Kay Scarpet - The Last Precinct Part 34

"I'll get Marino to submit the stamps and any latent prints to the Richmond labs," she then says. "And Kay, I need to ask you not to look at anything in that file unless it's witnessed; don't look any further. That's why it's best you don't submit any evidence yourself."

"I understand." Another reminder that I am under suspicion for murder.

"For your own protection," she adds.

"Ms. Berger, if you knew about the letters, about what was happening to Benton, then what did you think when he was murdered?"

"Aside from the obvious shock and grief? That he was killed by whoever was hara.s.sing him. Yes, first thing that came to mind. However, when it became clear who his killers were and then they were gunned down, there didn't seem to be anything to pursue further."

"And if Carrie Grethen wrote those hara.s.sing letters, she wrote the worst one, it seems, on the very day Susan was killed."

Silence.

"I think we must consider there could be a connection." I am firm on this point. "Susan may have been Chandonne's first victim in this country, and as Benton started poking around he might have started getting too close to other things that point to the cartel. Carrie was alive and in New York when Chandonne came there and killed Susan."

"And maybe Benton was a hit?" Berger sounds doubtful.

"More than maybe," I reply. "I knew Benton and the way he thought. For starters, why was he carrying the Tlip file in his briefcasewhy did he take it with him to Philadelphia if he didn't have some reason to think that the weird stuff in it was connected to what Carrie and her accomplice were doing? Balling people and cutting their faces off. Making them ugly. And the notes Benton was getting made it clear he was going to be made ugly, and he sure as h.e.l.l was...."

"I need a copy of that file," Berger dismisses me. It is obvious by her tone that she suddenly wants to get off the phone. "I've got a fax machine here in the house." She gives me the number.

I GO INTO ANNA'S STUDY AND SPEND THE NEXT HALF hour photocopying everything in the Tlip file because I can't feed laminated doc.u.ments into the fax machine. Marino finished the burgundy and is asleep on the couch again when I return to the living room, where Lucy and McGovern sit in front of the fire talking, continuing to paint scenarios that are only getting wilder the more they are influenced by alcohol. Christmas speeds away from us. We finally get around to opening gifts at half past ten, and Marino groggily plays Santa, handing out boxes and trying to be festive. But his mood has gotten only darker and any attempts at humor have a bite. At eleven o'clock, Anna's phone rings. It is Berger.

"Quid pro quo?" she launches in, referring to the letter dated December 5, 1997. "How many non-legal-minded people use that term? Just a crazy idea, but wonder if there's a way we could get hold of Rocky Caggiano's DNA. May as well turn over every stone and not be so quick to a.s.sume Carrie wrote these letters. Maybe she did. But maybe she didn't."

I can't concentrate as I return to Christmas gifts beneath the tree. I try to smile and act abundantly thankful, but I don't fool anyone. Lucy gives me a stainless-steel Breitling watch called a B52 while Marino's gift to me is a coupon for a year of firewood that he will personally deliver and stack. Lucy loves the Whirly-Girls necklace I had made for her and Marino loves the leather jacket from Lucy and me. Anna would be pleased with an art gla.s.s vase I found for her, but she is somewhere on 1-95, of course. Everybody goes through the motions quickly because questions hang heavy in the air. While we gather up rumpled ribbons and torn paper, I motion to Marino that I need a private word with him. We sit in the kitchen. He has been in some stage of drunkenness all day, and I can tell that he is probably getting drunk on a regular basis. There is a reason for it.

"You can't keep drinking like this," I say to him as I pour each of us a gla.s.s of water. "It doesn't help anything."

"Never has, never will." He rubs his face. "And that don't seem to make a d.a.m.n difference when I'm feeling like s.h.i.+t. Right now, everything's s.h.i.+t." His bleary, bloodshot eyes meet mine. Marino looks like he is about to cry again.

"Any reason you might have something that could give us Rocky's DNA?" I come right out and ask.

He flinches as if I have hit him. "What'd Berger tell you when she called? That it? She call about Rocky?"

"She's just going down the list," I reply. "Anybody connected with us or Benton who might have a link to organized crime. And Rocky certainly comes to mind." I go on and tell him what Berger revealed about Benton and the Susan Pless case.

"But he was getting that whacko s.h.i.+t before Susan was murdered," he says. "So why would someone be jerking him around if he wasn't sticking his nose in anything yet? Why would Rocky, for example? And I a.s.sume that's what you're thinking, that maybe Rocky was sending him that weird s.h.i.+t?"

I have no answer. I don't know.

"Well, I guess you're gonna have to get DNA from Doris and me 'cause I don't got anything of Rocky's. Not even hair. You could do that, right? If you got the DNA of the mother and the father then you could compare something like saliva?

"We could get a pedigree and at least know your son can't be ruled out as a contributor of the DNA on the stamps."

"Okay." He blows out. "If that's what you want to do. Since Anna's split, think I can smoke in here?"

"I wouldn't dare," I reply. "What about Rocky's fingerprints?"

"Forget that. Besides, it didn't look to me like Benton had any luck with the prints. I mean, you can tell he tested the letters for them and that seems to be the end of it. And I know you don't want to hear this, Doc, but maybe you'd better be sure why you're getting into all this. Don't go on a witch hunt 'cause you want to pay back the f.u.c.ker who might have sent that s.h.i.+t to Benton and maybe had to do with him being killed. It ain't worth it. Especially if you're thinking Carrie did it. She's dead. Let her rot."

"It is worth it," I say. "If I can know for sure who sent those letters to him, it's worth it to me."

"Huh. He said The Last Precinct was where he'd end up. Well, looks like he has," Marino muses. "We're The Last Precinct and we're working his case. Ain't that something?"

"Do you think he carried that file to Philadelphia because he wanted to make sure you or I got it?"

"a.s.suming something happened to him?"

I nod.

"Maybe," he says. "He was worried he wasn't going to be around much longer and he wanted us to find that file if something did happen to him. And it's strange, too. It's not like he says much in it, almost like he knew other people might see it and he didn't want anything in it that maybe the wrong person would see. Don't you find it interesting there ain't any names in it? Like if he had suspects in mind, he never mentioned anybody?"

"The file's cryptic," I agree.

"So who was he afraid might see it? Cops? 'Cause if something happened to him, he would know cops are going through his s.h.i.+t. And they did. Philly cops went through everything in his hotel room and then turned it over to me. He would also figure you're going to see his stuff at some point. Maybe Lucy, too."

"I think the point is he couldn't be sure of who might see the file. So he was cautious, period. And Benton was certainly known for being cautious."

"Not to mention," Marino goes on, "he was up there helping out ATE So he mightliave thought ATF would see the file, right? Lucy's ATF. McGovern's ATF and was in charge of the response team working the fires Carrie and her a.s.shole sidekick were setting to disguise the fact they had this nasty little hobby of cutting people's faces off, right?" Marino's eyes narrow. "Talley's ATF," he says. "Maybe we ought to get his DNA, the son of a b.i.t.c.h. Too bad." He gets that look again. I don't think Marino will ever forgive me for sleeping with Jay Talley. "You probably had his f.u.c.king DNA, no pun intended. In Paris. I don't guess you got a stain you maybe forgot to wash out?"

"Shut up, Marino," I say softly.

"I'm getting withdrawal." He gets up and goes to the liquor cabinet. Now it's time for bourbon. He pours Booker's into a gla.s.s and comes back to the table. "Wouldn't that just be something if it turns out Talley's involved in everything from soup to nuts. Maybe that's why he wanted you at Interpol. He wanted to pick your brain to see if you knew maybe what Benton knew? 'Cause guess what? Maybe when Benton was poking around after Susan's murder, he started figuring out s.h.i.+t that started pulling him too close to a truth Talley can't afford for n.o.body to know."

"What are you two talking about?" Lucy is in the kitchen. I didn't hear her walk in.

"Sounds like a job for you." Marino gives her his puffy eyes as he swills bourbon in his gla.s.s. "Why don't you and Teun investigate Talley and find out how dirty he is. 'Cause I believe with all my little heart they don't come no dirtier. And by the way." This to me. "In case you didn't hear, he's one of the guys who drove Chandonne up to New York. Now ain't that interesting? He sits in on Berger's interview. He spends six hours in the car with him. Hey, they're probably drinking buddies by nowor maybe they already was."

Lucy stares out the kitchen window, her hands in the pockets of her jeans, obviously put off by Marino and embarra.s.sed by him. He is sweating and profane, and unsteady on his feet, and filled with hate and spite one minute, sullen the next.

"You know what I can't stand?" Marino keeps at it. "1 can't stand bad cops who get away with it because everybody's too d.a.m.n chicken to go after them. And n.o.body wants to touch Talley or even try because he speaks all these languages and went to Harvard and is a big shot golden boy...."

"You really don't know what you're talking about," Lucy says to Marino, and by now, McGovern has wandered into the kitchen. "You're wrong. Jay's not off limits and you're not the only person on this planet who has doubts about him."

"Serious doubts," McGovern echoes.

Marino shuts up and leans against the counter.

"I can tell you what we know so far," Lucy says to me. She is reluctant and soft-spoken because n.o.body, really, is quite sure how I feel about Jay. "I kind of hate to, because there's nothing definitive. But it's not looking good so far." She looks at me as if in search of a cue.

"Good," I tell her. "Let's hear it."

"Yeah. I'm all ears," Marino responds.

"I've run him through quite a number of databases. No criminal or civil court records, no liens or judgments, et cetera. Not that we expected him to be a registered s.e.x offender or deadbeat parent or missing or wanted or whatever, and there's no evidence that the FBI, CIA or even ATF has a file on him in their systems of records. But doing a simple search of real estate records raised a red flag. First of all, he has a condo in New York where he's let certain select friends stayincluding high-ranking people in law enforcement," she says to Marino and me. "A three-million-plus place full of antiques, on Central Park. Jay has bragged that the condo is his. Well, it's not. Comes back to a corporate name."

"It's not uncommon for wealthy people to have property in separate corporate names, for privacy reasons and also to protect various a.s.sets from litigation," I point out.

"I know. But this corporation isn't Jay's," Lucy replies. "Not unless he owns an air freight company."

"Kind of eerie, right?" McGovern adds. "Considering how much s.h.i.+pping the Chandonne family is involved in. So maybe there's a connection. It's way too soon to say."

"No big surprise," Marino mutters, but his eyes light up. "Yeah, how well I remember him playing the big rich Harvard act, right, Doc? Remember, I wondered why we was suddenly on a Learjet, and next thing we're on the Concorde going to France. I knew Interpol didn't pay for all that s.h.i.+t."

"He never should have bragged about that condo," Lucy remarks. "Obviously he's got the same Achilles' heel other a.s.sholes do: ego." She looks at me. "He wanted to impress you, so he flies you out supersonicsays he got the tickets comped because they were for law enforcement. And sure, we know the airlines do that sort of thing on occasion. But we're tracking that, too, to see who made those reservations and what the story was."

"My big question," McGovern goes on, "is obviously whether or not that condo might be owned by the Chandonne family. And you can only imagine how many layers you'd have to go through to get to them."

"h.e.l.l, they probably own the whole f.u.c.king building," Marino says. "And half of Manhattan to go along with it."

"What about corporate officers?" I ask. "Any interesting names come up?"

"We've got names but they don't mean anything significant yet," Lucy replies. "These paper cases take a lot of time. We run them and then everything and everybody they connect with, on and on it goes,"

"And where do Mitch Barbosa and Rosso Matos fit in?" I ask. "Or do they? Because somebody took a key out of my house and put it in Barbosa's pocket. Do you think Jay did?"

Marino snorts and takes a swallow of bourbon. "Gets my vote," he retorts. "That and swiping your chipping hammer.

Can't think of anybody else who'd do it. I know every guy who went in there, in your house. Unless Righter did it, and he's too chicken and I really don't think he's dirty."

It isn't that Jay's shadow hasn't crossed our thoughts numerous times before. We know he was in my house. We know he is bitter toward me. We all have considerable questions about his character, but if he did plant the key or steal it from my house and pa.s.s it off to someone else, then this directly implicates him in Barbosa's torture-homicide and most likely in Matos's as well. "Where's Jay right now? Anybody know?" I search their faces.

"Well, he was in New York. That was Wednesday. Then we saw him yesterday afternoon in James City County. Got no idea right this very minute," Marino answers.

"There are a couple other things you might want to know." Lucy addresses this to me. "One in particular is real odd but I can't make heads or tails of it yet. On the credit search, I got hits on two Jay Talleys with different addresses and different social security numbers. One Jay Talley was issued his social security number in Phoenix between 1960 and 1961. Which couldn't be Jay unless he's in his forties, and he's what? Not much older than me? Early thirties at the most? A second Jay Talley I got a hit on was issued his social security number between 1936 and '37. No D-O-B, but he'd have to be one of the early timers who got a number shortly after the Social Security Act of 1935, so G.o.d knows how old this particular Jay Talley already was when he got his number. He'd have to be at least in his seventies and he sure moves around a lot and uses post office boxes instead of physical addresses. He's also bought a lot of cars, sometimes changing vehicles a couple times a year."

"Did Talley ever tell you where he was born?" Marino asks me.

"He said he spent most of his childhood in Paris and then his family moved to L.A.," I reply. "You were sitting in the cafeteria when he said that. At Interpol."

"No record of either Jay Talley ever living in L.A.," Lucy says.

"And speaking of Interpol," Marino says. "Wouldn't they check him out before letting him work there?"

"Obviously, they might have checked into him, but not extensively," Lucy replies. "He's an ATF agent. You a.s.sume he's clean."

"What about a middle name?" Marino asks. "We know his?"

"He doesn't have one. Nothing in his ATF personnel records." McGovern smiles wryly. "And neither does the Jay Talley who got his social security number back before the Great Flood. That alone is unusual. Most people have middle names. In his file at headquarters it does say he was born in Paris and lived there until he was six. But after that he supposedly moved to New York with his French father and American mother and there's no mention of Los Angeles. On his ATF application he claims to have gone to Harvard, but having looked into that we discovered there's no record of any Jay Talley having ever attended Harvard."

"Jesus," Marino exclaims. "Don't people check out nothing when they go through these applications? They just take your word for it that you went to Harvard or were a Rhodes scholar or pole-vaulted in the Olympics? And they hire you and give you a badge and a gun?"

"Well, I'm not going to give Internal Affairs a heads-up that they may want to check him out a little more closely," McGovern offers. "We've got to be careful someone doesn't tip him off, and it's hard to say who his friends are at headquarters."

Marino lifts his arms in the air and stretches. He cracks his neck. "I'm hungry again," he says.["_Toc37098934"]

CHAPTER 32.

THE GUEST ROOM IN ANNA'S HOUSE FACES THE river, and over pa.s.sing days I have fas.h.i.+oned a makes.h.i.+ft desk before the window. This required a small table, which I covered with a cloth so I would not scratch the satin finish, and from the library I purloined an apple-green English leather swivel chair. At first, I was dismayed that I had forgotten my laptop computer, but I discovered an unexpected solace in putting fountain pen to paper and letting thoughts flow through my fingers and s.h.i.+mmer in black ink. My penmans.h.i.+p is awful, and the notion that it has something to do with being a doctor is probably true. There are days when I must sign my name or initials five hundred times, and I suppose scribbling gross descriptions and measurements with b.l.o.o.d.y gloved hands has taken its toll, too.

