“I’m not sure I want to know how it might,” I said.
“But if what Lucy has to say about gateways is relevant, then maybe the final stop for this hacker is certain people’s telephone records.”
“Why?” Marino asked.
“To see who they were calling.” I paused. “The son of information a reporter might be interested in, for example.”
Getting up from the chair, I began to pace about as fear tingled along my nerves. I thought of Eddings poisoned in his boat, of Black Talons and uranium, and I remembered that Joel Hand’s farm was in Tidewater somewhere.
“This person named Dwain Shapiro who owned the bible you found in Eddings’ house,” I said to Marino. “He allegedly died in a carjacking. Do we have any further information on that?”
“Right now we don’t.”
“Danny’s death could have been signed out as the same sort of thing,” I said.
“Or yours could have. Especially because of the type of car. If this were a hit, maybe the assailant didn’t know that Dr. Scarpetta isn’t a man,” Janet said. “Maybe the gunman was cocky and only knew what you would be driving.”
I stopped by the hearth as she went on.
“Or maybe the killer didn’t figure out Danny wasn’t you until it was too late. Then Danny had to be dealt with.”
“Why me?” I said. “What would be the motive?”
It was Lucy who replied, “Obviously, they think you know something.”
“They?”
“Maybe the New Zionists. The same reason they killed Ted Eddings,” she said. “They thought he knew something or was going to expose something.”
I looked at my niece and Janet as my anxieties got more inflamed.
“For God’s sake,” I said to them with feeling, “don’t do anything more on this until you talk to Benton or someone, Damn! I don’t want them thinking you know something, too.”
But I knew Lucy, at least, would not listen. She would be on her keyboard with renewed vigor the moment I shut the door.
“Janet?” I held the gaze of my only hope for their playing it safe. “Your hacker is very possibly connected to people being murdered.”
“Dr. Scarpetta,” she said, “I understand.”
Marino and I left UVA, and the gold Lexus we had already seen twice this day was behind us all the way back to Richmond. Marino drove with his eyes constantly on his mirrors. He was sweating and mad because the DMV computer wasn’t up yet, and the plate number he had called in was taking forever to come back. The person behind us in the car was young and white. He wore dark glasses and a cap.
“He doesn’t care if you know who he is,” I said. “If he cared, he wouldn’t be so obvious, Marino. This is just one more intimidation attempt.”
“Yeah, well, let’s see who intimidates who,” he said, slowing down.
He stared in the rearview mirror again, slowing more, and the car got closer. Suddenly, he hit his brakes hard. I didn’t know who was more shocked, our tailgater or me, as the Lexus’s brakes screeched, horns blaring all around, and the car clipped the rear end of Marino’s Ford.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “Looks like someone’s just rearended a policeman.”
He got out and subtly unsnapped his holster while I looked on in disbelief. I slipped out my pistol and dropped it in a pocket of my coat as I decided I should get out, too, since I had no idea what was about to happen. Marino was by the Lexus’s driver’s door, watching the traffic at his back as he talked into his portable radio.
“Keep your hands where I can see them at all times,” he ordered the driver again in a loud, authoritative voice.
“Now I want you to give me your driver’s license. Slow.”
I was on the other side of the car, near the passenger’s door, and I knew who the offender was before Marino saw the license, and the photograph on it.
“Well, well, Detective Roche,” Marino raised his voice above the rush of traffic. “Fancy we should run into you.
Or vice versa.” His tone turned hard. “Get out of the car.