I know all too well that what separates us from total annihilation is nothing more than a three-pound trigger pull. Struck down by a copper bullet fired from nowhere. Thinking a thought one second. Then gone. We’re on the killer’s radar. He watches us. He could be in a ghillie suit right now disguised as heavy foliage or sagebrush, and I scan the dense woods beyond the runways and the grassy strips bordering them.
For some reason he has chosen not to squeeze the trigger—at least not yet. I have no factual basis for thinking this but the feeling is as palpable as the turbine engines overhead. I will my mind to stop but it won’t, the hissing again, a cold-blooded whisper.
What fun to torture you like this.
And I have a sick feeling, an indescribably dreadful one as we parallel the runway, following taxiway Delta at an altitude of thirty feet and the speed of a brisk walk. The same scenario plays vividly as if I’m watching a video recording of an event that’s already occurred. I see myself in the cross hairs of a thermal imaging computerized riflescope that emits no visible light or radio frequency energy. SNAP. Shattering the second cervical vertebra, dislocating the craniocervical junction, transecting the spinal cord.
Lucy gently flares her powerful flying machine as if she’s lightly pulling back on the reins of a horse. She couldn’t look more composed and sane. She couldn’t look more normal.
CHAPTER 39
SHE SETTLES INTO A hover over the ramp’s white tarmac where parked private jets and prop planes shine in the sun.
It occurs to me that shooting reconstructions are going to be miserable in this heat. Ballistic gelatin will get slimy and start stinking like rotting meat. Flies, sweat, stench and Jack Kuster, who I’ve never met, a macho man, a former Marine sniper, 103 kills in Iraq, Marino has continued to brag. I wonder who was counting.
I scan gauges and instrument lights, barely feeling the wheels touch down. I don’t bother saying nice landing. Lucy’s always are. They’re close to perfect, rather much the same way she executes everything in life. I’m not feeling charitable.
“Niner Lima Charlie down and secure,” I let the tower know as Lucy ground-taxis the helicopter, steering with her toes on the pedals as if she’s easing one of her supercars into a parking place.
“Welcome back, Doctor Scarpetta.” The familiar controller is slow-speaking and unflappable, and if I met her I could identify her by voice.
“Thanks. Nice to be here,” I continue in my typically truncated radio language, and my attention shifts to the passenger’s cabin, where I imagine Marino about to open his door while the blades are still turning.
How many times have I told him to wait until we’re completely shut down? I envision him in back, headset on, seat belt off as usual, looking out at the woods and hills of New Jersey. I give him five minutes before he starts joking around, talking like the Sopranos, drawing out his vowels and sounding ridiculous. I fuh-got. Or Fuck-dat. Or he’s a dewsh-bag. I switch the intercom to All.
“Stay put until the blades are stopped,” I remind him.
“Naw I’m-gunna get a haircut.” His big voice is loud in my helmet.
“You don’t have any hair and sound retarded,” Lucy says.
“Uh-oh. Not supposed to use that word. You’ll lose your allowance.”
“What’s this Pavlovian thing with you?” Her fingers move rapidly across overhead switches, flipping them off, and the colorful synthetic vision, terrain awareness and navigation screens go black. “The minute you’re back in New Jersey your IQ drops?”
“People here are smart as shit.”
“I’m not talking about people. I’m talking about you,” she says as the engines get quiet, and she begins jotting the flight time and other information in a small notebook.
“I dunno why I ever left.”
“You shouldn’t have. Then maybe we wouldn’t know you.” She flips off the avionics master switch before he can insult her back.
Shadows of the turning blades slow overhead in the cockpit’s roof windows, and I pull down the rotor brake, take off my flight helmet and hang it by the chinstrap on a hook. Releasing my harness, I arrange it neatly under me on the sheepskin-covered seat so it doesn’t dangle out the door and scratch the paint.
