Flesh and Blood: A Scarpetta Novel (Scarpetta Novels Book 22)

by Patricia Cornwell

  No words will turn away wrath and I put the CFC on alert the moment I was informed that he was coming to the Boston area. I’m not an alarmist and heads of state visiting here is common but it’s stressful when there’s so little notice in advance. Despite my close ties with the Armed Forces Medical Examiners and the Department of Defense I knew nothing until two days ago, my ultimate boss General John Briggs calling late Tuesday with a Homeland Security Advisory, high risk he said.

  “Think of it as orange,” he told me, “but as far as the public goes it’s the usual yellow.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “A confidential report out of Russia,” he said. “Their commitment to destroy al-Qaeda after terrorist operations in Volgograd just before the Olympics. Plus what’s going on in Crimea and the threat that certain stealth special operatives may go rogue.”

  “Certain ones?”

  “The worry that when Yanukovych fled Ukraine there may have been an exodus of extremely dangerous special ops who were loyal to his presidency.”

  “May have been?”

  “CIA ambiguity about money, drugs and thugs flowing into this country. Then there’s the Russian problem in Boston.”

  He meant the Chechen accused of the marathon bombings. Briggs’s warnings weren’t necessarily unexpected but they are more alarming than usual and as I say this to Marino I continue to replay what has happened today. I have an uneasy feeling it’s somehow related to everything else going on, and if that turns out to be true we have a very big problem, perhaps a global one.

  “Except the two cases in New Jersey,” he reminds me as we sit in traffic. “How do they fit with Obama being here and whatever’s going on in Ukraine?”

  “We need to find out if Bloom is connected to some extremist group,” I suggest.

  “Extremist greedy assholes comes to mind.” Marino glowers at cars not going anywhere. “I wish we had Lucy’s helicopter right about now.”

  HIS ROUTE IS A maze as he depends on a phone app to avoid gridlock.

  We’ve been moving very slowly, at times barely a crawl or not at all. In Chinatown, then Boston’s North End and we wound around the TD Garden, home of the Celtics and the Bruins. On Nashua Street crowded parking lots spread out on either side of us, then the Charles River Dam, now the Museum of Science, a COLOSSAL FOSSIL exhibit announced on banners draping the building.

  Sunlight flickers on the river like a vast school of small silver fish, and in the distance the cables of the Zakim Bridge soar like Old Ironsides’ rigging. I pay close attention to where we are and what’s around us, checking my side mirror and keeping up my scan. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rand Bloom is brazen enough to follow us, and I try to imagine exactly what he wants beyond making people uncomfortable. Miserable and extremely unsettled in fact, like Joanna Cather, like Sarah Angiers and in his mind me.

  I’ll never give him the satisfaction and he should have known that when I was standing on the street looking him in the eye, assuming he didn’t already know it before this afternoon. He promised he’d see me around as if that would frighten me, and I smiled and said fine. Maybe he’d like another restraining order or trespassing charge I let him know. Better yet if he shows up at my headquarters uninvited my security will give him a welcome he won’t forget.

  I didn’t mention he doesn’t want to tangle with my FBI husband or me on our private property, and that he’d be extremely wise not to come anywhere near my niece Lucy, former FBI and ATF, run off the job because of insubordination and a few bad kills. She is quite skilled with a gun and for better or worse it’s in her DNA not to be bothered by much, doesn’t care or feel remorse if she decides an action is just.

  I didn’t need to outright threaten Bloom for him to get the point, and when he drove away from the house on Gallivan it was with an angry squeal that left skid marks on the pavement. A sign of weakness I thought as I watched. But I won’t underestimate him. He’d be wise not to underestimate me either.

  “He knew me on sight but that’s not the most important issue. I got the feeling he expected I’d show up with you,” I emphasize to Marino, who seems unmoved by what I’m saying.

  “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me you’ve got a place in Miami.” Suddenly he is stuck on that instead.

  “As I’ve mentioned several times now, I just found out about it yesterday.”

  “But you’ve known for a while you were going down there on vacation.”

  “Yes, for my birthday. I thought we were staying in a hotel,” I reply and I’ve said that several times too.

  Marino is digging. For what, I’m not sure. He’s acting cavalier but something is gnawing at him as he fixates on Florida where he briefly lived when I had an office there years ago. As is true with most people, he remembers the good parts, and I listen to him while I skim through messages from my office. They land as fast as I can look at them, the most recent one from Luke Zenner.

  There was nothing unexpected in Jamal Nari’s autopsy except the gastric contents are interesting. It’s in Luke’s preliminary report, which he’s just completed and is happy to discuss, and whenever he uses the word interesting what he means is peculiar. There was something inside the stomach that he didn’t expect, and I wonder what it was. My deputy chief is too savvy to put details in an electronic communication, unlike Liz Wrighton, unlike Bryce Clark.

  Left for the day, Liz has let me know. Thick headed again, can hardly think & keep blowing my nose & coughing my brains out, she feels compelled to describe, and I wish she would spare me details that a defense attorney would love to use against her. It wouldn’t be helpful if a jury hears that she wasn’t thinking clearly if at all when she did the ballistics analysis in this case. And then there’s Bryce. He truly is impossible, hailing me as he often does with his Earth 2 Dr. Scarpetta salutations that make me sound like an eccentric or a space cadet.

