Dust

43

“Medical history: none.” I read what Dr. Geist reported about Gabriela Lagos on his autopsy protocol. He included some facts and omitted other ones.

“No history of seizures, fainting, cardiac problems, nothing, and suddenly she takes a bath and dies at age thirty-seven. Negative for drugs that were screened for, and the alcohol present in her blood was due to decomposition.” I show Benton what’s on the four-page document, going over the displayed image of it projected on the table. “White froth in her nose, mouth, and airway because it wasn’t possible to disguise the fact that she was a drowning.”

Benton gets up from his chair and walks into the PIT, where Gabriela’s bathroom and her decomposing body are all around him, their projected light and dark shapes reflected on his face as he seats himself at the small table, what Lucy calls the cockpit. The wireless keyboard and mouse allow him to reorient whatever he wants, moving the scene as if he’s moving through it, and the tub with the body, roll to the right and in closer, a little jerky at first until he gets warmed up.

I can see her long brown hair splayed over the stagnant surface of the cloudy water, and drifting nearby is a black elastic band with a shiny black bow that held her hair up and out of the way before she was drowned. A white mask smears the outer layer of skin that has slipped, her frog-like face bright red from the chin down because that’s how she was submerged after the tub was drained and refilled with hot tap water. Dr. Geist omitted that important fact, too. He failed to record the pale areas of exposed flesh above the surface of the water, the upper face, the tops of the wrists, while the rest of the body was scalded red.

“Had the water been scalding hot when she was being drowned,” I explain to Benton, “every inch of her upper body and head would have had full-thickness burns. And that’s a critical piece of information because it indicates the water got hotter after she was dead, and that alone tells me homicide.”

“I’ve never understood froth.” Benton clicks the mouse and Gabriela’s face suddenly looms larger, blown up by the gases of decomposition, her eyes bulging as if in horror. “People are underwater and the froth is still there. Why doesn’t it wash away?” He moves an arrow to the white foam between her protruding lips, pointing it out.

“It seems stubborn because it’s not really just between her lips,” I reply. “When someone is drowning and gasping violently froth builds up like dense soap suds in the lungs, the trachea. That’s where most of it is and what you’re seeing is leaking out of her mouth. It doesn’t wash away because there’s a lot of it and Dr. Geist knew he couldn’t say she didn’t drown. He knew her body wouldn’t let him get away with that lie. The best he could do was decide it was an accident.”

I walk over to where Benton is standing and as I look at her again I’m reminded why I felt the way I did at the time and drove to the funeral home in northern Virginia. While the contusions aren’t easy to discern because of the condition she’s in, they are there, dark red areas, some slightly abraded, on her right cheek and jaw, her right hip, and on both hands and elbows. Small fingertip bruises are scattered over both ankles and lower legs, with wider, more indistinct bruises behind her knees.

“It would take two hands to leave those bruises on her ankles, and two hands were used, not big hands like Martin’s hands, and that’s the other thing,” I tell Benton. “These circular bruises from fingertips pressing into the tissue of her lower legs and ankles are small.” I hold up my hands. “Not much bigger than mine. Someone held her firmly, grabbing her ankles with his hands and yanking up, hooking her lower legs in the bend of his arms, causing the bruises behind her knees.”

I show him.

“Now she’s held by her lower legs tightly against his chest and her upper body is completely underwater. The other bruises on her hip, hands, elbows, and face are from her thrashing and striking the sides of the tub. It would have been violent, with water splashing everywhere, knocking candles onto the floor and in the water, and then in minutes it was over.”

“I can see how that wouldn’t work if one arm was in a cast,” Benton says.

“Martin couldn’t have done it but I think he watched. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, his big feet on the white mat, where he’d probably sat for most of his life through every hellish episode of her forcing him to be an audience to her seductive bathing,” I explain. “You can’t blame him for wanting her dead, wanting to be free of her, but he wouldn’t have anticipated what it was like to actually witness such a thing.”

