Depraved Heart

by Patricia Cornwell

“It’s so fucked up. No matter the truth about Pakistan, about missing guns, about anything, nothing justifies this,” Lucy rants on. “There are better ways to handle it. What they’re doing is personally vindictive and destructive. There’s a child and a dog in this house. What did they ever do to deserve …? Well it’s evil and it isn’t even necessary.”

  “That depends on who you ask,” Janet says. “I’m sure to someone it’s necessary.”

  “To Erin.”

  “Directly, yes it’s necessary to Erin Loria. But this is higher up than her. It’s higher up than Benton. When you’re talking about a cover-up of this magnitude it’s at the cabinet level. It’s agency directors who get involved in ugly lies and conspiracies, the Watergates, the Benghazi disaster not to mention making deals with terrorists, exchanging the release of prisoners at GTMO for a deserter. The U.S. doesn’t need any more humiliations, scandals, botched missions, constitutional violations or casualties, and if the collateral damage is you or me or Desi? If it’s all of us? To DoJ, to DoD, to the White House that’s a nothing price to pay as long as the public doesn’t know. As long as it never gets out.”

  What she and Lucy are intimating is egregious beyond comprehension and yet I don’t doubt it could happen. Lucy seems to think that Carrie Grethen has been given an assignment. Or maybe an invitation is a more accurate way to put it if she’s been recruited to kill Lucy, maybe to kill everyone around her. And to make it easy? Let’s leave them on fifty isolated acres with no weapons. Let’s leave them on a remote estate the FBI has vacated and left wide open for an attack that will be interpreted as random, as the lightning strike of a violent psychopath.

  But not a lightning strike by Carrie Grethen. I have a strong suspicion the FBI isn’t about to acknowledge that she’s alive and well. They give every impression to the contrary. She’s not officially considered a fugitive. She’s not on the Ten Most Wanted list. Her case isn’t active with Interpol. On their website Carrie has been a black notice for the past thirteen years. In the international law enforcement community it would appear she’s considered just as dead today as she was when it was assumed that she went down in a helicopter.

  “They’ll chalk it up to a home invasion,” Lucy is saying to Janet, and my chest is tight. “One of those unfortunate things that’s related to my having money. Then the attention of the public will move on. Nobody will remember what happened to us or care.”

  My heart is pounding as I stand inside a dead woman’s bedroom fifteen miles away from Concord, which may as well be a million miles from Lucy’s house. I couldn’t possibly get there fast enough if Carrie has somehow breached the perimeter, if she’s gotten inside and is watching them even as I’m watching all of it. She’s stalking her quarry, about to pounce while I’m her audience it occurs to me horribly, and this is what she’s been leading up to, the grand finale.

  She wants me to see what she does to them.

  “Marino?” I don’t turn around or give a hint of what’s going on inside me. “I need you to get on your phone.”

  My voice catches as if I’m a little hoarse. But I’m perfectly steady. I don’t sound frantic.

  “What is it?” He steps closer.

  “Try Janet. If you can’t get her try Benton, the FBI, the state police …”

  “What the hell is it? Are you talking about Carrie?”

  “Yes that’s exactly who I mean. I’m concerned she might be inside Lucy and Janet’s house or is about to be inside it.”

  “Shit! Why would you …?”

  “Do it now, Marino.”

  “Even better I’ll get some cars from Concord P.D. ASAP. They can be there in two minutes. And I’ll try Janet …”

  “If there’s no response they should break down the gate, the front door. Whatever it takes. Janet and Lucy are okay but I’m not sure they will be for long.”

  “I’m on it. Where are they?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “The bomb shelter?”

  “Yes. But not Desi. I don’t see him.”

  “They must not be worried if he’s not with them,” Marino says and he’s right.

  Why is Desi alone?

  He’s not with them and yet I’ve never seen Lucy more worried than she is right now. It doesn’t make sense. She and Janet are devoted to him. If anything they’re overly protective. So why isn’t he with them? They don’t want him to witness what they’re doing. That’s the obvious answer but it’s not a good enough one, and I hear Marino on his phone as I watch Lucy crazed by panic and rage like a snake at the first metallic touch of the shovel blade. That’s what comes to mind as I spy. Another second goes by. Then two. Then ten, and she steps on various stone tiles as if they might be loose. She lightly jumps up and down on them.

