Flesh and Blood: A Scarpetta Novel (Scarpetta Novels Book 22)

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Then it’s definitely not been done yet. Maybe they’re waiting for special tests?” the anchorwoman suggests and that can’t be the reason.

  Knowing Raine as well as I do, I don’t accept that he wouldn’t do the autopsy immediately in such a high-profile fatality, and certainly the delay has nothing to do with any types of tests he might order. The longer he waits the more he’ll be swarmed by the media, and the rumors will get legs—which is what’s already happening.

  Assuming the jurisdiction is his and probably isn’t anymore.

  I revisit the same suspicion I began to entertain late last night when the news first broke, only now I feel a certainty, an inevitability. I envision Raine sequestered in his office on the phone making arrangements, discussing strategies, taking directions and orders. I’m betting he’s handed off the case like a hot potato, and there’s at least one good reason for him to do that.

  Florida’s Sunshine Law makes state government records accessible to the public, including photographs, reports and any other documented information related to a medicolegal investigation. If Raine wanted absolute discretion there’s a way to ensure it. All he had to do is request assistance from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner (AFME) and the FBI. He can legitimately claim that Rosado was a federal government official and therefore not Florida’s problem.

  He could have called me but the proper protocol was to go straight to my boss, John Briggs, and I suspect that both of them have an inkling about other disturbing factors. Rosado died suddenly when it was only a matter of time, perhaps only hours or days away before he would be publically sullied by serious crimes. Gracie Smithers’s murder and his son Troy’s part in it, a murdered insurance investigator linked to Rosado’s real estate and of course the possibility of money laundering and a crisis manager, a psychopath named Carrie Grethen who isn’t dead.

  Gordian knot, a knot impossible to unravel, and Alexander the Great solved the problem by cutting through it with his sword, in other words by cheating. A provocative name for a corporation and I wonder who came up with it and then she’s in my mind again. It’s the sort of cryptic name she would conceive, one that hints of using violence whenever it suits or in her case whenever she pleases.

  She doesn’t work alone.

  Her Clydes as Lucy used to call them. Carrie has always had a killing partner. Temple Gault. Newton Joyce. There probably have been others and her newest might be Troy Rosado, and that bends my thoughts back around to my niece. She was a teenager, about the same age as Troy when she and Carrie worked together at Quantico and began a relationship that hasn’t ended, I don’t care what Lucy claims.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed with my laptop I log on to the Internet to see what else I can find about Rosado’s death, and the most complete coverage is in the New York Times. There’s little that’s not already on the news, a few additional details from police and first responders who wouldn’t allow their names to be used.

  The fifty-two-year-old congressman died at approximately six P.M. while diving the Mercedes, a German freighter sunk in the 1980s, now an artificial reef in ninety feet of water barely a mile offshore. He chose to dive the shipwreck late in the day because he didn’t want other divers or their boats around, not only for privacy reasons but also for his safety.

  As chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee on border and maritime security he was a potential target for drug cartels and organized crime, and if what Lucy says is true he was a bigger thief than anyone who might be out to get him. For his first dive of the day, I continue to read, he was witnessed stepping off the dive platform, taking his giant stride into the ocean. He was floating on the surface with his buoyancy control device, his BCD vest inflated, when it appeared his tank malfunctioned. A sudden release of pressurized gas made “several loud popping sounds” and spun him into the air.

  Why several?

  I ponder this as the anchorwoman starts in on the local weather, warning that the high today in New Jersey will be record setting.

  Popping sounds, as in more than one?

  I flick off the TV and skim for an explanation, finding nothing further, only theories and wild speculations. His neck was broken. An O-ring was loose or failed. Someone tampered with the first stage of his regulator. A bomb was attached to the anchor line. A shark got him. His gear was sabotaged by the Mafia. Maybe his wife wanted him gone. I decide against my floor exercises. I sit on the bed and think. I wait for my phone to ring because I’m sure it will.