I imagine him wide-eyed, paralyzed and shocked as he watched his mother cruelly and horribly die before his eyes. Once it started he couldn’t have stopped it and he may have wanted it but he didn’t.

“It would have been appallingly awful,” I say to Benton. “I can promise you her son couldn’t have imagined how awful it would be.”

“He wouldn’t have enjoyed it,” Benton says. “Martin Lagos wasn’t a sociopath and he wasn’t a sadist. And he didn’t need to constantly overload his senses with the next huge thrill, in this case a kill thrill.”

“I wonder what size shoe Daniel Mersa wears.” And I envision the young man and the elephant in the photograph.

I feel a change in the air as the door behind us opens and light from the corridor makes the room brighter. Lucy walks in holding a sheet of paper and she looks really happy, the kind of happy she gets when she’s about to nail someone or pay them back in a way that’s lasting.

“Granby and his troops are here,” she says. “By the security desk. I said they had to wait and you’d be right out. The computer is wrapped up and ready to go. Ron has it and I’ve signed off on the paperwork, all set for you to do the honors of receipting it. There’s a lot more to go through but we’ve got everything backed up and they don’t know that. Carin and Janet are upstairs.”

“Good,” I reply.

Lucy glances at her phone and when she looks at me she smiles, then she hands the sheet of paper to Benton. “Well?” she asks him.

“I was getting to it,” he says.

“He has bad news that’s good news,” Lucy tells me cheerfully.

I spot Bryce in the corridor heading toward us and at this late hour he looks a bit rumpled and scruffy but has that wide-eyed nervousness that we see around here when we’re in the throes of the latest tragic drama.

“The Globe is here…,” Bryce starts to announce as he walks through the door. “Oh God!” he exclaims. “She’s so awful to look at. Can’t we take that picture down yet?” He averts his face from what’s displayed in the PIT. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If I die, please don’t let me look like that. Find me instantly or never. Sock’s upstairs in your office in his bed and I gave him a treat, there’s food in the break room, and Gavin’s in the parking lot with his lights turned off and he just saw the FBI roll up and in a minute I’ll bring him inside as if he works here. This is going to be the most amazing story. I want him to hear it for himself when they demand the computer and everything else.”

“Bryce, you’re talking too much,” I warn him.

“Payments of ten grand a month, supposedly for the lease of Washington, D.C., office space,” Lucy starts to tell me what Benton hasn’t gotten to yet. “Wires to a bank in New York City and from there they are broken up into different sums and wired out to another bank, broken up again and wired out again, and on and on like clockwork for the past seventeen years, literally from August of 1996, and that sure as hell can’t be a coincidence. It might never have led to Granby being the recipient of funds that clearly are laundered but he did one really stupid thing. An e-mail.” Lucy gets really happy again. “About six months ago he had lunch with an investor who mentioned it in an e-mail to Lombardi.”

She shows it to me on her phone:

Bending around my curved corridor that leads to the receiving area, I walk briskly, my lab coat over field clothes I’m scarcely aware of anymore. I’ve reached a zone of fatigue that broaches an out-of-body state, hyper-awake and also in slow motion.

“I don’t guess you or Marino could arrest him on the spot,” I say to Benton.

“He’ll deny everything.”

“Of course he will.”

“By daylight he’ll be lawyered up.”

“I don’t care. He’s done, Benton.” I’ve made sure Granby’s defeat will be a public one.

Benton looks at me and he’s single-minded in what he needs to do. And while it should give him pleasure, it doesn’t.

“No lawyer is going to save him and none of his usual powerbrokers in Washington are going to touch him with a ten-foot pole,” I add and then I get quiet as we reach the receiving area.

Ron is inside his office with the window open, and for an instant I’m knocked off guard by Granby and his entourage of agents. He looks exhausted but polite as if he knows he’s on my turf and is most appreciative of my having him here, the three agents in cargo pants and jackets standing some distance behind him. It occurs to me Ed Granby is scared and I wasn’t expecting that.

