Chaos

CHAPTER 33

I REST QUIETLY ON TOP of my hard black boxy perch. I keep my back straight, breathing slowly, deeply, trying not to slouch.

I bought the heavy-duty plastic scene case on sale at Home Depot years ago, and it’s an appropriate throne for the Queen of Crime, for Her Travesty and Royal Hardship. Bryce is quite the pun meister. He calls me a lot of things when he thinks I can’t hear him.

I wait for my molecules to gather, for the dizziness to pass. My brain seems to slide around heavily, slowly, inside my skull like an egg yolk as I turn my throbbing head this way and that. I listen to Marino and Benton. Sipping water, I look closely at who’s talking. Back and forth like a Ping-Pong match. Point and counterpoint like a Gregorian chant. The Pugilistic Crank versus the Unflappable Stoic.

I have a ringside seat as Marino questions, and Benton deflects and evades, not answering anything important about what’s happened to our mutual friend John Briggs. But it’s not lost on me that my husband doesn’t hesitate to probe about the dead woman in our midst, a twenty-three-year-old Canadian who shouldn’t be on the FBI’s radar, certainly not yet.

I also don’t trust Benton’s imperviousness to the helicopter that’s begun flying up and down the river. Or maybe it’s more than one. But he acts as if he doesn’t notice what at this hour isn’t a sightseeing tour, and it sounds too big to be a local TV news crew. I have a feeling the Feds have started showing up or are about to, and I don’t think Marino suspects what’s going on. Probably because oblivion is better, and as I rest and hydrate I give him another second or two before he faces reality in a most unhappy way. I know a not-so-friendly takeover when I see one.

“… The question’s also going to be why she really left their employment,” Benton is talking to Marino about the Portisons in London and their former au pair Elisa Vandersteel. “Because if the family was happy with her they would move heaven and earth to hang on to her. Why did she leave?”

“Maybe her visa.”

“There are ways around that if the family wanted to keep her and she wanted to stay. The two boys are older though. Thirteen and fourteen, and it may be as simple as they don’t need someone looking after them anymore.”

“What two boys? How the hell do you know that? Did Lucy tell you?”

But Benton doesn’t feel obligated to answer questions unless it suits him. He’s asking and commenting about the case as if he’s in charge, and Marino is beginning to fidget and get flustered. After carefully packing his Pelican case, he’s suddenly kneeling back on the grass to reopen it as if he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“Yeah, I know what the questions are,” he retorts, unsnapping clasps, and he’s getting defensive and louder. “You must have talked to Lucy and I don’t know why because last I checked this wasn’t your damn case.”

“Maybe she found out something from the people at the theater?” Benton doesn’t answer that question either as he looks toward the body some fifty feet away. “For example, what or who brought her to Cambridge?”

Marino opens the big lid on his scene case.

“The question is whether Elisa Vandersteel was an intended target or simply random-in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Whose question?” Marino begins rechecking the evidence he packaged, and I see his paranoia and anger grow by leaps and bounds. “I thought you were here to talk about Briggs.” His hot flushed face stares warily at Benton as the truth sinks in.

Something has happened to the jurisdiction in the Vandersteel case. That would explain why Benton is here. If the FBI has taken over the investigation it would make sense that he’s been prowling around the scene inside the tent, watching where he steps, scanning trees, the grass, the path, and the damaged lamp and exploded glass. When he’s not looking at me, he’s looking at everything else, and it’s beyond his usual curiosity.

I can tell when he’s making assessments. I know when he’s in his profiler mode. I also know that the FBI shouldn’t have been invited to assist in the Vandersteel case-not at this early stage. But Benton’s demeanor, his heavy energy and quiet gravitas, are telling me he doesn’t need an invitation.

What that suggests is a fait accompli, and it’s a thought I find disturbing and unsettling. We don’t know if she’s a homicide, and since when is the FBI interested in electrocutions or lightning strikes?

I have no doubt Barclay divulged all sorts of things as he escorted Benton through the park. But by that point most of the damage had been done. A decision had been made or my husband wouldn’t have shown up here to begin with, and Benton can’t just walk in uninvited and help himself to a case. There’s a process, and I wonder when Marino’s going to catch on that Benton isn’t treating him like an investigative colleague anymore.

I watch him pack up his coffin-size scene case, obsessively fussing with it the way he does with one of his monster tackle boxes or tool chests.

“… A heart attack is my vote.” He’s like a moth batting against a window screen, determined he’s going to extract more from Benton about Briggs, about anything.

But what I’m really witnessing is the agonal stages of Marino’s lead role-or any role-in the Vandersteel investigation. He won’t be involved with what’s happening in Maryland either. But then, technically he never was.

“… That’s why I’m wondering if Ruthie said anything about him not feeling good,” Marino says as Benton ignores him.

Marino hasn’t been informed outright that his case has been co-opted by the Feds, and since they aren’t collaborative that’s the same as being fired. Something like that wouldn’t come from Benton. That’s not how it’s done when a local investigator is removed from a case-or more accurately stated, when a case is removed from a local investigator. Benton won’t be the one to say it and he doesn’t have to for the ugly truth to be all around us like the stench and the heat.

“Like maybe he hadn’t been feeling right, was having chest pains. Or maybe it had to do with the pacemaker he got eight or nine months ago?” Marino has begun to bluster, and Benton isn’t answering. “But I can see you aren’t going to tell me shit. In other words you’re being a typical FBI dickwad.”

Benton isn’t really, and were Marino not so distracted by his discomfort and fatigue, by his usual power struggles and insecurities, he might realize what’s glaring. Briggs had a top-level security clearance and regularly advised military leaders, the secretary of state and various directorates including the Departments of Defense and Justice.

He attended social events at the White House and was accustomed to briefing the president. For obvious reasons he’s of keen interest to the U.S. intelligence community, which isn’t going to insert itself directly into the domestic investigation of his death. The CIA is sneakier than that.

Typically it uses the FBI as a liaison or a front because global spymasters aren’t supposed to deal directly with domestic medical examiners, cops and the likes. That’s a sanitized way of saying that in the real world the CIA is the invisible witch rubbing the FBI’s crystal ball, diverting and deploying its agents and experts like a squadron of flying monkeys.

What happens next suddenly and without warning is they descend upon your scenes, your witnesses, your offices, paper records, database, labs, morgues, your very homes and families. There’s no regard for what damage might be done, and cops like Marino may never know what hit them or the reason. Having a major case overtaken by the Feds is every investigator’s nightmare-especially if the agents involved are secretly doing the bidding of some cloak-and-dagger organization like the CIA.

I watch Marino watching Benton look around, assessing, contemplating, carrying himself as if he has the right to be here while I scarcely know the smallest thing about my mentor, my friend found dead in a pool. What pool? Was this at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware? I know he swam there religiously when he was overseeing the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs.

Or was Briggs traveling? He would use the hotel pool if there were one. But I have a feeling I know, and it would be tragically ironic. It would seem like an Old Testament judgment as I envision the quaint stone house in its charming Bethesda neighborhood off Old Georgetown Road. Briggs bought the property decades ago. One of the draws for him was its close proximity to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where we once worked together.

“Here.” Marino looms over me, and I realize he and Benton have stopped talking.

Marino has dug up a sports drink that’s as hot as the humid foul air. The bottle was hiding inside a rucksack for God knows how long but I don’t care. I wipe lint and grime off it, twist the cap, releasing the seal with a pop. The fruity flavor is salty and cloying, and I feel it instantly like the hit of a cigarette or a shot of Scotch.

“I don’t know if something like that can go bad after a while,” Marino watches me sip, and his clothing is several shades darker from sweat. “Sorry it’s not cold.”

ON THE DECK BEHIND the house is the Endless Pool Briggs was constantly repairing.

I can see it in my mind as vividly as a photograph, and it pains me unbearably. Too frugal and stubborn to replace it, he held it together with spit and rubber bands, he liked to quip. To him it was a functional exercise machine no different from a treadmill or a stationary bike, and swimming in place was part of his daily routine when he was at his and Ruthie’s Maryland home.

I was witness to it when I would stay with them, and the appointed time was six P.M., the witching hour between work and Johnnie Walker, as he liked to say. He’d step down into water heated to eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and turn on the current, selecting whatever resistance suited his mood and conditioning. Then he’d swim in place for thirty minutes. No more or less, and after all we’ve been through? After all my complaints about his jerry-rigged engineering? This is how it ends?

I ask Benton that. I need to know it for a fact. Where was Briggs? Was he at the house in Maryland? I want to know for sure and don’t care if Benton doesn’t want to talk in front of Marino or perhaps at all. I don’t care whose case it is. I need to know a few things. I need to know them now.

“Yes, in Bethesda,” Benton answers me while communicating with a look not to push him too far, that we can’t be talking about this here.

“Where was Ruthie?” I push a little more. “Was she home?” He can tell me that much.

“She was making dinner.”

The kitchen sink overlooks the redwood deck and fenced-in yard in back. But one can’t see the pool because it’s off to one side near the bird feeder and the toolshed. I told Briggs more than once it wasn’t safe. If he had a heart attack, if something happened, very likely no one would see him in time.

I badgered him about getting a defibrillator, about installing security cameras. When he got the pacemaker, I gave him a CCTV starter kit so Ruthie could monitor his exercise from different areas of the house.

Thanks but no thanks, he let me know. I don’t need to be spied on more than I already am.

Approximately six hours ago, I’m told, he headed out the back door with his towel, his goggles, barefoot, and in swim trunks. I’ve been to the residence countless times. I can see the Endless Pool about the size of a home spa. I recall Briggs installing it on the deck maybe fifteen years ago when old football injuries started acting up and he began referring to himself as the joints chief of staff.

