At Risk wg-1

by Patricia Cornwell

  “That’s her case number for sure. I looked at every damn thing in every damn box while that Roller Derby drunk wife of his rattled around in the kitchen upstairs, stomped around, made sure I knew how unwelcome I was. There’s nothing else.”

  He looks at the personal-effects inventory again, realizes something he should have noticed immediately.

  “Her nephew says he’ll be glad to talk to us,” Sykes says. “Well, not glad. But he will.”

  “Size ten,” Win says as someone knocks on the door. “The tennis clothes are size ten. A five-foot, ninety-one-pound woman doesn’t wear size ten. Now what!” as the knocking becomes more insistent.

  “Got to go,” he tells Sykes, gets up from his desk, walks into his living room as the urgent knocking continues.

  He looks through the peephole, sees Sammy’s flushed, unhappy face, opens the door.

  “I’ve been trying to get you for a damn hour,” Sammy blurts out.

  “How’d you know I was here?” Win asks, confused, his mind going everywhere.

  “I’m a detective. Your home phone’s busy. She just screeched at me like an air-raid siren.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think. You got to come with me right now. She’s waiting for you at the Globe.”

  “Forget it,” Win says.

  8

  Stuart Hamilton, the managing editor, maintains his appropriate demeanor as he sits inside his office with Lamont and a senior reporter and a photographer. The office is glass. Everyone in the newsroom is witness to what no doubt will be an unprecedented interview, maybe the biggest news in the city since the Red Sox won the World Series.

  Everyone, and there must be a hundred people beyond the glass, can see the well-known, formidable DA Monique Lamont, in a dark warm-up suit, exhausted, no makeup, sitting on a sofa, their commander in chief, Hamilton, listening, nodding, his face somber. Journalists, secretaries, editors are guarded in their glances from the other side of the glass, but Lamont knows she is being watched, talked about, that looks are being exchanged, that e-mails are firing from desk to desk. It is what she wants. The interview will run on A1, above the fold. It will race through cyberspace and land in papers and on Internet news sites all around the world. It will be talked about on television, the radio.

  Crawley can go to hell.

  “Because I have no choice,” she is saying from the sofa, her shoes off, her legs curled under her as if she is having coffee with old friends. “I owe it to women everywhere.” She catches herself. “To men, women, children, all victimized people everywhere.”

  Careful. Don’t suggest that sexual violence is a problem restricted to women. Don’t refer to yourself as a victim.

  “If we are going to destigmatize sexual violence. Pedophilia. Rape — and not only women are raped—” she continues, “then we must be open about it and speak of it in the context of violence and not simply in the context of sex.”

  “So you’re basically desexualizing it at the same time you’re demythologizing it,” the reporter says, Pascal Plasser-something, she never can get his name right.

  Last time he interviewed her, he was reasonably fair, reasonably truthful, and not particularly bright, which is why she requested him when she showed up unannounced at the newspaper, rang Hamilton, told him that if he assured her the coverage she deserves for an exclusive of this magnitude, she would talk openly about what just happened.

  “No, Pascal,” she says. “That’s not what I’m doing at all.”

  She wonders where Win is and her anger spikes, fear sits in her stomach like lead.

  She says, “I can’t possibly desexualize what happened to me. It was a sexual crime. Sexual violence that could have exacted the ultimate price. My life.”

  “It’s incredibly courageous for you to do this, Monique,” Hamilton says with an air of solemnity, of sorrow, like he’s a damn funeral home director. “But I must point out that some of your detractors will view this as a political ploy. Governor Crawley, for example…”

  “A ploy?” She leans forward on the sofa, holds Hamilton’s gaze. “Someone puts a gun to my head, ties me up, rapes me with the intention of murdering me and burning down my house, and that’s a ploy?”

  “Your talking about it might be construed as…”

  “Stuart,” she says, and her mettle, her self-control are remarkable. “I welcome anybody to suggest such a thing. I challenge them. I dare them.”

