Depraved Heart

by Patricia Cornwell

  “You can’t take out the damn trunk with a damn water cannon unless you want to kill whoever might be inside.” Marino is frustrated as hell.

  “That’s why you drill a hole and take a look,” I say to him as I drive fast toward the river. “And I don’t mean you literally, Marino. If there’s loose black powder anywhere I wouldn’t want to introduce a power drill unless it’s a bomb squad doing it.”

  “How much time do we got?” he retorts. “The answer is nothing to waste if there’s even the slightest chance Hyde is alive.”

  “What we know for a fact is the trunk has been glued shut for a reason,” Benton says. “Not a good one. If it’s not a dead body inside then we should be worried about some other ugly surprise like a bomb.”

  “Why glue the trunk shut then?” Marino says. “Why not let some poor cop pop the lid and boom? End of story.”

  “If you can’t open the trunk easily then more people get involved. The more people the more collateral damage,” Benton replies. “Maybe twelve people get taken out instead of one.”

  “Or that’s what we’re supposed to conclude,” I decide.

  CHAPTER 46

  MARINO COULDN’T BE MORE DISTRACTED. IT’S worse as we approach the old warehouses, the storage bins, the defunct belt conveyors and bucket elevators up ahead.

  A high fence and foothills of gravel and sand rise above rusty railroad tracks and soaring stretches of I-93 and U.S. 1. Beyond are the cable-stayed Zakim Bridge and the Boston skyline, the tops of the towers and buildings dissolving in the fog. The rain isn’t hard but it’s constant. The basin will be muddy and low-lying areas will be underwater.

  I glance in the rearview mirror at Benton. He meets my eyes and his are lusterless and grim. If he’s in contact with his FBI colleagues I can’t tell.

  “What’s going on with your division?” I ask him as Marino looks out his side window, on a call with the head of his department’s bomb squad.

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes?” Marino says. “Yeah usually we don’t need to touch nothing and can stand there until we turn into skeletons. But not when a cop might be dying inside the damn trunk. Yeah get here ASAP but I’m going to start without you. Yeah you heard me loud and clear.” He ends the call and drops his phone into his lap.

  “Should I expect to see some of your compatriots here?” I ask Benton. “Because I hope not.”

  “I haven’t told them anything,” he says, and Marino whips around long enough to glare at him.

  “Bullshit.” Marino stares out his window again and says, “One of my guys is missing or dead and your Boston Field Office doesn’t know?”

  “It’s not up to me to notify them unless you ask,” Benton says to the back of Marino’s head. “If you’re inviting me to help and thereby inviting my office to assist, that’s a different matter.”

  “When do I ever invite and when the hell do you ever wait for an invitation? The answer is you guys do whatever the hell you want.”

  “This isn’t about you guys. It’s about me trying to help,” Benton says. “And what I’ll tell you in no uncertain terms is this is a game. That doesn’t mean it’s not a deadly one.”

  “You’ve already been so much damn help today I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you,” Marino says sarcastically, rudely. “I mean flying around watching Lucy’s place get raided and her belongings hauled off. And all the planning that went into that because you guys had to know where she was and when and what would be the best time to spring a little ambush like that. Assuming the DEA didn’t get her first.”

  I turn onto an unpaved access road, and emergency lights are a rolling wave of red and blue.

  “You’ve probably been hatching plots for days and weeks, and I’m sure you never passed along any intelligence you happened to have access to.” Marino keeps his tirade going. “After all it’s only family we’re talking about. Why should you tell us a goddamned thing?”

  Benton is quiet. He knows when not to take verbal swings at Marino, who is keyed up and furious.

  “Right now plain and simple we may have an officer down.” He isn’t going to stop. “And I sure as hell don’t need the friggin’ FBI’s assistance. In fact maybe if you assholes had kept your nose out of what’s going on Carrie Grethen wouldn’t have just murdered someone else, this time a cop.”

  “Be careful …” Benton says but Marino cuts him off.

