“To detect frequency-weighted electric fields in the ELF and VLF range. A detector, in other words. An electromagnetic measurement tool,” Benton said. “You hold it up in the middle of a room to see if you get readings that might indicate you’re being electronically monitored.”

“Does it work?”

“It’s popular in ghost hunting,” Benton said.

Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

6

For the third time, Investigator P. R. Marino refused tea, coffee, soda, or a glass of water. She tried harder.

“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” she parroted her husband’s old quip. “How about a little spot of bourbon?”

“I’m all set,” Investigator Marino said.

“You sure? It’s no trouble. I might have a taste of it myself.”

She returned to the living room.

“No, thanks.”

She sat back down and there was no might about it. She’d poured herself a generous one. Ice rattled as she set down the glass on a coaster.

“I’m not usually like this,” she said from the corduroy couch. “I’m not a drunk.”

“I don’t go around judging people,” Investigator Marino said, his eyes lingering on her drink as if it were a pretty woman.

“Sometimes a person needs something for the nerves,” she said. “I’d be dishonest if I pretended you didn’t scare me a little.”

She was still shaky after a good ten minutes of back and forth about whether he really was the police. Holding up a badge to the peephole was a trick she’d seen numerous times in violent movies, and had the 911 operator not stayed on the line, assuring her that the man at her door was legitimate, and continued to stay on the line while she let him in, he wouldn’t be sitting in her living room right now.

Investigator Marino was a big man, with weathered skin and a red hue to his complexion that caused her concern about his blood pressure. Mostly bald with unfortunate wisps of gray hair in a crescent moon around his pate, he had the look and demeanor of one who did everything the hard way, listened to no one, and certainly wasn’t to be trifled with. She was quite sure he could pick up two thugs by the scruff of the neck, one in each hand, and simultaneously toss them across the room as if they were made of hay. She suspected he’d cut quite a figure when he was young. She also suspected he was single at this time, or would be better off if he were, because if he had a sweetheart and she let him out the door looking the way he did, either she didn’t care about him or she was of questionable breeding.

Oh, how Shrew would love to give him a tip or two about the way he dressed. If a man was large-boned, then the rule was that cheap, skimpily cut suits, especially black ones, and white cotton shirts without a tie, and rubber-bottomed black leather lace-up shoes tended to make him look a bit like Herman Munster. But she wasn’t about to offer him advice, for fear he would react the same way her husband had, and she was careful not to study the investigator too closely.