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.We’re going to call Detective Wagner.We can’t go in the house without permission from the police.We don’t have jurisdiction unless they ask for our help.”“I understand.Thank you very much.Please do something.”“All right, Mrs.Simister.We’ll get back to you.We need your phone number.”“Huh,” Marino says when Scarpetta hangs up.“Probably some mental case.”“How about you call Detective Wagner, since it seems you’re familiar with her,” Scarpetta says.“She used to be a motorcycle cop.Dumb as dirt but handled her Road King pretty good.I can’t believe they made her a detective.”He gets out his Treo and dreads hearing Reba’s voice and wishes Doris would get out of his mind.He tells Hollywood police dispatch to have Detective Wagner contact him immediately.He ends the call and looks around Scarpetta’s office, looks everywhere but at her as he thinks about Doris and the dentist, or whatever the hell he was, and the car salesman.He thinks about how satisfying it would have been to beat the dentist, or whatever the hell he was, senseless instead of getting drunk and barging into his office and demanding he step out of an examination room and in front of a lobby full of patients asking why he thought it was necessary to examine his wife’s tits and to please explain how tits might be relevant in a root canal case.“Marino?”Why that incident should still bother him all over again after all these years is a mystery.He doesn’t understand why a lot of things have started bothering him again.The last few weeks have been hell.“Marino?”He comes to and looks at Scarpetta at the same time he realizes his cell phone is buzzing.“Yeah,” he answers.“Detective Wagner here.”“Investigator Pete Marino,” he says, as if he doesn’t know her.“What do you need, Investigator Pete Marino.” She sounds as if she doesn’t know him, either.“I understand you got a family that’s disappeared from the West Lake area.Apparently last Thursday night.”“How did you hear about that?”“Apparently there’s some concern foul play might be involved.And the word is you aren’t being very helpful.”“We’d be investigating the hell out of it if we thought there was anything to it.What’s the source of your information?”“A lady from their church.You got the names of these people who supposedly have vanished?”“Let me think.They’re kind of odd names, Eva Christian and Crystal or Christine Christian.Something like that.I can’t think of the boys’ names.”“Could you mean Christian Christian?”Scarpetta and Marino look at each other.“Something a whole lot like that.I don’t have my notes in front of me.You want to look into it, be my guest.My department’s not going to devote a lot of resources to something when there’s absolutely no evidence…”“I got that part,” Marino says rudely.“Supposedly the church is going to start packing up that house tomorrow and if we’re gonna take a look, now’s the time.”“They’ve not even been gone for a week and the church is already packing up the house? Sounds to me they know they’ve skipped town and aren’t coming back.What’s it sound like to you?”“Sounds like we ought to make sure,” Marino says.The man behind the counter is older and more distinguished than Lucy imagined.She expected someone who looks like a has-been surfer, someone leathery and covered in tattoos.That’s the sort of person who ought to be working in a shop called Beach Bums.She sets down a camera case, and her fingers flutter through big, loud shirts printed with sharks, flowers, palm trees and other tropical designs.She peruses stacks of straw hats and bins of flip-flops and displays of sunglasses and lotions, not interested in buying any of it but wishing she were.For a moment she browses, waiting for two other customers to leave.She wonders how it would feel to be like everybody else, to care about souvenirs and gaudy things to wear and days in the sun, to feel good about the way she looks half-naked in a swimsuit.“You got any of that stuff with zinc oxide in it?” one of the customers is asking Larry, who is seated behind the counter.He has thick, white hair and a neatly trimmed beard, is sixty-two, was born in Alaska, drives a Jeep, has never owned a home, didn’t go to college and in 1957 was arrested for drunk and disorderly.Larry has managed Beach Bums for about two years.“Nobody likes that anymore,” he is telling the customer.“I do.It doesn’t break out my skin like all these other lotions.I think I’m allergic to aloe.”“These sunblocks don’t have aloe.”“You carry Maui Jim’s?”“Too expensive, my dear.The only sunglasses we got are the ones you’re looking at.”This goes on for a while, both customers making minor purchases, finally leaving.Lucy wanders up to the counter.“Can I help you with something?” Larry asks, looking at the way she is dressed.“Where’d you just come from, a Mission Impossible movie?”“I rode my motorcycle here.”“Well, you’re one of the few with any sense.Look out the window
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