  “Be careful? Be careful! It’s a little fucking late for that,” Marino yells at him, and I realize what this is about.

  Marino is terrified. He’s afraid we’re going to die. He’s trying not to panic, and anger is his remedy. It’s safer than debilitating fear.

  “Are you telling me you’ve been careful, Benton? Let’s talk about Erin Loria. If she was a cop she’d be a fucking bad one. As an FBI agent I guess she’s typical, a lying, manipulative bitch who has an axe to grind and an old score to settle. To put her on Lucy’s case is like asking John Wayne Gacy to babysit your kids.”

  “I’ve made it clear I had nothing to do with Erin coming here,” Benton says.

  “Well what a strange coincidence that Lucy knew her from their Quantico days.”

  “I doubt it’s a coincidence.”

  “Jesus Friggin’ Christ! You have this way of saying shit like it’s normal. You doubt it’s a coincidence? And you just sit back and watch it happen like a fucking wooden Indian.”

  “I don’t just sit back and watch anything unless I have a reason,” Benton says as I park a generous distance from at least half a dozen police cars, marked and unmarked.

  The three of us get out and I walk around to the back of the SUV, my boots crunching through gravel and swishing through puddles. The smacking of the rain is slower and softer, and cops in slickers and rain suits are huddled a good hundred feet from Hyde’s cruiser. It’s rain spattered and splashed with mud. It looks empty and dead. Whatever we do we run a terrible risk. I see no option that doesn’t include a potential horrific consequence, and Marino has every good reason to react the way he is.

  Usually when an explosive device is suspected the bomb squad will render the vehicle safe by hauling it away inside a containment vessel. They might use a portable X-ray machine to determine if there’s an explosive device inside, and if so they take out the power source, probably with a water cannon. But what Marino said is true. In the process Hyde probably wouldn’t survive assuming he’s inside the trunk and not already dead.

  Rusty and Harold are here and I trot to their van as it bumps through mud. They park and I open the tailgate as they climb out in rain suits. I reach for the borescope, the power drill in their black plastic carrying cases, and then Marino is grabbing them from me.

  “I’ll take care of it.” He’s ordering me around the same way he was Officer Dern.

  “You realize if she has a remote control or some other means to detonate a bomb …” Benton directs this at him as he walks closer to us.

  But Marino isn’t going to listen.

  “Someone’s got to do this. If Hyde’s unconscious and maybe bleeding to death then we don’t have time to waste. Maybe he’s suffocating in there and I’m sure as hell not waiting for the bomb squad,” Marino says over my protests but I’m not going to stop him. “And you need to clear the area, Doc.”

  “Absolutely not,” I reply. “I think right now might be a good time to have a doctor present.”

  “I’m not asking you. Get the hell out of here now!”

  “I’m not going anywhere, and you need to wait for the bomb squad. If Officer Hyde is inside the trunk it’s unlikely he went in willingly and is still alive. He may have been in there most of the day. Your life is a sure thing right this minute and his certainly isn’t. Let someone in a bomb suit drill a hole in the trunk. If this is a trap, Marino, you’re walking right into it.”

  “And if I don’t who will?” His eyes are wide and glassy, and I can see what passes behind them, the dark shape of finality and fear.

  Marino knows this mi
ght be it for him. He would risk everything for an officer he barely knows because that’s what cops do. The brotherhood of the badge, I think, and I understand his motivation but I can’t possibly agree with it.

  “I’m in charge of this scene and I’m ordering you to leave,” Marino says to me and I continue to ignore him. “Rusty, Harold, you need to back up, maybe pull the hell way back out of the way in case I start drilling and the police cruiser blows.”

  “You don’t have to ask us twice,” Rusty says and he and Harold hurry back into the van. “We’ll be a couple blocks from here.” It’s Harold who shouts this. “Just call when you’re ready.”

  “Unless you hear a big bang. In that case take to the hills.” Marino starts walking alone toward the Cambridge police cruiser abandoned between huge mounds of sand and gravel.