  General Briggs is an early riser. He’s usually up by four. Unless he’s somewhere else, Florida for example, he should be in his office at Dover Air Force Base port mortuary where several years ago I spent long months of radiologic training. I wait a few more minutes, pacing the room, and there’s no answer at his office. I try his cell with no better luck. Maybe he’s still at home and I enter that number.

  The phone rings three times, then, “Hello?”

  “Ruthie?”

  “Yes?” His wife sounds barely awake and startled. “Oh my God. Kay? Is he all right?”

  “Is there a reason he might not be?”

  “Then you’re not with him.” She sounds congested and upset from crying.

  “No. I’m sorry to call so early. I woke you up. I was hoping to speak to him about the Rosado case in Florida.”

  “I assumed you might be with him.” Her voice is shaky and depressed.

  “No, I’m in New Jersey,” I reply.

  “I see. John’s down there and whatever’s happened exactly? I don’t know but I can tell you he was very stressed. He flew out the door last night like a bat out of hell right after he got the phone call.”

  “About the congressman?”

  “A few minutes before seven last night.”

  I was on the range then and Benton wasn’t answering his phone.

  “As much as he hates the CIA as you well know since it seems to be their favorite pastime to harass him? Spying, showing up with their latest accusation about him leaking information,” she says and I didn’t know she was so paranoid.

  In fact she sounds almost hysterical.

  “And you know what I say? I say John? How are you any different? A life of secrets, lies and threats of being locked up in Leavenworth. There. If anybody’s tapping our phone I don’t care. I turn fifty next week and . . . Life is short and I don’t need to tell you that. Will you talk to him?”

  “About what exactly?”

  “His blood pressure and cholesterol are through the roof. He has Raynaud’s syndrome and had to have his beta-blocker changed because his heartbeat is so slow he was almost blacking out. He’s not supposed to dive! He was specifically told not to!”

  “He’s planning on diving?”

  “He took his gear so what do you think? And it’s strictly against his doctor’s orders but you know how he is. Everything he sees, everything that kills people and he believes it will never happen to him!” She starts to sob. “We got in a big fight about it before he left. Please don’t let him. I don’t want to lose my husband.”

  CHAPTER 46

  MOVING THE CHAIR AWAY from the sliding doors, I step out onto the balcony, the concrete warm and dry beneath my bare feet.

  I know how stubborn Briggs can be, and scuba diving is out of the question right now especially if strenuous underwater searching is involved. Hard-boiled Army he’s fearless. He thinks he’s invincible. He’s ungracious about aging and fiercely proud. He’ll kill himself if he’s not careful. I will have to outmaneuver him.

  Stagnant air settles over me as I check the weather app on my phone. It’s already eighty-six degrees at five A.M., hotter than South Florida, which is a balmy seventy-three with afternoon thunderstorms expected. The sound of traffic is a constant rush like a heavy surf or the wind. A power line hums. If diving is required then something needs to be recovered and I wonder what it is.r />
  I look down at the illuminated swimming pool as blue as turquoise in the hot darkness four floors below. I can barely make out red umbrellas furled like rock candy swizzle sticks and white lounge chairs lined up like piano keys. I return to the coolness of the living room and check flights into Fort Lauderdale. There’s a nonstop Virgin America flight out of Newark in two and a half hours.

  I’ll be on it but I’m not going to tell Lucy yet. She’ll try to come with me and she can’t. She’ll insist she send for a private plane and I’m not going to let her. Whatever is happening can’t involve her because it already does. Carrie Grethen. Lucy still has feelings, old powerful ones. Love, hate, lust, a murderous loathing, whatever it is it’s deadly not just to herself but also to everyone. I place a pod in the espresso machine. I listen to the pumping of hot water forced through injector holes as I replay our conversation from last night, recalling the look in her eyes and what I perceived. I smell the bold Brazilian blend flowing through the nozzle into a glass cup as I make the plane reservation.

