The Scarpetta Factor

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Dark clothes. Seems like he might have had on dark boots and dark pants. And a long coat, you know, like below his knees. Black. Collar up, gloves on, like I said, maybe fur-lined, and the FedEx cap. That’s it.”

  “Glasses?”

  “Sort of tinted ones, flash ones.”

  “Flash ones?”

  “You know. Sort of mirrored. Another thing? I’m just remembering. I thought I smelled cigarettes, maybe matches. Like maybe he’d been smoking.”

  “I thought you were stopped up, couldn’t smell anything,” Benton reminded him.

  “It just entered my head. I think maybe I did smell something like cigarettes.”

  “But that’s not what you think you smelled,” Benton said to Scarpetta.

  “No,” she answered, not adding that maybe what Ross had detected was sulfur, what smelled like a lighted match, and that was what had reminded him of cigarettes.

  “What about this man Ross is describing,” Benton said to her. “You see anybody fitting that description when you were walking back here, or maybe earlier, when you headed over to CNN?”

  She thought about it but came up with nothing, and it occurred to her. “The clipboard,” she asked Ross. “Did he ask you to sign anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then what was the clipboard for?”

  Ross shrugged, his breath a white vapor when he talked. “He didn’t ask me to do anything. Nothing. Just handed me the package.”

  “He say specifically to give it to Dr. Scarpetta?” Benton asked.

  “He said to make sure she got it, yeah. And he said her name, now that you mention it. He said, ‘This is for Dr. Scarpetta. She’s expecting it.’ ”

  “FedEx usually that specific, that personal? Isn’t that a little unusual? Because I’ve never heard FedEx make comments like that. How would he know she was expecting something?” Benton said.

  “I don’t know. I guess it was a little unusual.”

  “What was on the clipboard?” Scarpetta got back to that.

  “I really didn’t look. Maybe receipts, package slips. Am I going to get in trouble for this? My wife’s pregnant. I don’t need any trouble,” said Ross, who didn’t look nearly old enough to be married and a father.

  “I’m wondering why you didn’t call the apartment to tell me a package had arrived,” Benton said to him.

  “Because the FedEx guy said it was for her, like I told you, and I knew she’d be back pretty soon and assumed, now that we’re replaying all this, she was expecting it.”

  “And you knew she’d be back soon because?”

  “He was working the desk when I left around eight,” Scarpetta answered for Ross, “and he wished me good luck on the show.”

  “How did you know she was on a show tonight?” Benton asked.

  “I’ve seen commercials, ads for it. Just look.” Ross pointed at the top of a building on the other side of Columbus Circle, where news breaks on CNN’s scrolling ticker could be seen from blocks away. “Your name’s up in freakin’ lights.”

  Below the CNN neon-red marquee, Scarpetta’s off-camera comment crawled around the top of the skyscraper:

  . . . connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling is “antiquated” and not based on credible data. On tonight’s Crispin Report, Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling . . .

  Pete Marino materialized in the middle of the barricaded street, backlit by a blaze of halogen lights, as if he had emerged from the afterlife.

  Rotating beacons flashed across his big weathered face and un-stylish wire-rimmed glasses, and he was tall and broad in a down jacket, cargo pants, and boots. Pulled low over his bald head was an NYPD cap with an Aviation Unit patch over the bill, an old Bell 47 helicopter that brought to mind M*A*S*H. A gift from Lucy, a backhanded one. Marino hated flying.

  “I’m assuming you made Lobo’s acquaintance,” Marino said when he reached Scarpetta and Benton. “He taking good care of you? I don’t see no hot chocolate. Right about now bourbon would be good. Let’s go sit in my car before you get frostbit.”

