The director was silent for a moment. I looked out the window and could see the dark blue helicopter on its pad being towed out onto the tarmac.
'Dr Scarpetta, what would you like us to do?' Dr Ensor finally spoke, her voice tense and upset.
'Did Carrie have a social worker? Someone in legal aid? Anyone she really talked to?' I asked.
'Obviously, she spent a fair amount of time with a forensic psychologist, but he isn't on our staff. Mainly he's there to evaluate and make recommendations to the court.'
'Then she probably manipulated him,' I said as I watched Lucy climb up on the helicopter's skids and begin her preflight inspection. 'Who else? Anyone she may have gotten close to?'
'Her lawyer, then. Yes, legal aid. If you would like to speak to her, that can be arranged.'
'I'm leaving the airport now,' I said. 'We should be landing in approximately three hours. Do you have a helipad?'
'I don't remember anyone ever landing here. There are several parks nearby. I'll be happy to pick you up.'
'I don't think that will be necessary. My guess is we'll land close by.'
'I'll watch for you, then, and take you to legal aid, or wherever it is you need to go.'
'I would like to see Carrie Grethen's ward and where she spent her time.'
'Whatever you need.'
'You are very kind,' I said.
Lucy was opening access panels to check fluid levels, wiring, and anything else that might be amiss before we took to the air. She was agile and sure of what she was doing, and when she climbed on top of the fuselage to inspect the main rotor, I wondered how many helicopter accidents happened on the ground. It wasn't until I had climbed up into the copilot's seat that I noticed the AR-15 assault rifle in a rack behind her head, and at the same time, I realized the controls on my side had not been taken out. Passengers were not entitled to have access to the collective and cyclic, and the antitorque pedals were supposed to be cranked back far enough that the uninitiated did not accidentally push them with their feet.
'What's this?' I said to Lucy as I buckled my four-point harness.
'We've got a long flight.'
She cracked the throttle several times to make certain there was no binding and it was closed.
'I realize that,' I said.
'Cross country's a good time to try your hand at it.'
She lifted the collective and made big X's with the cyclic.
'Whose hand at what?' I said as my alarm grew.
'Your hand at flying when all you got to do is hold your altitude and speed and keep her level.'
'No way.'
She pressed the starter and the engine began to whirr.
'Yes, way.'
The blades began to turn as the windy roar got louder.
'If you're going to fly with me,' my niece, the pilot and certificated flight instructor, said above the noise, 'then I'd like to know you could help out if there was a problem, okay?'
I said nothing more as she rolled the throttle and raised the rpms. She flipped switches and tested caution lights, then turned on the radio and we put our headsets on. Lucy lifted us off the platform as if gravity had quit. She turned us into the wind and moved forward with gathering speed until the helicopter seemed to soar on its own. We climbed above trees, the sun high in the east. When we were clear of the tower and the city, Lucy began lesson one.
I already knew what most of the controls were and what they were for, but I had an extremely limited understanding of how they worked together. I did not know, for example, that when you raise the collective and increase power, the helicopter will yaw to the right, meaning you have to depress your left antitorque pedal to counter the torque of the main rotor and keep the aircraft in trim, and as your altitude climbs, due to the pulling up on the collective, your speed decreases, meaning you have to push the cyclic forward. And so on. It was like playing the drums, as best I knew, only in this instance I had to watch for dim-witted birds, towers, antennae, and other aircraft.
Lucy was very patient, and the time moved fast as we forged ahead at one hundred and ten knots. By the time we were north of Washington, I actually could keep the helicopter relatively steady while adjusting the directional gyro at the same time to keep it consistent with the compass. Our heading was 050 degrees, and although I could juggle not one more thing, such as the Global Positioning System, or GPS, Lucy said I was doing a fine job keeping us on course.
'We got a small plane at three o'clock,' she said through her mike. 'See it?'
'Yes.'
'Then you say, tally-ho. And it's above horizon. You can tell that, right?'
'Tally-ho.'
Lucy laughed. 'No. Tally-ho does not mean ten-four. And if something's above horizon, that means it's also above us. That's important, because if both aircraft are at horizon and the one we're looking at also doesn't seem to be moving, then that means it's at our altitude and either heading away from us or straight for us. Kind of smart to pay attention and figure out which one, right?'
Her instruction went on until the New York skyline was in view, then I was to have nothing more to do with the controls. Lucy flew us low past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, where my Italian ancestors had gathered long ago to begin with nothing in a new world of opportunity. The city gathered around us and the buildings in the financial district were huge as we flew at five hundred feet, the shadow of our helicopter moving below us along the water. It was a hot, clear day, and tour helicopters were making their rounds while others carried executives who had everything but time.
Lucy was busy with the radio, and approach control did not seem to want to acknowledge us because air traffic was so congested, and controllers were not very interested in aircraft flying at seven hundred feet. At this altitude in this city, the rules were see and avoid, and that was about it. We followed the East River over the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges, moving at ninety knots over crawling garbage barges, fuel tankers, and circling white tour boats. As we passed by the crumbled buildings and old hospitals of Roosevelt Island, Lucy let La Guardia know what we were doing. By now Ward's Island was straight ahead. It was appropriate that the part of the river at the southwestern tip was called Hell Gate.
What I knew about Ward's Island came from my enduring interest in medical history, and as was true of many of New York's islands in earlier times, it was a place of exile for prisoners, the diseased, and mentally ill. Ward's Island's past was particularly unhappy, as I recalled, for in the mid-eighteen hundreds, it had been a place of no heat or running water, where people with typhus were quarantined and Russian Jewish refugees were warehoused. At the turn of the century, the city's lunatic asylum had been moved to the island. Certainly conditions were better here now, although the population was far more maniacal. Patients had air conditioning, lawyers, and hobbies. They had access to dental and medical care, psychotherapy, support groups, and organized sports.
We entered the Class B airspace above Ward's Island in a deceptively civilized way, flying low over green parks shaded with trees as the ugly tan brick high-rises of the Manhattan Psychiatric and Children's Psychiatric Centers and Kirby loomed straight ahead. The Triborough Bridge Parkway ran through the middle of the island, where incongruous to all was a small circus going on, with bright striped tents, ponies, and performers on unicycles. The crowd was small, and I could see kids eating cotton candy, and I wondered why they weren't in school. A little farther north was a sewage disposal plant and the New York City fire department training academy, where a long ladder truck was practicing turns in a parking lot.