Red Mist

by Patricia Cornwell

  “After they broke up, Jaime started dating men, including that guy from NBC, Baker Thomas.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “I still got friends at NYPD. When I went to see Jaime a couple of months back, I hooked up with a few of them and heard stuff. Point is, you think she could be more obvious? Going out with a TV correspondent who’s considered one of New York’s most eligible bachelors. Even though I got my theory about him. It’s not an accident he’s never been married. Lucy used to see him in the Village in the kind of bars Bryce would like.”

  The Coastal Regional Crime Laboratory is tucked in trees and surrounded by a high privacy fence topped by anti-climb spikes. A metal gate bars the entrance, and to the left of it is a camera mounted on top of an intercom.

  “What time is Jaime supposed to meet us?” I ask.

  “She thought it would be good to give you a chance to look through the cases first.”

  “You’ve talked to her today?”

  “Not yet. But that’s the plan.”

  “I see. I go through them first, and she doesn’t need to show up until it suits her, if she bothers at all.”

  “Depends on what you find. I’m supposed to call her. Damn, this place has almost as much security as we do.”

  “Hate crimes,” I comment. “Years and years of them, going back to when the lab was first built. Colin’s been quite vocal about it. One case in particular that was all over the news when we had the office in Charleston. You might remember it.”

  Marino slows down and eases the van up to the intercom. “Lanier County, Georgia. African American named Roger Mosbly, a retired schoolteacher engaged to a white woman,” I continue. “He was driving home late at night, and as he pulled into his driveway, two white men stepped out in front of his car.”

  Marino reaches his arm out the window. He presses the intercom button, and it buzzes loudly.

  “They beat him to death with bottles and a baseball bat, and there was pressure behind the scenes for Colin to help the defense make their case that it was a fair fight,” I say. “Road rage. Mosbly started it, even though the defendants had no injuries and he had an abundance of abrasions and bruises to show they tried to drag him out of his car while he still had his seat belt on.”

  “White supremacist Nazi asswipes,” Marino says.

  “Threats were made because Colin told the truth, and shortly before the trial, the lab’s front windows were shot out one night. After that, the fence went up.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who would want someone executed for a crime they didn’t commit.” Marino presses the intercom button again.

  “If he were that kind of person, his place wouldn’t need all this security.” I don’t add that Jaime Berger has misjudged Colin Dengate, that she has misrepresented him. I don’t remind Marino yet again that this lawyer he thinks it would be wonderful to work with has self-serving agendas and really isn’t honest or kind.

  A woman’s voice sounds through the speaker: “May I help you?”

  “Dr. Scarpetta and Investigator Marino here to see Dr. Dengate,” he announces, as I check my iPhone for messages.

  Benton and Lucy just landed in Millville, New Jersey, for fuel, Lucy wrote eleven minutes ago. They’re making terrible time, with strong winds gusting out of the southwest, right on their nose, and there’s a message from Benton that is disturbing:

  D.K. no longer at Butler. Will let you know more when I do. Advise caution.

  A loud humming as the metal gate slowly slides open on a track across asphalt, and I see the stucco-and-brick lab building, one story but sprawling. Parked in the front lot are white SUVs with the GBI gold-and-blue crest on their doors, and the white Land Rover with an Army-green canvas roof that Colin Dengate has driven for as long as I’ve known him.

  “You going to tell Dr. Dengate about the new DNA results?” Marino asks, and I’m thinking about what Benton just wrote. That’s all I can think about.

  Flags hang limply from poles, not a breath of air stirring, and the walkway is lined with red-flowering bottlebrush shrubs that hummingbirds love, sprinklers watering them, nozzles spraying at the edge of the grass. We park in a visitor’s space in front of ground-level reflective windows that are bullet- and shatter-resistant and designed to withstand the force of a terrorist blast, and the only thing on my mind is that Dawn Kincaid has escaped from Butler State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

  If it’s true, someone else will die. Maybe more than one person. I’m sure of it. She is shockingly clever. She is sadistic, and has managed to get what she wants all of her blighted predatory life, and no one has stopped her. No one ever has, including me. I slowed her down, but I certainly didn’t stop her, and the only reason I’m still here is luck. A mist from the sprinklers touches my face, and I remember the mist of her blood. I remember the taste of salt and iron inside my mouth, on my teeth, on my tongue. A bloody fog on my face, in my eyes, in my hair. Tara Grimm suggested that Kathleen Lawler might be getting out of prison early. It enters my mind that Dawn Kincaid is planning to come down here.

