The Scarpetta Factor

by Patricia Cornwell

  The controller got back to her. “Niner-lima-foxtrot standby.”

  Fucking loser. Lucy imagined him sitting inside the dark control room, smirking as he looked down on her from the top of his tower.

  “Niner-lima-foxtrot,” she acknowledged, then to Berger, “Same thing he did last time. Messing with me.”

  “Don’t get worked up.”

  “I should get his phone number. I’m going to find out who the fuck he is.”

  “You’re getting worked up.”

  “They better not have lost my car or fucked with it.”

  “Tower has nothing to do with parking.”

  “Hope you’ve got clout with state troopers; I’m going to speed,” Lucy said. “We can’t be late.”

  “This was a bad idea. We should have done it another time.”

  “Another time wouldn’t have been your birthday,” Lucy said.

  She wasn’t going to allow herself to feel the sting, not when she was pulling in almost ninety percent torque, a crosswind slamming her tail boom, trying to swing it around while she held it steady with the pedals, making tiny corrections with the cyclic and collective. Berger was admitting it, telling the truth: She hadn’t wanted to go to Vermont for her birthday. Not that Lucy needed to be told, good Christ. Alone in front of the fire, looking out at the lights of Stowe, looking out at the snow, and Berger may as well have been in Mexico, she was so distant, so preoccupied. As the head of the New York County DA’s Sex Crimes Unit, she supervised what always turned out to be the most heinous cases in the five boroughs, and it was assumed within hours of Hannah Starr’s disappearance that she was the victim of foul play, possibly a sex crime. After three weeks of digging, Berger had a very different theory—thanks to Lucy and her forensic computer skills. Lucy’s reward? Berger could think of little else. Then the jogger had to die. A surprise getaway Lucy had planned for months, fucked. Another good deed punished.

  Lucy, on the other hand, with her own prepossessions and emotions, had been able to sip a grand cru Chablis by the hearth while she undetectably entertained her own shadowed thoughts, very dark shadowed thoughts, fearful thoughts about mistakes she’d made—specifically, the mistake she’d made with Hannah Starr. Lucy couldn’t forgive it and couldn’t get out from under it, so furious and full of hate it was like being sick, like chronic fatigue or myoneuralgia, always there making her miserable. But she revealed nothing. Berger didn’t know, couldn’t possibly fathom, what was inside Lucy. Years of deep undercover with the FBI, ATF, and paramilitary and private investigations, and she controlled what she gave away and what she kept to herself, had to be impeccably controlled when the slightest facial tic or gesture could blow a case or get her killed.

  Objectively, ethically, she shouldn’t have agreed to do the forensic computer analysis in the Hannah Starr case, and she sure as hell should recuse herself now but wasn’t about to, knowing what Hannah deliberately did. Of all people, Lucy should be the one to take care of such a travesty. She had her own history with Hannah Starr, a far more devastating one than she’d imagined before she’d started searching and restoring the entitled pampered bitch’s electronic files and e-mail accounts and sat around day after day looking at e-mails her lover boy husband, Bobby, still sent. The more Lucy discovered, the more contempt she had, the more righteous rage. She wouldn’t quit now, and no one could make her.

  She hovered over the yellow-painted hold line, listening to the controller vector some poor Hawker pilot all the hell over the place. What was wrong with people? When the economy had begun its free fall, the world seeming to disintegrate, Lucy had assumed people might behave better, like they did after 9/11. If nothing else, you get scared and survival mode kicks in. Chances for survival are better if you’re civilized and don’t go out of your way to piss everybody off unless there’s something tangible to be gained by it. There was nothing tangible to be gained by what the asshole air traffic controller was doing to Lucy, to other pilots, and he was doing it because he was anonymous up there in his tower, the goddamn coward. She was tempted to confront him, walk over to the tower and press the intercom button by the locked outer door. Someone would let her in. The people in the tower knew damn well who she was. Good Christ, she told herself. Calm down. For one thing, there wasn’t time.

