Dust

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I don’t want you implicated in anything.” I look at her.

  “I’m not the one who will be implicated and all I’ve done is do a high recon or two. The same thing I’d do from the air.” She doesn’t sound the least bit concerned but determined.

  “Did you do a flyover?”

  “It wouldn’t have been helpful and it would have been too obvious. My helicopter isn’t exactly quiet,” she says. “What I can tell you is if you show up uninvited you’ll never get past the main barn with its perimeter of cameras, supposedly to safeguard extremely valuable Churchill Thoroughbreds with racing pedigrees. The killer didn’t sneak in. And with the people who do keep regular hours at Double S? The housekeeper, ranch hands, a groundskeeper, the full-time chef? Somebody knows damn well who it is and isn’t saying anything.”

  “Marino thinks it’s Gail’s friend Haley Swanson, a close friend apparently.”

  “The person who posted information about her on Channel Five’s website. I got an alert and saw the name but I don’t know who Haley Swanson is and I’m not aware of Gail having any close friends.” Lucy scans her mirrors, cutting in and out of lanes skillfully, effortlessly, the way she walks along a sidewalk, always in front and aware of what’s around her.

  “It seems to me Gail didn’t tell you everything,” I reply pointedly.

  “She didn’t have to and I don’t know everything. But I know plenty.”

  “He works for the PR firm Lambant and Associates. Maybe Haley Swanson was doing crisis management for Gail.”

  “Why would she need that? She wasn’t a public figure and had no public business or even a reputation to lose. Although she was about to,” Lucy adds.

  “She was at the Psi Bar last night,” I reply. “Who might she have been with?”

  “She didn’t say when I talked to her. I didn’t ask because I didn’t care. If she was with this PR person, she wouldn’t have mentioned it anyway, not if she felt it was something she needed to hide, like most everything about her conniving, dishonest life. People are stupid thinking you’ll never find out. I don’t know why people are so fucking stupid,” she says and I can’t tell if she’s more angry or hurt or if she feels embarrassed that Gail might have fooled her about anything at all.

  “I’m calling Swanson a he because that’s what’s on his driver’s license, although there seems to be some question about his gender. An officer who confronted him early this morning described him as having breasts.”

  “If Gail knew him, she didn’t mention it to me for good reason. Maybe this Swanson person is someone she met through a mutual acquaintance,” Lucy adds and it seems an allusion to something else, something unpleasant and bad.

  “He also called nine-one-one to say Gail was missing and when he was told he’d have to come to the department to fill out the report he posted the information on Channel Five’s website instead. Then he called the police again and asked to speak to Marino,” I let her know as the first drops of rain begin to fall. “All of these actions might make sense if Haley Swanson was with Gail in the bar and she went outside to take your call and never came back.”

  “Lambant and Associates may have been doing PR for someone else and that’s how they met.” Lucy seems to be working it out in her head more than anything else.

  I continue to be struck by how dead the relationship is to her. It’s as dead as Gail Shipton and that’s the dark art of Lucy’s emotional sleight of hand. She can love one minute and feel nothing the next, not even anger or pain, because after a while those, too, will pass and what she’s left with is what I called her magic friendship hat when she was a little girl who spent most of her time alone. Where’s so and so? I would ask and she’d shrug and reach into her imagined hat and come up empty-handed. Poof, she’d say and then she’d cry and then it would go away, as far away as her mother who has never loved her.

  33

  Distant thunder rolls in waves of reverberating drumming and a slow starting rain hits the windshield in drops the size of quarters. I tell Lucy that someone may have been spying on me since I came home from Connecticut.

  “He was behind the house at around five-thirty this morning when I took Sock out,” I explain. “It’s believed it might have been Haley Swanson.”

  “Believed by who?”

  “The police. Marino certainly is convinced.”

  “Why?”

  “Where Swanson’s SUV was spotted and the early hour certainly makes it appear it could have been him,” I reply. “The officer who talked to him believes it was.”

