Identity Unknown (Kay Scarpetta #28)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

A s Fruge and I end the call, I’m distracted by the security video screens on my office walls. Something is going on with the cameras inside the vehicle bay, those images suddenly replaced by black squares. I send a text to Security Officer Wyatt Earle asking him what’s wrong.

Just noticed they’re out. Got no idea, he texts me back, and as if on cue the cameras are working again just like that.

The blacked-out squares are replaced by images inside the vehicle bay, the white cargo van I noticed earlier parked off to the side, a logo on the door that I can’t make out. Someone in a tan jumpsuit is walking around to the open tailgate. The metal bay door is retracted all the way up, bright sunlight and blue sky filling the huge square opening.

Cameras seem to be working fine now. I send Wyatt another text.

Don’t know what that was about, he answers.

I tell him to expect a few police cruisers showing up to help us keep an eye on our place. Explaining why, I give him the white Escalade’s plate number. I’m closing the window shade when my cell phone rings, out of area appearing on the display.

“Hello?” I answer, waiting several seconds, hearing radio or TV chatter playing quietly in the background. “Hello?” Ending the call, I think about who might have my personal cell phone number.

I don’t give it to many people. I also don’t share the direct number for the autopsy suite, and in my mind, I see security officer Norm Duffy’s thin lips and icy pale eyes. I can hear him calling me a fucking bitch after I fired him last fall. He was taking yet another break when an armed intruder entered the building. Norm did nothing, and I suspected he was stealing.

One of the worst employees I’ve ever had, he was a huge liability. His aggression and negligence placed everyone at risk, and not a day passes that I’m not grateful that he’s gone. For a while he left messages threatening to sue for wrongful termination. There’s been nothing from him this year, and I’m hopeful he’s moved on. But what if he hasn’t?

If not him, someone else.

Sadly, the list is long of those who can’t resist causing trouble. I step inside my private bathroom, perhaps the biggest perk that goes with being chief. Shutting the door, I take off my surgical clogs and scrubs. It’s now half past noon, and there’s no time to shower. I douse a washcloth with hot water, adding a dollop of antibacterial soap that claims to have a pleasant herbal scent. It doesn’t.

I’m gargling with an antiseptic mouthwash when my husband, Benton Wesley, calls, and I’m relieved and happy to hear his voice. I turn off the water in the sink and switch to speakerphone.

“I wanted to check on you while I could,” he’s saying. “I know you’re on your way to meet Lucy at Washington National.”

“I was going to try to reach you shortly but didn’t think I’d be so lucky, figuring you were locked away with the CIA.”

“I’m at my headquarters now because of what’s happened,” he says.

A forensic psychologist, my husband is the Secret Service’s top threat analyst. I have no doubt he’s aware of everything Lucy’s told me, and knows details that she doesn’t.

“As terrible as I feel about Sal, I can imagine how this must be for you,” Benton says, and he really can’t imagine what I’m feeling. No one can. “Nothing about this is going to be easy, Kay.”

“It already isn’t.” I rub moisturizer into my face and neck. “I can’t stop thinking about what I might have done to prevent it. I was just with him and am replaying every second.”

“There’s nothing you could have done.”

“I think of all the times I lectured him about security.” I open the bathroom’s closet, not much bigger than a locker.

“I warned him every time the three of us were together.” Benton’s voice is all around me. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” I collect cargo pants, a polo shirt from hangers. “And I stopped saying much after a while. But I shouldn’t have.”

“He saw the good in people even when it wasn’t there.” Benton has always been gracious about Sal when most husbands wouldn’t be. “Which might give us a hint about why he stopped his truck while heading up the mountain to check into the lodge last night. Maybe someone pretended to have car trouble, for example.”

“He’s the sort to bend over backwards to help.” I close the toilet lid, sitting down on it.

“Whoever’s responsible knew enough to appeal to his selfless nature,” Benton says in his pleasant baritone, rarely sounding rushed or stressed. “The first rule of being a good assassin is to know your victim.”

“Sounds like you’re not buying this UAP business.” I pull on the black cargo pants.

“We know there was one,” Benton says. “A moving blip on radar and multiple other sensors that can’t be explained.”

“I’m concerned. It’s a dangerous distraction from what’s really going on, and maybe that’s the point.” I pull on the polo shirt, black with the medical examiner’s crest embroidered on it.

“I don’t believe it’s the point, and a UAP would be a pretty difficult thing to fake, I should think,” Benton replies. “But that doesn’t mean we’re dealing with a flying saucer, extraterrestrials, interdimensional beings or whatever.”

“Why would someone do this to Sal? Do you have an idea? For what purpose?”

“He had direct access to sensitive information that our enemies want.”

“And you think that was the motive?”

“I think it was a motive. Not the only one.”

“Whose?”

