Chapters (48)
- also by patricia cornwell
- title page
- copyright
- dedication
- contents
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- two nights later
- credits
My mind keeps going back to the way Marino acted earlier today, as if the dead woman was personally offensive to him. His upset over the vintage buttons on her jacket was bizarre, and I have an incredible premonition, an awful one.
“She’d been dead quite a while by the time she was weighted down and dropped into the bay,” I’m saying, “and I’m wondering who called this gathering?”
“We think we got an ID,” Sil Machado says.
twenty
twenty
HE TURNS TO BENTON AND SPECIAL AGENT BURKE AND the woman I don’t know, as if it is up to them to continue, and I know what that means.
The Portuguese Man of War, as Marino calls Sil Machado, is a young hotshot, built like a bull, with dark hair and eyes and preppy taste in clothes, and he’s not a devotee of the FBI and doesn’t turn over a case to them without question and in some instances without resistance. If he’s deferring to them even as we stand here, then the Feds already have taken over the investigation, and there has to be a justifiable cause for it.
“How come nobody let me know?” Marino glares at Luke. “An ID based on what?” His tone is accusatory. “How’s that possible? It’s not like we could have DNA this fast, and forget a fingerprint match. That can’t happen without rehydrating her fingerpads, meaning we’re probably going to have to remove them first, which was what I planned to do—”
“Tell you what, Pete,” Machado interrupts him. “Why don’t you come with me, and we’ll let them talk while we go over a few things?”
“What?” Marino instantly is paranoid.
“We’ll go over everything.”
“You don’t want them talking in front of me?” Marino’s voice gets loud. “What the fuck!”
“Come on, buddy.” Machado winks at him.
“This is bullshit!”
“Come on, Pete. Don’t be like that.” Machado gets close to him, puts a hand on his arm, and Marino tries to shake him off, and Machado grips him harder. “Let’s go take a load off, and I’ll explain.” He escorts Marino out into the corridor. “I know you got coffee in this place, course what I’d really like is a beer, but forget it.”
“Let’s back up a minute.” I shut the door. “I thought I’d made it clear not to start this case without me.” I address this to Anne, to Luke. “So if what I’m seeing is the result of the FBI coming in here and giving directives to speed things along, that’s not how it works,” I add, and I’m not nice about it.
“It’s not like that,” Luke says to me.
But it is like that.
“The ID room is wide open, and you’ve started the scan when that wasn’t my instruction,” I reply.