The Scarpetta Factor

by Patricia Cornwell

  “As much as I hate political considerations,” Lanier then said.

  “It’s a valid point,” Benton said, his voice brittle with impatience, and he sounded anxious and frustrated. “We kick in the door and they’re sitting in the living room having coffee. My bigger worry is a hostage situation and we cause it to escalate. I’m not armed.” He said it to Marino, said it like an accusation.

  “You know what I’ve got,” Marino said to Lucy, giving her an unspoken instruction.

  Special Agent Lanier acted as if she didn’t hear the exchange or notice Lucy grabbing a black soft case about the size of a tennis racket but with Beretta CX4 embroidered on it. She handed it to Benton and he slipped it over his shoulder, and she shut the trunk. They didn’t know who was inside the mansion or nearby but were expecting Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. Either he was Bobby Fuller or someone else, and he worked with others, those who did his bidding, people who were evil and would stoop as low as low got. If Benton had an encounter, he didn’t intend to defend himself with bare fists but a compact carbine that shot nine-millimeter rounds.

  “I recommend we call ESU and get the entry team here.” Lanier was cautious, not wanting to tell NYPD how to do its job.

  Marino ignored her, staring at the house as he asked Lucy, “And that was when? You were here last and saw a jamming system when?”

  “A couple years back,” she said. “He had one since the early nineties, at least. The kind of high-power jamming system that can paralyze RF bands between twenty and three thousand megahertz. The radios NYPD has are eight hundred megahertz and wouldn’t be worth shit in there, and neither would cell phones. A little tactical advice? I agree.” She looked at Lanier. “Get ESU here now, the A team, because breaking down the door’s not the hard part. It’s what you do if you’re met with resistance, since you don’t know who or what the fuck’s in there. You force your way in all by yourself and maybe get your ass blown off or get crucified by Mother Blue. Take your pick.”

  Lucy was the calm voice of reason because inside she was screaming and not about to wait for anyone.

  “What Tac are you on if I see anyone?” she asked Marino.

  “Tac I,” he said.

  Lucy walked quickly toward Central Park South, and when she turned the corner, she started to run. At the back of the mansion was an apron of pavers that led to a wooden garage door, a swinging door painted black that opened on the left side, and nearby was a uniform cop Lucy had met earlier. He was probing shrubbery with his flashlight, the four floors above him dark, not a single window lit up.

  “Tell you what,” Lucy said, unzipping the bag and pulling out the thermal scope. “I’ll hang back here and check the windows for heat. You might want to head around to the front. They’re thinking of kicking in the door.”

  “Nobody’s called me.” The officer’s face looked at her, his features indistinguishable in the irregular glow of streetlamps. In a nice way, he was telling Berger’s computer nerd to fuck off.

  “The A team’s en route and nobody’s going to call you. You can check with Marino. He’s on Tac Ida.” Lucy powered on the thermal scope and trained it at windows overhead and they turned murky green in infrared, the draperies across them splotched grayish white. “Maybe some radiant heat from hallways,” she said, and the officer was walking off.

  Out of sight, gone, on his way to a forced entry that wasn’t about to happen where he was going. It was about to happen where he’d just left. Lucy got out the Rabbit Tool, a handheld hydraulic spreader capable of exerting ten thousand pounds of pressure per square inch. She worked the opposing tips of the jaws between the left side of the garage door and the frame, and started stepping on the foot pump, and wood strained and then several loud pops as iron strap hinges bent and snapped. She grabbed her tools and worked her way through the opening, pulling the door shut behind her so the breach wasn’t obvious from the street. She stood inside the cool dark, listening, orienting herself inside the lower level of the Starr garage. The thermal scope wasn’t going to help her in here, all it did was detect heat, and she got out her SureFire light and turned it on.

