Blow Fly

Silence. The taxi driver is listening to hip-hop.

"Turn that down, please," Benton calmly says, this time out loud.

Or what about the old woman struck by lightning because her umbrella frame was metal?

Scarpetta doesn't answer him.

Okay, then what about the entire family killed by carbon monoxide because no one told them not to cook with charcoal in the fireplace, especially with the windows closed? What reason, Kay?

His sense of her continues to linger like her favorite perfume.

So there's a reason I was murdered and am gone from your life forever?

The conversation has turned one-sided and won't stop. What reason has she assigned to what she believes happened to him, he asks, convinced she has come up with a reason, certainly by now.

You're rationalizing, Kay. You have forgotten our talks about denial.

Benton's facile mind moves on to another point as he rides in the taxi shortly after dark, en route to Manhattan, the trunk and every other space in the car piled with his belongings. The driver did not disguise his disgust when he realized that his fare came with a substantial pile of baggage. But Benton was clever. He hailed the cab from the street, and the driver didn't see the pile of luggage in the thick shadows of the sidewalk until he was faced with the choice of speeding off or accepting the lucrative job of driving a fare to New York.

The drivers name is Robert Leary, a white male with brown hair, brown eyes, approximately five-foot-ten and one hundred and eighty pounds. Those details and others, including the identification number on the photo ID clamped to the visor, are written in a refмllable wallet-size leather notebook that Benton carries wherever he goes. As soon as he gets to his hotel room, he will, as is customary for him, transfer the notes to his laptop computer. Since he entered the witness protection program, Benton has recorded his every activity, his every location and every person he has met-especially if it is more than once-and even the weather and where he worked out and what he ate.

Several times now, Robert Leary has attempted to initiate a conversation, but Benton stares out the window and says nothing, the driver, of course, having no idea that the man with the tan, chiseled, bearded face and shaved head is silently making points and examining tactical requirements and possibilities and probabilities from every tilt imaginable. No doubt, the cabbie is thinking it is his sorry luck to have picked up a weirdo, who, based on the shabbiness of his luggage, has fallen on hard times, very hard times.

"You sure you can pay the fare?" he asks, or rather demands, for the third time. "It ain't go

"I can pay the fare," Benton replies.

The headlights of passing cars slash his window, briefly lighting up his somber face. Of this he is certain: Jean-Baptiste Chando

Every person involved in his plan is tangentially if not directly co

The answer, he discovered, is simple: Surgically snip and strip the wires and disco

By this method, Benton will manipulate his enemies and delete them, one by one. By his calculations, the coalition comprised of himself and others who do not even know they have been conscripted into his private army will complete his mission in a few months, perhaps weeks. By his calculations, Rocco Caggiano is already dead or soon will be dead, killed in cold blood, his murder staged, and Lucy and Rudy may know what they are doing or have done, but what they don't know is the video game. They don't know that they are in it.

What Benton did not calculate and would never have anticipated is that Kay Scarpetta would form a co

Learning that his son is dead would inevitably result in Marino retracing Rocco's steps, which would lead Marino and his compatriots to Baton Rouge, where Rocco keeps an apartment and has for many years. The port in Baton Rouge is formidable. The Gulf Coast is gold. All ma

Jean-Baptiste and Jay were only sixteen the first time they visited Baton Rouge. Jean-Baptiste honed his murderous skills by killing prostitutes after Jay was serviced by them. Those cases have never been linked because the former coroner abdicated his investigative rights to other agencies, and the police didn't give a damn about prostitutes.

One step would lead to another until Marino discovered Jay Talley and Bev Kiffin in Baton Rouge and eliminated them. That was the plan. Scarpetta was never supposed to be part of it. His pulse beats rapidly in his temples.

He holds his wrist close to his face, unable to read the time on his cheap black plastic watch because the dial isn't luminescent. By design, it isn't. He wants nothing that glows in the dark.

"What time should we get there?" he asks in the same clipped tone.

"I du

A car draws close to them from the rear, its high beams bouncing blinding white light off the taxi's rearview mirror. The driver curses as a black Porsche 911 passes, its receding red taillights reminding Benton of hell.