Livid: a Scarpetta Novel, page 6
“Her background was journalism,” I reply. “It’s been my impression that she didn’t hesitate to say whatever she thought, often bluntly and with little regard for how she came across.”
Reaching in front of me, he unlocks the glove box. He lifts out his 10-millimeter matte-gray Guncrafter Industries 1911, custom built with Trijicon optic sights. Old-school Dirty Harry huge and heart attack scary, it’s loaded with 200-grain Buffalo Bore rounds, cocked and locked, the thumb safety on. He places the pistol and extra magazines on the console between us.
He arranges them for easy access as I turn on my phone’s flashlight. I check my injured ankle, tender to the touch, the bright red bruise turning dusky. I take photographs as Marino constantly scans the mirrors, blowing out exasperated breaths. We’ve made it only a few blocks.
The CVS drugstore is to our left. Just beyond is Lucy’s favorite bicycle shop, and the Indian restaurant that Benton likes a lot. The lights of traffic, the splashing rain are distracting and confusing. The truck’s menacing-looking grill guard is alarmingly close to the sports car in front of us, triggering loud warnings.
Everywhere I look I see accidents and outbursts about to happen as stressed commuters behave like primitives. I’m reminded that Marino and I have been inside a courtroom most of the afternoon. Before that, we were inside the autopsy suite. I’ve not had access to my phone for much of the day. We’ve been in our own morbid bubble, and I suspect there’s much happening that we don’t know about.
“I’m not sure I’ve seen it this bad before. Something else is going on, has to be.” I begin checking my emergency alerts and traffic apps. “Maybe a bad wreck, some other disaster in the area. This isn’t normal rush hour, not even in a storm before a holiday weekend.”
“You got that right,” Marino complains. “This minute we’re going six miles an hour, and people are acting like the world’s coming to an end.”
It doesn’t take long to discover that the cause of the chaos is the president of the United States. He made a visit to Old Town earlier this afternoon, and there were security issues, a perceived imminent danger that resulted in his motorcade diverting. Sections of King Street and the George Washington Memorial Parkway had to be shut down for extended periods.
It’s no wonder I’ve not heard from Benton and Lucy. Any threat to the president, and the U.S. Secret Service takes over. My husband is going to be involved. Possibly my niece will be as well. He’s their top threat analyzer and criminal profiler. She’s a technical subject matter expert, her title intentionally ambiguous.
“For a while, even the Woodrow Wilson Bridge was closed in both directions,” I relay to Marino.
“What security issues? Are there any details?” he asks as I glance through news articles and other information.
CHAPTER 7
The president was supposed to visit Ivy Hill Cemetery for a service at two-thirty but the motorcade was turned around.” I keep looking for news updates but there’s almost nothing. “It returned to the White House. There’s not much else I’m finding, including on government sites.”
“Must be something they’re keeping hush-hush,” Marino says.
“Whatever it is they’re taking it seriously.”
“I’m betting the feds have boxed in Alexandria, maybe the entire greater D.C. area, because they’ve got a suspect. Maybe more than one.” Marino has both hands tensely on the wheel, red taillights blearily stretching ahead endlessly.
“Unfortunately, stories about Rachael Stanwyck’s suspicious and shocking death are popping up all over the place already.” I tell Marino what else I’m finding as we make our way in the awful traffic. “Conspiracies are brewing about the privileged and peculiar Chilton sisters, and I quote.”
Annie’s address has been published. There’s gossip about her passive behavior on the bench during the Gilbert Hooke trial. She’s accused of showing favoritism toward Bose Flagler while treating Sal Gallo deplorably. Rumors are flying about why she’s never married and lives like a recluse in the family’s eighteenth-century haunted mansion.
“Forget any semblance of privacy,” I pass along to Marino. “Everything about this would be terrible for anyone. But it’s especially dangerous for a judge, and unfortunately she’s lax about security, as you’re about to discover.”