  Marino started walking them to his car, parked north of the bomb truck, which was flooded by halogens on light poles. Cops had removed the tarp and lowered a steel ramp, a special one Scarpetta had seen on other occasions in the past, with serrated tread the size of saw teeth. If you tripped and fell on the ramp, it would shred you to the bone, but if you stumbled while carrying a bomb, you had a bigger problem. The Total Containment Vessel, or TCV, was mounted on the diamond-steel flatbed and looked like a bright-yellow diving bell sealed shut by a spider yoke that an ESU cop loosened and removed. Beneath it was the lid, about four inches thick, and the ESU cop attached a steel cable to it, using a winch to lower it to the flatbed. He pulled out a wood-framed nylon-webbed tray, placed the winch control on it, and clamped the cable out of the way, making preparations for the bomb tech whose job it would be to lock Scarpetta’s suspicious package inside fourteen tons of high-tensile steel before it was driven away to be defeated by New York’s finest.

  “I’m so sorry about this,” Scarpetta said to Marino as they got into his dark-blue Crown Vic, a safe distance from the truck and its TCV. “I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing.”

  “And I’m sure Benton would agree with me. We’re never sure of anything,” Marino said. “You and Benton did the right thing.”

  Benton was looking up at the CNN marquee, neon-red beyond the Trump International Hotel with its shiny silver unisphere, a scaled-down version of the ten-story globe in Flushing Meadows, only this steely representation of the planet was about Donald Trump’s expanding universe, not about the space age. Scarpetta watched the news ticker, the same out-of-context nonsense crawling by, and wondered if Carley had orchestrated the timing of it, deciding she must have.

  No way Carley would want her ambush launched in bright lights while she was walking the intended victim home. Wait an hour, then cause Scarpetta trouble with the FBI and maybe make her think twice about going on any television show ever again. Goddamn it. Why was behavior like that necessary? Carley knew her ratings were bad, that was why. A desperate and sensational attempt to hang on to her career. And maybe sabotage. Carley had overheard Alex’s proposal, knew what was in store for her. Not a suspicion anymore. Scarpetta was convinced.

  Marino unlocked his car and said to Scarpetta, “How ’bout you sit up front so you and me can talk. Sorry, Benton, got to stick you in back. Lobo and some of the other bomb guys were just in Mumbai finding out whatever they can so we don’t have the same shit happen here. The trend in terrorist tactics, and Benton probably knows this, isn’t suicide bombers anymore. It’s small groups of highly trained commandos.”

  Benton didn’t answer, and Scarpetta could feel his hostility like static electricity. When Marino tried too hard to be inclusive or friendly, he made the situation worse, and Benton would be rude, and next Marino had to assert himself because he would feel put down and angry. A tedious and ridiculous vacillation, one demeanor, then the other, back and forth, and Scarpetta wished it would stop. Goddamn it, she’d had enough.

  “Point is, you couldn’t be in better hands. These guys are the best, will take good care of you, Doc.” As if Marino had made sure of it personally.

  “I feel awful about this.” Scarpetta shut her door and reached for the shoulder harness, out of habit, but changed her mind. They weren’t going anywhere.

  “Last I checked, it wasn’t you who did anything.” Benton’s voice behind her.

  Marino started the engine and turned the heat on high. “Probably a box of cookies,” he said to Scarpetta. “You and Bill Clinton. Same thing. Wrong address and the bomb squad gets called. Turns out to be cookies.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear,” she said.

  “You’d rather it be a bomb?”

  “I’d rather none of this had happened.” She couldn’t help it. She was mortified. She felt guilty, as i
f all of this was her fault.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” Benton said. “You don’t take chances, even if nine times out of ten it’s nothing. We’ll hope it’s nothing.”

  Scarpetta noticed what was displayed on the screen of the Mobile Data Computer mounted on the dash, a map depicting the Westchester County Airport in White Plains. Maybe it was related to Berger, to her flying in this evening with Lucy, assuming they hadn’t already arrived. Strange, though. Didn’t make sense for Marino to have the airport map displayed. At the moment, nothing was making sense. Scarpetta was confused and unsettled and felt humiliated.

  “Anybody know anything yet?” Benton asked Marino.

  “A couple news choppers spotted in the area,” he said. “No way this is going to be quiet. You bring in the mother of all bomb trucks and that’s it, will be a police escort like a friggin’ presidential motorcade when they drive the Doc’s package to Rodman’s Neck. Me calling Lobo direct cut out a lot of bullshit, but I can’t keep this on the QT. Not that you needed the attention, since I see your name up there in lights, bashing the FBI.”

