Benton didn’t answer. She entered her code and they walked into the Criminal Division, a rabbit warren of partitioned work spaces, all of them blue.
“Still, it was the Bureau’s loss, a very big loss,” she said. “I suggest we get coffee in the break room, such as it is.” She headed in that direction, a small room with a coffeemaker, a refrigerator, a table, and four chairs. “I won’t say what goes around comes around. About Agee,” she added, pouring coffee for both of them. “He sui cided your career, or tried to, and now he’s done the same to his.”
“He started self-destructing his career long before now.”
“Yes, he did.”
“The one who escaped death row in Texas,” Benton then said. “I didn’t get rid of all of them. I didn’t get rid of him, couldn’t find him. Is he still alive?”
“What do you take in it?” Opening a Tupperware container of creamer, rinsing a plastic spoon in the sink.
“I didn’t get rid of all of them. I didn’t get him,” Benton said it again.
“If we could ever get rid of all of them,” Lanier said, “I’d be out a job.”
The NYPD Firearms and Tactics Section on Rodman’s Neck was surrounded by a ten-foot-high fence topped with coils of razor wire. Were it not for that unfriendly obstruction and the heavy weapons going off and signs everywhere that said DANGER BLASTING and KEEP AWAY and DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING HERE, the south ernmost tip of the Bronx, jutting out like a finger into the Long Island Sound, would be, in Marino’s opinion, the choicest real estate in the Northeast.
The early morning was gray and overcast, eelgrass and bare trees agitated by the wind as he rode with Lieutenant Al Lobo in a black SUV through what was to Marino a fifty-something-acre theme park of ordnance bunkers, tactical houses, maintenance shops, hangars of emergency response trucks and armored vehicles, and firing ranges indoors and out, including one for snipers. Police and FBI and officers from other agencies went through so many rounds of ammunition that metal drums of their spent brass were as common as trash barrels at a picnic. Nothing was wasted, not even police vehicles totaled in the line of duty or simply driven to death. They ended up out here, were shot and blown up, used in urban simulations, such as riots and suicide bombings.
For all its seriousness, the base had its touches of cop humor, a comic-book motif of brightly painted bombs and rockets and Howitzer rounds buried nose-first in the ground and sticking out of the strangest places. During downtime when the weather was nice, the techs and instructors cooked out in front of their Quonset huts and played cards or with the bomb dogs, or this time of year, sat around and talked while fixing anything electrical that was broken in toys donated to needy families who couldn’t afford Christmas. Marino loved the Neck, and as he and Lobo drove and talked about Dodie Hodge, it occurred to Marino that this was the first time he’d ever been here when he didn’t hear gunfire, semiautomatics and full auto MP5s, the noise so constant it was calming to him, like being at the movies and hearing popcorn popping.
Even the sea ducks got used to it and maybe came to expect it, eiders and old-squaws swimming by and waddling up on the shore. No wonder some of the best waterfowl shooting was in these parts. The ducks didn’t recognize danger in guns going off-pretty damn unsportsmanlike, if you asked Marino. They should call it “sitting duck season,” he thought, and he wondered what the constant discharging of weapons and detonations did to fishing, because he’d heard there were some pretty nice black sea bass, fluke, and winter flounder in the sound. One of these days he’d have his own boat and keep it at a marina on City Island. Maybe even live over there.
“I think we should get out here,” Lobo said, stopping the Tahoe midway in the explosive demolition range, about a hundred yards downwind of where Scarpetta’s package was locked up. “Keep my truck out of the way. They get upset when you accidentally blow up city property.”
Marino climbed out, careful where he stepped, the ground uneven with rocks and scrap metal and frag. He was surrounded by a terrain of pits and berms built of sandbags, and rough roadbeds leading to day boxes and observation points of concrete and ballistic glass, and beyond was the water. For as far as he could see, there was water, a few boats far off in the distance and the Yacht Club on City Island. He’d heard stories about vessels coming loose from their moorings and drifting with the tides, ending up on the shores of Rodman’s Neck and civilian tow services not fighting over the job of retrieving them, some saying you couldn’t pay them enough. Finders keepers, it ought to be. A World Cat 290 with twin Suzuki four-strokes high and dry in sand and cobble, and Marino would brave a hailstorm of bullets and shrapnel as long as he didn’t have to give it back.
Bomb tech Ann Droiden was up ahead, in a Tactical Duty Uniform, TDUs, dark-blue canvas seven-pocket pants, probably lined with flannel because of the weather, a parka, ATAC Storm Boots, and amber-tinted wraparound glasses. She didn’t wear a hat, and her hands were bare as she clamped the steel tube of a PAN disrupter to a folding stand. She was something to look at but probably too young for Marino. Early thirties, he guessed.
“Try and behave yourself,” Lobo said.
“I believe she should be reclassified to a weapon of mass destruction,” Marino said, and he always had a hard time not openly gawking at her.
Something about her strong-featured good looks and amazingly agile hands, and he realized she reminded him a little of the Doc, of what she was like when she was that age, when they’d just started working together in Richmond. Back then, for a woman to be the chief of a statewide medical examiner’s system as formidable as Virginia ’s was unheard of, and Scarpetta had been the first female medical examiner Marino had ever met, maybe even ever seen.
“The phone call made from the Hotel Elysée to CNN. It’s just a thought I had, and I’ll mention it even if it sounds far-fetched, because this lady’s, what, in her fifties?” Lobo got back to the conversation they’d started in the SUV.
“What’s Dodie Hodge’s age got to do with her making the call?” Marino said, and he wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing, leaving Lucy and Scarpetta alone at the Hotel Elysée.
He didn’t understand what was going on over there, except that Lucy sure as hell knew how to take care of herself, was probably better at it than Marino, if he was honest. She could shoot a lollipop off its stick at fifty yards. But he was tied in knots, trying to figure things out. According to Lobo, the phone call Dodie Hodge made to CNN last night traced back to the Hotel Elysée. That was the number captured by caller ID, yet Dodie Hodge wasn’t a guest at the hotel. The same manager Marino had dealt with earlier said there was no record of anybody by that name ever staying there, and when Marino had provided Dodie’s physical description, based on information he’d gotten when he was at RTCC, the manager had said absolutely not. He had no idea who Dodie Hodge was, and furthermore, no outgoing call had been made to The Crispin Report’s 1-800 number last night. In fact, no outgoing call had been made from the Hotel Elysée at the precise time-nine-forty-three-when Dodie had called CNN and was put on hold before she was put on the air.
“How much do you know about spoofing?” Lobo said, as he and Marino walked. “You heard of buying these Spoof Cards?”
“I’ve heard of it. Another pain-in-the-ass thing for us to fucking worry about,” Marino said.
He wasn’t allowed to use his cell phone on the range, nothing that emitted an electronic signal. He wanted to call Scarpetta and tell her about Dodie Hodge. Or maybe he should tell Lucy. Dodie Hodge might have some sort of connection to Warner Agee. He couldn’t call anyone, not on the demolition range, where there was at least one possible bomb locked up in a day box.