Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(3)

He realizes the word will not come to him with this lamb in the fish box, just as it hasn't come with the others.

"I'm getting bored," he tells his lamb. "I'll ask you again. One last chance. What is the word?"

She swallows hard, her voice reminding him of a broken axle as she tries to move her tongue to speak. He can hear it sticking to her upper palate.

"I don't understand. I'm sorry..."

"Fuck the politeness, do you hear me? How many times do I have to say it?"

The tiny bird inside her neck beats frantically, and her tears flow faster.

"What is the word? Tell me what you feel. And don't say scared. You're a goddamn schoolteacher. You must have a vocabulary with more than five words in it."

"I feel... I feel acceptance," she says, sobbing.

"You feel what?"

"You're not going to let me go," she says. "I know it now."

3

SCARPETTAS SUBTLE WIT reminds Nic of heat lightning. It doesn't rip and crack and show off like regular lightning but is a quiet, shimmering flash that her mother used to tell her meant God was taking pictures.

He takes pictures of everything you're doing, Nic, so you'd better behave yourself because one day there will be the Final Judgment, and those pictures are going to be passed around for all to see.

Nic stopped believing such nonsense by the time she reached high school, but her silent partner, as she thinks of her conscience, will probably never stop warning her that her sins will find her out. And Nic believes her sins are many.

"Investigator Robillard?" Scarpetta is saying.

Nic is startled by the sound of her own name. Her focus returns to the cozy, dark dining room and the cops who fill it.

"Tell us what you'd do if your phone rang at two a.m. and you'd had a few drinks but were needed at a bad, really bad, crime scene," Scarpetta presents to her. "Let me preface this by saying that no one wants to be left out when there's a bad, really bad, crime scene. Maybe we don't like to admit that, but it's true."

"I don't drink very much." Nic instantly regrets the remark as her classmates groan.

"Lordy, where'd you grow up, girlfriend, Sunday school?"

"What I mean is, I really can't because I have a five-year-old son..." Nic's voice trails off, and she feels like crying. This is the longest she's ever been away from him.

The table falls silent. Shame and awkwardness flatten the mood.

"Hey, Nic," Popeye says, "you got his picture with you? His name's Buddy," he tells Scarpetta. "You gotta see his picture. A really ass-kicking little hombre sitting on a pony..."

Nic is in no mood to pass around the wallet-size photograph that by now is worn soft, the writing on the back faded and smeared from her taking it out and looking at it all the time. She wishes Popeye would change the subject or give her the silent treatment again.

"How many of you have children?" Scarpetta asks the table.

About a dozen hands go up.

"One of the painful aspects of this work," she points out, "maybe the worst thing about this work-or shall I call it a mission-is what it does to the people we love, no matter how hard we try to protect them."

No heat lightning at all. Just a silky black darkness, cool and lovely to the touch, Nic thinks as she watches Scarpetta.

She's gentle. Behind that wall of fiery fearlessness and brilliance, she's kind and gentle.

"In this work, relationships can also become fatalities. Often they do," Scarpetta goes on, always trying to teach because it is easier for her to share her mind than to touch feelings she is masterful at keeping out of reach.

"So, Doc, you got kids?" Reba, a crime-scene technician from San Francisco, starts on another whiskey sour. She has begun to slur her words and has no tact.

Scarpetta hesitates. "I have a niece."

"Oh yeah! Now I 'member. Lucy. She's been in the news a lot. Or was, I mean..."

Stupid, drunk idiot, Nic silently protests with a flash of anger.

"Yes, Lucy is my niece," Scarpetta replies.

"FBI. Computer whiz." Reba won't stop. "Then what? Let me think. Something about flying helicopters and AFT."

ATF, you stupid drunk. Thunder cracks in the back of Nic's mind.

"I dunno. Wasn't there a big fire or something and someone got killed? So what's she doing now?" She drains her whiskey sour and looks for the waitress.

"That was a long time ago." Scarpetta doesn't answer her questions, and Nic detects a weariness, a sadness as immutable and maimed as the stumps and knees of cypress trees in the swamps and bayous of her South Louisiana home.

"Isn't that something, I forgot all about her being your niece. Now she's something, all right. Or was," Reba rudely says again, shoving her short dark hair out of her bloodshot eyes. "Got into some trouble, didn't she?"

Fucking dyke. Shut up.

Lightning rips the black curtain of night, and for an instant, Nic can see the white daylight on the other side. That's how her father always explained it. You see, Nic, he would say as they gazed out the window during angry storms, and lightning suddenly and without warning cut zigzags like a bright blade. There's tomorrow, see? You got to look quick, Nic. There's tomorrow on the other side, that bright white light. And see how quick it heals. God heals just that fast.