  “Did Swanson admit to it when he was questioned? Did he say he knows who you or Benton are and was near your property at five-thirty this morning?”

  “No. But I don’t think he was asked that directly and one might expect him not to admit it if he was stalking me or casing our property. Especially if this is someone who has a lot to hide.”

  “You mean if he’s the Capital Murderer.”

  “I have no real basis to know any such thing but I don’t believe it.”

  “What about the description of the hooded sweatshirt with a face on it, what supposedly looks like Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe?” Lucy asks.

  “I didn’t notice the person had on something like that. He also was bareheaded but it could be he didn’t have his hood up.”

  “Was it raining?”

  “My impression was he wasn’t dressed for the weather or at least wasn’t wearing rain gear.”

  “Somebody revved up and overheated, excited and in overdrive. He might not have cared that it was raining and he probably wasn’t Haley Swanson,” Lucy says.

  “When he was questioned by the police he didn’t look like he’d been out in the rain. It probably wasn’t him behind the wall but I don’t think the person intended to hurt me.”

  “Not yet and that’s always your default,” Lucy says. “You don’t want to think that what you do might draw dangerous people to you.”

  “He’d had opportunity if that’s what he wanted.”

  “It’s more likely he wasn’t ready and you had your Sig, let me guess.”

  “All he had to do was shoot me with a stun gun if that’s who we’re talking about. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had a gun. I would have been on the ground.”

  “You don’t know who it was,” Lucy says flatly. “Just because Haley Swanson was in your neighborhood doesn’t mean it was him and it probably wasn’t. And just because Marino’s decided Swanson is the man spotted running through Minute Man Park doesn’t mean anything either. I’m not jumping to conclusions.”

  “None of us should.”

  “Marino’s basing it on a sweatshirt, deciding Swanson’s the killer because of a hoodie.”

  “That’s not the only reason but we need to be careful,” I reply.

  “Do you have any idea where Swanson lives?”

  “Near Conway Park. Apparently he’d stopped at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Somerville Ave first,” I repeat what Officer Rooney said.

  “If he left the Dunkin’ Donuts and headed to the projects on Windsor it would make sense for him to have passed right behind the Academy of Arts and Sciences and within blocks of your house. He probably was taking Park to Beacon.”

  “And I assume his name hasn’t come up in case discussions with Carin Hegel.”

  “No, but I’m not surprised. If I’ve never heard of him, she probably hasn’t either.”

  “When he called nine-one-one he asked to speak to Marino. I’ve assumed Gail might have mentioned him because you might have mentioned him,” I add what I know she won’t like to hear.

  “I never talked about Marino with her” is her emphatic answer and then I remember Benton’s remarks to him this morning at MIT.

  He infuriated Marino by reminding him that his pickup truck with the design flaw cost him a lot of money after a failed class action suit. Lambant and Associates represented the dealership and spun stories that blamed the owners for being bad drivers and causing the damage. This
was all very recent and it’s possible Haley Swanson might have known who and what Marino is because of that. I suggest the scenario to Lucy.

  “What it doesn’t explain,” I add, “is why Haley Swanson would call nine-one-one and think to ask for him specifically.”

  “If he was desperate it would explain it,” Lucy says. “If he talked to a nine-one-one operator and got nowhere? Next he calls back and asks for a detective by name.”

  “Did you ever discuss Marino with Carin Hegel?”

  “I didn’t discuss him or any of us but it’s not exactly a secret where I work and who my friends and family are,” Lucy says. “All of us are law enforcement or former law enforcement or criminal justice, and Gail sure as hell had reason to be aware that I’m surrounded by people she needed to worry about. She’d wandered into a really bad airspace and she’s probably better off dead. She had nothing to look forward to except what I was going to have to do about it and it’s a shame she put me in that position. But she did.”

  I look at her and she seems unbothered and sure of herself and her convictions as she drives with one hand on the wheel, the other on the four-wheel-drive gearshift, resting on it, her fingers curled around the carbon-fiber knob inside her carbon-fiber cockpit with instruments and joysticks worthy of an aircraft.

