Chaos

CHAPTER 42

ACROSS THE RIVER THE rooftops of Boston are a gray dragon’s back of slate tiles and chimney pots. I watch the darkness lifting on the horizon, the sun rising before my eyes.

From my office with a view I witness dawn touch the new day, the river turning variegated shades of blue with greenish hues. Iron lamps blink off along the pale gash of the fitness path where people are out riding bikes and jogging. The world is waking up as usual, as if nothing at all happened last night not even a mile downriver from here. The death in John F. Kennedy Park has hit the news but you’d never know it to look out my windows.

I walk across the carpet carrying a large very strong coffee I just made at the espresso bar. I sit down at my U-shaped desk with its bunker of large computer monitors, and I’ve been translating and transcribing for the better part of an hour.

I’ve decided spacing and line breaks based on cadence and pauses, doing my best to infer format from what I listened to in the Tailend Charlie audio clip e-mailed to me early last night:

Back again, K.S.-

(By popular request, no less!)

What’s next

will be worse

than what was first.

(Face it Florida cracker

you were cursed at birth.)

Chaos is coming

in a stinging swarm,

a death airborne.

(Remember Sister Twister?

Bet you won’t miss her!)

Interpreting meanings in cryptic messages and symbolism is like reading tea leaves, but what strikes me most about this last communication isn’t the mentions of Florida cracker and Sister Twister. Lucy had told me about these when we talked in the trailer, and I don’t care about insults right now. It’s the threat that we need to pay attention to, and Lucy probably missed it because her Italian is inadequate.

What’s next will be worse than what was first.

Was Molly Hinders first? Is this who Tailend Charlie is alluding to? And what’s next? Would that have been Elisa Vandersteel? Or maybe he’s talking about something or someone else entirely, and I wonder how much personal information about me came from years of Carrie spying on Janet’s sister Natalie.

Carrie could have learned all sorts of things if she put her mind to it, and she could have passed on these details to an accomplice who’s now using them to taunt and belittle. Someone brilliant but deranged, it enters my mind because that’s the feeling I get when I’m subjected to his communications.

But why? There are so many things one might mock me about. Why pick silly names I was called as a child? Why not pick the much worse ones I’m called now? It’s childish. In fact it reminds me of the way my sister used to fight with me when we were little kids. I decide it must be Carrie’s new sidekick who’s having such juvenile fun with verse recited in synthesized Italian that’s supposed to be my father berating and disgracing me. I try Benton again. The call goes to voice mail again, and I leave another message:

Hey, it’s me. I sent you my best effort with the latest troll-ish communication. Without being too specific, I think certain phrases in it might be of interest, and while I’m not the expert, it seems to promise something disastrous. The word aerotrasportato or “airborne” was used, and I checked multiple times to make sure I heard the canned Italian word right. Call when you’re able.

It’s almost seven A.M. here or about one P.M. in France, and I remember the last time I stayed at La Tour Rose in Lyon. It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since I last visited Interpol’s headquarters, what looks like an intergalactic space station clandestinely situated out in the middle of nowhere along the River Rhône.

The secretary-general will be eating lunch because one thing I know about Tom Perry is he never turns down a civilized meal. So I’m not likely to get him but I try his office anyway, and his assistant Marie answers the phone.

“I’m sure he’s at lunch,” I say by way of an apology after we exchange pleasantries.

“He is,” she replies in her heavy French accent. “But he happens to be eating at his desk as he finishes a long call.”

“I want to pass on information and I could use his help with something.”

“Hold on, please. And it’s very nice to talk to you again, Madame Scarpetta. You must come back and visit soon.”

I can hear her talking to the secretary-general in French but I have no idea what they’re saying. Then he’s on the line, and I know instantly by the tone of his voice that he’s in the middle of something that is indeed serious. More serious than usual, at any rate.

“I wouldn’t bother you, Tom,” I say right off, “but I think it’s time we talk about what’s happening in Cambridge.”

“And also in Bethesda, it seems,” he says, and as I suspected he knows about Briggs.

Obviously Benton or one of his colleagues with the FBI has been in communication with Interpol, and I wonder who Perry was having the long phone conversation with right before I called. I wonder if it might have been Benton. His phone goes straight to voice mail every time I try him, and I would expect him to be informing the secretary-general of what’s going on since some murderous miscreant is using Interpol’s esteemed name in vain, basically spoofing the agency.

Possibly Carrie Grethen is. Possibly her accomplice is. Maybe both of them together are responsible for everything, but Interpol is more than a little familiar with her at least, I remind Perry as I explain why I’m reaching out to him. They got a bellyful of Carrie long years ago, and then like the rest of us believed she was dead until she decided to show us that she’s not.

“I haven’t had much sleep, so I hope I’m not rambling,” I add. “But you know very well how dangerous she is, and I don’t have an idea what the ultimate goal is but I know she has one.”

“Why do you know that, Kay?”

“Because she always does, and I feel this is something really bad, that she’s looking to make a statement.”

“Certainly you know her better than I do,” he says, and I don’t like the way it feels when anybody points out that I know her at all.

“Based on information I’ve gotten from Lucy, it seems Carrie has been laying the groundwork for some sort of coup,” I explain. “She’s been planning something for years, and I’m concerned about more people being hurt or killed. I’m concerned about a lot of things.”