  “I didn’t bash the FBI,” Scarpetta said. “I was talking about Warner Agee, and it was off the air and off the record.”

  “No such thing,” Benton said.

  “Especially not with Crispy Crispin, claim to fame burning her sources. I don’t know why the hell you go on that show,” Marino said. “Not that we have time to get into it, but what a friggin’ mess. See how deserted the street is right now? If Carley keeps up with her yellow-cab crap, the streets will be this empty from now on, which is probably what she wants. Another scoop, right? Thirty thousand yellow cabs and not a single fare, and crowds of people rioting in a panic on the streets like King Kong’s on the loose. Merry Christmas.”

  “I’m curious about why you have Westchester County Airport on your computer screen.” Scarpetta didn’t want to discuss her blunders on CNN, and she didn’t want to talk about Carley or listen to Marino’s hyperbole. “Have you heard from Lucy and Jaime? I would have thought they would have landed by now.”

  “You and me both,” Marino said. “Was doing a MapQuest, trying to figure out the quickest route, not that I’m headed there. It’s about them heading here.”

  “Why would they be heading here? Do they know what’s happening?” Scarpetta didn’t want her niece showing up in the middle of this.

  In Lucy’s former life as a special agent and certified fire investigator for ATF, she routinely dealt with explosives and arson. She was good at it, excelled at anything technical and risky, and the more others shied away from something or failed at it, the quicker she was to master it and show them up. Her gifts and fierceness didn’t win her friends. While she was emotionally more limber now that she was beyond her twenties, give and take with people still didn’t come naturally to her, and respecting boundaries and the law was almost impossible. If Lucy was here, she’d have an opinion and a theory, and maybe a vigilante remedy, and at the moment, Scarpetta wasn’t in the mood.

  “Not here as in where we’re at,” Marino was saying. “Here as in them heading back to the city.”

  “Since when do they need MapQuest to find their way back to the city?” Benton asked from the back.

  “A situation I really can’t get into.”

  Scarpetta looked at Marino’s familiar rugged profile, looked at what was illuminated on the computer screen mounted above the universal console. She turned around to look at Benton in the backseat. He was staring out his window, watching the squad emerge from the apartment building.

  “Everybody’s got their cell phones turned off, I assume,” Benton said. “What about your radio?”

  “It ain’t on,” Marino said, as if he’d been accused of being stupid.

  The bomb tech in the EOD suit and helmet was coming out of the building, shapeless padded arms stretched out, holding a black frag bag.

  “They must have seen something on x-ray they didn’t like,” Benton commented.

  “And they’re not using Android,” Marino said.

  “Using who?” Scarpetta said.

  “The robot. Nicknamed Android because of the female bomb tech. Her name’s Ann Droiden. Weird about people’s names, like doctors and dentists with names like Hurt, Paine, and Puller. She’s good. Good-looking, too. All the guys always wanting her to handle their package, if you know what I mean. Must be a tough life, her being the only female on the bomb squad. Reason I’m familiar”—as if he needed to explain why he was going on and on about a pretty bomb tech named Ann—“is she used to work at Two Truck in Harlem where they keep the TCV, and she still drops by now and then to hang out with her old pals at ESU. The Two’s not far from my apartment, just a few blocks. I wander over there, have coffee, bring a few treats to their company boxer, nicest damn dog, Mac. A rescue. Whenever I can, if everybody’s tied up, I take Mac home so he’s not by his lonesome in the quarters all night.”

  “If they’re using her instead of the robot, then whatever’s in that box isn’t motion-sensitive,” Scarpetta said. “They must be certain of that.”

  “If it was motion-sensitive, I guess we’d be peeling you off the moon, since you carried it up to your apartment,” Marino said with his usual diplomacy.

  “It could be motion-sensitive and on a timer. Obviously, it’s not,” Benton said.

  Police kept people back, making sure no one was within at least a hundred yards of the bomb tech as she made her way down the building’s front steps, her face obscured by a visor. She walked slowly, somewhat stiffly but with surprising agility, toward the truck, its diesel engine throbbing.

  “They lost three responders in Nine-Eleven. Vigiano, D’Allara, Curtin, and the bomb squad lost Danny Richards,” Marino said. “You can’t see it from here, but their names are painted on the bomb truck, on all the trucks at the Two. They got a little memorial room in there, off the kitchen, a shrine with some of the guys’ gear recovered with their bodies. Keys, flashlights, radios, some of it melted. Gives you a different feeling when you seen a guy’s melted flashlight, you know?”

  Scarpetta hadn’t seen Marino in a while. Inevitably, when she came to New York, she was overscheduled and somewhat frantic. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might be lonely. She wondered if he was having problems with his girlfriend, Georgia Bacardi, a Baltimore detective he’d gotten serious about last year. Maybe that was over or on its way to being over, and if so, no big surprise. Marino’s relationships tended to have the life span of a butterfly. Now Scarpetta felt worse. She felt bad about carrying a package upstairs without examining it first, and she felt guilty about Marino. She should check on him when she was in the city. She should check on him even when she wasn’t, a simple phone call or e-mail now and then.

  The bomb tech had reached the truck, and her booted feet gripped the serrated tread on the ramp as she climbed up. It was difficult to see past Marino, out the window and down the street, but Scarpetta recognized what was happening, was no stranger to the procedure. The tech would set the frag bag on the tray and slide it back inside the TCV. Using the winch control, she would retract the steel cable to pull the massive steel lid back over the round opening, then replace the spider yoke and tighten it, likely with her bare hands. At most, bomb techs wore thin Nomex gloves or maybe nitrile to protect them from fire or potentially toxic substances. Anything heavily padded would make it impossible to perform the simplest task and probably wouldn’t save fingers in a detonation anyway.

  When the tech was done, other cops and Lieutenant Lobo convened at the back of the bomb truck, sliding the ramp back in place, covering the containment vessel with the tarp, buttoning up. The truck roared north on the sealed-off street, marked units in front and back, the convoy a moving sea of rapid bursts of light headed for the West Side Highway. From there it would follow a prescribed safe route to the NYPD range at Rodman’s Neck, probably to the Cross Bronx and 95 North, whatever would best buffer traffic, buildings, and pedestrians from shock
waves, a biological hazard, radiation, or shrapnel, should a device explode en route and somehow defeat its containment.

  Lobo was walking toward them. When he reached Marino’s car, he climbed into the back next to Benton, a rush of cold air washing in as he said, “I had images sent to your e-mail.” He shut his door. “From the security cameras.”

  Marino began typing on the Toughbook clamped into the pedestal between the front seats, the map of White Plains replaced by a screen asking for his username and password.

  “Your FedEx guy’s got an interesting tattoo,” Lobo said, leaning forward, chewing gum. Scarpetta smelled cinnamon. “A big one on the left side of his neck, kind of hard to see because he’s dark-skinned.”

  Marino opened an e-mail and loaded the attachment. A still from a security video recording filled the screen, a man in a FedEx cap walking toward the concierge desk.

  Benton repositioned himself to get a better look and said, “Nope. Got no idea. Don’t recognize him.”

  The man wasn’t familiar to Scarpetta, either. African American, high cheekbones, beard and mustache, the FedEx cap pulled low over eyes masked by reflective glasses. The collar of his black wool coat partially obscured a tattoo that covered the left side of his neck, up to his ear, a tattoo of human skulls. Scarpetta counted eight skulls but couldn’t see what they were piled on top of, just a linear edge of something.

  “Can you enlarge it?” She pointed at the tattoo, at what looked like the edge of a box that with a click of the trackpad got bigger. “Maybe a coffin. Skulls piled inside a coffin. Which immediately makes me wonder if he’s served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Skulls, skeletons, skeletons climbing out of coffins, tombstones. Memorials for fallen soldiers, in other words. Usually, each skull represents a lost comrade. Tattoos like this have become popular in the last few years.”

  “The RTCC can do a search on it,” Marino said. “If this guy’s in the database for some reason, maybe we can get a hit on his tattoo. We got a whole database of tattoos.”