Dust ks-21

by Patricia Cornwell

My first thought is Gail Shipton. Her feet were bare but that’s ridiculous. She didn’t wrap herself in a white cloth and walk along these tracks in the pouring rain to die in the middle of Briggs Field as if she willed it. More important, the footprint is pointed the wrong way, headed out of the campus and not in.

  We stop beyond the tunnel where rusty iron rails are missing crossties, a toothless stretch of railroad tracks spanning six or seven feet. Then the crossties resume and on the first one is the footprint left in a dirty patina coating the old creosote-treated wood. I crouch to take a closer look at the distinct shape of an insole and five toes with odd scoring at the ball of the foot and the back of the heel. The footprint is anatomically perfect. Too symmetrical and too perfect. It looks fake for a reason.

  Three crossties away I find another identical impression, then one more, and in the dirt nearby on the other side of the tracks there are several partial ones spattered by rain that oddly point the opposite way, toward the campus, as if the person were heading into it. The impressions were left at different times, the partial ones earlier while it was still raining lightly, I decide, and the others later when it had stopped. Each footprint is slightly smeared as if the person was jumping from tie to tie or running or both. Sure-footed, strong, and agile, he wasn’t slipping or stumbling in conditions that most of us couldn’t navigate at a rapid pace.

  The footprints look inhuman as if made by a superhero in a rubber suit who vanished along the railroad tracks as abruptly as he appeared. A Batman, a Superman, setting down before springing into flight again. Only this character isn’t dedicated to fighting threats against humanity, and I envision the figure in black tights I noticed jogging when I arrived at the scene while it was still dark. Agile and fast, and for some reason he caught my eye as he headed toward the very area of the campus where the railroad tracks run behind Simmons Hall.

  “A shoe glove.” That much is obvious to me. “Lucy wears them sometimes, five-fingered running shoes, as they’re called, for minimalist jogging or sprinting.”

  “Minimalist like a white cloth. Like simple clear plastic bags adorned with simple bows made out of decorative duct tape. Minimal injuries. A minimal struggle if there was one at all.” Benton says all this as if he’s computing out loud. “Killing minimally but with great fanfare and mockery. He knows how to get attention.”

  “Have you seen a footprint like this before?”

  He shakes his head, his jaw hard set. Benton hates whoever it is.

  “No footwear patterns have been found at any of the other scenes,” he says. “He drove and then was on foot through woods. It doesn’t mean he didn’t have something like this on. I don’t know.”

  “Supposedly running gloves are the closest thing to being barefoot, what Lucy calls running naked,” I tell him. “They’re certainly not what you would expect anyone to be wearing out here, especially in these wet, muddy conditions. They have protective soles but you can feel the terrain through them, every rock, stick, or crack in the sidewalk. Or so I’m told. Lucy usually wears hers on the street, on the beach, but not off road.”

  Within a space of ten crossties the shoulders of the tracks are gravel again. The dark hardwood is wet but relatively clean and I wonder if the footprints are another premeditated surprise. I wonder if we’re supposed to find them like the tool, like Gail Shipton’s handbag and wallet. Or did her minimalist, attention-seeking killer finally slip up and was the bead of mentholated ointment adhering to grass also an error? I can get DNA from Vicks. All I need is a few skin cells.

  I dig my phone out of my jacket pocket and use it to take several photos of a footprint and when I stand up my vision goes black. For an instant I feel faint. My blood sugar is low. I look up at the bare tops of trees against the bright sky, at clawlike branches swaying in wind that is shifting, and the air is brisk against my skin. I look around for him, for whoever is stalking women and murdering them and very likely stalking me. I need to get to my office.

  I need the body to talk to me because it will tell me the truth in a language that makes sense and can be trusted. The dead aren’t capricious with me. They don’t lie. They don’t create spectacles and they don’t prey on anyone. I don’t want to be inside the killer’s mind. I don’t want to witness what Benton does. I’m reminded how it feels to watch him bond the way he must with a person who brings the dead to my door.