  She’s not quite sure how she can be so poised, and a part of her is terrified that it isn’t normal for her to be this pulled together, that maybe it’s the dead calm before a horrific storm, the sane moment before the straitjacket or suicide.

  “Why do you say you’d welcome it?” Pascal What’s-his-name asks, scribbling notes, flipping a page.

  “Anybody,” she says ominously. “Anybody who says or suggests such a thing will only succeed in revealing his true character. Good. Let him try.”

  “Him?”

  “Let anybody try.”

  She looks through the glass, surveys the expanse of bleak partitioned space, journalists in their cubicles, rodents who feed on the garbage and tragedies of others. She looks for Win, waits for his formidable, striking presence to suddenly dominate the newsroom, striding her way. But there is no sign of him, and her hope begins to fade. Anger flares.

  He has defied her directive. He has degraded her, belittled her, shown his misogynistic contempt.

  “Your new crime initiative — in fact published in this very paper this morning—any crime, any time,” Hamilton says. “What might you say now?

  “And will this new cold-case initiative, At Risk, the murder in Tennessee, somehow take a backseat to…?”

  Win isn’t coming. She’ll punish him for this.

  “I couldn’t be more motivated and determined to bring about justice in any violent crime, no matter how long ago it was committed,” Lamont says. “In fact, I’ve assigned Investigator Garano to At Risk full-time while he’s on leave from my Middlesex County headquarters.”

  “Leave? So there’s a question about whether the shooting of Roger Baptista was merited?” Pascal is suddenly alert, more alert than he has been throughout her brave, painful interview.

  “Any time deadly force is used, no matter the apparent circumstances,” Lamont says, placing emphasis on the word apparent, “we must investigate the incident to the fullest.”

  “Are you implying that the force might have been excessive?”

  “I can make no further comment at this time,” she says.

  * * *

  Win feels a little guilty walking into the state police crime laboratory with his sealed envelope, knowing it really isn’t fair to bypass backlogs and protocols when he wants evidence analyzed right away.

  He doesn’t feel the least bit guilty for not showing up at the Globe to further Lamont’s relentless political aspirations, to participate in behavior that is inappropriate, outrageous, and, in his opinion, self-destructive. Sammy says her exclusive tell-all is already being talked about in cyberspace, on TV and the radio, getting everybody primed to read her prurient and pitiful interview. He has decided she’s reckless and irrational, and that’s not a good thing if the person is your boss.

  The modern brick building with its heavy steel front doors is a haven for Win, a place to go when he wants to unload on Captain Jessie Huber, discuss cases, complain, confide, ask for advice, maybe a favor or two. Win walks through the green and blue glass-block lobby, heads down a long hallway, and helps himself to the familiar open door where he finds his friend and mentor, typically dapper in a conservative dark suit and a gray silk cravat, typically on the phone. Huber is tall and thin, bald as a full moon, and women find him sexy, maybe because he is formidable and a good listener. Three years ago he was the senior investigator in Win’s unit, then was appointed to take over the labs.

  He hangs up when he sees Win, bolts up from his desk, blurts out, “Dammit, boy!” and hugs him the way men hug, mor
e backslapping than anything else. “Sit, sit! I can’t believe it. Tell me what the hell’s going on.” He shuts the door, pulls a chair close. “I send you to Tennessee, best damn forensic training facility on the planet, right up your alley. Then what? What the hell you doing back up here and what the hell have you gotten yourself into?”

  “You sent me?” Win sits, puzzled. “Thought it was Lamont. Thought it was her brilliant brainstorm to send me to the Academy, maybe so she could have me handy to work a small-town case, as she views it, that would make all us big-city folks up here look good.”

  Huber pauses, as if considering what he’s going to say next, then, “You just killed somebody, Win. Let’s don’t talk politics.”

  “I killed somebody because of politics. Politics are why I was ordered back up here to have dinner with her, Jessie.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m glad somebody does.”

  “You’re very angry.”

  “I’m being used. Given nothing to work with. Can’t even find the damn case file.”

  “Looks like you and me share the same opinion of this At Risk mess she’s gotten us into,” Huber says.

