Predator (53 page)

    
“Yes, we can,” she says. “But not right this minute.”

    
Dr. Self presses a flashing button on the phone.

    
“Our next caller—well, he’s been on hold for several minutes now, and he has an unusual nickname. Hog? I apologize. You still with us?”

    
“Yes, ma’am,” a soft-spoken voice enters the studio.

    
“You’re on the air,” she says. “Now, Hog? Why don’t you tell us about your nickname first. I’m sure everybody’s curious.”

    
“It’s what I’m called.”

    
Silence, and Dr. Self fills it instantly. There can be no dead time on the air.

    
“Well, Hog it is. Now, you called in with a startling story. You’re in the lawn-care business. And you were in a certain neighborhood and noticed citrus canker in someone’s yard… ?”

    
“No. It’s not quite like that.”

    
Dr. Self feels a pinch of irritation. Hog’s not following the script. When he called late Tuesday afternoon and she pretended to be someone other than herself, he distinctly said he had discovered canker in an old woman’s yard in Hollywood, just one orange tree, and now every citrus tree in her yard and all her neighbors’ yards has to be cut down, and when he mentioned the problem to the owner of that particular infected tree, the old woman, she threatened to kill herself if Hog reported the canker to the Department of Agriculture. She threatened to shoot herself with her dead husband’s shotgun.

    
The old woman’s husband had planted the trees when they first got married. He’s dead and the trees are all she has left, the only living thing left. To cut down her trees is to destroy a precious part of her life that nobody has any business touching.

    
“Eradicating those trees is to cause her to at last accept her loss.” Dr. Self is explaining all this to her audience. “And in doing so, she doesn’t see anything left worth living for. She wants to die. That’s quite a dilemma to find yourself in, isn’t it, Hog? Playing God,” she says to the speaker phone.

    
“I don’t play God. I do what God says. It’s not an act.”

    
Dr. Self is confused but carries on. “What a choice for you to make. Did you follow the government’s rules or follow your heart?”

    
“I painted red stripes on them,” he says. “Now she’s dead. You were next. But there isn’t time.”

    
Chapter 58

    
They sit in the kitchen at a table before a window that overlooks the narrow, murky canal.

    
“When the police got involved,” Fred Quincy is saying, “they did ask for a few things that might have their DNA. Hairbrush, toothbrush, I forget what else. I never heard anything about what they did with the stuff.”

    
“They probably never analyzed it,” Lucy says, thinking about what she and Marino just talked about. “Possibly it’s still in their evidence room. We can ask them about it, but I’d rather not wait.”

    
The suggestion that someone may have gained access to her system’s administrative password is incredible. It’s sickening. Marino must be mistaken. She can’t stop thinking about it.

    
“Obviously, the case isn’t a priority for them. They’ve always believed they just ran off. There was no sign of violence,” Fred says. “They said there should have been a sign of a struggle, or someone should have seen something. It was the middle of the morning, and there were people around. And Mom’s SUV was missing.”

    
“I was told her car was there. An Audi.”

    
“It definitely wasn’t. And she didn’t have an Audi. I did. Someone must have seen my car when I got there later, looking for them. Mom had a Chevy Blazer. She used it to haul things around. You know, people get things so twisted. I went to the shop after trying to call all day. My mom’s purse and Blazer were gone, and there was no sign of her or my sister.”

    
“Any sign they had ever been inside the shop?”

    
“Nothing was on. The closed sign was out.”

    
“Anything missing?”

    
“Not that I could tell. Certainly nothing obvious. Nothing in the cash drawer, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. If she left money in it overnight, it wasn’t much. Something must have come up if you suddenly need their DNA.”

    
“I’ll let you know,” Lucy says. “We may have a lead.”

    
“You can’t tell me?”

    
“I promise I’ll let you know. What was your first thought when you went looking for them, drove to the shop?”

    
“Truth? I thought maybe they’d never gone there at all, had just driven off somewhere over the rainbow.”

    
“Why do you put it like that?”

    
“There had been a lot of problems. Financial ups and downs. Personal problems. Dad had this extremely successful landscaping business.”

    
“In Palm Beach.”

    
“That’s where it was headquartered. But he had greenhouses and tree farms in other locations, including around here. Then, in the mid-eighties, he got wiped out by citrus canker. Every damn one of his citrus trees had to be destroyed, and he had to let go of almost all of his employees and came very close to declaring bankruptcy. That was hard on Mom. He got back on his feet and was more successful then, and that was hard on Mom, too. You know, I’m not sure I should be telling you all this.”

