Predator ks-14 Page 9

  “I didn’t ask the peanut gallery.” Marino raises his voice. “Anybody hear me ask the peanut gallery?”

  “Well, you know my opinion about your creativity,” Joe says to him. “Frankly, it’s dangerous.”

  “I don’t give a shit about your opinion.”

  “We’re lucky the Academy isn’t bankrupt. That would have been one hell of an expensive settlement,” Joe says, as if it never has occurred to him that one of these days Marino might knock him across the room. “Real lucky after what you did.”

  Last summer, one of Marino’s mock crime scenes traumatized a student who then quit the Academy, threatened to sue and fortunately was never heard from again. Scarpetta and her staff are paranoid about allowing Marino to participate in training, whether it is mock scenes, hellish or otherwise, or even classroom lectures.

  “Don’t think what happened doesn’t enter my mind when I’m creating hell scenes,” Joe goes on.

  “Hell scenes you create?” Marino declares. “You mean all those ideas you stole from me?”

  “I believe that’s called sour grapes. I don’t need to steal anyone’s ideas, certainly not yours.”

  “Oh really? You think I don’t recognize my own shit? You don’t know enough to come up with the kind of shit I do, Dr. Almost a Forensic Pathologist.”

  “That’s it,” Scarpetta says. She raises her voice. “That’s enough.”

  “I happen to have a great one of a body found in what appears to be a drive-by shooting,” Joe says, “but when the bullet’s recovered, it has an unusual waffle or mesh pattern in the lead because the victim was actually shot through a window screen, his body dumped…”

  “That’s mine!” Marino slams his fist down on the table.

  20

  The Seminole belongs to a beat-up white pickup truck filled with ears of corn, parked some distance from the gas pumps. Hog has been watching him for a while.

  “Some motherfucker took my fucking wallet, my cell phone, I think maybe when I was in the fucking shower,” the man is saying on the pay phone, standing with his back to the CITGO station and all the eighteen-wheelers rumbling in and out.

  Hog doesn’t show his amusement as he listens to the man rant and rave about overnighting again, complaining and cursing because he’ll have to sleep in the cab of his truck, has no phone, no money for a motel. He doesn’t even have money for a shower, and anyway, a shower has gone up to five bucks, and that’s a lot to pay for a shower when nothing comes with it, not even soap. Some of the men double up and get a discount, disappearing behind an unpainted privacy fence on the west side of the CITGO food mart, piling their clothes and shoes on a bench inside the fence before stepping into a tiny concrete space dimly lit with a single showerhead and a big, rusty drain in the middle of the floor.

  It is always wet inside the shower. The shower head always drips, and the water handles screech. The men carry in their own soap, shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste, usually in plastic bags. They bring their own towels. Hog has never showered in there, but he’s looked at the men’s clothes, figuring out what might be in the pockets. Money. Cell phones. Sometimes drugs. Women shower in a similar arrangement on the east side of the food mart. They never go in two at a time, no matter the discount, and are in a nervous hurry when they shower, shamed by their nakedness and terrified that someone will walk in on them, that a man will, a big, powerful man who can do what he wants.

  Hog dials the 800 number on the green card he keeps folded in his back pocket, a rectangular card maybe eight inches long with a large hole and a slit in one end so it can be attached to a door handle. Printed on the card is information and a cartoon of an animated citrus fruit wearing a tropical shirt and sunglasses. He is doing God’s will. He is the Hand of God doing God’s work. God has an IQ of a hundred and fifty.

  “Thank you for calling the Citrus Canker Eradication Program,” the familiar recording says. “Your call may be monitored for quality.”

  The canned female voice goes on to say that if he is calling to report damage inPalm Beach, Dade orBrowardCountiesorMonroeto please dial the following number. He watches the Seminole climb into his pickup truck, and his red-plaid shirt reminds him of a lumberjack, the carved one by the front door of The Christmas Shop. He dials the number the recorded voice gave him.

  “Department of Agriculture,” a woman answers.