  R U ever coming to the office 2day? he writes in his increasingly abbreviated text language, and not a minute later another message lands. OK U’ve left me no choice. The cat’s coming out of the bag. Some of YR very loyal staff R hanging around 2 surprise U. They got cannolis from Mike’s.

  Why? I write back.

  Hello? YR birthday?

  That’s very kind but please don’t have people wait for me.

  I should tell them that?

  Of course, I answer.

  Do U C that’s hurtful?

  “No matter what I do,” I mutter.

  “What?” Marino asks and I tell him and he replies, “I get what he’s saying. People want you to care that they would wait. If it makes you happy it makes them feel good.”

  “What it will make me feel is bad. I’m quite sure most of my staff would like to go home to their friends and family, to enjoy what little bit of the day is left. Do you know what jewelry mix is?” I’m reading something else on my phone.

  “Stainless steel shot used in a tumbler,” Marino says. “It’s different shapes and sizes. Lucy uses it sometimes when she hand-loads ammo. Why?”

  “Ernie Koppel.” I’m hearing from my most senior trace evidence examiner now.

  Usually by late afternoon I’ve made evidence rounds, stopping in various labs, checking on the status of cases in the works. But I’m trapped in a car because the president of the United States is here, and his presence is like a wildfire that spreads whichever way he goes, shutting down highways, thoroughfares, private air traffic and businesses within a wide radius. But life and death always go on at the CFC and scientists such as Ernie are briefing me. Their narratives aren’t detailed but they’re enough to give me a hint about developments I should follow up on.

  “He got the frag and the mysterious intact bullet from Liz before she left for the day, and he’s looked at photographs from the New Jersey cases,” I inform Marino. “There’s microscopic pitting that he associates with jewelry mix. He
says the pitting on everything is consistent.”

  Ernie doesn’t say it’s the same but that’s what he’s suggesting, I explain. He’s implying the copper bullets that struck Jamal Nari and the ones that killed two other people were polished in a tumbler—possibly the same tumbler with the same medium, jewelry mix that was placed inside the barrel. As it rotated over a period of hours or days, the friction caused by the steel shot removed oxidation and polished the metal. Ernie suspects the final part of the process was the use of a cloth, a manual buffing, and there’s also unique machining on the intact bullet that I’ll want to see.

  “And I remind you that Benton says the pennies may have been polished in a tumbler,” I add.

  “Bling,” Marino says.

  CHAPTER 17

  BLING?” I ASK.

  “A fanatic who treats his hand loads like jewelry. I know guys like that, snipers, competition shooters, Jack Kuster for example. When they eject cartridge cases they never let them hit the ground. As fast as lightning, snapping open the bolt, catching their brass like that.” Marino’s hand snakes out from the steering wheel as if grabbing a moth from the air. “Considering the type of rifle being used, it’s to be expected.”

  “A perfectionist,” I comment as more helicopters thud-thud, three monster Super Stallions, triple turbine engines, seven bladed.

  Marino cocks his head, looking up. “Is there an invasion going on that nobody’s told us about? I think we already know this person is a perfectionist.”

  “We probably did but everything else we’re finding out is only making matters worse,” I comment. “More dangerous,” I add. “That’s what worries me considerably. Who is it and why? And who is he going to kill next?”

  “In cases like this it would be the rule and not the exception that the person is meticulous, even OCD. A precision shooter who might have a smart rifle. This is someone who’s got his own shop filled with gunsmithing tools,” Marino replies as if he’s not surprised and has no doubt. “And I’ve said it before this homicide. I’ve said it about the two in Jersey.”

  “What about the frag from those? Before now was there a suggestion that a tumbler was used?”

  “There was so little left.”

  “Well if anybody could figure it out, Ernie would.” He’s one of the best microscopists I’ve ever worked with.

  “We were lucky. Especially with the bullet that’s mostly intact. Like winning the lottery,” Marino says. “Maybe that’s your birthday present from the universe. I’m trying to remember how old you are.”

  “I wouldn’t waste any mental energy on it.”

  “You look good, Doc. Considering.”

  “That’s nice to hear. I’ll ignore the considering part of it.”

  “Seriously. When you think about where you work? No sunlight, it’s cool. Maybe a constant exposure to formalin fumes. They preserve tissue so it doesn’t decompose, right? And that’s what aging is.” He replays my own joke to me. “You start decomposing, things start dying off, skin, muscle, hair. That’s what they say. The minute you’re born you start dying. Who would think it? That a morgue might be the Fountain of Youth.”

  “That’s my line you’ve just stolen. And you’ve managed to make me depressed,” I say distractedly, a visceral uneasiness simmering.

  I’m familiar with shooting aficionados who tumble cartridge cases before hand-loading ammunition. Lucy, for example. She has an indoor firing range and hand-loads her own ammo in a shop that has equipment worthy of an armory, including tumblers, all different sizes. But I’ve never heard of someone tumbling bullets. Brass cartridge cases, yes, but the actual projectiles, no, and then I wonder how the person did it. Were there separate tumblers or did he polish the entire cartridge he’d hand-loaded and -tooled?

