Port Mortuary

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Yeah, well, then why is there milk and cream?” Lucy’s loud voice. “Green Mountain or Black Tiger? There’s also hazelnut. Since when do you drink hazelnut?” The questions are rhetorical. She knows the answers.

  “Since never,” I mutter, seeing pencils, pens, Post-its, paper clips, and in a bottom drawer, a pack of spearmint gum.

  It is half-full, and I don’t chew gum. Who likes spearmint gum and would have reason to go into my desk? Not Bryce. He’s much too vain to chew gum, and if I caught him doing it, I would disapprove, because I consider it rude to chew gum in front of other people. Besides, Bryce wouldn’t root around inside my desk, not without permission. He wouldn’t dare.

  “Jack likes hazelnut, French vanilla, shit like that, and he drinks it with skim milk unless he’s on one of his high-protein, high-fat diets,” Lucy continues from inside my bathroom. “Then he uses real cream, heavy cream, like what’s in here. I suppose if you had guests, were expecting visitors, you might have cream.”

  “Nothing flavored, and please make it strong.”

  “He’s a superuser just like you are,” Lucy’s voice then says. “His fingerprints are stored in every lock in this place just like yours are.”

  I hear the spewing of hot water shooting through the K-Cup and use it as a welcome interruption. I refuse to engage in the poisonous speculation that Jack Fielding has been in my office during my absence, that maybe he’s been helping himself while he drinks coffee, chews gum, or who the hell knows what he’s been up to. But as I look around, it doesn’t seem possible. My office feels unlived-in. It certainly doesn’t appear as if anyone has been working in here, so what would he be doing?

  “I went over to Norton’s Woods before Cambridge PD did, you know. Marino asked them to go back because of the serial number being eradicated from the Glock. But I got there first.” Lucy talks on loudly from inside the bathroom. “But I had the disadvantage of not knowing exactly where the guy went down, where he was stabbed, we now know. Without the scene photographs, it’s impossible to get an exact location, just an approximate one, so I combed every footpath in the park.”

  She walks out with steaming coffee in black mugs that have the AFME’s unusual crest, a five-card poker draw of aces and eights, known as the dead man’s hand, what Wild Bill Hickok supposedly was holding when he was shot to death.

  “Talk about a needle in a haystack,” she continues. “The flybot’s probably half the size of a small paper clip, about the size of, well, a housefly. No joy.”

  “Just because you found a wing doesn’t mean the rest of it was ever out there,” I remind her as she sets a coffee in front of me.

  “If it’s out there, it’s maimed.” Lucy returns to her chair. “Under snow as we speak and missing a wing. But very possibly still alive, especially when it gets exposed to light, assuming it’s not further damaged.”

  “‘Alive’?”

  “Not literally. Likely powered by micro–solar panels as opposed to a battery that would already be dead. Light hits it and abracadabra. That’s the way everything is headed. And our little friend, wherever he is, is futuristic, a masterpiece of teeny-tiny technology.”

  “How can you be so sure if you can’t find most of it? Just a wing.”

  “Not just any wing. The angle and flexure joints are ingenious and suggest to me a different flight formation. Not the flight of an angel anymore. But horizontal like a real insect flies. Whatever this thing is and whatever its function, we’re talking about something extremely advanced, something I’ve never seen before. Nothing’s been published about it, because I get pretty much every technical journal there is online, plus I’ve been running searches with no success. By all indications, it’s a project that’s classified, top secret. I sure hope the rest of it is out there on the ground somewhere, safely covered with snow.”

  “What was it doing in Norton’s Woods in the first place?” I envision the black-gloved hand entering the frame of the hidden video camera, as if the man was swatting at something.

  “Right. Did he have it, or did someone else?” She blows on her coffee, holding the mug in both hands.

  “And is someone looking for it? Does someone think it’s here or think we know where it is?” I ask that again. “Has anyone mentioned to you that his gloves are gone? Did you happen to notice when you were downstairs while Marino was printing the body? It appears the victim put on a pair of black gloves as he arrived at the park, which I thought was curious when I watched the video clips. I assume he died with the gloves on, and so where are they?”

  “That’s interesting,” Lucy says, and I can’t tell if she already knew the gloves are missing.

  I can’t tell what she knows and if she’s lying.

