The Last Precinct

"That's right," I reply. "Can you tell your mother that Dr. Scarpetta is here and I need a word with her?"

He smiles as if he knows a mean secret that he thinks is fu

"What's your name?" Lucy asks him.

"So

"So

"That dumb dog," he says. "All we can figure is somebody stole her."

I find it impossible to believe that anyone would have stolen that old, worn-out dog. In the first place, she wasn't friendly to strangers. If anything, I might have expected her to get hit by a car.

"Oh yeah? That's too bad," Lucy answers So

So

"She disappeared when?" I want to know.

"Oh, I don't know." A shrug. "Last week."

"Well, Be

That cold look in his eyes again. "The kids at school called him a sissy. And he was one, too. That's why he killed himself. Everybody says so," So

"I thought the two of you were friends?" Lucy is getting aggressive with him.

"He bugged me," So

A motorcycle engine roars and rumbles to life. Zack's face pops up in the window to the right of the front door, and he is crying.

"Did Be

So

"So

So

"What are you doing out here?" Lucy asks him, and in the distance I spot Bev Kiffin walking this way, carrying a shotgun, coming from the direction of the motel, where I can only assume she has been with Jay. Red flags are popping up all over the place inside my head, and neither Lucy nor I make the co

"Christ," Lucy says. "For God's sake, Jay."

"I really wish you hadn't come here," he says to me in a calm, cold way. "I really wish you hadn't." He motions the gun toward the motel. "Come on. We're going to have a little talk."

Run. But there is no place to run. He might shoot Lucy if I run. He might shoot me in the back. He raises the pistol and points it at Lucy's chest as he unfastens her butt pack. He of all people knows what is in it. He takes my satchel and pats me down, making sure he explores my body intimately, to degrade me, to put me in my place, to enjoy the fury that dances across Lucy's face as she has to watch. "Don't," I quietly say to him. "Jay, you can stop now."

He smiles and dark rage sparks in a face that could be Greek. It could be Italian. It could be French. Bev Kiffin reaches us and her eyes narrow as they fix on me. She wears the same red lumberman's jacket she had on the other week, and her hair is tousled as if she has just gotten out of bed. "Well, well," she says. "Some folks just never get the message they aren't welcome, isn't that right?" Her eyes slide to Jay and linger.

I know without being told that they have been sleeping together, and every word Jay has ever told me turns to fable. Now I understand why Agent Jilison Mclntyre was perplexed when I said that Bev Kiffin's husband was a truck driver for Overland. Mclntyre was undercover. She did the company's books. She would be aware of it if there was an employee named Kiffin. The only co

Lucy walks close to me, her face concrete. She shows no reaction as we are walked at gunpoint past rusty campers that I suspect are unoccupied for a reason. "Drug labs," I say to Jay. "You making designer drugs out here, too? Or maybe just storing assault rifles and other things that end up on the street and kill people?"

"Kay, shut up," he softly says. "Bev, you take care of her." He indicates Lucy. "Find her a nice room and make sure she's comfortable."

Kiffin smiles a little. She taps the back of Lucy's leg with the shotgun. We are at the motel now, and I scan parked cars and find no sign of another human being. Benton flashes in my mind. My heart pounds and the realization roars through my brain. Bo

"You killed Benton, didn't you, Jay." I state it as a fact.

He lays a hand on my back, the pistol pointed and touching me as he pauses behind me and says for me to open the door. We enter room 15, the same room Kiffin showed me when I wanted to see what kind of mattresses and linens she used in this dump. "You and Bray," I say to Jay. "That's why she sent letters from New York, trying to make it seem they were from Carrie, to make Benton assume they were written from up there where she was locked up in Kirby."

Jay shuts the door and waves the gun almost wearily, as if I am tiresome and he is not enjoying this. "Sit down."

My eyes wander up to the ceiling, looking for eyebolts. I wonder where the heat gun is and if it is part of my fate. I keep standing where I am, near the dresser with its Gideon Bible, this one not opened to any special chapter about vanity or anything else. "I just want to know if I slept with the person who killed Benton." I am looking right at Jay. "You're going to kill me? Go ahead. But you already did that when you killed him. So I guess you can kill me twice, Jay." It is odd, I feel no fear,

only resignation. My pain, my anguish is over my niece, and I

wait for the sound of a shotgun to rock these walls. "Can't you just leave her out of it?" I ask anyway, and Jay knows I mean Lucy.

"I didn't kill Benton," he says, and he has the livid face of people who walk up and shoot a president. Pale, no expression, a zombie. "Carrie and her asshole friend did that. I made the call."