  “Hey? You look like you seen a ghost.”

  I realize Marino is talking to me.

  “I’m sorry,” I reply, as I slide open the van’s back door.

  “You going to tell him about the DNA?” he asks again.

  “No, absolutely not. It’s not for me to tell. I’d rather review the cases as if I know nothing. I intend to keep an open mind.” I retrieve dripping bottles of water from the cooler. “I don’t know when you put ice in this thing,” I add. “But if you want to brew tea, we probably could.”

  “At least it’s wet.” He takes a bottle from me.

  “I’ll be right in. I need to make a phone call.” I step into the hot shade of a tree and call Benton, hoping he and Lucy haven’t taken off yet.

  “I’m glad you’re still there,” I say with feeling when he answers. “Sorry about the wind. I’m sorry I asked you to come to Savannah and it’s proving to be such an ordeal.”

  “The wind is the least of my worries. It’s just slow. You all right?”

  “Not dressed for this weather.”

  “Getting a shot of coffee while Lucy pays for fuel. Christ, it’s hot as hell in New Jersey, too.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t have anything official and probably shouldn’t get you worried when it might not be a problem. But I know what she’s like and capable of, and so do you. She managed to convince guards and other personnel at Butler that she needed to go to the hospital, to the ER.”

  “For what?”

  “She has asthma.”

  “If she didn’t before, I’m sure she does now,” I say, with a flare of anger.

  “Jack had it, and in all fairness, asthma can be inherited.”

  “Malingering and more manipulations.” I don’t feel like being fair.

  “She was transported by ambulance around seven this morning. A contact of mine at Butler who’s not involved in her case and has no direct information heard about it and left me a message about half an hour ago. I’m really glad you’re a thousand miles away, but be careful. This makes me nervous. I don’t trust it.”

  “Understandable, considering who we’re talking about.” Sweat is running down my chest and my back, the air stagnant and thick like steam. “She’s still in custody, right?”

  “I assume so, but I don’t have details.”

  “You assume it?”

  “Kay, all I know is they’ve transported her to MGH, and this happened very recently. It’s not like we can go barging in questioning her when she’s in the middle of an alleged medical problem. She has her rights.”

  “Of course she does. More than the rest of us.”

  “Knowing her capabilities and skill at manipulating, of course I’m concerned this is a ploy, a scheme,” Benton says.

  “They can’t possibly have a clue what they’ve got on their hands.” I mean that Massachusetts General Ho
spital can’t.

  “If nothing else, this may be another ruse on the part of her lawyers to garner sympathy or imply she’s being mistreated or to add to this bullshit about the damage you’ve caused to her mental health, her physical health. Asthma’s made worse by stress.”

  “The damage I’ve caused?” I think about what Jaime said last night.

  “The obvious case she’s making.”

  “I didn’t know you thought she had a case.”

  “I’m saying she’s making one. I didn’t say she has one or that I think she does. You sound really upset.”

  “If you knew she was trumping up a case against me,” I reply, “it would have been helpful if you’d told me.”

  I feel shaky inside as I remember Marino’s accusation that my own husband knows I’m under investigation. How could he live in the same house with me and know such a thing, and why did he let me walk out alone that night, as if Benton doesn’t care. As if I mean nothing to him. As if he doesn’t love me. Marino and his jealousy,I remind myself.

  “We’ll talk more about this when I get there,” Benton says. “But if you didn’t know her defense is going to blame everything on you, then you’re the only person who didn’t know. Lucy’s walking out to the helicopter, so I need to go. I’ll call when we land next.”

