The Body Farm ks-5 Page 4

  "That's the thing about Structure Query Language," she was explaining.

  "It's more declarative than navigational, meaning the user specifies what he wants accessed from the data base instead of how he wants it accessed."

  I had begun watching a woman walking in our direction. She was tall, with a graceful but strong stride, a long lab coat flowing around her knees as she slowly stirred a paintbrush in a small aluminum can.

  "Have we decided what we're going to run this on eventually?" Wesley continued chatting with my niece.

  "A mainframe?"

  "Actually, the trend is toward downsized client data base server environments. You know, minis, LANS. Everything gets smaller." The woman turned into our cubicle, and when she looked up, her eyes went straight to mine and held for a piercing instant before shifting away.

  "Was there a meeting scheduled that I didn't know about?" she said with a cool smile as she set the can on her desk. I got the distinct impression she was displeased by the intrusion.

  "Carrie, we'll have to take care of our project a little later. Sorry," Lucy said. She added," I assume you've met Benton Wesley. This is Dr. Kay Scarpetta, my aunt. And this is Carrie Grethen. "

  "A pleasure to meet you," Carrie Grethen said to me, and I was bothered by her eyes.

  I watched her slide into her chair and absently smooth her dark brown hair, which was long and pinned back in an old-fashioned French twist.

  I guessed she was in her mid-thirties, her smooth skin, dark eyes, and cleanly sculpted features giving her face a patrician beauty both remarkable and rare. As she opened a file drawer, I noted how orderly her work space was compared to my niece's, for Lucy was too far gone into her esoteric world to give much thought to where to store a book or stack paper. Despite her ancient intellect, she was very much the college kid who chewed gum and lived with clutter. Wesley spoke.

  "Lucy? Why don't you show your aunt around?"

  "Sure." She seemed reluctant as she exited a screen and got up.

  "So, Carrie, tell me exactly what you do here," I heard him say as we walked away. Lucy glanced back in their direction, and I was startled by the emotion flickering in her eyes.

  "What you see in this section is pretty self-explanatory," she said, distracted and quite tense.

  "Just people and workstations."

  "All of them working on VI CAP

  "There's only three of us involved with CAIN. Most of what's done up here is tactical" -she glanced back again.

  "You know, tactical in the sense of using computers to get a piece of equipment to operate better. Like various electronic collection devices and some of the robots Crisis Response and HRT use." Her mind was definitely elsewhere as she led me to the far end of the floor, where there was a room secured by another biometric lock.

  "Only a few of us are cleared to go in here," she said, scanning her thumb and entering her Personal Identification Number. The gunmetal-gray door opened onto a refrigerated space neatly arranged with workstations, monitors, and scores of modems with blinking lights stacked on shelves. Bundled cables running out the backs of equipment disappeared beneath the raised floor, and monitors swirling with bright blue loops and whorls boldly proclaimed "CAIN." The artificial light, like the air, was clean and cold.

  "This is where all fingerprint data are stored," Lucy told me.

  "From the locks?" I looked around.

  "From the scanners you see everywhere for physical access control and data security."

  "And is this sophisticated lock system an ERF invention?"

  "We're enhancing and troubleshooting it here. In fact, right now I'm in the middle of a research project pertaining to it. There's a lot to do." She bent over a monitor and adjusted the brightness of the screen.

  "Eventually we'll also be storing fingerprint data from out in the field when cops arrest somebody and use electronic scanning to capture live fingerprints," she went on.

  "The offender's prints will go straight into CAIN, and if he's committed other crimes from which latent prints were recovered and scanned into the system, we'll get a hit in seconds."

  "I assume this will somehow be linked to automated fingerprint identification systems around the country."

  "Around the country and hopefully around the world. The point is to have all roads lead here."

  "Is Carrie also assigned to CAIN?" Lucy seemed taken aback.

  "Yes."

  "So she's one of the three people."

  "That's right." When Lucy offered nothing further, I explained, "She struck me as unusual."