  “I thought it was the governor’s initiative, that she’s just the quarterback. That’s how it was explained….”

  “Yes and no,” Huber interrupts, leaning forward in his chair, lowering his voice. “This is all about her. She cooked it up, suggested it to Crawley, convinced him it would make the Commonwealth, make him look good. She might get most valuable player, but he’s the team owner, right? Not hard to talk a governor, especially Crawley, into something like this — you know how out of touch governors can be when it comes to minutiae. What do you mean you can’t find the case file?”

  “Just what I said. The Finlay police case file — gone. Lost in space.”

  Huber gets a disgusted look on his face, almost rolls his eyes, mutters, “Jesus, wouldn’t you suppose she would have had it sent to her office?” He picks up the phone, dials, glances up at him, adds, “Before she dragged you into this?”

  “She says…” Win starts to reply.

  “Hey,” Huber says to the person who answers the phone. “I got Win Garano here with me. The Finlay case file. You ever see it?” A pause, then Huber stares at Win, says, “No big surprise. Thanks,” and hangs up.

  “What?” Win asks, a bad feeling fluttering in his stomach.

  “Toby says he got it weeks ago, put it on Lamont’s desk.”

  “She told me she’s never seen it. Knoxville PD’s never seen it, either. How ’bout giving me Toby’s phone number.”

  Did Lamont lie? Did she lose the file? Did somebody take it before she ever saw it?

  “Politics, my boy.” Huber is saying. “Maybe dirty politics,” he emphasizes with an ominous look in his eyes, writes down a phone number, hands it to him. “When she first told me about At Risk, I was emphatic she should never have talked Crawley into it and should try to talk him out of it. Any crime, any time. Jesus. What? We start doing DNA testing on every unsolved violent crime since the Great Flood? Meanwhile, we’ve got a backlog of some five hundred cases. Real cases with real people out there raping, killing.”

  “I’m not sure I understand why you would send me to Knoxville.” Win can’t get past that, feels shaky, a little dazed.

  “Thought I was doing you a service. Great place and great on your résumé.”

  “I know you’ve always looked out for me… but it just seems coincidental I’m down there and then…”

  “Look. It’s coincidental to a point,” Huber says. “Lamont was determined to work an old case that wasn’t local. You happened to be in Tennessee, Win, and happened to be the investigator she wanted involved.”

  “What if I hadn’t been in Tennessee?”

  “She would have found some other old case in some other distant town and probably loaned you out one way or another. You know, us enlightened New Englanders to the rescue,” he adds sarcastically. “Send in the Yankee troops from the land of MIT and Harvard. Easy to bury, too, right? If things don’t go so well down there in some quaint little Southern town, eventually — maybe even by election time — everyone up here forgets about it. Lot harder to bury some cold-case homicide that might have happened in Massachusetts, right?”

  “Probably.”

  Huber leans back in his chair, adds, “I hear you’re the star down there at the Academy.”

  Win doesn’t reply, his thoughts stuck in multiple places. He’s sweating under his suit, a cold sweat.

  “Your future, Win. I don’t think you want to work for her the rest of your life or run around all hours of the day and night working misdemeanor murders, one scumbag killing another. Not to mention the money. I sure as hell got tired of it. Training. The best. Grooming. You’re so damn talented. I’m thinking you’ll be replacing me as lab director when I retire, and I’m counting the days. All depending on the powers to be, who the governor is.” He gets a knowing look on his face. “You following me?”

  Win isn’t following much. Stays silent, has a feeling about Huber. One he’s never felt before.

  “You trust me?”

  “Always have,” Win replies.

  “You trust me now?” Huber says, his face very serious.

  Win won’t go there, says, “Trust you enough to spend my mental-health day with you, Jessie. That’s the way we do things here in the land of Oz when we kill somebody on the job. How ’bout it?”

  “I’m not in the stress unit anymore, my good friend. You know that.”