I have developed a ritual at Anna's house. Each morning I slip into the kitchen and pour myself a cup of coffee that was timed to begin dripping at exactly half past five. I return to my room, shut the door and sit at the window writing before a gla.s.s square of utter darkness. My first morning here, I was outlining cla.s.ses I am scheduled to teach at the Inst.i.tute's next death investigation school. But transportation fatalities, asphyxia and forensic radiology completely left my mind as life on the river was touched by first light.

This morning I have faithfully watched the show once again. At half past six, the darkness lightened to a charcoal gray, and within minutes I could make out the silhouettes of bare sycamores and oaks, then dark plains turned into water and land. Most mornings the river is warmer than the air, and fog rolls over the surface of the James. Right now it looks like the River Styx and I halfway expect a ghostly, gaunt man in rags to pole by in his boat through veils of mist. I don't expect to see animals until closer to eight, and they have become a huge comfort to me. I have fallen in love with the Canada geese that congregate by Anna's dock in a chorus of honking. Squirrels run errands up and down trees, tails curled like plumes of smoke. Birds hover at my window and look me straight in the eye as if to see what I am spying on. Deer run through bare winter woods on the opposite river bank and red-tailed hawks swoop.

At rare, privileged moments I am graced by bald eagles. Their enormous wingspans, white helmets and pantaloons make them unmistakable, and I am comforted because eagles fly higher and alone and don't seem to have the same agendas other birds do. I watch them circle or perch briefly in a tree, never staying in one spot long before suddenly they are gone, leaving me to wonder, like Emerson, if I have just been sent a sign. I have found nature to be kind. The rest of what I live with these days is not.

It is Monday, January 17th, and I remain in exile at Anna's house, or at least this is how I view it. Time has pa.s.sed slowly, almost stagnantly, like the water beyond my window. The currents of my life are moving in a certain, barely perceptible direction, and there is no possibility of rerouting their inevitable progress. The holidays have come and gone, and my cast has been replaced by Ace bandages and a splint. I am driving a rental car because my Mercedes is being held for further investigation, at Hull Street and Commerce Road, at the impound lot, which is not attended by police twenty-four hours a day and there is no guard dog. On New Year's Eve, someone smashed a window out of my car and stole the two-way radio, the AM-FM radio and CD player and G.o.d knows what else. So much for the chain of evidence, I told Marino.

There are new developments in the Chandonne case. As I suspected, when the seminal fluid in Susan Pless's case was originally tested in 1997, only four probes were used. The New York medical examiner's office still uses four probes for the first screening because they are developed in-house and therefore it is more economical to resort to them first. The frozen extraction was retested using fifteen loci, and the result is a non-match. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne was not the donor of the seminal fluid, nor was his brother, Thomas. But there are so many alleles in common, the DNA profiles are so incredibly close, that we can only a.s.sume there is a third brother, and it is this brother who had s.e.x with Susan. We are baffled. Berger is on her head. "DNA has told the truth and f.u.c.ked us," Berger told me over the phone. Chandonne's dent.i.tion matches the bite marks and his saliva and hair were on the b.l.o.o.d.y body, but he did not have v.a.g.i.n.al s.e.x with Susan Pless right before she died. That may not be enough for a jury in this day of DNA. A New York grand jury will have to decide if it is enough for an indictment, and it struck me as incredibly ironic when Berger said this. It doesn't seem to require much to accuse me of murder, nothing more than rumor and alleged intent and the fact that I conducted experiments with a chipping hammer and barbecue sauce.

For weeks, I have waited for the subpoena. Yesterday it arrived, and the sheriff's deputy was his usual cheerful self when he showed up at my office, not realizing, I suppose, that the case this time involves me as a defendant and not an expert witness. I have been asked to appear in room 302 of the John Marshall Courts Building to testify before the special grand jury. The hearing is set for Tuesday, February 1, at 2 P.M.