He hasn’t been to Chilton Farms, and won’t be happy when we get there. It may or may not have ghosts. I can’t swear to that, although I’ve heard my share of strange noises. I’ve seen peculiar shadows, and glimpsed strange images in mirrors I pass. What I can state categorically is that the overgrown property is a safe haven for gnats, ticks, mosquitoes and other antisocial insects.
Annie rules against pesticides, including natural ones like garlic spray. Outdoor lighting is basically nonexistent. As I’m describing this, Marino reaches for his gun. He places it and the extra magazines in his lap.
“Get ready, Doc!” His attention is everywhere, jaw muscles clenching.
I notice a brick wall on our right in the swirling fog. Just beyond is an alleyway Benton and I have walked through when it was still safe to take long strolls in Old Town.
“HANG ON!” Marino yells.
That’s my cue to grip the armrest, pushing my head against the back of the seat so I don’t bang into the window or wrench my neck during one of his NASCAR maneuvers. He floors it, cutting the steering wheel hard, rubber squealing, the engine gunning, the force of the turn shoving me against the door.
“BOOM! Now we’re talking!” He folds in the side mirrors.
He snakes his big truck through a narrow lane originally meant for pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages.
“Be careful of the stone column coming up on the left.” I point it out in the mist.
“No way anybody’s following us back here.”
Pleased with himself, he carefully bumps us along, foglamps reflecting off water and wet pavers. If I opened my window, I could reach out and touch the back walls and gates of grand old residences. The branches of ancient evergreens and English boxwood hedges are inches from us.
“Not the smoothest ride, sorry about that.” He glances at me, and I see my distorted reflection in his mirrored glasses. “But better than sitting on King Street for the rest of our lives.”
Turning around in my seat, I look for Dana Diletti and her crew. The narrow passage behind us is empty and foggy, no sign of the white van with the news station’s logo on it.
“I think you lost Channel Five and everyone,” I confirm. “Not that I’m surprised. I don’t believe cars are allowed back here. Nothing with an engine or much bigger than a golf cart.”
“I figure you could use a hit right about now.” Marino slides open the ashtray. “You and me both.”
He digs through his stash of retro chewing gum that reminds him of better days. The familiar aromas of Teaberry, Juicy Fruit, Bazooka and Dubble Bubble bring back powerful memories of my childhood when I would help out in my father’s neighborhood grocery store.
“Thanks.” I take the Wrigley’s Spearmint Marino offers, both of us recovering smokers.
He rolls up three sticks of gum, cramming them into his mouth at once. The inside of his truck smells sweetly minty as he navigates through the alleyway, past wrought iron fencing and walls. I glance at my phone, scrolling through messages.
“Did Lucy tell you what she’s doing today?” Marino is nonchalant as if it doesn’t bother him that they aren’t as close.
“We had coffee before you picked me up this morning but she didn’t mention anything specific,” I reply. “She had on her bike gear and backpack, though, headed out somewhere.”
“At least she’s not holed up in her crib twenty-four-seven talking to an avatar as if it’s a real person,” he says unpleasantly.
“That’s not fair. Or accurate.”
“I just don’t want her getting any weirder on us, Doc. Riding her tricked-out bike all over the place like it’s the X Games, chasing radio signals and things that go bump in the night.”
He’s not really worried about how my niece spends her time. What’s under Marino’s skin is that she’s sworn law enforcement again, and he’s not. It rankles him that he no longer can arrest people and lock them up, and she can. This on top of his relationship with her cooling considerably after he married her mother.
Traffic isn’t nearly as bad now that we’re on South Royal Street with its pristine detached homes and rowhouses, many with American flags over the entrances. Bronze historical plaques attached to siding are a reminder that nothing much can be done to your property without permission from a preservation committee.
The low sun shimmers through the lifting overcast as we get farther away from congested neighborhoods. We’re headed to the largely uninhabited stretch along the Potomac River where Annie and Rachael Chilton grew up. The haze is burning off, steam rising from pavement. A band of fiery gold light spreads along the horizon, and I recheck my messages, sending Fabian Etienne another one.
