He did not respond, and I looked at him, my soul heavy and sinking down into the darkness of a fathomless sea. People, and pigeons, and constant announcements on the PA blended into a dizzying din, and for an instant, all went black. Wesley caught me as I swayed.
“Are you all right?”
“I want to know who he was seeing,” I said.
“Come on, Kay,” he said, gently. “Let’s go someplace where you can sit down.”
“I want to know if the bombing was deliberate because a certain train was arriving at a certain time,” I persisted. “I want to know if this is all fiction.”
“Fiction?” he asked.
Tears were in my eyes. “How do I know this isn’t some cover-up, some ruse, because he’s alive and in hiding? A protected witness with a new identity.”
“He’s not.” Wesley’s face was sad, and he held my hand. “Let’s go.”
But I wouldn’t move. “I must know the truth. If it really happened. Who was he meeting and where is that person now?”
“Don’t do this.”
People were weaving around us, not paying any attention. Feet crashed like an angry surf, and steel clanged as construction workers laid new rail.
“I don’t believe he was meeting anyone.” My voice shook and I wiped my eyes. “I believe this is some great big Bureau lie.”
He sighed, staring off. “It’s not a lie, Kay.”
“Then who! I have to know!” I cried.
Now people were looking our way, and Wesley moved me out of traffic, toward platform 8, where the 11:46 train was leaving for Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye. He led me up a blue and white tile ramp into a room of benches and lockers, where travelers could store belongings and claim left baggage. I was sobbing, and could not help myself. I was confused and furious as we went into a deserted corner and he kindly sat me on a bench.
“Tell me,” I said. “Benton, please. I’ve got to know. Don’t make me go the rest of my life not knowing the truth,” I choked between tears.
He took both my hands. “You can put this to rest right now. Mark is dead. I swear. Do you really think I could have this relationship with you if I knew he were alive somewhere?” he passionately said. “Jesus. How can you even imagine I could do something like that!”
“What happened to the person he was meeting?” I kept pushing.
He hesitated. “Dead, I’m afraid. They were together when the bomb went off.”
“Then why all the secrecy about who he was?” I exclaimed. “This isn’t making sense!”
He hesitated again, this time longer, and for an instant, his eyes were filled with pity for me and it looked like he might cry. “Kay, it wasn’t a he. Mark was with a woman.”
“Another agent.” I did not understand.
“No.”
“What are you saying?”
The realization was slow because I did not want it, and when he was silent, I knew.
“I didn’t want you to find out,” he said. “I didn’t think you needed to know that he was with another woman when he died. They were coming out of the Grosvenor Hotel when the bomb went off. It had nothing to do with him. He was just there.”
“Who was she?” I felt relieved and nauseated at the same time.
“Her name was Julie McFee. She was a thirty-one-year-old solicitor from London. They met through a case he was working. Or maybe through another agent. I’m really not sure.”
I looked into his eyes. “How long had you known about them?”
“For a while. Mark was going to tell you, and it wasn’t my place to.” He touched my cheek, wiping away tears. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how this makes me feel. As if you haven’t suffered enough.”
“In a way it makes it easier,” I said.
A teenager with body piercing and a mohawk slammed a locker door. We waited until he sauntered off with his girl in black leather.
“Typical of my relationship with him, in truth.” I felt drained and could scarcely think as I got up. “He couldn’t commit, take a risk. Never would have, not for anyone. He missed out on so much, and that’s what makes me saddest.”
Outside it was damp with a numbing wind blowing, and the line of cabs around the station did not end. We walked hand in hand and bought bottles of Hooper’s Hooch, because one could drink alcoholic lemonade on the streets of England. Police on dappled horses clopped past Buckingham Palace, and in St. James’s Park, a band of guards in bearskin caps were marching while people pointed cameras. Trees swayed and drums faded as we walked back to the Athenaeum Hotel on Piccadilly.
“Thank you.” I slipped my arm around him. “I love you, Benton,” I said.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
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Point of Origin
PATRICIA CORNWELL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
POINT OF ORIGIN
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1998 by Cornwell Enterprises, Inc.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
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The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 978-1-1012-0734-5
A BERKLEY BOOK®
Berkley Books first published by The IMPRINT Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
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BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
First edition (electronic): July 2001
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With love
to
Barbara Bush
(for the difference you make)
Contents
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Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.
(I Corinthians 3:13)
DAY 523.6
ONE PHEASANT PLACE
KIRBY WOMEN’S WARD WARDS
ISLAND, NY
Hey DOC,
Tick Tock
Sawed bone and fire.