“That’s the question.”

“Why leave him in the Oz theme park?” I continue thinking about who owns it. “I find that detail particularly disturbing. Possibly because I’ve been there and can see it so vividly in my head. But the park belongs to Ryder Briley, whose daughter I just autopsied.”

“Yes, I’m aware. I agree that it’s troubling,” Benton says. “What I can tell you is the Oz theme park isn’t random. I suspect it was picked deliberately in part to shock and degrade. Perhaps to make a mockery of the ET Whisperer. Or maybe it’s personal for other reasons.”

“Personal for whom?”

“As you’ve mentioned, Lucy used to love it when you took her there,” he says. “It was a very special place.”

“What could that possibly have to do with the UAP, the unidentified craft detected in the area?” I ask, baffled.

“We’re missing too much data to know what’s going on, Kay. But every precaution must be taken, and we apologize in advance for any inconvenience.”

When my husband begins a statement with we, I usually won’t be happy about what follows, and this is no exception. He goes on to explain that the location of Sal Giordano’s autopsy and other details will be disclosed to me at the appropriate time. There’s no point in trying to coax him for further information. He’s not going to give it.

“Again, we regret the inconvenience.” What he’s saying is that I won’t be conducting the postmortem examination in my building.

Nor will I be using the Remote Mobile Operating Theater Environment semi tractor-trailer in my parking lot. We resort to the REMOTE in potentially hazardous cases, but the Secret Service has something else in store.

“As sensitive as this is, we don’t think the body should be examined in any of your district offices. We have another location better suited,” Benton says, and my first thought is Dover Air Force Base, where all military-related fatalities are handled.

I’m familiar with its port mortuary, having worked there on occasion. But when I push him about it, he indicates that the body isn’t destined for Dover, Delaware. I won’t know where I’m going until I get there.

“I’m sorry we can’t tell you anything more for now,” Benton adds.

“I understand the need for secrecy.” I tuck in my shirt. “But I have to insist that we work Sal’s case together with reasonable transparency. I’m not responding to the scene and then letting the Secret Service completely shut me out. I have to do the job up to my standards and swear to my findings under oath.”

“Our labs and yours will conduct independent examinations of all evidence except the body itself,” Benton promises. “We’ll do our best to keep the details from the public for as long as possible. How we manage what happens when the news finally breaks is what I’m about to address in a SCIF.”

He has colleagues waiting for him inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, and I don’t know when we’ll see each other or talk again. It’s been this way from the start of our time together, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easy.

We first met when a serial killer began raping and strangling women in Richmond not long after I’d moved there. Benton was the star psychological profiler at what was then the FBI Academy’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Handsome and from old New England money, he had a beautiful wife and family. He dressed like GQ and drove a BMW. Assuming he was a legend in his own mind, I was prepared to dislike him intensely.

But when he walked into my conference room that hot June afternoon, he wasn’t at all what I anticipated, the attraction electric. I stare at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of my office bathroom door, thinking about the decades that have passed. What I envision and feel inside don’t match the image reflected back, and the loss of Sal is knocking out pixels I forgot I had.

He wasn’t my first love or the most important. But he came along when I needed it most, and without him I wouldn’t have been ready for Benton. Swiping Carmex over my lips, I brush on mineral sunblock, the overhead light shadowing the lines in my face, the hollowed areas carved by the years. My field clothes are unflattering, the cargo pants and polo shirt a bit snug after multiple washings in scalding water.

Or that’s what I blame it on, and I can imagine what my sister, Dorothy, would say. Her voice is always at the back of my thoughts as I dissect myself as thoroughly as everything else.

Turning off the light, I emerge from the bathroom to discover that my secretary has opened our connecting office door. She’s spraying Lysol as she walks in holding a datebook and a pen while wishing me a fine top of the day.

“Always wise to disinfect a bit when you’ve just come up from the morgue,” Shannon Park explains, spraying some more, tucking the can in one of her many pockets. “Can’t be too careful these days.” Her typically cheery face is haunted.

“Yes indeed, I can always tell when you’ve just been in here,” I reply pointedly, and no doubt she was eavesdropping while I talked to Benton.

That means she knows about Sal Giordano, explaining her somber demeanor. A retired court stenographer, Shannon is a snoop with bat ears , as Marino describes her. Most people don’t take her seriously, writing her off as an eccentric. They tend to talk freely when she’s around, and I couldn’t be happier that I hired her. I no longer have to dread what I’ll find when I come to work. I’m not worried about her sabotaging me the way my last secretary did.

This is the first time Shannon and I have seen each other today, and she’s dressed in her usual vintage attire, none of it quite fitting or matching. The yellow paisley vest over her long emerald-green tunic, her voluminous pale blue skirt, black fishnet hose and red high-top sneakers are an unlikely ensemble. Not quite five feet tall, she’s fond of old bucket hats like the purple one she has on, her spikey hair tinted pink.