  “Doesn’t matter. And you know that. I’m declaring this an official counseling session with the experienced counselor of my choice. Anybody inquires, I just had my mental-health day. Go on, ask me how I feel.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Regretful that deadly force was necessary,” Win mechanically recites. “All broken up about it, can’t sleep. Did everything I could to stop him, but he left me no choice. It’s tragic. Just a kid, maybe he could have been rehabilitated, added something positive to society.”

  Huber stares at him for a long moment, then, “I’m gonna throw up.”

  “All right then. Grateful he didn’t kill Lamont. Or me. Angry the worthless piece of shit did this to her, to me. Glad he’s dead so he doesn’t sue me. You mind if I borrow Rake for a little while?” Win holds up the envelope, the back of it sealed with yellow evidence tape initialed by him. “Maybe try out her ESDA magic box or that fancy image-enhancement software you just got or both on a letter? Reminds me, any prints on the money, the thousand dollars in Baptista’s pocket?”

  “Already ran them in IAFIS. Nothing.” Huber gets up, goes back behind his desk, sits in his swivel chair.

  “You got any thoughts about it?” Win then says. “Robbery gone bad or something else?”

  Huber hesitates, says, “Enemies? The list is long, Win. I think by now you’re seeing the scary truth for yourself, and I’d be very careful what you tell her, what you ask her, very, very careful. A shame. A damn shame, because you know what? She wasn’t like that when she got started, was a real ballbuster, took down a lot of dirtbags, had my respect. Let’s just put it this way, the word ethics probably isn’t in her fancy vocabulary anymore.”

  “I thought the two of you were buddies. Here she’s doing this little favor for your son.”

  “Right, buddies.” He smiles ruefully. “In this business, never let people know what you really think of them. She certainly has no clue what Toby really thinks of her.”

  “Or you?”

  “Incompetent and blames everything on everybody else, including Toby. Two guys talking? Between you and me, Geronimo? She’s going down,” Huber says. “It’s really sad.”

  9

  The forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy on the train fatality died one week later during a Sunday afternoon of skydiving when his parachute didn’t open.

  If Sykes didn’t have the original case file in front of her, she might not believe it. Ba
d karma, she thinks uncomfortably. As a kid, she loved archaeology. It was one of the few subjects that interested her, maybe because it wasn’t taught in school. She lost interest when she read about King Tut’s tomb, about curses and people mysteriously dying.

  “Twenty years ago, Mrs. Finlay’s death,” she is saying to Win over the phone. “Two years before that a train death, then the ME’s death. I’m getting a little freaked out.”

  “Possibly coincidence,” he says.

  “Then why was the picture stapled to Mrs. Finlay’s personal-effects inventory?”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this right now,” says Win, who doesn’t like cell phones and certainly doesn’t assume that any conversation on them is secure.

  Sykes is alone in the small morgue office on the eleventh floor of a tall, beige building behind the UNC–Chapel Hill medical school’s hospitals. She is bewildered, seems the more she looks into Vivian Finlay’s violent death, the more mysterious it gets. First, her case file has disappeared except for an inventory of clothing she supposedly had on when she was murdered, tennis clothes that would appear to be the wrong size. Second, a train fatality may somehow be connected to her case, and now the ME and his skydiving accident.

  “Just a few things,” Win adds. “Keep the details to a minimum. How?”

  “Chute didn’t open.”

  “There should have been an autopsy on the chute.”

  “How about I e-mail all this to you,” Sykes says. “How about you read it yourself. When you getting back this way?”

  She’s feeling very isolated, abandoned. He’s up there with that DA, the two of them headline news. As far as Sykes is concerned, he was involved in a shooting, should get out of town and be down here to help her out. It’s his case. Well, that’s not how it’s feeling anymore. But the fact is, it’s his case. Typically, now that something sensational has happened, an old lady murdered twenty years ago is a throwaway. Who cares.

  “As soon as I can,” is all Win has to say about it.

  “I know you got some real problems up there,” she replies as reasonably as possible. “But this is your case, Win. And if I don’t get back to the Academy, the TBI will be all over me like white on rice.”