Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

“Oh shit,” Marino says. “I smell the feds. Oh boy,” he says to me as we park, “this ain’t good.”

I notice a curious detail as Marino and I follow the brick walkway to the townhouse where Barbosa lived with his al­leged girlfriend. Through an upstairs window I see a fishing rod. It leans against the glass, and I don’t know why it strikes me as out of place except that this isn’t the time of year for fishing, just as it isn’t the time of year for camping. Again, I think of the mysterious if not mythical people who fled the campground, leaving behind many of their possessions. I re­turn to Bev Kiffin’s lie and feel I am moving deeper into a dangerous airspace where there are forces I can’t see or un­derstand moving at incredible speeds. Marino and I wait at the front door of townhouse D, and he rings the bell again.

Detective Stanfield answers and greets us distractedly, his eyes darting everywhere. Tension between him and Marino is a wall between them. “Sorry I didn’t make it by the motel,” he announces curtly as he steps aside to let us in. “Something’s come up. You’ll see that in a minute,” he promises. He is in gray corduroys and a heavy wool sweater, and he won’t meet my eyes, either. I am not sure if this is because he knows how I feel about his leaking information to his brother-in-law, Rep­resentative Dinwiddie, or if there is some other reason. It flashes across my thoughts that he might know I am being in­vestigated for murder. I try not to think about that reality. It serves no good purpose to worry right now. “Everybody’s up­stairs,” he says, and we follow him up.

“Who’s everybody?” Marino asks.

Our feet thud quietly on carpet. Stanfield keeps moving. He doesn’t turn around or pause when he replies, “ATF and the FBI.”

I notice framed photographs arranged on the wall to the left of the staircase and take a moment to peruse them, recog­nizing Mitch Barbosa grinning with tipsy-looking people in a bar and hanging out the window of the cab of a transfer truck. In one photograph, he is sunbathing in a bikini on a tropical beach, maybe Hawaii. He holds up a drink, toasting the per­son behind the camera. Several other poses are with a pretty woman, perhaps the girlfriend he lives with, I wonder. Halfway up is a landing and the window the fishing pole leans against.

I stop, a strange sensation lightly whispering across my flesh as I examine, without touching, a Shakespeare fiberglass rod and Shimano reel. A hook and split-shot weights are at­tached to the fishing line, and on the carpet next to the rod’s handle is a small blue plastic tackle box. Nearby, as if set down when someone entered the townhouse, are two empty Rolling Rock beer bottles, a new pack of Tiparillo cigars and some change. Marino turns around to see what I am doing. I join him at the top of the stairs and we emerge into a brightly lit living area that is attractively decorated in spare modern furniture and Indian rugs.

“When’s the last time you went fishing?” I ask Marino.

“Not freshwater,” he replies. “Not around here these days.”

“Exactly.” I am cut off by an awareness that I know one of the three people standing near the picture window in the living room. My heart jumps when the familiar dark head turns to me and suddenly I am facing Jay Talley. He doesn’t smile, his glance sharp as if his eyes are tipped like arrows. Marino makes a barely audible noise that is like a groan from a small, primitive animal. It is his way of letting me know that Jay is the last person he wants to see. Another man in a suit and tie is young and looks Hispanic, and when he sets down his coffee cup, his jacket falls open and reveals a shoulder holster hold­ing a large caliber pistol.

The third person is a woman. She doesn’t demonstrate the devastated, confused demeanor of a person whose lover has just been killed. She is upset, yes. But her emotions are well contained beneath the surface, and I recognize the flare in her eyes and angry set of her jaw. I have seen the look in Lucy, in Marino and others who are more than bereft when something bad happens to a person they care about. Cops. Cops are of­fended and in an eye for an eye mode when something hap­pens to one of their own. Mitch Barbosa’s girlfriend, I suspect right away, is law enforcement, probably undercover. In a matter of minutes, the scenario has dramatically shifted.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *