“I don’t know. I guess it was a little unusual.”
“What was on the clipboard?” Scarpetta got back to that.
“I really didn’t look. Maybe receipts, package slips. Am I going to get in trouble for this? My wife’s pregnant. I don’t need any trouble,” said Ross, who didn’t look nearly old enough to be married and a father.
“I’m wondering why you didn’t call the apartment to tell me a package had arrived,” Benton said to him.
“Because the FedEx guy said it was for her, like I told you, and I knew she’d be back pretty soon and assumed, now that we’re replaying all this, she was expecting it.”
“And you knew she’d be back soon because?”
“He was working the desk when I left around eight,” Scarpetta answered for Ross, “and he wished me good luck on the show.”
“How did you know she was on a show tonight?” Benton asked.
“I’ve seen commercials, ads for it. Just look.” Ross pointed at the top of a building on the other side of Columbus Circle, where news breaks on CNN’s scrolling ticker could be seen from blocks away. “Your name’s up in freakin’ lights.”
Below the CNN neon-red marquee, Scarpetta’s off-camera comment crawled around the top of the skyscraper:
… connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling is “antiquated” and not based on credible data. On tonight’s Crispin Report, Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling…
10
Pete Marino materialized in the middle of the barricaded street, backlit by a blaze of halogen lights, as if he had emerged from the afterlife.
Rotating beacons flashed across his big weathered face and un-stylish wire-rimmed glasses, and he was tall and broad in a down jacket, cargo pants, and boots. Pulled low over his bald head was an NYPD cap with an Aviation Unit patch over the bill, an old Bell 47 helicopter that brought to mind M*A*S*H. A gift from Lucy, a backhanded one. Marino hated flying.
“I’m assuming you made Lobo’s acquaintance,” Marino said when he reached Scarpetta and Benton. “He taking good care of you? I don’t see no hot chocolate. Right about now bourbon would be good. Let’s go sit in my car before you get frostbit.”
Marino started walking them to his car, parked north of the bomb truck, which was flooded by halogens on light poles. Cops had removed the tarp and lowered a steel ramp, a special one Scarpetta had seen on other occasions in the past, with serrated tread the size of saw teeth. If you tripped and fell on the ramp, it would shred you to the bone, but if you stumbled while carrying a bomb, you had a bigger problem. The Total Containment Vessel, or TCV, was mounted on the diamond-steel flatbed and looked like a bright-yellow diving bell sealed shut by a spider yoke that an ESU cop loosened and removed. Beneath it was the lid, about four inches thick, and the ESU cop attached a steel cable to it, using a winch to lower it to the flatbed. He pulled out a wood-framed nylon-webbed tray, placed the winch control on it, and clamped the cable out of the way, making preparations for the bomb tech whose job it would be to lock Scarpetta’s suspicious package inside fourteen tons of high-tensile steel before it was driven away to be defeated by New York’s finest.
“I’m so sorry about this,” Scarpetta said to Marino as they got into his dark-blue Crown Vic, a safe distance from the truck and its TCV. “I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing.”
“And I’m sure Benton would agree with me. We’re never sure of anything,” Marino said. “You and Benton did the right thing.”
Benton was looking up at the CNN marquee, neon-red beyond the Trump International Hotel with its shiny silver unisphere, a scaled-down version of the ten-story globe in Flushing Meadows, only this steely representation of the planet was about Donald Trump’s expanding universe, not about the space age. Scarpetta watched the news ticker, the same out-of-context nonsense crawling by, and wondered if Carley had orchestrated the timing of it, deciding she must have.
No way Carley would want her ambush launched in bright lights while she was walking the intended victim home. Wait an hour, then cause Scarpetta trouble with the FBI and maybe make her think twice about going on any television show ever again. Goddamn it. Why was behavior like that necessary? Carley knew her ratings were bad, that was why. A desperate and sensational attempt to hang on to her career. And maybe sabotage. Carley had overheard Alex’s proposal, knew what was in store for her. Not a suspicion anymore. Scarpetta was convinced.
Marino unlocked his car and said to Scarpetta, “How ’bout you sit up front so you and me can talk. Sorry, Benton, got to stick you in back. Lobo and some of the other bomb guys were just in Mumbai finding out whatever they can so we don’t have the same shit happen here. The trend in terrorist tactics, and Benton probably knows this, isn’t suicide bombers anymore. It’s small groups of highly trained commandos.”
Benton didn’t answer, and Scarpetta could feel his hostility like static electricity. When Marino tried too hard to be inclusive or friendly, he made the situation worse, and Benton would be rude, and next Marino had to assert himself because he would feel put down and angry. A tedious and ridiculous vacillation, one demeanor, then the other, back and forth, and Scarpetta wished it would stop. Goddamn it, she’d had enough.
“Point is, you couldn’t be in better hands. These guys are the best, will take good care of you, Doc.” As if Marino had made sure of it personally.
“I feel awful about this.” Scarpetta shut her door and reached for the shoulder harness, out of habit, but changed her mind. They weren’t going anywhere.
“Last I checked, it wasn’t you who did anything.” Benton ’s voice behind her.
Marino started the engine and turned the heat on high. “Probably a box of cookies,” he said to Scarpetta. “You and Bill Clinton. Same thing. Wrong address and the bomb squad gets called. Turns out to be cookies.”
“Just what I wanted to hear,” she said.
“You’d rather it be a bomb?”
“I’d rather none of this had happened.” She couldn’t help it. She was mortified. She felt guilty, as if all of this was her fault.
“You don’t need to apologize,” Benton said. “You don’t take chances, even if nine times out of ten it’s nothing. We’ll hope it’s nothing.”
Scarpetta noticed what was displayed on the screen of the Mobile Data Computer mounted on the dash, a map depicting the Westchester County Airport in White Plains. Maybe it was related to Berger, to her flying in this evening with Lucy, assuming they hadn’t already arrived. Strange, though. Didn’t make sense for Marino to have the airport map displayed. At the moment, nothing was making sense. Scarpetta was confused and unsettled and felt humiliated.
“Anybody know anything yet?” Benton asked Marino.
“A couple news choppers spotted in the area,” he said. “No way this is going to be quiet. You bring in the mother of all bomb trucks and that’s it, will be a police escort like a friggin’ presidential motorcade when they drive the Doc’s package to Rodman’s Neck. Me calling Lobo direct cut out a lot of bullshit, but I can’t keep this on the QT. Not that you needed the attention, since I see your name up there in lights, bashing the FBI.”
“I didn’t bash the FBI,” Scarpetta said. “I was talking about Warner Agee, and it was off the air and off the record.”
“No such thing,” Benton said.
“Especially not with Crispy Crispin, claim to fame burning her sources. I don’t know why the hell you go on that show,” Marino said. “Not that we have time to get into it, but what a friggin’ mess. See how deserted the street is right now? If Carley keeps up with her yellow-cab crap, the streets will be this empty from now on, which is probably what she wants. Another scoop, right? Thirty thousand yellow cabs and not a single fare, and crowds of people rioting in a panic on the streets like King Kong’s on the loose. Merry Christmas.”