Depraved Heart

by Patricia Cornwell

  “And right now there’s a case in federal court involving that.” I’m walking slowly and uphill again. “Apparently Jill Donoghue has something to do with it. Benton might have something to do with it too.”

  “Do you need to stop for a minute, Aunt Kay?” Lucy pauses to wait up for me.

  “We need to work on what you call me. You can’t keep calling me Aunt Kay.”

  “Then what?”

  “Kay.”

  “Feels strange.”

  “Doctor Scarpetta. Chief. Hey you. Something besides Aunt Kay. You’re not a kid. Both of us are adults.”

  “You seem to be hurting a lot,” Lucy says. “We need to get you someplace where you can sit down.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m all right.”

  “You’re hurting. You’re not all right.”

  “Sorry I’m so damn slow.”

  The pain in my leg is a radiating throb that I’ve gotten used to for the most part. Each week I’m better but I can’t move fast. Stairs are difficult. Standing on the hard tile in the autopsy room hours on end is miserable. But vigorous activity such as trudging uphill in extreme heat and humidity would be considered off-limits so soon. I’m not supposed to get my blood pressure up.

  When I do I’m reminded that bone is living tissue, and the longest heaviest bone in the human body is the femur. It has two super-nerves, the femoral and the sciatic, that run from the lower back to the knee like high-speed trains carrying pain along their tracks. I stop walking for a moment and rub my thigh, gently massaging the muscles.

  “You should use a cane,” Lucy says.

  “God no.”

  “I’m serious.” She glances at me, at my leg as I resume walking stiffly. “You’re at a disadvantage. You can’t outrun anyone and at least if you had a sturdy walking stick, a cane, you could use it as a weapon.”

  “That sounds like the logic of a seven-year-old, like something Desi would say.”

  “Looking so obviously wounded and vulnerable makes you an easy target. Bad people smell your weakness like a shark smells blood. Metaphorically it’s the wrong message.”

  “I’ve already been an easy target once this summer for a shark of sorts. It won’t happen again. And I have a pistol in my bag.” I sound a little winded.

  “Don’t let them see it. They’d love an excuse to shoot us.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Do I look like I’m laughing?”

  Her house comes into view, timber and glass with a copper roof on a rise overlooking a part of the river as wide as a bay. The helicopter is over the woods again, very low this time and treetops churn in the downwash.

  “What the hell are they looking for?” I ask.

  “They want the recording.” Lucy says it matter-of-factly, and I’m shocked.

  I stop on the driveway and stare at her. “What recording?”

  “They think I have it hidden somewhere, maybe buried like treasure, maybe in some secret bunker. I mean really?” she says derisively. “They think I’m going to tuck the camera into a little metal box and dig a hole and whoaaa it’s safe? If I don’t want them to find something they won’t in a million years.”

  “What recording?”

  “I can guarantee you they’re using ground-penetrating radar, looking for geologic parameters that might tell them I have something hidden belowground.” Lucy’s attention is fixed on the helicopter, so loud and close we’re having to shout. “Next they’ll probably show up with fucking backhoes just so they can have the pleasure of destroying my landscaping. Because more than anything this is revenge, this is putting me in my place.”

  “What recording?” I expect her next to admit that the Depraved Heart video clips were sent to her too.

  “The one from Florida.”

  She means the recording of my being shot while diving a shipwreck off the coast of Fort Lauderdale two months ago.

  “There’s nothing helpful in it but I guess they don’t know that. It depends on what they’re really looking for,” she says as I realize she’s been lying to me, to everyone. “Or better yet what they’re not looking for, which is the more likely story. And I can’t give them that bonus. I’m pretty sure I know what it is and they won’t get it courtesy of me.”

  MY SCUBA MASK with its embedded mini-recorder is missing. Or I thought it was. It was never recovered after Carrie tried to kill me. Or that’s what I’ve been led to believe.

