“Describe the package,” Lobo said to her. “How big?”
“Midsized FedEx box, I’d say fourteen by eleven and maybe three inches thick. I set it on the middle of the coffee table in the living room. Nothing between it and the door, so it should be easily accessible to you or, if need be, to your robot. I left our door unlocked.”
“How heavy would you estimate?”
“Maybe a pound and a half at most.”
“Did the contents shift around when you moved it?”
“I didn’t move it much. But I’m not aware of anything shifting,” she said.
“Did you hear or smell anything?”
“I didn’t hear anything. But I might have smelled something. A petroleum-type smell. Tarry but sweet and foul, maybe a sulfurous pyrotechnic smell. I couldn’t quite identify it, but an offensive odor that made my eyes water.”
“What about you?” Lobo asked Benton.
“I didn’t smell anything, but I didn’t get close.”
“You notice an odor when the package was delivered?” Lobo asked Ross.
“I don’t know. I sort of have a cold, like I’m real stopped up.”
“The coat I was wearing, and my gloves,” Scarpetta said to Lobo. “There’re on the hallway floor in the apartment. You might want to bag them, take them with you, to see if there’s any sort of residue.”
The lieutenant wasn’t going to say it, but she’d just given him quite a lot of information. Based on the size and weight of the package, it couldn’t contain more than a pound and a half of explosives and wasn’t motion-sensitive, unless some creative timing mechanism had been rigged to a tilt switch.
“I didn’t notice anything unusual at all.” Ross was talking fast, looking at the drama on the street, lights flashing on his boyish face. “The guy put it on the counter and turned around and left. Then I placed it behind the desk instead of in back because I knew Dr. Scarpetta would be returning to the building soon.”
“How’d you know that?” Benton asked.
“We have a TV in the break room. We knew she was on CNN tonight…”
“Who’s we?” Lobo wanted to know.
“Me, the doormen, one of the runners. And I was here when she left to go over there, to CNN.”
“Describe the person who delivered the FedEx,” Lobo said.
“Black guy; long, dark coat; gloves; a FedEx cap; a clipboard. Not sure how old but not real old.”
“You ever seen him before making deliveries or pickups at this building or in the area?”
“Not that I remember.”
“He show up on foot, or did he park a van or truck out front?”
“I didn’t see a van or anything,” Ross answered. “Usually they park wherever they can get a space and show up on foot. That’s pretty much it. What I noticed.”
“What you’re saying is you got no idea if the guy was really FedEx,” Lobo said.
“I can’t prove it. But he didn’t do anything to make me suspicious. That’s pretty much what I know.”
“Then what? He set down the package, and what happened next?”
“He left.”
“Right that second? He made a beeline to the door? You sure he didn’t linger, maybe wander around, maybe go near a stairwell or sit in the lobby?”
ESU cops were getting off the elevator, escorting other residents out of the building.
“You positive the FedEx guy came in and went straight to your desk, then turned around and went straight back out?” Lobo asked Ross.
Ross was staring in astonishment at the caravan coming toward the building, squad cars escorting a fourteen-ton truck-mounted bomb disposal Total Containment Vessel.
He exclaimed, “Holy shhhh… Are we having a terrorist attack or something? All this because of that FedEx box? You kidding me?”
“He maybe go over by the Christmas tree there in your lobby? You’re sure he didn’t go near the elevators?” Lobo persisted. “Ross, you paying attention? Because this is important.”
“Holy mother.”
The white-and-blue bomb truck, its TCV in back covered by a black tarp, parked directly in front of the building.
“Little things can go a long way. Even the tiniest detail matters,” Lobo said. “So I’m asking you again. The FedEx guy. He go anywhere at all, even for a second? To the john? To get a drink of water? He look at what’s under the Christmas tree in the lobby?”
“I don’t think so. Jesus Christ.” Gawking at the bomb truck.
“You don’t think so? That’s not good enough, Ross. I need to be absolutely sure where he did and didn’t go. Do you understand why? I’ll tell you why. Anyplace he might have gone, we’ve got to check to make sure he didn’t set some device somewhere nobody’s thinking about. Look at me when I’m talking to you. We’re going to check the recordings from your security cameras, but it’s quicker if you tell me right now what you observed. You sure he wasn’t carrying anything else when he entered the lobby? Tell me every detail, the smallest one. Then I’m going to look at the recordings.”
“I’m pretty sure he came straight in, handed me the box, and went straight back out,” Ross said to him. “But I got no idea if he did anything outside the building or maybe went anywhere else. I didn’t follow him. I had no reason to be concerned. The computer for the camera system’s in the back. That’s all I can think of.”
“When he left, which way did he go?”
“I saw him go out this door”-waving a hand at the glass front door-“and that was it.”
“This was what time?”
“A little after nine.”
“So the last time you saw him was about two hours ago, two hours fifteen.”
“I guess.”
Benton asked Ross, “Was he wearing gloves?”
“Black ones. They might have been lined with rabbit fur. When he was handing me the box, I think I saw fur sticking out of the gloves.”
Lobo suddenly stepped away from them and got on his radio.
“You recall anything else-anything at all-about the way he was dressed?” Benton asked Ross.
“Dark clothes. Seems like he might have had on dark boots and dark pants. And a long coat, you know, like below his knees. Black. Collar up, gloves on, like I said, maybe fur-lined, and the FedEx cap. That’s it.”
“Glasses?”
“Sort of tinted ones, flash ones.”
“Flash ones?”
“You know. Sort of mirrored. Another thing? I’m just remembering. I thought I smelled cigarettes, maybe matches. Like maybe he’d been smoking.”
“I thought you were stopped up, couldn’t smell anything,” Benton reminded him.
“It just entered my head. I think maybe I did smell something like cigarettes.”
“But that’s not what you think you smelled,” Benton said to Scarpetta.
“No,” she answered, not adding that maybe what Ross had detected was sulfur, what smelled like a lighted match, and that was what had reminded him of cigarettes.
“What about this man Ross is describing,” Benton said to her. “You see anybody fitting that description when you were walking back here, or maybe earlier, when you headed over to CNN?”
She thought about it but came up with nothing, and it occurred to her. “The clipboard,” she asked Ross. “Did he ask you to sign anything?”
“No.”
“Then what was the clipboard for?”
Ross shrugged, his breath a white vapor when he talked. “He didn’t ask me to do anything. Nothing. Just handed me the package.”
“He say specifically to give it to Dr. Scarpetta?” Benton asked.
“He said to make sure she got it, yeah. And he said her name, now that you mention it. He said, ‘This is for Dr. Scarpetta. She’s expecting it.’ ”
“FedEx usually that specific, that personal? Isn’t that a little unusual? Because I’ve never heard FedEx make comments like that. How would he know she was expecting something?” Benton said.