In the distance beyond miles of dense woods and on the other side of the Hudson, One World Trade Center rises high above the Manhattan skyline, which I can’t see from here. All I can make out is the top of the skyscraper and its spire, a reminder that if you hurt us we’ll strike back only harder. We’ll rebuild only bigger. As I’ve watched the construction over the years I’m reminded of the new enemy I face: hate-filled bombers and shooters who know nothing about the people they massacre in a skyscraper, a movie theater, a school building, at a marathon or out by their cars. I think of what John Briggs said to me the other day about the Homeland Security Alert. It’s suddenly foremost in my mind again.
Think of it as orange, but as far as the public goes it’s yellow.
He wasn’t just talking about Obama’s visit. He was alluding to intelligence gathered by the CIA, about events in Crimea. He mentioned money, drugs and thugs flowing into this country, and in light of what’s happened since he said that to me I wonder what he really meant.
Hot air hits me like a wall as I step down on the tarmac, where Marino is busy opening the baggage compartment, grabbing out black cases, one of them tagged as evidence. He sets down overnight bags, scanning for our ride as a bright yellow Shell fuel truck pulls up and a kid hops out of the cab.
“Where the hell is Kuster?” Marino asks no one in particular. His broad face is red, and sweat is beaded on top of his shiny shaved head, his eyes masked by his Ray-Bans. “I emailed him when we were thirty minutes out and I don’t want this shit sitting in the sun.”
“Nothing will melt or explode.” Lucy grabs rolled-up silver sun shields. “Except you maybe.”
“I could fry an egg on the pavement,” Marino complains.
“You couldn’t.” Lucy starts unrolling shields that on a windy day fight her like kites but in this hot calm are completely limp.
“We’ll carry everything into the FBO if need be,” I suggest.
“Hell no,” he says.
He looks sour and irritable even if he’s not, his wide brow deeply furrowed, the corners of his mouth pulled down. He parks his sunglasses on top of his head, squinting in the shade under the tail boom to type on his phone’s display as Lucy opens the fuel cap. Her rose-gold hair is polished by the sun, and she’s nimble and strong in a summer-weight khaki flight suit as she walks around her aircraft, placing the sun shields in the windows. Then she locks the doors as the fuel truck driver who looks all of sixteen clips the ground wire on a skid.
“Afternoon,” he says to Lucy. “This yours?”
“I’m just crew.” She secures the tires with bright yellow chocks.
“Kuster is pulling up,” Marino announces.
“Ready when I’m done.” Lucy’s not going anywhere until the helicopter has been refueled and she’s satisfied it’s safe from anyone who might be tempted to tamper with it.
She’s obsessive about locking the cabin, cockpit, baggage and battery compartments, the cowling, everything, and her precautions aren’t unusual. But I detect her vigilance is in overdrive and I know she’s armed, a Colt .45 in a concealment holster under her flight suit. I felt it when I hugged her in Boston. I asked her about it and she shrugged me off.
The security gate slides open on its tracks and Jack Kuster drives through in his dark blue SUV, parking a safe distance from the fuel truck. He rolls down his window.
“Sorry I’m late,” he calls out to us. “Been busy in the kitchen.”
I HAVE NO DOUBT he’s spent the day preoccupied with the onerous task of mixing up ballistic gelatin, creating blocks or molded shapes of a hydrolyzed collagen derived from animal skin, connective tissue and bone.
We have a lot of control test fires to do before it gets dark. We’re almost out of time. The da
y has cheated us. It seems nothing is on our side and I watch Jack Kuster carefully, knowing him only by reputation, specifically the praises Marino sings. Kuster climbs out and grins boldly at Lucy as if they know each other and she doesn’t smile back. She holds his stare for an instant, then grabs up several hard cases and bags, whichever are the heaviest.
“The biggest problem was how to mimic bone, specifically the skull,” Kuster says as if he’s in the middle of a conversation I know nothing about. “I considered putting a motorcycle helmet on the jelly head but it would be too unwieldy. A problem for another day and I gave up after making a mess. That leaves us one to play with.” He means one molded gelatin block. “It’s not a situation I generally find myself in because usually we’re targeting center mass and not taking head shots.”
“There’s nothing usual about this killer,” I reply.
“Well he’s definitely aiming for the head, the upper spine unless he’s just damn lucky.”
“It’s not luck,” I answer. “Not three times. Possibly more if there are other shooting deaths we don’t know about.”
“There aren’t,” Lucy says as if she has information we don’t. “Three with more on the way. That’s the message we’re supposed to get. Number three out of seven.”
Because of the seven polished pennies on my wall but I don’t bring it up.
“My point is if he’s military or former, it’s not what he was taught.” Kuster rearranges gear in the back of the SUV, making room for what we brought. “We go for center mass.”
“Russian special forces don’t,” Lucy counters. “They’re trained for neck and head shots.”
“So now we’re looking for Russians?” Kuster stares at her.
“There’s an exodus of Russian-trained special ops because of what’s going on over there,” she says as if she’s been talking to Briggs. “That and hundreds of billions of dollars out the door, draining the economy. Not to mention drugs.”
Benton would know this too. The FBI gets briefed by the CIA. Lucy’s information probably came from him.
“It all depends on the weapon.” Marino shoves ammo boxes around. “There’s a shitload out there now that you didn’t have in Iraq.” He directs this at Kuster. “And yeah a shitload of stuff they’ve probably got overseas that’s not in circulation here, not public circulation anyway.”
“Smart guns, sniper rifles with computerized scopes and we do have them here,” Kuster says. “One ballistic gelatin head is what we got and I again apologize for that. I thought about getting a pig carcass. I still could if you’ve got time tomorrow, if you wanna hang around another day. I also know some pretty good bars.”
“No carcasses of pigs or anything else. The gelatin’s going to be bad enough in this weather.” I open a back door and tuck Lucy’s and my overnight bags on the floor because we’re running out of room.
“Who? You squeamish?” Kuster says to me.
“I don’t do tests on animals alive or dead.”
“But you’ll do them on people.”
“Deceased ones, yes. With signed consent.”
“You get signed consent from dead people?” His banter is a blend of flirting and needling that I have no patience for right now. “That sounds like quite a trick. Is that why they call you Doctor Death?”
“Whoever they is? You’ll have to ask them why they call me that.”
“You always this unfriendly?”
“Not always,” I reply.
“They’ve got this synthetic stuff that you don’t have to mix and it doesn’t stink,” Lucy comments as if Kuster was born yesterday.
“That would be too easy. He wants it to be disgusting.” Marino’s face is slick with sweat.
“We don’t have it in our budget to buy premade stuff that’s not disgusting.” Kuster’s attention is fixed on Lucy.
“I’m going inside to pay.” She trots across the ramp, her boots light on the blacktop, and somehow she manages to look cool in the sweltering heat.
“You can’t afford me,” Kuster calls after her.
“Not in the market,” she fires back at him.
“Here we go.” Marino glowers at both of them.
“How much by the pound?” Kuster yells.
“Out of season.” She pushes through the glass door leading inside the FBO.
“No kidding she’s out of season all right,” Marino says in a loaded way but Kuster isn’t listening.
The more he flirts with Lucy, the more she’ll flirt back in the way she flirts. I’d be the first to admit that he’s a compelling man, in his forties, tall and muscular like a clean-cut Ken doll in cotton twill desert-colored BDU pants and a beige T-shirt, a Smith & Wesson .40 cal in a pancake holster. I have no doubt he’s already been told he doesn’t have what it takes to wind Lucy’s clock. Marino would have repeated his favorite cliché and offered all the details. He might have gone so far as to suggest there are things going on that are suspicious, weird coincidences that are too close to home. Marino and his big mouth.
He opens the SUV’s front passenger’s door as if he and Kuster are partners and I’m a civilian ride-along. I fasten my shoulder harness. I sit quietly. I can’t get out of my mood or begin to fully understand it. I’m angry with Marino. I’m angry with everyone.
“What’s new?” Kuster props an arm on the back of the seat, turning to talk to me, his handsome face tan with a blush of a burn on his nose, his eyes grayed-out by sunglasses.
