From Potter's Field ks-6 Read online

  Despite my efforts at putting her at ease, she always acted like a corporal startled by Patton walking in. She was a new agent, and I had first noticed her when I was a guest lecturer here last month. I remembered showing slides about violent death and crime scene preservation while she kept her eyes on me from the back of the room. In the dark I could feel her studying me from her chair, and it made me curious that during breaks she did not speak to anyone. She would disappear downstairs.

  Later I learned she and Lucy were friends, and perhaps that and shyness explained Janet's demeanor toward me. Well built from hours in the gym, she had shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes that were almost violet. If all went well, she would graduate from the Academy in less than two months.

  'If you'd ever like to run with us, Dr. Scarpetta, you'd be welcome,' Janet politely repeated her invitation.

  'You are very kind.' I smiled. 'And I am flattered that you would think I could.'

  'Of course you could.'

  'No, she couldn't.' Lucy finished her Gatorade and set the empty bottle on the counter. 'She hates running. She thinks negative thoughts the whole time she's doing it.'

  I returned to the bathroom as they went out the door, and I washed my face and stared in the mirror. My blond hair seemed grayer than it had this morning and the cut had somehow gotten worse. I wore no makeup, and my face looked like it had just come out of the dryer and needed to be pressed. Lucy and Janet were unblemished, taut and bright, as if nature took joy in sculpting and polishing only the young. I brushed my teeth again and that made me think of Jane.

  Benton Wesley's unit had changed names many times and was now part of HRT. But its location remained sixty feet below the Academy in a windowless area that once had been Hoover's bomb shelter. I found Wesley in his office talking on the phone. He glanced at me as he flipped through paperwork in a thick file.

  Spread out in front of him were scene photographs from a recent consultation that had nothing to do with Gault. This victim was a man who had been stabbed and slashed 122 times. He had been strangled with a ligature, his body found facedown on a bed in a motel room in Florida.

  'It's a signature crime. Well, the blatant overkill and the unusual configuration of the bindings,' Wesley was saying. 'Right. A loop around each wrist, handcuff style.'

  I sat down. Wesley had reading glasses on and I could tell he had been running his fingers through his hair. He looked tired. My eyes rested on fine oil paintings on his walls and autographed books behind glass. He was often contacted by people writing novels and scripts, but he did not flaunt celebrity connections. I think he found them embarrassing and in poor taste. I did not believe he would talk to anyone if the decision were left completely up to him.

  'Yes, it was a very bloody method of attack, to say the least. The others were, too. We're talking about a theme of domination, a ritual driven by rage.'

  I noticed he had several pale blue FBI manuals on his desk that were from ERF. One of them was an instruction manual for CAIN that Lucy had helped write, and pages were marked in numerous places with paper clips. I wondered if she had marked them or if he had, and my intuition answered the question as my chest got tight. My heart hurt the way it always did when Lucy was in trouble.

  'That threatened his sense of domination.' Wesley met my eyes. 'Yes, the reaction's going to be anger. Always, with someone like this.'

  His tie was black with pale gold stripes, and typically his shirt was white and starched. He wore Department of Justice cuff links, his wedding band and an understated gold watch with a black leather band that Connie had given him for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. He and his wife came from money, and the Wesleys lived quietly well.

  He hung up the phone and took off his glasses.

  'What's the problem?' I asked, and I hated the way he made my pulse pick up.

  He gathered photographs and dropped them inside a manilla envelope. 'Another victim in Florida.'

  'The Orlando area again?'

  'Yes. I'll get you reports as soon as we get them.'

  I nodded and changed the subject to Gault. 'I'm assuming you know what happened in New York,' I said.

  'The pager.'

  I nodded again.

  'I'm afraid I know.' He winced. 'He's taunting us, showing his contempt. He's playing his games, only it's getting worse.'

  'It's getting much worse. But we shouldn't focus only on him,' I said.

  He listened, eyes locked on mine, hands folded on the case file of the murdered man he had just been discussing on the phone.