I wonder if he’s suspicious Lucy has been inside Double S’s server and then I decide he knows what’s about to happen. He’s not naïve about who she is and what she’s capable of. And whether or not he’s cognizant of any incriminating information she might find, he has to be expecting the worst. That’s the way it works with people who are guilty of as much as he is. For every one sin uncovered they know of at least a hundred more.

“I apologize for the inconvenience,” he says to me while he doesn’t look at Benton and has no idea about Bryce or the young bearded man next to him who is dressed in a plaid shirt, sweater-vest, and jeans and sneakers.

Lucy walks past us and toward the elevator and I hear the door slide open.

“Obviously this is a significant white-collar criminal investigation we’ve got going here and thank you for respecting, uh, for appreciating our need to get Double S’s computer to our labs,” Granby says to me. “Your cooperation is so appreciated,” he stumbles nervously, too polite and smiling too much.

“Of course,” I reply and I’m not smiling at all or remotely friendly. “We have it ready for you.” I meet Ron’s eyes and he nods at me through his open window.

“Yes, ma’am — Chief,” he says and maybe I’m sleep deprived but I catch a trace of a grin. “I’ve got it right here and all the paperwork’s in order.”

“And then there are the homicides.” I look Granby in the eye as he uses both hands to smooth his perfect hair at his perfectly graying temples. “We’ll continue working those up and get the FBI any information needed.”

“As always, much appreciated.” He continues smoothing his hair as he watches Ron open his door and push out a cart that has the computer server on it, upright and shrouded in plastic. As if to make a point, Lucy has overwrapped it with bright red tape that boldly warns in black: SEALED EVIDENCE — Do Not Tamper.

I pull a Sharpie out of a pocket of my lab coat and slide the evidence submission form out of its transparent plastic window that’s taped to the computer. I initial and date it in front of everyone and then I hand it to Granby, doing things the proper way, officially receipting evidence to the FBI for analysis that we sure as hell don’t need. I wonder when the last time was that the head of a division actually received evidence or bothered to show up at a medical examiner’s facility. I wouldn’t be surprised if Granby’s never seen an autopsy.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” he says to Benton. “And why are you here?” he asks as he touches his hair again.

“Enjoying time off. Probably more than you will.”

Granby’s eyes seem to get smaller when he’s nakedly aggressive but he smiles again. “Not me. Too much to do.”

“I think you’re about to have a lot of time on your hands, Ed.”

I hear energetic footsteps from the direction of the elevator and then Lucy, Janet, and Carin Hegel appear. They stand next to Bryce and Gavin Connors, a crowd of witnesses gathered according to plan.

“What’s this?” Granby’s attention fixes on Hegel like the darts from a stun gun, his eyes seem to anchor right into her skin.

He would know who she is for every reason imaginable. She’s often in the news because of high-profile trials and is almost as recognizable around here as a professional athlete. But more to the point she was Gail Shipton’s lawyer and pitted against a firm that as it turns out has been paying off Granby for years. Enough monthly cash and who knows what other favors and he must have assumed he had little to worry about as long as he didn’t get ensnared by his own deceptions. And he has. The life he’s enjoyed is about to be over.

“If you know who this is really about, Ed, now’s a good time to say something.” Benton hasn’t taken his eyes off him. “It’s not Martin Lagos we’re looking for. I know what you’ve done. All of us know.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about but I take umbrage at the implication.”

“You’re about to pin the Capital Murderer cases on a kid who disappeared seventeen years ago based on DNA that to put it diplomatically must be a mistake. A lab error, I’m sure you’ll say.”

“This isn’t the time or the place!” Granby fires back at him. “We’ll discuss this in private.”

“You won’t,” Carin Hegel says and I just now noticed she must have taken time to dress in power clothes at this hour.

A small, fiery woman with short chestnut hair and an attractive face that doesn’t look remotely threatening until she talks, she bothered to put on a dark cashmere jacket with a dramatic collar and large silver buttons and black slacks and boots.

“Everything said is going to be said right here in front of all of us.” She sounds more like a judge than a lawyer.

