She bangs on the sun porch door. No answer. She walks around to the side of the house, supposing whoever is cooking might be somewhere over there, but the side yard is empty and overgrown. She peers through a space between the blinds and the edge of a big window and sees an empty kitchen, all stone and stainless steel. She’s never seen a kitchen like that except in magazines. She notices two big dog bowls on a mat near the butcher block.

“Hello!” she yells. “I think I have your dog! Hello!” She moves along the side of the house, calling out. She climbs up steps to a door, next to it a window missing a pane of glass. Another pane is broken. She thinks about hurrying back to the beach, but inside the laundry room is a big dog crate that’s empty.

“Hello!” Her heart beats hard. She’s trespassing, but she’s found the basset hound’s home and she’s got to help. How would she feel if it were Frisbee and someone didn’t bring him back?

“Hello!” She tries the door and it opens.

Chapter 12

Kay Scarpetta 15 - Book of the Dead

Chapter 12

W ater drips from live oaks.

In the deep shadows of yew and tea olive trees, Scarpetta arranges broken pieces of pottery in the bottoms of pots to help with drainage so the plants don’t rot. The warm air is steamy from a hard rain that suddenly started and just as suddenly stopped.

Bull carries a ladder over to an oak tree that spreads its canopy over most of Scarpetta’s garden. She begins tamping potting soil into the pots and tucks in petunias, then parsley, dill, and fennel, because they attract butterflies. She relocates fuzzy silver lamb’s ears and artemisia into better spots where they will catch the sun. The scent of wet, loamy earth mingles with the pungency of old brick and moss as she moves rather stiffly—from years of unforgiving tile floors in the morgue—to a brick post overgrown with hollyfern. She starts diagnosing the problem.

“If I pull this fern out, Bull, I might damage the brick. What do you think?”

“That’s Charleston brick, probably two hundred years old, my guess.” From the top of the ladder. “I’d pull a little, see what happens.”

The fern peels off without complaint. She fills a watering can and tries not to think about Marino. She feels sick when she thinks about Rose.

Bull says, “Some man came through the alley on a chopper right before you got here.”

Scarpetta stops what she’s doing, stares up at him. “Was it Marino?”

When she got home from Rose’s apartment, his motorcycle was gone. He must have driven her car to his house and gotten a spare key.