  'It would be all too easy to become so obsessed with Gault that we don't really work the cases. For example, it is very important to identify this woman we think he murdered in Central Park.'

  'I would assume everyone thinks that's important, Kay.'

  'Everyone will say they think it is important,' I replied, and anger began quietly stirring. 'But in fact, the cops, the Bureau want to catch Gault, and identifying this homeless lady isn't a priority. She's just another poor, nameless person prisoners will bury in Potter's Field.'

  'Obviously, she is a priority to you.'

  'Absolutely.'

  'Why?'

  'I think she has something yet to say to us.'

  'About Gault?'

  'Yes.'

  'On what are you basing this?'

  'Instinct,' I said. 'And she's a priority because we are bound morally and professionally to do everything we can for her. She has a right to be buried with her name.'

  'Of course she does. NYPD, the Transit Police, the Bureau - we all want her identified.'

  But I did not believe him. 'We really don't care,' I flatly said. 'Not the cops, not the medical examiners, and not this unit. We already know who killed her, so who she is no longer matters. That's the black and white of it when you're talking about a jurisdiction as overwhelmed by violence as New York is.'

  Wesley stared off, running his tapered fingers over a Mont Blanc pen. 'I'm afraid there's some truth in what you're saying.' He looked back at me. 'We don't care because we can't. It isn't because we don't want to. I want Gault caught before he kills again. That's my bottom line.'

  'As it should be. And we don't know that this dead woman can't help with that. Maybe she will.'

  I saw depression and felt it in the weariness of his voice. 'It would seem her only link to Gault is that they met in the museum,' he said. 'We've been through her personal effects, and nothing among them might lead us to him. So my question is, what else might you learn from her that would help us catch him?'

  'I don't know,'1 said. 'But when I have unidentified cases in Virginia, I don't rest until I've done all I can to solve them. This case is in New York, but I'm involved because I work with your unit and you have been invited into the investigation.'

  I talked with conviction, as if the case of Jane's vicious murder were being tried in this room. 'If I am not allowed to uphold my own standards,' I went on, 'then I cannot serve as a consultant for the Bureau any longer.'

  Wesley listened to all this with troubled patience. I knew he felt much of the same frustration that I did, but there was a difference. He had not grown up poor, and when we had our worst fights, I held that against him.

  'If she were an important person,' I said, 'everyone would care.'

  He remained silent.

  'There is no justice if you're poor,' I said, 'unless the issue is forced.'

  He stared at me.

  'Benton, I'm forcing the issue.'

  'Explain to me what you want to do,' he said.

  'I want to do whatever it takes to find out who she is. I want you to support me.'

  He studied me for a moment. He was analyzing. 'Why this victim?' he asked.

  'I thought I'd just explained that.'

  'Be careful,' he said. 'Be careful that your motivation isn't subjective.'

  'What are you suggesting?'

  'Lucy.'

  I felt a rush of irritation.

  'Lucy could ha
ve been as badly head injured as this woman was,' he said. 'Lucy's always been an orphan, of sorts, and not so long ago she was missing, wandering around in New England, and you had to go find her.'

  'You're accusing me of projecting.'

  'I'm not accusing you. I'm exploring the possibility with you.'

  'I'm simply attempting to do my job,' I said. 'And I have no desire to be psychoanalyzed.'

  'I understand.' He paused. 'Do whatever you need to do. I'll help in any way I can. And I'm sure Pete will, too.'

  Then we switched to the more treacherous subject of Lucy and CAIN, and this Wesley did not want to talk about. He got up for coffee as the phone in the outer office rang, and his secretary took another message. The phone had not stopped ringing since my arrival, and I knew it was always like this. His office was like mine. The world was full of desperate people who had our numbers and no one else to call.

  'Just tell me what you think she did,' I said when he got back.

  He set my coffee before me. 'You're speaking like her aunt,' he said.

  'No. Now I'm speaking like her mother.'