  “Completely undetectable. You can walk across these tiles all day long like those assholes did and you can’t tell.” Lucy jumps again for good measure.

  She’s obsessed with the FBI. She’s fixated on outsmarting the Feds and that’s not wise. Lucy knows better. Certainly Janet does.

  “And even if they’d ever found this, which I knew they wouldn’t, they’d still have to go under a certain undetectable area of the metal flooring and dig down about three feet for the gun case,” Lucy says. “I hate to tell you I told you so.”

  “I agree they shouldn’t have put us in this position,” Janet says strangely.

  It’s as if she’s disassociating herself from whatever she and Lucy may have done earlier that has caused them to be in this part of the house right now. Janet continues to make comments in a stiff stilted way as if she knows someone is listening.

  “But you don’t have to do this,” she’s saying and I continue to be bothered by the way she sounds and acts. “Let’s go upstairs, pack up and get to Kay’s.”

  It’s subtle but I see it. Janet is performing. It’s as if she’s onstage and doesn’t want to be. Like a deer in the headlights, it occurs to me, and I wonder if Erin Loria talked to her alone. I wonder what the FBI might have said to Janet while they were searching the property. They might have made a deal with her. If so it won’t be one that has a good payoff for Lucy. I know about such bargains. You can have immunity as long as you throw your own mother under the bus, and my vigilance kicks up another notch.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Janet encourages Lucy but she isn’t pushy about it. “I don’t want you getting into any more trouble.”

  Lucy stares at her incredulously. “What’s going on with you? I’m not leaving us with no damn way to protect ourselves. We agreed this morning we wouldn’t let them do that to us. What’s wrong with you? You of all people know what she’s like.”

  “I never really knew her,” Janet says and I’m stunned.

  Of course she knew Carrie. Janet knew about their relationship at the time. There have been endless conversations about it since.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Lucy has her hands on her hips. “You sure as hell met her back then. Remember the time we were having lunch in the Boardroom and she sat at our table and didn’t say one word to you or even look at you?” She’s angry and accusatory. “And the time you and I were talking in my dorm room and she walked in without knocking like she was hoping to catch us. What do you mean you never really knew her? What are you talking about?” Lucy is getting more upset.

  “In the ERF, the Boardroom, out running, in passing in other words.” Janet’s voice is flat and disconnected. “I’m not sure I’d recognize her.”

  “You’ve seen the photos. I’ve used computer age progression and showed you what she’d look like today. And besides you remember her. You’d recognize her. Hell yes you would.”

  “I recognize her behavior. But literally I’ve not seen her to quote recognize her.”

  “Are you being funny?”

  “I’m being a lawyer. I’m telling you how I would feel compelled to answer the question of whether I’ve seen her.”

  “Because this isn’t a game,” Lucy says, and I think I sme
ll it. “They lie and say there’s no evidence she exists and you’re going to help them out by saying you haven’t seen her?”

  “I haven’t seen her since the late nineties. Not probably. Absolutely and it’s the truth,” Janet says, and I’m sure I smell it.

  I remember the loamy musky scent. More olfactory fool’s gold, and of course I’m not smelling it now but it wasn’t just Lucy. It was Janet too. When I hugged both of them it entered my mind that they’d been doing yard work. Until I remembered they don’t do yard work. They smelled as if they’d been digging in the soil.

  Both of them did.

  Not just Lucy. But also Janet, who was in her scrubs, and I was surprised by her messy hair, her dirty nails and that she was wearing what essentially are her pajamas. She didn’t bother to get dressed this morning. She got out of bed and got busy. She got sweaty and dirty. She didn’t clean up before Erin Loria appeared at the front door and that was deliberate. Janet wanted to look surprised. She wanted to look raided without a moment’s advance warning. She intended to look caught, ambushed and demoralized. But she wasn’t really. Neither was Lucy.

