Point of Origin Read online

  “It’s Dr. Scarpetta,” I said.

  “Oh!” He was relieved. “Good morning.”

  “Chuck? What about the hang-ups? You still getting them?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Nothing said? Not even the sound of somebody breathing?”

  “Sometimes I think I hear traffic in the background, like maybe the person’s at a pay phone somewhere.”

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Okay.”

  “Next time it happens, I want you to say, Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Quinn.”

  “What?” Chuck was baffled.

  “Just do it,” I said. “And I have a hunch the calls will stop.”

  Lucy was laughing when I hung up.

  “Touché,” she said.

  21

  AFTER BREAKFAST, I wandered about in my bedroom and study, deliberating over what to bring on our trip. My aluminum briefcase would go, because it was habit to take it almost everywhere these days. I also packed an extra pair of slacks and a shirt, and toiletries for overnight, and my Colt .38 went into my pocketbook. Although I was accustomed to carrying a gun, I had never even thought about taking one to New York, where doing so could land one in jail with no questions asked. When Lucy and I were in the car, I told her what I had done.

  “It’s called situational ethics,” she said. “I’d rather be arrested than dead.”

  “That’s the way I look at it,” said I, who once had been a law-abiding citizen.

  HeloAir was a helicopter charter service on the western edge of the Richmond airport, where some of the area’s Fortune 500 companies had their own terminals for corporate King Airs and Lear Jets and Sikorskys. The Bell JetRanger was in the hangar, and while Lucy went on to take care of that, I found a pilot inside who was kind enough to let me use the phone in his office. I dug around in my wallet for my AT&T calling card and dialed the number for Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center’s administrative offices.

  The director was a woman psychiatrist named Lydia Ensor who was very leery when I got her on the line. I tried to explain to her in more detail who I was, but she interrupted.

  “I know exactly who you are,” she said with a Midwestern tongue. “I’m completely aware of the current situation and will be as cooperative as I can. I’m not clear, however, on what your interest is, Dr. Scarpetta. You’re the chief medical examiner of Virginia? Correct?”

  “Correct. And a consulting forensic pathologist for ATF and the FBI.”

  “And of course, they’ve contacted me, too.” She sounded genuinely perplexed. “So are you looking for information that might pertain to one of your cases? To someone dead?”

  “Dr. Ensor, I’m trying to link a number of cases right now,” I replied. “I have reason to suspect that Carrie Grethen may be either indirectly or directly involved in all of them and may have been involved even while she was at Kirby.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Clearly, you don’t know this woman,” I firmly said. “I, on the other hand, have worked violent deaths caused by her for half of my career, beginning when she and Temple Gault were on a spree in Virginia and finally in New York, where Gault was killed. And now this. Possibly five more murders, maybe more.”

  “I know Miss Grethen’s history all too well,” Dr. Ensor said, and she wasn’t hostile, but defensiveness had crept into her tone. “I can assure you that Kirby handled her as we do all maximum security patients . . .”

  “There’s almost nothing useful in her psychiatric evaluations,” I cut her off.

  “How could you possibly know about her medical records . . . ?”

  “Because I am part of the ATF national response team that is investigating these fire-related homicides,” I measured my words. “And I work with the FBI, as I’ve already said. All of the cases we’re talking about are my jurisdiction because I’m a consultant for law enforcement at a federal level. But my duty is not to arrest anyone or smear an institution such as yours. My job is to bring justice to the dead and give as much peace as possible to those they left behind. To do that, I must answer questions. And most important, I am driven to do anything I can to prevent one more person from dying. Carrie will kill again. She may already have.”

  The director was silent for a moment. I looked out the window and could see the dark blue helicopter on its pad being towed out onto the tarmac.

  “Dr. Scarpetta, what would you like us to do?” Dr. Ensor finally spoke, her voice tense and upset.

  “Did Carrie have a social worker? Someone in legal aid? Anyone she really talked to?” I asked.