  Once she shut down, she wouldn’t refuel. She wasn’t going to wait for the fuel truck. It would take forever, might never get to her, the way things were going. She’d lock up the helicopter and grab her car and race to Manhattan. Barring any further delays, they should be in the Village, in her loft, by half past one. That was cutting it close for a two a.m. interview they’d never get again—an interview that might lead to Hannah Starr, whose disappearance had captured the public’s morbid imagination since the day before Thanksgiving, when she was allegedly last seen getting into that yellow cab on Barrow Street. Ironically, just blocks from where Lucy lived, Berger had pointed out more than once. “And you were home that night. Too damn bad you didn’t see anything.”

  “Helicopter niner-lima-foxtrot,” the controller said over the air. “You can proceed to the ramp. Landing is at your own risk. If you’re unfamiliar with the airport, you need to inform us.”

  “Niner-lima-foxtrot,” Lucy said with no inflection, the way she sounded before she offed someone or threatened it. She nudged the helicopter forward.

  She hover-taxied to the edge of the ramp, made a vertical descent, and set down on her dolly, situated between a Robinson helicopter that reminded her of a dragonfly and a Gulfstream jet that reminded her of Hannah Starr. The wind grabbed the tail boom, and exhaust fumes filled the cabin.

  “Unfamiliar?” Lucy chopped the throttle to flight idle and turned off the low-RPM warning horn. “I’m unfamiliar? You hear that? He’s trying to make me look like a crappy pilot.”

  Berger was silent, the smell of fumes strong.

  “He does it every damn time now.” Lucy reached up and flipped off overhead switches. “Sorry about the exhaust. You okay? Hang in there for two minutes. Really sorry.” She should confront the controller. She shouldn’t let him get away with it.

  Berger took off her headset and opened her window, moving her face as close to it as she could.

  “Opening the window makes it worse,” Lucy reminded her. She should walk over to the tower and take the elevator up to the top and let him have it inside the control room right in front of his colleagues.

  She watched seconds tick by on the digital clock, fifty-something to go, and her anxiety and anger grew. She would find out the name of that damn air traffic controller and would get him. What had she ever done to him or anybody who worked here except act respectfully and mind her own business and tip well and pay her fees? Thirty-one seconds to go. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know him. She’d never been anything but professional over the air, no matter how rude he was, and he was always rude to everyone. Fine. If he wanted a fight, he’d get one. Jesus Christ. He had no idea who he was tangling with.

  Lucy radioed the tower, and the same controller answered her.

  “Requesting your supervisor’s phone number,” Lucy said.

  He gave it to her because he had no choice. FAA regs. She wrote it down on her kneeboard. Let him worry. Let him sweat. She radioed the FBO and asked to have her car brought out and her helicopter towed into the hangar. She wondered if her next unpleasant surprise was going to be damage to her Ferrari. Maybe the controller had seen to that, too. She cut the throttle and silenced the warning horn one last time. She took off her headset, hung it on a hook.

  “I’m getting out,” Berger said inside the dark, stinking cockpit. “You don’t need to pick a fight with anyone.”

  Lucy reached up for the rotor brake, pulled it down. “Hold on until I stop the blades. Remember, we’re on the dolly, not the ground. Don’t forget that when you step down. Just a few more seconds.”

  Berger unfastened her four-point harness as Lucy finished the shutdown. Making sure the NG was zero, she
flipped off the battery switch. They climbed out, Lucy grabbing their bags and locking up. Berger didn’t wait, headed to the FBO, walking fast between aircraft, stepping around tie-downs and dodging a fuel truck, her slender figure in her long mink coat receding and gone. Lucy knew the routine. Berger would dash into the ladies’ room, gulp down four Advil or a Zomig, and splash her face with cold water. Under different circumstances, she wouldn’t get into the car right now but would give herself a chance to recover, walk around for a while in the fresh air. But there wasn’t time.