  He tells me he loves me, and I get off the phone. Heat is a shimmering wall rising from blacktop as sprinklers spray, water sweeping in waves and splashing on foliage. I walk to the entrance of the lab building, then into a lobby of comfortable blue cloth chairs and couches, and an area rug with a Persian Serapi design in beige and rose, and potted palms, and prints of aspen trees and gardens arranged on off-white walls. An elderly woman sits alone in a corner, staring blankly out a window, in this tasteful place where no one wants to be, and I try Jaime Berger.

  The hell with pay phones and pretending we haven’t talked. I don’t give a damn who’s listening, and I don’t believe her anyway. Her cell phone rings and goes to voicemail.

  “Jaime, it’s Kay,” I leave a message. “There’s been a development up north that I can’t help but suspect you know about.” I hear the accusation in my tone, as if whatever has happened somehow is her fault, and maybe it is.

  Dawn Kincaid is up to something because she knows about the DNA, I’m sure she does, and Jaime is being naïve or is into denial to think otherwise. A number of people who can cause trouble might know, for that matter. I don’t believe it’s the secret Jaime assumes it is. She has started something terribly dangerous.

  “Call me when you get this,” I tell her in a tone that conveys I mean it. “If I don’t answer, try Colin’s office and ask someone to find me.”

  16

  Colin Dengate has graying red hair he wears in a buzz cut, and a closely clipped mustache smudges his upper lip like rust. He is built like a bullet, with no fat to spare, and, like a lot of MEs I know, has a sense of humor that can border on silliness.

  As he leads me deeper into his headquarters I walk past a skeleton dressed for Mardi Gras and beneath hanging mobiles of bones, bats, spiders, and ghouls that shiver and spin slowly in cool air blowing out of vents. A ringtone of spooky music and a witch’s cackle announces Colin’s wife, who can’t find the key to their daughter’s bicycle lock, and he suggests using bolt cutters. The eerie pulsing of a Star TrekTricorder as we head down a hall is a GBI investigator named Sammy Chang letting Colin know he’s clearing the scene of a motor-vehicle fatality on Harry Truman Parkway and the body is en route.

  “And when it’s me?” I wonder what ringtone Colin would assign.

  “You never call,” he says. “But let me think. Maybe Grateful Dead. ‘Never Trust a Woman’ is a good one. Heard them on tour a couple times in my glory days. They don’t make music like they used to. I’m not sure they make people like they used to.”

  I left Marino in the break room, where he was getting coffee and flirting with a toxicologist named Suze who has a tattoo on her biceps depicting a grinning winged skull. Colin wants a word with me alone. He’s been friendly so far, despite the reason I’m here.

  “Can I get you a coffee, a Vitaminwater?” We enter his corner office overlooking the loading dock behind his building, where a big truck has just pulled up. “Coconut water’s good in this weather. Replaces potassium, and I keep a stash in my personal fridge. And certain bottled waters have electrolytes, and that’s helpful in this heat. What would you like? Anything?”

  His Georgia drawl isn’t as drawn-out as most. For this part of the world, he talks fast and with a great deal of energy. I drink from the bottle of warm water I retrieved from Marino’s ice chest. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I smell dead fish again.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve dealt with Florida or Charleston summer weather,” I tell him. “And Marino’s van doesn’t have air-conditioning.”

  “I don’t know why you’re dressed that way, unless you’re asking for hyperthermia.” He surveys my black ensemble. “I usually stick with scrubs.” Which is what he has on now, cotton ones the color of crème de menthe. “They’re nice and cool. I don’t wear anything black this time of year unless it’s a bad mood.”

  “A long story I doubt you have time for. Actually, a cold water would be good.”

  “A surprising thing about air-conditioning in cars?” He opens a small refrigerator behind his ergonomic chair, retrieves two waters, and hands me one. “Not everybody in this part of the world has it. My Land Rover, for example. A 1983 I’ve completely restored since I saw you last.” He settles behind his piled-up desk in an office overwhelmed by memorabilia. “New aluminum flooring, new seats, new Gear Gators and windscreen. Stripped the roof frame and powder-coated it black. You name it, but didn’t bother with air-conditioning. Driving it makes me feel the way I did when I was a young buck fresh out of med school. Windows wide open, and you sweat.”

