The Last Precinct ks-11

by Patricia Cornwell

  "Hello?" A woman answers.

  "Ms. Berger?" I say.

  "Hold on." The person calls out, "Mom! For you!"

  The minute Berger gets on the line I say, "What else don't I know about you? Because it's becoming patently clear that I don't know much."

  "Oh, Jill." She must mean the person who answered the phone. "Actually, they're from Greg's first marriage. Two teenagers. And today I'd sell them to the first bidder. Hell, I'd pay someone to take them."

  "No, you wouldn't!" Jill says in the background and laughs.

  "Let me get to a quieter spot." Berger talks as she moves into some other area of wherever it is she lives with a husband and two children she has never mentioned to me, even after all the hours we spent together. My resentment simmers. "What's up, Kay?"

  "Did you know Benton?" I ask her straight up.

  Nothing.

  "Are you there?" I speak again.

  "I'm here," she says and her tone has gotten quiet and serious. "I'm thinking how best to answer you…"

  "Why not start with the truth. For once."

  "I've always told you the truth," she replies.

  "That's ridiculous. I've heard even the best of you lie when you're trying to manipulate someone. Suggesting lie detectors, or the big needle truth serum to get people to 'fess up, and there's also such a thing as lying by omission. The whole truth. I demand it. For God's sake, did Benton have something to do with the Susan Pless case?"

  "Yes," Berger replies. "Absolutely yes, Kay."

  "Talk to me, Ms. Berger. I've just spent the entire afternoon going through letters and other weird things he received before he was murdered. They were processed in the post office located in Susan's neighborhood."

  A pause. "I'd met Benton numerous times and my office has certainly availed itself of the services the behavioral science unit has to offer. Back then, at least. We actually have a forensic psychiatrist we use now, someone here in New York. I'd worked with Benton on other cases over the years, that's my point. And the minute I learned about Susan's murder and went to the scene, I called him and got him up here. We went through her apartment, just as you and I went through the Richmond crime scenes."

  "Did he ever indicate to you that he was getting strange

  mail and phone calls and other things? And that just possibly there was a connection between whoever was doing it and whoever murdered Susan Pless?"

  "I see," is all she says.

  "See? What the hell do you see?"

  "I see you know," she answers me. "Question is, how?"

  I tell her about the Tlip file. I inform her that it appears Benton had the documents checked for fingerprints and I am wondering who did that and where and what the results might have been. She has no idea but says we should run any latent prints through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, known as AFIS. "There are postage stamps on the envelopes," I inform her. "He didn't remove them and he would have had to if he wanted them checked for DNA."

  It has only been in recent years that DNA analysis has become sophisticated enough, because of PCR, to make it worthwhile to analyze saliva, and just maybe whoever affixed postage stamps to the envelopes did so by licking them. I am not sure that even Carrie would have known back then that licking a stamp might give up her identity to us. I would have known. Had Benton showed these letters to me, I would have recommended he have the stamps examined. Maybe we would have gotten results. Maybe he wouldn't be dead.

  "Back then a lot of people, even those in law enforcement, just didn't think about things like that." Berger is still talking about the postage stamps. "Seems like all cops do these days is follow people for their coffee cups or sweaty towels, Kleenex, cigarette butts. Amazing."

  1 have an incredible thought. What she is saying has brought to mind a case in England where a man was falsely accused of a burglary because of a cold hit on the Birmingham-based National DNA Database. The man's solicitor demanded a retest of the DNA recovered from the crime, this time using ten loci, or locations, instead of the standard six that had been used. Loci, or alleles, are simply specific locations on your genetic map. Some alleles are more common than others, so the less common they are and the more locations used, the better

  your chances for a match_which isn't literally a match, but

  rather a statistical probability that makes it almost impossible to believe the suspect didn't commit the crime. In the British case, the alleged burglar was excluded upon retesting with ad- ditional loci. There was a one-in-thirty-seven-million chance of a mismatch, and sure enough, it happened.

  "When you tested the DNA from Susan's case, did you use STR?" I ask Berger.