  They knew the FBI was coming.

  “I’m not getting Janet,” Marino says behind my back. “It goes straight to voice mail.”

  JANET’S PHONE DOESN’T RING. I’m watching it on her waistband and the display isn’t lighting up the way it should if someone is calling her. I also don’t hear it.

  Marino is trying her number and her phone is silent. She’s not checking it and I wonder if it was working earlier. The video opened with Janet clipping her phone back on the waistband of her scrubs. What was she doing with it before I started watching and why doesn’t it seem to be working now?

  “Okay. I’m trying again. And I think Janet might have her phone off. Or the FBI might have taken it from her.” Marino has no idea what I’m seeing.

  He isn’t watching the live feed and can’t know that I’m looking at Janet and her phone even as he’s trying to call her.

  “She may have the ringer off or the battery could be dead but the FBI doesn’t have her phone,” I say to Marino because I’m looking at it. “Are the police en route?”

  “They sure as hell should be. Let me check.”

  “Don’t push me away,” Janet is saying to Lucy. “Don’t act like I’m the enemy. That’s what they want. That’s especially what Erin wants. Come on. Let’s go back upstairs.” She pulls Lucy by the hand but she won’t budge. “We’ll get a few things and go to Kay’s house. Come on. We’ll get there and have a drink and a nice dinner and everything will be better,” says Lucy’s partner, her lover, her soul mate, colleague and best friend.

  They’ve been each other’s best everything on and off since the beginning of their FBI careers when they first met at Quantico. For a number of years they lived together, and I’ve always thought Janet is wonderful for Lucy, ideal, maybe perfect. They have much in common and are similarly motivated and trained. But Janet is more flexible and easygoing. She’s as patient and deliberate as the Sphinx, she likes to say, and she’s bright and grounded. She’s not an impulsive or angry person and doesn’t seem to have a lot to prove.

  I was distraught when they broke up. But time heals as it passes and about a decade did. Then Janet came back. I don’t know how it happened exactly, only what I’ve been told and that it seemed a miracle. I suppose it still does, and I think back to when Lucy ordered her to move out not all that long ago. The spring, I think, and how cruel that must have been.

  It was about the same time Janet learned her sister was dying, and in the blink of an eye it must have seemed that everything was lost. It would be a hard thing to forgive. I understand Lucy’s fear that Carrie would target Janet and Desi. But I also believe what Lucy decided to do about it was hurtful and unfair. Janet has let it go, just as she’s let so many things go. Sometimes I halfway wonder if she’s a saint.

  “I told you not to follow me down here.” Lucy walks to a workbench. “Everything isn’t going to be better but it’s also not going to get as bad as it could. Go upstairs.” She opens a drawer. “I bet Desi would like some popcorn and a movie. Why don’t you put Frozen on again? I’ll be right up with a few friends and we’ll go,” she adds and friends is a euphemism for guns.

  Lucy has hidden weapons from the FBI.

  She’s fighting for her life, for what in her mind is everybody’s life while Janet in cool contrast is reluctant and somewhat removed. I sense something else beneath her flat calm, beneath her unconditional love and loyalty. For a flicker I feel a wavering of trust. Just as quickly the feeling is gone. Janet is uncomfortable. Understandably so I tell myself. If she’s acting detached and a little flat and uncooperative it’s to counterbalance Lucy, who at the moment is her polar opposite emotionally. Her fists are loosely clenched. Her entire body is tense as she threatens and curses the federal government.

  I watch her open more drawers in a workbench that fills an entire wall. I can see a hydraulic lift in the background and there’s a car on it, her Ferrari FF, Tour de France blue. The all-wheel-drive supercar is what she was driving two months ago when I was shot. She was talking about it with Jill Donoghue earlier today when they were going over possible alibis for where Lucy was when I almost died.

  “You can’t let them dictate how you behave. It doesn’t matter what they’ve done.” Janet is firm but calm, and she’s something else. “Let’s go upstairs before it’s too late. You don’t need to do this.”