  If they weren’t back in Lucy’s loft by two a.m., Hap Judd would get spooked, would leave and never contact Berger again. He wasn’t the type to tolerate excuses of any sort, would assume an excuse was a ruse. He was being set up, the paparazzi were around the corner, that’s exactly what he would think, because he was paranoid as hell and guilty as hell. He’d blow them off. He’d get himself a lawyer, and even the dumbest lawyer would tell him not to talk, and the most promising lead would be lost. Hannah Starr wouldn’t be found, soon or ever, and she deserved to be found, for the sake of truth and justice—not her justice. She didn’t deserve something she’d denied everybody else. What a joke. The public had no hint. The whole fucking world felt sorry for her.

  Lucy never had felt sorry for her but hadn’t realized until three weeks ago exactly what she did feel for her. By the time Hannah was reported missing, Lucy was keenly aware of the damage the woman could do and in fact had done, just hadn’t recognized it was deliberate. Chalked it up to bad luck, the market, the collapsing economy, and a superficial person’s superficial advice, a favor that got punished but nothing premeditated and malevolent. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Hannah Starr was diabolical; she was evil. If only Lucy had given more weight to her instincts, because the gut feeling she’d gotten the first time she and Hannah had met alone in Florida wasn’t good, wasn’t close to good, she realized that now. While Hannah was polite and nice, almost flirting, there was something else. Lucy realized that now because she hadn’t wanted to realize it then. Maybe it was the way Hannah kept looking at the high-performance boats going by, obnoxiously loud below her glitzy North Miami Beach apartment balcony, so loud Lucy could barely hear herself talk. Greed, unabashed greed. And competitiveness.

  “Bet you have one of those tucked away somewhere.” Hannah’s voice, husky, lusty as a 46 Rider XP, triple-stepped hull, inboards at least nine-fifty HP each, headed out to sea, sounding like a Harley full-throttle if your head was next to the Screamin’ Eagle pipes.

  “I’m not into go-fast boats.” Lucy hated them, truth be told.

  “No way. You and all your machines? I remember the way you used to drool all over my father’s cars. You were the only one he ever let drive his Enzo. I couldn’t believe it. You were just a kid. I should think a cigarette boat would be right up your alley.”

  “Not at all.”

  “And I thought I knew you.”

  “They wouldn’t get me anywhere I need to go unless I have a secret life of running drugs or errands for the Russian Mafia.”

  “Secret life? Do tell,” Hannah had said.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “God, look at it go.” Another one leaving a wide swath of lacy white wake, thundering into the inlet from the Intracoastal, under the causeway, toward the Atlantic. “Yet one more of my ambitions. To have one someday. Not a secret life but a boat like that.”

  “If you have one, better not let me find out. I’m not talking about boats.”

  “Not me, hon. My life’s an open book.” Hannah’s art deco diamond ring flashed in the sunlight when she placed her hands on the balcony rail, gazing at the aqua water and the powder-blue sky and the long strip of bone-colored beach scattered with furled umbrellas that looked like candy swizzle sticks and feathery palms that were yellowing at the edges of their fronds.

  Lucy remembered thinking Hannah could have stepped out of an ad for a five-star resort in her ready-to-wear silk Ungaro, beautiful and blond, with just enough weight to be sexy and just enough years to be credible as a high-level financier. Forty and perfect, one of those precious people untouched by commonness, by hardship, by anything ugly, someone Lucy always avoided at the lavish dinners and parties hosted by Rupe Starr, her father. Hannah had seemed incapable of crime, if for no other reason than she didn’t need to bother with anything as untidy as living a lie and stealing people blind. Lucy had misread Hannah’s open book, all right, misread it enough to incur incalculable damage. She’d taken a nine-figure hit because of Hannah’s little favor. One lie leads to another, and now Lucy was living one, although she had her own definition of lying. It wasn’t literally a lie if the end result was truth.

  She paused halfway across the ramp, tried Marino on her BlackBerry. Right about now he should be doing surveillance, checking on Hap Judd’s whereabouts, making sure he hadn’t decided to boogie after his bullshit tap dance about meeting during the wee hours of the morning because he didn’t want to be recognized. Didn’t want anything ending up on Page Six of the Post or all over the Internet. Maybe he should have thought about that before he’d blown off the likes of Jaime Berger the first time she tried to reach him three weeks ago. Maybe he should have thought, period, before running his mouth to a stranger who, what do you know, happened to be a friend of Lucy’s, a snitch.

