The Scarpetta Factor

9

The lights of Columbus Circle pushed back the darkness of Central Park, and near the gateway leading into it, the Maine Monument ’s fountain and its gilded sculpture of Columbia Triumphant were deserted.

The red booths of the holiday market were closed, their crowds this season dramatically diminished, and there wasn’t a soul milling around the news kiosk, not even the usual cops, just an old man who looked homeless, wrapped in layers, sleeping on a wooden bench. Taxis speeding by were minus advertising in their lighted tops, and gone were long lines of limousines outside apartment buildings and hotels. Everywhere Scarpetta looked she found symbols and signs of dismal times, of the worst times she could recall. She had grown up poor in a marginal part of Miami, but that had felt different because it wasn’t everybody. It was just them, the Scarpettas, of struggling Italian immigrant stock.

“Aren’t you the lucky one to live right here?” Carley peeked over the turned-up collar of her coat as she and Scarpetta followed the sidewalk in the uneven glow of lamplight. “Someone pays you well. Or maybe it’s Lucy’s apartment. She’d be perfect to have on my show to talk about forensic computer investigations. She still good friends with Jaime Berger? I saw them one night at the Monkey Bar. Don’t know if they mentioned it. Jaime refuses to be on, and I’m not going to ask again. It really isn’t fair. It wasn’t anything I did.”

Carley didn’t seem to have a glimmer that there would be no future shows, at least not with her as the host. Or maybe she was fishing because she suspected what was going on behind the scenes at CNN. It nagged at Scarpetta that when she and Alex had walked out of the makeup room, they’d discovered Carley waiting in the hallway not two feet from the door. Ostensibly, she was just that second leaving and she and Scarpetta should walk together, which hadn’t made any sense. Carley didn’t live nearby, but in Stamford, Connecticut. She didn’t walk or take the train or a cab, always used a car service supplied by the network.

“After she was on American Morning last year. I don’t know if you saw it.” Carley stepped around dirty patches of ice. “That animal abuse case she prosecuted, the pet shop chain. CNN had her on to talk about it, really as a favor. And she got annoyed because she got asked hard questions. So, guess who gets punished? Me. If you asked her, she’d probably go on. I bet you could talk anybody into it you wanted, with the connections you have.”

“Why don’t we get you a cab,” Scarpetta said. “You’re going out of your way, and I’m fine to walk alone. It’s just up ahead.”

She wanted to call Benton so he’d know why she was taking so long and wouldn’t worry, but she didn’t have her BlackBerry. She must have left it in the apartment, had probably set it down by the sink in the master bath, and it had occurred to her several times now to borrow Carley’s phone. But that would mean using it to call a private and unpublished number, and if Scarpetta knew nothing else after tonight, Carley wasn’t to be trusted.

“I’m glad Lucy didn’t have her fortune invested with Madoff, not that he’s the only crook,” Carley then said.

A train clattered underfoot and warm air billowed up from a grate. Scarpetta wasn’t going to take the bait. Carley was fishing.

“I didn’t get out of the market when I should have, waited until the Dow fell below eight thousand,” Carley continued. “Here I am, sometimes at the same events as Suze Orman, and did I ask her for advice? How much did Lucy lose?”

As if Scarpetta would tell her, assuming she knew.

“I know she made a fortune in computers and investments, always on the Forbes list, in the top hundred. Except now,” Carley continued. “I noticed she’s not listed anymore. Wasn’t she once, well, not that long ago, worth in the billions because of high-speed technologies and all sorts of software she’s been inventing since she was practically in diapers? Plus, I’m sure she’s been getting good financial advice. Or she was.”

“I don’t look at Forbes lists,” Scarpetta said, and she didn’t know the answer. Lucy had never been all that forthcoming about her finances, and Scarpetta didn’t ask. “I don’t talk about my family,” she added.

“There certainly are a lot of things you don’t talk about.”

