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“Take us to hieant,” Parker said with a smile
CHAPTER 47
SERGEANT RODBOURNE FOUND AN orderly, and ent in through the adeway to an older, one-story brick dorm
We were buzzed through a gate and went down a long, worn, once-white corridor The hospital’s eency lockup was lined with the kind of heavy doors usually seen on walk-in freezers The blast doors had peekaboo s in theed, shatterproof glass
“Are you still drea of the lambs, Clarice?” I whispered to Parker, who immediately elbowed me in the solar plexus
As we stopped at a door near the end of the hallway, I looked through the screenedto see Scricca, shirtless and on his back, handcuffed to a hospital bed
I was surprised to see that he was good-looking He was deeply tanned, with long, shiny black hair and pale-gray-green eyes, and was muscular in a wiry, rock-climber kind of way
Even the creeps have to keep up appearances out here in the land of ht
I saw ubiquitous tattoos, inked only on his torso in a vestlike pattern It looked like he earing a paisley blackjack-dealer vest of snakes and soaring eagles and eight balls and evil clowns
“Style I like that in a man,” Parker mumbled as the orderly cracked the clasps on the door
What Sergeant Rodbourne said was true, I thought, quickly scanning Scricca’s face as ent into the rooed If anything, his tired, forlorn expression was quite sober, that of a man who had just awakened to find hio, and without a paddle in sight
“Hi, Mr Scricca I’ent Parker,” Emily said with the slow, deliberate speech one would use with a toddler or a stoned-out junkie “I work for the FBI”
“Yeah, well, I’ on the thuirls of e, but, like I told the shit She told ht? To tell you the truth, she was the one who suggested I make the U-turn She dared me, in fact Said I didn’t have the balls”
“You’re a piece of work, Scricca,” Sergeant Rodbourne said, stepping toward him “First you throw your date under a truck, now you throw her under the bus”
Sensing trouble, I took a quick step sideways, into the brawny and angry cop’s path