  I’ll let Lucy know what I’m doing after I’ve already taken off. She and Marino need to go home. They need to stay out of it. I leave my spandex shorts and top on and pull cargo pants and a polo shirt over them. I skip a shower. I don’t bother with makeup. I know what I’m going to do, and I pick up the espresso, black with a tan froth on top.

  I’m about to try Benton again when he calls me first. I’m right about where he is and why. Rosado was murdered. He was shot. Briggs got in around midnight and did the autopsy. The reason it isn’t finished yet is biological evidence has yet to be recovered from the dive site, from the bottom of the sea.

  “We have the rifle,” Benton continues to explain. “It was on the yacht. A PGF 300 Win Mag with a muzzle brake and rounds with solid copper bullets, Barnes one-ninety grain polished like jewelry.”

  “Are any of them engraved?”

  “No.”

  “Did you find the tumbler? Did you find where the gunsmithing and hand loading were done?”

  “Not yet but the rifle belongs to Elaine Rosado. There were no prints on it. After it was swabbed for DNA it was sprayed with a chemical reagent and a residue lit up like Saint Elmo’s fire.”

  “Bleach. Someone wiped it down and made sure any DNA was destroyed.”

  “Apparently Mrs. Rosado bought it for her husband,” Benton says. “Several times a year he did big game hunting in places like Tanzania, Montenegro, Cambodia, and apparently no one noticed the rifle was missing from a locked gun closet in their West Palm home.”

  “What has Lucy said to you about Carrie?” I sit on the arm of the couch.

  “After she left you last night we were on the phone. It sounds like Carrie is in league with Troy and that’s classic. It’s what she does so well. The male thinks he’s dominant and he couldn’t be more mistaken,” Benton says.

  “Marino doesn’t believe it.”

  “He doesn’t want to believe it,” Benton says. “Let me back up. I suspect the rifle was transported to West Palm Beach yesterday morning when Troy flew home on his father’s G-Five. At some point prior to the shooting it ended up on the yacht, which is where the police found it when they searched it last night.”

  “What about spent cartridge cases? Did the police find those?”

  “No. The magazine is missing and I’m guessing it went overboard, that Carrie tossed it. The Rosados know her as Sasha Sarin, the name on a passport and other documents stolen in Ukraine last year. When Troy flew down here yesterday there was a second passenger on the plane by that name.”

  “Did Congressman Rosado know the real identity of the crisis manager he hired?”

  “I’m sure not,” Benton says. “No one in his right mind would hire Carrie Grethen.”

  “SARIN,” I REPEAT, AND she must have found it enormously amusing when the opportunity presented itself, a person with the same name as a deadly nerve gas.

  “The pilots described her as attractive, in her forties, thin with light blond hair and large framed glasses,” Benton says. “When she got on the jet with Troy yesterday morning she was carrying a guitar case. The same type of guitar Jamal Nari had and as you recall there was a case missing from his condo. Three guitars but only two cases.”

  “A guitar case?” I’m baffled.

  “I strongly suspect that’s what Carrie had the rifle in. If it was broken down it would fit just fine, a RainSong guitar case that she carried on board herself. One of the pilots noticed it because he’s a musician, and he said she buckled it into an empty seat and carried it off after they landed. She wouldn’t let them touch it.”

  “She was in Nari’s house, unpacked his guitars and placed them back on their stands? Then stole one of the cases?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? Not after he was shot. There wouldn’t have been time,” I decide. “If he packed his guitars before he went out to run errands then Carrie must have gone inside their apartment while he and his wife were out.”

  “Locks and alarm codes have never been a problem for her. She would have reveled in walking around the apartment, thrilled by the fantasy of what she was about to do. She stole something her next victim cared about, taking a souvenir, a symbol of him in advance. When he returned home and was carrying groceries inside he would have noticed his guitars were back on their stands and wondered how the hell that happened. It probably was one of the last things he ever thought.”

