His hands are shaking badly. He looks at her so she can read his lips. “That was stupid, wasn’t it, Jess. Now what?” He pets the dog.

“He’ll be the saloon dog, and if that man comes back, it won’t be good for him. But you better be careful now. You’ve started something.”

“You ever seen him before?”

She shakes her head.

Marino notices Shandy on the porch, by the railing. He wonders why she hasn’t left the porch. He almost killed someone and she’s still on the porch.

Chapter 10

Kay Scarpetta 15 - Book of the Dead

Chapter 10

S omewhere a dog barks in the near dark, and the barking becomes more insistent.

Scarpetta detects the distant carbureted potato-potato- potato rhythm of Marino’s Roadmaster. She can hear the damn thing blocks away on Meeting Street, heading south. Moments later it roars through the narrow alleyway behind her house. He’s been drinking. She could hear it in his voice when she talked to him on the phone. He’s being obnoxious.

She needs him sober if they’re going to have a productive conversation—perhaps the most important one they’ve ever had. She begins making a pot of coffee as he turns left on King Street, then another left into the narrow driveway she shares with her unpleasant neighbor, Mrs. Grimball. Marino rolls the throttle a few times to announce himself and kills the engine.

“You got something to drink in there?” he says as Scarpetta opens the front door. “A little bourbon would be nice. Wouldn’t it, Mrs. Grimball!” he shouts up at the yellow frame house, and a curtain moves. He locks the bike’s front fork, slips the key in his pocket.

“Inside, now,” Scarpetta says, realizing he’s far more intoxicated than she thought. “For God’s sake, why did you find it necessary to ride down the alley and yell at my neighbor?” she says as he follows her to the kitchen, his booted footsteps loud, his head almost touching the top of each door frame they pass through.

“Security check. I like to make sure nothing’s going on back there, no lost hearses, no homeless people hanging out.”

He pulls out a chair, sits, slumped back. The odor of booze is powerful, his face bright red, his eyes bloodshot. He says, “I can’t stay long. Got to get back to my woman. She thinks I’m at the morgue.”

Scarpetta hands him a coffee, black. “You’re going to stay long enough to sober up, otherwise you’re not going anywhere near your motorcycle. I can’t believe you got on it in your condition. That’s not like you. What’s wrong with you?”

“So I had a few. Big deal. I’m fine.”