Depraved Heart

by Patricia Cornwell

  “We’ve got agents on location.”

  “Ernie wonders if there’s an area of the house we don’t know about that might explain some of the evidence we’re identifying. Your agents might want to look around the property for some area that isn’t readily visible,” I’m saying when his phone rings.

  “Yes,” he says and then he listens. “It has to be coming from somewhere,” he finally replies curtly, not particularly nicely.

  He gives the cross street address of where we are and ends the call.

  He turns to me and says, “We’ve got four agents there and all of them heard the same thing. Some weird slamming noise they can’t identify.”

  “Marino and I both heard something similar a number of times.” I continue checking my mirrors for the filthy smoke plume of a black powder bomb going off.

  I listen for an alert tone on the scanner that might indicate an emergency but I see and hear nothing that might hint at what’s happening with Marino. I keep telling myself he must be all right or I’d know. He must have drilled a decent-size hole by now and has the borescope’s long camera probe fed through so he can see what’s inside.

  “You mind swinging by there?” Benton asks and I don’t understand.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The Gilbert house. Let’s see what they’re talking about. The noise has to be coming from somewhere.”

  CHAPTER 47

  I TURN ON BINNEY STREET AS MORE MINUTES PASS. I’ve heard nothing about Marino and I can’t stand it.

  “What’s going on with him?” I ask Benton as we drive back toward the Harvard campus. “It shouldn’t take any time at all to know what’s inside the trunk. To thread the camera head through he’d need about nine or ten millimeters, a hole about that size which isn’t that big. He must know by now what’s inside,” I add and it hasn’t escaped my notice that I’m not hearing sirens.

  I’ve heard nothing on the scanner that might indicate Hyde has been found inside the trunk and a rescue squad is responding. I’ve heard not a peep from Rusty and Harold.

  “Lucy and Janet are safely out of their house,” Benton says, as if that’s what we’re talking about, and he’s skimming through messages on his phone, using some encrypted FBI app that allows him to communicate safely, privately. “I suggested the best place to drop them off for now is your office. I didn’t think they should be at our house yet or anywhere else until we have a better idea what’s going on.”

  “What about Desi and Jet Ranger?”

  “All of them are safe, Kay. I have a text from Janet. She says Desi and Jet Ranger will wait in your office. When you get there everybody will be waiting, and that’s a big relief to hear.”

  “It’s nice she texted you. She must know we’re together right now. Somehow.”

  “Why do you say it like that?” he asks as he stares straight ahead.

  “She didn’t text me. She must figure you’d tell me. Janet would know how worried I am,” I reply and Benton doesn’t answer. “It’s easy for me to forget that the two of you were friends before she knew Lucy. In fact you introduced them to each other.”

  “It was one of my better decisions.”

  “She signed up with the FBI because of you.”

  “And I’m very glad because she might not have met Lucy, and I’m not sure where we’d be right now if it wasn’t for Janet.”

  “And she’s texting you but not me.” I make that point again. “She hasn’t asked you to pass along to me that they’re okay, and that’s surprising because she knows what I’m feeling. I was on their property this morning. She’s aware of my concern to put it mildly.”

  “We’ve always had a special closeness.”

  “Even during the years they were broken up and out of contact.”

  “Janet kept up with her through me,” he says. “She’s always been Lucy’s biggest protector.”

  “Including now.”

  “Yes.” He looks at me. “It would be good if you’d leave it at that.”

  “I can’t possibly. I couldn’t help but notice that Janet seems very aware of the cameras inside their house, ’specially in the machine shop, where Lucy was removing tiles from the floor, pulling out rifles the FBI missed. I had a funny feeling Janet knew they were being filmed.”

  Benton doesn’t reply, and I hear Carrie’s voice in my mind. I see her gleaming eyes as she talks into the camera.

  And you know the evolutionary purpose of psychopathy now don’t you?