“And we’re here.” They had reached Scarpetta’s building. “You take care of yourself, Carley. Have a happy holiday and a happy new year.”

“Business is business, right? All’s fair. Don’t forget we’re friends.” Carley hugged her. She’d never done that before.

Scarpetta entered the polished-marble lobby of her building, digging in her coat pockets for her keys, seeming to remember that’s where her BlackBerry had been last. Was she certain? She couldn’t remember, tried to reconstruct what she’d done tonight. Had she used her phone at all, maybe taken it out at CNN and left it somewhere? No. She was sure she hadn’t.

“You were good on TV.” The concierge, young and recently hired, and sharp in his neat blue uniform, smiled at her. “Carley Crispin put you through it, huh? If it had been me, I would have gotten mad. Something just came for you.” He reached down behind the desk. Scarpetta remembered his name was Ross.

“Just came?” she said. “At this hour?” Then she remembered. Alex was sending over a proposal.

“The city that never sleeps.” Ross handed her a FedEx box.

She boarded the elevator and pressed the button for the twentieth floor, glancing at the airbill, looking at it more closely. She searched for confirmation that the package was from Alex, from CNN, but there was no return address and her own address was unusual:

DR. KAY SCARPETTA

CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER of GOTHAM CITY

1111 CENTRAL PARK WEST USA 10023

Referring to her as the chief medical examiner of Gotham City was sarcastic. It was kooky. The handwriting was so precise it looked like a font, almost looked computer-generated, but she could tell it wasn’t, and she sensed a mocking intelligence guiding the hand that had held the pen. She wondered how the person knew that she and Benton had an apartment in this building. Their addresses and phone numbers were unpublished and unlisted, and she realized with growing alarm that the sender’s copy was still attached to the airbill. The package hadn’t been sent by FedEx. Dear God, don’t let this be a bomb.

The elevator was old, with ornate brass doors and an inlaid wood ceiling, and it climbed excruciatingly slowly, and she imagined a muffled explosion and hurtling down the dark shaft, crashing at the bottom. She smelled a foul tarry chemical odor, like a petroleum-based accelerant, sweet but disgusting. She focused on it, unsure what it was or if it was real. Diesel fuel. Diphorone Pentaperoxide and acetone peroxide and C4 and nitroglycerine. Odors and dangers she knew from working fires and explosions, from teaching at post-blast schools in the late nineties when Lucy was a special agent with ATF, when Scarpetta and Benton were members of its International Response Team. Before Benton was dead, then alive again.

Silver hair, charred flesh and bone, his Breitling watch in a soup of sooty water at that fire scene in Philadelphia where she’d felt her world end. What she’d thought were Benton ’s remains. His personal effects. Didn’t just suspect it, was certain he was dead because she was supposed to be certain. The dirty, foul odor of arson and accelerants. Emptiness yawning before her, impenetrable and forever, nothing left but isolation and pain. She feared nothingness because she knew what it felt like. Year after year of nonexistence, her brain going strong but not her heart. How to describe it? Benton still asked her, but not often. He’d been hiding from the Chandonne cartel, from organized criminals, murderous scum, and of course had been protecting her, too. If he was in danger, she was in danger. As if she was in less danger, somehow, with him not around. Not that she was asked. Better if everyone believed he was dead. The Feds said. Please, God, don’t let this be a bomb. A petroleum, asphalt smell. The offensive fuel odor of coal tar, of naphthenic acid, of napalm. Her eyes watered. She was nauseated.

The brass doors opened and she jostled the package as little as possible. Her hands were shaking. She couldn’t leave the FedEx box in the elevator. She couldn’t set it down, couldn’t get rid of it without placing other residents or building employees at risk. Her fingers fumbled nervously with keys as her heart raced and she hypersalivated, could barely catch her breath. Metal against metal. Friction, static electricity, could set it off. Breathe deeply, slowly, and stay calm. Unlocking the apartment door with a startlingly loud click. Please, God, don’t let this be what I think.