  STR is the newest technology in DNA profiling. All it means is we amplify the DNA with PCR and look at very discriminating repeated base pairs called Short Tandem Repeats. Typically, the requirement for DNA databases these days is that at least thirteen probes or loci be used, thus making it highly improbable that there will be any mismatches.

  "I know our labs are very advanced," Berger is saying. "They've been doing PCR for years."

  "It's all PCR unless the lab is still doing the old RFLP, which is very reliable but just takes forever," I reply. "In 1997, it was a matter of how many probes you used_or loci. Often in first screening of a sample, the lab may not do ten, thirteen or fifteen loci. That gets to be expensive. If only four loci were done in Susan's case, for example, you could come up with an unusual exception. I'm assuming the ME's office still has the extraction left in their freezer."

  "What sort of bizarre exception?"

  "If we're dealing with siblings. Brothers. And one left the seminal fluid and the other left the hair and saliva."

  "But you tested Thomas's DNA, right? And it was similar to Jean-Baptiste's but not the same?" I can't believe it. Berger is getting agitated.

  "We also did that just days ago with thirteen loci, not four or six," I reply. "I'm assuming the profiles had a lot of the same alleles, but also some different ones. The more probes you do, the more you come up with differences. Especially in closed populations. And when you think of the Chandonne family, theirs is probably a very closed population, people who have lived on Ile Saint-Louis for hundreds of years, probably married their own kind. In some cases, inbreeding_marrying cousins, which might also account for Jean-Baptiste Chandonne's congenital deformity. The more people inbreed, the more they up their chances for genetic glitches."

  "We need to retest the seminal fluid from Susan's case," Berger decides.

  "Your labs would do that anyway, since he's up on murder charges," I reply. "But you might want to encourage them to make it a priority."

  "God, let's hope it doesn't turn out to be someone else," she says in frustration. "Jesus, that would be awful if the DNA doesn't match when they do the retest. Talk about really screwing up my case."

  She is right. It certainly would. Even Berger might have a hard time making a jury believe that Chandonne killed Susan if his DNA doesn't match the DNA of the seminal fluid recovered from her body.

  "I'll get Marino to submit the stamps and any latent prints to the Richmond labs," she then says. "And Kay, I need to ask you not to look at anything in that file unless it's witnessed; don't look any further. That's why it's best you don't submit any evidence yourself."

  "I understand." Another reminder that I am under suspicion for murder.

  "For your own protection," she adds.

  "Ms. Berger, if you knew about the letters, about what was happening to Benton, then what did you think when he was murdered?"

  "Aside from the obvious shock and grief? That he was killed by whoever was harassing him. Yes, first thing that came to mind. However, when it became clear who his killers were and then they were gunned down, there didn't seem to be anything to pursue further."

  "And if Carrie Grethen wrote those harassing letters, she wrote the worst one, it seems, on the very day Susan was killed."

  Silence.

  "I think we must conside
r there could be a connection." I am firm on this point. "Susan may have been Chandonne's first victim in this country, and as Benton started poking around he might have started getting too close to other things that point to the cartel. Carrie was alive and in New York when Chandonne came there and killed Susan."

  "And maybe Benton was a hit?" Berger sounds doubtful.

  "More than maybe," I reply. "I knew Benton and the way he thought. For starters, why was he carrying the Tlip file in his briefcase_why did he take it with him to Philadelphia if he didn't have some reason to think that the weird stuff in it was connected to what Carrie and her accomplice were doing? Balling people and cutting their faces off. Making them ugly. And the notes Benton was getting made it clear he was going to be made ugly, and he sure as hell was…"

  "I need a copy of that file," Berger dismisses me. It is obvious by her tone that she suddenly wants to get off the phone. "I've got a fax machine here in the house." She gives me the number.