  The mansion’s alarm system was unarmed, suggesting that when Bonnell and Berger had showed up, the person who let them in must not have reset the security system. Maybe Nastya, Lucy thought. She had met her the last time she was here and remembered the housekeeper as a careless and self-important woman, a recent hire of Hannah’s, or maybe Nastya was one of Bobby’s picks. But it had struck Lucy as peculiar that people like Nastya suddenly were part of Rupe’s life. They weren’t his type, and the decision likely hadn’t been his, and it caused Lucy to wonder what really had happened to him. She didn’t think it was possible to murder someone with salmonella, and it wasn’t likely there had been a mistake in the diagnosis, not in Atlanta, a city known for its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Maybe he’d willed his own death because Hannah and Bobby were cannibalizing his life and he knew what was ahead, which was to have nothing left, to be old and powerless and at their mercy. It was possible. People did that. Got cancer, got in accidents, short-circuiting the inevitable.

  She set down her bag and slipped her Glock pistol out of its ankle holster, the long beam of the tactical light probing her surroundings, licking across whitewashed stone walls and terra-cotta tile. Directly left of the garage door was a bay for washing cars, and water slowly dripped from the end of a sloppily coiled hose, and filthy towels were scattered over the floor, a plastic bucket turned on its side, and nearby several gallons of Clorox bleach. There were shoe prints and a lot of tire tracks, and a wheelbarrow and a shovel, both crusty with dried cement.

  She followed wheel marks on the floor and more footprints, different treads, different sizes, and a lot of dust, maybe a running shoe, maybe a boot, at least two different people but possibly more. She listened and probed with the light, knowing what the basement was supposed to look like and noting what was different, finding signs everywhere of activity that had nothing to do with anyone maintaining vintage cars anymore. The powerful beam cut across a work area with benches, pressure tools, gauges, air compressors, battery chargers, jacks, cases of oil, and tires, all dusty and randomly placed, as if moved out of the way but unused and unappreciated.

  Not at all like the old days, when you could eat off the floor because the garage was Rupe’s pride and joy, that and his library, the two areas connected by a hidden door behind a painting of ships. The light moved across thick dust and cobwebs on a lift he’d installed when grease pits weren’t legal anymore, were deemed unsafe because of carbon monoxide in the hole when a car engine was running. There didn’t used to be a mattress, a bare one near the wall, covered with large brown stains and swipes, what looked like blood, and Lucy saw hairs, long ones, dark ones, blond ones, and she detected an odor or thought she did. Nearby was a box of surgical gloves.

  About ten steps away was the old grease pit, covered with a painter’s drop cloth that didn’t used to be there. The surrounding floor was crazed with tread marks similar to others Lucy had seen, and there were spatters and smears of dried concrete. She squatted to lift an edge of the tarp, and under it were wide sheets of plywood, and under those her light illuminated the pit, and at the bottom of it was an uneven layer of concrete that wasn’t very deep, not even two feet. Whoever had shoveled in the wet cement hadn’t bothered to smooth it, the surface irregular and rough with mounds and peaks, and she thought she detected an odor again and was acutely conscious of her gun.

  Walking more quickly now, she followed the ramp, staying close to the wall, up to the next level, where Rupe Starr had kept his cars, and as the incline bent around, Lucy began to see light. Her boots were quiet on Italian flooring that used to be immaculate, now dusty and scarred with tire tracks and scattered with a lot of sand and salt. She heard voices and stopped. Women’s voices. She thought she heard Berger. Something about being “blocked in” and a different voice saying, “Well, someone did” and “We were originally told,�
�� and several times the phrase “Clearly not true.”

  Then, “What friends? And why didn’t you tell us this before?” Berger asked.

  This was followed by an accented voice, muffled, a woman talking fast, and Lucy thought of Nastya and listened for a man, for Bobby Fuller. Where was he? The message Berger had left Marino while he and Lucy were still in the training lab without their phones was that Berger and Bonnell were meeting with Bobby. Supposedly he had flown in from Fort Lauderdale early this morning because of what he’d heard on the news about Hannah’s head hairs being found, and Berger had asked to talk to him again because she had a number of questions. He’d refused to meet her at One Hogan Place or any public place and had suggested the house, this house. Where was he? Lucy had checked, had called the Westchester airport tower, had talked to the same controller who was always so rude.