  “If I didn’t know better I’d think Janet was trying to hurt Lucy. Not help her,” I hear myself say to Benton as I remember the recordings I watched. “Because I’m not sure how it helps Lucy’s case if she’s caught on video obstructing justice, committing a felony.”

  “A video that could be very destructive if it ever became public,” Benton says. “The Democrats in particular don’t need to further inflame the NRA for example by showing two young women fearing for their lives and the life of their child because the FBI rolled in and took all of their guns for no good reason.”

  We’ve never had a substantive conversation. Not even a cordial one. And that’s shocking when one considers what you could learn from me.

  Carrie was talking to Benton. Long years ago she made the recordings with him in mind, and I say that to him as we drive through the Harvard campus, past the Yard with its old brick walls and wrought iron.

  “As I think back to everything I watched in her Depraved Heart secret recordings it makes sense that she was never talking on camera with me in mind,” I say to Benton. “She was talking to you.”

  “A supreme narcissist like that and she assumes I want to know the slightest detail about her.” He confirms he’s seen the recordings but there’s more to it than that.

  “YOU DID THIS. You and Janet.” I’m accusing Benton and at the same time I’m strangely relieved.

  I’ve been lied to for the best of reasons. Benton’s first loyalty is his family.

  “The two of you are trying to save our family and in doing so may get all of us destroyed.” I hope this is the truth.

  “I’m not going to get us destroyed, Kay,” he says. “Neither is Janet. And you need to leave it at that.”

  “And what about Lucy’s involvement? How much is she in on all of this, Benton?”

  “You need to leave it, Kay,” he says but I can’t.

  “You’ve created a record that you hope will clear Lucy’s name while showing that Erin Loria is a compromised agent who is trying to entrap her.” I glance over at him and my misgivings grow. “The recordings from 1997 are real and they aren’t.”

  “They’re edited.”

  “You turned them into fiction to manipulate.”

  “I turned them into what they needed to be. We’re in the next election cycle. The Bhutto story would be very unfortunate timing,” he says. “And it’s all the more believable because Janet is on film saying things that are unhelpful and damaging for Lucy. That’s what makes it authentic. Janet is saying things that could incriminate Lucy. But it won’t matter by the time the Bureau has to deal with the rest of it. The timing is terrible, and Carrie knew it would be when she tampered with records relating to the Bhutto case.”

  “For the FBI, for the current administration, yes, the timing is bad,” I reply. “But not for Carrie. She wouldn’t give a damn about what you just said beyond her ecstasy that she’s managed to orchestrate a disaster. So who put Janet up to filming what happened in their basement?”

  I think back to when I was inside Chanel Gilbert’s bedroom and realized Benton was standing in the doorway. I now have no doubt he was watching the same live-streaming video I was. He and Janet are partners. Lucy may be their partner too. The three of them are in on this and I’m the odd person out. Benton admits nothing but it’s making sense.

  “What about the other videos,” I then say, “the ones Carrie is supposedly responsible for? I just need you to say that you’re the reason for them—that you’re the one who ma
de sure they were sent to me.”

  “We have spousal privilege.” Benton looks at me. “We don’t ever mention this conversation. But yes. And Janet has been helping.”

  “And the timing of my getting these little cyber bombs that I was supposed to worry were from Lucy’s In Case of Emergency line? You must have planned this for quite a while and I’m trying to figure out the connection between your sending these to me and Chanel Gilbert’s ending up dead.”

  “Her murder is Carrie’s timing. Not ours,” Benton says. “But is there a connection? Yes. It would appear that she’s known for a while who and what Chanel Gilbert was. When you consider Carrie’s previous ties to Russia and what we know she was doing over there for at least the past decade? It’s no surprise that she would have encountered some of our people from the intelligence community.”

  “Were Carrie and Chanel personally involved?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “I assume you pulled the trigger on making sure the Depraved Heart videos were sent to me because you knew Lucy was getting raided this morning,” I then say and Benton doesn’t answer me. “I just need to know you had nothing to do with Chanel being killed …”

  “Jesus, Kay. Of course not.” He holds my stare and again says, “You need to leave it. Suffice it to say that the information in those recordings you’ve watched will derail what Erin Loria is trying to do to Lucy. And now is a good time to trust me. We shouldn’t talk about this anymore.”

