Blow Fly

Extra magazines for the pistols and extra cartridges for the.357 magnum go in a designer leather butt pack. Benton dresses in a loose-fitting London Fog jacket and baggy jeans that are slightly too long, a cap, tinted glasses and the rubber-soled Prada shoes. He could be a tourist. He could work in Baton Rouge and barely merit notice in this city of transients, where hundreds of professors, some of them eccentric, and thousands of oblivious students and preoccupied visiting scholars of all ages and nationalities abound. He could be straight. He could be gay. He could be both.

111

THE NEXT MORNING, muddy, sluggish water carries Scarpetta's eye to a riverboat casino, to the USS Kidd battleship and on to the distant Old Mississippi Bridge, then back to Dr. Sam Lanier.

In the few minutes she spent with him last night when she finally arrived at his door and he quickly escorted her to his guest house in back without walking her through the main house because he didn't want to awaken his wife, she decided she liked him. She worries that she shouldn't.

"In Charlotte Dard's case," she says, "how involved did you and your office get with the family in terms of trying to counsel or question them?"

"Not as much as I would have liked. I tried." The light in his eyes dims, and his mouth tightens. "I did talk to the sister, Mrs. Guidon. Briefly. She's an odd one. Anyway, orientation time. Let me show you where you are."

His abrupt change of subject strikes her as paranoid, as if he worries that someone might be listening. Swiveling around in his chair, he points west out the window.

"People are always jumping from the Old Mississippi Bridge. Can't tell you how many times I've fished bodies out of the river because some poor soul takes a leap-takes his time, too, while the police try to talk him down and people in their cars start yelling 'Go ahead and jump!' because he's slowing up traffic. Can you believe that?

"Now, down there straight ahead, I had a guy dressed in a shower curtain with an AK-47, tried to get on the USS Kidd to kill all the Russians. He got intercepted," he drolly adds. "Death and mental health are part of the same department, and we do all the pickups-commit about three thousand cases a year."

"And that works how, exactly?" Scarpetta inquires. "A family member requests an order of protective custody?"

"Almost always. But the police can request it. And if the coroner-in this case, me-believes the person is gravely disabled and acutely dangerous to himself or others and is unwilling or unable to seek medical attention, deputies are sent in."

"The coroner is elected. It helps if he's on good terms with the mayor, the police, the sheriff, LSU, Southern University, the district attorney, judges, the U.S. Attorney, not to mention influential members of the community." She pauses. "People in power can certainly influence the public on how to cast its votes. So the police recommend someone should be removed to a psychiatric hospital, and the local coroner agrees. In my world, that's called a conflict of interest."

"It's worse than that. The coroner also determines competency to stand trial."

"So you oversee the autopsy of a murder victim, determine cause and ma

"Do the DNA swab in the exam room. Then sits right here in my office, a cop on either side, attorney present. And I interview him. Or her."

"Dr. Lanier, you have the most bizarre coroner system I've ever heard of, and it doesn't sound to me as if you have any protection, should the powers that be decide they can't control you."

"Welcome to Louisiana. And if the powers that be try to tell me how to do my job, I tell them to kiss my ass."

"And your crime rate? I know it's bad."

"Worse than bad. Terrible," he replies. "By far, Baton Rouge has the highest rate of unsolved homicides in the entire country."

"Why?"

"Clearly, Baton Rouge is a very violent city. I'm not sure why."

"And the police?"

"Listen, I have a lot of respect for street cops. Most of them try very hard. But then you've got the people in charge who squash the good guys and encourage the assholes. Politics." His chair creaks as he leans back in it. "We've got a serial murderer ru

"Organized crime?"

"Fifth largest port in the country, the second largest petrochemical industry, and Louisiana produces some sixteen percent of the nation's oil. Come on." He gets up from his desk. "Lunch. Everybody's got to eat, and I have a feeling you haven't done much of that lately. You look pretty damn beat-up, and your suit's hanging a little loose around the waist."

Scarpetta can't begin to tell him how much she has grown to hate her black suit.

Three clerks glance up as Scarpetta and Dr. Lanier walk out of his office.

"You coming back?" an overweight woman with gray hair asks her boss, a cool steel edge to her voice.

Scarpetta is fairly sure this is the clerk Dr. Lanier has complained about.

"Who knows?" he responds in what Scarpetta would call the flat affect of an expert witness testifying in court.

She can tell he doesn't like her. Old, ugly specters hover between them. He seems relieved when the outer office door opens and a tall, good-looking man in navy range pants and a dark blue coroner's jacket walks in. His presence is a high energy that is several steps ahead of him, and the overweight clerk's eyes fasten on his face like dark, angry wasps.

Eric Murphy, the chief death investigator, welcomes Scarpetta to Luysiana. "Where are we going to lunch?" he asks.

"No matter what, you have to eat," Dr. Lanier says at the elevator. "I insist, and this is the place to do it. Like I said, I can't get rid of her."

He absently stabs the button for the parking garage.

"Hell, she's been working in this office longer than I have. Sort of an inherited sinkhole that gets passed on from one coroner to the next."

The elevator doors open inside a large parking garage. Car doors shut in muffled counterpoint as people head out to lunch, and Dr. Lanier points his key at what he calls his unit, a black Chevrolet Caprice with a blue light in the dash, a two-way radio, a police sca

"You can't be sitting in back. It doesn't look right," Eric complains, holding open the front passenger door. "You're our guest, ma'am."

"Oh, please don't call me ma'am. I'm Kay. And my legs are shorter, which means I sit in the back."

"Call me anything you like," Eric cheerfully replies. "Everybody else does."

"From now on, I'm Sam. No more of this doctor shit."

"Don't be calling me doctor, either," Eric says. "For the good reason that I'm not one."

He gets inside the car, giving up on telling Scarpetta where to sit.

"Hell, the only time you were a doctor was when you were, what?" Dr. Lanier starts the engine. "Ten, maybe twelve years old, and molesting all the little girls in your neighborhood? Jesus God, I hate parking between concrete damn pillars."

"They have a way of moving in on you, don't they, Sam?" Eric turns around and winks at Scarpetta. "They grab at his ve-hicle on a regular basis. Look over there." He points at a concrete support gouged and streaked with black paint. "If you were working that crime scene, what would you conclude?" He peels cellophane off a pack of Dentyne chewing gum. "Let me give you a clue. That used to be the coroners parking place, but not so long ago, the coroner-guess which one, and there's only one-complained it was way too narrow, and he'd be goddamned if he was parking there."