“ Benton?”

She stepped inside, leaving the door open wide.

“Hello? Benton?”

She carefully set the FedEx box on the middle of the coffee table in their empty living room of fine art and mission-style furniture. She imagined expansive windows exploding, a massive glass bomb blowing up and raining razor-sharp shards down twenty stories. She picked up an art-glass sculpture, an undulating bowl in vibrant colors, moved it off the coffee table, set it on the rug, making sure there was a clear path from the doorway to the FedEx box.

“ Benton, where are you?”

A stack of paperwork was in his usual Morris recliner by windows overlooking the lights of the Upper West Side and the Hudson. In the distance, planes looked like UFOs above the blazing runways of Teterboro. Lucy was probably flying her helicopter, heading to New York, to Westchester County. Scarpetta didn’t like it when Lucy flew after dark. If she lost her engine she could auto-rotate, but how did she see where to set down? What if she lost her engine over miles of trees?

“ Benton!”

Scarpetta headed down the hallway toward the master bedroom. She took deep breaths and swallowed repeatedly, trying to slow her heart and settle her gut. She heard a toilet flush.

“Christ, what the hell’s going on with your phone?” Benton ’s voice was followed by him appearing in the bedroom doorway. “Have you gotten any of my messages? Kay? What the hell’s the matter?”

“Don’t come any closer,” she said.

He was still in his suit, simple dark-blue flannel that didn’t suggest money because he never wore anything expensive on prison wards or in forensic units, was careful what he telegraphed to prisoners and psychiatric patients. He had taken off his tie and his shoes, and his white shirt was open at the neck and untucked. His silver hair looked the way it did when he’d been running his fingers through it.

“What’s happened?” he said, not moving from the doorway. “Something’s happened. What?”

“Get your shoes and coat,” Scarpetta said, clearing her throat. “Don’t come close. I don’t know what I’ve got on me.” Desperate to scrub her hands with a solution of bleach, to decon, to take a long, hot shower and remove layers of makeup and shampoo her hair.

“What’s happened? Did you run into someone? Did something happen? I’ve been trying to get hold of you.” Benton was a statue in the doorway, his face pale, his eyes looking past her, toward the front door, as if he feared someone had come in with her.

“We need to leave.” Her television makeup felt sticky, cloying, like glue. She smelled the smell, thought she did. Tar, sulfur, its molecules trapped in her makeup, in her hairspray, trapped in the back of her nose. The smell of fire and brimstone, of hell.

“The caller from Detroit? I tried to get hold of you,” Benton said. “What’s going on? Did someone do something?”

She took off her coat, her gloves and dropped them in the hallway, kicking them out of the way, and said, “We need to leave. Now. A suspicious package. It’s in the living room. Get warm coats for both of us.” Don’t be sick. Don’t throw up.

He disappeared inside the bedroom and she heard him go into his closet, hangers scraping along the rod. He reappeared carrying a pair of hiking boots, a wool coat, and a ski jacket he hadn’t worn in so long, it still had a lift ticket attached to the zipper. He handed her the jacket and they hurried down the hallway. Benton ’s face was hard as he looked at the wide-open door, as he looked at the FedEx box in the living room, at the art glass bowl on the Oriental rug. Open the windows to minimize pressure and damage if there’s an explosion. No, you can’t. Do not go into the living room. Do not go near the coffee table. Do not panic. Evacuate the apartment, close the door, and keep others from entering. Do not make noise. Do not create shock waves. She shut the door softly, leaving it unlocked so the police could get in. There were two other apartments on this floor.

“You ask the desk how it got here?” Benton said. “I’ve been up here all night. They didn’t call to say anything was delivered.”

“I didn’t notice certain details until I was already in the elevator. No, I didn’t ask. It has a strange odor.” She put on his ski jacket and it engulfed her, was almost to her knees. Aspen. When were they there last?

