Flesh and Blood

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I worry about hacking,” Benton says. “I worry we’re dealing with someone who has extreme cyber skills, explaining the tweets we can’t trace and possibly explaining your credit card fraud. That’s been recent, just the past few months and it’s happening repeatedly. Every time you get a new card it happens again, and while I’ve not wanted to plant unfounded fears in your mind, I’ve been concerned that there might be a breach in security.”

  “You blew it off this morning when I brought it up.”

  “I didn’t want to ruin our vacation.”

  “Well it’s ruined so go ahead and ruin it some more.”

  “Lucy claims it’s impossible anyone could be getting past the CFC firewalls but I don’t share her confidence,” Benton says.

  “When did you start thinking this way?”

  “It’s entered my mind in recent weeks. As the day has worn on my suspicions have intensified.”

  “Well I do share Lucy’s confidence. I’m not sure the NSA could get past her firewalls, Benton.” I’m not exaggerating.

  By the time Lucy was a teenager she was interning for the FBI and was instrumental in developing their Criminal Artificial Intelligence Network, CAIN. Creating machine language from source code comes as naturally to her as handling powerful machines, and protecting her domain from viruses and malware is automatic and unrelenting. A breach of computer security is something my niece would take extremely personally. It would be a fatal error. She wouldn’t let it happen.

  “It’s easy to get complacent,” Benton says.

  “You feel Lucy has gotten complacent?”

  “She doesn’t lack confidence,” he repeats. “So much confidence that sometimes she isn’t objective. That’s the problem with narcissists.”

  “Now she’s a narcissist. A sociopath and a narcissist. How fortunate for her that she has someone close who can profile her.”

  “Come on, Kay,” he says quietly. “She is what she is but that doesn’t mean she’s bad. It just means that she could be.”

  “Everybody could be.”

  “That’s absolutely true.”

  “Are you having misgivings about her that you haven’t shared with me?” I think of her aloofness, her paranoia and her reason for why she’s no longer wearing Janet’s family ring.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.” I don’t take my eyes off him.

  “We’ve had conversations that concern me about her state of mind,” he says. “Her thinking that people like Jen Garate are out to get her et cetera …”

  “Et cetera?” I won’t let him breeze past the remark. “As in more than one person who is out to get her?”

  “References and allusions that are disturbing. Suffice it to say I worry that recent events in her personal life have had a destabilizing effect.”

  “What recent events?”

  “Whatever might be going on between Janet and her in addition to evidence that her computer empire is being breached and her adamance that it isn’t possible,” he says. “Well it is. And the more she protests, the more I have my doubts.”

  “About what?”

  “About who’s really doing it.”

  “Are you suggesting Lucy is contriving all of this? The untraceable tweets to me, the credit card fraud?” I stare at him, stunned. “Are you thinking that Lucy might be shooting people too?”

  “Contriving is a good word for it,” he replies evasively. “Someone is contriving something.”

  “And the motive of whoever might be contriving what’s been happening of late?”

  “The tweets like the pennies and possibly somebody using your credit card may be for attention.”

  “The bullet with a three etched on it?” I add. “The same thing?”

  “Yes. A calling card from someone invisible who’s in our faces.”

  “Lucy is in our faces.” My eyes are locked on his sharp unsmiling profile as he hints at a hypothesis that for me is out of the question.

  “I’m not ready to go that far. I don’t ever want to go that far, Kay. But put it this way—somebody is way too interested in us.”

  “Is this why you were so angry back there that you practically blew the pickup truck off the road?”

  “I don’t like it.” Benton’s jaw is set hard again. “I’m not nice when we’re messed with no matter who the hell is doing it.”

  “And the other New Jersey victim? How might that person fit?”

  “Jack Segal,” Benton replies and the Rosado property is up ahead.

  The driveway hooks sharply to the right and is unlighted but I notice there are lights on inside the house.

  “He was opening his restaurant, in back of it unlocking the door when he was shot,” Benton says.