“It sounded like you were having an unfortunate phone conversation a few minutes ago.” Carrying in a pair of tactical boots, I sit down behind my desk. “I’m very sorry you’re being harassed, but not surprised based on what I witnessed inside the Briley house yesterday.”

“The father’s a real dirt bird, was effin’ a blue streak on the phone. I don’t care a tinker’s damn who he is or how bloody much money he has. I find him disgusting, and recorded our conversations while telling him I was doing it. He’ll keep calling, and I don’t recommend you talk to him directly, Doctor Scarpetta.”

“I’ll let the police deal with him from now on.” I pull on my boots, remembering how arrogant and contemptuous he was. “He and his wife were parked across from our building a few minutes ago. It appeared she was drinking a beer while they filmed employees driving in and out.”

“Well that figures. So, he’s parked a stone’s toss away while badgering me over the phone about viewing the body.” Shannon’s voice is tight with emotion.

“Never happening.”

“He demanded to see his precious little girl before the funeral home repairs your butchery and whatever treachery you’re up to with your political cronies, to quote him. I guess he thought he was going to drive right on through our gate and come inside, looking at whatever he pleases.”

“I’m sure you told him that for security and safety reasons we’re not permitted to have viewings or unofficial visitors.” I give her the party line. “The police certainly wouldn’t want him or his wife coming around when it’s uncertain who shot their daughter.”

“In his mind, he’s above the law, an exception to every rule,” Shannon says, her preoccupations heavy. “And if he’s heartbroken about his so-called precious little girl, you could have fooled me.”

“I’ve alerted Wyatt to be on the lookout in case they decide to come back.” I tie my boot laces as my secretary watches everything I do.

Her periwinkle-blue eyes are pinned to me curiously, and I sense questions and heartache unrelated to Luna Briley. I know how much Shannon admired Sal Giordano. I saw the way she lit up when his name was mentioned. It didn’t escape my notice that she was flirty when he’d call, no doubt hoping he’d ask her out. In recent months I’ve begun sensing she might be lonely.

A medical examiner’s office is the antithesis of the bustling courthouses where she was a fixture for decades. Shannon lives alone in Old Town, her daughter hours away in Richmond. The rest of her family is in Ireland or no longer alive. Benton and I have her over on occasion, but the underlying problem traces back to when the intruder broke into my building five months ago.

A lot of people could have been killed besides me, depending on who happened to be around and if things had turned out differently. Such thoughts have occurred to other employees besides Shannon, a few of them quitting to take jobs elsewhere. I can tell she feels vulnerable in a way I’ve not seen in the past.

“Well, you’re dressed for battle, going somewhere unpleasant, Doctor Scarpetta. Might you tell me what’s the story?” she says.

“How much do you already know from opening our connecting door while I was on the phone with Benton?” I’m not coy about it. “And just because you can hear something doesn’t mean you should listen. For your own good maybe you shouldn’t.”

“I was leaving a few things on your desk and could hear you talking inside the bathroom. By the sound of it, Sal Giordano went missing and has been found dead in that old Oz theme park near West Virginia,” she says, and when I don’t respond she reacts visibly, her face stricken, her eyes welling. “Oh dear, it’s true. How dreadful!”

“It’s beyond dreadful.” I get up from my desk, handing her a box of tissues as I steady myself.

“He’s always been so nice to me, never too busy to ask how I am.”

“That’s the way he was to everyone.” I clear my throat. “I know how fond of you he was.”

“And so humble. You’d never know he won a Nobel Prize.” She dabs her eyes. “I can’t imagine how you feel. There are no words.”

“Please be mindful that identity hasn’t been confirmed, the case is extremely confidential.” I focus on what’s important right now.

“If such a thing can happen to the likes of him?” Blinking back more tears. “When he’s been nothing but their biggest defender? Makes no sense and I don’t believe it for a minute. Something else must be to blame.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Without intending to hear anything at all, I picked up references to a UFO.” Shannon confirms that she eavesdropped on Benton’s and my conversation.

“Again, not a word to anyone,” I reply with feeling. “We can’t afford for something like this to leak…”

“I find it most alarming since Doctor Giordano’s known for trying to communicate with aliens. Of course, we’re not supposed to call them that anymore. I guess the safest thing is to refer to them as the Others . But I’d be shocked if they’d harm him or anyone unless the person had it coming.”

“We don’t know the facts yet. We don’t know much at all.”

“I’ve always believed that they would have destroyed us long ago if that’s their intention,” Shannon replies. “I’ve assumed it’s humans who are the danger.”

“That’s because we are.” I peek behind a window shade, making sure the white Escalade hasn’t come back.