The Scarpetta Factor

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I got more important things to do right now than bird-dog some pervert who thinks he’s the next James Dean. Call if you get detoured and end up lost, Amelia Earhart.”

  Lucy got off the phone and picked up her pace, thought about checking on her aunt, and then thought about the number she’d written down on her kneeboard. Maybe she should call the supervisor before she left the airport. Maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow and call the ATC manager or, better yet, complain to the FAA and get the guy sent to refresher training. She was seething as she thought about what he’d broadcast over the tower’s frequency, making sure everybody on it heard him accuse her of being an incompetent pilot, accuse her of not knowing her way into an airport she flew in and out of several times a week.

  She hangared her helicopter and Citation X jet here, for God’s sake. Maybe that was his motivation. To bring her down a notch or two, to rub it in because he’d heard the rumors or was making assumptions about what had happened to her during what everyone was calling the worst financial meltdown since the thirties. Only it wasn’t the crash of Wall Street that had done the real damage. Hannah Starr had. A favor, a gift her father, Rupe, would have wanted Lucy to have. A parting gesture. When Hannah was dating Bobby, that’s all she heard. Lucy this and Lucy that.

  “He thought you were Einstein. A pretty Einstein but a tomboy. He adored you,” Hannah had said to Lucy not even six months ago.

  Seductive or making fun, Lucy couldn’t tell what Hannah meant or knew or supposed. Rupe had known the facts of Lucy’s life, for damn sure. Thin gold-rimmed glasses, fuzzy white hair, and smoky blue eyes, a tiny man in tidy suits and as honest as he was smart. Didn’t give a shit who was in Lucy’s pants as long as they stayed out of her pockets, as long as it didn’t cost her in any way that counted. He understood why women loved women since he loved them, too, said he might very well be a lesbian because if he were a woman, he’d want women. So, what was anybody, anyway? It’s what’s in your heart, he used to say. Always smiling. A kind, decent man. The father Lucy never had. When he died last May during a business trip to Georgia, from a strain of salmonella infection that ran him down like a cement truck, Lucy had been disbelieving, devastated. How could someone like Rupe be done in by a jalapeño pepper? Was existence contingent on nothing more than the fucking decision to order nachos?

  “We miss him terribly. He was my mentor and best buddy.” This past June. Hannah on her balcony, watching million-dollar boats roar by. “You did well with him. You can do even better with me.”

  Lucy told her thanks but no thanks, told her more than once. She wasn’t comfortable turning over her entire portfolio to Hannah Starr. No fucking way, Lucy had politely said. At least she’d listened to her gut on that one, but she should have paid attention to what she felt about the favor. Don’t do it. But Lucy did. Maybe it was her need to impress Hannah because Lucy sensed a competition. Maybe it was her wound, the one Hannah stuck her finger in because she was cunning enough to recognize it. As a child Lucy had been abandoned by her father and as an adult didn’t want to be abandoned by Rupe. He had managed her finances from day one and had never been anything but honorable, and he’d cared about her. He was her friend. He would have wanted her to have something special on his way out of this life because she was so special to him.

  “A tip he would have given you had he lived long enough,” said Hannah, brushing Lucy’s fingers as she handed her a business card, her practiced lavish scrawl on the back: Bay Bridge Finance and a phone number.

  “You were like a daughter to him, and he made me promise to take care of you,” Hannah had said.

  How could he have promised any such thing? Lucy realized that too late. He’d gotten sick so fast, Hannah never saw him or spoke to him before he died in Atlanta. Lucy hadn’t asked that question until nine figures later, and now was certain there had been more to it than the considerable kickback Hannah must have gotten for herding rich people to the slaughter. She’d wanted to hurt Lucy for the sake of hurting her, to maim her, to make her weak.