  “That you?” Marino’s voice in her wireless jawbone. “Was getting worried you’d decided to visit John Denver.”

  Lucy didn’t laugh, not even a smile. She never joked about people who’d been killed in crashes. Planes, helicopters, motorcycles, cars, the space shuttle. Not funny.

  “I e-mailed you a MapQuest,” Marino said as she resumed walking across the tarmac, hauling luggage over her shoulders. “I know that race car of yours ain’t got a GPS.”

  “Why the hell would I need a GPS to find my way home?”

  “Roads being shut down, traffic diverted, because of a little situation that I didn’t want to get into while you were flying that death trap of yours. Plus, you got the package with you.” He meant Berger, his boss. “You get lost or hung up and are late for your two a.m., guess who gets blamed? She’s already going to be pissed when I’m a no-show.”

  “A no-show? Even better,” Lucy said.

  All she’d asked was for him to take his time, be maybe thirty or forty minutes late so she could have her chance with Hap Judd. If Marino was sitting there from the get-go, she wouldn’t be able to maneuver the interview the way she wanted, and what she wanted was a deconstruction. Lucy had a special talent for interrogation, and she intended to find out what she needed to know so she could take care of things.

  “You been keeping up with the news?” Marino said.

  “At fuel stops. We know what’s all over the Internet about the yellow-cab connection, the stuff about Hannah and the jogger.” She assumed that was what he was referencing.

  “Guess you haven’t been monitoring OEM.”

  “No way. No time. I got diverted twice. One airport was out of Jet-A, another hadn’t been plowed. What’s going on?”

  “A FedEx box left at your aunt’s building. She’s fine, but you should call her.”

  “A FedEx box? What are you talking about?” Lucy stopped walking.

  “We don’t know what’s in it. May have something to do with a patient of Benton’s. Some whack job who left the Doc a Christmas present. Santa’s sleigh had to transport it to Rodman’s Neck. Not even an hour ago, headed right at you, to the Cross Bronx Express-way, which you’d be crossing out of White Plains, and why I sent you a map. I routed you way east of the Bronx just in case.”

  “Shit. Who’d you deal with from the bomb squad? I’ll talk to whoever it was.” Sixth Precinct, where the bomb squad was headquartered, was in the Village, close to Lucy’s loft. She knew a few of the techs.

  “Thanks, Special Agent ATF, but it’s handled. NYPD will somehow manage without you. I’m doing what needs to be done, not to worry. The Doc will tell you about it. She’s fine.
This same nut job of Benton’s might have a connection with Hollywood.” Marino’s sarcastic nickname for Hap Judd. “I’m going to check it out at RTCC. But maybe the subject should come up. Her name’s Dodie Hodge. A mental patient at McLean’s.”

  “Why would she know him?” Lucy started walking again.

  “Might be more of her make-believe, a hallucination, right? But seeing as how there was this incident at your aunt’s apartment building, maybe you should ask Hollywood about her. I’ll be at RTCC probably all night. Explain it to the boss.” He meant Berger. “I don’t want her pissed at me. But this is important. I’m going to get to the bottom of it before something worse happens.”

  “So, where are you? In TriBeCa?” Lucy wove between jet wings, careful of tip extensions sticking up like dorsal fins and communications antennas that could put a person’s eye out. She’d once watched a pilot walk into his trailing edge Junker flap while he was drinking coffee and on the phone, gashed his head wide open.

  “Cruised by Hollywood’s place a few minutes ago, on my way downtown. Looks like he’s home. That’s good news. Maybe he’ll show up,” Marino said.

  “You should stake him out, make sure he does. That was our deal.” Lucy couldn’t stand depending on other people to get the job done. The damn weather. If she’d gotten here earlier, she would have tailed Hap Judd herself and made sure he didn’t miss their meeting.