Cause of Death Read online

  Then she mused as she still gazed out the glass, "So we've got a reporter who's into survivalist weaponry.

  Somehow he's poisoned with cyanide gas while diving around decommissioned ships in a restricted area at night."

  "That's just a possibility," I reminded her. "His case is pending. We should be careful not to forget that."

  She turned around. "Where would you get cyanide if you wanted to poison someone'? Would that be hard?"

  "You could get it from a variety of industrial settings," I said.

  "Such as?"

  "Well, for example, it's used to extract gold from ore.

  It's also used in metal plating, and as a fumigant, and to manufacture phosphoric acid from bones," I said. "In other words, anyone from a jeweler to a worker in an industrial plant to an exterminator could have access to cyanide. Plus.

  you're going to find it and hydrochloric acid in any chemical lab."

  "Well," it was Marino who spoke, "if someone poisoned Eddings, then they had to know he was going to be out in his boat. They had to know where and when."

  "Someone had to know many things," I agreed. "For example, one would have had to know what type of breathing apparatus Eddings planned to use because had he gone down with scuba gear instead of a hookah, the MO would have had to be entirely different."

  "I just wish we knew what the hell he was doing down there." Marino opened the screen to tend to the fire.

  "Whatever it was," I said, "it seems to have involved photography. And based on the camera equipment it appears he had with him, he was serious."

  "But no underwater camera was found," Lucy said.

  "No," I said. "The current could have carried it anywhere, or it might be buried in silt. Unfortunately, the kind of equipment he apparently had doesn't float."

  "I sure would like to get hold of the film." She was still looking out at the snowy night, and I wondered if she was thinking of Aspen.

  "One thing's for damn sure, he wasn't taking pictures of fish." Marino jabbed a fat log that was a little too green.

  "So that pretty much leaves ships. And I think he was doing a story somebody didn't want him to do."

  "He may have been doing a story," I agreed, "but that doesn't mean it's related to his death. Someone could have used his being out diving as an opportunity to kill him for another reason."

  "Where do you keep the kindling?" He gave up on the fire.

  "Outside under a tarp," I answered. "Dr. Mant won't allow it in the house. He's afraid of termites."

  "Well, he ought to be more afraid of the fires and wind shear in this dump."

  "In back, just off the porch," I said. "Thanks, Marino."

  He put on gloves but no coat and went outside as the fire smoked stubbornly and the wind made eerie moaning sounds in the leaning brick chimney. I watched my niece, who was still at the window.

  "We should work on dinner, don't you think?" I said to her.

  "What's he doing?" she said with her back to me.

  "Marino?"

  "Yes. The big idiot's gotten lost. Look, he's all the way up by the wall. Wait a minute. I can't see him now. He turned his flashlight off. That's kind of weird."

  Her words lifted the hair on my neck and instantly I was on my feet. I dashed into the bedroom and grabbed my pistol off the nightstand. Lucy was on my heels.

  "What is it?" she exclaimed.

  "He doesn't have a flashlight," I said as I ran.

  CHAPTER 4

  IN THE KITCHEN, I FLUNG OPEN THE DOOR LEADING TO the porch and ran into Marino. We almost knocked each other down.

  "What the shit ... ?" he yelled behind a load of wood.

  "There's a prowler," I spoke with quiet urgency.

  Kindling thudded loudly to the floor and he ran back out into the yard, his pistol drawn. By now, Lucy had fetched her gun and was outside, too, and we were ready to handle a riot.

  "Check the perimeter of the house," Marino ordered.

  "I'm going over here."

  I went back in for flashlights, and for a while Lucy and I circled the cottage, straining eyes and ears, but the only sight and sound was our shoes crunching as we left impressions in the snow. I heard Marino decock his pistol as we reconvened in deep shadows near the porch.

  "There are footprints by the wall," he said, and his breath was white. "It's real strange. They lead down to the beach and then just disappear near the water." He looked around. "You got any neighbors who might have been out for a stroll?"

  "I don't know Dr. Mant's neighbors," I replied. "But they should not have been in his yard. And who in his right mind would walk on the beach in weather like this?"

  "Where on this property do the footprints go?" Lucy asked.

  "Looks like he came over the wall and went about six feet inside the yard before backtracking," Marino answered.

  I thought of Lucy standing before the window, backlit by the fire and lamps. Maybe the prowler had spotted her and had been scared off.

  Then I thought of something else. "How do we know this person was a he?"

  "If it ain't, I feel sorry for a woman with boats that big," Marino said. "The shoes are about the same size as mine."

  "Shoes or boots?" I asked, heading toward the wall.

  "I don't know. They got some sort of cross-hatch tread pattern." He followed me.

