Depraved Heart

by Patricia Cornwell

  “It’s always the same damn no-win situation,” he says. “You can’t get hold of a cop and finally instigate a search? Then it turns out he’s watching TV somewhere and eating a Big Mac. Or he’s gotten drunk at lunch and is screwing his girlfriend.”

  “We can only hope that’s what it is.” I look out at the rain, at the roll of yellow tape in the flower bed.

  “You and me both.” Marino’s jaw muscles are flexing.

  “Maybe one of them was securing the property when the skies opened up and that’s why only the front steps have tape across them and the roll was left where it is. Maybe the person got out of here in a hurry. This is a very bad storm.”

  “Yeah it’s bad. But something’s not right.” Marino makes the understatement of the year. “First we think she’s an obvious accident. Now she’s a homicide and we can’t find her Range Rover and I don’t know where the hell my backup is. There should be two cruisers parked out here keeping an eye on the place. Hold on a second.”

  He tries another number.

  “Hey it’s me again back at the same address,” he says to whoever answers, a female I suspect based on his flirty tone. “Have any units been dispatched to the house here on Brattle since I left around ten-thirty hours? Specifically two-thirty-seven and one-ten? Anything from them?”

  Units 237 and 110 are Hyde and Lapin, I presume, and Marino meets my eyes and shakes his head.

  “Really? No contact at all? They haven’t responded to any radio calls in almost three hours? And they haven’t marked out of service or anything like that? Because that’s screwed up. They were coming back here from Dunkin’, were supposed to secure the perimeter and watch the place … Well the point being I need to talk to them, and I need to know who’s been on the property since I left. Okay? Get back to me as fast as you can.”

  I watch water boil on bricks. The billowing rain is almost horizontal.

  “You could ping their phones,” I suggest to him.

  “That requires a warrant.”

  “Not the way I’ve seen you do it.”

  “Let me see what Helen finds out.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “The dispatcher I was just talking to. Me and her have gone out a few times.”

  “I’m glad you have helpful friends. We need assurance that Hype and Lapin are safe.”

  “What I don’t want is to get them into trouble, Doc. And I could. Big trouble if they’re out of service without telling anyone and we ping on their phones and figure out where they are and it’s not related to their jobs.”

  “I don’t want any chance that they’re unsafe,” I repeat.

  “You think I do?”

  “Don’t take any risks, Marino. Not with her on the loose.” I don’t need to say Carrie Grethen’s name. He knows who I mean.

  “I get that and don’t think it’s not entering my mind. But it’s serious shit when you sound the alert and every cop in northeastern Massachusetts starts looking for someone. I’m not ready to do that yet,” he says. “There’s not enough of a reason. Some cops are bad about the radio and don’t always answer their phones or get back to you right away and there could be a lot of reasons why. But you don’t call out the troops unless you’re sure. And I’m not. There’s probably a good explanation.”

  “I’m sure there is. But don’t assume it’s good. Do we have reason to think someone else might have had access to the Range Rover?” I ask. “What about the housekeeper? Elsa Mulligan I believe you said is her name? Is it possible she moved it for some reason?”

  “She’d better not have.”

  “Does she impress you as someone who might do something like that? Based on what you’ve been told?”

  “Hyde talked to her for only a few minutes, and I didn’t talk to him long when you and me first got there. But I remember he said right off she was really upset and he told her to go on home and we’d sit down with her later. He felt bad for her. Probably because she’s nice-looking.”

  I remember Marino in the kitchen with Hyde after we first got here early this morning. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was in the foyer with the body. I was busy.

  “He said she’s nice-looking?”

  “Nice body. Pretty face with funky short black hair and big dark-framed glasses. He said she looked very Hollywood.”

  “I thought you said she’s from New Jersey.”

  “It was Hyde’s opinion that she looked Hollywood. That’s what he said.”

  “Did she understand she wasn’t to touch or disturb anything or return here until you said it was all right?” I then ask.

