“After she was on American Morning last year. I don’t know if you saw it.” Carley stepped around dirty patches of ice. “That animal abuse case she prosecuted, the pet shop chain. CNN had her on to talk about it, really as a favor. And she got annoyed because she got asked hard questions. So, guess who gets punished? Me. If you asked her, she’d probably go on. I bet you could talk anybody into it you wanted, with the connections you have.”
“Why don’t we get you a cab,” Scarpetta said. “You’re going out of your way, and I’m fine to walk alone. It’s just up ahead.”
She wanted to call Benton so he’d know why she was taking so long and wouldn’t worry, but she didn’t have her BlackBerry. She must have left it in the apartment, had probably set it down by the sink in the master bath, and it had occurred to her several times now to borrow Carley’s phone. But that would mean using it to call a private and unpublished number, and if Scarpetta knew nothing else after tonight, Carley wasn’t to be trusted.
“I’m glad Lucy didn’t have her fortune invested with Madoff, not that he’s the only crook,” Carley then said.
A train clattered underfoot and warm air billowed up from a grate. Scarpetta wasn’t going to take the bait. Carley was fishing.
“I didn’t get out of the market when I should have, waited until the Dow fell below eight thousand,” Carley continued. “Here I am, sometimes at the same events as Suze Orman, and did I ask her for advice? How much did Lucy lose?”
As if Scarpetta would tell her, assuming she knew.
“I know she made a fortune in computers and investments, always on the Forbes list, in the top hundred. Except now,” Carley continued. “I noticed she’s not listed anymore. Wasn’t she once, well, not that long ago, worth in the billions because of high-speed technologies and all sorts of software she’s been inventing since she was practically in diapers? Plus, I’m sure she’s been getting good financial advice. Or she was.”
“I don’t look at Forbes lists,” Scarpetta said, and she didn’t know the answer. Lucy had never been all that forthcoming about her finances, and Scarpetta didn’t ask. “I don’t talk about my family,” she added.
“There certainly are a lot of things you don’t talk about.”
“And we’re here.” They had reached Scarpetta’s building. “You take care of yourself, Carley. Have a happy holiday and a happy new year.”
“Business is business, right? All’s fair. Don’t forget we’re friends.” Carley hugged her. She’d never done that before.
Scarpetta entered the polished-marble lobby of her building, digging in her coat pockets for her keys, seeming to remember that’s where her BlackBerry had been last. Was she certain? She couldn’t remember, tried to reconstruct what she’d done tonight. Had she used her phone at all, maybe taken it out at CNN and left it somewhere? No. She was sure she hadn’t.
“You were good on TV.” The concierge, young and recently hired, and sharp in his neat blue uniform, smiled at her. “Carley Crispin put you through it, huh? If it had been me, I would have gotten mad. Something just came for you.” He reached down behind the desk. Scarpetta remembered his name was Ross.
“Just came?” she said. “At this hour?” Then she remembered. Alex was sending over a proposal.
“The city that never sleeps.” Ross handed her a FedEx box.
She boarded the elevator and pressed the button for the twentieth floor, glancing at the airbill, looking at it more closely. She searched for confirmation that the package was from Alex, from CNN, but there was no return address and her own address was unusuaclass="underline"
DR. KAY SCARPETTA
CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER of GOTHAM CITY
1111 CENTRAL PARK WEST USA 10023
Referring to her as the chief medical examiner of Gotham City was sarcastic. It was kooky. The handwriting was so precise it looked like a font, almost looked computer-generated, but she could tell it wasn’t, and she sensed a mocking intelligence guiding the hand that had held the pen. She wondered how the person knew that she and Benton had an apartment in this building. Their addresses and phone numbers were unpublished and unlisted, and she realized with growing alarm that the sender’s copy was still attached to the airbill. The package hadn’t been sent by FedEx. Dear God, don’t let this be a bomb.
The elevator was old, with ornate brass doors and an inlaid wood ceiling, and it climbed excruciatingly slowly, and she imagined a muffled explosion and hurtling down the dark shaft, crashing at the bottom. She smelled a foul tarry chemical odor, like a petroleum-based accelerant, sweet but disgusting. She focused on it, unsure what it was or if it was real. Diesel fuel. Diphorone Pentaperoxide and acetone peroxide and C4 and nitroglycerine. Odors and dangers she knew from working fires and explosions, from teaching at post-blast schools in the late nineties when Lucy was a special agent with ATF, when Scarpetta and Benton were members of its International Response Team. Before Benton was dead, then alive again.
Silver hair, charred flesh and bone, his Breitling watch in a soup of sooty water at that fire scene in Philadelphia where she’d felt her world end. What she’d thought were Benton ’s remains. His personal effects. Didn’t just suspect it, was certain he was dead because she was supposed to be certain. The dirty, foul odor of arson and accelerants. Emptiness yawning before her, impenetrable and forever, nothing left but isolation and pain. She feared nothingness because she knew what it felt like. Year after year of nonexistence, her brain going strong but not her heart. How to describe it? Benton still asked her, but not often. He’d been hiding from the Chandonne cartel, from organized criminals, murderous scum, and of course had been protecting her, too. If he was in danger, she was in danger. As if she was in less danger, somehow, with him not around. Not that she was asked. Better if everyone believed he was dead. The Feds said. Please, God, don’t let this be a bomb. A petroleum, asphalt smell. The offensive fuel odor of coal tar, of naphthenic acid, of napalm. Her eyes watered. She was nauseated.
The brass doors opened and she jostled the package as little as possible. Her hands were shaking. She couldn’t leave the FedEx box in the elevator. She couldn’t set it down, couldn’t get rid of it without placing other residents or building employees at risk. Her fingers fumbled nervously with keys as her heart raced and she hypersalivated, could barely catch her breath. Metal against metal. Friction, static electricity, could set it off. Breathe deeply, slowly, and stay calm. Unlocking the apartment door with a startlingly loud click. Please, God, don’t let this be what I think.
“ Benton?”
She stepped inside, leaving the door open wide.
“Hello? Benton?”
She carefully set the FedEx box on the middle of the coffee table in their empty living room of fine art and mission-style furniture. She imagined expansive windows exploding, a massive glass bomb blowing up and raining razor-sharp shards down twenty stories. She picked up an art-glass sculpture, an undulating bowl in vibrant colors, moved it off the coffee table, set it on the rug, making sure there was a clear path from the doorway to the FedEx box.
“ Benton, where are you?”
A stack of paperwork was in his usual Morris recliner by windows overlooking the lights of the Upper West Side and the Hudson. In the distance, planes looked like UFOs above the blazing runways of Teterboro. Lucy was probably flying her helicopter, heading to New York, to Westchester County. Scarpetta didn’t like it when Lucy flew after dark. If she lost her engine she could auto-rotate, but how did she see where to set down? What if she lost her engine over miles of trees?