The Bone Bed by Patricia Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

it, because it could be interpreted as a threat. A threat to a government official. I’m surprised Benton wouldn’t see it that way.” Marino’s remark is more of a probe, as if he’s wondering as usual if Benton is vigilant about my safety or even a decent husband.
    “Did Lucy also tell you where it was sent from? The IP?”
    “Yeah, I’m aware. Maybe to make it look like it was one of us. Bryce, me, any of us who flew into Logan yesterday right about the time you got the e-mail. You need to ask who might want you to think that, who it might benefit if you don’t feel you can trust those you’re closest to.”
    He switches into the right lane to turn onto the Longfellow Bridge, with its central towers that are shaped like salt and pepper shakers, and I think of Lucy searching my office a little while ago. We merge into a long line of cars crossing the river into Beacon Hill, rush hour barely moving, traffic stretching across the water and onto Cambridge Street for as far as I can see. I recall what she said about someone in our own backyard, someone we know, and I imagine Marino and her talking about it, speculating and accusing. It doesn’t take much to get her worked up and on the warpath.
    “Look, it’s no secret I don’t have a good opinion of him. I mean, what the hell do we really know about him except he’s Anna’s nephew?” Marino then says, and I’m really not surprised this is what he’s been waiting to confront me with. “Me and Lucy are worried about motives that might not occur to you. We were trying to figure out a connection, and there is one, with his father.”
    “A connection to what?”
    “Maybe a connection to a lot of things. Including that e-mail sent from Logan. Including maybe the two of you having more going on between you than . . . I mean, it’s pretty obvious you’re under his spell. . . .”
    “I wish you wouldn’t plant ideas like this with Lucy or anyone else.” I won’t let him finish such an accusation about my relationship with Luke.
    “His father’s a big financial tycoon in Austria, right?”
    “You really should be careful what you suggest to people.”
    “You just saw Guenter at Anna’s funeral, right?” He won’t stop pushing.
    Guenter Zenner is Anna’s only living sibling. I saw him briefly at her graveside service in Zentralfriedhof, a gaunt old man draped in a long, dark duster, leaning on a cane and immeasurably sad.
    “Just so happens one of the things he’s into is oil trading,” Marino continues, as we crawl across the bridge, the low sun directly in our faces and as bright as the light from a burning lens.
    “Lucy found this out?”
    “What matters is it’s true,” he says. “And that pipeline from Alberta to Texas is a huge deal to oil traders. They’re counting on it, have huge investments and stand to make millions, maybe billions.”
    “Do you have any idea how many oil traders there are in the world?” I remind him.
    This had to come from Lucy, and I imagine her finding out about Marino staying at the CFC last night because at some point she looked for him. Maybe she went there to talk to him and discovered him drinking and napping on the AeroBed, I don’t know, and I reconstruct what happened after I received the anonymous e-mail at 6:30 p.m.
    Benton and I spent some time discussing it before I called the Grande Prairie police and next was directed to an Investigator Glenn with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who has been working the Emma Shubert case since she disappeared in August. What struck me most was the hesitation I sensed and what it implied, and I mentioned something about it to Lucy when we discussed the e-mail over the phone.
    Dr. Shubert was skilled in reconstructing dino skeletons,
Investigator Glenn said to me, and he was intimating that anyone who knows how to make molds and anatomically exact casts of bones in a lab might be capable of other types of fabrications, including a severed ear.
    “The