Chaos

CHAPTER 36

SHE ANSWERS HER CELL phone on the first ring, and I can tell she’s expecting my call.

“I’m pulling into the parking lot now,” Anne’s voice is in my earpiece, and she doesn’t bother with hello.

“Any sign of visitors yet?” I ask.

“Not so far.”

There may be a lot of people in and out, and it doesn’t matter if we didn’t invite some of them, I tell her. It’s of no consequence if we don’t like them or completely understand who they are. They must be taken care of properly. So we need beverages, especially coffee, and most of all we need food.

“Not much is going to be open at this hour if you’re hoping for something decent to eat,” Anne’s easygoing voice says as I begin to make out John F. Kennedy Street through dense trees up ahead, and I don’t see any traffic.

“That’s why we have the locked freezer in the break room,” I begin to explain confidentially as if I’m telling her how to access Fort Knox. “There should be pizza I keep for emergencies. Meat, vegetarian and vegan. Gluten-free and regular.”

“Seriously?”

“What did you think was in there?”

“The last lawyer you didn’t like. I don’t know.”

“I’m still at the scene but heading back. Benton is dropping me off.” I keep my voice down.

I glance back at him, and the hulking shape of the tent looms in the dark distance behind us like a flattened thunderhead. He’s politely walking some distance away because he doesn’t want to overhear what I say. If he doesn’t hear it he doesn’t have to tell anyone, and it won’t be Benton who pulls the evidence out from under me. But he won’t stop it from happening either. That’s assuming I don’t beat his colleagues to the draw.

I’m suddenly alert and in overdrive as I explain to Anne that I need Ernie Koppel to come in right away. I’ll also require someone from the histology lab to prepare specimens for him. We’re about to be interfered with, overtaken, and if we don’t begin testing evidence immediately there’s a good chance it will all end up at Quantico, at the FBI crime labs.

We talk about this obliquely. Nothing is to be put in writing, and we’re very careful what we say over the phone. Hopefully, by the time the government makes its official requests, I’ll have done most of the analysis. I’ll have done everything I possibly can to answer questions that I worry might languish otherwise or never be asked. Elisa Vandersteel needs me to finish what I’ve started.

She deserves the best I can give her, and the first order of business will be the CT scan. I suggest to Anne that whatever left the odd linear burns might have deposited microscopic evidence in the wounds.

“Lightning wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re exactly right,” I reply. “It wouldn’t.”

“But an electrocution might.”

“And if so?” I ask her. “Electrocuted by what? What looks like lightning but isn’t? We need to find out exactly what happened to her if for no other reason than to make sure that it doesn’t happen to somebody else.”

“And while we may care about that? No one else will,” Anne says, and I know what she’s really saying.

If the evidence ends up in Quantico, we have no control over who finds out what. The Feds have their own agenda, and it’s not the same as mine.

“He’ll be autopsied in Baltimore tomorrow. Well actually today.” Benton has wandered back and slides his hand out of his pants pocket, glances at the luminescent dial glowing on his wrist. “Christ. It’s already half-past midnight. How did that happen?”

“I assume you’ve talked to Doctor Ventor or someone has.”

The chief medical examiner of Maryland, Henrik “Henry” Ventor is one of the finest forensic pathologists in the country, both of us affiliated with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, the AFMES. Briggs trained us, was our commander, our boss.

“Yes, and he’s already been in touch with the police,” Benton says.

“I assume that’s where you’re headed after you drop me off,” I add.

“I took the liberty of getting Page to grab your bug-out bag from the hall closet at home, and we have it with us. Any other items hopefully you can pick up at the office. I realize you need to get out of your scrubs and clean up a bit. Then we’ll head out.”

“I’m not going with you, Benton.”

“We’d like you there.”

“Even if I didn’t have responsibilities here, I wouldn’t get involved. I don’t need to tell you why that is.”

“We could use your help, and the other doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It shouldn’t matter but it could. Imagine what it would do to Ruthie if I got asked the wrong thing under oath.”

“I promise you won’t get asked.”

“That’s a promise you can’t possibly keep, Benton. I can’t be helpful in Maryland right now but I could do some harm. And I need to finish this case. I’m not about to walk off in the middle of it. So I’m staying put.”

He goes on to remind me that the Army CID, the Pentagon, the FBI and various intelligence agencies want Briggs’s autopsy witnessed by at least one other senior forensic pathologist, preferably a special reservist with the Air Force who’s affiliated with the AFMES. In other words, ordinarily that senior person would be me, he says as if I didn’t just tell him no several times.

“Page will take care of Sock and Tesla. I expect we’ll be there for several days,” he adds, and I can’t possibly.

Benton wants to go after Carrie with guns blazing, and I have no doubt Lucy is more than happy to accommodate. Neither of them is comfortable with the idea of my staying here alone in the house with Page and the dogs, and I’m not about to move in with Janet and Desi, especially now that my sister is here.

“You’ll work both cases with us, Kay. It will be like the old days.”

“It wouldn’t. The FBI doesn’t work with anyone, and I won’t work for you or them. I work for the victim. Specifically, the dead woman I just spent several hours with in the tent.”

“I don’t want you staying here.”

“I know you don’t but that’s the way it has to be,” as we close in on headlights burning through the trees.

“Then stay at Lucy’s new place in Boston. You’ll be safe with Janet.”

“I can’t.”

“Then they can move into our place while I’m gone, and all of you will be together.”

I hear an engine idling, and Benton wouldn’t leave his expensive Audi running with no one in it-not even for two minutes. He didn’t come here alone, not that I’m surprised, and I wonder which agents are with him.

“I’m heading to Norwood, and from there to Baltimore,” he says, and Lucy keeps her helicopter in Norwood, just outside of Boston, where she has her own hangar.

“I see. That’s why she’s in a flight suit. She’s taking you,” and I think about the timing of her showing up as I emerged from the trailer.

Benton must have let her know about Briggs’s death hours ago.

“When I’m done here I’ll come meet you,” I promise as we approach a black Tahoe with dark-tinted windows and government plates.

The back door on the passenger’s side opens, and I watch an unfamiliar man climb out.

“It will be at least a day or two,” I say to Benton, “but I’ll help Ruthie, do anything I can.”

Off to our left the Kennedy School of Government hulks against the night, and for an instant it’s hard to breathe.