“The FBI’s been turning the Rosado estate and the sailboat inside out,” Marino answers for me.
I send Benton an email, telling him we’re safely on the ground, and at the same time a text message lands from Bryce.
My email password’s not working is yours?
Mine is fine, I reply.
Can you ask Lucy?
“Rand Bloom’s gray pickup truck was recovered from long-term parking at Logan,” Marino is saying. “And remember the white truck you told me about? The one that hit a car at the Edgewater Ferry the day before Julie Eastman was shot? You said it looked like a U-Haul bobtail?”
“You think you found it,” Kuster says rather than asks and I’m reminded again of the boxy white construction truck we saw when we were driving to Nari’s crime scene.
It also looked like a U-Haul bobtail. Marino blared his horn at it and the driver pulled over to let us pass. The killer may have been right in front of us and we had no idea. It’s just like everything else. We’re being played, made fools of, following the monster’s master plan. How amusing we must be.
“Left at a marina not far from the Rosado house in Marblehead Neck.” Marino continues passing along the latest developments, details that I feel certain won’t help us. “Plates removed, nothing inside except bleach. You could smell it a block away.”
“So the person driving it, probably the killer, ditched it. Then after he killed Rand Bloom he left in his pickup truck and skipped town,” Kuster replies as if it’s a fact.
And tailed Benton’s car, played cat and mouse with us on the highway.
“That sucks but I already knew about it,” Kuster says.
If he already knew then the FBI has contacted him, and my anger spikes. They’re asking questions, poking around, and I stare at the back of Marino’s head. What has he been saying deliberately and thoughtlessly? What CFC business has he divulged without having the common sense to anticipate the harm it might do? The FBI shunned Lucy back in the day and it would shun her now but in a far different way. It would be a different type of judgment, one that could rob her of her freedom and her life.
“A day late a dollar short, that’s the Bureau for you. Another waste of taxpayer dollars at work,” Marino says as Lucy emerges from the FBO, jogging to the SUV.
“Who’s she again?” Kuster asks me, and I don’t believe he doesn’t know and I don’t know how anyone can be playful right now. “Your daughter, your little sister? She really fly that big bird all by herself?”
Lucy slides in back
with me.
“Bryce’s email,” I say to her. “A problem?”
“A security situation. I’ll explain later,” she says.
I glance at my watch. It’s quarter of five. We have at most three hours of usable daylight left.
CHAPTER 40
THE DRIVE TO THE Morris County Sheriff’s Department training center and firing range is thirty minutes in the late afternoon traffic.
I feel time. It’s tangible like a strong headwind pushing us back into a past that yawns forbidden and immutable. Lucy holds something close to her that she won’t share and I sense that eventually I will recognize whatever it is. She’s absorbed in her iPad while I stress over tests and reconstructions that I have no faith will catch a killer who has gone viral on the Internet. Since we left Boston Copperhead is trending, Lucy has informed us. I can’t abide the attention evil people get.
I don’t like the reminder that much of my energy is spent building a case instead of stopping the person responsible. It’s my job to prepare for future juries, for future attorneys, to make sure I’ve explored every molecule of an investigation and documented all of it. But that’s not enough and I’m beyond being conservative. I’m not sure I’m capable of it anymore.
Alone in my frustrated defiant thoughts I watch the scenery of handsome old homes, of horse farms behind neat fences, and meadows and parks with outcrops of purplish pudding stone. Foliage is lush and shadows dapple the roads, on West Hanover Avenue now, in and out of brightness that hurts my eyes. Lucy is busy on the Internet and I have my back to her as I stare out the window.
You’re making this too personal.
I keep telling myself that but it does no good, and for an instant I’m sentimental. Hand-painted signs advertise homegrown produce the Garden State is famous for, and I swallow hard. I feel choked up with emotions I didn’t expect. If only life were different. I’d like to pick out sweet corn, tomatoes, herbs and apples. I long to smell their freshness and feel their potential. Instead what’s around me is like a noxious fog. Deceit. Lucy has her own agenda and she and Benton have been talking.
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