  We need to talk, I write to Ernie. How long will you be in the lab?

  A while. FTIR next. On a roll.

  He’s using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, different frequencies of light to analyze a trace amount of a sample. FTIR doesn’t digest or destroy evidence the way gas or liquid chromatography do, and I wonder what he suspects. Possibly a chemical, and I think of my niece again and what she’s learned from me. Flitz tarnish remover has been around forever and is my cure-all for rust, corrosion, calcium deposits and stains. I use it at home on copper, brick, terra-cotta, aluminum and even glass. I’ve seen cans of Flitz in Lucy’s machine shop. That’s what she uses when she hand-polishes metal with a cloth.

  “Miami? Huh.” Marino is obsessing about Florida again. “Don’t get some bright idea about moving back down there. You should have told me about the new place.”

  “I thought we were staying at a resort. Benton made the arrangements. The condo was a surprise. I’ve seen pictures, that’s all, and I don’t know why it matters. Your concern at the moment should be that a thug of an insurance investigator seems to be a common denominator in a number of things going on.”

  “He has nothing to do with New Jersey. With those cases,” Marino says.

  “Are you certain of that? What about the victims’ insurance policies? Any chance their carrier was TBP?”

  “Before now I’d never heard of Bloom. I’m not aware of any insurance stuff in connection with the Jersey shootings.”

  “You’d better ask.”

  “It’s a damn good thing you’re my partner or I wouldn’t know how to act.”

  “I’m your partner because you’ve held me hostage all day.”

  “Obama has.”

  “Not earlier.”

  “We do good working together, truth is.”

  “We always did,” I reply.

  “So I’ll double-check about the Jersey cases but I think Bloom’s a peripheral pain in the ass, a red heron.” Marino means a red herring. “Some of the stuff with him is coincidental and we shouldn’t be distracted by it.”

  I DON’T AGREE THAT Rand Bloom’s turning up everywhere is coincidental. That doesn’t mean I’m suggesting he’s a serial killer, I explain. But I’m close to insisting he’s a common thread somehow.

  “It’s probably going to take Lucy to figure out exactly what that thread is,” I say to Marino as we come to a complete stop again.

  “It’s my case and I don’t want anyone asking her to hack,” he answers. “Taking Storrow Drive was a mistake.”

  “Driving anywhere today was a mistake.”

  In the past ten minutes we’ve gone not even half a mile, and I look out at trees along the river, and ahead of us an endless line of cars, heat rising from them, sunlight blanking out glass.

  “I would never ask Lucy to hack.” I don’t add that Marino doesn’t hesitate to help himself to anything she offers as long as no one finds out. “In general I avoid asking people to break the law, especially if they’re family,” I add ironically.

  “Would Janet and her go with you?” Marino asks.

  “Excuse me?” I look at him and his face is somber. He’s not joking.

  “It’s always a good idea if I know what’s going on with you, Doc. If you’re thinking of retiring in Miami, I should know.”

  “Retiring?”

  “You could. It’s not like you and Benton need the money.”

  “I didn’t become a forensic pathologist with a law degree for the money. That’s not my motivation.”

  “You and him don’t have to work another day in your lives if you don’t want to. Unlike the rest of us, not including Lucy who’s probably on the Forbes List.”

  “I don’t think so but it’s not something I check.”

  “I’d like to be rich even for a week. Just to know what it feels like not to worry about which bill to pay or whether I can afford to trade in my bike for a newer one.”

  “Fundamental problems are the same for everyone,” I reply as we move ahead again, then stop again. “Life, death, sickness, diets
, relationships, bills that need to be paid. And if you need something, Marino, you know you can ask.”

  “I don’t need anything. Wanting stuff is another matter. If I had the money for sure I’d have a place in the Keys, get a boat, a trailer for my bike and travel. Take it easy, nothing hanging over my head but an awning on my back porch.”

  “You’d be bored in five minutes.”

  “Probably.”

  “I have no intention of retiring or quitting any time soon if ever,” I tell him. “But thank you for implying I’m nonessential and old. That’s the best birthday present you could give me.”

  “What I’m implying is you’ve been doing this for a while and I wouldn’t blame you for being sick of dealing with dead people and dirtbags. Plus Miami’s where you’re from so even if you don’t want to cash it in,” he adds as if I’m dying, “maybe you’d just rather spend your days around palm trees and sunshine.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “Plus you’re good pals with the chief in Broward right next door in Lauderdale,” he says. “And you teach forensic investigation classes down there three or four times a year. You like South Florida.”

  “I like a lot of places.”

  Marino wedges his SUV between two cars, changing lanes as if it will matter. It doesn’t. It just pisses people off.

  “Why would you bring up something like that?” I ask.

  “Because you never know what people are going to do. One day they’re your best friend. The next they’re a stranger or your enemy. They put you in a situation where there’s no right choice if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “So which is worse?” he asks. “To betray someone or let him get away with something he shouldn’t?”

  “Both are worse. Are you talking about me? Did I do something I don’t know about?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. You never know about anyone.”