BLACK NOTICE. PATRICIA CORNWELL

“You would hate it,” Eggleston promised.

“You got that right. Nothing I hate more than wasting my time,” Marino said.

Stringing wasn’t a waste of time, but it was a nightmare of tedium unless one was fond of protractors and trigonometry and had an anal-retentive mind. The point was that each droplet of blood has its individual trajectory from the impact site, or wound, to a target surface such as a wall, and depending on velocity, distance traveled and angles, droplets have many shapes that tell a gory story.

Although these days computers. could come up with the same results, the scene work required just as much time, and all of us who had testified in court had learned that jurors would rather see brightly colored string in a tangible, three-dimensional model than hatch lines on a chart. But calculating the exact position of a victim when each blow was struck was superfluous unless inches matter, and they didn’t matter here. I didn’t need measurements to tell me this was a homicide versus a suicide or that the killer had been enraged and frenzied and all over the place.

“We need to get her downtown,” I said to Marino. “Let’s get the squad up here.”

“I just can’t figure how he got in;” Ham said. “She’s a cop. You’d think she’d know better than to open the door to a stranger.”

“Assuming he was a stranger.”

“Hell, he’s the same damn maniac who killed the girl in the Quik Cary. Gotta be.”

“Dr. Scarpetta?” Harris’s voice came from the hall.

I turned around with a start. I’d thought he was gone.

“Where’s her, gun? Has anybody found it?” Marino asked.

“Not so far.”

“Could I see you for a minute, please?” Harris asked me.

Marino threw Harris a dirty look and stepped into the bathroom, calling out a little too loudly, “You guys know to check the drains and pipes, right?”

“We’ll get there, boss.”

I joined Harris in the hall and he moved us away from the door where no one could hear what he had to say. Richmond’s police chief had surrendered to tragedy. Anger had turned to fear, and that, I suspected, was what he didn’t want his troops to see. His suit jacket was draped over an arm, his shirt collar open and tie loose. He was having a hard time breathing.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Asthma.”

“You have your inhaler?”

“Just used it.”

“Take it easy, Chief Harris;” I calmly said, because asthma could get dangerous fast and stress made everything worse.

“Look,” he said, “there’ve been rumors. That she was involved in certain activities in D.C. I didn’t know anything about it when I hired her. Where she gets her money,” he added, as if Diane Bray weren’t- dead. “And I know Anderson follows her around like a puppy.”

“Maybe followed her when Bray didn’t know it, as well,” I said.

“We’ve got her in a patrol car,” he said, as if this were news to me.

“As a rule, it’s not my place to voice opinions about who’s guilty of murder,” I replied, “but I don’t think Anderson committed this one.”

He got out his inhaler again and took two puffs.

“Chief Harris, we’ve got a sadistic killer out there who murdered Kim Luong. The M.O. here is the same. It’s too unique to be someone else. There aren’t enough details known for it to be a copycat-many details are known only by Marino and me.”

He struggled to breathe.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I asked. “Do you want others to die like this? Because it will happen again. And soon. This guy’s losing control at a lightning rate. Maybe because he left his safe haven in Paris and now he’s like a hunted wild animal with no place to run? And he’s enraged, desperate. Maybe he feels challenged and he’s taunting us;” I added as I wondered what Benton would have said. “Who knows what goes on inside a mind like that.”

Harris cleared his throat.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“A press release, and I mean now. We know he speaks French. He may have a congenital disorder that results in excessive hairiness. He may have long pale hair on his body. He may shave his entire face, neck and head, and have deformed dentition, widely spaced, small, pointed teeth. His face is probably going to look odd, too.”

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