  “I need to speak to a citrus inspector, please,” he says as he stares at the Seminole and thinks about alligator wrestling.

  “What may I help you with?”

  “Are you an inspector?” he asks as he thinks of the alligator he saw about an hour ago on the bank of the narrow canal that runs along South 27.

  He took it as a good sign. The gator was at least five feet long and very dark and dry, and not interested in the big lumber trucks rumbling by. He would have pulled over if there had been any place to do it. He would have watched the gator, studied the way it fearlessly handles life, quiet and calm but poised to flash into the water or grab its unsuspecting prey and drag it down to the bottom of the canal, where it would drown and rot and be eaten. He would have watched the gator for a long time, but he couldn’t safely get off the highway, and he is on a mission.

  “Do you have something to report?” the woman’s voice is asking over the line.

  “I work for a lawn service and happened to notice citrus canker in a yard about a block from where I was cutting the grass yesterday.”

  “Can you give me the address?”

  He gives her an address in theWestLakeParkarea.

  “May I have your name?”

  “I’d rather report this anonymously. I could get in trouble with my boss.”

  “All right. I’d like to ask you a few questions. Did you actually enter this yard where you think you spotted the canker?”

  “It’s an open yard, so I walked in because there are a lot of really nice trees and hedges and a lot of grass, and I was thinking maybe I could do some work there if they needed anyone. Then I noticed the suspicious-looking leaves. Several of the trees have tiny lesions on their leaves.”

  “Did you notice a watery-looking margin around any of these lesions?”

  “It’s my impression these trees were recently infected, which is probably why your routine inspections have missed them. What worries me is the yards on either side. They have citrus that in my estimation are less than nineteen hundred feet from the infected ones, meaning they’re probably infected, too, and the citrus in other yards beyond that in my estimation are also less than nineteen hundred feet away. And on and on throughout the neighborhood. So you can understand my concern.”

  “What makes you think our routine inspections have missed the properties you’re mentioning?”

  “Nothing to indicate you’ve been there. I’ve been working with citrus trees down here for a long time, working with professional lawn services most of my life. I’ve seen the worst of the worst, entire orchards that had to be burned. People wiped out.”

  “Did you notice any lesions on any of the fruit?”

  “As I’ve been explaining, it looks like the canker’s in the early stages, very early stages. I’ve seen entire orchards burned because of the canker. People’s lives ruined.”

  “When you walked into the yard where you think you saw citrus canker, did you disinfect after you left?” she asks, and he doesn’t like her tone.

  He doesn’t like her. She’s stupid and tyrannical.

  “Of course I deconned. I’ve been in the lawn-care business for a long time. I always spray myself and my tools with GX-1027, according to regulation. I know all about what happens. I’ve seen entire commercial orchards destroyed, burned up and abandoned. People ruined.”

  “Excuse me…”

  “Very bad things happen.”

  “Excuse me…”

  “People need to take the canker seriously,” Hog says.

  “What’s the registration number for your vehicle, the one you use for your lawn se
rvice? I’m assuming you have a yellow-and-black regulatory sticker on the left side of the windshield? I need that number.”

  “My number’s irrelevant,” he says to the inspector, who thinks she’s so much more important and powerful than he. “The vehicle belongs to my boss and I’ll get in trouble if he knows I made this call. If people find out his lawn service reported citrus canker that’s probably going to result in every citrus tree in the neighborhood being eradicated, what do you think will happen to our lawn-care business?”

  “I understand, sir. But it’s important I have your decal number for our records. And I really would like a way to contact you, if necessary.”

  “No,” he says. “I’ll get fired.”

  21

  The CITGO station is getting busy with truckers who park their semis behind the food mart and off to the side of the Chickee Hut restaurant, line them up at the edge of the woods and sleep in them and probably have sex in them.

  The truckers eat at the Chickee Hut, which is misspelled because the people who come here are too ignorant to know how to spell chikee and probably don’t even know what it is. Chikee is a Seminole word, and even the Seminoles can’t spell it.

