Read Online Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell - Free Book Online Page B

relief and pleasure in the arms of many beautiful young women and only remains married to Madame Chandonne because that is the way it must be. At a young age, Jean-Baptiste was told hypertrichosis is congenital, but he is certain it was caused by his mother’s alcoholism. She made no effort to curtail her drunkenness while she was pregnant with him and his twin brother, who calls himself Jay Talley and had the good fortune to emerge from their mother’s womb less than three minutes after Jean-Baptiste. His brother was born a perfect specimen of maleness, a golden sculpture with an exquisite body touched by blond hair that catches light, his face formed by a master. He dazzles everyone he meets, and the only satisfaction Jean-Baptiste findsin the injustice of their births is that Jay Talley, whose real name is Jean-Paul Chandonne, does not look like what he is. For that reason, he is worse than Jean-Baptiste.
    It is not lost on Jean-Baptiste that the several minutes separating his birth from his brother’s is how long it is supposed to take for Jean-Baptiste to die on May 7. Several minutes is about how long his chosen ones lived, as blood spattered walls in peaks and valleys that looked very much like an abstract painting he once saw and wished badly he could buy, but had no money and no place to hang it.
    â€œWho’s there!” he screams.

T HE CHARLES RIVER reflects the fledgling green of spring along Boston’s embankment, and Benton Wesley watches young men row a racing shell in perfect rhythm.
    Muscles ripple like the gentle current, paddles dip in whispered plashes. He could watch and say nothing all afternoon. The day is perfect, without a cloud, the temperature seventy-five degrees. Benton has become a close companion of isolation and silence, and craves them to the extreme that conversation fatigues him and is weighted by long pauses that intimidate some people and irritate others. He rarely has more to say than the homeless people who sleep in rag piles beneath the Arthur Fiedler footbridge. He even managed to offend the loud, gregarious Max, who works in the Café Esplanade, where Benton on occasion buys root-beer and Cracker Jacks or a soft pretzel. The first comment Benton ever made to Max was taken the wrong way.
    â€œChange.” That was all Benton muttered with a shake of his head.
    Max, who is German and often mistranslates English and takes umbrage easily, interpreted the cryptic remark to mean that that smart-ass in running clothes and dark sunglasses thinks all foreigners are inferior and dishonest and was demanding the change due him from thefive-dollar bill Max tucked inside the till. In other words, the hardworking Max is a thief.
    What Benton meant was that Cracker Jacks at the Café Esplanade are served in bags, not boxes, and cost a dollar instead of a quarter. The toy surprises inside are games printed on folded white paper, cheap as hell, and require the IQ of a pigeon. Gone are the days of Benton’s childhood, when his sticky fingers dug through caramel-glazed popcorn and peanuts for treasure, such as a plastic whistle or BB game or, best of all, the magic decoding ring that little Benton wore on his index finger, pretending it empowered him to know what people thought, what they would do and which monster he would defeat on his next secret mission.
    The irony isn’t lost on him that he grew up to wear a special ring—this one gold and engraved with the FBI crest—and became the champion of decoding the thoughts, motivations and actions of people the public calls monsters. Benton was born with a special gift for channeling his intuition and intellect into the neurological and spiritual abysses of the worst of the worst. His quarry was the elusive offenders whose violent sexual acts were so heinous that panicking police from the United States and abroad used to wait in line to review their cases with him in the FBI Academy’s Profiling Unit in