  “Does Marino have some link to him too?”

  “No,” Benton says. “But you do.”

  “I do?”

  “His son was Dick Segal.”

  “I have no idea.” But the name touches some buried place.

  “When you were with the OCME in Manhattan, Jack Segal’s son Dick allegedly committed suicide. This was about five years ago. He supposedly jumped off the G.W. Bridge and the family protested the autopsy for religious reasons,” Benton says and the case comes back to me. “They had their rabbi pay you a visit, and there was a fair amount of anger in the Jewish community when you did an autopsy anyway.”

  “Without a CT scanner there was no choice. It was the law, and it’s a good thing we abided by it since it turned out Dick Segal had help going off that bridge. I found evidence of ligature marks, and several boys from his school were suspects but were never indicted because there wasn’t sufficient evidence.”

  “Again something that could be known,” Benton says. “The case is public information if you know where to look. If we were to chart everything on a whiteboard it starts looking like a web, and you have to be honest enough to consider who might be in the center of it.”

  “If you know something I don’t,” I start to say and my heart is constricted by dread.

  “I don’t know anything for a fact. But whatever the truth, we will have to face it. No matter what it is.”

  He turns into the paved driveway and I note an unmarked black Tahoe. It’s parked near the three-story house that I recognize from photographs. Investigator Joe Henderson is here and it appears he might be inside, which is an unanticipated bonus. I had no expectation that we would be allowed to wander at will through every part of Congressman Rosado’s property.

  We get out and I’m aware of the wind, the surf, the soft thuds of the car doors shutting and the alarm going off inside my head as I notice several things at once. The back door of the house is slightly ajar, light seeping out onto the brick landing and the steps, and Benton is sliding the pistol out of the holster under his jacket. There is no sign of anyone. Yet the lights are on in certain rooms of the house and the unmarked Tahoe didn’t just get here.

  Benton touches the hood and confirms it’s cold. On the console between the front seats is a take-out cardboard carrier with two large coffees, the lids on, napkins, wooden stirrers and sugar packets tucked between them. The portable radio charger is empty, the driver’s door locked. Benton has the Glock pointed down by his side as he walks away from the SUV, scanning, listening, tense because I’m with him but it isn’t safe for me to sit alone in his car.

  He heads toward the back door of the house, his footsteps light like a cat’s, completely silent on old pavers with recently trimmed borders, the grass spreading out on either side lush and well cared for. He makes sure I stay behind him. But if there’s a problem there’s no good place for me to be. He climbs the steps and at the top nudges the door open a little with his toe. He calls inside for Joe Henderson, shouting several times and no one answers. He pushes the door open wider. I have my phone ready to call the police and Benton holds up a finger, pausing me.

  “Dispatch already notified patrol,” he says quietly and I get his meaning.

&n
bsp; Anybody monitoring the Marblehead frequencies would know we were headed here, and I glance at the time on my phone. My call to the investigative unit was twenty-four minutes ago. Prior to that at about six P.M. I called looking for Henderson to alert him that Gracie Smithers is a homicide, and dispatch raised him on the air and gave him my number. He got hold of me and we talked.

  “FBI!” Benton yells, standing to one side of the door, his body shielding me. “Henderson? Anybody in there identify yourself now!”

  The wind rushes in from the sea, shaking trees and careening around the house in a low whistle. Silence, no people sounds, no sign of anybody around, and he holds his stance, the butt of the pistol gripped in both hands, pointing out and up, his index finger laid across the trigger guard.

  “Call for backup,” he says. “Give them the Tahoe’s plate number, make sure it’s his.”

  I make the call. Almost instantly I’m startled by the broadcast, a dispatcher requesting a backup, and Benton kicks open the door all the way. Ten feet inside and off to the left a portable radio is on the hardwood floor.