  Benton recites all this as if it’s indisputable. He sounds dispassionate and sure of his facts as if he’s talking about a chronic illness that went into remission for years and now is back. He can predict its progression and every symptom, and I’m desperate to get to Florida. My anxieties are in overdrive as I envision what he describes, and I wonder if Carrie intended to kill Rand Bloom. What was he doing at the Rosado house? Was he meeting her and did they know each other?

  In his former career with the Department of Justice Bloom made sure charges against the congressman were dropped. Rosado had a faithful ally and protector in Bloom. But he may have become a liability, a problem. He must have known about the drugs, the money laundering, assuming all of that is true. Maybe Bloom knew too much. Maybe Carrie didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. Or more likely she was just in the mood when she thrust a knife into his heart, and that’s what Benton thinks too.

  “She felt like killing him whether she planned it or not,” he says. “And then she didn’t feel like killing Detective Henderson when he showed up. It was more fun to abduct and terrorize him and she’s reminding us she can be decent because in her mind she is. What motivates someone like this has little to do with expediency. Some of it is scripted. Some of it isn’t. But she has an end game, a goal. It’s Lucy. Carrie’s come back for Lucy.”

  “To do what?” The thought of it is so enraging it’s all I can do to talk. “What exactly does the damn bitch want?”

  “In her blighted fantasies she may think they’ll get together again.”

  “Lucy’s in extreme danger.”

  “All of us are. Maybe more than she is, frankly. Carrie wants to get to her and we’re in the way. In fact we’re weapons she can use to hurt her.”

  “Was Carrie on the yacht when Rosado was killed?”

  “She must have been.”

  I walk into the bathroom to pack up my cosmetic bag as Benton goes on to describe the aftermath of the shooting. There was so much panic and chaos it wasn’t discovered right away that Troy was gone and most likely Carrie was with him.

  “The yacht has a rigid inflatable tender, a twenty-foot RIB which also was gone,” Benton says as I zip up an overnight bag. “It’s presumed he took off in it. The crew was in the wheelhouse and the main galley at the time of the shooting and they couldn’t have seen anyone on the uppermost deck unless they were specifically monitoring that part of the yacht, which they weren’t. Positioning on
the helipad would have placed the shooter thirty-six feet above the water and some sixty yards from where Rosado was killed.”

  “It must be a very big yacht.”

  “A hundred and seventy feet.”

  “Why the helipad? What makes anybody think the shots were fired from up there?”

  “That’s where the rifle was found. In a deck hatch where aviation equipment is kept, life vests, extra headsets, things like that. I just sent you CT images from the morgue and the video clip his wife took. She was filming her husband’s dive. It’s only about two minutes. When she realized something bad had happened she turned the camera off.”

  I look while we talk, the empty ocean a ruffled dark blue, a red dive flag on a yellow float moving with the chop, and I overhear voices in the background talking about cutting up another cantaloupe. A woman—Elaine Rosado I assume—tells a member of the crew that the cantaloupe isn’t cold enough and she wants another martini. She points the camera at her husband, the recording herky-jerky at first and then steadier.

  I see his image in high resolution, his scant dark hair plastered to his balding head, his heavy jowls and chin tan and stubbly. The amber lenses of his dive mask are looking directly at the camera as he holds up the BCD’s power inflator until he’s comfortable with his buoyancy. It’s a stiff chop and the regulator is in his mouth.

  “You all right, hon?” his wife calls out. “It looks rough. Maybe you should just come back in and have a drink!” She laughs.

  He forms a circle over his head with both gloved hands, giving the universal dive signal that he’s okay. Everything is fine, and he floats on the surface, waiting to descend the mooring line. I press pause.

  “Who was he diving with?” I ask.

  “The dive master had gone down first to make sure everything was clear around the wreck, making sure there were no other divers, specifically spear fishermen. As you know it’s legal to use scuba gear while spearfishing in Florida and there have been some accidents, both serious injuries and fatalities. There was someone shot in that area just the other day.”