Bryce’s next text lands with a chime and I let him know that all cases need to be done tonight.
“Do U want us to save U one?” he writes back as if an autopsy is a slice of cake or a sandwich.
“No. But make sure Luke is the one doing post of victim tentatively ID’d as Haley Swanson.”
“10-4 & btw. Ernie has results. Gonzo for the day but U can call him at home. He’s always up late.” As usual, Bryce is in a mood to chat.
“Thanks.” I turn around at the sound of footsteps.
An FBI agent in a polo shirt and khaki cargo pants passes through in tactical boots, wearing a Glock on his belt and carrying an M4 carbine, the short barrel pointed down, the black nylon strap hanging to his hip.
He pauses to look at us with a smile that flashes brightly without a trace of warmth, and he opens the steel door and shuts it behind him, returning to the rooms where the others have been busy for hours digging through documents.
“We should head out.” Benton stares toward the back offices, fully aware of what’s going on without him.
While I was examining Caminska’s body, slumped over her bloody desk, I overheard a mention of the Bureau’s Eurasian Organized Crime Squad. It primarily targets criminals with ties to the Soviet Union and Central Europe and I’m aware the entire compound is now a crime scene that’s been taken over by the FBI.
The entrance to the driveway is barricaded and guarded and soon it won’t be possible to walk anywhere without running into agents armed with assault rifles and sub-submachine guns. Benton and I will be noticed by someone before we’re done. But I have my reason, an unusual murder weapon and my right to look for it or something like it.
“What about keys?” I ask.
I saw Marino hand over the big set of them to the agent who just walked through. This was after Marino and Benton returned from searching the grounds without permission or telling anyone. The agent took the keys from Marino with an inquisitive look, wondering how he got them or where they were from. I remembered seeing them in blood on Lombardi’s desk, partially under his nearly decapitated body, and later the keys weren’t there anymore. Benton offered no explanation to his young FBI colleague while Marino disappeared into the night with his dog, loudly mentioning something about teaching Quincy to be friends with horses without being kicked or stepped on.
He emphasized the words kicked and stepped on and that’s when I knew he understood what was going on and being done. In the blink of an eye Marino has gone from trying to push Benton around to being his biggest ally.
“We don’t need keys,” Benton says to me.
I don’t ask him how he expects to get back into the locked-up private places he and Marino explored, Lombardi’s secret rooms, his massive garage. I will see what’s there for myself in this very brief window of time. Benton and I need to be done in an hour, not much more than that, without risking an interference that we can’t afford.
“Everything will be fine.” I retrieve gloves and a small camera from my field case and tuck them into a pocket. “There are steps that can be taken and we’re taking them.”
Benton doesn’t answer. He continues to stare in the direction of the offices where the FBI has busied itself after instructing NEMLEC officers to clear the scene and telling him to go home and not return to work until he’s called, which will be never, he says. Only one Concord detective remains with them. I can’t imagine he’s saying much, hanging around and ignored like a cigar store wooden Indian, there for appearances, the FBI cooperating in a joint operation, as joint as it gets with an unscrupulous bastard like Ed Granby in charge.
“We’re okay. We’re way ahead, Benton.”
He looks at me with no expression. “We shouldn’t have to be,” he says.
“It doesn’t matter whether we should or shouldn’t. We’re ahead of them and will stay ahead of them.” I glance back toward the offices where Granby and his team are investigating the mother of cases, as Marino put it after he and Benton had gone building to building, room to room. “They’re so busy with whatever’s locked in filing cabinets and drawers and all the bankers boxes in that back storage area I saw that they aren’t focused on the computer yet,” I add.
“I don’t think they know it’s gone,” Benton says. “They’re still wondering what happened to the DVR or if there was one.”
“They’ll get nothing from us. Not one glimmer of enlightenment.” I snap shut the oversized clasps of my field case, grateful Lucy left with the server before Granby and his agents showed up.
I’ve said nothing about any evidence that’s at my labs or en route to them and the FBI can’t just roll in and take everything. There’s such a thing as chain of custody and they’ll have to work it out with the Concord and Cambridge police. And if trace or DNA evidence is in my possession already, then they’ll have to work it out with me. I can make the process as slow and weighed down by bureaucracy as they’ve ever seen. There’s no right reason for evidence from my cases in Massachusetts to go to the national labs in Quantico, only the wrong reason that has to do with what Ed Granby decides to alter, destroy, or simply hide. I won’t give him anything until I don’t need it anymore.
Meanwhile, every minute that passes Lucy is at her keyboards surrounded by flat screens, mining for truths, and she’s already causing Granby the most trouble he’s ever had in his life. It couldn’t be more deserved. He can go to hell and he will before I’m done.
“Ready,” I say to Benton.
I carry my gear through the front door and onto the veranda and I’m delighted Granby isn’t the sort to take me seriously. He never has even when he’s acted like it. As many times as he’s been in my presence at his office and mine, out to dinner and over to the house, he doesn’t know me, only what he projects from his self-image and filters through his self-absorption. He doesn’t know Benton any better.
I don’t yet have an idea how far Granby has stepped over the line but anyone who would tamper with evidence is capable of anything and what I can’t get out of my mind is his career trajectory. I saw the press release when he was named the special agent in charge of Boston. I’ve heard him talk ad nauseam about all of the important things he’s done.
When I was the chief medical examiner of Virginia he was the assistant special agent in charge, the ASAC, of the Washington, D.C., field office, where he worked public corruption and violent crime, among other lofty responsibilities that included the White House. For a long time after that he was a Hoover Building bureaucrat at headquarters, overseeing field office inspections and national security investigations, and then last summer he came to Boston.
I remember Benton telling me it was a lateral move Granby requested because he’s originally from here but now I’m convinced there’s another reason, a filthy one. His transfer occurred last summer, not long after Klara Hembree left Cambridge in the midst of an acrimonious divorce. She moved to Washington, D.C., to be near her family because she didn’t feel safe and already Lucy has discovered that her estranged husband has an extensive business relationship with Double S.
She’s found purchase and sale contracts for pricey real estate and evidence of all sorts of payments and monies moved in and out of different bank and investment accounts. She’s texting bullet summaries to Benton almost in real time and I happen to hear them land and see them glowing bright green on his phone as I did a few minutes ago.