  "I suppose you could say that about everybody here," my niece answered.

  "Where is she from?" I persisted, for I had taken an instant dislike to Carrie Grethen. I did not know why.

  "Washington State."

  "Is she nice?" I asked.

  "She's very good at what she does."

  "That doesn't quite answer my question." I smiled.

  "I try not to get into the personalities of this place. Why are you so curious?" Defensiveness crept into her tone.

  "I'm curious because she made me curious," I simply said.

  "Aunt Kay, I wish you'd stop being so protective.

  Besides, it's inevitable in light of what you do professionally that you're going to think the worst about everyone. "

  "I see. I suppose it's also inevitable, in light of what I do professionally, that I'm going to think everyone is dead," I said dryly.

  "That's ludicrous," my niece said.

  "I was simply hoping you'd met some nice people here."

  "I would appreciate it if you would also quit worrying about, whether I have friends."

  "Lucy, I'm not trying to interfere with your life. All I ask is that you're careful."

  "No, that isn't all you ask. You are interfering."

  "It is not my intention," I said, and Lucy could make me angrier than anyone I knew.

  "Yes, it is. You really don't want me here."

  I regretted my next words even as I said them.

  "Of course I do. I'm the one who got you this damn internship." She just stared at me.

  "Lucy, I'm sorry. Let's not argue. Please." I lowered my voice and placed my hand on her arm. She pulled away.

  "I've got to go check on something." To my amazement, she abruptly walked off, leaving me alone in a high-security room as arid and chilly as our encounter had become. Colors eddied on video displays, and lights and digital numbers glowed red and green as my thoughts buzzed dully like the pervasive white noise. Lucy was the only child of my irresponsible only sister, Dorothy, and I had no children of my own. But my love for my niece could not be explained by just that.

  I understood her secret shame born of abandonment and isolation, and wore her same suit of sorrow beneath my polished armor. When I tended to her wounds, I was tending to my own. This was something I could not tell her. I left, making certain the door was locked behind me, and it did not escape Wesley's notice when I returned from my tour without my guide. Nor did Lucy reappear in time to say goodbye.

  "What happened?" Wesley asked as we walked back to the Academy.

  "I'm afraid we got into another one of our disagreements," I replied.

  He glanced over at me.

  "Someday get me to tell you about my disagreements with Michele."

  "If there's a course in being a mother or an aunt, I think I need to enroll. In fact, I wish I had enrolled a long time ago. All I did was ask her if she'd made any friends here and she got angry."

  "What's your worry?"

  "She's a loner." He looked puzzled.

  "You've alluded to this before. But to be honest, she doesn't impress me as a loner at all."

  "What do you mean?" We stopped to let several cars pass. The sun was low and warm against the back of my neck, and he had taken off his suit jacket and draped it over his arm. He gently touched my elbow when it was safe to cross.

  "I was at the Globe and Laurel several nights ago and Lucy was there with a f
riend. In fact, it may have been Carrie Grethen, but I'm really not sure. But they seemed to be having a pretty good time." My surprise couldn't have been much more acute had Wesley just told me Lucy had hijacked a plane.

  "And she's been up in the Boardroom a number of late nights. You see one side of your niece, Kay. What's always a shock to parents or parental figures is that there's another side they don't see."

  "The side you're talking about is completely foreign to me," I said, and I did not feel relieved. The idea that there were elements of Lucy I did not know was only more disconcerting. We walked in silence for a moment, and when we reached the lobby I quietly asked, "Benton, is she drinking?"

  "She's old enough."

  "I realize that," I said.

  I was about to ask him more when my heavy preoccupations were aborted by the simple, swift action of his reaching around and snapping his pager off his belt. He held it up and frowned at the number in the display.

  "Come on down to the unit," he said, "and let's see what this is about."

  3

  Lieutenant Hershel Mote could not keep the note of near hysteria out of his voice when Wesley returned his telephone call at twenty-nine minutes past six p. m.

  "You're where?" Wesley asked him again on the speaker phone.

  "In the kitchen."