  “What’s the matter? You think I forgot how to do my job?” He stares straight ahead as rain slaps the windshield.

  “You know I don’t think that.”

  “I made it clear to her not to touch anything or step foot here until I told her otherwise.” He’s busy with his phone again, his thumbs typing fast.

  “That doesn’t mean she obeyed your directive,” I reply. “Maybe there were items inside the house that she wanted to retrieve or tuck out of sight. Or she might have feared that once the mother gets here there’s no chance of getting back inside. People do all sorts of seemingly irrational or unwise things when there’s a sudden death. Most of the time they don’t mean to make our jobs harder. They don’t mean to cause trouble.”

  “Why do I feel like you’re lecturing me right now?”

  “You feel that way because you’re frustrated. You feel powerless and that makes you angry and impatient. Understandably.”

  “It’s not understandable because I don’t feel that way. I’m sure as hell not powerless. The other day at my gym I deadlifted three-fifty. That’s not exactly powerless.”

  “Of course that’s not what I’m talking about.” I don’t react to his rudeness and silly macho boasts. “I have no question about how physically strong you are. This isn’t about how much iron you can lift.”

  I open my door and the sound of splashing water is much louder.

  CHAPTER 30

  COLD RAIN LASHES MY FACE AND SOAKS MY HAIR and clothes as I step out of the truck.

  My attention returns to the flower bed, to the roll of bright yellow tape. I head there automatically like a divining rod, and the wind rushing around the eaves makes a whistling howl that is unearthly and foreboding.

  I crouch down by the wooden bulkhead doors, painted the same dusky blue as the house, pitched at a steep angle and bordered in old bricks. Rain coldly smacks the top of my head and back. What feels like buckets of water splash around my soaked black nylon boots as I look around at broken purple asters, at brown-eyed Susans that have been flattened and bruised. My opinion doesn’t change.

  Someone began securing the perimeter and got as far as the front railing and then stopped. For some reason this person left the roll of tape in the flower bed next to the bulkhead doors. They’re closed tightly but I can’t tell if they’re locked. I contemplate my next move as the wind moans in a lower octave.

  I don’t want to nudge or touch the doors with my boots or bare hands, and I pick up a branch snapped off by the storm. I hold it by its broken end, poking the tip through the steel handles. I try lifting. The doors don’t budge. I shout this to Marino as he slogs toward me in the deluge.

  “A key lock versus a padlock,” I explain over the driving rain. “Someone may have been using these doors to enter the lower area of the house. The flowers have been crushed and gouged as if someone was stepping on them. When you were in the basement earlier did you notice if these doors might have been accessed recently?”

  “Nothing much down there and nothing caught my eye.” He looms over me, his hands on his hips. Water streams down his shaved head, and his shoes are beginning to squish. “If it was Hyde who came back here with the tape? What made him walk over here and step all over a bunch of flowers?”

  “It would seem that someone did. That much we can say.” I return to the back of the truck, and the water is al
ready inches deep in low-lying areas of the lawn and walkway.

  “And then he got interrupted?” Marino squishes and splashes after me. “Now nobody can find him or his police car?”

  “As I’ve suggested maybe you should ping his phone.” I try the tailgate’s double doors.

  They’re locked just as I thought they would be. I find the right key, and my fingers are wet and slick. I open up the back. Lights automatically blink on and I smell the fresh citrus scents of the disinfectant and bleach we use to wash our transport vehicles. I mandate that we scrub and decontaminate them until they’re clean enough to eat in although I don’t mean it literally. I scan for the source of the mysterious clanking.