    
“Fred, I’m trying to help. I can’t do it if you don’t talk to me.”

    
“Let me start with when Helen was twelve,” he says. “I was beginning my freshman year in college. I’m older, obviously. Helen went to live with my dad’s brother and his wife for about six months.”

    
“Why?”

    
“It was sad, such a pretty, talented girl. Got into Harvard when she was only sixteen, lasted not even a semester, had a meltdown and came home.”

    
“When?”

    
“That would have been the fall before she and Mom disappeared. She only lasted until November—at Harvard.”

    
“Eight months before she and your mother disappeared?”

    
“Yes. Helen was dealt a really lousy genetic hand.”

    
He pauses as if trying to decide whether he should go on, then, “All right. My mom wasn’t the most stable person. You might have already figured that out, her Christmas obsession. Craziness, more craziness, on and off for as long as I can remember. But it got really bad when Helen was twelve. Mom was doing some pretty irrational things.”

    
“Was she seeing a local psychiatrist?”

    
“Whatever money could buy. That celebrity one. She lived in Palm Beach back then. Dr. Self. She recommended hospitalization. That’s the real reason she sent Helen off to live with my aunt and uncle. Mom was in the hospital, and Dad was really busy and not inclined to take care of a twelve-year-old kid all by himself. Mom came home. Then Helen did and neither of them were, well, normal.”

    
“Did Helen go to a psychiatrist?”

    
“Not at that time,” Fred says. “She was just strange. Not unstable like Mom but strange. She did well in school, really well, then went off to Harvard and crashed and burned, was found in the lobby of some funeral home up there, didn’t know who she was. As if things weren’t bad enough, Dad died. Mom went into a real downhill spiral, would go places on the weekends, not tell me where she was, freaking me out. It was awful.”

    
“So the police figured she was unstable and into disappearing acts, and maybe ran off with Helen?”

    
“I wondered it myself. I still wonder if my mom and sister are out there somewhere.”

    
“How did your dad die?”

    
“Fell off a ladder in the rare-book library. The house in Palm Beach was three stories, everything marble and stone tiles.”

    
“He home alone when it happened?”

    
“Helen found him on the first-floor landing.”

    
“She was the only one in the house at the time?”

    
“A boyfriend, maybe. Don’t know who.”

    
“When was this?”

    
“A couple months before she and Mom disappeared. Helen was seventeen then, precocious. Well, truthfully, after she came home from Harvard, she was completely out of control. I’ve always wondered if it was a reaction to my dad, my uncle, the people on my dad’s side of the family. Extremely religious and serious, Jesus this, Jesus that, big in their churches. Deacons, Sunday-school teachers, always trying to witness to people.”

    
“You ever meet any of Helen’s boyfriends?”

    
“No. She ran around, would disappear for days. Just trouble. I didn’t come home if I didn’t have to. Mom’s Christmas obsession is such a joke. It was never Christmas in our house. It was always pretty damn awful.”

    
He gets up from the table. “Mind if I have a beer?”

    
“Help yourself.”

    
He picks out a Michelob, twists off the cap. He shuts the refrigerator door and sits back down.

    
“Was your sister ever hospitalized?” Lucy asks.

    
“Same place Mom was. For a month right after she dropped out of Harvard. Club McLean, I called it. The good ole family genes.”

    
“McLean in Massachusetts?”

    
“Yup. You ever take notes? I don’t know how you can remember all this.”

    
Lucy fingers the pen she’s holding, the small recorder turned on and invisible in her pocket.

    
“We need your mom’s and sister’s DNA,” she says.

    
“I don’t have any idea how we’re going to get it now. Unless the police still have that stuff.”

    
“Yours will work. Think of it as family-tree DNA,” Lucy says.

    
Chapter 59

    
Scarpetta looks out the window at the cold, white street. It is almost three, and she has been on the phone most of the day.

    
“What kind of screening do you have? You must have some system in place for controlling who makes it on the air,” she says.

    
“Of course. One of the producers talks to the person, makes sure he isn’t crazy.”

    
It seems an odd choice of words for a psychiatrist.

    
“In this case, I’d already had a conversation with the man, the lawn-service man. It’s a long story.” Dr. Self is talking fast.

    
“He said his name was Hog when you talked to him the first time?”

    
“I didn’t think anything about it. A lot of people have wacky nicknames. I just need to know. Did some elderly lady suddenly turn up dead, a suicide? You would know, wouldn’t you? He threatened to kill me.”