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Back The Bone Bed Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. also by patricia cornwell
  2. title page
  3. copyright
  4. dedication
  5. contents
  6. prologue
  7. one
  8. two
  9. three
  10. four
  11. five
  12. six
  13. seven
  14. eight
  15. nine
  16. ten
  17. eleven
  18. twelve
  19. thirteen
  20. fourteen
  21. fifteen
  22. sixteen
  23. seventeen
  24. eighteen
  25. nineteen
  26. twenty
  27. twenty-one
  28. twenty-two
  29. twenty-three
  30. twenty-four
  31. twenty-five
  32. twenty-six
  33. twenty-seven
  34. twenty-eight
  35. twenty-nine
  36. thirty
  37. thirty-one
  38. thirty-two
  39. thirty-three
  40. thirty-four
  41. thirty-five
  42. thirty-six
  43. thirty-seven
  44. thirty-eight
  45. thirty-nine
  46. forty
  47. two nights later
  48. credits

“She would have taken the cat with her wherever she went when she left here.” Her voice is nasal. “And she obviously left here, and I would say willingly as opposed to having been abducted. And it’s obvious that when she left this house she wasn’t coming back for a while.” She fires this off at me as if I’m trying her patience and have about used it up.

“So she left with her cat but without her car, possibly for Illinois or Florida, and along the way something happened that ended with her being dumped in the bay,” I summarize what is illogical.

“We can’t assume she wasn’t meeting up with someone.” She pulls a fresh tissue out of her Tyvek sleeve. “Someone who perhaps picked her up, which is why her car’s still here. That maybe she got involved with the wrong person, someone she met on the Internet, for example.”

The cat bowls are on a mat on the floor near the door leading outside, and one is empty, and the other has a hard residue, what’s left of wet food.

“You’ve known Pete Marino a long time,” Burke says.

“I would collect it,” I repeat my suggestion about the cat treats. “It strikes me as out of place. Nothing else is left out and opened. It should go to the labs to be checked for fingerprints, for DNA. It’s best you don’t touch it.”

She’s wiping her nose and sneezing. Her gloves aren’t clean.

“Benton’s told me a little bit about him.” She intends to ignore me about the cat, and I won’t let her.

“One dish is empty because the water would have evaporated,” I continue. “The other dish had food in it and wasn’t washed. Sometimes it’s the one little thing that doesn’t seem to matter.”

“A troubled volatile marriage. Abusive to his wife.”

“I’m not aware he was abusive to Doris. Not physically,” I say, and I can’t imagine Doris’s shock if she picked up the phone or opened her door and the FBI was there to question her about Marino.

“A son who was involved in organized crime and was murdered in Poland.” Burke is looking at her phone.

I can take care of the bag myself, but I prefer not to because it’s not related to the body, it’s not biological, and I open my scene case. Burke has left me no choice. I collect the cat treats and label the bag and initial it.