“I doubt Fielding has bothered to watch the recording,” Marino adds anyway. “I doubt he’s done a damn thing. I haven’t seen or heard from the
son of a bitch since first thing this morning. MIA once again, just like he’s done before.” He opens the glass front door. “I sure as hell hope he
doesn’t shut us down. Wouldn’t that be something? You do him a fucking favor and give him a job after he walked off the last one, and he destroys
the CFC before it’s even off the ground.”
Inside the lobby with its showcases of awards and air force memorabilia, its comfortable chairs and big-screen TV, a sign welcomes guests to
the home of the C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globe-master III. At the front desk I silently wait behind a man in the muted pixilated tiger stripes of army
combat uniforms, or ACUs, as he buys shaving cream, water, and several mini bottles of Johnnie Walker Scotch. I tell the clerk that I’m checking out
earlier than planned, and yes, I’ll remember to turn in my keys, and of course I understand I’ll be charged the usual government rate of thirty-eight
dollars for the day even though I’m not staying the night.
“What is it they say?” Marino goes on. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“Let’s try not to be quite so negative.”
“You and me both gave up good positions in New York, and we shut down the office in Watertown, and this is what we’re left with.”
I don’t say anything.
“I hope like hell we didn’t ruin our careers,” he says.
I don’t answer him because I’ve heard enough. Past the business center and vending machines, we take the stairs to the second floor, and it is
now that he informs me that Lucy isn’t waiting with the helicopter at the Civil Air Terminal. She’s in my room. She’s packing my belongings, touching
them, making decisions about them, emptying my closet, my drawers, disconnecting my laptop, printer, and wireless router. He’s waited to tell me
because he knows damn well that under ordinary circumstances, this would annoy me beyond measure—doesn’t matter if it’s my computer-genius,
former-federal-law-enforcement niece, whom I’ve raised like a daughter.
Circumstances are anything but ordinary, and I’m relieved that Marino is here and Lucy is in my room, that they have come for me. I need to get
home and fix everything. We follow the long hallway carpeted in deep red, past the balcony arranged with colonial reproductions and an electronic
massage chair thoughtfully placed there for weary pilots. I insert my magnetic key card into the lock of my room, and I wonder who let Lucy in, and
then I think of Briggs again and I think of CNN. I can’t imagine appearing on TV. What if the media has gotten word of what’s happened in
Cambridge? I would know that by now. Marino would know it. My administrator Bryce would know it, and he would tell me right away. Everything is
going to be fine.
Lucy is sitting on my neatly made bed, zipping up my cosmetic case, and I detect the clean citrus scent of her shampoo as I hug her and feel
how much I’ve missed her. A black flight suit accentuates her bold green eyes and short rose-gold hair, her sharp features and leanness, and I’m
reminded of how stunning she is in an unusual way, boyish but feminine, athletically chiseled but with breasts, and so intense she looks fierce.
Doesn’t matter if she’s being playful or polite, my niece tends to intimidate and has few friends, maybe none except Marino, and her lovers never
last. Not even Jaime, although I haven’t voiced my suspicions. I haven’t asked. But I don’t buy Lucy’s story that she moved from New York to Boston
for financial reasons. Even if her forensic computer investigative company was in a decline, and I don’t believe that, either, she was making more in
Manhattan than she’s now paid by the CFC, which is nothing. My niece works for me pro bono. She doesn’t need money.
“What’s this about the satellite radio?” I watch her carefully, trying to interpret her signals, which are always subtle and perplexing.
Caplets rattle as she checks how many Advil are in a bottle, deciding not enough to bother with, and she clunks it in the trash. “We’ve got
weather, so I’d like to get out of here.” She takes the cap off a bottle of Zantac, tossing that next. “We’ll talk as we fly, and I’ll need your help
copiloting, because it’s going to be tricky dodging snow showers and freezing rain en route. We’re supposed to get up to a foot at home, starting
around ten.”
My first thought is Norton’s Woods. I need to pay a retrospective visit, but by the time I get there, it will be covered in snow. “That’s unfortunate,”
I comment. “We may have a crime scene that was never worked as one.”
“I told Cambridge PD to go back over there this morning.” Marino’s eyes probe and wander as if it is my quarters that need to be searched.
“They didn’t find anything.”
“Did they ask you why you wanted them to look?” That concern again.