“Let him know to avoid King Street unless he wants to sit there until he turns into a skeleton,” Marino says.
“There’s no point in telling him much when he’s not bothering to answer us.” I’ve about had enough of this.
“Hell, it’s exactly what he fantasizes about,” Marino says. “A big case that’s all over the news, and he rolls in like the Grim Reaper. He’s probably been primping in the mirror for the last half hour, putting on eye makeup, redoing his nails.”
“Fabian doesn’t respond to me in a timely fashion unless it suits his purposes,” I reply, and my problem with the death investigator isn’t the way he looks.
It isn’t his taste in attire. Or even his favorite cliché, Our day begins when yours ends, that’s silkscreened and printed on T-shirts and coffee mugs he sells on the Internet. I can’t control Fabian. It was bad enough when I first got here. But after a year it seems close to a lost cause.
I have no doubt who’s influencing him, and it’s been escalating. I think of recent encounters with the former physician’s assistant who claims he’s always dreamed of being a death investigator. Yesterday, I couldn’t find him for hours, and finally took the elevator below ground to the anatomical division.
Phones don’t work very well down there, and that’s his excuse when he’s not answering. I discovered him injecting formaldehyde into the femoral artery of the most recent body donated to science. He was doing an embalming with no one else around.
“This is the third time I’ve caught him,” I remind Marino. “God only knows what the real number is. Fabian has decided he doesn’t answer to me, not to either of us. And I don’t think he’s the only one who’s decided it.”
I send him another text, warning about traffic. I instruct him to head out, adding that I hope he got my earlier messages. He’s to bring extra PPE, and on his way to grab scrubs and a pair of surgical clogs for me. I don’t want him in my office digging through more personal clothing. I don’t want my secretary touching my belongings, either.
“Screw this.” Marino checks traffic all around us.
He nudges his truck ahead barely, and I can tell he’s about to bust another move.
“Hold on, Doc!”
He flips on the strobes like a cowboy cop. Flooring it, he cuts into another side street as I clutch my briefcase, holding on to the armrest again.
“You’re going to have to do something about her.” Marino is talking about Maggie. “Before it’s too late. And maybe it already is.”
“You know how hard it is to fire anyone who works for the state,” I reply. “Especially if that person is protected the way she is and has been for decades. Should we go after her, it will be an all-out war. One we won’t win because she’s in Elvin’s pocket.”
“You mean in his pants.”
“We can’t prove that or much of anything,” I reply.
“We’ve got to find something to nail her with like leaks to the media. Because we know damn well it’s her. What’s she getting in exchange for her favors to the Dana Dilettis of the world? Our office is hemorrhaging like a damn sieve.”
“And who’s going to do something about it?” I reply, and it’s a tired argument. “Elvin oversees everything that pertains to public health in the Commonwealth. That includes how people die. I answer to him.” It’s a loathsome thought, and Marino can’t accept it. “Elvin has all the power, and he set things up to be exactly like they are. I’m sure he’s enjoying himself royally.”
My predecessor, Elvin Reddy, won’t forgive or forget. He’ll never stop paying me back for dropping him from my forensic pathology fellowship program. This was decades earlier when I was new on the job in an all-boys club. The first woman chief medical examiner of Virginia, I had very decided ideas about doing no harm. Death shouldn’t be political. It’s not something to be exploited or trivialized.
I refused to mentor Elvin or so much as write a letter of recommendation, and would do the same today. When I agreed to replace him as chief medical examiner last year, I didn’t know the rest of the story. It wasn’t until I’d moved here that I realized his secretary, Maggie, wasn’t leaving with him. I’d inherited her. Then he was appointed health commissioner. I’d been lured into a trap is the way Marino describes it.
