Point of Origin

'I'll be right there.'

In fact, I was very pleased to have company. I hurried to the enclosed bay, and I pushed a button on a wall. The huge door began to crank up, and Marino ducked under it, the dark night smudged with sodium vapor lights. I realized the sky had gotten overcast with clouds that portended rain.

'Why are you here so late?' Marino asked in his usual grumpy way as he sucked on a cigarette.

'My office is smoke-free,' I reminded him.

'Like anybody in this joint's gotta worry about secondary smoke.'

'A few of us are still breathing,' I said.

He flicked the cigarette to the concrete floor and irritably crushed it with his foot, as if we had never been through this routine, not even once in our lives. In fact, this had gotten to be a standard act with us that in its own dysfunctional way somehow reaffirmed our bond to each other. I was quite certain that Marino's feelings would be injured if I didn't nag him about something.

'You can follow me into the decomp room,' I said to him as I shut the bay door. 'I'm in the middle of something.'

'I wish I'd known before,' he complained. 'I would've just dealt with you over the phone.'

'Don't worry. It's not too bad. I'm just cleaning up some bones.'

'Maybe that ain't bad to you,' he said, 'but I've never gotten used to smelling people cook.'

We walked inside the decomposition room and I handed him a surgical mask. I checked the processing to see how it was going and turned the heat down fifty degrees to make sure the water did not boil over and knock bones against each other and the sides of the pot. Marino bent the mask to fit over his nose and mouth and tied sloppy bows in the back. He spotted a box of disposable gloves, snatched a pair and worked them on. It was ironical that he was obsessive in his concerns about outside agents invading his health, when in fact the gravest danger was simply the way he lived. He was sweating in khakis and a white shirt and tie and at some point during the day had been assaulted by ketchup.

'Got a couple interesting things for you, Doc,' he said, leaning against a brightly polished sink. 'We ran the tags on the burned-up Mercedes behind Kenneth Sparkes's house, and it comes back to an '81 Benz 240D, blue. The odometer's probably rolled over at least twice. Registration's a little scary, comes back to a Dr Newton Joyce in Wilmington, North Carolina. He's in the book but I couldn't get him, just his answering machine.'

'Wilmington is where Claire Rawley went to school, and close to where Sparkes had his beach house,' I reminded him.

'Right. So far the signs are still pointing that way.'

He stared blankly at the steaming pot on the burner.

'She drives someone else's car to Warrenton and somehow gets inside Sparkes's house when he's not home, and gets murdered and burns up in a fire,' he said, rubbing his temples. 'I tell you, this one stinks about as bad as what you're cooking there, Doc. We're missing a really big piece, because nothing's making sense.'

'Are there any Rawleys in the Wilmington area?' I asked. 'Any possibility she has relatives there?'

'They got two listings, and neither of them have ever heard of a Rawley named Claire,' he said.

'What about the university?'

'Haven't gotten to that yet,' he answered as I went over to check the pot again. 'Thought you were going to do that.'

'In the morning.'

'So. You gonna hang out here all night cooking this shit?'

'As a matter of fact,' I said, turning off the burner, 'I'm going to let it sit so I can go home. What time is it anyway? Oh God, almost nine o'clock. And I've got court in the morning.'

'Let's blow this joint,' he said.

I locked the door to the decomposition room, and I opened the bay door again. Through it I saw mountainous dark clouds blowing across the moon like boats in full sail, and the wind was wild and making eerie rushing sounds around the corners of my building. Marino walked me to my car and seemed in no hurry as he got out his cigarettes and lit one.

'I don't want to put any hinky ideas in your head,' he said, 'but there's something I think you ought to know.'

I unlocked my car door and slid behind the wheel.

'I'm afraid to ask,' I said, and I meant it.

'I got a call about four-thirty this afternoon from Rex Willis at the paper. The editorial columnist,' he said.

'I know who he is.'

I fastened my seat belt.

'Apparently he got a letter today from an anonymous source, kind of in the format of a press release. It's pretty bad.'

'About what?' I said as an alarm shot through my blood.

'Well, it's supposedly from Carrie Grethen, and she's saying that she escaped from Kirby because she was framed by the feds and knew they'd execute her for something she didn't do unless she got away. She claims that at the time of the murders you were having an affair with the chief profiler in the case, Benton Wesley, and all the so-called evidence against her was doctored, made up, a conspiracy between the two of you to make the Bureau look good.'

'And this was mailed from where?' I asked as outrage heated me up.

'Manhattan.'

'And it was addressed specifically to Rex Willis?'

'Yup.'

'And of course, he's not going to do anything with it.'

Marino hesitated.

'Come on, Doc,' he said. 'When's the last time a reporter didn't do something with something?'

'Oh for God's sake!' I blurted out as I started the engine. 'Has the media gone totally mad? They get a letter from a psycho and print it in the paper?' e

'I've got a copy if you want to see it.'

He dug a folded sheet of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to me.

'It's a fax,' he explained. 'The original's already at the lab. Documents is going to see what they can do with it.'

I unfolded the copy with shaking hands, and did not recognize the neat printing in black ink. It was nothing like the bizarre red printing that was on the letter I had received from Carrie, and in this epistle, the words were very articulate and clear. For a moment I read, skimming over the ridiculous claims that she had been framed, my eyes stopping cold on the last long paragraph.

As for Special Agent Lucy Farinelli, she has enjoyed a successful career only because the ever influential chief medical examiner, Dr Scarpetta, her aunt, has covered up her niece's mistakes and transgressions for years. When Lucy and I were both at Quantico, it was she who came on to me, not the other way around as it would most certainly be alleged in court. While it is true that we were lovers for a while, this was all manipulation on her part to get me to cover for her when she screwed up CAIN time and time again. Then she went on to take credit for work she'd never done. I'm telling you this is the God's truth. I swear it. And I'm asking you to please print this letter for all to see. I don't want to stay in hiding the rest of my life, convicted by society for terrible deeds I did not do. My only hope for freedom and justice is for people to see the truth and do something about it.

Have Mercy, Carrie Grethen

Marino quietly smoked until I was finished reading, then he said, 'This person knows too much. I got no doubt the bitch wrote it.'

'She writes me a letter that seems the work of someone deranged and then follows it with this, something that seems completely rational?' I said, and I was so upset I felt sick. 'How does that make sense, Marino?'

He shrugged as the first drops of rain began to fall.

'I'll tell you what I think,' he said. 'She was sending you a signal. She wants you to know she's jerking everybody around. It wouldn't be fun for her if she couldn't piss you off and ruin your day.'

'Does Benton know about this?'

'Not yet.'

'And you really think the paper's going to print it,' I asked again, hoping his answer would be different this time.

'You know how it goes.'

He dropped the cigarette butt and it glowed to the ground and scattered in sparks.

'The story will be that this notorious psychopathic killer has contacted them while half of law enforcement is out there looking for the bitch,' he said. 'And the other bad news is that there's nothing to say she hasn't sent the same letter other places, too.'