“I said we had questions. I blamed it on the Glock. The serial number’s been ground off. Guess I didn’t tell you that,” he adds as he looks
around, looking at everything but me.
“Firearms can try acid on it, see if we can restore the serial number that way. If all else fails, we’ll try the large-chamber SEM,” I decide. “If
there’s anything left, we’ll find it. And I’ll ask Jack to go to Norton’s Woods and do a retrospective.”
“Right. I’m sure he’ll get right on it,” Marino says sarcastically. “He can take photographs before the snow starts,” I add. “Or someone can.
Whoever’s on call—”
“Waste of time,” Marino says, cutting me off. “None of us was there yesterday. We don’t know the exact damn spot—only that it was near a tree
and a green bench. Well, that’s a lot of help when you’re talking about six acres of trees and green benches.”
“What about photographs?” I ask as Lucy continues going through my small pharmacy of ointments, analgesics, antacids, vitamins, eyedrops,
and hand sanitizers spread over the bed. “The police must have taken pictures of the body in situ.”
“I’m still waiting for the detective to get those to me. The guy who responded to the scene, he brought in the pistol this morning. Lester Law,
goes by Les Law, but on the street he’s known as Lawless, just like his father and grandfather before him. Cambridge cops going back to the
fucking Mayflower. I’ve never met him.”
“I think that about does it.” Lucy gets up from the bed. “You might want to make sure I didn’t miss anything,” she says to me.
Wastebaskets are overflowing, and my bags are packed and lined up by a wall, the closet door open wide, nothing inside but empty hangers.
Computer equipment, printed files, journal articles, and books are gone from my desk, and there is nothing in the dirty-clothes hamper or bathroom
or in the dresser drawers I check. I open the small refrigerator, and it is empty and has been wiped clean. While she and Marino begin carrying my
belongings out, I enter Briggs’s number into my iPhone. I look out at the three-story stucco building on the other side of the parking lot, at the large
plate-glass window in the middle of the third floor. Last night I was in that suite with him and other colleagues, watching the game, and life was
good. We cheered for the New Orleans Saints and ourselves, and we toasted the Pentagon and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
DARPA, which had made CT-assisted virtual autopsies possible at Dover and now at the CFC. We celebrated mission accomplished, a job well
done, and now this, as if last night wasn’t real, as if I dreamed it.
I take a deep breath and press send on my iPhone, going hollow inside. Briggs can’t be happy with me. Images flash on the wall-mounted flatscreen
TV in his living room, and then he walks past the glass, dressed in the combat uniform of the army, green and sandy brown with a mandarin
collar, what he typically wears when he’s not in the morgue or at a scene. I watch him answer his phone and return to his big window, where he
stands, looking directly at me. From a distance we are face-to-face, an expanse of tarmac and parked cars between the armed forces chief
medical examiner and me, as if we’re about to have a standoff.
“Colonel.” His voice greets me somberly.
“I just heard. And I assure you I’m taking care of this, will be on the helicopter within the hour.”
“You know what I always say,” his deep, authoritative voice sounds in my earpiece, and I try to detect the degree of his bad mood and what
he’s going to do. “There’s an answer to everything. The problem is finding it and figuring out the best way to do that. The proper and appropriate
way to do that.” He’s cool. He’s cautious. He’s very serious. “We’ll do this another time,” he adds.
He means the final briefing we were scheduled to have. I’m sure he also means CNN, and I wonder what Marino told him. What exactly did he
say?
“I agree, John. Everything should be canceled.”
“It has been.”
“Which is smart.” I’m matter-of-fact. I won’t let him sense my insecurities, and I know he sniffs for them. I know damn well he does. “My first
priority is to determine if the information reported to me is correct. Because I don’t see how it can be.”
“Not a good time for you to go on the air. I don’t need Rockman to tell us that.”
Rockman is the press secretary. Briggs doesn’t need to talk to him because he already has. I’m sure of it.
“I understand,” I reply.
“Remarkable timing. If I was paranoid, I might just think someone has orchestrated some sort of bizarre sabotage.”
“Based on what I’ve been told, I don’t see how that would be possible.”
“I said if I was paranoid,” Briggs replies, and from where I stand, I can make out his formidable sturdy shape but can’t see the expression on
his face. I don’t need to see it. He’s not smiling. His gray eyes are galvanized steel.