  I don’t see anything that could account for it. The diamond-plate steel floor is empty and spotless, shining like a new dime. The scene cases, the storage chests and cabinets are tightly buttoned exactly as I left them. Fire extinguishers, chemical cabinets and large tools such as rakes, shovels, an axe and bolt cutters are bracketed to the sides. Nothing is loose, not the laptops, not the camera and forensic light equipment, not the remote controls for the multiple flat-screen displays that constitute what I consider my mobile office. I have everything I need in here including communication technology that allows me to work while away from the CFC for the better part of a day as I am right now.

  I climb up on the tailgate slowly, awkwardly, careful with my leg, dripping water as I walk around inside making a hollow thudding sound on the steel flooring. I search the rear area where the noise seemed to come from while I was driving, my attention fixing on the built-in workstation and a swivel chair secured to the floor with fasteners. On top of the desk are a computer tower and flat-panel monitors with tough polyurethane covers and screen protectors. On either side are watertight rustproof storage cabinets.

  I open the one on my right. Nothing unusual, just a printer in the pull-out tray and under it reams of paper. I pause for a moment when Marino’s phone rings. It’s the dispatcher, the one named Helen.

  “Okay. Like we thought. That’s too bad. Nope. Me too. Still waiting,” Marino says to her. “If I don’t hear anything soon I’ll let you know. Thanks again.”

  His phone is in a waterproof tactical case that he clips to the waistband of his soaking wet cargo shorts.

  “No luck,” he says to me. “No earlier radio traffic about any units responding here after you and me left midmorning. And nothing about the Range Rover. If we don’t get some sort of idea of what’s happened to Lapin and Hyde we’ll put it out over the air.”

  “She’s trying to raise them on the radio and neither of them are answering.” I summarize as I find what I’m looking for in the cabinet on my left.

  “Another few minutes and nothing from them? And we pull the trigger.”

  “You might want to pull it now,” I tell him.

  THE POLISHED COPPER rod is approximately three feet long and the thickness of a pencil.

  It rests against stacks of blue towels, and an alarm is sounding in a remote part of my brain. I notice a stiff yellowish fringe on one end and what looks like a claw of bent razor blades on the other. I bend down to get a better look and detect the acrid pungent stench of decomposing flesh. I begin opening drawers until I find a box of gloves.

  “What is it?” Marino watches from outside the open tailgate as he’s blasted by rain and wind. “What did you find?”

  “Give me a minute.” I put on gloves and a face shield. “There’s something here that certainly shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m coming up.”

  “No. It’s best you stay where you are.”

  I print a label for the white plastic ruler I’ll use as a scale, and I take photographs without touching or disturbing anything. Then I reach inside the cabinet and pick up an arrow that’s unlike one I’ve ever seen before. It isn’t functional. I can’t imagine how it can be. What bow could fire a solid copper arrow that weighs as much as a pound? Were it even possible what would be the reason?

  I hold it up in my gloved hands and inspect reddish-brown stains on the damaged three-bladed broadhead tip and the elaborately engraved polished shaft. I turn the arrow in my fingertips. The stench is from the fletching, which isn’t made of feathers.

  “What the hell?” Marino is about to climb inside anyway and I again tell him no.

  “The back of this truck has just become part of a crime scene,” I say to him. “We’re going to have to treat it like that at any rate.”

  “What crime scene?” The look on his face is fierce. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I don’t know yet,” I reply as I watch it settle over him, one thing turning into another and going from ugly to unthinkable.

  “Copperhead.” He repeats the nickname that has stuck in the media, the nickname of a monster we know is Carrie. “Copper bullets. Now a copper arrow.”

  The splashing, the constant drumming on the metal roof are very loud and I have to yell when I explain that the arrow’s broadhead tip is a mechanical game point. It expands on contact rather much the way a hollowpoint bullet does. The goal is to inflict catastrophic injuries, to kill quickly, mercifully.

  “Except as you well know bow hunting arrows typically are constructed of extremely lightweight carbon fiber,” I add. “The fletching or vanes meant to stabilize the arrow in flight are usually real feathers, occasionally synthetic. But not whatever this bristly material is.”

