“You’ve been involved in the case from the start,” I said.
“You must have known Max Ferguson pretty well.”
“I guess not as well as I thought.”
“Are you aware that he’s a suspect?”
“I know it. I know all about it.” The sun through the window made his eyes so pale they seemed made of water. He blinked several times and dabbed tears caused by bright light or emotion. He talked some more.
“I also know they’re looking hard at Creed Lindsey, and you know it’s sort of a shame for either of’em.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“Well, now. Dr. Scarpetta, Max ain’t exactly here to defend himself.”
“No, he isn’t,” I agreed.
“And Creed couldn’t begin to know how to defend himself, even if he was here.”
“Where is he?”
“I hear he’s run off someplace, not that it’s the first time. He done the same thing when that little boy was run over and killed. Everybody thought Creed was guiltier than sin. So he disappeared and turned up again like a bad penny. Now and again he just goes off to what they used to call Colored Town and drinks himself into a hole.”
“Where does he live?”
“Off Montreal Road, up there in Rainbow Mountain.”
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with where that is.”
“When you get to the Montreal gate, it’s the road going up the mountain to the right. Used to be only mountain folk up there, what you’d probably call hillbillies. But during the last twenty years a lot of them has gone on to other places or passed on and folk like Creed’s moved in.” He paused for a minute, his expression distant and thoughtful.
“You can see his place from down below on the road. He’s got an old washing machine on the porch and pitches most his trash out the back door into the woods.” He sighed.
“The plain fact is. Creed wasn’t gifted with smarts.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he’s scared of what he don’t understand, and he can’t understand something like what’s going on around here.”
“Meaning you also don’t think he’s involved in the Steiner girl’s death,” I said. Detective Mote closed his eyes as the monitor over his bed registered a steady pulse of 66. He looked very tired.
“No ma’am, I don’t for a minute. But there’s a reason he’s running, you ask me, and I can’t get that out of my mind.”
“You said he was scared. That seems reason enough.”
“I just have this feeling there’s something else. But I guess there’s no point in my stewing over it. Not a darn thing I can do. Not unless all of ’em want to line up outside my door and let me ask’em whatever I want, and that sure isn’t likely to happen.”
I did not want to ask him about Marino, but I felt I must.
“What about Captain Marino? Have you heard much from him?” Mote looked straight at me.
“He came on in the other day with a fifth of Wild Turkey. It’s in my closet over there.” He raised an arm off the covers and pointed. We both sat silently for a moment.
“} know I’m not supposed to be drinking,” he added.
“I want you to listen to your doctors. Lieutenant Mote. You’ve got to live with this, and that means not doing any of those things that got you into trouble.”
“I know I got to quit smoking.”
“It can be done. I never thought I could.”
“You still miss it?”
“I don’t miss the way it made me feel.”
“I don’t like the way any bad habit makes me feel, but that’s got nothing to do with it.” I smiled.
“Yes, I miss it. But it does get easier.”
“I told Pete I don’t want to see him ending up in here like me. Dr. Scarpetta. But he’s a hardhead.”
I was unsettled by the memory of Mote turning blue on the floor as I tried to save his life, and I believed it was simply a matter of time before Marino suffered a similar experience. I thought of the fried steak lunch, his new clothes and car and strange behavior. It almost seemed he had decided he did not want to know me anymore, and the only way to bring that about was to change into someone I did not recognize.