He gave up running for swimming, and at their Maryland home he’d wage war against the Endless Pool’s artificial current. If he wanted to build endurance he didn’t go longer but harder. He’d wear water mitts or scuba fins to increase resistance, and I ask if he had on either. Benton doesn’t seem to know, and I watch Marino pick up a handle of his big Pelican case, rolling it closer to the tent entrance as I hear voices and the clatter of a stretcher.

Then Marino’s cell phone startles the stifling quiet, the ring tone a World War II air-raid siren, an urgent alert I’ve heard before but not often. He steps away from his scene case and us as he answers someone high up in the Cambridge Police Department food chain.

“Yeah, I’m still here and about to wrap it up. What? You’re kidding.” His voice is exasperated but restrained. “Yeah, I’m hearing you. Not that I’m surprised.” He glares at Benton. “When the hell was this?”

The tent flap opens again, and Harold walks in, weary but tranquil, smiling sympathetically at me. He asks if I need anything, and I would see it on his face if he’d heard the news about Briggs. The CFC exists because of General John Anderson Briggs. He helped shape the place and has spent considerable time with us over the years. Harold, Rusty and the rest of my staff will be crushed. But not as crushed as I’ll always be.

“… That figures. It’s nice of him to tell me himself seeing as how I’ve been standing here talking to him for the past fifteen friggin’ minutes.” Marino gestures on the phone, stealing resentful sidelong glances at Benton.

“It’s still hot as Hades out there.” Harold solemnly nods, looking at me as if I’m a prospective project for an undertaker.

I can imagine him contemplating different glues and shades of makeup and whether I’m going to need putty.

“If you don’t mind my saying so, Doctor Scarpetta…?”

“I do mind, Harold. I don’t need to hear that I look worse than some of my patients right about now.”

“Goddamn son of a bitch.” Marino has ended his call.

“You just look like you could use a break someplace cool, Chief.” Harold takes my empty sports-drink bottle from me, studies it with a frown before tossing it in the trash. “You did notice this was expired?”

“Well that makes two of us, Harold. Thanks and you know where I’ll be.” I look down at my damp dirty scrubs, at my loathsome pumps. “I’ll see you back at the ranch.”

“Well I don’t know about you walking anywhere. You still look pretty hot to me… Oh dear.” As he’s pulling on a pair of gloves. “I didn’t mean that kind of hot. Anyway I’m not sure you should exert yourself in the least.” His concerned face appraises me too carefully.

“Don’t even think about it.” I wag a finger at him.

“We do happen to have a stretcher handy and it’s as clean as brand-new-”

“No. Thank. You.” I emphasize each word like a gunshot.

“Fine. But we’ll be bringing up the rear if you start feeling faint. It’s a bit of a hike, and there seem to be a lot of people. Law enforcement of one sort or another,” he adds, signaling that there are cops or agents in the park who weren’t here earlier.

“What about the media?” I ask.

“Oh no. They can’t get in. The park is completely sealed. They have the entrances blocked and have even closed off Bennett and Eliot Streets and University Road. Cruisers are all over the place, most of them with their emergency lights off, and there are a lot of unmarked cars lurking about. And I’ve been hearing a helicopter. Actually, it could be more than one.”

Then he goes on to give me an update in the same earnest soothing tone. He says my troops are being mobilized, and that confirms what I suspect. He realizes it’s not happenstance that Benton is here. Harold recognizes the signs of a coup on the way, and he’s taken it upon himself to mount a defensive front while the new day is still young.

My radiologist Anne has agreed to come in to work right away, he confirms. So has Luke Zenner, and Bryce is already there. Rusty has driven the mobile command center back to the CFC and returned with a van to transport Elisa Vandersteel’s body. Harold has saved me hours and possibly a lot more than that. This is one of many reasons why I couldn’t possibly replace him, and I tell him thanks.

“I can use all the help I can get,” I add. “I think the long night might have just gotten longer.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, Chief.” His smile is somewhere between unctuous and pious.

Benton loops the strap of my briefcase over his shoulder, pretending he didn’t hear anything we just said. He follows me as I duck through the black fabric flap, passing from glaring brightness to the pitch dark. For an instant I can’t see. But the great hot outdoors is a pleasant relief, and I fill my lungs with air that’s not as stifling and doesn’t stink.

“How are you feeling? Are you okay to head out? Tell me the truth,” Benton says, and maybe it’s my muddled condition but I feel a vibration.

“As long as I don’t jog.” I detect the unmistakable thud-thud.

“Slow and easy please,” he looks at me as my attention is pulled toward the river.

The whomp-whomp-whomp reverberates in my bones, percussing in my organs. I scan around us as mechanical turbulence bounces off buildings and bridges, making it difficult to pinpoint the location of what sounds big and scary.

I’m fairly certain it’s the same helicopter we’ve been hearing or another one like it, and I notice a bright white light in the distant dark to the northeast, a searchlight probing, headed toward us. We stop walking to watch the blazing finger pick its way along the MIT and Harvard campuses.

It paints over the ruffled water, slashing through thick treetops and over the fitness path on this side of the river.