  The footprints I saw gave me cause for more alarm. They were not from typical boots or athletic shoes.

  "My God," I said. "I think this person was wearing dive boots or something with a moccasin shape like dive boots.

  Look."

  I pointed out the pattern to Lucy and Marino. They had gotten down next to me, footprints obliquely illuminated by my flashlight.

  "No arch," Lucy noted. "They sure look like dive boots or aqua shoes to me. Now that's bizarre."

  I got up and stared out over the wall at dark, heaving water. It seemed inconceivable that someone could have come up from the sea.

  "Can you get photos of these?" I asked Marino.

  "Sure. But I got nothing to make casts."

  Then we returned to the house. He gathered the wood and carried it into the living room while Lucy and I returned our attention to dinner, which I was no longer certain I could eat because I was so tense. I poured another glass of wine and tried to dismiss the prowler as a coincidence, a harmless peregrination on the part of someone who enjoyed the snow or perhaps diving at night.

  But I knew better, and kept my gun nearby and frequently glanced out the window. My spirit was heavy as I slid the lasagne into the oven. I found the Parmesan reggiano in the refrigerator and began grating it, then I arranged figs and melon on plates, adding plenty of prosciutto for Marino's share. Lucy made salad, and for a while we worked in silence.

  When she finally spoke, she was not happy. "You've really gotten into something, Aunt Kay. Why does this always happen to you?"

  "Let's not allow our imaginations to run wild," I said.

  "You're out here alone in the middle of nowhere with no burglar alarm and locks as flimsy as flip-top aluminum cans-"

  "Have you chilled the champagne yet?" I interrupted.

  "It will be midnight soon. The lasagne will only take about ten minutes, maybe fifteen, unless Dr. Mant's oven works like everything else does around here. Then it could take until this time next year. I've never understood why people cook lasagne for hours. And then they wonder why everything is leathery."

  Lucy was staring at me, resting a paring knife on a side of the salad bowl. She had cut enough celery and carrots for a marching band.

  "One day I will really make lasagne coi carciofi for you.

  It has artichokes, only you use bechamel sauce instead of marinara-"

  "Aunt Kay," she impatiently cut me off. "I hate it when you do this. And I'm not going to let you do this. I don't you give a shit about lasagne right now. What matters is that this morning you got a weird phone call. Then there was a bizarre death and people treated you suspiciously at the scene. No
w tonight you had a prowler who might have been in a damn wet suit."

  "It's not likely the person will be back. Whoever it was.

  Not unless he wants to take on the three of us."

  "Aunt Kay, you can't stay here," she said.

  "I have to cover Dr. Mant's district, and I can't do that from Richmond," I told her as I again looked out the window over the sink. "Where's Marino? Is he still out taking pictures?"

  "He came in a while ago." Her frustration was as palpable as a storm about to start.

  I walked into the living room and found him asleep on the couch, the fire blazing. My eyes wandered to the window where Lucy had looked out, and I went to it. Beyond cold glass the snowy yard glowed faintly like a pale moon, and was pockmarked by elliptical shadows left by our feet.

  The brick wall was dark, and I could not see beyond it, where coarse sand tumbled into the sea.

  "Lucy's right," Marino's sleepy voice said to my back.

  I turned around. "I thought you were down for the count."

  "I hear and see everything, even when I'm down for the count," he said. I could not help but smile.

  "Get the hell out of here. That's my vote." He worked his way up to a sitting position. "No way I'd stay in this crate out in the middle of nowhere. Something happens, ain't no one going to hear you scream." His eyes fixed on me. "By the time anyone finds you, you'll be freeze-dried.

  If a hurricane don't blow you out to sea, first,"

  "Enough," I said.

  He retrieved his gun from the coffee table, got up and tucked it in the back of his pants. "You could get one of your other doctors to come out here and cover Tidewater

  "I'm the only one without family. It's easier for me to move, especially this time of year."

  "What a lot of bullshit. You don't have to apologize for being divorced and not having kids."

  "I am not apologizing."

  "And it's not like you're asking someone to relocate for six months. Besides, you're the friggin' chief. You should make other people relocate, family or not. You should be in your own house."

  "I actually hadn't thought coming here would be all that unpleasant," I said. "Some people pay a lot of money to stay in cottages on the ocean."

  He stretched. "You got anything American to drink around here?"

  "Milk."

  "I was thinking more along the lines of Miller."

  "I want to know why you're calling Benton. I personally think it's too soon for the Bureau to be involved."

  "And I personally don't think you're in a position to be objective about him."

  "Don't goad me," I warned. "It's too late and I'm too tired."