  His name was Lech Peterek, and he was Polish and dour, very unfriendly on the phone because that was who and what he was, had nothing to do with who or what Lucy was. In fact, he didn’t seem able to place her until she recited tail numbers, and even then he had been vague. He’d said there was no record of an arrival today from South Florida, not the Gulfstream Bobby Fuller and Hannah Starr routinely flew on—Rupe’s Gulfsteam. It was still in its hangar and had been for weeks, the same hangar Lucy used, because it was Rupe who had brokered her purchases of aircraft. It was Rupe who had introduced her to remarkable machines like Bell helicopters and Ferraris. Unlike Hannah, his daughter, he had been well-intentioned, and until his death, Lucy had felt no insecurity about her livelihood and hadn’t imagined anyone wanting to ruin it for the hell of it.

  She reached the top of the ramp, staying close to the wall in incomplete darkness, the only lights on in the area near the far left corner where the voices came from, but she couldn’t see anyone. Berger and probably Bonnell and Nastya were hidden behind vehicles and thick columns that had been boxed in with mahogany and protectively wrapped in black neoprene so precious cars didn’t get dings on their doors. Lucy moved closer, listening for distress or any hint of danger, but the voices sounded calm, engaged in an intense conversation that at intervals was confrontational.

  “Well, someone has. Obviously.” Unmistakably Berger.

  “People have always been in and out. They entertain so much. They have always.” The accent again.

  “You said that had tapered off after Rupe Starr died.”

  “Yes. Not so much. But still there are a few people who come. I don’t know. Mr. Fuller is very private. He and his friends come down here. I don’t intrude.”

  “We’re supposed to believe you don’t know who’s in and out?” The third voice had to be Bonnell.

  Rupe Starr’s cars. A collection as thoughtful and sentimental as it was impressive and rare. The 1940 Packard like the one his father had owned. The 1957 Thunderbird that had been Rupe’s dream when he was in high school and drove a VW Bug. The 1969 Ca maro like the one he’d owned after he’d gotten his MBA from Harvard. The 1970 Mercedes sedan he’d rewarded himself with when he’d started doing well on Wall Street. Lucy walked past his prized 1933 Duesenberg Speedster, his Ferrari 355 Spyder, and the last car he’d gotten before his death and hadn’t had a chance to restore yet, a 1979 yellow Checker cab because it reminded him of New York in his heyday, he’d said.

  The new additions to his collection, the Ferraris, the Porsches, the Lamborghini, had been recent purchases influenced by Hannah and Bobby, including the white Bentley Azure convertible that was parked nose-in against the far wall, Bobby’s red Carrera GT blocking it in. Berger, Bonnell, and Nastya were standing by the Bentley’s rear fender, talking, their backs to Lucy, not noticing her yet, and she called out hello and told them not to be startled as she reached the Checker cab and noticed a residue of sand on its tires and tracks leading to them. She loudly alerted everyone that she was armed as she continued to walk closer, and they turned around and she recognized the look on Berger’s face because she’d seen it before. Fear. Distrust and pain.

  “Don’t,” Berger said, and it was Lucy she feared. “Put the gun down. Please.”

  “What?” Lucy said, dumbfounded, and she noticed Bonnell’s right hand twitch.

  “Please put down the gun,” Berger said, with no emotion in her tone.

  “We’ve been trying to call, been trying to get you on the radio. Careful, easy does it,” Lucy warned Bonnell. “Slowly move your hands away from your body. Hold them out in front of you.” Lucy had her pistol ready.

  Berger said to her, “Nothing you’ve done is worth this. Please put it down.”

  “Easy does it. Be calm. I’m coming closer, and we’re going to talk,” Lucy said to them as she walked. “You don’t know what’s happened. We’ve not been able to get through. Jesus fuck!” she yelled at Bonnell. “Don’t fucking move your hand again!”

  Nastya muttered something in Russian and began to cry.

  Berger stepped closer to Lucy and said, “Give me the gun and we’ll talk. Talk about anything you want. Everything’s all right. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Whether it’s money or Hannah.”

  “I haven’t done anything. Listen to me.”

  “It’s all right. Just give me the gun.” Berger stared at her while Lucy stared at Bonnell, making sure she didn’t go for her weapon.

  “It’s not all right. You don’t know who she is.” Lucy meant Nastya. “Or who any of them are. Toni came here. You don’t know because we couldn’t get through. The watch Toni was wearing has a GPS in it, and she was here. She came here on Tuesday and died here.” Lucy glanced at the yellow Checker cab. “And he kept her here for a while. Or they did.”