“What sort of odor?”

“A sweet, tarry, rotten-egg sort of smell. I don’t know. I might have imagined it. And the airbill, the way it was addressed. I shouldn’t have carried it upstairs. Should have left it on the desk and made Ross get out of the way, kept everybody out of the way until the police got here. God, I’m stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“Oh, I’m stupid, all right. Distracted by Carley Crispin and stupid as hell.”

She rang the bell of the apartment nearest theirs, a corner unit belonging to a clothing designer she’d seen only in passing. That was New York. You could live next door to someone for years and never have a conversation.

“Don’t think he’s here,” Scarpetta said, ringing the bell, knocking on the door. “I’ve not seen any sign of him lately.”

“How was it addressed?” Benton asked.

She told him about the sender’s copy still being attached, about the reference to her being the chief medical examiner of Gotham City. She described the unusual handwriting as she rang the bell one more time. Then they headed to the third apartment, this one lived in by an elderly woman who had been a comedic actress decades ago, best known for a number of appearances on The Jackie Gleason Show. Her husband died a year or so ago, and that was the sum of what Scarpetta knew about her, about Judy, except that she had a very nervous toy poodle that began its cacophony of barking the instant Scarpetta rang the bell. Judy looked surprised and not especially pleased when she opened her door. She blocked the doorway, as if hiding a lover or a fugitive, her dog dancing and darting behind her feet.

“Yes?” she said, looking quizzically at Benton, his coat on but in his socks and holding his boots.

Scarpetta explained that she needed to borrow the phone.

“You don’t have a phone?” Judy slurred her words a little. She had fine bones but a wasted face. A drinker.

“Can’t use cell phones or the phone in our apartment, and we don’t have time to explain,” Scarpetta said. “We need to use your land line.”

“My what?”

“Your house phone, and then you need to come downstairs with us. It’s an emergency.”

“Certainly not. I’m certainly not going anywhere.”

“A suspicious package was delivered. We need to use your phone, and everyone on this floor needs to go downstairs as quickly as possible,” Scarpetta explained.

“Why would you bring it up here! Why would you do that?”

Scarpetta smelled booze. No telling what prescriptions she’d find in Judy’s medicine cabinet. Irritable depression, substance abuse, nothing to live for. She and Benton stepped inside a paneled living room overwhelmed by fine French antiques and Lladró porcelain figurines of romantic couples in gondolas and carriages, on horseback and swings, kissing and conversing. On a windowsill was an elaborate crystal Nativity scene and on another one an arrangement of Royal Doulton Santas, but no lights or Christmas tree or menorah, only collectibles and photographs from an illustrious past that included an Emmy in a curio cabinet with a Vernis Martin- style finish and hand-painted scenes of cupids and lovers.

“Did something happen inside your apartment?” Judy asked as her dog yapped shrilly.

Benton helped himself to the phone on a giltwood console. He entered a number from memory, and Scarpetta was pretty sure she knew who he was trying to reach. Benton always handled situations efficiently and discreetly, what he referred to as “mainlining,” getting information directly to and from the source, which in this instance was Marino.

“They brought a suspicious package up? Why would they do that? What kind of security are they?” Judy continued.

“It’s probably nothing. But to be safe,” Scarpetta assured her.

“You at headquarters yet? Well, don’t bother with that right now,” Benton told Marino, adding that there was a remote possibility someone had delivered a dangerous package to Scarpetta.

“I guess someone like you has all sorts of crazies out there.” Judy was putting on a full-length coat, sheared chinchilla with scalloped cuffs. Her dog jumped up and down, yapping more frantically as Judy collected her leash from a satinwood étagère.

Benton hunched his shoulder, using the phone hands-free while he put on his boots, and said, “No, in a neighbor’s apartment. Didn’t want to use ours and send out an electronic signal when we didn’t know what’s in it. An alleged FedEx. On the coffee table. Going downstairs right now.”