  "Lieutenant Mote, take it easy. Tell me exactly where you are."

  "I'm in SBI Agent Max Ferguson's kitchen. I can't believe this. I've never seen nothing like this."

  "Is there anybody else there?"

  "It's just me here alone. Except for what's upstairs, like I told you.

  I've called the coroner and the dispatcher seeing who he can raise. "

  "Take it easy. Lieutenant," Wesley said again with his usual unflappability.

  I could hear Mote's heavy breathing.

  I said to him, "Lieutenant Mote? This is Dr. Scarpetta.

  I want you to leave everything exactly the way you found it. "

  "Oh, Lordy," he blurted.

  "I done cut him down…"

  "It's okay…"

  "When I walked in I… Lord have mercy, I couldn't just leave him like that."

  "It's all right," I reassured him.

  "But it's very important that nobody touches him now."

  "What about the coroner?"

  "Not even him." Wesley's eyes were on me.

  "We're heading out. You'll see us no later than twenty-two hundred hours. In the meantime, you sit tight."

  "Yes, sir. I'm just going to sit right in this chair till my chest stops hurting."

  "When did this start?" I wanted to know.

  "When I got here and found him. I started having these pains in my chest."

  "Have you ever had them before?"

  "Not that I recollect. Not like this."

  "Describe where they are," I said with growing alarm.

  "Right in the middle."

  "Has the pain gone to your arms or neck?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Any dizziness or sweating?"

  "I'm sweating a bit."

  "Does it hurt when you cough?"

  "I've not been coughing. So I don't reckon I can say."

  "Have you ever had any heart disease or high blood pressure?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "And you smoke?"

  "I'm doing it now."

  "Lieutenant Mote, I want you to listen to me carefully. I want you to put out your cigarette and try to calm down. I'm very concerned because you've had a terrible shock, you're a smoker, and that's a setup for a coronary. You're down there and I'm up here. I want you to call an ambulance right now."

  "The pain's settling down a little. And the coroner should be here any minute. He's a doctor."

  "That would be Dr. Jenrette?" Wesley inquired.

  "He's all we got'round here."

  "I don't want you fooling around with chest pains, Lieutenant Mote," I said firmly.

  "No, ma'am, I won't." Wesley wrote down addresses and phone numbers. He hung up and made another call.

  "Is Pete Marino still running around out there?" he asked whoever had answered the phone.

  "Tell him we've got an urgent situation. He's to grab an overnight bag and meet us over at HRT as fast as he can get there. I'll explain when I see him."

  "Look, I'd like Katz in on this one," I said as Wesley got up from his desk.

  "We're going to want to fume everything we can for prints, in the event things aren't the way they appear."

  "Good idea."

  "I doubt he'd be at The Body Farm this late. You might want to try his pager."

  "Fine. I'll see if I can track him down," he said of my forensic scientist colleague from Knoxville. When I got to the lobby fifteen minutes later, Wesley was already there, a tote bag slung over his shoulder. I had had just enough time in my room to exchange pumps for more sensible shoes, and to grab other necessities, including my medical bag.

  "Dr. Katz is leaving Knoxville now," Wesley told me.

  "He'll meet us at the scene." Night was settling beneath a distant slivered moon, and trees stirring in the wind sounded like rain. Wesley and I followed the drive in front of Jefferson and crossed a road dividing the Academy complex from acres of field offices and firing ranges. Closest to us, in the demilitarized zone of barbecues and picnic tables shaded by trees, I spotted a familiar figure so out of context that for an instant I thought I was mistaken. Then I recalled Lucy once mentioning to me that she sometimes wandered out here alone after dinner to think, and my heart lifted at the chance of making amends with her.

  "Benton," I said, "I'll be right back." The faint sound of conversation drifted toward me as I neared the edge of the woods, and I wondered, bizarrely, if my niece were talking to herself. Lucy was perched on top of a picnic table, and as I drew closer I was about to call her name when I saw she was speaking to someone seated below her on the bench. They were so close to each other their silhouettes were one, and I froze in the darkness of a tall, dense pine.