  The explanation I’ve been given is that finding it wasn’t the top priority. Saving my life was. By the time divers searched for the mask the current had moved it and possibly covered it with silt.

  “They wanted that recording two months ago.” I’m careful what I say. “Why is this coming up now?”

  “Before now it was theoretical. They’re convinced I have it.”

  “The FBI is convinced,” I reply and she nods. “Based on what? How can you know what they’re convinced of?”

  “When I flew back from Bermuda recently I landed at Logan and within minutes Customs police were all over my plane.”

  “Stop.” I hold up my hand and pause on the driveway again. “Before you continue, why would the Feds care if you were in Bermuda? Why would they be monitoring you there?”

  “Maybe because of who they suspected I was seeing.”

  I think of Carrie as I ask, “And who was that?”

  “I was seeing a friend of Janet’s. No one you need to concern yourself with.”

  “I’d say there’s a need for me to concern myself since it would seem this person is someone the FBI is interested in.”

  “And they’ll just keep on snooping around in case Carrie really does exist.”

  “If she doesn’t then who did this to my leg?” I tamp down a flare of anger.

  “Long story short, the FBI sicced Customs on me. They went through everything on my plane and asked me a long list of questions about my trip, about why I was traveling and had I been scuba diving. They held me for well over an hour and I have no doubt about the point of it. They were instructed to look for the mask, for recording devices, in other words for items the FBI had interest in but didn’t want to tip their hand about with me. The FBI couldn’t crawl all over my plane and go through my luggage to their hearts content without drawing huge attention. But Customs could.”

  I don’t know how Lucy could have gotten hold of my scuba mask, and next I think of Benton. If he found it and never turned it in he would be guilty of tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, anything his FBI compatriots might hurl at him.

  “Should we be …?” I don’t finish the question as I make a point of looking at lampposts, at the cameras mounted on them.

  “I’ve been knocking out the audio of every camera we pass. I’m sure they know I’m doing it. As soon as I get inside they’ll take my phone so I can’t tamper with my own security system,” Lucy says. “They were going through my scuba gear earlier.”

  “But you weren’t diving with me when it happened.”

  “They’ll make a case that I was.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You weren’t even in Florida.”

  “Prove it.”

  “They’re making a case that you were with me when I was shot? You were on that dive? How could they possibly make a case for that? You weren’t with us.”

  “Who will irrefutably prove I wasn’t?” She continues to push her point. “Benton and you? Because everyone else isn’t talking.”

  What she means is the two police divers who had gone down to the wrecked barge first were murdered. I’m not aware of any witnesses to my being shot except Benton and the one who did it, Carrie.

  “They believe I have your dive mask,” Lucy says.

  “Do you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Not exactly?”

  “The instant you activated the camera on your mask,” she says, “it began to live stream to a designated site.”

  I think of Bermuda again. I think of Janet’s fri
end whom Lucy supposedly was seeing.

  “What site?” I ask.

  “We won’t get into that.”

  “Now we’re up to two things you won’t tell me. The person you met in Bermuda and where the video was live streamed.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well I’m not aware that anybody has my mask,” I add, and her answer is silence, and her house is very close now. “To my knowledge it’s never been found. The first priority of course was keeping me alive when they got me into the boat. Plus there was an underwater crime scene to work, a double homicide.”

  I envision the two speared bodies in the hatch of the sunken barge, the police divers killed just moments before Benton and I took our giant stride off the boat. When I found them I knew I was next, and then Carrie appeared around a section of the rusting hulk. I hear the faint buzzing sound of her being propelled through the water toward me, and the clink of the first spear hitting my tank, then the shock when the second one impaled my thigh.

  “There were bodies to recover in addition to any gear I might have lost after I was shot,” I remind Lucy. “It was hours before the sunken barge and the area around it were thoroughly searched, and I’ve always been told my mask was never found.” I keep saying that.