  “I’ll get hold of Marino,” I decide. “He needs to come here now so I can get to the office and start on the autopsy.” I text the photos to him.

  I include the message that we’ve found unusual footprints left on the railroad tracks on the other side of the tunnel that cuts through a brain research institute, maybe a quarter of a mile from the tennis bubble.

  Not a minute after I’ve pressed Send, Marino calls me.

  “You got any good reason to think they’re his?” he asks right off.

  “They were left in the past few hours as the rain was light and then later when it stopped,” I reply. “Some impressions are partially washed away and heading into the campus while others are intact and heading out. Therefore, I think we can safely conclude these were left by someone walking, possibly running, back here recently, headed into the campus and then away from it while it was still dark and we were still working the scene.”

  “He wouldn’t be heading toward the scene on foot if he had the body with him,” Marino says, his voice heavy with doubt.

  “No he wouldn’t.”

  “Then what the hell was he doing going in and out?”

  “I don’t know but you should check to see if you find other footprints, ones I might have missed.”

  “I don’t know why he’d go in and out on foot. Maybe different people left what you’re looking at.”

  “Are you familiar with shoe gloves?” I ask.

  “The freaky shoes Lucy wears. She got me a pair a couple of Christmases ago, remember? They got no arch support. I looked like a frog in them and kept stubbing my damn rubber toes.”

  “I’m estimating they’re twenty-six, possibly twenty-seven, centimeters in length.”

  “How about inches. I live in America.”

  “Approximately ten inches, which would be the equivalent of a size eight in men’s shoes or a size ten in women’s.”

  “Size eight?” Marino’s voice is loud in my ear. “That’s pretty damn small for a man. Could be a kid playing around back there along the railroad tracks. Not to mention the weird-ass shit MIT students are into, and some of their nerdy little genius-types are like fourteen years old, right? Wouldn’t surprise me if one of them would wear shoes with toes in them.”

  “We need these footprints photographed to scale.” I hear myself telling Marino what to do as if he still works for me.

  No matter my intentions I can’t seem to resist supervising him. I can feel him bristle over the phone. Or I imagine I do.

  “It may be that they turn out not to be relevant,” I add diplomatically as I hear the background sounds of metal jingling and a car door thudding.

  I hear Marino getting Quincy out of the SUV and on leash.

  “But let’s play it safe. Photos and measurements, please,” I add. “I don’t think you’ll be able to cast the impressions but you might want to collect the soil for trace. We’ll get Ernie to take a look at that, too.” Ernie Koppel is my most senior microscopist and trace evidence examiner. “It’s a long shot, I realize, but if it’s not necessary or possible to preserve the footprints intact you may as well get whatever you want while you can.”

  “I’m coming,” Marino says. “Heading toward you even as we speak. Hold on a few minutes and I’ll grab the photos, whatever’s needed. It doesn’t make sense wearing shoe gloves but I guess if they’re rubber you can wash them off easy enough like flip-flops. What a whack job. Certifiable. We should check area mental hospitals to see who’s gotten out recently.”

  “I wouldn’t make that the first thing on your list.” I hear myself telling him what to do ag
ain.

  “How ’bout you let me do my job?”

  “That’s what I want you to do.”

  “Is he right there?” Marino lowers his voice.

  I look at Benton waiting restlessly, walking along one side of the fence, stooping over again to tuck his pants legs in.

  “That’s correct,” I reply.

  I can’t tell if Benton is listening but it doesn’t matter if he is. He doesn’t have to work hard to figure out what Marino might be thinking. Benton doesn’t have to guess at what Marino might say or wish were true.

  “He mention anything about Lucy?” Marino asks. “Whether she knew her?”

  He wants to know the details of Lucy’s relationship with Gail Shipton and I can’t talk about it.

  “Not really,” I answer as I watch Benton move around, not looking at me, but suddenly I have his attention, I can tell.