“This is a joke.” But Granby doesn’t think it’s funny and his nervousness transitions to fear that’s palpable.

I watch him get wound tighter like a spring about to snap and it occurs to me he might run.

“I thought you might like to see this.” Benton hands him the printout of the call sheet. “I know it was a long time ago but you might remember giving Dr. Geist a telephone call. He was the medical examiner in Gabriela Lagos’s drowning, a homicide that you wanted him to decide was an accident.”

Granby stares at the sheet of paper he holds, staring at it as if he doesn’t know how to read.

“We have evidence her crime scene was tampered with,” Benton says and he illustrates what he means, mentioning the air conditioner turned off, the scalding-hot water in the tub, the spilled wax, the tidying up.

“And her son Martin had a broken arm so it wasn’t him gripping both of her ankles to drown her,” Benton adds. “I can show you the contusions on her lower legs, the two sets of fingertip bruises, if you’d like to see them.”

Granby is so dumbfounded he doesn’t notice that the young bearded man in the plaid shirt and sweater-vest is furiously taking notes and that the very pretty blond young woman next to Lucy is holding a digital recorder that she makes a point to say is running. Janet has made this point several times by announcing that she’s recording our conversation and if any party present refuses consent, speak up now or consent is implied. Granby doesn’t speak up but I do. I tell Ed Granby who Janet and Carin are, that both of them are lawyers, and then I make it clear why they’re here right now.

“Forensic evidence links the murders of Gail Shipton, Haley Swanson, Dominic Lombardi, and Jadwiga Caminska with those in D.C., despite your protestations to the contrary,” I say, to his visible shock. “Fibers, a mineral fingerprint, and we’ve only just begun, and I happen to know for a fact that a DNA profile in CODIS was tampered with. The sample you got a profile from and then changed to Martin Lagos came from a female, from a mixture of fluids including menstrual blood.”

“This will be dealt with through the proper channels, my channels. I certainly don’t trust your channels or anything about you, for that matter.” Carin Hegel looks at him and the agents standing behind him. “I’ve already left a message for the attorney general,” she starts to say and this is when Granby runs.

The call sheet he was holding flutters to the floor as he bolts through the door leading into the open bay, flinging it open so hard it bangs against the wall, and he gets as far as the parking lot, where Marino is climbing out of his SUV. When he sees all of us emerging from the building he does what he used to do when he was a Richmond cop.

“Whoa! Where are we going in such a hurry?” Marino says loudly as Granby runs toward his car.

In several big strides Marino intercepts him, grabbing him by the back of his belt and lifting him off the asphalt so that only his toes touch. Granby flails powerlessly as Marino uses his other hand to pat him down for a weapon, a pistol he finds in a shoulder holster under Granby’s suit jacket. Marino hands the gun to Benton.

“I’ll put you down when you quit tussling,” Marino lets Granby know sweetly.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” he screams, and his agents do nothing to intercede.

They stand back watching their boss’s humiliation with blank expressions on their faces, smart enough to know which side to take, which isn’t his anymore.

“Tell us who and where he is, Ed.” Benton gets close to him in my well-lit parking lot filled with white crime scene trucks. “It’s not Martin Lagos or you wouldn’t be trying to get him indicted for murder and I suspect he’s not around to defend himself and hasn’t been since he disappeared. Did you help get rid of him or did his friend Daniel Mersa do it?”

Granby stares mutely at him from his tiptoe position. His arms and legs go completely still as if he’s wilted and Marino sets him down squarely on his feet but keeps a grip on the back of his belt.

“Where is he?” Benton asks. “Do you want him to murder someone else?”

Granby stares at him with dead eyes.

“You really don’t give a shit, do you,” Benton says and I hear his disappointment again.

“Go to hell,” Granby says quietly, dully.

“You have a chance to make this right,” Benton says what I already know won’t move any part of Ed Granby.

I know about desperation that turns hard and empty, then as cold as outer space. I know where it leads and I know where it ends.