Predator

36

It is very dark, the moon like a shadowy shape on an x-ray, vague behind clouds. Small insects swarm in the light of streetlamps. The traffic never quits on A1A, and the night is filled with noise.

“What’s bothering you?” Scarpetta asks as Lucy drives. “This is the first alone time you and I have had since I can’t remember when. Please talk to me.”

“I could have called Lex. I didn’t mean to drag you out.”

“And I could have told you to. I didn’t have to be your partner in crime tonight.”

Both of them are tired and in humorless moods.

“So, here we are,” Lucy says. “Maybe I used this as an opportunity for us to catch up. I could have called Lex,” she says again, staring straight ahead as she drives.

“I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me.”

“I’m not.” Lucy looks over at her without smiling. “I’m sorry about things.”

“You should be.”

“You don’t have to be so quick to agree. Maybe you don’t always know what my life is like.”

“The problem is, I want to. You consistently shut me out.”

“Aunt Kay, you really don’t want to know as much as you think you do. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I’m doing you a favor? That maybe you should enjoy me as you know me and leave the rest of it alone?”

“What is the rest of it?”

“I’m not like you.”

“In the important ways, you are, Lucy. We’re both intelligent, decent, hard-working women. We try to make a difference. We take risks. We’re honest. We try, we really try.”

“I’m not as decent as you think. All I do is hurt people. I’m good at it, getting better at it all the time. And every time I do it, I care less. Maybe I’m turning into a Basil Jenrette. MaybeBentonought to enroll me in his study up there. I bet my brain looks like Basil’s, like all the other fucking psychopaths.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Scarpetta says quietly.

“I think it’s blood.” Lucy makes one of her fast breaks again, changing the subject so abruptly, it’s jolting. “I think Basil’s telling the truth. I think he killed her in the back of the shop. I have a feeling it will turn out to be blood, what we found back there.”

“Let’s wait and see what the labs say.”

“The entire floor lit up. That was weird.”

“Why would Basil say anything about it? Why now? Why toBenton?” Scarpetta says. “That bothers me. Worries me, actually.”

“There’s always a reason with these people. Manipulation.”

“It worries me.”

“So he’s talking to get something he wants, to get his rocks off. How could he make it up?”

“He could know about the missing people from The Christmas Shop. It was in the paper, he was aMiamicop. Maybe he heard about it from other cops,” Scarpetta says.

The more they talk about it, the more she worries that Basil really did have something to do with what happened to Florrie and Helen Quincy. But she can’t imagine how he could have raped and murdered the mother in the back of the store. How did he get her bloody, dead body out of there, or get both dead bodies out of there, assuming he killed Helen, too.

“I know,” Lucy says. “I can’t envision it, either. And if he did kill them, why didn’t he just leave them there? Unless he didn’t want anyone to know they were murdered, wanted them presumed missing, presumed missing of their own volition.”

“That suggests motive to me,” Scarpetta says. “Not compulsive sexual homicide.”

“I forgot to ask you,” Lucy says. “I’m assuming I’m taking you to your house.”

“At this hour, yes.”

“What are you going to do aboutBoston?”

“We’ve got to deal with the Simister scene, and I just can’t do it now. I’ve had it for the night. Reba’s probably had it.”

“She agreed to let us in, I assume.”

“As long as she’s with us. We’ll do it in the morning. I’m thinking about not going toBostonat all, but it’s not fair toBenton. Not fair to either of us,” she says, unable to keep the frustration and disappointment out of her voice. “Of course, it’s the same thing. I suddenly have urgent cases. He suddenly has an urgent case. All we’ll do is work.”

“What’s his case?”

“A woman dumped nearWalden Pond, nude, bizarre fake tattoos on her body that I suspect were done after her murder. Red handprints.”

Lucy grips the steering wheel harder.

“What do you mean, fake tattoos?”

“Painted ones. Body art,Bentonsays. A hood over her head, a shotgun shell inserted in her rectum, posed, degrading, all the rest. I don’t know much, but I’m sure I will.”

“Do they know who she is?”

“They know very little.”

“Anything similar happen in the area? Similar homicides? With the red handprints?”

“You can divert the conversation all you want, Lucy, but it won’t work. You’re not yourself. You’ve gained weight, and for that to happen means something is off, very off. Not that you look bad, not at all, but I know what you’re like. You’re tired a lot and don’t look well. I hear about it. I haven’t said anything, but I know something’s wrong. I’ve known it for a while. Are you going to tell me?”

“I need to know more about the handprints.”

“I’ve told you what I know. Why?” Scarpetta keeps her eyes on Lucy’s tense face. “What’s going on with you?”

She stares straight ahead and seems to struggle with how to put the right answer together. She’s good at that, so bright, so quick, she can rearrange information until her concoctions are more believable than the truth, and rarely does anybody doubt or question. What saves her is that she doesn’t believe her misinformation and manipulations, doesn’t for a moment forget the facts and fall headlong into her own traps. Lucy always has a rational reason for what she does, and sometimes it’s a good one.

“You must be hungry,” Scarpetta then says. She says it quietly, gently, the way she used to talk when Lucy was an impossible child, always acting out because she hurt so much.

“You always feed me when you can’t do anything else with me,” Lucy says in a subdued way.

“It used to work. When you were a little girl, I could get you to do anything in exchange for my pizza.”

Lucy is silent, her face grim and unfamiliar in the red glow of a traffic light.

“Lucy? Are you going to smile or look at me even once this night?”

“I’ve been doing stupid things. One-night stands. I hurt people. Just the other night in Ptown, I did it again. I don’t want to be close to anybody. I want to be left alone. I can’t seem to help it. This time, it may have been really stupid. Because I haven’t been paying attention. Because maybe I don’t give a shit.”

“I didn’t even know you were in Ptown,” Scarpetta remarks, and she isn’t judgmental.

Lucy’s sexual orientation isn’t what bothers her.

“You used to be careful,” Scarpetta says. “More careful than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Aunt Kay, I’m sick.”