  'I would rather you and I talk about this like two professionals,' he said.

  'Fine. You can start by filling me in.'

  'The espionage that began last October when ERF was broken into is still going on,' he said. 'Someone is inside CAIN.'

  'That much I know.'

  'We don't know who is doing it,' he said.

  'We assume it's Gault, I suppose,' I said.

  Wesley reached for his coffee. He met my eyes. 'I'm certainly no expert in computers. But there's something you need to see.'

  He opened a thin file folder and withdrew a sheet of paper. As he handed it to me I recognized it as a printout from a computer screen.

  'That's a page of CAIN's audit log for the exact time that the most recent message was sent to the VICAP terminal in the Transit Police Department's Communications Unit,' he said. 'Do you notice anything unusual?'

  I thought of the printout Lucy had shown me, of the evil message about 'Dead Cops.' I had to stare for a minute at the log-ins and log-outs, the IDs, dates and times before I realized the problem. I felt fear.

  Lucy's user ID was not traditional in that it was not comprised of the initial of her first name and first seven letters of her surname. Instead, she called herself LUCYTALK, and according to this audit trail she had been signed on as the superuser when CAIN had sent the message to New York.

  'Have you questioned her about this?' I asked Wesley.

  'She's been questioned and wasn't concerned because as you can see from the printout, she's on and off the system all day long, and sometimes after hours, as well.'

  'She is concerned. I don't care what she said to you, Benton. She feels she's been moved to the security floor so she can be watched.'

  'She is being watched.'

  'Just because she was signed on at the same time the message was sent to New York doesn't mean she sent it,' I persisted.

  'I realize that. There's nothing else in the audit log to indicate she sent it. There's nothing to indicate anybody sent it, for that matter.'

  'Who brought this to your attention?' I then asked, for I knew Wesley did not routinely look at audit logs.

  'Burgess.'

  'Then, someone from ERF brought it to his attention first.'

  'Obviously.'

  'There are still people over there who don't trust Lucy, because of what happened last fall.'

  His gaze was steady. 'I can't do anything about that, Kay. She has to prove herself. We can't do that for her. You can't do that for her.'

  'I'm not trying to do anything for her,' I said hotly. 'All I ask is fairness. Lucy is not to blame for the virus in CAIN. She did not put it there. She's trying to do something about it, and frankly, if she can't, I don't think anyone will be able to help. The entire system will be corrupted.'

  He picked up his coffee but changed his mind and set it back down.

  'And I don't believe she's been put on the security floor because some people think she's sabotaging CAIN. If you really thought that, you'd send her packing. The last thing you'd do is keep her here.'

  'Not necessarily,' he said, but he could not fool me.

  'Tell me the truth.'

  He was thinking, looking for a way out.

  'You assigned Lucy to the security floor, didn't you?' I went on. 'It wasn't Burgess. It wasn't because of this log-in time you just showed me. That's flimsy.'

  'Not to some people it isn't,' he said. 'Someone over there raised a red flag and asked me to get rid of her. I said not now. We would watch her first.'

  'Are you telling me you think Lucy is the virus?' I was incredulous.

  'No.' He leaned forward in his chair. 'I think Gault is the virus. And I want Lucy to help us track him.'

  I looked at him as if he had just pulled out a gun and shot it into the air. 'No,' I said with feeling.

  'Kay, listen to me…'

  'Absolutely not. Leave her out of this. She's not a goddam FBI agent.'

  'You're overreacting…'

  But I would not let him talk. 'She's a college student, for God's sake. She has no business-' My voice caught. 'I know her. She'll try to communicate with him. Don't you see?' I looked fiercely at him. 'You don't know her, Benton!'

  'I think I do.'

  'I won't let you use her like this.'

  'Let me explain.'

  'You should shut CAIN down,' I said.

  'I can't do that. It might be the only trail Gault leaves.' He paused as I continued to glare at him. 'Lives are at stake. Gault hasn't finished killing.'