  He pauses. He turns around and stares right at me, and when it’s apparent I’m not climbing back inside my SUV and driving away he gets on his radio. I can’t hear what he says as he walks toward the cruiser with his back to me. But instantly a uniformed officer strides in my direction, a young cop I’ve seen before.

  He politely, firmly tells Benton and me that we need to leave the scene now, and when that gets no response he warns us. If we don’t drive away immediately we’ll be interfering with a police investigation. As if he really might haul an FBI agent and a chief medical examiner in handcuffs, and I’m not paying any attention as I watch Marino stop walking again. He turns around and looks back at us as the rain smacks and splashes more slowly. But it seems louder. It seems more ominous.

  “GO!” he bellows. “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

  If it happens he doesn’t want me to see it.

  He walks on. Benton and I get back inside the SUV, only this time he’s in front, and we watch in unbearable silence. Marino has reached the rear of the police cruiser now. He’s up to his ankles in mud, and he sets the carrying cases on the highest driest ground he can find, and he opens them. I see him pick up the cordless drill and attach a battery pack. He walks around the trunk, squatting, standing, studying every detail as he determines where to make the hole.

  The first bite of the steel drill bit into metal and the car is going to explode.

  “It’s not what we think,” Benton says as Marino targets the top of the trunk lid, exactly in the middle. “This isn’t what we think, Kay. It’s what she thinks. This is her fantasy and we’re obliging her by playing it out.”

  “Are you suggesting the car isn’t going to blow up? That it’s a bluff?”

  “I don’t know the answer. But I do know her. I think it’s a bluff but I couldn’t possibly suggest such a thing. We should leave.”

  “Carrie’s fantasy? And you know what that is, Benton? Isn’t it really dangerous to assume you can think and feel like her?”

  I’m so worried about Marino I don’t know whether to scream or cry.

  “Do you see how treacherous it is if you believe you can divine her fantasies?” I hear the high-pitched whine of the drill turning on.

  I WAIT FOR THE SHARP THUNDEROUS CRACK, the billowing black explosion. But there’s nothing.

  “I know the formula for defining who and what she is and does,” Benton is saying. “And she thinks she can do the same with us.”

  “But she can’t.” I roll up my window and shove the gear into reverse. “She can’t possibly, not accurately. She doesn’t have a Rosetta stone that can help her decipher people like us no matter what she believes in her wildest delusions. Carrie is missing too many moral pieces. A conscience for example.”

  “Don’t ever undersell her shrewdness, Kay,” Benton says.

  “And don’t you undersell her malignancy, her sickness. She isn’t us.” I back up and nose out, driving away as I wait for the worst to happen. “And she can’t possibly think and feel exactly like us.”

  “Meaning she’s capable of miscalculating.”

  “As are we,” I reply, and he doesn’t argue but he doesn’t agree with me either.

  I can’t hear the drill bit grinding through metal anymore as I drive away slowly through the flooded River Basin, looking in my rearview mirror. I watch Marino until he’s a small figure I can scarcely recognize. Then he’s gone as we round a bend and I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.

  “Sickness?” Benton returns to that. “You know better than to assume she’s crazy.”

  “I’m referring to her physical health.” I may never see Marino alive again.

  For an instant I’m too upset to speak. I can barely breathe as I listen for the noise of the world coming to an end. Not the entire world. But mine. Will it be a big bang or a whimper? How does death announce itself when it’s our turn at last? Of all people I should know. But I don’t. Not today. Not like this.

  “What about her health?” Benton asks me again, and I can’t abide what I believe he’s done.

  “Ernie detected trace amounts of copper in the dust bunny, the fletching,” I reply. “He says it permeates the samples I collected.”

  “I guess it could be from the copper arrow,” Benton says but his mind is going through something else, making another dangerous calculation that will probably turn out wrong. “Staying there is what she expects us to do.”

  “As opposed to what we’re actually doing, which is driving away and waiting for Marino to die?” Bile is coming up the back of my throat.