  I GO INTO ANNA'S STUDY AND SPEND THE NEXT HALF hour photocopying everything in the Tlip file because I can't feed laminated documents into the fax machine. Marino finished the burgundy and is asleep on the couch again when I return to the living room, where Lucy and McGovern sit in front of the fire talking, continuing to paint scenarios that are only getting wilder the more they are influenced by alcohol. Christmas speeds away from us. We finally get around to opening gifts at half past ten, and Marino groggily plays Santa, handing out boxes and trying to be festive. But his mood has gotten only darker and any attempts at humor have a bite. At eleven o'clock, Anna's phone rings. It is Berger.

  "Quid pro quo?" she launches in, referring to the letter dated December 5, 1997. "How many non-legal-minded people use that term? Just a crazy idea, but wonder if there's a way we could get hold of Rocky Caggiano's DNA. May as well turn over every stone and not be so quick to assume Carrie wrote these letters. Maybe she did. But maybe she didn't."

  I can't concentrate as I return to Christmas gifts beneath the tree. I try to smile and act abundantly thankful, but I don't fool anyone. Lucy gives me a stainless-steel Breitling watch called a B52 while Marino's gift to me is a coupon for a year of firewood that he will personally deliver and stack. Lucy loves the Whirly-Girls necklace I had made for her and Marino loves the leather jacket from Lucy and me. Anna would be pleased with an art glass vase I found for her, but she is somewhere on 1-95, of course. Everybody goes through the motions quickly because questions hang heavy in the air. While we gather up rumpled ribbons and torn paper, I motion to Marino that I need a private word with him. We sit in the kitchen. He has been in some stage of drunkenness all day, and I can tell that he is probably getting drunk on a regular basis. There is a reason for it.

  "You can't keep drinking like this," I say to him as I pour each of us a glass of water. "It doesn't help anything."

  "Never has, never will." He rubs his face. "And that don't seem to make a damn difference when I'm feeling like shit. Right now, everything's shit." His bleary, bloodshot eyes meet mine. Marino looks like he is about to cry again.

  "Any reason you might have something that could give us Rocky's DNA?" I come right out and ask.

  He flinches as if I have hit him. "What'd Berger tell you when she called? That it? She call about Rocky?"

  "She's just going down the list," I reply. "Anybody connected with us or Benton who might have a link to organized crime. And Rocky certainly comes to mind." I go on and tell him what Berger revealed about Benton and the Susan Pless case.

  "But he was getting that whacko shit before Susan was murdered," he says. "So why would someone be jerking him around if he wasn't sticking his nose in anything yet? Why would Rocky, for example? And I assume that's what you're thinking, that maybe Rocky was sending him that weird shit?"

  I have no answer. I don't know.

  "Well, I guess you're gonna have to get DNA from Doris

  and me 'cause I don't got anything of Rocky's. Not even hair. You could do that, right? If you got the DNA of the mother and the father then you could compare something like saliva?"

  "We could get a pedigree and at least know your son can't be ruled out as a contributor of the DNA on the stamps."

  "Okay." He blows out. "If that's what you want to do. Since Anna's split, think I can smoke in here?"

  "I wouldn't dare," I reply. "What about Rocky's fingerprints?"

  "Forget that. Besides, it didn't look to me like Benton had any luck with the prints. I mean, you can tell he tested the letters for them and that seems to be the end of it. And I know you don't want to hear this, Doc, but maybe you'd better be sure why you're getting into all this. Don't go on a witch hunt 'cause you want to pay back the fucker who might have sent that shit to Benton and maybe had to do with him being killed. It ain't worth it. Especially if you're thinking Carrie did it. She's dead. Let her rot."

  "It is worth it," I say. "If I can know for sure who sent those letters to him, it's worth it to me."

  "Huh. He said The Last Precinct was where he'd end up. Well, looks like he has," Marino muses. "We're The Last Precinct and we're working his case. Ain't that something?"

  "Do you think he carried that file to Philadelphia because he wanted to make sure you or I got it?"

  "Assuming something happened to him?"

  I nod.

  "Maybe," he says. "He was worried he wasn't going to be around much longer and he wanted us to find that file if something did happen to him. And it's strange, too. It's not like he says much in it, almost like he knew other people might see it and he didn't want anything in it that maybe the wrong person would see. Don't you find it interesting there ain't any names in it? Like if he had suspects in mind, he never mentioned anybody?"