He hung up, and Judy tottered, bending over to snap the leash on the poodle’s matching collar, blue leather and an Hermès lock, probably engraved with the neurotic dog’s name. They went out the door and got on the elevator. Scarpetta smelled the pungently sweet chemical odor of dynamite. A hallucination. Her imagination. She couldn’t possibly smell dynamite. There was no dynamite.

“Do you smell anything?” she asked Benton. “I’m sorry your dog’s so upset.” It was her way of asking Judy to make the damn thing shut up.

“I don’t smell anything,” Benton said.

“Maybe my perfume.” Judy sniffed her wrists. “Oh. You mean something bad. I hope somebody didn’t send you Ant-trax or whatever it’s called. Why did you have to bring it upstairs? How’s that fair to the rest of us?”

Scarpetta realized her shoulder bag was in the apartment, on the table inside the entryway. Her wallet, her credentials, were in it, and the door was unlocked. She couldn’t remember what had happened to her BlackBerry. She should have checked the package before carrying it upstairs. What the hell was wrong with her?

“Marino’s on his way but won’t get here before the others do,” Benton said, not bothering to explain to Judy who Marino was. “He’s coming from downtown, from headquarters, from Emergency Operations.”

“Why?” Scarpetta watched floors slowly go by.

“RTCC. Doing a data search. Or was going to.”

“If this were a co-op, we wouldn’t have voted you in.” Judy directed this at Scarpetta. “You get on TV and talk about all these horrible crimes, and look what happens. You bring it home and subject the rest of us. People like you attract kooks.”

“We’ll hope it’s nothing, and I apologize for upsetting you. And your dog,” Scarpetta said.

“Slowest damn elevator. Calm down, Fresca, calm down. You know she’s all bark. Wouldn’t hurt a flea. I don’t know where you expect me to go. I suppose the lobby. I don’t intend to sit in the lobby all night.”

Judy stared straight ahead at the brass elevator doors, her face pinched by displeasure. Benton and Scarpetta didn’t talk anymore. Images and sounds Scarpetta hadn’t remembered in a long while. Back then, in the late nineties, life had gotten as tragic as it could get, back in the days of ATF. Flying low over scrubby pines and soil so sandy it looked like snow as rotor blades paddled the air and slung sounds in rhythm. Metallic waterways were corrugated by the wind, and startled birds were a dash of pepper flung against the haze, heading for the old blimp station in Glynco, Georgia, where ATF had its explosives range, raid houses, concrete bunkers, and burn cells. She didn’t like post-blast schools. Had quit teaching at them after the fire in Philadelphia. Had quit ATF, and so had Lucy, both of them moving on without Benton.

Now he was here in the elevator, as if that part of Scarpetta’s past was a nightmare, a surreal dream, one she hadn’t gotten over and couldn’t. She hadn’t taught at a post-blast school since, avoidance, not as objective as she should be. Personally disturbed by bodies blown apart. Flash burns and shrapnel, massive soft-tissue avulsion, bones fragmented, hollow organs lacerated and ruptured, hands gory stumps. She thought about the package she’d carried into the apartment. She hadn’t been paying attention, had been too busy fretting about Carley and what Alex had confided, too caught up in what Dr. Edison referred to as her career at CNN. She should have noticed instantly that the airbill had no return address, that the sender’s copy was still attached.

“Is it Fresca or Fresco?” Benton was asking Judy.

“Fresca. As in the soda. Had a glass of it in my hand when Bud walked into the apartment with her in a bakery box. For my birthday. That should have been my first clue, all the holes in the top. I thought it was a cake and then she barked.”

“I bet she did,” said Benton.

