Patricia Cornwell – Scarpetta11 – The Last Precinct

“You can’t keep drinking like this,” I say to him as I pour each of us a glass of water. “It doesn’t help anything.”

“Never has, never will.” He rubs his face. “And that don’t seem to make a damn difference when I’m feeling like shit. Right now, everything’s shit.” His bleary, bloodshot eyes meet mine. Marino looks like he is about to cry again.

“Any reason you might have something that could give us Rocky’s DNA?” I come right out and ask.

He flinches as if I have hit him. “What’d Berger tell you when she called? That it? She call about Rocky?”

“She’s just going down the list,” I reply. “Anybody con­nected with us or Benton who might have a link to organized crime. And Rocky certainly comes to mind.” I go on and tell him what Berger revealed about Benton and the Susan Pless case.

“But he was getting that whacko shit before Susan was murdered,” he says. “So why would someone be jerking him around if he wasn’t sticking his nose in anything yet? Why would Rocky, for example? And I assume that’s what you’re thinking, that maybe Rocky was sending him that weird shit?”

I have no answer. I don’t know.

“Well, I guess you’re gonna have to get DNA from Doris

and me ’cause I don’t got anything of Rocky’s. Not even hair. You could do that, right? If you got the DNA of the mother and the father then you could compare something like saliva?”

“We could get a pedigree and at least know your son can’t be ruled out as a contributor of the DNA on the stamps.”

“Okay.” He blows out. “If that’s what you want to do. Since Anna’s split, think I can smoke in here?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I reply. “What about Rocky’s finger­prints?”

“Forget that. Besides, it didn’t look to me like Benton had any luck with the prints. I mean, you can tell he tested the let­ters for them and that seems to be the end of it. And I know you don’t want to hear this, Doc, but maybe you’d better be sure why you’re getting into all this. Don’t go on a witch hunt ’cause you want to pay back the fucker who might have sent that shit to Benton and maybe had to do with him being killed. It ain’t worth it. Especially if you’re thinking Carrie did it. She’s dead. Let her rot.”

“It is worth it,” I say. “If I can know for sure who sent those letters to him, it’s worth it to me.”

“Huh. He said The Last Precinct was where he’d end up. Well, looks like he has,” Marino muses. “We’re The Last Precinct and we’re working his case. Ain’t that something?”

“Do you think he carried that file to Philadelphia because he wanted to make sure you or I got it?”

“Assuming something happened to him?”

I nod.

“Maybe,” he says. “He was worried he wasn’t going to be around much longer and he wanted us to find that file if some­thing did happen to him. And it’s strange, too. It’s not like he says much in it, almost like he knew other people might see it and he didn’t want anything in it that maybe the wrong person would see. Don’t you find it interesting there ain’t any names in it? Like if he had suspects in mind, he never mentioned anybody?”

“The file’s cryptic,” I agree.

“So who was he afraid might see it? Cops? ‘Cause if some­thing happened to him, he would know cops are going through his shit. And they did. Philly cops went through everything in his hotel room and then turned it over to me. He would also figure you’re going to see his stuff at some point. Maybe Lucy, too.”

“I think the point is he couldn’t be sure of who might see the file. So he was cautious, period. And Benton was certainly known for being cautious.”

“Not to mention,” Marino goes on, “he was up there help­ing out ATE So he mightliave thought ATF would see the file, right? Lucy’s ATF. McGovern’s ATF and was in charge of the response team working the fires Carrie and her asshole side­kick were setting to disguise the fact they had this nasty little hobby of cutting people’s faces off, right?” Marino’s eyes nar­row. “Talley’s ATF,” he says. “Maybe we ought to get his DNA, the son of a bitch. Too bad.” He gets that look again. I don’t think Marino will ever forgive me for sleeping with Jay Talley. “You probably had his fucking DNA, no pun intended. In Paris. I don’t guess you got a stain you maybe forgot to wash out?”

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