‘Airport,’ Pete Marino answered as I sat next to him. ‘It’s closer.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I said.
‘At least they got coffee and a john there,’ he said, and I knew he did not mean them in that order. ‘I guess Benton headed out on vacation without you,’ he added for the effect.
Lucy was rolling the throttle to full power, and the blades were going faster.
‘I can tell you right now I got one of those feelings,’ he let me know in his grumpy tone as the helicopter got light and began to lift. ‘We’re headed for big trouble.’
Marino’s specialty was investigating death, although he was completely unnerved by possibilities of his own. He did not like being airborne, especially in something that did not have flight attendants or wings. The Richmond Times Dispatch was a mess in his lap, and he refused to look down at fast retreating earth and the distant city skyline slowly rising from the horizon like someone tall standing up.
The front page of the paper prominently displayed a story about the fire, including a distant AP aerial photograph of ruins smoldering in the dark. I read closely but learned nothing new, for mostly the coverage was a rehash of Kenneth Sparkes’s alleged death, and his power and wealthy lifestyle in Warrenton. I had not known of his horses before or that one named Wind had sailed in last one year at the Kentucky Derby and was worth a million dollars. But I was not surprised. Sparkes had always been enterprising, his ego as enormous as his pride. I set the newspaper on the opposite seat and noted that Marino’s seat belt was unbuckled and collecting dust from the floor.
‘What happens if we hit severe turbulence when you’re not belted in?’ I talked loudly above the turbine engine.
‘So I spill my coffee.’ He adjusted the pistol on his hip, his khaki suit a sausage skin about to split. ‘In case you ain’t figured it out after all those bodies you’ve cut up, if this bird goes down, Doc, a seat belt ain’t gonna save you. Not airbags either, if we had them.’
In truth, he hated anything around his girth and had come to wear his pants so low I marveled that his hips could keep them up. Paper crackled as he dug two Hardee’s biscuits out of a bag stained gray with grease. Cigarettes bunched in his shirt pocket, and his face had its typical hypertensive flush. When I had moved to Virginia from my native city of Miami, he was a homicide detective as obnoxious as he was gifted. I remembered our early encounters in the morgue when he had referred to me as Mrs Scarpetta as he bullied my staff and helped himself to any evidence he pleased. He had taken bullets before I could label them, to infuriate me. He had smoked cigarettes with bloody gloves and made jokes about bodies that had once been living human beings.
I looked out my window at clouds skating across the sky and thought of time going by. Marino was almost fifty-five, and I could not believe it. We had defended and irritated each other almost daily for more than eleven years.
‘Want one?’ He held up a cold biscuit wrapped in waxy paper.
‘I don’t even want to look at it,’ I said ungraciously.
Pete Marino knew how much his rotten health habits worried me and was simply trying to get my attention. He carefully stirred more sugar in the plastic cup of coffee he was floating up and down with the turbulence, using his meaty arm for suspension.
‘What about coffee?’ he asked me. ‘I’m pouring.’
‘No thanks. How about an update?’ I got to the point as my tension mounted. ‘Do we know anything more than we did last night?’
‘The fire’s still smoldering in places. Mostly in the stables,’ he said. ‘A lot more horses than we thought. Must be twenty cooked out there, including thoroughbreds, quarter horses, and two foals with racehorse pedigrees. And of course you know about the one that ran the Derby. Talk about the insurance money alone. A so-called witness said you could hear them screaming like humans.’