Fresca began tugging the leash and barking at a shattering pitch, piercing Scarpetta’s ears, stabbing deep into her brain. Hy persalivating, her heart skipping. Don’t get sick. The elevator stopped, and the heavy brass doors crept open. Red and blue lights flashed through the lobby’s front glass door, freezing air sweeping in with half a dozen cops in dark-navy BDUs, tactical jackets, and boots, operator belts heavy with battery holders, mag pouches, batons, flashlights, and holstered pistols. A cop grabbed a luggage cart in each hand and wheeled them out the door. Another made his way straight to Scarpetta as if he knew her. A big man, young, with dark hair and skin, muscular, a patch on his jacket depicting gold stars and the cartoonish red bomb of the bomb squad.

“Dr. Scarpetta? Lieutenant Al Lobo,” he said, shaking her hand.

“What’s going on here?” Judy demanded.

“Ma’am, we’re going to need you to evacuate the building. If you could just step outside until we’re clear in here. For your own safety.”

“For how long? Lord, this isn’t fair.”

The lieutenant eyed Judy as if she looked familiar. “Ma’am, if you’ll please go outside. Someone out there will direct you… ”

“I can’t stay outside in the cold with my dog. This certainly isn’t fair.” Glaring at Scarpetta.

“What about the bar next door?” Benton suggested. “Okay if she goes over there?”

“They don’t allow dogs in the bar,” Judy said indignantly.

“I bet if you ask them nicely.” Benton walked her as far as the front door.

He returned to Scarpetta and took her hand, and the lobby was suddenly a chaotic, noisy, drafty place, with the elevator doors dinging open and squad members heading upstairs to begin an evacuation immediately above, below, and on either side of Scarpetta and Benton ’s apartment, or what the lieutenant called “the target.” He began machine-gunning questions.

“I’m pretty sure there’s no one left on our floor, the twentieth floor,” Scarpetta answered. “One neighbor didn’t answer and doesn’t seem to be home, although you should check again. The other neighbor is her.” She meant Judy.

“She looks like someone. One of those old shows like Carol Bur-nett. Just one floor above you?”

“Two. There are two above ours,” Benton said.

Through glass Scarpetta watched more emergency response trucks pull up, white with blue stripes, one of them towing a light trailer. She realized traffic had stopped in both directions. The police had closed off this section of Central Park West. Diesel engines rumbled loudly, approaching sirens wailed, the area around their building beginning to look like a movie set, with trucks and police cars lining the street and halogen lights shining from pedestals and trailers, and red and blue emergency strobes stuttering nonstop.

Members of the bomb squad opened bin doors on the sides of the trucks, grabbing Pelican cases and Roco bags and sacks, and harnesses, and tools, trotting up the steps with armloads and piling them on luggage carts. Scarpetta’s stomach had settled down, but there was a cold feeling in it as she watched a female bomb squad tech open a bin and lift out a tunic and trousers, eighty-something pounds of heavily padded tan fire-retardant armor on hangers. A bomb suit. An unmarked black SUV pulled up, and another tech climbed out and let his chocolate Lab bound out of the back.

“I need you to give me as much information as you can about the package,” Lobo was saying to the concierge, Ross, standing behind the desk, looking dazed and scared. “But we need to take it outside. Dr. Scarpetta, Benton? If you’ll come with us.”

The four of them went out to the sidewalk, where the halogen lights were so bright they hurt Scarpetta’s eyes and the rumbling of diesel engines resonated like an earthquake. Cops from patrol and the Emergency Service Unit were sealing the perimeter of the building with bright yellow crime-scene tape, and people were assembling by the dozens across the street, inside the deep shadows of the park and sitting on the wall, talking excitedly and taking photographs with cell phones. It was very cold, and arctic blasts bounced off buildings, but the air felt good. Scarpetta’s head began to clear, and she could breathe better.

“Describe the package,” Lobo said to her. “How big?”

“Midsized FedEx box, I’d say fourteen by eleven and maybe three inches thick. I set it on the middle of the coffee table in the living room. Nothing between it and the door, so it should be easily accessible to you or, if need be, to your robot. I left our door unlocked.”

