“The fuckers,” he growls, and I can see the pulse in his temple as a reddish-purple thrush creeps up his neck. “I’m sitting down with the guy and really getting somewhere, and the assholes showed up in fucking SWAT gear and had the mother-effing helicopter thundering over the damn house. When they realize it’s just me and some local nutjob they call off the dogs, and then Mahant walks in like the new sheriff’s come to town.” Marino dusts off his hands. “The end.”

“What do you mean the end? And who are you talking about?”

“Bryce’s cranky next-door neighbor,” Marino says to my shock. “I was just getting to the bottom of why he made the bogus nine-one-one call about you.”

“Marino …?” as I think of what Tom Perry just told me about Theo Portison.

He’s either been visited by the FBI or is about to be.

“It was exactly what Bryce said,” Marino is talking fast and without pause. “To get him back for insulting him, and what better way to hurt him than to drag the big chief Doctor Scarpetta into the mix so maybe he gets fired—”

“What did you just call me?”

“Big chief?” Marino shrugs. “It’s what he called you, not me.”

“That’s what Tailend Charlie calls me in some of the mocking audio clips.”

“Well you can tell the FBI that but I’m not helping them a damn bit.”

“Are you saying that they just showed up at Theo Portison’s door while you were sitting in the living room with him?” I then ask.

“Who the hell’s Theo Portison?” Marino scowls, looming over me. “Bryce’s neighbor is John Smyth with a y, the English spelling. And I guess it’s not enough for the Feds to take over the Vandersteel and Briggs cases but now they’re looking into crank nine-one-one calls? I mean what the hell?”

“Did Mahant or someone tell you why they were there?”

“When do they ever tell us anything?”

“His name is Theodore Portison, and apparently he’s known for having aliases because he gets paranoid.” I push back my chair from my desk. “He was fired by MIT twenty years ago, and he knew Elisa Vandersteel. It’s quite possible he’s Tailend Charlie.” I get up and take off my lab coat. “We’ll see if I get any more audio files after this.”

“Well they grabbed him,” Marino says as we walk to my door. “They ended up arresting him.”

“For what?”

“Hell if I know. But they’ve been digging through his landfill of a place. Shit. It’s my case, Doc.”

“The important thing is he was caught.”

“But Carrie hasn’t been.”

“One down is better than nothing. Assuming he’s Tailend Charlie, that he’s the one who killed these two women.”

“And has been harassing you, me, Benton. Using voice-altering software or whatever? Why?”