  “They weren’t in the woods when I was walking around yesterday morning,” she informs me. “I would have seen a pair of black gloves, saying they were accidentally left by the squad, the removal service, the cops. Of course, they could have been and were picked up by anybody who happened along.”

  “In the video clips, someone wearing a long, black coat walks past right after the man falls to the ground. Is it possible whoever killed him paused just long enough to take his gloves?”

  “You mean if they’re some type of data gloves or smart gloves, what they’re using in combat, gloves with sensors embedded in them for wearable computer systems, wearable robotics,” Lucy says, as if it is a normal thing to consider about a pair of missing gloves.

  “I’m just wondering why his gloves might be important enough for someone to take them, if that’s what’s happened,” I reply.

  “If they have sensors in them and that’s how he was controlling the flybot, assuming the flybot is his, then the gloves would be extremely important,” Lucy says.

  “And you didn’t ask about the gloves when you were downstairs with Marino? You didn’t think to check gloves, clothing, for sensors that might be embedded?”

  “If I had the gloves, I would have had a much better chance of finding the flybot when I went back to Norton’s Woods,” Lucy says. “But I don’t have them or know where they are, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I am asking that because it would be tampering with evidence.”

  “I didn’t. I promise. I don’t know for a fact that the gloves are data gloves, but if they are, it would make sense in light of other things. Like what he’s saying on the video clip right before he dies,” she adds thoughtfully, working it out, or maybe she’s already worked it out but is leading me to believe what she’s saying is a new thought. “The man keeps saying ‘Hey, boy.’”

  “I assumed he was talking to his dog.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “And he said other things I couldn’t figure out,” I recall. “‘And for you’ or ‘Do you send one’ or something like that. Could a robotic fly understand voice commands?”

  “Absolutely possible. That part was muffled. I heard it, too, and thought it was confusing,” Lucy says. “But maybe not if he was controlling the flybot. ‘For you’ could be four-two, maybe, as in the number four? ‘And’ could be ‘N,’ as in north? I’ll listen again and do more enhancement.”

  “More?”

  “I’ve done some. Nothing helpful. Could be he was telling the flybot GPS coordinates, which would be a common command to give a device that responds to voice—if you’re telling it where to go, for example.”

  “If you could figure out GPS coordinates, maybe you could find the location, find where it is.”

  “Sincerely doubt it. If the flybot was controlled by the gloves, at least partially controlled by sensors in them, then when the victim waved his hand, probably at the moment he was stabbed?”

  “Right. Then what.”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t have the flybot, and I don’t have the gloves,” Lucy says to me while looking at me intently, her eyes directly on mine. “I didn’t find them, but I sure wish I had.”

  “Did Marino mention that someone may have been
following Benton and me after we left Hanscom?” I ask.

  “We looked for the big SUV with xenon lights and fog lamps. I’m not saying it means anything, but Jack’s got a dark-blue Navigator. Pre-owned, bought it back in October. You weren’t here, so I guess you haven’t seen it.”

  “Why would Jack follow us? And no. I don’t know anything about him buying a Navigator. I thought he had a Jeep Cherokee.”

  “Traded up, I guess.” She drinks her coffee. “I didn’t say he would follow you or did. Or that he would be stupid enough to ride your bumper. Except in a blizzard or fog, when visibility’s really bad, a rather inexperienced tail might follow too close if the person doesn’t know where the target is going. I don’t see why Jack would bother. Wouldn’t he assume you were on your way here?”

  “Do you have an idea why anyone would bother?”

  “If someone knows the flybot is missing,” she says, “he or she sure as hell’s looking for it, and possibly would spare nothing to find it before it gets into the wrong hands. Or the right hands. Depending on who or what we’re dealing with. I can say that much based on a wing. If that’s why you were followed, it would make me less likely to suspect that whoever killed this guy found the flybot. In other words, it could very well still be missing or lost. I probably don’t need to tell you that a top-secret proprietary technical invention like this could be worth a fortune, especially if someone could steal the idea and take credit for it. If such a person is looking for it and has reason to fear it may have come in with the body, maybe this person wanted to see where you were going, what you were up to. He or she might think the flybot is here at the CFC or might think you have it off-site somewhere. Including at your house.”

  “Why would I have it at my house? I haven’t been home.”