Still home alone with FIB the liar? Watch the clock BIG DOC!
Spurt dark light and fright
TRAINSTRAINSTRAINS.
GKSFWFY wants photos.
Visit with we. On floor three. YOU trade with we.
TICK TOC DOC! (Will Lucy talk?)
LUCY-BOO on TV. Fly through window. Come with we
Under covers. Come til dawn. Laugh and sing. Same ole song.
LUCY LUCY LUCY and we!
Wait and see.
Carrie
/>
1
BENTON WESLEY WAS taking off his running shoes in my kitchen when I ran to him, my heart tripping over fear and hate and remembered horror. Carrie Grethen’s letter had been mixed in a stack of mail and other paperwork, all of it put off until a moment ago when I had decided to drink cinnamon tea in the privacy of my Richmond, Virginia, home. It was Sunday afternoon, thirty-two minutes past five, June eighth.
“I’m assuming she sent this to your office,” Benton said.
He did not seem disturbed as he bent over, peeling off white Nike socks.
“Rose doesn’t read mail marked personal and confidential.” I added a detail he already knew as my pulse ran hard.
“Maybe she should. You seem to have a lot of fans out there.” His wry words cut like paper.
I watched him set pale bare feet on the floor, his elbows on his knees and head low. Sweat trickled over shoulders and arms well defined for a man his age, and my eyes drifted down knees and calves, to tapered ankles still imprinted with the weave of his socks. He ran his fingers through wet silver hair and leaned back in the chair.
“Christ,” he muttered, wiping his face and neck with a towel. “I’m too old for this crap.”
He took a deep breath and blew out slowly with mounting anger. The stainless steel Breitling Aerospace watch I had given to him for Christmas was on the table. He picked it up and snapped it on.
“Goddamn it. These people are worse than cancer. Let me see it,” he said.
The letter was penned by hand in bizarre red block printing, and drawn at the top was a crude crest of a bird with long tail feathers. Scrawled under it was the enigmatic Latin word ergo, or therefore, which in this context meant nothing to me. I unfolded the simple sheet of white typing paper by its corners and set it in front of him on the antique French oak breakfast table. He did not touch a document that might be evidence as he carefully scanned Carrie Grethen’s weird words and began running them through the violent database in his mind.
“The postmark’s New York, and of course there’s been publicity in New York about her trial,” I said as I continued to rationalize and deny. “A sensational article just two weeks ago. So anyone could have gotten Carrie Grethen’s name from that. Not to mention, my office address is public information. This letter’s probably not from her at all. Probably some other cuckoo.”
“It probably is from her.” He continued reading.
“She could mail something like this from a forensic psychiatric hospital and nobody would check it?” I countered as fear coiled around my heart.
“Saint Elizabeth’s, Bellevue, Mid-Hudson, Kirby.” He did not glance up. “The Carrie Grethens, the John Hinckley Juniors, the Mark David Chapmans are patients, not inmates. They enjoy our same civil rights as they sit around in penitentiaries and forensic psychiatric centers and create pedophile bulletin boards on computers and sell serial killer tips through the mail. And write taunting letters to chief medical examiners.”
His voice had more bite, his words more clipped. Benton’s eyes burned with hate as he finally lifted them to me.
“Carrie Grethen is mocking you, big chief. The FBI. Me,” he went on.
“FIB,” I muttered, and on another occasion, I might have found this funny.
Wesley stood and draped the towel over a shoulder.
“Let’s say it’s her,” I started in again.
“It is.” He had no doubt.
“Okay. Then there’s more to this than mockery, Benton.”
“Of course. She’s making sure we don’t forget that she and Lucy were lovers, something the general public doesn’t know yet,” he said. “The obvious point is, Carrie Grethen hasn’t finished ruining people’s lives.”
I could not stand to hear her name, and it enraged me that she was now, this moment, inside my West End home. She might as well be sitting at my breakfast table with us, curdling the air with her foul, evil presence. I envisioned her condescending smile and blazing eyes and wondered what she looked like now after five years of steel bars and socializing with the criminally insane. Carrie was not crazy. She had never been that. She was a character disorder, a psychopath, a violent entity with no conscience.
I looked out at wind rocking Japanese maples in my yard and the incomplete stone wall that scarcely kept me from my neighbors. The telephone abruptly rang and I was reluctant to answer it.
“Dr. Scarpetta,” I said into the receiver as I watched Benton’s eyes sweep back down that red-penned page.
“Yo,” Peter Marino’s familiar voice came over the line. “It’s me.”
