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get along. One of many reasons.”
    Scarpetta has suspected that Nic’s marriage is in trouble or has ended.People who are unhappy in relationships carry about them a distinct air of discontent and isolation. In Nic’s case, the signs are there, especially the anger that she thinks she hides.
    â€œHow bad?” Scarpetta asks her.
    â€œSeparated, well on our way to divorce.” Nic reaches for her coffee cup again but changes her mind. “Thank God my father lives nearby in Baton Rouge or I don’t know what I’d do about Buddy. I know damn well Ricky would take him from me just to pay me back.”
    â€œPay you back? For what?” Scarpetta inquires, and she has a reason for all these questions.
    â€œA long story. Been going on more than a year, from bad to worse, not that it was ever all that good.”
    â€œAbout as long as these women have been disappearing from your area.” Scarpetta finally gets to her point. “I want to know how you’re handling that, because it will get you if you let it. When you least expect it. It’s not escaped my notice that you haven’t brought up the cases once, not once, not while I’ve been here. Ten women in fourteen months. Vanished, from their homes, vehicles, parking lots, all in the Baton Rouge area. Presumed dead. I can assure you they are. I can assure you they were murdered by the same person, who is shrewd—very shrewd. Intelligent and experienced enough to gain trust, then abduct, then dispose of the bodies. He’s killed before, and he’ll kill again. The latest disappearance was just four days ago—in Zachary. That makes two cases in Zachary, the first one several months ago. So you’re going home to that, Nic. Serial murders. Ten of them.”
    â€œNot ten. Just the two in Zachary. I’m not on the task force,” Nic replies with restrained resentment. “I don’t run with the big boys. They don’t need help from little country cops like me, at least that’s the way the U.S. Attorney looks at it.”
    â€œWhat’s the U.S. Attorney got to do with it?” Scarpetta asks. “These cases aren’t the jurisdiction of the feds.”
    â€œWeldon Winn’s not only an egotistical asshole, but he’s stupid. Nothing worse than someone who’s stupid and arrogant and has power. The cases are high-profile, all over the news. He wants to be part of them, maybe end up a federal judge or senator someday.
    â€œAnd you’re right. I know what I’m going home to, but all I can do is work the two disappearances we’ve had in Zachary, even if I know damn well they’re connected to the other eight.”
    â€œInteresting the abductions are now happening farther north of Baton Rouge,” Scarpetta says. “He may be finding his earlier killing field too risky.”
    â€œThe only thing good I can say about that is Zachary may be in the East Baton Rouge Parish, but at least it isn’t the jurisdiction of the Baton Rouge police. So the high and mighty task force can’t boss me around about my cases.”
    â€œTell me about them.”
    â€œLet’s see. The most recent one. What I know about it. What anybody knows about it. Two days after Easter, just four nights ago,” she begins. “A forty-year-old schoolteacher named Glenda Marler. She’s a teacher at the high school—same high school I went to. Blonde, blue-eyed, pretty, very smart. Divorced, no children. This past Tuesday night, she goes to the Road Side Bar Be Q, gets pulled pork, hush puppies and slaw to go. She has a ’94 Honda Accord, blue, and is observed driving away from the restaurant, south on Main Street, right through the middle of town. She vanishes, her car found abandoned in the parking lot of the high school where she taught. Of course, the task force is suggesting she was having a rendezvous with one of her students, that the case isn’t