  “Ensuring not everybody wants to ride with you.”

  “An additional benefit.”

  I move my chair closer, the two of us separated by a big maple desk crowded with Ball jars of cartridge cases, large-caliber tarnished brass shells sitting upright like rockets, a Secret Service ashtray filled with minié balls and Confederate uniform buttons, tiny toy dinosaurs and spaceships, animal bones that I suspect were mistaken for human, a model of the CSS H. L. Hunleysubmarine, which vanished from Charleston’s outer harbor during the Civil War and was discovered and raised about a decade ago. I couldn’t begin to catalog or explain all the eccentric mementos crowding every surface and crammed on bookcases and tightly arranged on his walls except that I have no doubt all of it has stories and meaning, and I suspect some items might be toys from when his children were small.

  “That right there is a commendation from the CIA.” He catches me looking around and indicates a handsome shadow box displaying a gold Agency Seal Medal mounted on the wall to the left of me. The elaborate accompanying certificate cites a significant contribution to the CIA’s intelligence efforts but includes no name of the recipient or even a date.

  “About five years back,” he explains, “I worked a case involving an airplane crash in a swamp around here. Some intelligence folks, although I had no idea until suddenly the CIA and some of your Armed Forces ME’s showed up. Had to do with the nuclear sub base at Kings Bay, and that’s all I’m at liberty to say, and if you know about it, I’m sure you’re not at liberty to say anything, either. Anyway, it was a big ordeal, spy stuff, and at some point afterward I got summoned to Langley for an awards ceremony. Now, let me tell you, that was squirrelly. Didn’t know who the hell anybody was, and they never said who the medal was for or what the hell I did to earn it except to stay out of the way and keep my mouth shut.”

  His greenish-hazel eyes read me carefully as I take another swallow of cold water.

  “I’m not sure why you’ve involved yourself in the Jordan murders, Kay.” He finally gets around to why I’m sitting across from him. “I got a call just the other day from your friend B
erger to inform me you were coming in to review the cases. Now, my first thought”—he opens a desk drawer—“is why you wouldn’t call me yourself.” He offers me a small box of slippery-elm throat lozenges. “You ever had these?”

  I take one because my mouth and throat are parched.

  “Best thing since sliced bread if you’ve got to give a talk or testify. Popular with professional singers, which is how I know about them.” He takes the box back from me and pops a lozenge into his mouth.

  “I didn’t call you, Colin, because I wasn’t aware I was scheduled to see you until last night.” I talk around the lozenge, which has a slightly rough texture and pleasant maple flavor.

  He frowns as if what I just said is impossible, and his chair creaks as he leans back in it, not taking his eyes off me, the throat lozenge a small lump in the side of his cheek.

  “I came to Savannah because I had an appointment at the Georgia Prison for Women to talk to an inmate named Kathleen Lawler,” I start to explain, as I wonder where to begin.

  Already, he’s nodding. “Berger told me,” he says. “She said you were coming down here to meet with an inmate at the GPFW, which is all the more reason I didn’t understand why you didn’t call me yourself to at least say hi and maybe let’s have lunch.”

  “Jaime told you I was coming,” I repeat, as I wonder what she has said to him and others, and how much of it was tailored to suit her purposes. “I’m sorry I didn’t call and suggest lunch. But I really thought I would be in and out.”

  “She’s called here enough,” he says, about Jaime. “Everybody in the front office knows who the hell she is.” The lozenge slips from one cheek to the other as if there is a small animal moving around inside his mouth. “Good stuff, huh? Also a demulcent. Tried ones before, more than I can shake a stick at, that purport to be a demulcent but aren’t. These work, really soothe the mucous membrane. Sodium- and gluten-free. No preservatives and importantly, no menthol. That’s the misnomer out there. That menthol is the cure-all for the throat, when in fact what it does is cause temporary loss of the vocal cords.” He savors the lozenge, looking up at the ceiling as if he’s a sommelier tasting a complex grand cru. “I’ve started singing in a barbershop quartet,” he adds, as if that explains everything.