  The air traffic controller couldn’t possibly know anything about what had happened to Lucy’s net worth, couldn’t have the slightest knowledge of her damage and degradation. She was being overly anxious, hypervigilant, and irrational, what Berger called pathological, in a foul mood because a surprise weekend she’d planned for months had been a flop and Berger had been distant and irritable, had rebuffed her in every way that mattered. Berger had ignored her in the town house and on Lucy’s way out the door, and onboard the helicopter it hadn’t gotten any better. She hadn’t talked about anything personal the first half of the flight, then spent the second half sending text messages from the helicopter’s cell phone because of Carley Crispin and yellow cabs and who knows what, every slight indirectly leading back to the same damn thing: Hannah. She had taken over Berger’s life and taken something else from Lucy, this time something priceless.

  Lucy glanced at the control tower, the glass-enclosed top of it blazing like a lighthouse, and imagined the controller, the enemy sitting in front of a radar screen, staring at targets and beacon codes that represented real human beings in real aircraft, everybody doing the best they could to get where they were going safely, while he barked commands and insults. Piece of shit. She should confront him. She was going to confront someone.

  “So, who towed my dolly out and turned it downwind?” she asked the first line crewman she saw inside the FBO.

  “You sure?” He was a skinny, pimply kid in oversized insulated coveralls, marshalling wands in the pockets of his Dickies work coat. He wouldn’t look her in the eye.

  “Am I sure?” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him right.

  “You wanna ask my supervisor?”

  “No, I don’t wanna ask your supervisor. This is the third time I’ve landed in a tailwind here in the past two weeks, F. J. Reed.” She read his name tag. “You know what that means? It means whoever’s towing my dolly out of the hangar orients it on the ramp with the tow bar pointed exactly the wrong way—directly downwind, so I land in a tailwind.”

  “Not me. I would never orientate something downwind.”

  “There’s no tate.”

  “Huh?”

  “Orient. As in the Far East,” Lucy said. “You know anything about aerodynamics, F. J. Reed? Airplanes, and that includes helicopters, land and take off into the wind, not with the wind on their ass. Crosswinds suck, too. Why? Because wind speed equals airspeed minus ground speed, and the direction of the wind changes the flight trajectory, fucks with the angle of attack. When you’re not into the wind on takeoff, it’s harder to reach translational lift. When you’re landing, you can settle with power, fucking crash. Who’s the controller I was talking to? You know the guys in the tower, right, F. J. Reed?”

  “I donno anybody in the tower really.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re the black chopper with the FLIR and the NightSun. Sort of looks like Homeland Security. But I’d know if you were. We know who comes in and out of here.”

  Lucy was sure of it. He was the moron who had towed her dolly out and deliberately turned it downwind because the jerk in the control tower had instructed him or at the very least encouraged him to pick on her, to make a fool of her, to humiliate and belittle her.

  “Appreciate it. You told me what I need to know,” she said.

  She stalked off as Berger emerged from the ladies’ room, buttoning her mink coat. Lucy could tell she had washed her face, splashed a lot of cold water on it. It didn’t take much for Berger to get what she called “sick headaches” and Lucy called migraines. The two of them left the FBO and got into the 599GTB, the twelve-cylinder engine grumbling loudly as Lucy ran her Surefire flashlight along the gleaming Rosso Barchetta paint, the deep red of a fine red wine, looking for the slightest flaw, the faintest sign that there had been any misadventure or mischief with her 611-horsepower supercoupe. She checked the run-flat tires and looked inside the boot, arra
nging luggage. She tucked herself behind the carbon-fiber steering wheel and scanned the instrument panel, taking note of the mileage, checking the radio station, it’d better be what she’d left it on, making sure nobody took the Ferrari for a joyride during the time she and Berger were away or, as Berger put it, “stuck in Stowe.” Lucy thought of the e-mail Marino had sent but didn’t look for it. She didn’t need his help with navigation, no matter what traffic might have been diverted or roads closed. She should call her aunt.

  “I didn’t get him,” Berger said, her profile clean and lovely in the near dark.

  “He’d better hope I don’t get him,” Lucy said, shifting into first.

  “I meant a tip. I didn’t tip the valet.”

  “No tips. Something’s not right. Until I figure it out, I’m not nice anymore. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Marino says someone, a former psychiatric patient of Benton’s, left a package at my aunt’s building. The bomb squad had to be called. The package is at Rodman’s Neck,” Lucy said.

  “This is why I never take vacations. I go away and look what happens.”