  “Obviously, she spent a fair amount of time with a forensic psychologist, but he isn’t on our staff. Mainly he’s there to evaluate and make recommendations to the court.”

  “Then she probably manipulated him,” I said as I watched Lucy climb up on the helicopter’s skids and begin her preflight inspection. “Who else? Anyone she may have gotten close to?”

  “Her lawyer, then. Yes, legal aid. If you would like to speak to her, that can be arranged.”

  “I’m leaving the airport now,” I said. “We should be landing in approximately three hours. Do you have a helipad?”

  “I don’t remember anyone ever landing here. There are several parks nearby. I’ll be happy to pick you up.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary. My guess is we’ll land close by.”

  “I’ll watch for you, then, and take you to legal aid, or wherever it is you need to go.”

  “I would like to see Carrie Grethen’s ward and where she spent her time.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  “You are very kind,” I said.

  Lucy was opening access panels to check fluid levels, wiring, and anything else that might be amiss before we took to the air. She was agile and sure of what she was doing, and when she climbed on top of the fuselage to inspect the main rotor, I wondered how many helicopter accidents happened on the ground. It wasn’t until I had climbed up into the copilot’s seat that I noticed the AR-15 assault rifle in a rack behind her head, and at the same time, I realized the controls on my side had not been taken out. Passengers were not entitled to have access to the collective and cyclic, and the antitorque pedals were supposed to be cranked back far enough that the uninitiated did not accidentally push them with their feet.

  “What’s this?” I said to Lucy as I buckled my four-point harness.

  “We’ve got a long flight.”

  She cracked the throttle several times to make certain there was no binding and it was closed.

  “I realize that,” I said.

  “Cross country’s a good time to try your hand at it.”

  She lifted the collective and made big X’s with the cyclic.

  “Whose hand at what?” I said as my alarm grew.

  “Your hand at flying when all you got to do is hold your altitude and speed and keep her level.”

  “No way.”

  She pressed the starter and the engine began to whir.

  “Yes, way.”

  The blades began to turn as the windy roar got louder.

  “If you’re going to fly with me,” my niece, the pilot and certificated flight instructor, said above the noise, “then I’d like to know you could help out if there was a problem, okay?”

  I said nothing more as she rolled the throttle and raised the rpms. She flipped switches and tested caution lights, then turned on the radio and we put our headsets on. Lucy lifted us off the platform as if gravity had quit. She turned us into the wind and moved forward with gathering speed until the helicopter seemed to soar on its own. We climbed above trees, the sun high in the east. When we were clear of the tower and the city, Lucy began lesson one.

  I already knew what most of the controls were and what they were for, but I had an extremely limited understanding of how they worked together. I did not know, for example, that when you raise the collective and increased power, the helicopter will yaw to the right, meaning you have to depress yo
ur left antitorque pedal to counter the torque of the main rotor and keep the aircraft in trim, and as your altitude climbs, due to the pulling up on the collective, your speed decreases, meaning you have to push the cyclic forward. And so on. It was like playing the drums, as best I knew, only in this instance I had to watch for dim-witted birds, towers, antennas, and other aircraft.

  Lucy was very patient, and the time moved fast as we forged ahead at one hundred and ten knots. By the time we were north of Washington, I actually could keep the helicopter relatively steady while adjusting the directional gyro at the same time to keep it consistent with the compass. Our heading was 050 degrees, and although I could juggle not one more thing, such as the Global Positioning System, or GPS, Lucy said I was doing a fine job keeping us on course.

  “We got a small plane at three o’clock,” she said through her mike. “See it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you say, tally-ho. And it’s above horizon. You can tell that, right?”

  “Tally-ho.”

  Lucy laughed. “No. Tally-ho does not mean ten-four. And if something’s above horizon, that means it’s also above us. That’s important, because if both aircraft are at horizon and the one we’re looking at also doesn’t seem to be moving, then that means it’s at our altitude and either heading away from us or straight for us. Kind of smart to pay attention and figure out which one, right?”

