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  1. Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta
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So far, only Jake Loudin had been located. He wasn’t about to admit he might know Mike Morales, might actually use him to euthanize pets that didn’t sell or God knows what he used him for. Maybe Morales went by the name of Juan Amate when he entered the basements of pet shops and added yet one more layer of misery to the world, for a fee. Maybe Berger would get lucky and find a way to coax Loudin into admitting, in exchange for a reduced sentence, that he’d called Morales last night after Eva Peebles was in the wrong place at the wrong time, a pet store basement. Berger really didn’t think that Loudin had asked Morales to murder anyone. But Eva Peebles’s existence was becoming an inconvenience that gave Morales the excuse to have a little more fun.

The intercom buzzed as she finished getting dressed, and Lucy was sitting on the bed, because they had been talking nonstop.

Berger picked up the house phone as she buttoned her Oxford cloth shirt.

“Jaime? It’s Kay,” Scarpetta’s voice said. “I’m at your door.” Berger pressed the zero on the keypad and remotely unlocked it, and said, “Come in, I’ll be down in a minute.”

Lucy said, “All right with you if I take a quick shower?”

33

Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

33

Marino watched Headline News on his PDA as he walked swiftly along Central Park South, leading with his shoulder, weaving through other pedestrians like a football player with the goal in sight.

Benton, in his blue pinstriped suit, was sitting at a table across from a correspondent, Jim somebody. Marino couldn’t remember, because it wasn’t one of the more famous ones at this hour in the day. Below Benton’s name in bold block letters was:

DR. BENTON WESLEY, FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST,

MCLEAN HOSPITAL

“Thanks for joining us. And with us is Dr. Benton Wesley, former chief of the FBI’s behavioral science unit at Quantico, and you’re now, actually, at Harvard, and here at John Jay?”

“Jim, I want to get straight to the point because this is extremely urgent. We’re appealing to Dr. Oscar Bane to please contact the FBI… .”

“Let me just back up and tell our viewers this is in reference to cases that you can’t miss, no matter where you look—the two absolutely appalling homicides committed in New York over the past couple of nights. What can you tell us about those?”