  “Name’s Dodie Hodge, and Marino says she might have some connection with Hap Judd and he’s going to run her through RTCC.”

  “You come across anything about her?” Berger asked. “All the data searches you’ve done, I would think you might have if there’s anything.”

  “Not familiar,” Lucy said. “We should ask Hap about her, find out how he knows her or if he does. I’m really not liking it that now it appears this asshole is connected to someone who might have just left a package for my aunt.”

  “It’s premature to make any such connection.”

  “Marino’s up to his ears in alligators. He told me to tell you that.”

  “Implying what?”

  “He just said to tell you he’s got a lot of stuff to run down. He sounded pretty frantic,” Lucy said.

  She downshifted back to third after hitting sixty in three seconds flat. Easy goes it on the access road, and hold your horses on Route 120. You can cruise half asleep at a hundred on the Parkway. She wasn’t going to tell Berger that Marino wasn’t going to make it to the interview.

  “Slow down,” Berger objected.

  “Dammit. I’ve told Aunt Kay about being on live TV.” Taking corners as if she intended to powerslide through them, the manet tino controller set to race mode, the power assist shut off. “Same thing you worry about. If you’re on live TV, people know where you are. It was obvious she was in the city tonight, and there are plenty of ways we can make it harder for people to do shit like this to her. She should make it hard as hell for people to do shit like this to her.”

  “Let’s don’t blame the victim. It’s not Kay’s fault.”

  “I’ve told her repeatedly to stay away from Carley Crispin, for fuck’s sake.” Lucy flicked her high beams at some fool creeping in front of her, gunned around him, kicking grit in his eyes.

  “It’s not her fault. She thinks she’s helping,” Berger said. “God knows there’s so much garbage out there. Juries, especially. Everybody’s an expert. Slowly but surely, smart people like Kay have to set the record straight. We all do.”

  “Helping Carley. That’s probably the only person Aunt Kay is helping. And you don’t set the record straight with somebody like that. Obviously. Look what just happened. We’ll see how many people are still taking taxis in the morning.”

  “Why are you so hard on her?”

  Lucy drove fast and didn’t answer.

  “Maybe the same reason you’re so hard on me,” Berger said, looking straight ahead.

  “What reason might that be? I see you, what? Two nights a week? I’m sorry you hated your birthday.”

  “Every one of them,” Berger said, the way she sounded when she was trying to ease the tension. “Wait until you’re past forty. You’ll hate your birthdays, too.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant.”

  Lucy drove faster.

  “I’m assuming Marino’s on his way to your loft?” Berger asked.

  “He said he might be a little late.” One of those lies that wasn’t quite one.

  “I don’t feel good about this.” Berger was thinking about Hannah Starr, about Hap Judd. Preoccupied, obsessed, but not with Lucy. No matter how much Berger reassured her or apologized, things had changed.

  Lucy tried to remember exactly when. Summer, maybe, when the city started announcing budget cuts and the planet began wobbling on its axis. Then, in the past few weeks, forget it. And now? Gone. It was feeling gone. It was feeling over. It couldn’t be. Lucy wasn’t going to let it go. Somehow she had to stop it from leaving her.

  “I’ll say it again. It’s all about the outcome.” Lucy reached for Berger’s hand, pulled it close, and stroked it with her thumb. “Hap Judd will talk because he’s an arrogant sociopath, because he’s got nothing but self-interest, and he believes it’s in his self-interest.”

  “Doesn’t mean I feel comfortable,” Berger said, lacing her fingers in Lucy’s. “About a shade away from entrapment. Maybe not even a shade away.”

  “Here we go again. We’re fine. Don’t worry. Eric had an eighth of White Widow on him for pain management. Nothing wrong with medical marijuana. As for where he got it? Maybe from Hap. Hap’s a pothead.”

  “Remember who you’re talking to. I don’t want to know anything about where Eric—or you—get your so-called medical marijuana, and I’m assuming you don’t have any, have never had any.” Berger had said this before, repeatedly. “I’d better not find out you’re growing it indoors somewhere.”