  “No one has been here.” Nastya was shaking her head side to side and crying.

  “You’re a fucking liar,” Lucy said. “Where’s Bobby?”

  “I don’t know anything. I just do what I’m told,” Nastya cried.

  “Where was he Tuesday afternoon?” Lucy said to her. “Where were you and Bobby?”

  “I don’t come down when they show people the cars.”

  “Who else was here?” Lucy said, and Nastya didn’t answer. “Who was here Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday? Who drove out of here at four-something in the morning, yesterday morning? Drove that.” Lucy nodded her head at the Checker cab and said to Berger, “Toni’s body was in it. We couldn’t get through to tell you. The yellow paint chips collected from her body are from something old. An old car painted that color.”

  Berger said, “Enough damage has been done. Somehow we’ll fix it. Please give me the gun, Lucy.”

  It began to occur to her what Berger meant.

  “No matter what you’ve done, Lucy.”

  “I’ve not done anything.” Lucy talked to Berger but kept her eyes on Bonnell and Nastya.

  “It doesn’t matter to me. We’ll get past it,” Berger said. “But it has to stop now. You can stop it now. Give me the gun.”

  “Near the Duesenberg over there are boxes,” Lucy said. “The stationary system that has jammed your phones, your radio. If you look, you can see them. They’re to my left against that wall. They look like a small washer and dryer with rows of lights in front. Switches for different RF bands, radio frequency bands. Rupe had it installed, and you can see from here it’s on. The rows of lights are red because all of the frequencies have been jammed.”

  Nobody moved and nobody looked. Their eyes were fastened on Lucy as if she might kill them any moment, do to them what Berger had gotten into her head that Lucy did to Hannah. “And you were home that night. Too damn bad you didn’t see anything.” Berger making that remark repeatedly these past few weeks because Lucy’s loft was on Barrow Street and Hannah was last seen on Barrow Street, and Berger knew what Lucy could do and didn’t trust her, was scared of her, thought she was a stranger, a monster. Lucy didn’t know what to say to change it, to roll their lives back to where they used to be, but she wasn’t going to let the destruction advance. Not one more inch. She was end
ing it.

  “Jaime, walk over there and look,” Lucy said. “Please. Walk over to the boxes and look. Switches designated for different megahertz frequencies.”

  Berger walked past her but didn’t get close, and Lucy didn’t look at her. She was busy watching Bonnell’s hands. Marino had mentioned that Bonnell hadn’t been a homicide detective long, and Lucy could tell she was inexperienced and didn’t recognize what was going on because she wasn’t listening to her instincts, she was listening to her head and she was panicky. If Bonnell listened to her instincts she would sense that Lucy was being aggressive because Bonnell was, that it wasn’t Lucy who had instigated what was now a standoff, a showdown.

  “I’m at the boxes,” Berger said from the side wall.

  “Flip all the switches.” Lucy didn’t look at her, would be god-damned if she was going to be killed by a fucking cop. “The lights should turn green, and you and Bonnell should see a lot of messages land on your phones. That will tip you off that people have been trying to reach you, that I’m telling you the truth.”

  The sound of switches being flipped.

  Lucy said to Bonnell, “Try your radio. Marino’s out front on the street. If the A team hasn’t already rammed in the front door, he and the others are just outside. Get on your radio. He’s on Tac Ida.”

  She was telling Bonnell to switch to the point-to-point frequency Tac I, instead of using the standard repeater radio service and going through a dispatcher. Bonnell unclipped her radio from her belt, switched channels, and pressed the transmit button.

  “Smoker, do you copy?” she said, watching Lucy. “Smoker, are you on the air?”

  “Yeah, I copy, Los Angeles.” Marino’s tense voice. “What’s your twenty?”

  “We’re in the basement with Hot Shot.” Bonnell wasn’t answering Marino’s question.

  He was asking if she was okay, and she was telling him where she was, using personal designations that the two of them must have assigned to each other, and to Lucy. Lucy was Hot Shot, and Bonnell didn’t trust her. Bonnell wasn’t reassuring Marino that she or anyone was safe. She was doing the opposite.