“How heavy would you estimate?”

“Maybe a pound and a half at most.”

“Did the contents shift around when you moved it?”

“I didn’t move it much. But I’m not aware of anything shifting,” she said.

“Did you hear or smell anything?”

“I didn’t hear anything. But I might have smelled something. A petroleum-type smell. Tarry but sweet and foul, maybe a sulfurous pyrotechnic smell. I couldn’t quite identify it, but an offensive odor that made my eyes water.”

“What about you?” Lobo asked Benton.

“I didn’t smell anything, but I didn’t get close.”

“You notice an odor when the package was delivered?” Lobo asked Ross.

“I don’t know. I sort of have a cold, like I’m real stopped up.”

“The coat I was wearing, and my gloves,” Scarpetta said to Lobo. “There’re on the hallway floor in the apartment. You might want to bag them, take them with you, to see if there’s any sort of residue.”

The lieutenant wasn’t going to say it, but she’d just given him quite a lot of information. Based on the size and weight of the package, it couldn’t contain more than a pound and a half of explosives and wasn’t motion-sensitive, unless some creative timing mechanism had been rigged to a tilt switch.

“I didn’t notice anything unusual at all.” Ross was talking fast, looking at the drama on the street, lights flashing on his boyish face. “The guy put it on the counter and turned around and left. Then I placed it behind the desk instead of in back because I knew Dr. Scarpetta would be returning to the building soon.”

“How’d you know that?” Benton asked.

“We have a TV in the break room. We knew she was on CNN tonight…”

“Who’s we?” Lobo wanted to know.

“Me, the doormen, one of the runners. And I was here when she left to go over there, to CNN.”

“Describe the person who delivered the FedEx,” Lobo said.

“Black guy; long, dark coat; gloves; a FedEx cap; a clipboard. Not sure how old but not real old.”

“You ever seen him before making deliveries or pickups at this building or in the area?”

“Not that I remember.”

“He show up on foot, or did he park a van or truck out front?”

“I didn’t see a van or anything,” Ross answered. “Usually they park wherever they can get a space and show up on foot. That’s pretty much it. What I noticed.”

“What you’re saying is you got no idea if the guy was really FedEx,” Lobo said.

“I can’t prove it. But he didn’t do anything to make me suspicious. That’s pretty much what I know.”

“Then what? He set down the package, and what happened next?”

“He left.”

“Right that second? He made a beeline to the door? You sure he didn’t linger, maybe wander around, maybe go near a stairwell or sit in the lobby?”

ESU cops were getting off the elevator, escorting other residents out of the building.

“You positive the FedEx guy came in and went straight to your desk, then turned around and went straight back out?” Lobo asked Ross.

Ross was staring in astonishment at the caravan coming toward the building, squad cars escorting a fourteen-ton truck-mounted bomb disposal Total Containment Vessel.

He exclaimed, “Holy shhhh… Are we having a terrorist attack or something? All this because of that FedEx box? You kidding me?”

“He maybe go over by the Christmas tree there in your lobby? You’re sure he didn’t go near the elevators?” Lobo persisted. “Ross, you paying attention? Because this is important.”

“Holy mother.”

The white-and-blue bomb truck, its TCV in back covered by a black tarp, parked directly in front of the building.

“Little things can go a long way. Even the tiniest detail matters,” Lobo said. “So I’m asking you again. The FedEx guy. He go anywhere at all, even for a second? To the john? To get a drink of water? He look at what’s under the Christmas tree in the lobby?”

“I don’t think so. Jesus Christ.” Gawking at the bomb truck.

“You don’t think so? That’s not good enough, Ross. I need to be absolutely sure where he did and didn’t go. Do you understand why? I’ll tell you why. Anyplace he might have gone, we’ve got to check to make sure he didn’t set some device somewhere nobody’s thinking about. Look at me when I’m talking to you. We’re going to check the recordings from your security cameras, but it’s quicker if you tell me right now what you observed. You sure he wasn’t carrying anything else when he entered the lobby? Tell me every detail, the smallest one. Then I’m going to look at the recordings.”