At a few minutes past seven, I stand inside the closet, pus.h.i.+ng through suits and blouses as I run through all I need to do this day. I already know from Jack Fielding that we have six cases and two of the doctors are in court. I also have a ten o'clock telephone conference with Governor Mitch.e.l.l. I pick out a black pants suit with blue pinstripes and a blue blouse with French cuffs. I wander into the kitchen for another cup of coffee and a bowl of high-protein cereal that Lucy brought over. I have to smile as I practically break my teeth on her healthy, crunchy gift. My niece is determined that I will emerge from my smoldering life a fit phoenix. I rinse dishes and finish getting dressed and am heading out the door when my pager vibrates. Marino's number shows up on the video display and is followed by 911.

Parked in Anna's driveway is the latest change in my life the rental car. It is a midnight blue Ford Explorer that smells like ancient cigarettes and will always smell like ancient cigarettes unless I do what Marino suggested and stick an air freshener on the dash. I plug my cell phone into the cigarette lighter and call him.

"Where are you?" he asks right off.

"Heading out the driveway." I turn on the heater and Anna's gates open to let me out. I don't even stop to pick up the newspaper, which Marino next tells me I need to see, because clearly I haven't read it yet or I would have called him right away.

"Too late," I tell him. "I'm already on Cherokee." I harden myself like a little kid flexing his stomach muscles when he dares someone to sock him in the gut. "So go on and tell me. What's in the paper?" I am expecting that the special grand jury investigation has been leaked to the press, and I am right. I drive along Cherokee as recent winter weather continues to dissolve in drips and puddles, and slushy snow sluggishly slides off roofs.

"Chief Medical Examiner Suspected in Grisly Slaying," Marino reads the banner headline on the front page. "It's got a picture of you, too," he adds. "Looks like one maybe that b.i.t.c.h took out in front of your house. The lady that fell on the ice, remember? It shows you climbing in my truck. Pretty good of my truck. Not so hot of you ..."

"Just tell me what it says," I interrupt him.

He reads the highlights as I hug the hard curves of Cherokee Road. A Richmond special grand jury is investigating me in the murder of Deputy Police Chief Diane Bray, the newspaper says. The revelation is described as shocking and bizarre and has local law enforcement reeling. Although Commonwealth's Attorney Buford Righter refused comment, unnamed sources say Righter instigated the investigation with great heartache after witnesses came forth with statements and police produced evidence that was impossible to ignore. Additional unnamed sources claim I was in a heated clash with Bray, who believed I was incompetent and no longer fit to be chief medical examiner of Virginia. Bray was trying to have me removed from office and told people before her murder that I had confronted her on several occasions and had bullied and threatened her. Sources say there are indicators pointing to the possibility that I staged Bray's murder to look like the brutal murder of Kim Luong and on and on and on.

By now I am on Huguenot Road in the thick of rush-hour traffic. I tell Marino to stop. I have heard quite enough.

"It goes on forever," he says.

"I'm sure it does."

"They must have been working on it all during the holidays 'cause it's got all kinds of s.h.i.+t about you and your background." I hear pages turning. "Even stuff about Benton and his death, and Lucy. There's this big sidebar with all your vital statistics, where you went to school. Cornell, Georgetown, Hopkins. The pictures on the inside are good. Even one of you and me together at a crime scene. Oh s.h.i.+t, it's Bray's crime scene."

"What about Lucy?" I ask.

But Marino is bewitched by publicity, by what must be huge photographs that include him and me working together. "I ain't never seen anything like this." More pages turning. "It just goes on and on, Doc. So far I've counted five bylines. They must've had the entire f.u.c.king news staff working this thing without our having a clue. Including an aerial shot of your house..."

"What about Lucy?" I ask with more force. "What does it say about Lucy?"