  "The file's cryptic," I agree.

  "So who was he afraid might see it? Cops? 'Cause if something happened to him, he would know cops are going through his shit. And they did. Philly cops went through everything in his hotel room and then turned it over to me. He would also figure you're going to see his stuff at some point. Maybe Lucy, too."

  "I think the point is he couldn't be sure of who might see the file. So he was cautious, period. And Benton was certainly known for being cautious."

  "Not to mention," Marino goes on, "he was up there helping out ATE So he mightliave thought ATF would see the file, right? Lucy's ATF. McGovern's ATF and was in charge of the response team working the fires Carrie and her asshole sidekick were setting to disguise the fact they had this nasty little hobby of cutting people's faces off, right?" Marino's eyes narrow. "Talley's ATF," he says. "Maybe we ought to get his DNA, the son of a bitch. Too bad." He gets that look again. I don't think Marino will ever forgive me for sleeping with Jay Talley. "You probably had his fucking DNA, no pun intended. In Paris. I don't guess you got a stain you maybe forgot to wash out?"

  "Shut up, Marino," I say softly.

  "I'm getting withdrawal." He gets up and goes to the liquor cabinet. Now it's time for bourbon. He pours Booker's into a glass and comes back to the table. "Wouldn't that just be something if it turns out Talley's involved in everything from soup to nuts. Maybe that's why he wanted you at Interpol. He wanted to pick your brain to see if you knew maybe what Benton knew? 'Cause guess what? Maybe when Benton was poking around after Susan's murder, he started figuring out shit that started pulling him too close to a truth Talley can't afford for nobody to know."

  "What are you two talking about?" Lucy is in the kitchen. I didn't hear her walk in.

  "Sounds like a job for you." Marino gives her his puffy eyes as he swills bourbon in his glass. "Why don't you and Teun investigate Talley and find out how dirty he is. 'Cause I believe with all my little heart they don't come no dirtier. And by the way." This to me. "In case you didn't hear, he's one of the guys who drove Chandonne up to New York. Now ain't that interesting? He sits in on Berger's interview. He spends six hours in the car with him. Hey, they're probably drinking buddies by now_or maybe they already was."

  Lucy stares ou
t the kitchen window, her hands in the pockets of her jeans, obviously put off by Marino and embarrassed by him. He is sweating and profane, and unsteady on his feet, and filled with hate and spite one minute, sullen the next.

  "You know what I can't stand?" Marino keeps at it. "1 can't stand bad cops who get away with it because everybody's too damn chicken to go after them. And nobody wants to touch Talley or even try because he speaks all these languages and went to Harvard and is a big shot golden boy…"

  "You really don't know what you're talking about," Lucy says to Marino, and by now, McGovern has wandered into the kitchen. "You're wrong. Jay's not off limits and you're not the only person on this planet who has doubts about him."

  "Serious doubts," McGovern echoes.

  Marino shuts up and leans against the counter.

  "I can tell you what we know so far," Lucy says to me. She is reluctant and soft-spoken because nobody, really, is quite sure how I feel about Jay. "I kind of hate to, because there's nothing definitive. But it's not looking good so far." She looks at me as if in search of a cue.

  "Good," I tell her. "Let's hear it."

  "Yeah. I'm all ears," Marino responds.

  "I've run him through quite a number of databases. No criminal or civil court records, no liens or judgments, et cetera. Not that we expected him to be a registered sex offender or deadbeat parent or missing or wanted or whatever, and there's no evidence that the FBI, CIA or even ATF has a file on him in their systems of records. But doing a simple search of real estate records raised a red flag. First of all, he has a condo in New York where he's let certain select friends stay_including high-ranking people in law enforcement," she says to Marino and me. "A three-million-plus place full of antiques, on Central Park. Jay has bragged that the condo is his. Well, it's not. Comes back to a corporate name."

  "It's not uncommon for wealthy people to have property in separate corporate names, for privacy reasons and also to protect various assets from litigation," I point out.