“I’m pretty sure he came straight in, handed me the box, and went straight back out,” Ross said to him. “But I got no idea if he did anything outside the building or maybe went anywhere else. I didn’t follow him. I had no reason to be concerned. The computer for the camera system’s in the back. That’s all I can think of.”

“When he left, which way did he go?”

“I saw him go out this door”-waving a hand at the glass front door-“and that was it.”

“This was what time?”

“A little after nine.”

“So the last time you saw him was about two hours ago, two hours fifteen.”

“I guess.”

Benton asked Ross, “Was he wearing gloves?”

“Black ones. They might have been lined with rabbit fur. When he was handing me the box, I think I saw fur sticking out of the gloves.”

Lobo suddenly stepped away from them and got on his radio.

“You recall anything else-anything at all-about the way he was dressed?” Benton asked Ross.

“Dark clothes. Seems like he might have had on dark boots and dark pants. And a long coat, you know, like below his knees. Black. Collar up, gloves on, like I said, maybe fur-lined, and the FedEx cap. That’s it.”

“Glasses?”

“Sort of tinted ones, flash ones.”

“Flash ones?”

“You know. Sort of mirrored. Another thing? I’m just remembering. I thought I smelled cigarettes, maybe matches. Like maybe he’d been smoking.”

“I thought you were stopped up, couldn’t smell anything,” Benton reminded him.

“It just entered my head. I think maybe I did smell something like cigarettes.”

“But that’s not what you think you smelled,” Benton said to Scarpetta.

“No,” she answered, not adding that maybe what Ross had detected was sulfur, what smelled like a lighted match, and that was what had reminded him of cigarettes.

“What about this man Ross is describing,” Benton said to her. “You see anybody fitting that description when you were walking back here, or maybe earlier, when you headed over to CNN?”

She thought about it but came up with nothing, and it occurred to her. “The clipboard,” she asked Ross. “Did he ask you to sign anything?”

“No.”

“Then what was the clipboard for?”

Ross shrugged, his breath a white vapor when he talked. “He didn’t ask me to do anything. Nothing. Just handed me the package.”

“He say specifically to give it to Dr. Scarpetta?” Benton asked.

“He said to make sure she got it, yeah. And he said her name, now that you mention it. He said, ‘This is for Dr. Scarpetta. She’s expecting it.’ ”

“FedEx usually that specific, that personal? Isn’t that a little unusual? Because I’ve never heard FedEx make comments like that. How would he know she was expecting something?” Benton said.

“I don’t know. I guess it was a little unusual.”

“What was on the clipboard?” Scarpetta got back to that.

“I really didn’t look. Maybe receipts, package slips. Am I going to get in trouble for this? My wife’s pregnant. I don’t need any trouble,” said Ross, who didn’t look nearly old enough to be married and a father.

“I’m wondering why you didn’t call the apartment to tell me a package had arrived,” Benton said to him.

“Because the FedEx guy said it was for her, like I told you, and I knew she’d be back pretty soon and assumed, now that we’re replaying all this, she was expecting it.”

“And you knew she’d be back soon because?”

“He was working the desk when I left around eight,” Scarpetta answered for Ross, “and he wished me good luck on the show.”

“How did you know she was on a show tonight?” Benton asked.

“I’ve seen commercials, ads for it. Just look.” Ross pointed at the top of a building on the other side of Columbus Circle, where news breaks on CNN’s scrolling ticker could be seen from blocks away. “Your name’s up in freakin’ lights.”

Below the CNN neon-red marquee, Scarpetta’s off-camera comment crawled around the top of the skyscraper:

… connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling is “antiquated” and not based on credible data. On tonight’s Crispin Report, Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling…