Flesh and Blood. Patricia Cornwell

and as I explain all this to Marino I continue to feel incredulous. I feel as if ground is moving under my feet, as if I can’t get my balance. I have no idea what is happening but it all seems too close to me like the pennies in my own backyard and the pickup truck on my street.

      “One of my cases and not that long ago,” I explain. “And their phone number was on the side of a truck parked on my street this morning, not even two blocks down from my house? What the hell is going on?”

      “Nothing good,” Marino says.

      I Google Sonny’s Lawn Care. There’s no such company in Massachusetts. I try Hands On Mechanics and there’s no listing for that either.

      “This is only getting more disturbing,” I say as the dispatcher gets back to Marino.

      She tells him that the plate number belongs to a 1990 gray F-150 Ford pickup truck. It’s registered to an eighty-three-year-old white male named Clayton Phillip Schmidt with a Springfield address, some ninety miles west of here, almost across the border into Connecticut.

      “Any record of the plate or vehicle being stolen?” Marino asks.

      “Negative.”

      He requests that all units in the area be on the alert for a 1990 gray Ford pickup truck with that plate number.

      “Saw it maybe ten minutes ago on Memorial Drive, eastbound.” Marino holds the radio close to his mouth. “Took a right on the Harvard Bridge. Same vehicle was spotted around twelve hundred hours in the area of the incident on Farrar Street. Had Sonny’s Lawn Care on the door. Now has Hands On Mechanics. Possibly using different magnetic signs.”

      “Thirteen to thirty-three,” another unit calls.

      “Thirty-three,” Marino answers.

      “Saw vehicle at approximately noon, corner of Kirkland and Irving,” unit thirteen, a female officer advises. “Had Sonny’s Lawn Care on it at that time.”

      “Parked or moving?”

      “Pulled off onto the shoulder.”

      “You see anybody?”

      “Negative.”

      I open a text message Benton has just sent to me.

      An unexpected development. Will tell you when I see you, I read.

      I envision him in our backyard earlier today, and the pennies on our wall and the flick of light he saw. I think of Copperhead, of the odd poem tweeted to me from a hotel in Morristown. Now a mysterious truck has a phone number on it that is connected to a recent death I handled—one I really don’t want further scrutinized.

      I didn’t misrepresent the medical facts in Johnny Angiers’s case but I was liberal in my interpretation and decision to sign him out as an accidental death due to hypothermia. When his insurance company questioned me, pointing out that my autopsy report indicated a finding of ruptured plaque due to coronary artery disease, I held my ground. Johnny Angiers wasn’t diabetic but his vitreous glucose was elevated and this is typical in hypothermia deaths. There were skin changes, gastric lesions and damage to his organs consistent with exposure to cold temperatures.

      Hypothermia may have precipitated cardiac arrest or it could have been the other way around. It was impossible to say with certainty and if I were going to err it was on the side of compassion. The accidental life insurance policy didn’t cover death by heart attack even if it was a heart attack that caused a fatal accident such as a fall or a car crash or exposure to cold. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. The company TBP Insurers is huge. It’s notorious for finding ways to avoid payment to people who have just been traumatized by the unexpected loss of a loved one.

      Had I not filled out the autopsy report and death certificate the way I did, Johnny Angiers’s widow would have been forced to sell their house and stop any financial assistance they were giving to grandchildren in college and graduate school. I had ample justification to make sure that didn’t happen, and I have a deep-seated disdain for greedy unethical insurance companies. I constantly see the lives they rob and ruin, and unfortunately my run-ins with TBP aren’t new.

      “I hope what’s happening doesn’t in any way compromise her,” I remark as Marino tries a number and gets voice mail. “We should head on to my office,” I add as we continue to sit in the parking lot.

      “Compromise Mrs. Angiers? Why would what’s on a pickup truck compromise her? It’s not her fault.”

      “The insurance company. Anything that draws attention to her or her husband’s case may not be helpful.” I’m grateful I didn’t use my phone to call a number that turns out to be hers.

      TBP would make something of it.

      “She’s eligible to collect the insurance money but obviously hasn’t gotten it yet,” I add.

      “How do you know what she’s gotten?”

      “One of their investigators called Bryce the other day wanting to set up an appointment with me about the case. In person this time. They wouldn’t do that if they weren’t still fighting it.”

      “You going to sit down with them?”

      “It’s not been scheduled yet since I’m supposed to be out of town. Bryce gave them dates and we haven’t heard back, which is their typical M.O. The longer they stall, the better for them. The only person in a hurry is the one who needs the money.”

      “Fuckers.” Marino tries another number on his phone.

      “So now it’s in your backyard, buddy,” a man answers right off. “Unbelievable.”

      “That’s how it’s looking. Your two shootings linked with the one we got here, not to mention weird shit going on,” Marino says, and I realize he’s talking to Morris County investigator Jack Kuster. “You ever hear any reports of a gray pickup truck spotted in your area, maybe one that had a company logo on the doors?”

      “Not a gray one, funny you’d ask. But a white truck, you know like a Ryder or U-Haul bobtail rental truck but with no name on it. Not a huge truck, maybe a ten-footer. I thought I told you about it that night you got so shit-faced at Sona. Oh yeah. That’s why you don’t remember.” Jack Kuster has an easygoing baritone voice with a heavy New Jersey accent. “I think you must’ave been drinking Blithering Idiot.”

      “Skull Splitter Ale I’m pretty sure,” Marino deadpans. “What about the white truck?”

      “The day before Julie Eastman was shot while she was waiting for the Edgewater Ferry, the truck I’m talking about was spotted at a construction site that had been shut down. From there it went down the road a little ways into the ferry landing parking lot.”

      “I guess there’s only one white truck in all of Jersey,” Marino says.

      “The reason this particular vehicle came to anyone’s attention is it hit a car that was backing up and the truck hauled ass out of there. Two things about it caught my interest after the homicide. A recovered paint chip showed the truck had been repainted multiple times and the tag number came back to a plate belonging to someone dead. From Massachusetts as a matter of fact.”

      “Jesus,” Marino says. “A commercial plate I assume.”

      “No. A regular noncommercial one. Obviously stolen from a noncommercial vehicle, a thirty-something-year-old Pontiac that had been totaled back in November, thus explaining why the owner is deceased.”

      “Anybody take a picture of the truck?”

      “No one has come forward if they did.” Kuster’s voice is loud over speakerphone, and Marino pushes the SUV gearshift into reverse. “The person whose car was hit by it got the plate number, like I said, and described it as a white moving truck but didn’t get a look at the driver, just someone wearing a hat and glasses.”

      “Doesn’t sound like the same thing here,” Marino says. “And