  CHAPTER 36

  ACRES OF TERRACED ROCKERY span the back of the property, and it’s as black as ink, a thick darkness broken by a distant perimeter of throbbing red and blue. Beams of high intensity LED flashlights crisscross the terrain as police search for Joe Henderson.

  Marked units and detectives’ cars are parked behind the Tahoe, his take-home police SUV, and we have no idea where he is. He doesn’t answer his phone and there was no sign he got much farther than the front door when he entered the house, which is furnished but sterile.

  A thorough walk-through took no more than thirty minutes and there was nothing in the cupboards or closets, no personal effects, not linens or even soap, only furniture, window treatments, and bottles of water and beer in the bar refrigerator. The house felt unlived in with an air of neglect. Toilets hadn’t been flushed in a while, and when I ran water in the sinks it was brown at first.

  Yet someone was inside earlier, someone other than Henderson we’re sure. This person turned on lights in the mudroom, a hallway, the bar and the kitchen, possibly leaving through the back door without closing it all the way. The detective accompanying us, the sergeant whose last name is Freedman, said Henderson had no plan to enter the house. He had no key or warrant. He must have done the same thing Benton did. He saw the door was ajar.

  “Until a couple hours ago this was an accidental drowning.” Freedman continues to talk as we follow a stone path toward the water, flashlights in hand, and I detect fear, high-pitched like a dog whistle. “We had no reason to search the house or secure it. The kids were never inside it.”

  He’s talking about Gracie Smithers and Troy Rosado.

  “That we know of,” Benton reminds him. “I’m going to bet that Troy has a way to get in if he wants.”

  “When we got here this morning after the body was found the back door was locked,” Freedman says.

  “And the alarm log?” Benton asks.

  “I sure as hell didn’t wear the right shoes for this.” Freedman is short, heavy with a barrel-shaped chest, and the dress shoes he’s wearing with his suit aren’t compatible with walking over slippery leaves and rocks. “The Realtor’s not very helpful about remembering exactly what time she does her checks of the place, in and out almost every day, nothing routine, just when she’s in the area because of worries about vandalism.”

  “I’m not aware that’s much of a problem around here,” I reply. “Marblehead is considered safe with very little violence or property crime. But then I don’t need to be telling you that.”

  “I’m passing on what she told me, and the problem with the alarm log is she can’t say with certainty if she was in the house at a certain time. For example the log shows the alarm was turned off at ten-fifteen last night and it was never reset.”

  “And she’s saying she doesn’t know if she did that?” I don’t believe the Realtor whoever she is, and Benton is in front of me, saying little but I know he’s listening.

  “She says she doesn’t think so.” Freedman steadies himself, going slowly one step at a time, and he sounds breathless, keyed up and winded, his eyes everywhere. “But she might have forgotten. Suddenly she has amnesia.”

  “Her loyalty is to the owners.” I have no doubt of that, especially considering who they are. “I suspect the last thing she wants to do is cause them trouble and lose her commission.”

  Maybe lose more than that is the thought that follows, and no matter the Realtor’s excuse it strikes me as inconceivable she would check the property daily unless it was being shown that often, which it wasn’t. Freedman says it’s rare anybody looks at the Rosado estate. It’s too expensive for the area and requires a full-time caretaker. Or at least that’s what the Realtor told him but she meant it as a boast not a disparagement, and a suspicion begins to take form.

  “Troy,” Benton says as we follow shallow stone steps, mossy and thick with dead leaves, leading steeply down through hardwood trees. “Is she aware of his ever accessing the property? I know what I suspect but did she say anything about it? He goes to school around here and has been in and out of trouble.”

  “I don’t remember her saying anything about him.”

  “He apparently has a suspended driver’s license”—I pass on what Lucy dug up—“and at one time was using a car service like Uber to get around. All you need is an app on your phone and a credit card on file. You rarely have the same driver twice. The Realtor?” I then ask. “Who is it?”

  “A big company that represents a lot of waterfront property here, Gloucester, the Cape, Boston.” Freedman tells me the name of the woman he spoke to and it means nothing.

