Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell

Author:Patricia Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Richmond (Va.), Mystery & Detective, Political, Medical, Psychopaths, Florida, Women Pathologists, Death Row Inmates, Fiction, Psychological, Women Physicians, General, Mystery Fiction, Women Sleuths, Suspense, Medical Examiners (Law), Louisiana, Kay (Fictitious Character), Scarpetta, Forensic Pathologists
ISBN: 9780425198735
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2003-04-15T05:00:00+00:00

13

AT THE CORNER OF 83RD and Lexington, a delivery truck struck. a pedestrian—an elderly woman.

Benton Wesley overhears excited talk in the gawking crowd as emergency lights flash, the block cordoned off in yellow crime-scene tape. The fatal accident occurred less than an hour earlier, and Benton has seen enough gore in his life to walk swiftly past and respectfully avert his eyes from the body trapped under one of the trucks back tires.

He catches the words brains and decapitated, and something about dentures lying on the street. If the public had its way, every death scene would be pay-per-view: Five dollars for a ticket, and you can stare at blood and guts to your hearts content. When he used to arrive at crime scenes and all the cops would move out of the way to allow his expert eye to take in every detail, he had the right to order unauthorized people to leave. He could vent his disgust as he pleased—sometimes calmly, sometimes not.

He surveys the area from behind his dark glasses, his lean body moving along the crowded sidewalk, cutting in and out with the agility of a lynx. A plain black baseball cap covers his shaved head, and he backtracks toward Lucy's headquarters, having gotten out of a taxi ten blocks north instead of directly in front of her building or even near it. Benton probably could walk right past Lucy and say "excuse me," and she would not recognize him. Six years it has been since he has seen or talked to her, and he is desperate to know what she looks like, sounds like, acts like. Anxiety presses him onward at his determined pace until he nears the modern polished granite building on 75th Street. A doorman stands in front, hands behind his back. He is hot in his gray uniform and shifts his weight from leg to leg, indicating that his feet hurt.

"I'm looking for The Last Precinct," Benton says to him.

"The what?" The doorman looks at him as if he's crazy.

Benton repeats himself.

"You talking about some kind of police precinct?" The doorman scrutinizes him, and homeless and wacko register on his jaded Irish face. "Maybe you mean the precinct on Sixty-ninth."

"Twenty-first floor, suite twenty-one-oh-three," Benton replies.

"Yeah, now I know what you're talking about, but it ain't called The Last Precinct. Twenty-one-oh-three's a software company—you know, computer stuff." You sure?

"Hell, I work here, don't I?" The doorman is getting impatient, and he glares at a woman whose dog is sniffing too close to the planter in front of the building. "Hey," he says to her. "No dogs doing their business in the hedge."

"She's just sniffing," the woman indignantly replies, jerking the leash, tugging her hapless toy poodle back to the middle of the sidewalk.

Having asserted himself, the doorman ignores the woman and her dog. Benton digs in a pocket of his faded jeans and pulls out a folded piece of paper. He smooths it open and glances at an address and phone number that

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