  “What was it you felt you were going to have to do exactly?” I inquire.

  “I was about to tell Carin the truth.” Wipers sweep the glass and more thunder sounds in a guttural rumble that ends with a sharp crack. “She would have fired Gail as a client but that wasn’t good enough.”

  “After what you’ve told me, I don’t blame you for being angry.”

  “I was building a case and needed to prove it and I waited because nothing was enough,” Lucy says. “I was stupid. That’s why you can’t hate anyone. That’s why even when I feel it I put a stop to it. I try really hard to put a stop to it but I didn’t with her and that was a mistake. Hate makes you stupid.”

  Wind blows across the surface of a gray body of water beyond Lucy’s window. On my side are rows of small houses that bring to mind Monopoly’s Baltic Avenue or regimented developments I associate with military bases.

  “The two of you met her at the Psi, had a few drinks, and, next thing, you’re working on a project together,” I point out. “You may not have heard of Gail Shipton some eight months ago but maybe she’d heard of you. Maybe she was aware the Psi is a place you frequent.”

  “I probably shouldn’t frequent any place. It’s not smart.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t chance she sent drinks to your table last spring.”

  “It wasn’t chance but it didn’t turn into what it became until later,” Lucy says. “She was running out of what money she had left and then by summer Double S was doing everything it could to escalate her legal fees. She was going under and was too proud to tell anyone. But Double S knew. They knew exactly how much money she had left and how quickly they could go through it. Then they had her where they wanted her.”

  I feel the deep rumbling thunder and smell rain in the fresh moist air blowing through the open vents. Lucy doesn’t like recirculating air and she doesn’t like being hot and I smell expensive new leather and the clean grapefruit scent of the cologne she wears, the same cologne I bought her for Christmas and have yet to wrap.

  “Who was there when you were deposed?” I ask. “Did you meet anyone from Double S?”

  “Just their dirtbag lawyers.”

  Light shimmers in rolling clouds and shines on wet pavement, the eerie light of storms, and I ask nothing more. The rain’s not as heavy as we drive farther west and the view opens up to a huge spread of shallow water, sandbars, and conservation land.

  “What about Gail?” I ask. “Where was she when you were being deposed?”

  “She was sitting at the table the entire time.”

  “What was her demeanor?” My suspicions are gathering.

  “Something I didn’t trust,” Lucy says and she should have distrusted her sooner but I don’t say it. “She wasn’t a good actor. She wasn’t a good anything anymore.”

  As we get closer to Concord, woods are interspersed with clearings, pastureland and dormant plowed fields that look like faded corduroy. Homes and barns are tucked back from the turnpike in this old-moneyed part of the world where people keep a few chickens or goats or designate land for preservation to get another tax write-off. Peace and conservation foundations and famous cemeteries flourish and cutting down a tree is close to a felony. Single-serving bottled water has been banned because plastic is a sin and Lucy’s fuel-guzzling vehicle must be appallingly offensive to her Concord neighbors. Knowing her, that might be why she got it.

  In minutes we’re crossing Main Street in the center of a town where Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott’s homes can be toured and their graves and those of Thoreau and Hawthorne can be visited. Shops and restaurants are small and quaint and at every corner there are monuments, historic markers, and battlefields.

  Through pastures and over a river we follow Lowell Road, bearing right onto Liberty Street, where we pass Minute Man National Park. I notice people out sightseeing and staff in Colonial period dress as if nothing happened earlier. They seem oblivious to unmarked cars and plainclothes law enforcement prowling the grounds. They pay no attention to a television crew. Channel 5 again. I recognize Barbara Fairbanks talking into a microphone on a wooden footbridge, maybe the one the killer raced across and into a group of children he scared and scattered.

  The road we’re on bends to the left and the woods get impenetrably dense, the typical forests of New England, with thick canopies and no undergrowth. In about a mile and past an open field, electric gates are frozen in the open position and SS is posted on a stone pillar with no street address. Lucy slows and turns in. She rolls her window down as we stop next to a Concord cruiser parked just inside. I retrieve my credentials from my bag, handing the thin black wallet to her as she digs into a pocket for her CFC badge.