  "I'm just being straight with you." He knocked a Marlboro out of the pack and tucked it between his lips. "And he will come to Richmond. I got no doubt about that. He and the wife didn't go nowhere for the holidays, so my guess is he's ready for a little field trip right about now.

  And this is going to be a good one."

  I could not hold his gaze, and I resented that he knew why.

  "Besides," he went on, "at the moment it ain't Chesapeake who's asking the FBI anything. It's me, and I have a right. In case you've forgot, I'm the commander of the precinct where Eddings' apartment is. As far as I'm concerned right now, this is a multijurisdictional investigation.

  "The case is Chesapeake's, not Richmond's," I stated.

  "Chesapeake is where the body was found. You can't bulldoze your way into their jurisdiction, and you know it. You can't invite the FBI on their behalf."

  Look," he went on, "after going through Eddings' apartment and finding what I did- I interrupted him, "Finding what you did? You keep referring to whatever it is you found. You mean, his arsenal?"

  "I mean more than that. I mean worse than that. We haven't gotten to that part yet." He looked at me and took the cigarette out of his mouth. "The bottom line is Richmond's got a reason to be interested in this case. So consider yourself invited."

  "I'm afraid I was invited when Eddings died in Virginia."

  "Don't sound to me like you felt all that invited this morning when you were at the shipyard."

  I didn't say anything, because he was right.

  "Maybe you had a guest on your property tonight so you would realize just how uninvited you are," he went

  "I want the FBI in this thing now because there's more to it than some guy in a johnboat you had to fish out of the river."

  "What else did you find in Eddings' apartment?" I asked him.

  I could see his reluctance as he stared off, and I did not understand it.

  "I'll serve dinner first and then we'll sit down and talk," I said.

  "If it could wait until tomorrow, it would be better." He glanced toward the kitchen as if worried that Lucy might overhear.

  "Marino, since when have you ever worried about telling me something?"

  "This is different." He rubbed his face in his hands. "I think Eddings got himself tangled up with the New Zionists."

  The lasagne was superb because I had drained fresh mozzarella in dishcloths so it did not weep too much during baking, and of course, the pasta was fresh. I had served the dish tender instead of cooking it bubbly and brown, and a light sprinkling of Parmesan reggiano at the table had made it perfect.

  Marino ate virtually all of the bread, which he slathered with butter, layered with prosciutto and sopped with tomato sauce, while Lucy mostly picked at the small portion on her plate. The snow had gotten heavier, and Marino told us about the New Zionist bible he had found as fireworks sounded in Sandbridge.

  I pushed back my chair. "It's midnight. We should open the champagne."

  I was more disturbed than I had supposed, for what Marino had to say was worse than I feared. Over the years, I had heard quite a lot about Joel Hand and his fascist followers who called themselves the New Zionists. They were going to cause a new order, create an ideal land. I had always feared they were quiet behind their Virginia compound walls because they were plotting a disaster.

  "What we need to do is raid the asshole's farm," Marino said as he got up from the table. "That should have been done a long time ago."

  "What probable cause would anybody have?" Lucy said.

  "You ask me, with squirrels like him, you shouldn't need probable cause."

  "Oh, good idea. You should suggest that one to Gradecki," she drolly said, referring to the U.S. attorney general.

  "Look, I know some guys in Suffolk where Hand lives, and the neighbors say some really weird shit goes on there.

  "Neighbors always think weird shit goes on with their neighbors," she said.

  Marino got the champagne out of the refrigerator while I fetched glasses.

  "What sort of weird shit?" I asked him.

  "Barges pull up to the Nansemond River and unload crates so big they got to use cranes. Nobody knows what goes on there, except pilots have spotted bonfires at night, like maybe there's occult rituals. Local people swear they hear gunshots all the time and that there have been murders on his farm."

  I walked into the living room because we would clean up later.

  I said, "I know about the homicides in this state, and I've never heard the New Zionists mentioned in connection with any of them, or with any crime at all, for that matter.

  I've never heard they are involved in the occult, either.

  Only on-the-fringe politics and oddball extremism. They seem to hate America and would probably be happy if they could have their own little country somewhere where Hand could be king. Or God. Or whatever he is to them."

  "You want me to pop this thing?" Marino held up the champagne.

  "The new year's not getting any younger," I said. "Now let me get this straight." I settled on the couch. "Eddings had some link with the New Zionists?"

  "Only because he had one of their bibles, like I already told you," Marino said. "I found it when we was going through his house."

  That's what you were worried about me seeing?" I looked quizzicall
y at him.

  "Tonight, yes," he said. "Because I'm more worried about her seeing it, if you want to know." He looked at Lucy.