  Her instruction went on until the New York skyline was in view, then I was to have nothing more to do with the controls. Lucy flew us low past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, where my Italian ancestors had gathered long ago to begin with nothing in a new world of opportunity. The city gathered around us and the buildings in the financial district were huge as we flew at five hundred feet, the shadow of our helicopter moving below us along the water. It was a hot, clear day, and tour helicopters were making their rounds while others carried executives who had everything but time.

  Lucy was busy with the radio, and approach control did not seem to want to acknowledge us because air traffic was so congested, and controllers were not very interested in aircraft flying at seven hundred feet. At this altitude in this city, the rules were see and avoid, and that was about it. We followed the East River over the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges, moving at ninety knots over crawling garbage barges, fuel tankers, and circling white tour boats. As we passed by the crumbled buildings and old hospitals of Roosevelt Island, Lucy let La Guardia know what we were doing. By now Ward’s Island was straight ahead. It was appropriate that the part of the river at the southwestern tip was called Hell Gate.

  What I knew about Ward’s Island came from my enduring interest in medical history, and as was true of many of New York’s islands in earlier times, it was a place of exile for prisoners, the diseased, and mentally ill. Ward’s Island’s past was particularly unhappy, as I recalled, for in the mid-eighteen hundreds, it had been a place of no heat or running water, where people with typhus were quarantined and Russian Jewish refugees were warehoused. At the turn of the century, the city’s lunatic asylum had been moved to the island. Certainly conditions were better here now, although the population was far more maniacal. Patients had air conditioning, lawyers, and hobbies. They had access to dental and medical care, psychotherapy, support groups, and organized sports.

  We entered the Class B airspace above Ward’s Island in a deceptively civilized way, flying low over green parks shaded with trees as the ugly tan brick high-rises of the Manhattan Psychiatric and Children’s Psychiatric Centers and Kirby loomed straight ahead. The Triborough Bridge Parkway ran through the middle of the island, where incongruous to all was a small circus going on, with bright striped tents, ponies, and performers on unicycles. The crowd was small, and I could see kids eating cotton candy, and I wondered why they weren’t in school. A little farther north was a sewage disposal plant and the New York City fire department training academy, where a long ladder truck was practicing turns in a parking lot.

  The forensic psychiatric center was twelve stories of steel mesh covered windows, opaque glass, and air conditioning units. Sloppy coils of razor wire bent in over walkways and recreation areas, to prevent an escape that Carrie apparently had found so easy. The river here was about a mile wide, rough and foreboding, the current swift, and I did not think it likely that anyone could swim across it. But there was a footbridge, as I had been told. It was painted the teal of oxidized copper and was maybe a mile south of Kirby. I told Lucy to fly over it, and from the air I saw people crossing it from both directions, moving in and out of the East River Housing of Harlem.

  “I don’t see how she could have gotten across that in broad daylight,” I transmitted to Lucy. “Not without being seen by someone. But even if she could and did, what next? The police were going to be all over the place, especially on the other side of the bridge. And how did she get to Lehigh County?”

  Lucy was doing slow circles at five hundred feet, the blades flapping loudly. There were remnants of a ferry that at one time must have allowed passage from East River Drive at 106th Street, and the ruins of a pier, which was now a pile of rotting, creosote-treated wood jutting out into unfriendly waters from a small open field on Kirby’s western side. The field looked suitable for landing, providing we stayed closer to the river than to the screened-in walkways and benches of the hospital.

  As Lucy began a high reconnaissance, I looked down at people on the ground. All were dressed in civilian clothes, some stretching or lying in the grass, others on benches or moving along walkways between rusting barrels of trash. Even from five hundred feet, I recognized the slovenly, ill-fitting dress and odd gaits of those broken beyond repair. They stared up, transfixed, as we scoured the area for problems, such as power lines, guy wires, and soft, uneven ground. A low reconnaissance confirmed our landing was safe, and by now, more people had emerged from buildings or were looking out windows and standing in doorways to see what was going on.