  “Cambridge Forensic Center. Lucy Farinelli. I have Dr. Scarpetta with me.” She displays our IDs and badges to the officer, who could pass for twenty. “How are you doing?”

  “You mind if I ask what you’re driving?” He bends down, his admiring face in her open window.

  “It’s just an SUV.” She returns my creds to me.

  “Yeah, right. And I’m driving the space shuttle. Care if I look?”

  “Follow me up.”

  “Can’t do that.” The officer is equally enthralled with the SUV’s driver. “I’ve got to make sure nobody comes in who’s not supposed to and have already turned away half a dozen reporters. It’s a good thing the weather’s crappy or they’d have news choppers up. My name’s Ryan.”

  “Have you been inside?”

  “It’s pretty unbelievable. I’m thinking someone crazy who escaped from MCI.” He refers to the nearby medium security men’s prison. “How fast can this thing go?”

  “Tell you what, Ryan, come by when you’re not busy and I’ll let you test-pilot,” Lucy says as I try to get Marino on the phone.

  She shoves her beast of a vehicle back into gear and we begin to follow a paved driveway that’s more like a road. Ahead are acres of manicured paddocks, maintenance sheds, small barns, and the big red one Lucy mentioned. On either side of us are straight rows of peeling birch trees, a scattering of dead leaves clinging to their branches and stuck to the wet blacktop. Marino answers my call and I tell him we’re two minutes out.

  “Park in front and I’ll meet you at the door,” he says. “I’ve got your scene case. Make sure you cover up good, Doc. It looks like someone spilled a vat of borscht in here.”

  34

  Past outbuildings and a small natural pond, the two-story timbered headquarters is set on the highest point of immaculate grounds. It fronts paddocks and pastureland and is connected by covered walkways to the rest of a compound that’s not visible from the long paved drive unless one follows it to the end where it b
ends around. Lucy explains the layout to me. I no longer ask her how she knows.

  The steeply pitched roof is copper tarnished like an old penny and there are thick stone columns on either side of the veranda. Beveled leaded transom windows are over the heavy front door, with big windows across both floors and I imagine a clear view of rolling fields, sheds, barns, and people on the grounds if the shades aren’t drawn like they are right now. I think of security cameras that would detect an uninvited guest.

  It’s no longer raining, as if Double S can buy its own weather, and I tilt my head back and feel the chilled moist air on my cheeks and pushing through my hair. I can see my breath just barely. The sky is turgid and dark as if it’s dusk instead of almost two p.m., and I imagine what Benton is doing and what he knows. He’ll be here soon. There’s no way he won’t be and already I’m looking for him.

  I follow the rows of silvery birch trees that in warmer months meet in a canopy over the long black driveway, my eyes moving past the quiet muddy-green pond, then the empty brown paddocks behind gray split-rail palings. Horses will be in the main barn because of the weather, an angry colliding of warm and cold fronts that could hammer down sleet or hail. Beyond the fencing and a meadow fringed in switchgrass are heavy woods that lead to the park where a fleeing man in a hoodie frightened children and teachers hours earlier. I estimate it’s not even a mile as a crow flies. Already I suspect that Double S’s intruder wasn’t one.

  A half dozen Concord police cruisers and unmarked cars are parked on a spacious tarmac and I notice an expensive white Lincoln Navigator and a white Land Rover that I suspect belong to Double S. Marino’s SUV has the windows cracked, his rowdy German shepherd crated in back whining and pawing frantically like a jailbreak because he knows it’s us.

  “Marino lets him sleep in his bed, too,” Lucy says. “The dog’s totally worthless.”

  “Not to him,” I reply. “And you’re one to talk. You and Janet cook fresh fish for Jet Ranger and dehydrate vegetables for his treats, the most spoiled bulldog on the planet.”