Kay Scarpet - Cruel And Unusual Part 29

"Then perhaps you can impress upon him that the only reasonable response to such an unreasonable situation is for me to allow him to do his job while he allows me to do mine."

"Can I refresh that?"

Getting up, he returned with the bottle. We didnat bother with ice.

"Benton, letas talk about the killer. In light of whatas happened to Donahue, what are you thinking now?"

He set down the bottle and stirred the fire. For moment, he stood before the fireplace, his back to ;a hands in his pockets. Then he sat on the edge of hearth, his forearms on his knees. Wesley was more rev less than I had seen him in a very long time.

"If you want to know the truth, Kay, this animal scares the h.e.l.l out of me."

"How is he different from other killers you have p sued?"

"I think he started out with one set of rules and then decided to change them."

"His rules or someone elseas?"

"I think the rules were not his at first. Whoever behind the conspiracy to free Waddell first made the decisions. But this guyas got his own rules now. Or maybe would be better to say that there are no rules now. He is cunning and heas careful. So far, heas in control."

"What about motive?" I asked.

"Thatas hard. Maybe it would be better for me phrase it in terms of mission or a.s.signment. I suspect thereas some method to his madness, but the madness what turns him on. He gets off on playing with people minds. Waddell was locked up for ten years, then, suddenly the nightmare of his original crime is revisited. On the night of his execution, a boy is murdered in a s.e.xually s.a.d.i.s.tic fas.h.i.+on that is reminiscent of Robin Naismithas case. Other, people start dying, and all of them are in some way connected to Waddell. Jennifer Deighton was his friend. Susan was it appears, involved, at least tangentially, in whatever this conspiracy is. Frank Donahue was the prison warden and would have supervised the execution that occurred on the night of December thirteenth. And what is this doing to everybody else, to the other players?"

"I should think that anyone who has had any a.s.sociation with Ronnie Waddell, either legitimately or otherwise, would feel very threatened," I replied. .

"Right. If a cop killer is on the loose and you are a cop, you know you may be next. I could walk out your door tonight and this guyas waiting in the shadows to gun me down. He could be out in his car somewhere, looking for Marino or trying to find my house: He could be fantasizing about taking out Grueman."

"Or me."

Wesley got up and began rearranging the fire again.

"Do you think it would be wise for me to send Lucy back to Miami?" I asked.

"Christ, Kay, I donat know what to tell you. She doesnat want to go home. That comes across loud and clear. You might feel better if she returned to Miami tonight. For that matter, I might feel better if you went with her. In fact, everybody - you, Marino, Grueman, Vander, Connie, Michele, me - would probably feel better if all of us left town. But then who would be left?"

"He would." I said. "Whoever he is."

Wesley .glanced at his watch and set his .gla.s.s on the coffee table. "None of us should interfere with each other," he said. "We canat afford to."

"Benton, I have to clear my name."

"It is exactly what I would do. Where do you want to start?"

"With a feather."

"Please explain."

"Itas possible that this killer went out and bought some specialty item filled with eiderdown, but Iad say thereas a good chance he stole it."

"Thatas a plausible theory."

"We canat trace the item unless we have its label or some other piece to trace back to a manufacturer, but there may be another way. Maybe something could appear in the newspaper."

"I donat think we want the killer to know heas leaking feathers everywhere. Heas sure to get rid of the item in question."

"I agree. But that doesnat preclude your getting one of your journalist sources to run some trumped-up little feature about the eider duck and its prized down, and how items filled with it are so expensive that theyave become a hot commodity for thieves. Maybe this could be-tied in with the ski season or something."

"What? In hopes someone out there will call and say that his car was broken into and his down-filled jacket was stolen?"

"Yes. If the reporter quotes some detective who supposedly has been a.s.signed to the thefts; this gives readers someone they can call. You know, people read a story and say a'The same thing happened to me.a' Their impulse is to help. They warn to feels important. So they pick up the phone".

"Iall have to give it some thought."

aAdmittedly itas a long shot."

We began walking to the door. "I spoke briefly with Michele before leaving the Homestead," Wesley said. "She and Lucy have already been conferring. Michele says your niece is quite frightening."

"Sheas been a holy terror since the day she was born"

He smiled. "Michele didnat mean it like that: She says that Lucyas intellect is frightening."

"Sometimes I worry that itas too much wattage for such a fragile vessel."

"Iam not certain sheas all that fragile. Remember, I just spent the better part of two days with her. Ia'm very impressed with Lucy on many fronts."

"Donat you go trying to recruit her for the Bureau."

"Iall wait until she finishes college' That will take her, what? All of a year?"

Lucy did not emerge from my study, until Wesley had driven off and I was carrying our gla.s.ses into the kitchen.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" I asked her.

"Well, I hear you got along famously with the Wesleys."

I turned off the faucet and sat at the, table where Ia'd left my legal pad.

"Theyare nice people." "

Rumor has it they think youare nice, too."

She opened the refrigerator door and idly stared; inside. "Why was Pete here earlier?"

It seemed odd to hear Marino referred to by his first name. I supposed he and Lucy had moved from a state of cold war to dtente when he had taken her shooting"

"What makes you think he was here?" I asked.

"I smelled cigarettes when I came in the house. I a.s.sume he was here unless youare smoking again."

She shut the refrigerator door and came over to the table.

"Iam not smoking again, and Marino was here briefly."