  I blurted, 'That's exactly why I don't want Lucy even thinking about him!'

  Wesley was silent. He looked toward the shut door, then back at me. 'He already knows who she is,' he said.

  'He doesn't know much about her.'

  'We don't know how much he knows about her. But at the very least he probably knows what she looks like.'

  I could not think. 'How?'

  'From when your American Express gold card was stolen,' he said. 'Hasn't Lucy told you?'

  'Told me what?'

  'The things she kept in her desk.' When he could see I did not know what he was talking about, he abruptly caught himself. I sensed he had brushed against details he would not tell me.

  'What things?' I asked.

  'Well,' he went on, 'she kept a letter in her desk at ERF - a letter from you. The one that had the credit card in it.'

  'I know about that.'

  'Right. Also inside this letter was a photograph of you and Lucy together in Miami. You were sitting in your mother's backyard, apparently.'

  I shut my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as he grimly went on.

  'Gault also knows Lucy is your point of greatest vulnerability. I don't want him fixing on her, either. But what I'm trying to suggest to you is that he probably already has. He's broken into a world where she is god. He has taken over CAIN.'

  'So that's why you moved her,' I said.

  Wesley watched me as he struggled for a way to help. I saw the hell behind his cool reserve and sensed his terrible pain. He, too, had children.

  'You moved her on the security floor with me,' I said. 'You're afraid Gault might come after her.'

  Still he did not speak.

  'I want her to return to UVA, to Charlottesville. I want her back there tomorrow,' I said with a ferocity I did not feel. What I really wanted was for Lucy not to know my world at all, and that would never be possible.

  'She can't,' he simply said. 'And she can't stay with you in Richmond. To tell you the truth, she really can't stay anywhere right now but here. This is where she's safest.'

  'She can't stay here the rest of her life,' I said.

  'Until he's caught…'

  'He may never be caught, Benton!'

  He looked wearily at me. 'Then both of you may end up in our Protected Witness Program.'

  'I will not give up my identity. My l
ife. How is that any better than being dead?'

  'It is better,' he said quietly, and I knew he was seeing bodies kicked, decapitated, and with bullet wounds.

  I got up. 'What do I do about my stolen credit card?' I numbly asked.

  'Cancel it,' he said. 'I was hoping we could use money from seized assets, from drug raids. But we can't.' He paused as I shook my head in disbelief. 'It's not my choice. You know the budget problems. You have them, too.'

  'Lord,' I said. 'I thought you wanted to trail him.'

  'Your credit card isn't likely to show us where he is, only where he's been.'

  'I can't believe this.'

  'Blame it on the politicians.'

  'I don't want to hear about budget problems or politicians,' I exclaimed.

  'Kay, the Bureau can barely afford ammunition for the ranges these days. And you know our staffing problems. I'm personally working a hundred and thirty-nine cases even as we speak. Last month two of my best people retired.

  'Now my unit's down to nine. Nine. That's a total of ten of us trying to cover the entire United States plus any cases submitted from abroad. Hell, the only reason we have you is we don't pay you.'

  'I don't do this for money.'

  'You can cancel your Amex card,' he said wearily. 'I'd do it immediately.'

  I looked a long time at him and left.

  10

  Lucy had finished her run and showered by the time I returned to the room. Dinner was being served in the cafeteria, but she was at ERF working.

  'I'm going back to Richmond tonight,' I said to her on the phone.

  'I thought you were spending the night,' she said, and I detected disappointment.

  'Marino's coming to get me,' I said.

  'When?'

  'He's on his way. We could have dinner before I go-'

  'Okay. I'd like Jan to come.'

  'That's fine,' I said. 'We should include Marino, though. He's already on the road.'

  Lucy was silent.

  'Why don't you and I visit alone first?' I suggested.

  'Over here?'

  'Yes. I'm cleared as long as you let me through all those scanners, locked doors, X-ray machines and heat-seeking missiles.'