“Well I’m glad you reached out to me, and I’m always grateful for your input, especially about a matter you’ve had so much personal experience with. What did you want my help with specifically?” The secretary-general has a Connecticut accent, and he doesn’t sound surprised or impressed by anything I’ve said.

“Last time I visited you in Lyon we had a conversation over a very nice Bordeaux, and you made the comment that anything can be weaponized, and of course that includes fear.”

“Which is the point of terror.”

“If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear,” I explain, “the fear itself can cause damage that’s as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently. And imagine suddenly worrying that something airborne might kill you as you ride your bike or swim in your pool.”

“Yes, I agree,” he says. “That would be extremely bad, especially if there really is a weapon involved. I understand your office is doing the autopsy this morning in the Vandersteel case.”

“We’re done,” I reply. “By the time we got to it we already had a pretty good idea that she’s an electrocution and most likely is a homicide. But what’s new and somewhat of a surprise is there may have been an earlier victim.”

“Where and how recently?”

“In Cambridge at the beginning of the week. In fact I’m fairly certain of it now, and that leads to my next question. Could there be others, including in places outside the United States? Cases of presumed lightning strikes or weird electrocutions, particularly if the person is around water and out in the open. It’s also possible there are victims who survived. I’m not sure Elisa Vandersteel would have died had the electrical current not hit a metal necklace she was wearing.”

“We’re thinking the same way,” Perry says. “You and I both know that things start small but the problem is, by the time we recognize these things, they’re no longer small.”

“If we’re not careful.”

“That’s right. And we must be very careful because local terror in Massachusetts or the U.S. can be a proving ground for something international,” he adds, and I tell him about Molly Hinders.

I DESCRIBE HER INJURIES, explaining that she was killed in Cambridge near the Charles River and so was Elisa Vandersteel.

Both of them were attacked as it was getting dark, meaning the visibility would have been poor, and moisture was a factor in each case. Molly was standing in wet grass as she sprayed a hose, and Elisa would have been sweaty. Moisture and electricity like each other.

“But it’s curious. Why would Carrie Grethen be interested in either of the women?” Perry wonders over the phone.

“If you want my opinion? Carrie wouldn’t be,” and it’s amazing how much I resist saying her name.

But I’m thinking of what Lucy said. If I make no effort to understand Carrie Grethen, I’ll never have a hope of stopping her. And I do know her. I know her far better than I let on to anyone, including myself.

“Carrie would be interested in Briggs,” I explain. “I can understand her targeting him, and mostly the choice is personal for her. Benton and I had worked with him for decades. You know how close I was to him. She’s paying us back. Mostly she’s paying me back.”

“For what?”

I start to give him my stock flip answer of who knows? But I do know what Carrie will never forgive, and it’s not really about Lucy or any of us. It’s about Temple Gault. I killed him in a confrontation, stabbed a knife in his thigh and severed his femoral artery. I knew exactly what I was doing, and he gave me no choice. Carrie’s never gotten over it, and according to Benton she’s never gotten over him.

“But there’s nothing personal about the victim selection with the other two,” Perry says.

“There probably is but probably not for Carrie Grethen,” I reply. “The more we’re seeing, the less likely it is that she’s working alone. So maybe her accomplice, her new Temple Gault, is killing the women while Carrie is on to bigger game like John Briggs or who knows who might be next.”

“You know the problem with accomplices, don’t you? They don’t always do what they’re told.”

“Suggesting Carrie might not have anything to do with the Vandersteel and Hinders cases.”

“If someone goes rogue.”

“That would make her very angry.”

“And her partners always go rogue. But let me ask you this first,” Perry says over the phone. “From an evidence standpoint what justifies your deciding these cases are homicides? Has something turned up that I wouldn’t know about?”

He wouldn’t know about certain developments because the FBI doesn’t yet, and I’m in no hurry to share the information. If the secretary-general of Interpol tells them, that’s his business.

“Something has turned up, and you’re about to be the only person I’ve told,” I reply as I watch the sun peek above the horizon, painting streaks of orange across Prussian blue. “I’ve not told the FBI or anyone what I’m about to say to you. We need to be extremely strategic about how the information is shared because it appears we’re dealing with a weapon that at least in part has been fashioned from a meteorite-”

“All right, hold on,” he interrupts me. “Say that again.”

I tell him about panguite as I keep thinking about what Ernie said.

You’d have to go around testing space rocks in every museum in the world…

Before he mentioned that, I wasn’t thinking about museums. But now I am.

“Of course someone could have bought pieces of meteorites on the Internet but they wouldn’t necessarily contain panguite. So we need to consider how someone acquired it and then had the ability to engineer it into something dangerous,” I’m explaining to Tom Perry. “For example, was it stolen from a collection somewhere? Just as priceless art can be heisted from museums, so can rare rocks.”

“Obviously you’ve not talked to Benton yet,” Perry says, and I imagine the secretary-general’s smiling eyes and easygoing manner.

No matter how busy he is, he never acts like he’s in a hurry. Some of the nicest, longest business lunches I’ve ever had have been with him in Lyon, and he knows French wines dangerously well for an American.

“Obviously you’ve talked to Benton if you’re asking me that. I’ve not talked to him since he left here with Lucy, headed to Maryland,” I reply as light flares mirror bright on the surrounding Harvard and MIT apartment and academic buildings.