  “Not really that she knew her or that you don’t know the details?” Marino says.

  “I don’t.”

  “Huh,” he replies. “But they knew each other somehow.”

  “It would seem so.” I’m not going to lie. “I don’t know to what degree.”

  “Something’s going on with Gail’s phone. When I first got into it early this morning there were text messages, which is how I knew Carin Hegel wanted her to call. There were e-mails. Now they’re gone.”

  “Are you sure they were there in the first place?” I ask and Benton is listening.

  He looks at me.

  “Hell yes,” Marino says. “And every text message and e-mail’s gone, and before that all the photographs were gone. I don’t believe there weren’t any. Who doesn’t have a single photo on their phone? I think when I was picking it up off the pavement somebody had already started deleting shit.”

  “You’re looking at her phone again right now?” I puzzle and I can tell by Benton’s reaction that this has his attention in a powerful way.

  “Why the hell do you think?” Marino asks.

  “It needs to go to the labs.”

  “It’s not that simple. I was just showing the phone to Machado because we’re trying to figure out what to do with it,” Marino says. “Suddenly all that’s left on it are incoming and outgoing calls. No voice mails, no apps, no e-mails, fucking nothing.”

  “You need to get it to the labs,” I repeat.

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that? Considering who would be the one examining it? That’s what Machado and me were talking about. It’s a serious conflict.”

  It would be Lucy who examines it. She’s the CFC’s forensic computer and technology expert, and she analyzes any evidence relating to cybercrime. I understand what Marino’s getting at and why he was having a conversation with Machado. I imagine her deleting certain information from the phone when she discovered it was on the pavement near the Psi Bar around midnight.

  After that she was flying her helicopter, flying Benton home, while she remotely monitored what was going on with Gail’s phone. I suspect when Lucy realized Marino had found it in the parking lot behind the bar she quickly deleted more and by now may have deleted almost everything, and he’s onto her. He’s certain she’s scrubbed the device of any information she doesn’t want the police or anyone else to see.

  “Then I suggest you submit it to the FBI,” I answer him and Benton holds my stare and begins to shake his head. “Let their labs handle it,” I add and Benton startles me by shaking his head No, absolutely not.

  “I do that I lose any control,” Marino says.

  “It sounds to me that you feel you have anyway.” I can tell by Benton’s face that he doesn’t want me to mention the FBI again and I won’t but I don’t understand it and I feel slightly shocked.

  “I’ll never know what they find out either,” Marino says. “They don’t exactly work and play well with others.”

  “You’ll lose control,” I reinforce his misgivings, trying to take back what I suggested that has created such resistance in Benton.

  “And to be fair, I’ve got to talk to her first,” Marino decides.

  Not before I do, I think and I move closer to Benton, both of us watching each other, and I can tell he’s angry and going to do something about it.

  “Maybe there’s an explanation, right?” Marino says conspiratorially. “You’d tell me if you knew, right?”

  “Be careful out here. There’s a lot of slippery mud and rusty metal. We’re just on the other side of the tunnel.”

  “Okay, you can’t talk. But this is exactly what I don’t need right now. A problem with her, and you and me both know what the hell she’s like. Right now I fucking don’t need this,” Marino declares. “One month on the job, not even.”

  “Don’t encourage Marino to turn over the phone to the FBI,” Benton says and he’s adamant about it, referencing the FBI as if it’s separate and apart from him.

  “I already did and you heard me. It made sense to suggest it.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “What on earth is going on?”

  “Don’t suggest it again.”

  “If you say so I won’t.”

  “I mean it, Kay. Goddamn it, I don’t want Granby to know about the phone. I hope to hell Marino stops shooting his mouth off. He has no idea what he’s dealing with.”

  Our eyes are locked as we wait near footprints in a section of muddy tracks, MIT’s nuclear reactor just up ahead, what looks like a big white fuel tank with a tall brick smokestack painted red. For weeks Benton has been talking about a problem with trust and now it’s coming out. He’s not just having personnel disputes, something is terribly wrong and his reaction is unnerving.

