Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell Page B

your address is printed, machine-printed. How could Chandonne manage to do that?”
    â€œHow the hell do you stand this joint? Don’t you even got air-conditioning? And we did swab the envelopes the letters came in, but it’s that self-stick adhesive. So he didn’t have to lick nothing.”
    This is evasion and Marino knows it. Sloughed-off skin cells can adhere to self-sticking adhesives. He doesn’t want to answer Benton’s question.
    â€œHow did Chandonne pull off sending you letters inside an envelope like this?” Benton shakes the photocopy at Marino. “And don’t you find it just a little odd that first-class mail is x-ed out? Why might that be?”
    â€œI guess we’ll just have to get Wolfman to explain,” Marino rudely replies. “I got no fucking idea.”
    â€œYet you seem to know for a fact that the letters are from Jean-Baptiste.” Benton measures each word. “Pete. You’re better than this.”
    Marino wipes his forehead on his sleeve. “Look, so the fact is, we don’t got scientific evidence to prove nothing. But it’s not because we didn’t take a shot at it. We did use the Luma-Lite, and we did try for DNA, and everything’s whistle-clean as of this moment.”
    â€œMitochondrial DNA? You trying for that?”
    â€œWhy bother? It would take months, and by then he’ll be dead. Andthere’s no way in hell we’re going to get a goddamn thing anyway. For crying out loud, don’t you think the asshole gets off on somehow using a National Academy of Justice envelope? How’s that for a fuck-you? Don’t you think he gets off on making us do all these tests when he knows we’ll come up with zip? All he had to do was cover his hands with toilet paper or whatever when he touched anything.”
    â€œMaybe,” Benton says.
    Marino is about to erupt. He is exasperated beyond his limit.
    â€œEasy, Pete,” Benton says. “You would think less of me if I didn’t ask.”
    Marino stares off without blinking.
    â€œMy opinion?” Benton goes on. “He wrote the letters and was deliberate about not leaving evidence. I don’t know how he managed to use a National Academy of Justice envelope, and yes, that is a huge fuck-you. Frankly, I’m surprised you haven’t heard from him before now. The letters sound authentic. They do not have the off-key ring of a crank. We know Jean-Baptiste has a breast fetish.” He says this clinically. “We know it is very likely he has information that could destroy his criminal family and the cartel. It fits with his insatiable need to dominate and control that he presents the conditions he has.”
    â€œAnd what about him saying the Doc wants to see him?”
    â€œYou tell me.”
    â€œShe never wrote him. I asked her point-blank. Why the hell would she write that piece of shit? I told her about the National Academy of Justice envelopes, that the letter to her and me came in one. I showed her a photocopy . . .”
    â€œOf what?” Benton interrupts.
    â€œA photocopy of the National Academy of Justice envelope.” Marino is getting exasperated. “The one her and my letters from Wolfman came in. I told her if she gets one of these goddamn National Academy of Justice letters herself, not to open it, not to even touch it. Do you really believe he wants her to be his executioner?”
    â€œIf he intends to die . . .”
    â€œIntends?” Marino interrupts him. “I don’t believe ol’ Wolfie Boy’s got much to say about that.”
    â€œA lot can happen between now and then, Pete. Remember who his connections are. I wouldn’t be too sure of anything. And by the way, when Lucy got her letter, was it also sent in a postage-paid National Academy of Justice envelope?”
    â€œYup.”
    â€œThe fantasy of a woman doctor administering the lethal injection and