  "That's because you always do that," Lucy was saying in a wounded tone I knew well.

  "No, it's because you always assume I'm doing that." The woman's voice was soothing.

  "Well, then, don't give me cause."

  "Lucy, can't we get past this? Please."

  "Let me have one of those."

  "I wish you wouldn't start."

  "I'm not starting. I just want a puff."

  I heard the spurt of a match striking, and a small flame penetrated the darkness. For an instant, my niece's profile was illuminated as she leaned closer to her friend, whose face I could not see. The tip of the cigarette glowed as they passed it back and forth. I silently turned and walked away. Wesley resumed his long strides when I got back to him.

  "Someone you know?" he asked.

  "I thought it was," I said.

  We walked without speaking past empty ranges with rows of target frames and steel silhouettes eternally standing at attention. Beyond, a control tower rose over a building constructed completely of tires, where HRT, the Bureau's Green Berets, practiced maneuvers with live ammunition. A white-and-blue Bell Jetranger waited on the nearby grass like a sleeping insect, its pilot standing outside with Marino.

  "We all here?" the pilot asked as we approached.

  "Yes. Thanks, Whit," Wesley said.

  Whit, a perfect specimen of male fitness in a black flight suit, opened the helicopter's doors to help us board. We strapped ourselves in, Marino and I in back, Wesley up front, and put on headsets as blades began to turn, the jet engine warming. Minutes later, the dark earth was suddenly far beneath our feet as we rose above the horizon, air vents open and cabin lights off. Our transmitted voices blurted on and off in our ears as the helicopter sped south toward a tiny mountain town where another person was dead.

  "He couldn't have been home long," Marino said.

  "We know…?"

  "He wasn't." Wesley's voice cut in from the copilot's seat.

  "He left Q
uantico right after the consultation. Flew out of National at one."

  "We know what time his plane got to Asheville?"

  "Around four-thirty. He could have been back to his house by five."

  "In Black Mountain?"

  "Right."

  I spoke. "Mote found him at six."

  "Jesus." Marino turned to me.

  "Ferguson must've started beating off the minute he hit" - The pilot cut in! "We got music if anybody wants it."

  "Sure."

  "What flavor?"

  "Classical."

  "Shit, Benton."

  "You're outvoted, Pete."

  "Ferguson hadn't been home long. That much is clear no matter who or what's to blame," I resumed our jerky conversation as Berlioz began in the background.

  "Looks like an accident. Like auto eroticism gone bad. But we don't know." Marino nudged me.

  "Got any aspirins?"

  I dug in my pocketbook in the dark, then got a mini Maglite out of my medical bag and rooted around some more. Marino muttered profanities when I motioned I could not help him, and I realized he was still in the sweatpants, hooded sweatshirt, and lace-up boots he had been wearing at Hogan's Alley. He looked like a hard drinking coach for some bush-league team, and I could not resist shining the light over incriminating red paint stains on his upper back and left shoulder. Marino had gotten shot.

  "Yeah, well, you ought to see the other guys," his voice abruptly sounded in my ears.

  "Yo, Benton. Got any aspirins?"

  "Airsick?"

  "Having too much fun for that," said Marino, who hated to fly. The weather was in our favor as we chopped a path through the clear night at around a hundred and five knots. Cars below us glided like bright-eyed water bugs as the lights of civilization flickered like small fires in the trees. The vibrating darkness might have soothed me to sleep were my nerves not running hot. My mind would not stay still as images clashed and questions screamed.

  I envisioned Lucy's face, the lovely curve of her jaw and cheek as she leaned into the flame cupped by her girlfriend's hands. Their impassioned voices sounded in my memory, and I did not know why I was stunned.

  I did not know why it should matter. I wondered how much Wesley was aware. My niece had been interning at Quantico since fall semester had begun. He had seen her quite a lot more than I had. There was not a breath of wind until we got into the mountains, and for a while the earth was a pitch-black plain.