  “We have to ask ourselves what she calculates we’d do.” Benton’s hands are loosely curled around the phone in his lap, and every other second he’s looking at what’s landing in the display. “To start with she’d predict you’d say what you just did,” he adds, and he’s in a different character, the one who takes over when he conjures up the devil, when he invites evil to be part of the discussion.

  “If it’s true she has a blood disorder and it’s not being treated,” I say to him, “then she could be in trouble.”

  Even as I ask this the same doubts nag at me. Why would Carrie want me to know that her health could be compromised? Why would she use her self-produced video recordings to reveal that she has a potentially life-threatening gene mutation that killed her mother and her grandmother—if Carrie was telling the truth. Why would she want me to know she suffers from polycythemia vera. By telling me that, she’s given me reason to suspect she’s physically compromised beyond any injury I might have inflicted on her at the bottom of the sea in Fort Lauderdale last June.

  I explain to Benton that if Carrie hasn’t been having regular blood draws she may be suffering from headaches and exhaustion. She could have weakness, visual disturbances and serious complications that could kill or incapacitate her. Such as a stroke, and it seems impossible to consider that a monster like her might ultimately be defeated in such a mundane way.

  “I’ve checked with area doctors, phlebotomists and clinics to see if someone even remotely fitting Carrie’s description has been getting blood removed,” Benton says to my disappointment and surprise. “And the answer seems to be no. But she’s masterful at disguises and creative options.”

  “Then you’ve seen the videos.” I confront him again about the Depraved Heart recordings and he doesn’t say a word. “How long have you known about them and her blood disorder.” I push harder.

  “I know about her suffering from polycythemia vera,” he says.

  “Am I to assume you’ve had access to lab values that show an increased hematocrit and bone marrow packed with red cell precursors?”

  He says nothing.

  “The answer’s no. So in other words, Benton, I don’t see how you could have known. Unless you witnessed the same thing I did on recordings she covertly made.”

  He’s seen them. But he’s not going to say it.

  “If she’s been in this area for the better part of a year as we suspect then she has to have some means of removing a unit or pint of blood every month or two,” I then say, because he’s not going to discuss what he’s orchestrated and misrepresented. “Unless she’s found a dif
ferent way to take care of her problem.”

  “She could have,” he says and right now I know my husband and I don’t.

  I’m reminded I couldn’t do what he does for a living. I’ve never been motivated to form alliances and détentes with miscreants, with monsters. I don’t pretend to understand them. I don’t want to be their friend and tend to resist the temptation of believing I can think like them. I probably can’t. Maybe I wouldn’t if I could or maybe I already can and refuse to face it. But the love of my life, the man I sleep with is a very different story.

  “How the hell has this happened?” I talk very quietly, scarcely audibly as I listen for a boom or bang, what might be a bomb going off.

  “It’s happened exactly according to plan,” Benton says, and he channels people like Carrie or at least he comes disturbingly close to it.

  In his own baffling way he doesn’t judge those he pursues and he doesn’t hate them either. They’re nothing more than sharks or snakes or other deadly creatures in the grand pecking order and food chain of things. He accepts that their behavior is predetermined as if they have no will of their own. He has no feelings about them. Not feelings the rest of us can begin to understand.

  “She presents us with a choice and believes she knows exactly what we’ll decide,” he says as I head to the office. Finally at almost five-thirty.

  At least at the CFC I’m only minutes from the River Basin should the worst happen and in typical fashion I begin to envision what that scene would look like. Then I stop myself. I can’t bear to imagine Marino dead, much less blown apart. He’s always joked about knowing far too much about death and how humiliating it can be. He wouldn’t want people laughing at his autopsy pictures.

  You’ll make sure they don’t pass them around and make fun of me, right Doc? Because I’ve sure as hell seen them do it with other people …

  “Who’s at the Gilbert house? Anybody yet?” I ask Benton as he scrolls through something on his phone.