  But the real estate company is the same one Mary Sapp works for. I suggest we find out who the owner is behind any shells and LLCs. I remind them that Bob Rosado is a real estate investor who made a fortune from buying devalued properties and flipping them. Then he went into politics and right out of the box won his congressional seat.

  “Yeah I know all about Congressman Rosado and his worthless kid.” Freedman shines his Maglite down at his feet. “A couple of summers ago I picked up Troy for shoplifting at the liquor store near Seaside Park.”

  “What happened?” Benton asks.

  “His father showed up with the district attorney, that’s what happened.”

  “Nothing in other words,” I reply.

  “There’s a history of that with them. But if Troy’s got something to do with what happened to Gracie Smithers? If anything’s happened to Henderson? Now we’re talking a different ending to the story. I’ll put him away if it’s the last thing I do. Where the hell is he anyway?”

  “I wonder if the Rosados have someone who looks after this place.” I suggest what I’m beginning to think. “Someone who’s in the area now and perhaps has been since the property went on the market. The Realtor said this property needs a caretaker. The question is did she bring that up because the Rosados have one.”

  “She didn’t mention it specifically and I got the impression she’s the one looking after things.” Freedman is getting more upset. “I don’t understand. Where the hell could he be?” He’s talking about Henderson. “What made him drop his damn radio? There’s no sign of a struggle. It’s like he just vanished in thin air. It doesn’t make sense he’d get out of his car and leave his coffee in it for that matter.”

  ON EITHER SIDE OF the steps is a wall built of the same rough gray stone. The walls get higher the farther down the hillside we go, higher than Benton’s head as the earth levels out.

  I smell pungent decaying leaves and dead wood, and the wind carries the clean saltiness of the sea rushing against a rocky beach about fifty feet ahead where the trees and vegetation end. Pebbles clatter and twigs snap as we spread out away from the walled-in steps, shining our lights, searching for any sign of Joe Henderson, for any sign of what might have happened to Gracie Smithers before someone dumped her body in the swimmin
g pool.

  Ahead and to my right are the ruins of more walls, perhaps an outbuilding in the property’s long-ago past, and then I detect another odor. I move downwind and it gets stronger. Charred wood, and the narrow beam of my flashlight licks over cinders and partially burned logs in a small clearing where coarse sand surrounds a fire pit that has been used recently. I note that the sand on one side of the pit is disturbed.

  Impressions shaped like hands, shoes, indentations and swaths where people may have been sitting, moving around a lot, and a struggle comes to mind. I step closer and gold metal flickers in the sweep of my light. I sit on my heels and pull a pair of clean gloves out of a pocket of my cargo pants.

  “Well that answers at least one question.” I brush sand way from a delicate gold chain, a necklace with the name Gracie, the curl of the e embellished with a tiny crystal.

  “So she was definitely here in this spot.” Freedman leans close, looking at the necklace in the gloved palm of my hand, shining his light on it.

  “Possibly sitting around the fire,” I reply, “and the clasp is broken, which is consistent with what I saw in her autopsy photos. She has a very thin linear abrasion on the right side of her neck that could have been caused by someone forcibly removing a necklace.”

  I open my metal case and tuck the necklace inside an evidence envelope, labeling it.

  “You mean doing that while she was alive?” Freedman says and his eyes don’t stop moving. “To steal it from her?”

  “It could be a souvenir,” Benton offers. “But if so why is it still here?”

  “It may have gotten caught on something such as clothing if she were undressing or being undressed, for example,” I suggest.

  “So she might have been by the fire making out with Troy Rosado?” Freedman says angrily, and he’s scared.

  With each minute that goes by his tension is more palpable. He’s trying to focus on Gracie Smithers’s murder but he’s locked in on Henderson and what awful thing might have happened to him.

  “Whatever may have gone on could have been consensual at first,” I reply. “What I do know is she didn’t die here.”