  “Maybe we should have tried one of the parks,” I said. “I hope we don’t start a riot.”

  Lucy lowered into a five-foot hover, weeds and tall grass thrashing violently. A pheasant and her brood were appropriately startled and darted along the bank and out of view amid rushes, and it was hard to imagine anything innocent and vulnerable living so close to disturbed humanity. I suddenly thought of Carrie’s letter to me, of her odd listing of Kirby’s address as One Pheasant Place. What was she telling me? That she had seen the pheasants, too? If so, why did it matter?

  The helicopter softly settled and Lucy rolled the throttle to flight idle. It was a very long two-minute wait to cut the engine. Blades turned as digital seconds did, and patients and hospital personnel stared. Some stood perfectly still, pinning us with glazed eyes, while others were oblivious, tugging on fences or walking with jerky motions and staring at the ground. An old man rolling a cigarette waved, a woman in curlers was muttering, and a young man wearing headphones started into a loose knee rhythm on the sidewalk, for our benefit, it seemed.

  Lucy rolled the throttle to idle cut-off and braked the main rotor, shutting us down. When the blades had fully stopped and we were climbing out, a woman emerged from the gathering crowd of the mentally deranged and those who took care of them. She was dressed in a smart herringbone suit, her jacket on despite the heat. Her dark hair was short and smartly styled. I knew before being told that she was Dr. Lydia Ensor, and she seemed to pick me out as well, for she shook my hand first, then Lucy’s, as she introduced herself.

  “I must say, you’ve created a lot of excitement,” she said with a slight smile.

  “And I apologize for that,” I said.

  “Not to worry.”

  “I’m staying with the helicopter,” Lucy said.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  “I’m sure,” she replied, looking around at the unnerving crowd.

  “Most of these are outpatients at the psychiatric center right over there.” Dr. Ensor pointed at another high rise. “
And Odyssey House.”

  She nodded at a much smaller brick building beyond Kirby, where there appeared to be a garden, and an eroded asphalt tennis court with a billowing torn net.

  “Drugs, drugs, and more drugs,” she added. “They go in for counseling, and we’ve caught them rolling a joint on their way out.”

  “I’ll be right here,” Lucy said. “Or I can head out to get fuel, and then come back,” she added to me.

  “I’d rather you wait,” I said.

  Dr. Ensor and I began the brief walk to Kirby while eyes glared and poured out black unspeakable pain and hate. A man with a matted beard shouted out to us that he wanted a ride, making gestures towards the heavens, flapping arms like a bird, jumping on one foot. Ravaged faces were in some other realms or vacant or filled with a bitter contempt that could only come from being on the inside looking out at people like us who were not enslaved to drugs or dementia. We were the privileged. We were the living. We were God to those who were helpless to do anything except destroy themselves and others, and at the end of the day, we went home.

  The entrance to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center was that of a typical state institution, with walls painted the same teal as the footbridge over the river. Dr. Ensor led me around a corner to a button on a wall, which she pressed.

  “Come to the intercom.” An abrupt voice sounded like the Wizard of Oz.

  She moved on, needing no direction, and spoke through the intercom.

  “Dr. Ensor,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The voice became human. “Step on up.”

  The entrance into the heart of Kirby was typical for a penitentiary, with its airlocked doors that never allowed two of them to be opened at the same time, and its posted warnings of prohibited items, such as firearms, explosives, ammunition, alcohol, or objects made of glass. No matter how adamant politicians, health workers, and the ACLU might be, this was not a hospital. Patients were inmates. They were violent offenders housed in a maximum security facility because they had raped and beaten. They had shot their families, burned up their mothers, disemboweled their neighbors, and dismembered their lovers. They were monsters who had become celebrities, like Robert Chambers of the Yuppie murder fame, or Rakowitz, who had murdered and cooked his girlfriend and allegedly fed parts of her to street people, or Carrie Grethen, who was worse than any of them.