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
“It’s really difficult to see, in her condition.” Luke uses a hand lens to examine the subtle contusions I’ve pointed out, and I’m aware of the whisper of his white gown moving as he moves, the intense light shining on his pale blond hair.
“It helps to illuminate areas at different angles, getting an overview before doing a close visual exam of a particular feature or features,” I suggest to him, as I feel the heat of him and the heat of the lamp. “The same way you enter a crime scene. The big picture first. Then narrow it down. Don’t fixate so much on one thing that you miss all of it.”
“I certainly wouldn’t want to be so fixated I miss all of it.” Luke adjusts the light again.
“Had a case not all that long ago that I was called in to consult on.” Ned collects his raincoat from the chair. “In New Hampshire, several patients with broken dental tools in their teeth.”
“Thanks so much, Ned.” I look up at him. “You saved the day, as always, and I’m grateful, the FBI is grateful, everybody’s grateful.”
He lingers by the door. “That particular dentist is up to his eyeballs in more than a hundred civil malpractice suits.”
“Benton ran out to pick up pizza, and I’m guessing he’s back by now,” I let Ned know.
“He’ll probably be going to prison for a few years and could be deported back to Iran.”
“Maybe check on the seventh floor?” I suggest. “I’m sure they’d love your company, if you’re not in a hurry to get home.”
“Maybe a few here as well?” Luke points out more brown spots, small and almost perfectly round, his arm touching mine, and I feel its firmness through the Tyvek sleeve. “If a grip was intermittent? Like we see when someone is being forcibly held, and the grip tightens and relaxes, tightens and relaxes. Would you expect fingertip bruises through her layers of clothing?”
I pick up a camera and the six-inch scale Marino labeled earlier today.
“Would you expect her to bruise like this through a blouse and a wool jacket?” Luke asks, and I begin to take photographs, because Marino isn’t here.
While I don’t know exactly what is happening, I’ve gathered he’s still upstairs, being questioned by Machado and the FBI, their interest related to Twitter, to the woman Lucy told me about. Someone Marino met on the Internet and recently unfollowed in more ways than one, my niece said early this morning, when she informed me that he’d been sleeping over at the CFC on an AeroBed.