  The ignorant truckers live from mile to mile and pull over here to spend their money at the food mart, where there is plenty of diesel fuel, beer, hotdogs and cigars, and a selection of folding knives in a glass case. They can play pool in the Golden Tee game room and get their trucks repaired at the CB antenna or tire services. The CITGO is a full-service stop out in the middle of nothing, where people come and go and mind their own business. Nobody bothers Hog. They barely look at him, so many people in and out, hardly anybody to see him twice, except the guy who works in the Chickee Hut restaurant.

  It is behind a chain-link fence at the edge of the parking lot. Signs posted on the fence announce that solicitors will be prosecuted and the only dogs allowed are K9s, and wildlife can enter at its own risk. There is plenty of wildlife at night, but Hog wouldn’t know about it firsthand because he doesn’t waste money in the game room, not on pool or the jukebox. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t want sex with any of the women at the CITGO.

  They are disgusting in skimpy shorts and tight tops, their faces made harsh by too much cheap makeup and too much sun. They sit in the open-air restaurant or at the bar, which is nothing but a roof thatched with palmetto leaves and a scarred wooden counter lined with eight stools. They eat dinner specials like BBQ ribs and meat-loaf and country-fried steak, and they drink. The food is good and cooked right there on the premises. Hog likes the trucker burger, and it’s only three ninety-five. A grilled cheese is three dollars and a quarter. Cheap, disgusting women, bad things happen to women like that. They deserve it.

  They want it.

  They tell everyone.

  “I’ll have a grilled cheese to go,” Hog says to the man behind the bar. “And a trucker burger for here.”

  The man has a big belly and wears a soiled white apron. He is busy popping caps off dripping bottles of beer that he keeps on ice inside tubs. The man with the big belly has waited on him before but never seems to remember him.

  “You want the grilled cheese the same time as your burger?” he asks, sliding two bottles of beer closer to a trucker and his lady who are already drunk.

  “Just make sure the grilled cheese is wrapped to go.”

  “I asked you if you wanted them at the same time.” He isn’t annoyed but rather indifferent about it.

  “That would be fine.”

  “What do you want to drink?” the man with the big belly asks as he opens another beer.

  “Plain water.”

  “Now what the hell is plain water?” the drunk trucker asks loudly as his lady giggles and presses her breast against his big, tattooed arm. “Water you get on an air-plane?”

  “Just plain water,” Hog says to the man behind the bar.

  “I don’t like nothing plain, do I baby?” the drunk trucker’s drunk girlfriend slurs, gripping the stool with her plump legs in their tight shorts, her plump breasts bulging from her low-cut top.

  “So where you heading?” the drunk girlfriend asks.

  “North,” he says. “Eventually.”

  “Well you be careful driving around down here all by your lonesome,” the woman slurs. “There’s a lot of crazies.”

  22

  Do we have any idea where he is?” Scarpetta asks Rose. “He’s not in his office and he’s not answering his cell phone. When I spoke to him after staff meeting and said you needed to see him, he told me he had an errand to run and would be right back,” Rose reminds her. “That was an hour and a half ago.”

  “What time did you say we should leave for the airport?” Scarpetta looks out the window at palm trees shaking in the gusting wind and thinks again about firing him. “We’re going to have a thunderstorm, a bad one. That figures. Well, I’m not going to sit around and wait for him. I should just leave.”

  “Your flight’s not untilsix thirty,” Rose says as she hands Scarpetta several phone messages.

  “I don’t know why I’m bothering. Why am I bothering to talk to him?” Scarpetta glances through the messages.

  Rose looks at her in a way that only Rose can. She stands quietly, thoughtfully, in the doorway, her white hair swept up and pinned back in a French twist, her gray linen suit out of style but elegant and crisp. After ten years, her gray lizard-skin pumps still look new.

  “One minute you want to talk to him, the next you don’t. What is it?” Rose remarks.

  “I guess I should go.”