  “Stupid me not to figure it out.” I turn the wipers off because the rain has almost stopped. “The red flag should have been that Carrie confessed she has a blood disorder, that she might have a physical impairment. I don’t have to be a profiler to intuit that she wouldn’t want to come across as weak. Not to me. But she couldn’t resist making such a confession to you.”

  “Transference. It’s not so different from what happens between a patient and a psychiatrist.”

  I look at him. “How long have you had these recordings. Benton?”

  “Pretty much since they were made.”

  “Lucy figured it out?”

  “Not at first. If you listen to them unedited Carrie refers to me by name. Not you.”

  “Then Lucy has seen them too. You, Janet and Lucy are all in this together. I thought so. Okay. At least I know.”

  A soupy grayness blurs lights and obliterates the tops of tall trees and buildings. Harvard Square is almost deserted and shrouded in fog.

  “I think it’s safe to say that all of us need to be in this together,” Benton replies.

  “The MP5K was a movie prop and the firearms reports linking it to an assassination were probably faked,” I then say. “And the videos as it turns out are propaganda …”

  “They’re not,” Benton interrupts. “The footage is genuine and Carrie did hide cameras in Lucy’s dorm room.”

  “You’ve had the recordings for seventeen years and suddenly decided to edit them into clips that were sent to me.” I follow the trail to where I’m sure it leads. “You’re using Carrie’s own covert recordings against her, and that presupposes she’s seen the Depraved Heart clips too.”

  “It’s safe to suppose that.”

  “Then that can mean only one thing. Carrie Grethen is into everything,” I say to Benton, and the Gilbert driveway is up ahead. “She’s seeing everything we do.”

  “Now you’re hitting the mother lode,” he says.

  “Data fiction.”

  “That’s what this is about,” he says. “That’s Carrie’s big coup. Yes she’s seeing and manipulating pretty much everything and has been for a while.”

  We bump and splash over the same old pavers, through the same deep standing water and puddles. I park behind three Bureau SUVs in the driveway, near the front of the house.

  “Do you have contact with your people?” I cut the engine. “Because in light of everything else let’s not venture inside until we know your agents are alive and well and accounted for.”

  I don’t need to repeat what happened in South Florida two months ago. I don’t need to find out the hard way that Carrie has killed our backups.

  “I’m giving you a heads-up that a couple of the same agents who were on Lucy’s property are here because of the presumed connection between Lucy and Chanel,” Benton says, and he goes on to explain that the four agents inside have spread out.

  Other than the peculiar thudding noise that sounds like a heavy door slamming they’ve found nothing unexpected. That’s what Benton says Erin Loria has reported to him, and we’re on the porch now. He tries the front door. It’s unlocked. The alarm system is disarmed. I hear a chirp as we open the door but it’s not the alarm system. It’s Benton’s phone.

  He looks at the display. He places his hand on my arm and shows me an image sent to him, a photograph the borescope took of the inside of the trunk. There’s nothing there but the usual police gear neatly stowed. I can make out a first aid kit, a roll of toilet paper, a stack of paper towels, spray bottles of all-purpose cleaner, Windex, jumper cables. Benton opens the door and we step inside the foyer, and the odor of decomposition is fainter now, and we hear the thud again.

  It’s muffled but loud. It’s what we’ve heard before, and then it happens another two times in rapid succession.

  BOOM! BOOM!

  A heavy slamming that sounds faintly metallic, and it seems louder than I remember it, as if the volume has been turned up. Benton and I look around. We don’t hear or see a sign of anyone. He reaches under his suit jacket and slides out his gun, and we walk through the foyer. We stop every few steps and listen, and as we get closer to the door that leads down into the basement I hear voices. Benton opens the door, and Erin Loria sounds distressed.

