“The print on the gold coin.” He’s excited, talking fast. “We got a hit—the unidentified little boy who was found last week. The kid from Hilton Head.”

“Are you sure? You can’t be sure. It makes no sense.”

“May not make sense, but there’s no doubt about it.”

“Don’t say that, either, unless you mean it. My first reaction is there’s an error,” Scarpetta says.

“There’s not. I pulled his ten-print card from the prints Marino took in the morgue. I visually verified it. Unquestionably, the ridge detail from the partial on the coin matches the unidentified kid’s right thumbprint. There’s no mistake.”

“A fingerprint on a coin that’s been fumed with glue? I don’t see how.”

“Believe me, I’m with you. We all know the fingerprints of prepubescent kids don’t last long enough to fume. They’re mostly water. Just sweat instead of the oils, amino acids, and all the rest that comes with puberty. I’ve never superglued a kid’s prints and don’t think you could. But this print is from a kid, and that kid is the one in your morgue.”

“Maybe that’s not how it happened,” Scarpetta says. “Maybe the coin was never fumed.”

“Had to be. There’s ridge detail in what sure looks like superglue, the same as if it had been fumed.”

“Maybe he had glue on his finger and touched the coin,” she says. “And left his print that way.”

Chapter 18

Kay Scarpetta 15 - Book of the Dead

Chapter 18

N ine p.m. A hard rain slaps the street in front of Marino’s fishing shack.

Lucy is soaking wet as she turns on a wireless receiver mini-disc recorder disguised as an iPod. In exactly six minutes, Scarpetta will call Marino. Right now, he is arguing with Shandy, their every word picked up by the multidirectional mike embedded in his computer’s thumb drive.

His heavy footsteps, the refrigerator door opening, the swish of a can popped open, probably a beer.

Shandy’s angry voice sounds in Lucy’s earpiece. “…Don’t lie to me. I’m warning you. All of a sudden? All of a sudden you decide you don’t want a committed relationship? And by the way, who said I’m committed to you? The only fucking thing that ought to be committed is you—to a fucking mental hospital. Maybe the Big Chief’s fiance can give you a discount on a room up there.”

He’s told her about Scarpetta’s engagement to Benton. Shandy’s hitting Marino where it hurts, meaning she knows where it hurts. Lucy wonders how much she’s used that against him, taunted him about it.