  “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six.” Lucy means she’d rather be on trial than dead. “If we don’t have any way to protect ourselves? You know exactly what’s going to happen. This is wrong, Janet. It’s outrageously disgusting. The FBI wants us murdered.”

  “I realize Erin has set it up that way. Don’t give her what she wants.”

  “How convenient. If we’re dead then Erin is rid of her biggest problem in life.”

  “That’s what she thinks at any rate. So you know what we do? Let’s leave and go to your aunt’s house. Let’s talk to Benton about it,” Janet says, and then it lands hard on me.

  I realize what I’ve been picking up. Janet won’t look in the direction of any surveillance camera. Lucy in contrast is looking wherever she wants. At cameras and away from them. It’s obvious to me that she doesn’t assume the FBI is spying on them. Lucy clearly doesn’t think she’s being picked up by her own security system but Janet is wary and cautious. She avoids looking in the direction of the cameras and yet she’s talking openly and that’s confusing to me. Why would she mention Erin Loria by name? Why would she mention POTUS, Benghazi and cover-ups?

  “We can’t be emotional.” Janet doesn’t take her eyes off Lucy.

  “I’ll be whatever I want,” Lucy says. “Wait and see what I do. They can go to hell if they think we’re going to be left here with nothing. Not a handgun. Not even a damn steak knife. She leaves us here like this so we can’t protect ourselves or Desi or even Jet Ranger against the worst dirtbag imaginable. And they know her. They sure as hell do because they created her.”

  The Feds created Carrie Grethen like Frankenstein. Marino said that earlier and he was quoting Lucy.

  She walks over to the area of flooring she was jumping on a few minutes ago. Metal rings against stone as she sets down a pry bar and a small shovel. She pulls her gray T-shirt over her head, balls it up and drops it on top of the workbench. She’s sinewy and strong in her sports bra and running shorts, and I feel her raw vulnerability as I wonder where the cops are.

  “Have you heard from the Concord police?” I ask Marino. “Are they there yet?”

  CHAPTER 41

  THE MUSCLES OF HER SHOULDERS AND UPPER ARMS flex as she finds a folded tarp and opens it near the area of flooring she was jumping on a few minutes ago.

  I’m reminded of how supremely fit and disciplined Lucy is. She rarely drinks alcohol. She’s vegan. She runs and works out daily with weights and TRX bands. I catch a glimpse of the small
dragonfly on her flat lower abdomen and think about what the whimsical tattoo hides. Carrie scarred her. Carrie marked her for life. Carrie might be inside the house. She could be no more than a room or two away. Lucy and Janet have no idea and I can’t reach them.

  “I’ve not heard shit.” Marino answers my question about the Concord police. “Let me try my guy there again.”

  I’m not intimate with every nook and cranny inside the house Lucy built after we relocated to Massachusetts some five years ago. But I’m familiar with where she and Janet are right now and know that the entire area is monitored by surveillance devices. Lucy is technically sophisticated and meticulous. So is Janet. It was only months ago they began talking about adopting Desi and upgrading the security system.

  “Really?” Lucy puts on a pair of thick leather work gloves. “They come in here and do this and we’re not supposed to have any recourse?” She picks up the pry bar. “Talk about an unfair fight.”

  “There are no words for how unfair this is,” Janet says.

  “The kurz is going to be planted somewhere around here. You know that right?”

  “Did Erin say something that made you think she was planting evidence?”

  “She wanted me to think it and start packing my bags for going down the river.”

  “Where would she have hidden it?”

  “Maybe out there in the woods where somebody’s been but the cameras aren’t picking up anything,” Lucy says. “Maybe it’s buried out there like Blackbeard’s treasure so the FBI can magically dig it up and send me to prison. Maybe Carrie was out there in the woods watching Erin hide the damn thing. That would almost be funny.”

  “When for a fact did you ever see Erin with the MP5K?”

  “I didn’t see it and wouldn’t have known about it. But Carrie had to brag. She just couldn’t resist rubbing it in.”

  “So it’s what Carrie said as opposed to what you saw.” Janet is a lawyer but I wouldn’t expect her to sound like one during a supposed private moment with her partner.