I grip the armrest again as he careens into another alleyway. This one isn’t as narrow as before, and we’re a few blocks from the river. Sunlight breaks through clouds, and a perfect rainbow arcs across the sky over the steeple of the Basilica of Saint Mary. I’ve not been to church since the pandemic started. Before that I had other excuses, if I’m honest.
“Let’s see what Maggie has to say for herself, what poisonous stew she’s been stirring up this time.” I call her mobile phone, and it barely rings before she answers instantly.
“It’s about time you got back to me,” her voice sounds rudely from the truck’s speakers.
“I’ve been a little busy, as you well know,” I reply.
“I left you a message that the health commissioner needs a word with you.” My secretary’s polished British accent belies her basic incivility.
I can tell from the background noise that she’s home from the office. It sounds like she’s outside walking her dog, and she asks me to hold for a second. I hear her picking up after her Corgi named Emma as Marino glances at me, shaking his head hatefully. Then Maggie resumes telling me how frustrating it is when I’m missing in action.
“As usual you’re nowhere to be found, flitting about with your personal investigative partner in his gas-guzzling truck,” she’s saying, and I sense her resentment like a bomb off-gassing. “And his reimbursements for fuel and such are something you and I need to discuss…”
“You know exactly where I’ve been.” I make no attempt at sounding gracious, barely polite. “I’ve not had an opportunity to deal with much of anything since escaping a volatile situation in court a few minutes ago—”
“I have no doubt that you could use a vacation, a rest from all this madness.” Maggie is quick to cut me off, and I have no doubt who she’s been conferring with. “Today in particular has been… Well, there’s no other word for it other than deplorable.”
“What do you want, Maggie?”
“I understand you’ve yet to call Doctor Reddy?”
“Call him about what?”
“If you’d bothered to return my call in a timely fashion you would know.” The way she addresses me, you’d think she was in charge. “Well, it won’t be possible to reach him now.”
Elvin no doubt has plenty to say about Marino’s outbursts, and my running shoeless along the sidewalk in Courthouse Square. Every public embarrassment, mistake and misfortune is a gift when one’s adversary has the obsessiveness of a stalker.
“Doctor Reddy is having dinner at the governor’s mansion, and waited as long as he could. I’m afraid you lost that window of opportunity.” Maggie’s arrogant voice inside the truck.
“What’s so urgent?” Anger continues heating me up. “Why is it more important than what Marino and I are on our way to deal with—”
“I’m afraid your public spectacles a little while ago are everywhere.” Maggie continues to interrupt. “He and others aren’t happy about your investigative partner’s behavior, either. It’s simply disgraceful the way he bullies and threatens—”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Marino feels compelled to interrupt as profanely as possible.
“Such language,” she goes on to chide him, and I imagine her imperiously pretty face as sharp as a blade.
I can see her smug, satisfied smile as she walks her spoiled dog through her cloistered Old Town condo development. I tell her that Channel 5 knew about Rachael Stanwyck around the same time Investigator Fruge notified our office.
“Dana Diletti was on the air first with the breaking news, ambushing me yet again.” It’s obvious what I’m accusing. “And this has been happening all too often. It’s been escalating.”
“Just one of many things Doctor Reddy has concerns about,” Maggie says. “But far more troubling is your very clear conflict of interests.”
Rachael Stanwyck is linked to a controversial trial that’s international news. She’s the sister of the very judge in the case. Apparently, Annie Chilton and I have a long history, Maggie goes down the list.
“You know better than most that there’s not much one can’t find out these days.” Her tone turns insidious like the hiss of a snake. “And apparently it’s come to the health commissioner’s attention that you and the judge once lived together in a lovely place that I wouldn’t think was in your price range back then.”
CHAPTER 8
Maggie informs me that Channel 5 has been digging up all sorts of interesting information about Annie’s and my past. Including specifics about the rented rowhouse we shared while at Georgetown Law, two bedrooms and a patio. It’s not far from the Four Seasons Hotel, my secretary says, and that’s true.
