From Potter's Field ks-6 Read online

  'Put the pager in an evidence bag. It needs to be processed for prints,' I said. 'I know we've touched it, but we can still try. That's why his coat was unzipped.'

  'Huh?' Marino looked stunned.

  'Davila's coat was unzipped and there was no reason for that'

  'Yeah, there was a reason. Gault wanted Davila's gun.'

  'It wasn't necessary to unzip his coat to get his gun,' I said. 'There's a slit in the jacket's side where the holster is. I think Gault unzipped Davila's coat to find the pager. Then he got the number off it.'

  The doctors had returned their efforts to the body. They pulled off boots and socks and unfastened an ankle holster holding a Walther.380 that Davila shouldn't have been carrying and had never had a chance to use. They took off his Kevlar vest, a navy police T-shirt, and a silver crucifix on a long chain. On his right shoulder was a small tattoo of a rose entwining a cross. In his wallet was a dollar.

  9

  I left New York that afternoon on a US Air shuttle and got into Washington National at three. Lucy could not meet me at the airport because she had not driven since her accident, and there was no appropriate reason for me to find Wesley waiting at my gate.

  Outside the airport I suddenly felt sorry for myself as I struggled alone with briefcase and bag. I was tired and my clothes felt dirty. I was hopelessly overwhelmed and ashamed to admit it. I couldn't even seem to get a taxi.

  Eventually, I arrived at Quantico in a dented cab painted robin's-egg blue with glass tinted purple. My window in back would not roll down, and it was impossible for my Vietnamese driver to communicate who I was to the guard at the FBI Academy entrance.

  'Lady doctor,' the driver said again, and I could tell he was unnerved by the security, the tire shredders, the many antennae on tops of buildings. 'She okay.'

  'No,' I said to the back of his head. 'My name is Kay. Kay Scarpetta.'

  I tried to get out, but doors were locked, the buttons removed. The guard reached for his radio.

  'Please let me out,' I said to the driver, who was staring at the nine-millimeter pistol on the guard's belt. 'I need for you to let me out.'

  He turned around, frightened. 'Out here?'

  'No,' I said as the guard emerged from the booth.

  The driver's eyes widened.

  'I mean, I do want out here, but just for a minute. So I can explain to the guard.' I pointed and spoke very slowly. 'He doesn't know who I am because I can't open the window and he can't see through the glass.'

  The driver nodded some more.

  'I must get out,' I said firmly and with emphasis. 'You must open the doors.'

  The locks went up.

  I got out and squinted in the sun. I showed my identification to the guard, who was young and militaristic.

  'The glass is tinted and I couldn't see you,' he said. 'Next time just roll your window down.'

  The driver had started taking my luggage out of the trunk and setting it on the road. He glanced about frantically as artillery fire cracked and gunshots popped from Marine Corps and FBI firing ranges.

  'No, no, no.' I motioned him to put the luggage back in the trunk. 'Drive me there, please.' I pointed toward Jefferson, a tall tan brick building on the other side of a parking lot.

  It was clear he did not want to drive me anywhere, but I got back in the car before he could get away. The trunk slammed and the guard waved us through. The air was cold, the sky bright blue.

  Inside Jefferson's lobby a video display above the reception desk welcomed me to Quantico and wished me a happy and safe holiday. A young woman with freckles signed me in and gave me a magnetic card to open doors around the Academy.

  'Was Santa good to you, Dr. Scarpetta?' she cheerfully asked, sorting through room keys.

  'I must have been bad this year,' I said. 'I mostly got switches.'

  'I can't imagine that. You're always so sweet,' she said. 'We've got you on the security floor, as usual.'

  'Thank you.' I could not recall her name and had a feeling she knew it.

  'How many nights will you be with us?'

  'Just one.' I thought her name might be Sarah, and for some reason it seemed very important that I remember it.

  She handed me two keys, one plastic, one metal.

  'You're Sarah, aren't you?' I took a risk and asked.

  'No, I'm Sally.' She looked hurt.

  'I meant Sally,' I said, dismayed. 'Of course. I'm sorry. You always take such good care of me, and I thank you.'