  “I’m not. I don’t do stuff like that anymore. Haven’t lit up in years. I promise.” Lucy smiled, downshifting onto the exit ramp for I-684 South, Berger’s touch reassuring her, bolstering her confidence. “Eric had a few J’s. Just happened to be enjoying himself when he just happened to run into Hap, who just happens to frequent the same places, is a creature of habit. Not smart. Makes you easy to find and befriend.”

  “Yes, so you’ve said. And I continue to say the following: What if Eric decides to talk to somebody he shouldn’t? Like Hap’s lawyer, because he’ll get one. After I’m done with him, he will.”

  “Eric likes me and I give him work.”

  “Exactly. You trust a handyman.”

  “A stoner with a record,” Lucy said. “Not credible, no one would believe him if it came down to that. Nothing for you to worry about, I promise.”

  “There’s plenty for me to worry about. You induced a famous actor . . .”

  “Not exactly Christian Bale, for Christ’s sake,” Lucy said. “You never even heard of Hap Judd before all this.”

  “I’ve heard of him now, and he’s famous enough. More to the point, you encouraged him to break the law, to use a controlled substance, and you did it on behalf of a public servant so you could gain evidence against him.”

  “Wasn’t there, not even in New York,” Lucy said. “You and I were in Vermont Monday night when Hap and my handyman had so much fun.”

  “So, that’s really why you wanted to steal me away during a workweek.”

  “I didn’t decide your birthday was December seventeenth, and it wasn’t my intention for us to get snowed in.” Stung again. “But yes, it made sense to have Eric cruise various bars while we were out of town. Especially while you were out of town.”

  “You didn’t just ask him to cruise various bars, you supplied the illegal substance.”

  “Nope. Eric bought the stuff.”

  “Where’d he get the money?” Berger said.

  “We’ve been through all this. You’re making yourself crazy.”

  “The defense will claim entrapment, outrageous government conduct.”

  “And you’ll say Hap was predisposed to do what he did.”

  “Now you’re coaching me?” Berger laughed ruefully. “Don’t know why I bothered going to law school. In summ
ary, let’s be honest, you had ideas implanted in Hap’s mind that could get him indicted for something we can never prove. You basically got him stoned and had your snitch handyman lure him into a conversation about Park General Hospital, which you got suspicious about because you hacked into Hap’s e-mail account and God knows what else. Probably the goddamn hospital’s, too. Jesus God.”

  “I got their info fair and square.”

  “Please.”

  “Besides, we don’t need to prove it,” Lucy said. “Isn’t that the point? To scare the shit out of Mr. Hollywood so he’ll do what’s right?”

  “I don’t know why I listen to you,” Berger said, holding Lucy’s hand tighter and tucking it against her.

  “He could have been honorable. He could have been helpful. He could have been a normal law-abiding citizen, but guess what, he’s not,” Lucy said. “He’s brought this upon himself.”

  Searchlights swept a crisscross of steel bracing at the top of the George Washington Bridge, where a jumper was holding on to cables. He was a big man, maybe in his sixties, the wind whipping his pants legs, his bare ankles fish-belly white in the blazing light, his face dazed. Marino couldn’t stop his attention from wandering to the live feed on the flat-screen TV across the room from him.

  He wished the cameras would hold steady on the jumper’s face. He wanted to see what was there and what was missing. Didn’t matter how many times he’d witnessed situations like this. For each desperate person it was different. Marino had watched people die, watched them realize they were going to live, watched people kill and be killed, had looked them in the face and witnessed the moment of recognition that it was over or it wasn’t. The look was never exactly the same. Rage, hate, shock, grief, anguish, terror, scorn, amusement, combinations of them, and nothing. As different as people are different.

  The windowless blue room where Marino went data mining fairly often these days reminded him of Times Square, of Niketown. He was surrounded by a dizzying array of images, some dynamic, others static, all bigger than life on flat screens and the two-story data wall comprised of huge Mitsubishi cubes tiled together. An hourglass spun in one of the cubes as the Real Time Crime Center’s software searched the more-than-three-terabyte data warehouse for anyone who might match the description of the man in the FedEx cap, a security camera image of him ten feet tall on the wall, and next to it a satellite picture of Scarpetta’s granite apartment building on Central Park West.