The crack of a shotgun blast.
Marino and Lobo took off their hearing protectors and stepped out from behind several tons of concrete blocks and ballistic glass, about three hundred feet up-range from Droiden in her bomb suit. She walked to the pit where Scarpetta’s FedEx box had just been shot and knelt to examine what she had defeated. Her helmet turned toward Marino and Lobo, and she gave them a thumbs-up, her bare hand small and pale surrounded by dark-green padding that made her look twice her normal size.
“Like opening a box of Cracker Jacks,” Marino said. “Can’t wait to see the prize.”
He hoped whatever was in Scarpetta’s FedEx box was worth all the trouble, and he hoped it wasn’t. His career was a chronic conflict he didn’t talk about, didn’t even like to admit to himself what he really felt. For an investigation to be rewarding meant there needed to be real danger or damage, but what decent human being would hope for such a thing?
“What we got?” Lobo asked her.
Another tech was helping her take off the bomb suit. Droiden had an unpleasant expression on her face as she put her coat back on, zipping it up.
“Something that stinks. That same nasty smell. Not a hoax device, but not like anything I’ve ever seen. Or smelled, for that matter,” she said to Lobo and Marino as the other tech busied himself with the bomb suit, packing it up. “Three AG-ten-type button batteries and aerial repeaters, pyrotechnics. Some kind of greeting card with a voodoo-looking doll attached to the top. A stink bomb.”
The FedEx box had been blasted wide open. It was a mass of soggy shredded cardboard, broken glass, the remnants of a small white cloth doll, and what looked like dog fur confined within a berm of dirty sandbags. A recordable voice module not much bigger than a credit card had been blown into several pieces, the mangled button batteries nearby, and as Marino got closer he got a whiff of what Droiden was talking about.
“Smells like a mixture of asphalt, rotten eggs, and dog shit,” he said. “What the hell is it?”
“It’s whatever was in the vial, a glass vial.” Droiden opened a black Roco sack and got out evidence bags, an epoxy-lined aluminum can, face masks, and nitrile gloves. “Not like anything I’ve ever smelled before, sort of a petroleum-type smell but not. Like tar, sulfur, and dung.”
“What was it supposed to do?” Marino asked.
“I think the point was you open the box, and there’s a greeting card inside with the doll attached to the top of it. When you open the card, it explodes, causing the glass vial of this stinky liquid to shatter. The voice module’s power source, the batteries, was connected to three commercial repeating aerial bombs tied to an electric match, a professional pyrotechnic igniter.” She pointed to what was left of three flash firecrackers attached to a thin bridge wire.
“E-matches are very sensitive to current,” Lobo told Marino. “A few recorder batteries were all it took. But what someone would have had to do was alter the voice module’s slide switch and recorder circuit so the battery current set off the explosion as opposed to playing a recording.”
“The average person couldn’t do it?” Marino said.
“The average person could definitely do it, as long as he’s not stupid and follows directions.”
“On the Internet,” Marino thought out loud.
“Oh, yeah. You can practically build a fucking atom bomb,” Lobo said.
“If the Doc had opened it?” Marino started to ask.
“Hard to say,” Droiden said. “Could have injured her, that’s for sure. Maybe blown a few of her fingers off or gotten glass in her face and eyes. Disfigured her. Blinded her. For sure it would have gotten this nasty-smelling liquid all over her.”
“I assume that was the point,” Lobo said. “Someone wanted this liquid on her, whatever it is. And to mess her up pretty good. Let me take a look at the card.”
Marino unzipped his briefcase and gave Lobo the evidence pouch Scarpetta had given to him. Lobo pulled on a pair of gloves and started looking. He opened the Christmas card, an upset Santa on the glossy cover being chased by Mrs. Claus with a rolling pin. A woman’s thin, off-tune voice singing. “Have a Ho-Dee, Do-Dee Christmas…” Lobo peeled back stiff paper and slid out the voice module as the annoying tune continued, “Stick some mistletoe where it ought to go…” He disconnected the recorder from its batteries, three button batteries, AG10s no bigger than what goes inside a wristwatch. Silence, the wind gusting in from the water and through the fence. Marino couldn’t feel his ears anymore, and his mouth was like the Tin Man’s, in need of oil. It was getting hard to talk, he was so cold.
“A bare talking module ideal for greeting card mounting.” Lobo held the recorder close to Marino to show him. “The kind used by crafters and do-it-yourselfers. Full circuit with a speaker. Ready-made slider switch for auto play, which is the key to the whole thing. The sliding contact closes the firing circuit and triggers the bomb. Ready to order. Hell of a lot easier than making one yourself.”
Droiden was plucking bomb parts out of the wet, filthy mess in the pit. She got up and got closer to Marino and Lobo, holding silver, black, and dark-green plastic and metal fragments and black and copper wire in the palm of her nitrile-gloved hand. She took the intact recording module from Lobo and began making a comparison.
“Microscopic examination will confirm,” she said, but her meaning was plain.
“Same kind of recorder,” Marino said, cupping his big hands around hers to shield the frag from the wind and wishing he could stand there for a long time that close to her. Didn’t matter if he’d been up all night and was turning into a chunk of ice, he felt suddenly warm and alert. “Jesus, that stinks. And what is that, dog fur?” With a synthetic rubber-sheathed finger, he prodded several long, coarse hairs. “Why the hell is dog fur in it?”
“Looks like the doll was stuffed with fur. It might be dog fur,” she said. “I’m seeing significant similarities in the construction. The circuit board, the slider switch, the record button and microphone speaker.”
Lobo was studying the Santa card. He turned it over to see what was on the back.
“Made in China. Recyclable paper. An environmentally friendly Christmas bomb. How nice,” he said.
19
Scarpetta dragged the open suitcase across the floor. The twenty-nine accordion file folders inside it, bound by elastic bands and labeled with white stickers that had handwritten dates on them, covered a span of twenty-six years. Most of Warner Agee’s career.
“If I talked to Jaime, what do you think she’d tell me about you?” she continued to probe.
“That’s easy. I’m pathological.” Lucy’s anger flashed.
Sometimes her anger was so sudden and intense that Scarpetta could see it like lightning.
“I’m pissed all the time. Want to hurt someone,” Lucy said.
Agee must have moved a lot of his personal belongings to the Hotel Elysée, certainly ones that were important to him. Scarpetta picked out the most recent folders and sat on the carpet at her niece’s feet.
“Why do you want to hurt someone?” Scarpetta asked her.
“To get back what was fucking taken from me. To redeem myself somehow and get a second chance so I never let anybody do something like that to me again. Do you know what’s terrible?” Lucy’s eyes blazed. “It’s terrible to decide there are some people it’s okay to destroy, to kill. And to imagine it, to work it out in your mind, and not feel even a twitch or a twinge. To feel nothing. Like he probably felt.” Waving her arm as if Warner Agee was in the room. “That’s when the worst happens. When you feel nothing anymore. That’s when you do it-you do something you can’t take back. It’s terrible to know you’re really no different from the assholes you’re chasing and trying to protect people from.”