  She gave me an uncertain look. 'By the way. Your niece walked through maybe thirty minutes ago,'

  'Which way was she headed?'

  She pointed toward glass doors leading from the lobby into the heart of the building and clicked the lock free before I had a chance to insert my card. Lucy could have been en route to the PX, post office, Boardroom, ERF. She could have been heading toward her dormitory room, which was in this building but on a different wing.

  I tried to imagine where my niece might be at this hour of the afternoon, but where I found her was the last place I would have looked. She was in my suite.

  'Lucy!' I exclaimed when I opened the door and she was standing on the other side. 'How did you get in?'

  'The same way you did,' she said none too warmly. 'I have a key.'

  I carried my bags into the living room and set them down. 'Why?' I studied her face.

  'My room's on this side, yours is on that.'

  The security floor was for protected witnesses, spies or any other person the Department of Justice decided needed extra protection. To get into rooms, one had to pass through two sets of doors, the first requiring a code entered on a digital keypad that was reconfigured each time it was used. The second needed a magnetized card that was also often changed. I'd always suspected the telephones were monitored.

  I was assigned these quarters more than a year ago because Gault was not the only worry in my life. I was baffled that Lucy had now been assigned here, too.

  'I thought you were in Washington dorm,' I said.

  She went into the living room and sat down. 'I was,' she said. 'And as of this afternoon, I'm here.'

  I took the couch across from her. Silk flowers had been arranged, curtains drawn back from a window filled with sky. My niece wore sweatpants, running shoes, and a dark FBI sweatshirt with a hood. Her auburn hair was short, her sharp-featured face flawless except for the bright scar on her forehead. Lucy was a senior at UVA. She was beautiful and brilliant, and our relationship had always been one of extremes.

  'Did they put you here because I'm here?' I was still trying to understand.

  'No.'

  'You didn't hug me when I came in.' It occurred to me as I got up. I kissed her cheek, and she stiffened, pulling away from my arms. 'You've been smoking.' I sat back down.

  'Who told you that?'

  'No one needs to tell me. I can smell it in your hair.'

  'You hugged me because you wanted to see if I smell like cigarettes.'

  'And you didn't hug me because you know you smell like cigarettes.'

  'You're nagging me.'

  'I most certainly am not,' I said.

  'You are. You're worse than Grans,' she said.

  'Who is in the hospital because she smoked,' I said, holding her intense green gaze.

  'Since you know my secret, I may as well light up now.'

  'This is a nonsmoking room. In fact, nothing is allowed in this room,' I said.

  'Nothing?' She did not blink.

  'Absolutely nothing.'

  'You drink coffee in here. I know. I've heard you zap it in the microwave when we've been on the phone.'

  'Coffee is all right.'

  'You said nothing. To many people on this planet, coffee is a vice. I bet you drink alcohol in here, too.'

  'Lucy, please don't smoke.'

  She slipped a pack of Virginia Slim menthols out of a pocket. 'I'll go outside,' she said.

  I opened windows so she could smoke, unable to believe she had tak
en up a habit I had shed much blood to quit. Lucy was athletic and superbly fit. I told her I did not understand.

  'I'm flirting with it. I don't do it much.'

  'Who moved you into my suite? Let's get back to that,' I asked as she puffed away.

  'They moved me.'

  'Who" is they?'

  'Apparently, the order came from the top.'

  'Burgess?' I referred to the assistant director in charge of the Academy.

  She nodded. 'Yes.'

  'What would his purpose be?' I frowned.

  She tapped an ash into her palm. 'No one's told me a reason. I can only suppose it's related to ERF, to CAIN.' She paused. 'You know, the weird messages, et cetera.'

  'Lucy,' I said, 'what exactly is going on?'

  'We don't know,' she spoke levelly. 'But something is.'

  'Gault?'

  'There's no evidence that anyone's been in the system - no one who isn't supposed to be.'

  'But you believe someone has.'

  She inhaled deeply, like veteran smokers do. 'CAIN is not doing what we're telling him to do. He's doing something else, getting his instruction from somewhere else.'

  'There's got to be a way to track that,' I said.

  Her eyes sparked. 'Believe me, I'm trying.'

  'I'm not questioning your efforts or ability.'

  'There's no trail,' she went on. 'If someone is in there, he's leaving no tracks. And that's not possible. You can't just go into the system and tell it to send messages or do anything else without the audit log reflecting it. And we have a printer running morning, noon and night that prints every keystroke made by anybody for any reason.'

  'Why are you getting angry?' I said.

  'Because I'm tired of being blamed for the problems over there. The break-in wasn't my fault. I had no idea that someone who worked right next to me…' She took another drag. 'Well, I only said I'd fix it because I was asked to. Because the senator asked me to. Or asked you, really…'

  'Lucy, I'm not aware that anyone is blaming you for problems with CAIN,' I said gently.

  Anger burned brighter in her eyes. 'If I'm not being blamed, I wouldn't have been assigned to a room up here. What this constitutes is house arrest.'

  'Nonsense. I stay here every time I come to Quantico, and I'm certainly not under house arrest.'

  'They put you here for security and privacy,' she said. 'But that's not why I'm here. I'm being blamed again. I'm being watched. I can tell it in the way certain people are treating me over there.' She nodded in the direction of ERF, which was across the street from the Academy.

  'What happened today?' I asked.

  She went into the kitchen, ran water over the cigarette butt and dropped it into the disposal. She sat back down and didn't say anything. I studied her and got more unsettled. I did not know why she was this angry, and whenever she acted in a way that could not be explained, I was frightened again.

  Lucy's car accident could have been fatal. Her head injury could have ruined her most remarkable gift, and I was assaulted by images of hematomas and a skull fractured like a hard-boiled egg. I thought of the woman we called Jane with her shaved head and scars, and I imagined Lucy in places where no one knew her name.

  'Have you been feeling all right?' I asked my niece.

  She shrugged.

  'What about the headaches?'

  'I still get them.' Suspicion shadowed her eyes. 'Sometimes the Midrin helps. Sometimes it just makes me throw up. The only thing that really works is Fiorinal. But I don't have any of that.'

  'You don't need any of that.'

  'You're not the one who gets the headaches.'

  'I get plenty of headaches. You don't need to be on barbiturates,' I answered. 'You're sleeping and eating all right, and getting exercise?'

  'What is this, a doctor's appointment?'

  'In a matter of speaking, since it just so happens I'm a doctor. Only you didn't make an appointment but I'm nice enough to see you anyway.'

  A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. 'I'm doing fine,' she said less defensively.

  'Something happened today,' I said again.

  'I guess you haven't talked to Commander Penn.'

  'Not since this morning. I didn't know you knew her.'

  'Her department's on-line with us, with CAIN. At twelve noon CAIN called the Transit Police VICAP terminal. I guess you had already left for the airport.'

  I nodded, my stomach tightening as I thought of Davila's beeper going off in the morgue. 'What was the message this time?' I asked.

  'I have it if you want to see it.'

  'Yes,' I said.

  Lucy went into her room and returned carrying a briefcase. She unzipped it and pulled out a stack of papers, handing me one that was a printout from the VICAP terminal located in the Communications Unit, which was under Frances Penn's command. It read:

  — - -MESSAGE PQ21 96701 001145 BEGINS- - -

  FROM:-CAIN

  TO: - ALL UNITS amp; COMMANDS

  SUBJECT: - DEAD COPS

  TO ALL COMMANDS CONCERNED:

  MEMBERS WILL, FOR THE PURPOSE OF SAFETY WHEN RESPONDING TO OR BEING ON PATROL IN THE SUBWAY TUNNELS, WEAR HELMETS. - - -MESSAGE PQ21 96701 001145 ENDS- - -

  I stared at the printout for a while, unnerved and inflamed. Then I asked, 'Is there a username associated with whoever logged on to type this?'

  'No.'

  'And there's absolutely no way to trace this?'

  'Not by conventional means.'

  'What do you think?'

  'I think when ERF was broken into, whoever got into CAIN planted a program.'

  'Like a virus?' I asked.