  “I didn’t say which is it. I asked what is it.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about him. I keep thinking about firing him, but I’d rather resign than do that.”

  “You could take the position of chief,” Rose reminds her. “They’d force Dr. Bronson to retire if you’d agree, and maybe you should seriously consider it.”

  Rose knows what she’s doing. She can seem very sincere when suggesting something that she secretly doesn’t want Scarpetta to do, and the result is predicable.

  “No thank you,” Scarpetta says adamantly. “Been there, done that, and in case you’ve forgotten, Marino’s one of their investigators, so I wouldn’t exactly get away from him by resigning from the Academy and ending up at the ME’s office full-time. Who’s Mrs. Simister and what church?” she asks, puzzling over one of the phone messages.

  “I don’t know who she is, but she acted as if she knows you.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “She called a few minutes ago and said she wanted to talk to you about some missing family in theWestLakeParkarea. She didn’t leave her number, said she’d call back.”

  “What missing family? Here inHollywood?”

  “That’s what she said. Let’s see, you’re flying out ofMiami, unfortunately. Worst airport on earth. I’d say we don’t need to leave… well, you know the traffic down here. Maybe we should leave as early as four. But we’re not going anywhere until I check on your flight.”

  “You’re sure I’m in first class? And it’s not been cancelled.”

  “I have your printed reservation, but you’re going to have to check in because it’s last-minute.”

  “Can you believe it? They cancel me, and now it’s last-minute because I had to rebook?”

  “You’re all set.”

  “No offense, but that’s what you said last month, Rose. And I wasn’t in the computer and ended up in coach. All the way toLos Angeles. And look what happened yesterday.”

  “I confirmed it first thing this morning. I’ll do it again.”

  “Do you think this is all about Marino’s hell scenes? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him.”

  “I suspect he feels you shunned him after that, no longer trusted or respected him.”

  “How can I trust his judgment?”

  “I’m still not sure what Marino did,” Rose replies. “I typed up that particular hell scen
e and edited it just like I do all of his, and as I’ve told you before, his script didn’t include a hypodermic needle in that big, old, fat dead man’s pocket.”

  “He set up the scene. He supervised it.”

  “He swears someone else put that needle in the pocket. Probably she did. For money, which thankfully, she didn’t get. I don’t blame Marino for the way he feels. Hell scenes were his idea, and now Dr. Amos is doing them and getting all sorts of attention from the students while Marino’s treated like…”

  “He’s not nice to the students. Not from day one.”

  “Well, now it’s worse. They don’t know him and think he’s an ill tempered dinosaur, a cranky old has-been. And I know just how it feels to be treated like a cranky old has-been or, worse, to feel like one.”

  “You’re anything but cranky or a has-been.”

  “At least you agree that I’m old,” Rose says as she steps back through the doorway, adding, “I’ll try him again.”

  Inside room 112 of the Last Stand motel, Joe sits at the cheap desk across from the cheap bed and checks the computer for Scarpetta’s plane reservation, jotting down the flight number and other information. He calls the airline.

  After five minutes of dead time on hold, he gets a real person.

  “I need to change a reservation,” he says.

  He recites the information, then changes the seating to coach, as far back in the plane as is available, preferably a middle seat, because his boss doesn’t like windows or the aisle. Just like he did last time so successfully, when she was flying toLos Angeles. He could cancel her flight again. But this is more fun.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What about an E-ticket?”

  “No sir, a change this close to departure, and you’re going to have to check in at the desk.”

  He hangs up, exhilarated, as he imagines the Almighty Scarpetta trapped between two strangers, hopefully two enormous, smelly ones for three hours. He smiles as he plugs a digital recorder into his super hybrid system telephone handset. The window air-conditioning unit rattles loudly but is ineffective. He is getting uncomfortably warm and detects the faint, foul stench of rotting meat from a recent hell scene that included racks of raw pork ribs, beef liver and chicken skin rolled up in carpet and hidden beneath closet flooring.