  “Is Lucy going to be all right?” I ask. “What’s happening, Benton?”

  “I don’t want some case made about obstruction of justice. She could go to prison and he would do that.”

  “Marino would?” I can’t believe it.

  “Not him, not intentionally. You don’t want my division involved. Cambridge PD can analyze the phone.” His rubber-soled feet crunch on gravel as he moves around, the wind in his hair. “One of their detectives is assigned to the Secret Service and they can do the forensic analysis at their field office in Boston.”

  “How is that better than your office doing it? Your office, where people know us.”

  “Knowing us is worse. And I don’t work for the Secret Service.” Benton steps on a railroad tie, testing how slippery it is. “That’s why it’s better.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You can’t trust them, Kay. That’s what I’m saying. Do you have any idea how much fun Granby would have if he knew anything about the phone? Marino needs to keep his damn mouth shut.”

  It alarms me to think that Benton’s boss would relish going after my niece. I’ve always found him boring and a lightweight, a typical example of what rises to the top, but it’s becoming quite clear that Benton is suggesting Ed Granby is more than an irritant and an obstruction, and not just to him but possibly to all of us.

  “The phone has nothing to do with Gail Shipton’s murder anyway,” Benton says in a steely tone. “Lucy will tell you what she’s done and what she’s trying to prevent. It should come from her. I have to be careful what I say and I’ve already said too much.”

  “I don’t think you’ve said nearly enough and now’s not the time to be careful,” I reply. “We’ve been down this road before when you’ve been so damn loyal to the Bureau and so damn careful and look what happens? All of us get torn apart.” I’m feeling upset and I don’t want to feel like this. “I’m sorry. I’m tired and I haven’t eaten and this is unnerving.”

  He’s silent and I can see his conflict, which is like a war inside him, then he says, “I won’t let that happen ever again.”

  “You’ve said you wouldn’t.”

  “You know what the FBI expects. It not only comes first, it owns you, and then when it’s done with you it exiles you into oblivion or worse.”

  “It doesn’t
own either of us,” I reply. “It did once and it won’t again and your people won’t touch Lucy.”

  “They’re not my people.” His anger flashes again.

  “You own yourself, Benton.”

  “I know that, Kay. I promise I do. I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t own myself.”

  “What is it I can’t trust exactly?” I look at him. “I think it’s time you spell it out.”

  “I’m not sure I can spell it out. But I can tell you what worries me and that I’m alone in it.” Sticks break as he steps farther from the tracks. “I don’t want you hurt and I don’t want Lucy hurt. Granby will hurt you if he can. He’ll hurt all of us and I hope to hell Marino doesn’t say anything about the phone to him or to anyone at my office. Dammit. Why does he have to stick his nose in it? He shouldn’t have called my office and there will be hell to pay if he turns over the phone to them.”

  “He won’t. Marino hates the FBI.”

  “Maybe he should.”

  “I need to know what you’re alone in.” I will make him tell me. “Whatever you’re up against, I’m up against. All of us are.”

  “Now that he’s murdered here, you’re up against it, that’s for sure.”

  “There can’t be any secrets, Benton. The hell with the FBI. This is us. This is people who are dying. Fuck the FBI.” I can’t believe I said it but I did.

  “Marino probably just got me fired but I don’t give a shit. We can’t let Granby get away with this.”

  “We won’t, whatever it is, but you have to talk to me.”

  Benton sits on his heels, his back against the fence, about to tell me what he believes he shouldn’t.

  “They think they know who it is and I’m going to give you the information because anything you hear from them you can’t trust. It’s probably a lie.” He continues to refer to the FBI as if he isn’t the FBI. “These cases now involve you directly and I’m not going to let the Bureau do this to you. You’re right. I promised that would never happen again and it won’t.”

  “Do what?”

  “They’ve done enough to you, to both of us.”

  “What’s happened, Benton?”