Blow Fly

Swooping back around and getting on track, Lucy flies over water again.

"That's it," Nic says. "That's the river. See how it bends to the left. Well, we could see it better if we were higher."

"Forget it," Rudy says.

"I think… yes!" Nic is getting excited. "There it is, that very narrow creek. See it on your right. Dutch Bayou. My father's fishing shack isn't even a mile up it, on the left."

Nerves are suddenly on edge. Rudy pulls his pistol out of his shoulder holster. Lucy takes a deep breath, tenser and more apprehensive than she lets on, as she descends to a hundred feet, directly over a narrow bayou thick with cypress trees that appear ominous in the fog.

"At this altitude especially, they can already hear us," Lucy says calmly, focusing, thinking, trying not to react to what is quickly becoming a very dangerous situation.

Suddenly, a dilapidated gray shack materializes. Tied to a warped pier is a white boat that is completely incongruous with its surroundings.

Lucy swoops around the shack. "You sure, you sure?" She can't help it, her adrenaline is raising her voice.

"Yes! I recognize the roof! Papa used blue metal. I can still see some of the blue! And the same porch and screen door!"

Lucy drops to fifty feet, in a hover, and turns to the left, Rudy's window lined up with the boat.

"Shoot it!" Lucy yells at him.

Rudy slides open his window. He rapidly fires seventeen rounds into the bottom of the boat as the front door of the shack flies open and Bev Kiffin runs out with a shotgun. Lucy pushes the cyclic forward to push up her airspeed.

"Duck! But stay in your seats!"

Rudy has already slapped a new magazine into his gun. Although the seats in back are directly over the fuel ceJJ, this isn't Lucy's concern. Jet-A is by no means as flammable as gasoline, and the most damage shotgun pellets might do is cause leaks. On the floor, there is Jess of the aircraft's skin to penetrate.

Rudy arms the floats.

The shotgun is pump-action with a magazine extender. Bev fires seven rounds, one right after another. Pellets shatter windows, smacking the composite skin, and hit the main rotor blade and engine cowling. If the burn can is penetrated, there's going to be a fire, and Lucy immediately cuts off the throttle and lowers the collective. Alarms go off in desperate warnings as she lowers the collective, presses the right pedal and turns into the wind, where there is no place to set down but an area of tall saw grass. Nitrogen explodes like another gunshot, and floats on the skids instantly inflate like rubber rafts. The helicopter lurches out of trim, and Lucy fights to stabilize it, realizing that at least one of the six floats has been penetrated by shotgun pellets.

The landing is hard enough to set off the ELT, or emergency locator transmitter, and the helicopter rocks in dense grass and dark, muddy water, and lists hard to the right. Opening her door, Lucy looks down. Two of the three floats were penetrated and didn't inflate. Rudy shuts off the battery and the generator and everyone sits for a moment, stu

"At least she's not going anywhere," Rudy remarks as he and Lucy take off their headsets.

Lucy unscrews a large cap on her watch and pulls out the ante

"Come on," she says. "We can't sit here."

"I can," Marino replies.

"Nic?" Lucy turns around. "You got any idea how deep the water is right here?"

"Not too deep, or there wouldn't be all this saw grass. Its the mud that's the problem. We could sink up to our knees."

"I'm not going anywhere," Marino says. "What for? The boat's sunk, so she ain't going anywhere, either. And I'm not getting snake-bit or eaten by a fucking alligator."

"Here's what we can do." Nic continues as if Marino isn't in the back with her. "The saw grass stretches all the way behind the shack, and I know the water's not that deep, because we used to put on high boots and collect mussels."

"I'm going," Lucy says, opening her door.

Inside the shack, dogs are barking loudly.

The problem for Lucy is that the fat float on her skid is going to make it impossible for her to lower herself gently, one foot at a time. She tightens the shoelaces on her ankle-high boots and hands Rudy her Glock and extra magazines.

Perched in the door frame like a skydiver, she says, "Here I go!"

She lands in the water feetfirst and is pleasantly surprised to find she sinks in just above her boots. If she steps quickly, she doesn't sink as much. Stepping closer, her face splattered with dirty water, she reaches out to take her weapon and wedges it into the back of her pants. She temporarily jams the extra magazines into a pocket.

Everybody takes turns holding on to guns and ammo as Rudy, then Nic, jumps out, exiting from the same side of the helicopter as Lucy did. Marino sits like an angry lump in the backseat.

"You go

Marino slides across the seats and tosses Rudy his gun. He jumps, loses his balance and falls, his head hitting a float. When he manages to get to his feet, he is covered with mud and swearing.

"Shhhh," Lucy says. "Voices carry on the water. You all right?"

Marino wipes his hands on Rudy's shirt and angrily takes back his gun as both ELTs flash brightly on radar screens in airport towers and are picked up by any pilors who happen to be monitoring the emergency frequency.

They slog along, tensely keeping an eye out for snakes, hearing them rustle through the tall grass. When the four of them are within a hundred feet of the shack, pistols held high, barrels pointed up, the screen door whines open again and Bev dashes out on the pier with the shotgun, shrieking, screaming at them, insane and suicidal with desperation and rage.

Before she can even take aim, Rudy fires.

Crack-crack! Crack-crack! Crack-crack!

She hits the old wood planking and rolls into the water next to the half-sunken boat.

123

ALBERT DARD OPENS the imposing door, the front of his long-sleeve shirt spotted with blood.

"What happened?" Scarpetta exclaims as she steps inside.

She gets down and gently raises his shirt. In a tic-tac-toe pattern on his stomach are shallow cuts. Scarpetta lets out a long breath as she lowers his shirt and stands up.

"When did you do this?" She takes his hand.

"After she left and didn't come back. Then he left. The man on the plane. I don't like him!"

"Your aunt didn't come back?"

Scarpetta noted when she approached the house that a white Mercedes and Mrs. Guidon's old Volvo were parked in front.

"You have a place where I can do something about those cuts?"

He shakes his head. "I don't want to do anything."

"Well, I do. I'm a doctor. Come on."

"You are?" He seems dazzled, as if he's never imagined that women could be doctors.

He leads her up the stairs to a bathroom that, like the kitchen, hasn't been renovated in many years. Inside is a old-fashioned white tub, a white sink and a medicine cabinet, where she finds iodine but no Band-Aids.

"Let's get your shirt off." She helps him pull it over his head. "Can you be brave? I know you can. Cutting yourself hurts, doesn't it?"

She is dismayed by the multitude of scars covering his back and shoulders.

"I don't really feel it when I do it," he says, watching anxiously as she unscrews the cap from the iodine.

"I'm afraid you're going to feel this, Albert. A little sting." She lies the way all doctors do when some procedure is going to hurt like hell.