  “But they know it existed,” Lucy replies. “They know about the mask you had on when Carrie supposedly attacked you. And that’s the problem. They were told about it.”

  “Supposedly attacked?”

  “That’s the way they look at it. Yes,” Lucy says. “They know there was a mini-recorder attached to your mask and that it might stand to reason the video captured on that dive was live streamed. Possibly to me. They would assume I was sitting somewhere with a device that was capturing everything happening to you.”

  “Why would they assume such a thing?”

  “Because they would.”

  “There must be more of a reason than that.” I get an increasingly unsettled feeling. “Tell me what it is,” I say as the feeling is stronger, fluttering through my chest.

  “The reason is you,” Lucy says and now I remember. “You mentioned the mask in interviews. You told the FBI that I’d installed a mini-recorder on the mask you had on when Carrie shot you, so there should be an irrefutable record of exactly what happened. Except there isn’t.”

  “What do you mean there isn’t?”

  “Do you remember telling me about it after they talked to you in the hospital?”

  “Barely.”

  “Do you remember telling the FBI about the mask and its capabilities?”

  “Barely.”

  I don’t really recall what I said to Lucy, to the Feds, to anyone. Those initial conversations are disjointed and dreamlike, and I can’t retrieve the questions or my answers word for word. But I know I would have told the truth if asked, especially if I were injured and medicated, if I were as out of it as I must have been.

  I would have had no reason to feel it was unsafe to relay precisely what I knew or thought I did, never imagining the information would be used against us. I couldn’t have anticipated that two months later the FBI would be crawling all over Lucy’s property and searching it from the air.

  “I’m sorry if I’ve caused you trouble. In fact not if. Clearly I have,” I say to her.

  “You haven’t.”

  “It would appear that I have made things worse somehow,” I reply and we’re almost to her sidewalk. “I’m very sorry, Lucy, because it certainly wasn’t my intention.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about and now we stop talking. Three-two-one and the audio is back on.” She touches an app on her phone, looks at me and nods.

  Our privacy is gone just like that.

  CHAPTER 16

  AS IF ON CUE A WOMAN IN KHAKI CARGO PANTS AND a dark polo shirt opens the front door. She could see us on the surveillance cameras even if she couldn’t hear what we were saying.

  The .40 caliber Glock and the shiny brass badge on Erin Loria’s belt overwhelm her thin frame, and I do an instant inventory. Shoulders slightly rounded on their way to hunched. Teeth straight and natural with no discoloration due to enamel loss. Arms covered with lanugo, fine dark hair. Anorexic versus bulimic. She’ll have early osteoporosis and cardiac problems if she’s not careful. She doesn’t look familiar. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before. But I know who she is all right.

  The special agent in charge who may have had an affair with Carrie Grethen watches us reach the stone sidewalk. We follow it as she looks on silently, her face framed by long black hair that is thinning prematurely at the temples and on the crown. She has a cockeyed smile that on her best day is insincere and on her worst is condescending like it is right now, and I have to scrutinize closely to detect the scaffolding of a former beauty queen. I have to look carefully for the fine bone structure beneath sunbaked skin, the curves that have been replaced by raw bones and flat buttocks and sagging breasts. Her dark eyes are widely spaced with bags underneath, and her pouty mouth has puppet lines.

  The remnants of her Barbie doll prettiness are rapidly eroding, and if I met her at Quantico when Lucy was there I can’t tell and I’m pretty good at remembering people. There’s no spark of recognition and there would be had we been introduced, had I ever chatted with her. At most we might have passed in a hallway. We may have been on the elevator at the same time. I don’t know, and I don’t care if she really was involved with Carrie sexually. What matters is what Lucy believed at the time, and it’s stunningly inappropriate that Erin Loria has led the raid on Lucy’s property, that Erin has anything at all to do with my niece.

  “A curious conflict of interest comes to mind.” I don’t greet her in a friendly manner.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Give it careful thought and you might know what I’m talking about.” I don’t offer to shake her hand.

