Predator Read Online Free PDF Page A

dead have to say, she told him some fifteen years ago when they were working their first homicide together. If you can’t be bothered with them, then, frankly, I can’t be bothered with you, Special Agent Wesley.
         Fair enough, Dr. Scarpetta. I’ll trust you to make introductions.
         All right then, she said.Come with me.
         That was the first time he had ever been inside a morgue refrigerator, and he can still hear the loud clack of the handle pulling back and the whoosh of cold, foul air. He would know that smell anywhere, that dark, dead stench, foul and flat. It hangs heavy in the air, and he has always imagined that if he could see it, it would look like filthy ground fog slowly spreading out from whatever has died.
         He replays his conversation with Basil, analyzes every word, every twitch, every facial expression. Violent offenders promise all sorts of things. They manipulate the hell out of everybody to get what they want, promise to reveal the locations of bodies, admit to crimes that were never solved, confess the details of what they did, offer insights into their motivation and psychological state. In most cases, it is lies. In this case, Benton is concerned. Something about at least some of what Basil confessed strikes him as true.
         He tries Scarpetta on his cell phone. She doesn’t answer. Several minutes later, he tries again and still can’t get her.
         He leaves a message: “Please call me when you get this,” he says.
         The door opens again and a woman comes in with the snow, as if blown in by the blizzard.
         She wears a long, black coat and is brushing it off as she pushes back her hood, and her fair skin is rosy from the cold, her eyes quite bright. She is pretty, remarkably pretty, with dark blond hair and dark eyes and a body that she flaunts. Lucy watches her glide to the back of the restaurant, glide between tables like a sexy pilgrim or a sensuous witch in her long, black coat, and it swirls around her black boots as she heads straight back to the bar where there are plenty of empty stools. She chooses one next to Lucy’s and folds her coat and sits on it without a word or a glance.
         Lucy drinks tequila and stares at the TV over the bar as if the latest celebrity romance is interesting. Buddy makes the woman a drink as if he knows what she likes.
         “I’ll have another,” Lucy tells him soon enough.
         “Coming up.”
         The woman with the black hooded coat gets interested in the colorful tequila bottle that Buddy lifts from a shelf. She keenly watches the pale amber liquor pour in a delicate stream, filling the bottom of the brandy snifter. Lucy slowly swirls the tequila, and the smell of it fills her nose all the way up to her brain.
         “That stuff will give you the headache from Hades,” the woman with the black hooded coat says in a husky voice that is seductive and full of secrets.
         “It’s much purer than regular liquor,” Lucy says. “Haven’t heard the word Hades in a while. Most people I know say hell.”
         “The worst headaches I ever got were from margaritas,” the woman offers, sipping a Cosmopolitan that is pink and lethal-looking in a champagne glass. “And I don’t believe in hell.”
         “You’ll believe in it if you keep drinking that shit,” Lucy replies, and in the mirror behind the bar, she watches the front door open again and more snow blow into Lorraine’s.
         Wind gusting in from the bay sounds like silk whipping, reminding her of silk stockings whipping on a clothesline, although she has never seen silk stockings on a clothesline or heard what they sound like in the wind. She is aware of the woman’s black stockings because tall stools and short, slitted skirts are not a safe combination unless a woman is in a bar where the men are interested only in one another, and in Provincetown, this is usually the case.