“The timing is either a coincidence or it’s not,” I say. “The basic tenet in criminal investigations, John. It’s always one or the other.”
“Let’s not trivialize this.”
“I’m doing anything but.”
“If a living person was put in your damn cooler, I can’t think of much worse,” he says flatly.
“We don’t know—”
“It’s just a damn shame after all this.” As if everything we’ve built over the past few years is on the precipice of ruin.
“We don’t know that what’s been reported is accurate—” I start to say.
“I think it would be best if we bring the body here,” he interrupts again. “AFDIL can work on the identification. Rockman will make sure the
situation is well contained. We’ve got everything we need right here.”
I’m stunned. Briggs wants to send a plane to Hanscom Field, the air force base affiliated with the CFC. He wants the Armed Forces DNA
Identification Lab and probably other military labs and someone other than me to handle whatever has happened, because he doesn’t think I’m
competent. He doesn’t trust me.
“We don’t know if we’re talking about federal jurisdiction,” I remind him. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
“Look. I’m trying to do what’s best for all involved.” Briggs has his hands behind his back, his legs slightly spread, staring across the parking lot
at me. “I’m suggesting we can dispatch a C-Seventeen to Hanscom. We can have the body here by midnight. The CFC is a port mortuary, too, and
that’s what port mortuaries do.”
“That’s not what port mortuaries do. The point isn’t for bodies to be received, then transferred elsewhere for autopsies and lab analysis. The
CFC was never intended to be a first screening for Dover, a preliminary check before the experts step in. That was never my mandate, and it
wasn’t the agreement when thirty million dollars was spent on the facility in Cambridge.”
“You should just stay at Dover, Kay, and we’ll bring the body here.”
“I’m requesting you refrain from intervening, John. Right now this case is the jurisdiction of the chief medical examiner of Massachusetts.
Please don’t challenge me or my authority.”
A long pause, then he states rather than asks, “You really want that responsibility.”
“It’s mine whether I want it or not.”
“I’m trying to protect you. I’ve been trying.”
“Don’t.” That’s not what he’s trying. He doesn’t have confidence in me.
“I can deploy Captain Avallone to help. It’s not a bad idea.”
I can’t believe he would suggest that, either. “That won’t be necessary,” I reply firmly. “The CFC is perfectly capable of handling this.”
“I’m on the record as having offered.”
On the record with whom? It occurs to me uncannily that someone else is on the line or within earshot. Briggs is still standing in front of his
window. I can’t tell if anyone else might be in the suite with him.
“Whatever you decide,” he then says. “I’m not going to step on you. Call me as soon as you know something. Wake me up if you have to.” He
doesn’t say good-bye or good luck or it was nice having me here for half a year.
2
Lucy and Marino have left my room. My suitcases, rucksacks, and Bankers Boxes are gone, and there is nothing left. It is as if I was never here, and
I feel alone in a way I haven’t for years, maybe decades.
I look around one last time, making sure nothing has been forgotten, my attention wandering past the microwave, the small refrigerator-freezer
and coffeemaker, the windows with their view of the parking lot and Briggs’s lighted suite, and beyond, the black sky over the void of the empty golf
course. Thick clouds pass over the oblong moon, and it glows on and off like a signal lantern, as if telling me what is coming down the tracks and if I
should stop or go, and I can’t see the stars at all. I worry that the bad weather is moving fast, carried on the same strong south wind that brings in the
big planes and their sad cargo. I should hurry, but I’m distracted by the bathroom mirror, by the person in it, and I pause to look at myself in the glare
of fluorescent lights. Who are you now? Who really?
My blue eyes and short blond hair, the strong shape of my face and figure, aren’t so different, I decide, are remarkably the same, considering
my age. I have held up well in my windowless places of concrete and stainless steel, and much of it is genetic, an inherited will to thrive in a family
as tragic as a Verdi opera. The Scarpettas are from hearty Northern Italian stock, with prominent features, fair skin and hair, and well-defined
muscle and bone that stubbornly weather hardship and the abuses of self-indulgence most people wouldn’t associate with me. But the inclinations
are there, a passion for food, for drink, for all things desired by the flesh, no matter how destructive. I crave beauty and feel deeply, but I’m an
aberration, too. I can be unflinching and impervious. I can be immutable and unrelenting, and these behaviors are learned. I believe they are