  It’s impossible not to think about what I witnessed on film, and I envision Lucy beside herself with hurt and jealousy after Erin showed up on the Yellow Brick Road obstacle course. It wasn’t a coincidence. It would seem Carrie and Erin were having a relationship right under Lucy’s nose, and I can’t imagine what must have gone through Lucy’s mind when seventeen years later Erin shows up on her private property with a warrant.

  “I’m Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner.”

  “Yes I know.”

  “I’m just making sure you do. I can show you identification if need be,” I say as she blocks the doorway, not budging an inch in any direction. “I believe you and Lucy have already met,” I add a sting of irony.

  “I know who you are. And I know your niece. I’m sure you’re aware we go back a long way.” That maddening smile again as she stares at Lucy. “It’s nice to see you didn’t run off.”

  “I’m sure that’s the real reason you have the helicopter up. In case I try to escape from my own property. That sounds like the FBI’s brilliant thinking.” Lucy has a way of sounding bored when she’s contemptuous.

  “A glib remark. I said it lightly. Tongue in cheek.” Erin’s clever humor comes across as haughty. “Of course you wouldn’t be so silly as to run off. I was teasing.”

  “Let me guess who’s flying.” Lucy looks up at the military black twin-engine bird. “John, six-five with a three-ten steroid body. Big John who has the light touch of a Mack truck. You should have seen him setting down on the dolly the other day at that hangar your people use at Hanscom. Oh I’m sorry. Did you not know it’s common knowledge the FBI has a secret special ops hangar at Hanscom Air Force Base? That big tax-dollar-subsidized recently refurbished hangar next to MedFlight?

  “Anyway”—Lucy continues to needle her about the FBI’s not-so-secret hangar just outside of Boston—“it took Big John three tries to get your bird centered on the dolly, skids all whackadoo, one of them touching down and bouncing off like a wobbly puppy feeling for the next step when it’s learning to do the stairs. I can always tell when it’s Big John on the stick. I could give him some pointer
s about overcontrolling. You know, think-it-don’t-touch-it. That sort of thing.”

  I can see thoughts racing behind Erin’s eyes. She’s incensed and trying to figure out her best comeback. I don’t give her the chance.

  “I’d like to enter my niece’s house.” I look past her into a vast open space of timber and glass soaring over the water.

  “Perfect,” Erin says without stepping aside. “Because I need to ask you a few questions.”

  I TAKE IN the dusty footprints all over the deep red cherry floors, the stacks of white Banker Boxes against a wall.

  Inside the living room the lamps are missing their mica shades, and the mission-style furniture has been carelessly rearranged, the cushions sloppily replaced. I notice the take-out coffee cups and crumpled food bags on top of tables and scattered over the hand-carved African mahogany fireplace mantel. Empty sugar packets and stirring sticks fill an art glass bowl I bought for Lucy in Murano. In the space of two short hours it looks as if a small army has been tromping through her Architectural Digest spread. The FBI is giving her the finger back. More precisely her former dorm mate is.

  “You can save any questions for Jill Donoghue,” I let Erin know. “She’ll be here soon. And in the world I come from?” I meet her cool customer stare. “We don’t eat or drink at scenes. We don’t bring in coffee, help ourselves to water or the bathroom. We certainly don’t leave our detritus. It looks like you’ve forgotten basic crime scene training, which is surprising since you’re married to a judge. You should know better than most that lapses in protocol can come back to haunt you in court.”

  “Please come in,” Erin says as if she lives here and I didn’t just say what I did.

  “I’m going to check on everyone.” Lucy starts to walk away.

  “Not so fast.” Erin lightly grips her arm.

  “You need to get your hands off me,” Lucy says quietly.

  “How’s your leg?” Erin asks me as she continues to hold on to Lucy’s arm only harder. “When I heard about it my first thought was how did you manage not to drown? And by the way, Zeb sends his regards.”