Predator

19

Scarpetta hears the distant roar of a motorcycle with very loud pipes.

She tries to concentrate as the motorcycle gets closer, cruising past the building toward the faculty parking lot. She thinks about Marino and wonders if she is going to have to fire him. She’s not sure she could.

She is explaining that there were two phones inside Laurel Swift’s house and both of them were unplugged, the cords missing.Laurelhad left his cell phone in his car and says he was unable to find his brother’s cell phone, so he had no way to call for help. Panicking,Laurelfled and flagged somebody down. He didn’t return to the house until the police arrived, and by then the shotgun was gone.

“This is information I got from Dr. Bronson,” Scarpetta says. “I’ve talked to him several times and I’m sorry I don’t have a better grasp of the details.”

“The phone cords. Have they ever shown up?”

“I don’t know,” Scarpetta says, because Marino hasn’t briefed her.

“Johnny Swift could have removed them to make sure no one could call for help in case he didn’t die right away, assuming he’s a suicide,” Joe offers another one of his creative scenarios.

Scarpetta doesn’t answer because she knows nothing about the phone cords beyond what Dr. Bronson relayed to her in his vague, somewhat disjointed way.

“Anything else missing from the house? Anything besides the phone cords, the decedent’s cell phone and the shotgun? As if that’s not enough.”

“You’ll have to ask Marino,” she says.

“I believe he’s here. Unless someone else has a motorcycle as loud as the space shuttle.”

“I’m surprisedLaurelhasn’t been charged with murder, you want my opinion,” Joe says.

“You can’t charge someone with murder when the manner of death hasn’t been determined,” Scarpetta replies. “The manner is still pending, and there isn’t sufficient evidence to change it to suicide or homicide or accident, although I certainly fail to see how this is an accident. If the death isn’t resolved to Dr. Bronson’s satisfaction, he’ll eventually change the manner to undetermined.”

Heavy footsteps sound on carpet in the hallway.

“What happened to common sense?” Joe says.

“You don’t determine manner of death based on common sense,” Scarpetta says, and she wishes he could keep his unwelcome comments to himself.

The conference-room door opens, and Pete Marino walks in carrying a briefcase and a box of Krispy Kreme donuts, dressed in black jeans, black leather boots, a black leather vest with the Harley logo on the back, his usual garb. He ignores Scarpetta as he sits in his usual chair next to hers and scoots the box of donuts across the table.

“I sure wish we could test the brother’s clothing for GSR, get our hands on whatever he was wearing when he was shot,” Joe says, leaning back in his chair the way he does when he’s about to pontificate, and he tends to pontificate more than usual when Marino is around. “Take a look at them on soft x-ray, the Faxitron, SEM/spectrometry.”

Marino stares at Joe as if he might hit him.

“Of course, it’s possible to get trace amounts on your person from sources other than a gunshot. Plumbing materials, batteries, automobile greases, paints. Just like in my lab practicum last month,” Joe says as he plucks out a chocolate-iced donut that is smashed, most of its icing stuck to the box. “You know what happened to them?”

He licks his fingers as he looks across the table at Marino.

“That was quite a practicum,” Marino says. “Wonder where you got the idea.”

“What I asked is, do you know what happened to the brother’s clothes,” Joe says.

“I think you been watching too many fantasy forensic shows,” Marino says, his big face staring at him. “Too much Harry Potter policing on your big flat-screen TV. Think you’re a forensic pathologist, or almost one, a lawyer, a scientist, a crime-scene investigator, a cop, Captain Kirk and the Easter Bunny all rolled up in one.”

“By the way, yesterday’s hell scene was a screaming success,” Joe says. “Too bad all of you missed it.”

“Well, what is the story about the clothes, Pete?” Vince asks Marino. “We know what he had on when he found his brother’s body?”

“What he had on, according to him, was nothing,” Marino says. “Supposedly, he came in through the kitchen door, put the groceries on the counter, then went straight back to the bedroom to pee. Supposedly. Then he took a shower because he had to work at his restaurant that night and happened to look out the doorway and saw the shotgun on the carpet behind the couch. At this point, he was naked, so he says.”

“Sounds like a lot of crap to me.” Joe talks with his mouth full.

“My personal opinion is it’s probably a robbery that got interrupted,” Marino says. “Or something got interrupted. A rich doctor maybe gets tangled up with the wrong person. Anybody seen my Harley jacket? Black with a skull and bones on one shoulder, an American flag on the other.”

“Where did you have it last?”

“I took it off in the hangar the other day when Lucy and me were doing an aerial. Came back, it was gone.”

“I haven’t seen it.”

“Neither have I.”

“Shit. That thing cost me. And the patches are custom. Goddamn it. If someone stole it…”

“Nobody steals around here,” Joe says.

“Oh yeah? What about stealing ideas?” Marino glares at him. “And that reminds me,” he says to Scarpetta, “while we’re on the subject of hell scenes…”

“We’re not on the subject,” she says.

“I came here this morning with a few things to say about them.”

“Another time.”

“I got some good ones, left a file on your desk,” Marino says to her. “Give you something interesting to think about during your vacation. Especially since you’ll probably get snowed in up there, we’ll probably see you again in the spring.”

She controls her irritation, tries to keep it tucked into a secret place where she hopes no one can see it. He is deliberately disrupting staff meeting and treating her the same way he did some fifteen years ago when she was the new chief medical examiner of Virginia, a woman in a world where women didn’t belong, a woman with an attitude, Marino decided, because she has an M.D. and a law degree.

“I think the Swift case would be a damn good hell scene,” Joe says. “GSR and x-ray spectrometry and other findings tell two different stories. See if the students figure it out. Bet they’ve never heard of the billiard-ball effect.”

“I didn’t ask the peanut gallery.” Marino raises his voice. “Anybody hear me ask the peanut gallery?”

“Well, you know my opinion about your creativity,” Joe says to him. “Frankly, it’s dangerous.”

“I don’t give a shit about your opinion.”

“We’re lucky the Academy isn’t bankrupt. That would have been one hell of an expensive settlement,” Joe says, as if it never has occurred to him that one of these days Marino might knock him across the room. “Real lucky after what you did.”

Last summer, one of Marino’s mock crime scenes traumatized a student who then quit the Academy, threatened to sue and fortunately was never heard from again. Scarpetta and her staff are paranoid about allowing Marino to participate in training, whether it is mock scenes, hellish or otherwise, or even classroom lectures.

“Don’t think what happened doesn’t enter my mind when I’m creating hell scenes,” Joe goes on.

“Hell scenes you create?” Marino declares. “You mean all those ideas you stole from me?”

“I believe that’s called sour grapes. I don’t need to steal anyone’s ideas, certainly not yours.”

“Oh really? You think I don’t recognize my own shit? You don’t know enough to come up with the kind of shit I do, Dr. Almost a Forensic Pathologist.”

“That’s it,” Scarpetta says. She raises her voice. “That’s enough.”

“I happen to have a great one of a body found in what appears to be a drive-by shooting,” Joe says, “but when the bullet’s recovered, it has an unusual waffle or mesh pattern in the lead because the victim was actually shot through a window screen, his body dumped…”

“That’s mine!” Marino slams his fist down on the table.