14 Predator by Patricia Cornwell

Author:Patricia Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Scarpetta
Published: 2012-08-22T20:08:09+00:00

P.S. The best way to reach me is at this address. My Harvard account is firewall-protected, and I can’t use it unless I’m on campus.

“Shit,” Marino says. “Holy shit,” he says.

Lucy restores more e-mails, opens dozens of them, e-mails that become increasingly personal, then romantic, then lewd exchanges between Joe and Jan that continued during her internship at the Academy, leading up to an e-mail he sent her early this past July when he suggested she try a little creativity with a hell scene that was scheduled to take place at the Body Farm. He arranged for her to stop by his office for hypodermic needles and whatever else you might feel like getting stuck with.

Lucy has never seen the film of the hell scene that went so wrong. She has never seen films of any hell scenes. Until now, she wasn’t interested.

“What’s it called?” she says, getting frantic.

“Body Farm,” Marino says.

She finds the video file and opens it.

They watch students walking around the dead body of one of the most obese men Lucy has ever seen. He is on the ground, fully clothed in a cheap, gray suit, probably what he had on when he dropped from sudden cardiac arrest. He is beginning to decompose. Maggots teem over his face.

The camera angle shifts to a pretty young woman digging in the dead man’s coat pocket, turning toward the camera, withdrawing her hand, yelling—yelling that she’s been stuck through her glove.

Stevie.

Lucy tries to reach Benton. He doesn’t answer. She tries her aunt and can’t get hold of her. She tries the neuroimaging lab, and Dr. Susan Lane answers the phone. She tells Lucy that both Benton and Scarpetta should be here any minute, are scheduled to be with a patient, with Basil Jenrette.

“I’m e-mailing a video clip to you,” Lucy says. “About three years ago, you scanned a young female patient named Helen Quincy. I’m wondering if it might be the same person in the video clip.”

“Lucy, I’m not supposed to.”

“I know, I know. Please. It’s really important.”

WONK… WONK… WONK… WONK…

Dr. Lane has Kenny Jumper in the magnet. She is in the middle of his structural MRI, and the lab is full of the usual racket.

“Can you go into the database?” Dr. Lane asks her research assistant. “See if we might have scanned a patient named Helen Quincy. Possibly three years ago? Josh, keep going,” she says to the MRI tech. “Can you stand it without me for a minute?”

“I’ll try.” He smiles.

Beth, the research assistant, is typing on the keyboard of a computer on the back counter. It doesn’t take her long to find Helen Quincy. Dr. Lane has Lucy on the phone.

“Do you have a photograph of her?” Lucy asks.

WOP WOP WOP WOP. The sound of the gradients acquiring images reminds Dr. Lane of the sonar in a submarine.

“Only of her brain. We don’t photograph patients.”

“Have you looked at the video clip I just e-mailed to you? Maybe it will mean something.”

Lucy sounds frustrated, disappointed.

TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP…

“Hold on. But I don’t know what you think I can do with it,” Dr.

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