  CHAPTER 48

  THE FIRST SIGN OF TROUBLE IS THAT THE LIGHT over the stairs no longer works. I have a flashlight in my shoulder bag, and I dig for it and my nine mil as I hear Erin Loria yelling somewhere below us inside the pitch-dark cellar.

  “FBI! Come out now with your hands up in the air!”

  I paint the light on the stairs, on the cave-like walls, and at the bottom I try more light switches but they aren’t working either. If there are other agents inside the house there is no indication of it. I feel we are alone. I feel we have made what may prove to be the worst mistake of our lives.

  “FBI! Come out now with your hands up in the air!” Erin Loria’s voice is a recording, and then the sound again, the booming thud and it seems to be coming from the rear of the basement, past the bulkhead doors toward the back of the house. “FBI! Come out now with your hands up in the air!”

  Carrie is mocking us with a recording of Erin Loria reciting what sounds like a line from a campy cop movie. The FBI agents aren’t down here or if they are there’s no sign of it, and I realize as I shine the light around the empty cellar that we are where we’re supposed to be. We’re here as planned but not our plan. It’s her plan.

  “Stay right behind me,” Benton says under his breath.

  There is no other place for me to be. I can’t run and I can’t stand still in the dark while he walks around with his gun. Then the light touches an area of stone that is out of alignment with the wall around it, and this is deliberate too. I draw Benton’s attention to what appears to be a secret opening, and we walk toward it as the thudding sounds again, a heavy slamming as we get closer. Benton pushes the wall with his foot, and it moves, and the thudding sounds again as we find ourselves staring into the dark mouth of a tunnel that is very old, possibly as old as the house.

  I smell the stale cool air of a closed-up space, and I shine the light through the arched opening to the left of us. The boom sounds again and the tunnel lights up as if a bomb has gone off. Troy Rosado’s shrieks are drowned out by the sound, and it’s not possible he could be heard anywhere else in the house. He’s underground, chained by his wrists to iron rings in the wall. Another boom and a flash of glaring light, and I see his crazed eyes, his short dyed blond hair. He
’s naked except for a towel tied with rope around his narrow hips like a Tarzan loincloth.

  Dangling barely within reach is a malignant mobile comprised of a small green teddy bear …

  Mister Pickle.

  And a Swiss Army knife …

  The one from Lucy’s dorm room.

  There’s also a silver key, a bottle of water and a candy bar. They’re connected by bare copper wires that have been rigged in such a way as to shock Troy if he grabs for a drink or food or a way to free himself. More bare wires dangle from the ceiling and touch his head, shoulders and back like jellyfish tentacles, and I can smell his foulness as we get closer. In the background a stainless steel industrial freezer has glass panels on the double doors, and I can make out the units of blood inside hanging from racks, scores of pint bags, dark red and frozen.

  She’s been drawing her own blood.

  I notice a work area set up. Tools. A food processor. Empty glass bottles. Draped over an old wooden worktable is a pair of black silk pajama bottoms. A naked dress form mannequin on a metal stand looks like a faceless torso, and I see the silvery glint of mirrors everywhere.

  Troy makes a grunting noise as he suddenly lunges at the mobile. His spastic fingers graze the Swiss Army knife and it swings perilously as the thudding sounds and he screams and the light pops like a camera flash.

  “Troy?” I call out to him, and his eyes widen and he looks around in deranged fear.

  I know why we’ve been lured here. Carrie expects us to save him. But she will exact a price that I’m already deciding I won’t pay. He may be the only witness who can claim that Carrie is alive and responsible for what’s happening, and I feel certain that’s the choice I’m supposed to make. I need Troy for Lucy, and I can see Benton going into his mode like a fighter plane revving up for an air strike.

  “Troy? Over here. Turn around and look behind you.” It’s Benton talking to him now, and I touch his arm.

  “Benton, don’t.” The pressure in my grip communicates that he shouldn’t get any closer.