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
Maybe Benton found a discreet way to suggest what Lucy discovered almost instantly and illegally, but Hahn has found out what she needs to know. She has the information that the video footage of Emma Shubert’s last jetboat ride was taken with her own iPhone. I suspect it was recorded by a colleague while the paleontologists were headed to the Wapiti bone bed on a rare sunny morning, a file innocently made and saved and then later looked at by a monster. He probably went through every file saved on her phone, the same phone he used to take a photograph of a severed ear, what we’re supposed to assume is her ear.
The same phone that e-mailed the video and the jpg to me.
“He got what he wanted.” Douglas Burke pushes back her chair, and no one answers her. “He’s out, a free man, right?” She looks incensed. “Channing Lott benefited from what’s going on, and in fact is the only individual who has benefited from it.”
She gets up and walks to the closed conference room door. She looks angry enough to hurt someone.
“He was in jail when Peggy Stanton vanished.” Benton calmly looks at her, and she defiantly stares back at him. “He was in jail when Emma Shubert disappeared. He certainly didn’t kill them or anyone while he was locked up in jail.”
“Crimes elaborately staged so we’re thinking serial murders. Why?” Burke is saying this to Benton, as if Val Hahn and I aren’t here. “To cover, to obfuscate the ultimate goal, which is getting rid of his wife and getting away with it.”
“He was locked up. That’s a fact,” Benton says.
“So someone did his bidding,” Burke answers him. “Someone makes sure Peggy Stanton’s body shows up exactly when it did and is filmed and he gets acquitted. Genius, I have to say. Amazing what money can buy.”
“This killer acts alone,” Benton says. “Elaborate, yes. But not so we’ll think serial murders. They are serial murders.”
“You know what, Benton?” She opens the conference room door. “You’re not always right.”
thirty-eight
thirty-eight
I WANT PASTA OR PIZZA AND HAVE ASKED BENTON TO stop on his way home, which won’t be anytime soon, he warned me, when we were leaving the CFC separately.
Both of us alone. Prepossessed and preoccupied. Off to where we need to go, and that is the sum of us individually and together. I know full well when something isn’t important to anyone but me.
“Food,” I told my husband, as I was driving alone out of my parking lot. “God, I’m hungry. I’m starved,” I said on my way to handle what no one else can be bothered with, and I check my rearview mirror again and the dark blue Ford LTD is right behind me.