  It’s about an inch long, pale blond and toothbrush-firm as if it’s been varnished. I find a hand lens and a flashlight to get a better look at what could be pieces of a pelt. Not animal but human, and in bright light and magnification I see dirt, fibers and other debris including granules of what looks like black sugar.

  I see remnants of glue where the three thin strips of leathery backing have been attached to notches machined into the copper shaft. I think of mummified human scalps, and I have a strong suspicion about what this is as I cover a countertop with blue towels. I place the arrow on them. The razor-sharp broadhead has been deployed. The reddish-stained blades are bent backward, as if the arrow penetrated a target and was forcibly pulled out. Carrie has hurt or killed someone else. I can’t possibly know this for a fact. Yet I have no doubt and it’s not coincidental that I can’t conduct a simple and quick presumptive test for hemoglobin. Copper is an impossible problem and very little is random with Carrie.

  I remember the way she used to look at me coldly and with calculation during our encounters at Quantico. No matter what I said about science, medicine, law or anything at all she always acted as if she were better informed on the subject. I felt she was judging me, looking for anything that might verify her superiority. She was competitive. She was jealous and impossibly arrogant. She was extraordinarily knowledgeable, charming when she chose to be, and one of the brightest people I’ve ever met. I know her patterns. I know them as well as she knows mine.

  She’s creating situations and then sabotaging any effort I might expend in response, and copper is part of her plan. I saw in the videos that she believes copper has healing if not magical properties. She would also be aware that it creates chaos at crime scenes. The reagent phenolphthalein plus a drop or two of hydrogen peroxide will instantly turn a swab bright pink no matter what chemical or material is present. In the typical presumptive blood test, copper tops the list of substances that react with a false positive.

  In other words I’ll definitely get a confirmation. It could be correct. It could be misleading, and that’s Carrie’s unique gift. She creates confusion, false hope, wrong turns, seeming impossibilities, and is supremely skilled at curdling one’s deductive skills, of foiling science and procedures. She revels in upending our routines and training on their heads, and I feel as if she’s inside the truck with me. I know without empirical proof that what I’m thinking will be validated soon enough. There’s no point in denying that the disasters of the day all come from the same single source.

  Carrie has been here. She might be here right now for all we kn
ow, and I explain this to Marino as he waits in the downpour, standing there stoically because he has no place else to go unless he sits inside the cab. He won’t. He’ll wait. I feel him watching me cut and fold heavy white paper. He can’t be as certain as I am because he hasn’t seen the videos and doesn’t know about them. But I can imagine his thoughts as I seal my package with red evidence tape that I initial and date. He stares mutely at me with his head bent in the heavy rain. His darkening mood is palpable.

  “Are you sure it couldn’t have been in there for a while?” he finally asks. “Maybe from some other case and it got left in there somehow. Or maybe it’s a joke. Someone’s sick joke.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “As a heart attack.”

  “It’s not from some other case and it’s certainly not a joke. At least not something a normal person would consider a joke.” I dig into my pants pocket for the nitrile-cocooned metamaterial I found on Lucy’s property.

  “I’m grasping at straws because I don’t want to believe it,” he says.

  “I don’t want to believe it either,” I agree.

  “How the hell did it get inside the truck?”

  “I don’t know but that’s where it was.”

  “And you’re thinking it’s her.”

  “What do you think, Marino?”

  “Jesus. How the hell could she get inside your truck? Let’s start with that. One thing at a time.”

  “Someone put the arrow inside the cabinet to the left of the desk. It’s a fact. It didn’t get there on its own. That’s what I can tell you without reservation.” I label a plastic evidence bag with the time and location of when and where I found the tiny quartz-like hexagon that I tucked inside the finger of a glove.

  “What are we talking about? A fucking Houdini?” Marino is angry and foul because he’s unnerved, and his eyes are everywhere, his right hand down by the holstered .40 caliber Glock on his hip.