“Excuse me…”

“People need to take the canker seriously,” Hog says.

“What’s the registration number for your vehicle, the one you use for your lawn service? I’m assuming you have a yellow-and-black regulatory sticker on the left side of the windshield? I need that number.”

“My number’s irrelevant,” he says to the inspector, who thinks she’s so much more important and powerful than he. “The vehicle belongs to my boss and I’ll get in trouble if he knows I made this call. If people find out his lawn service reported citrus canker that’s probably going to result in every citrus tree in the neighborhood being eradicated, what do you think will happen to our lawn-care business?”

“I understand, sir. But it’s important I have your decal number for our records. And I really would like a way to contact you, if necessary.”

“No,” he says. “I’ll get fired.”

The CITGO station is getting busy with truckers who park their semis behind the food mart and off to the side of the Chickee Hut restaurant, line them up at the edge of the woods and sleep in them and probably have sex in them.

The truckers eat at the Chickee Hut, which is misspelled because the people who come here are too ignorant to know how to spell chikee and probably don’t even know what it is. Chikee is a Seminole word, and even the Seminoles can’t spell it.

The ignorant truckers live from mile to mile and pull over here to spend their money at the food mart, where there is plenty of diesel fuel, beer, hotdogs and cigars, and a selection of folding knives in a glass case. They can play pool in the Golden Tee game room and get their trucks repaired at the CB antenna or tire services. The CITGO is a full-service stop out in the middle of nothing, where people come and go and mind their own business. Nobody bothers Hog. They barely look at him, so many people in and out, hardly anybody to see him twice, except the guy who works in the Chickee Hut restaurant.

It is behind a chain-link fence at the edge of the parking lot. Signs posted on the fence announce that solicitors will be prosecuted and the only dogs allowed are K9s, and wildlife can enter at its own risk. There is plenty of wildlife at night, but Hog wouldn’t know about it firsthand because he doesn’t waste money in the game room, not on pool or the jukebox. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t want sex with any of the women at the CITGO.

They are disgusting in skimpy shorts and tight tops, their faces made harsh by too much cheap makeup and too much sun. They sit in the open-air restaurant or at the bar, which is nothing but a roof thatched with palmetto leaves and a scarred wooden counter lined with eight stools. They eat dinner specials like BBQ ribs and meat-loaf and country-fried steak, and they drink. The food is good and cooked right there on the premises. Hog likes the trucker burger, and it’s only three ninety-five. A grilled cheese is three dollars and a quarter. Cheap, disgusting women, bad things happen to women like that. They deserve it.

They want it.

They tell everyone.

“I’ll have a grilled cheese to go,” Hog says to the man behind the bar. “And a trucker burger for here.”

The man has a big belly and wears a soiled white apron. He is busy popping caps off dripping bottles of beer that he keeps on ice inside tubs. The man with the big belly has waited on him before but never seems to remember him.

“You want the grilled cheese the same time as your burger?” he asks, sliding two bottles of beer closer to a trucker and his lady who are already drunk.

“Just make sure the grilled cheese is wrapped to go.”

“I asked you if you wanted them at the same time.” He isn’t annoyed but rather indifferent about it.

“That would be fine.”

“What do you want to drink?” the man with the big belly asks as he opens another beer.

“Plain water.”

“Now what the hell is plain water?” the drunk trucker asks loudly as his lady giggles and presses her breast against his big, tattooed arm. “Water you get on an air-plane?”

“Just plain water,” Hog says to the man behind the bar.

“I don’t like nothing plain, do I baby?” the drunk trucker’s drunk girlfriend slurs, gripping the stool with her plump legs in their tight shorts, her plump breasts bulging from her low-cut top.

“So where you heading?” the drunk girlfriend asks.

“North,” he says. “Eventually.”

“Well you be careful driving around down here all by your lonesome,” the woman slurs. “There’s a lot of crazies.”

Do we have any idea where he is?” Scarpetta asks Rose. “He’s not in his office and he’s not answering his cell phone. When I spoke to him after staff meeting and said you needed to see him, he told me he had an errand to run and would be right back,” Rose reminds her. “That was an hour and a half ago.”

“What time did you say we should leave for the airport?” Scarpetta looks out the window at palm trees shaking in the gusting wind and thinks again about firing him. “We’re going to have a thunderstorm, a bad one. That figures. Well, I’m not going to sit around and wait for him. I should just leave.”

“Your flight’s not untilsix thirty,” Rose says as she hands Scarpetta several phone messages.

“I don’t know why I’m bothering. Why am I bothering to talk to him?” Scarpetta glances through the messages.

Rose looks at her in a way that only Rose can. She stands quietly, thoughtfully, in the doorway, her white hair swept up and pinned back in a French twist, her gray linen suit out of style but elegant and crisp. After ten years, her gray lizard-skin pumps still look new.

“One minute you want to talk to him, the next you don’t. What is it?” Rose remarks.

“I guess I should go.”

“I didn’t say which is it. I asked what is it.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about him. I keep thinking about firing him, but I’d rather resign than do that.”

“You could take the position of chief,” Rose reminds her. “They’d force Dr. Bronson to retire if you’d agree, and maybe you should seriously consider it.”

Rose knows what she’s doing. She can seem very sincere when suggesting something that she secretly doesn’t want Scarpetta to do, and the result is predicable.

“No thank you,” Scarpetta says adamantly. “Been there, done that, and in case you’ve forgotten, Marino’s one of their investigators, so I wouldn’t exactly get away from him by resigning from the Academy and ending up at the ME’s office full-time. Who’s Mrs. Simister and what church?” she asks, puzzling over one of the phone messages.

“I don’t know who she is, but she acted as if she knows you.”

“Never heard of her.”

“She called a few minutes ago and said she wanted to talk to you about some missing family in theWestLakeParkarea. She didn’t leave her number, said she’d call back.”

“What missing family? Here inHollywood?”

“That’s what she said. Let’s see, you’re flying out ofMiami, unfortunately. Worst airport on earth. I’d say we don’t need to leave… well, you know the traffic down here. Maybe we should leave as early as four. But we’re not going anywhere until I check on your flight.”

“You’re sure I’m in first class? And it’s not been cancelled.”

“I have your printed reservation, but you’re going to have to check in because it’s last-minute.”

“Can you believe it? They cancel me, and now it’s last-minute because I had to rebook?”

“You’re all set.”

“No offense, but that’s what you said last month, Rose. And I wasn’t in the computer and ended up in coach. All the way toLos Angeles. And look what happened yesterday.”

“I confirmed it first thing this morning. I’ll do it again.”

“Do you think this is all about Marino’s hell scenes? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him.”