"What did he want?"

"He wanted to ask me a lot of questions," I said.

"About what?"

"Why do you need to know the details?"

Her eyes moved from my face to the stack of financial files to the legal pad filled with my indecipherable penmans.h.i.+p. "It doesnat matter why since you obviously donat want to tell me."

"Itas complicated, Lucy."

"You always say somethingas complicated when you want to shut me out," she said as she turned and walked away.

I felt as if my world were falling apart, the people in it scattering like dry seeds in the wind. When I watched parents with their children, I marveled over the gracefulness of their interactions and secretly feared I lacked an instinct that couldnat be learned: I found my niece in my study sitting before the computer. Columns of numbers combined with letters of the alphabet were on the screen, and embedded here and there were fragments of what I a.s.sumed were data. She was making computations with a pencil on graph paper, and did not look up as I moved next to her.

"Lucy, your mother has had many men in and out of your house; and I am well aware of how that has made you feel. But this is not your house and I am not your mother. It is not necessary for you to feel threatened by my male colleagues and friends. It is not necessary for you to constantly be looking for evidence that some man was here, and it is unfounded for you to be suspicious of my relations.h.i.+p with Marino or Wesley or anyone else."

She did not respond.

I placed my hand on her shoulder. "I may not be the constant presence in your life that I wish I could be, but you are very important to me."

Erasing a number and brus.h.i.+ng rubber particles off the paper, she said, "Are you going to get charged with a crime?"

"Of course not. I havenat committed any crimes."

I leaned closer to the monitor.

"What youare looking at is a hex dump," she said.

"You were right. Itas hieroglyphics."

Placing her fingers on the keyboard, Lucy began moving the cursor as she explained, "What Iam doing here is trying to get the exact position of the SID number. Thatas the State Identification Number, which is the unique identifier. Every person in the system has a SID nun including you, since your prints are in AFIS, too. Fourth generation language, like SQL, I could a query by a column name. But in hexadecimal the language is technical and mathematical. There are no column names, only positions in the record layout. In other words, if I wanted to go to Miami, in SQL I would simply tell the computer I want to go to Miami. But in hexadecimal, I would have to say that I want to go position that is this many degrees north of the, equator and this many degrees east of the prime meridian. "So to extend the geographical a.n.a.logy, Iam figuring out the longitude and lat.i.tude of the SID number also of the number that indicates the record type. Then I can write a program to search for any SID number wheel the record is a type two, which means a deletion, or y type three, which is an update. Iall run this program through each journal tape."

"Youare, a.s.suming that if a record has been tampered with, then, what was changed was the SID?" I asked.

"Letas just say it would be a whole lot easier to with the SID number than it would be to mess with the actual fingerprint images on the optical disk record, thatas really all youave got in AFIS - the SID number the corresponding prints. The personas name, his and other personal information are in his CCH, Computerized Criminal History, which resides at CCRE, or the Central Criminal Records Exchange:"

"As I understand it the records in CCRE are linked to the prints in AFIS by the SID numbers," I said.

"Exactly."

Lucy was still working when I went to bed I fell right to sleep, only to awaken at two A.M. I did not drift off again until five, and my alarm roused me less than an hour later. I drove downtown in the dark and listened as one of the local radio announcers gave a news update. He reported that police had questioned me, and I had refused to disclose information pertaining to my financial records. He went on to remind everyone that Susan Story had deposited thirty five hundred dollars in her checking account just weeks before her murder.

When I got to the office, I had barely taken off my coat when Marino called.

"The d.a.m.n major canat keep his mouth shut," he said right off.

"Obviously."

"s.h.i.+t, Iam sorry."

"Itas not your fault. I know you have to report to him."

Marino hesitated. "I need to ask you about your guns. You donat own a twenty-two, right?"

"You know all about my handguns. I. have a Ruger and a Smith and Wesson. And if you pa.s.s that along to Major Cunningham, Iam sure Iall hear about it on the radio within the hour."

"Doc, he wants them submitted to the firearms lab."

For an instant, I thought Marino was joking..

"He thinks you should be willing to submit them for examination," he added. "He thinks itas a good idea to show right away that the bullets recovered from Susan, the Heath kid, and Donahue couldnat have been fired from your guns."

"Did you tell the major that the revolvers I have are thirty-eights?" I asked, incensed.

"Yes."

"And he knows that twenty-two slugs were recovered from the bodies?"

"Yeah. I went round and round with him about it.

"Well, ask him for me if he knows of an adapter that would make it possible to use twenty-two rim fire cartridges in a thirty-eight revolver. If he does, tell him he ought to present a paper on it at the next American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting."

"I really donat think you want me to tell him that."

aThis is nothing but politics, publicity ploys. Itas not even rational."

Marino did not comment.

"Look," I said evenly, "I have broken no laws. I am not submitting my financial records, firearms, or anything else to anyone until I have been appropriately advised. I understand that you must do your job, and I want you to do your job. What I want is to be left alone so I can do mine. I have three cases downstairs and Fieldingas off to court."

But I was not to be left alone, and this was made clear when Marino and I concluded our conversation and Rose appeared in my office. Her face was pale, her eyes frightened.

"The governor wants to see you," she said.

"When?" I asked as my heart slapped.

"At nine.a'

It was already eight-forty.

"Rose, what does he want?"

"The person who called didnat say."