  'It is a virus, and it has been attached to a file that we just haven't thought of. It's allowing someone to move inside our system without leaving tracks.'

  I thought of Gault backlit by his flashlight in the tunnel last night, of endless rails leading deeper into darkness and disease. Gault moved freely through spaces most people could not see. He nimbly stepped over greasy steel, needles and the fetid nests of humans and rats. He was a virus. He had somehow gotten into our bodies and our buildings and our technology.

  'CAIN is infected by a virus,' I said. 'In summary.'

  'An unusual one. This isn't a virus oriented toward crashing the hard disk or trashing data. This virus isn't generic. It is specific for the Crime Artificial Intelligence Network because its purpose is to allow someone access to CAIN and the VICAP database.

  This virus is like a master key. It opens up every room in the house.'

  'And it's attached to an existing program.'

  'You might say it has a host,' she said. 'Yes. Some program routinely used. A virus can't cause its damage unless the computer goes through a routine or subroutine which causes a host program - like autoexec.bat in DOS - to be read.'

  'I see. And this virus is not embedded in any files that are read when the computer is booted, for example.'

  Lucy shook her head.

  'How many program files are there in CAIN?'

  'Oh my God,' she said. 'Thousands. And some of them are long enough to wrap around this building. The virus could be attached anywhere, and the situation is further complicated because I didn't do all of the programming. I'm not as familiar with files others wrote.'

  Others meant Carrie Grethen, who had been Lucy's programming partner and intimate friend. Carrie had also known Gault and was responsible for the ERF break-in. Lucy would not talk about her and avoided saying her name.

  'Is there any possibility this virus might be attached only to programs Carrie wrote?' I asked.

  The expression did not change on Lucy's face. 'It might be attached to one of the programs I didn't write. It might also be attached to one I did. I don't know. I'm looking. It may take a long time.'

  The telephone rang.

  'That's probably Jan.' She got up and went into the kitchen.

  I glanced at my watch. I was due down in the unit in half an hour. Lucy placed her hand over the rec
eiver. 'Do you care if Jan drops by? We're going running.'

  'I don't mind in the least,' I said.

  'She wants to know if you want to run with us.'

  I smiled and shook my head. I couldn't keep up with Lucy even if she smoked two packs a day, and Janet could pass for a professional athlete. The two of them gave me the vague sensation of being old and left in the wrong drawer.

  'How about something to drink?' Lucy was off the phone and inside the refrigerator.

  'What are you offering?' I watched her slight figure bent over, one arm holding open the door while the other slid cans around on shelves.

  'Diet Pepsi, Zima, Gatorade and Perrier.'

  'Zima?'

  'You haven't had it?'

  'I don't drink beer.'

  'It's not like beer. You'll like it.'

  'I didn't know they had room service here,' I said with a smile.

  'I got some stuff at the PX.'

  'I'll have Perrier.'

  She came over with our drinks.

  'Aren't there antivirus programs?' I said.

  'Antivirus programs only find known viruses like Friday the Thirteenth, the Maltese Amoeba, the Stoned virus, Michelangelo. What we're dealing with inside CAIN was created specifically for CAIN. It was an inside job. There is no antivirus program unless I write one.'

  'Which you can't do until you find the virus first.'

  She took a big swallow of Gatorade.

  'Lucy, should CAIN be shut down?'

  She got up. 'Let me check on Jan. She can't get through those outer doors and I doubt we'll hear her knocking.'

  I got up too and carried my bags into my bedroom with its plain decor and simple pine wardrobe. Unlike other rooms, the security suite had private baths. Through windows I had an unspoiled view of snow-patched fields unrolling into endless woods. The sun was so bright it felt like spring, and I wished there were time to bathe. I wanted to scrub New York away.

  'Aunt Kay? We're out of here,' Lucy called as I brushed my teeth.

  I quickly rinsed my mouth and returned to the living room. Lucy had slipped on a pair of Oakleys and was stretching by the door. Her friend had one foot propped up on a chair as she tightened a shoelace.

  'Good afternoon, Dr. Scarpetta,' Janet said to me, quickly straightening up. 'I hope you don't mind my stopping by. I didn't mean to disturb you.'