He was a captain with the Richmond Police Department, and I knew him well enough to recognize his tone. I braced myself for more bad news.
“What’s up?” I said to him.
“A horse farm went up in flames last night in Warrenton. You may have heard about it on the news,” he said. “Stables, close to twenty high-dollar horses, and the house. The whole nine yards. Everything burned to the ground.”
So far, this wasn’t making any sense. “Marino, why are you calling me about a fire? In the first place, Northern Virginia is not your turf.”
“It is now,” he said.
My kitchen seemed to get small and airless as I waited for the rest.
“ATF’s just called out NRT,” he went on.
“Meaning us,” I said.
“Bingo. Your ass and mine. First thing in the morning.”
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ National Response Team, or NRT, was deployed when churches or businesses burned, and in bombings or any other disaster in which ATF had jurisdiction. Marino and I were not ATF, but it was not unusual for it and other law enforcement agencies to recruit us when the need arose. In recent years I had worked the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings and the crash of TWA Flight 800. I had helped with the identifications of the Branch Davidians at Waco and reviewed the disfigurement and death caused by the Unabomber. I knew from stressful experience that ATF included me in a call-out only when people were dead, and if Marino was recruited, too, then the suspicion was murder.
“How many?” I reached for my clipboard of call sheets.
“It’s not how many, Doc. It’s who. The owner of the farm is media big shot Kenneth Sparkes, the one and only. And right now it’s looking like he didn’t make it.”
“Oh God,” I muttered as my world suddenly got too dark to see. “We’re sure?”
“Well, he’s missing.”
“You mind explaining to me why I’m just now being told about this?”
I felt anger rising, and it was all I could do not to hurl it at him, for all unnatural deaths in Virginia were my responsibility. I shouldn’t have needed Marino to inform me about this one, and I was furious with my Northern Virginia office for not calling me at home.
“Don’t go getting pissed at your docs up in Fairfax,” said Marino, who seemed to read my mind. “Fauquier County asked ATF to take over here, so that’s the way it’s going.”
I still didn’t like it, but it was time to get on with the business at hand.
“I’m assuming no body has been recovered yet,” I said, and I was writing fast.
“Hell no. That’s going to be your fun job.”
I paused, resting the pen on the call sheet. “Marino, this is a single-dwelling fire. Even if arson is suspected, and it’s a high-profile case, I’m not seeing why ATF is interested.”
“Whiskey, machine guns, not to mention buying and selling fancy horses, so now we’re talking about a business,” Marino answered.
“Great,” I muttered.
“Oh yeah. We’re talking a goddamn nightmare. The fire marshal’s gonna call you before the day’s out. Better get packed because the whirlybird’s picking us up before dawn. Timing’s bad, just like it always is. I guess you can kiss your vacation goodbye.”
Benton and I were supposed to drive to Hilton Head tonight to spend a week at the ocean. We had not had time alone so far this year and were burne
d out and barely getting along. I did not want to face him when I hung up the phone.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “I’m sure you’ve already figured out there’s a major disaster.”
I hesitated, watching him, and he would not give me his eyes as he continued to decipher Carrie’s letter.
“I’ve got to go. First thing in the morning. Maybe I can join you in the middle of the week,” I went on.
He was not listening because he did not want to hear any of it.
“Please understand,” I said to him.
He did not seem to hear me, and I knew he was terribly disappointed.
“You’ve been working those torso cases,” he said as he read. “The dismemberments from Ireland and here. ‘Sawed-up bone.’ And she fantasizes about Lucy, and masturbates. Reaching orgasm multiple times a night under the covers. Allegedly.”
His eyes ran down the letter as he seemed to talk to himself.
“She’s saying they still have a relationship, Carrie and Lucy,” he continued. “The we stuff is her attempt to make a case for disassociation. She’s not present when she commits her crimes. Some other party doing them. Multiple personalities. A predictable and pedestrian insanity plea. I would have thought she’d be a little more original.”
“She is perfectly competent to stand trial,” I answered with a wave of fresh anger.
“You and I know that.” He drank from a plastic bottle of Evian. “Where did Lucy Boo come from?”
A drop of water dribbled down his chin and he wiped it with the back of his hand.
I stumbled at first. “A pet name I had for her until she was in kindergarten. Then she didn’t want to be called that anymore. Sometimes I still slip.” I paused again as I imagined her back then. “So I guess she told Carrie the nickname.”
“Well, we know that at one time, Lucy confided in Carrie quite a lot,” Wesley stated the obvious. “Lucy’s first lover. And we all know you never forget your first, no matter how lousy it was.”
The Body Farm Page 58