Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

“Yeah, there’s some strange shit out there,” Marino is telling Vander by cell phone. “So yours truly here’s gonna be your bodyguard.” He ends the call and we are quiet for a mo­ment. Last night seems to fill the rumbling space between us in the truck.

“How long have you known?” I finally ask Marino one more time, not at all satisfied with what he told me in Anna’s driveway when I walked him out to his truck after midnight. “When exactly did Righter tell you he was instigating a spe­cial grand jury investigation and what was his reason?”

“You hadn’t even finished her damn autopsy yet.” Marino lights a cigarette. “Bray was still on your table, to be exact. Righter gets me on the phone and says he don’t want you do­ing her post, and I tell him, ‘So what you want me to do? Walk in the morgue and order her to drop her scalpel and put her hands up in the air?’ The dumb shit.” Marino blows out smoke as my dismay folds into a scary shape inside my brain. “That’s why he didn’t ask your permission to come snoop around your house, either,” Marino adds.

The snooping part, at least, I had already figured out.

“He wanted to see if the cops came across anything.” He pauses to tap an ash. “Like a chipping hammer. Especially one with maybe Bray’s blood on it.”

“The one he tried to attack me with may very well have her blood on it,” I reply reasonably, calmly as anxiety inches through me.

“Problem is, the hammer with her blood on it was found in your house,” Marino reminds me of a fact.

“Of course it was. He brought it to my house so he could use it on me.”

“And yeah, it does have her blood on it,” Marino keeps talking. “They already did the DNA. Never seen the labs move so fast as they are these days, and you can guess why. The governor’s got his eye on everything going onin case his chief medical examiner turns out to be some whacko mur­derer.” He sucks on the cigarette and glances over at me. “And another thing, Doc. Don’t know if Berger might have men­tioned this to you. But the chipping hammer you say you bought at the hardware store? It ain’t been found.”

“What?” I am incredulous, then furious.

“So the only one at your house is the one with Bray’s blood on it. One hammer. Found at your house. And it’s got Bray’s blood.” He makes his point, not without some reluc­tance.

“You know why I bought that hammer,” I reply as if my ar­gument is with him. “I wanted to see if it matched up with the pattern of her injuries. And it was definitely in my house. If it wasn’t there when you guys went through everything, then ei­ther you overlooked it or someone took it.”

“You remember where you had it last?”

“I used it in the kitchen on chicken to see what the injuries looked like, and also what kind of pattern the coiled handle would leave if I put something on it and pressed the handle against paper.”

“Yeah, we found pounded-up chicken in the garbage. And a pillowcase with barbecue sauce on it, like maybe from your rolling the handle around.” He doesn’t think such an experi­ment is odd. He knows I engage in a lot of unusual research when I am trying to figure out what happened to somebody. “But no chipping hammer. We didn’t find that. Not with or without barbecue sauce,” Marino goes on. “So I’m wondering if asshole Talley swiped it. Maybe you ought to get Lucy and Teun to turn their secret squirrel organization on him and see what they find out, huh? The Last Precinct’s first big investi­gation. I’d like to ran a credit check on the bastard and see where he gets all his money from, for starters.”

I keep glancing at my watch, timing our drive. The subdi­vision where Mitch Barbosa lived is ten minutes from The Fort James Motel. Taupe clapboard townhouses are new and there is no vegetation, just raw earth sprinkled with dead young grass and patched with snow. I recognize unmarked po­lice vehicles in the lot when we pull in, three Ford Crown Vic­torias and a Chevrolet Lumina parked in a row. It doesn’t escape my attention or Marino’s that two of these vehicles have Washington, D.C., plates.