BLACK NOTICE. PATRICIA CORNWELL

“I guess,” he mumbled.

“How are you feeling? Still sick? If not, I’ve got to head out to Petersburg, and I think you should ride with me so we can finish this conversation.”

“Well, I . . :’

“Well what, Chuck?”

“I want to finish the conversation, too,” he said.

“Start with how you know Deputy Chief Bray. I find it rather extraordinary that you should have what seems to be a personal relationship with the most powerful person in the police department.”

“Imagine how I felt when it all started;” he innocently said. “See, Detective Anderson called me a couple months ago, said she was new and wanted to ask me questions about the M.E: s office, about our procedures, and could I meet her at the River City Diner for lunch. That was when I got on the road to hell, and I know I should’ve said something to you about her call. I should’ve told you what I was doing. But you were teaching classes most of the day and I didn’t want to bother you, and Dr. Fielding was in court. So I told Anderson I’d be glad to help her out.”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious she didn’t learn anything.”

“She was setting me up,” he said, “and when I walked into the River City Diner, I couldn’t believe it. She was sitting in a booth with Deputy Chief Bray, and she told me she wanted to know all about the way our office runs,too. “

“Who did?”

“Bray did.”

“I see. Big surprise,” I said.

“I guess I was really flattered but nervous, too, because I didn’t understand what was going on. I mean, next thing, she’s telling me to walk back to police headquarters with her and Anderson.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this at the time?” I said as we drove toward Fifth Street to pick up I-95 South.

“I don’t know . . .” His voice trailed off.

“I think you do.”

“I was scared.”

“Might it have anything to do with your ambition of becoming a police officer?”

“Well, let’s face it,” he said. “What better connection could I have? And somehow she knew I was interested and when we got to her office, she closed the door and sat me across from her desk.”

“`Was Anderson there?”

“Just Bray and me. She said that with my experience I might think about becoming a crime-scene technician. I felt like I’d won the lottery.”

I was working hard at keeping my distance from cement barriers and aggressive drivers while Ruffin continued his choirboy act.

“I have to admit I was in a dream after that and lost interest in my job, and I’m sorry for that,” he said. “But it wasn’t until two weeks later that Bray e-mailed me . . :’

“Where did she get your e-mail address?”

“Uh, she asked for it. So she e-mailed me and said she wanted me to drop by her house at five-thirty, that she had something very confidential to discuss with me.

“And I’m telling you, Dr. Scarpetta, I didn’t want to go. I knew something bad was going to come out of it.”

“Such as?”

“I halfway wondered if maybe she was going to hit on me or something.”

“Did she? What happened when you got to her house?” I asked.

“Gosh, this is-really hard to say.”

“Say it.”

“She got me a beer and moved her chair real close to the couch where I was sitting. She asked me all kinds of questions about myself like she was really interested in me as a person. And . . :”

A loaded-down logging truck pulled in front of me and I sped around it.

“I hate those things,” I said.

“Me, too,” Chuck said, and his shoe-licking tone was making me sick.

“And what? You were telling me?” I said.

He took a deep breath. He got very interested in the trucks bearing down on us and the men working with mounds of asphalt on the roadside. It seemed as if this stretch of I-95 near Petersburg had been under construction since the Civil War.

“She wasn’t in a uniform, if you get what I mean,” he resumed with overblown sincerity. “She, well, she had on a business suit, but I don’t think she was wearing a bra, or at least the blouse . . . you could sort of see through it.”

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