  “Logic has nothing to do with it when someone is in over-drive,” Lucy answers. “If I were the person looking, I might assume you instructed your former FBI husband to hide the flybot at your house. I might assume all kinds of things. And if the flybot is still at large, I’m still going to be looking.”

  I remember what the man exclaimed, can hear his voice in my head. “What the…? Hey… !” Maybe his startled reaction wasn’t due solely to the sudden sharp pain in his lower back and tremendous pressure in his chest. Maybe something flew at his face. Maybe he had on data gloves, and his startled reaction is what caused the flybot to get broken. I imagine a tiny device mid-flight, and then struck by the man’s black gloved hand and crushed against his coat collar.

  “If someone has the data gloves and looked for the flybot before the snow started, is it really possible the person wouldn’t have found it?” I ask my niece.

  “Sure it’s possible. Depends on a number of things. How badly damaged is it, for example. There was a lot of activity around the man after he went down. If the flybot was there on the ground, it could have been crushed or damaged further and rendered completely unresponsive. Or it could be under something or in a tree or a bush or anywhere out there.”

  “I assume a robotic insect could be used as a weapon,” I suggest. “Since I don’t have a clue what caused this man’s internal injuries, I need to think about every possibility imaginable.”

  “That’s the thing,” Lucy says. “These days, almost anything you can imagine is possible.”

  “Did Benton tell you what we saw on CT?”

  “I don’t see how a micromechanical insect could cause internal damage like that,” Lucy answers. “Unless the victim was somehow injected with a micro–explosive device.”

  My niece and her phobias. Her obsession with explosives. Her acute distrust of government.

  “And I sure as hell hope not,” she says. “Actually, we’d be talking about nanoexplosives if a flybot was involved.”

  My niece and her theories about super-thermite, and I remember Jaime Berger’s comment the last time I saw her at Thanksgiving when all of us were in New York, having dinner in her penthouse apartment. “Love doesn’t conquer all,” Berger said. “It can’t possibly,” she said as she drank too much wine and spent a lot of time in the kitchen, arguing with Lucy about 9/11, about explosives used in demolitions, nanomaterials painted on infrastructures that would cause a horrendous destruction if impacted by large planes filled with fuel.

  I have given up reasoning with my phobic, cynical niece, who is too smart for her own good and won’t listen. It doesn’t matter to her that there simply aren’t enough facts to support what has her convinced, only allegations about residues found in the dust right after the towers collapsed. Then, weeks later, more dust was collected and it showed the same residues of iron oxide and aluminum, a highly energetic nanocomposite that is used in making pyrotechnics and explosives. I admit there have been credible scientific journal articles written about it, but not enough of them, and they don’t begin to prove that our own government helped mastermind 9/11 as an excuse to start a war in the Middle East.

  “I know how you feel about conspiracy theories,” Lucy says to me. “That’s a big difference between us. I’ve seen what the so-called good guys can do.”

  She doesn’t know about South Africa. If she did, she would realize there isn’t a difference between the two of us. I know all too well what so-called good guys can do. But not 9/11. I won’t go that far, and I think of Jaime Berger and imagine how difficult it would be for the powerful and established Manhattan prosecutor to have Lucy as a partner. Love doesn’t conquer all. It really is true. Maybe Lucy’s paranoia about 9/11 and the country we live in has driven her back into a personal isolation that historically is never broken for long. I really thought Jaime was the one, that it would last. I now feel certain it hasn’t. I want to tell Lucy I’m sorry for that and I’m always here for her and will talk about anything she wants, even if it goes against my beliefs. Now is not the time.

  “I think we need to consider that we might be dealing with some renegade scientist or maybe more than one of them up to no good,” Lucy then tells me. “That’s the big point I’m trying to make. And I mean serious no good, extreme no good, Aunt Kay.”

  It relieves me to hear her call me Aunt Kay. I feel all is right with us when she calls me Aunt Kay, and she rarely does it anymore. I don’t remember the last time she has. When I’m her Aunt Kay I can almost ignore what Lucy Farinelli is, which is a genius who is marginally sociopathic, a diagnosis that Benton scoffs at, nicely but firmly. Being marginally sociopathic is like being marginally pregnant or marginally dead, he says. I love my niece more than my own life, but I’ve come to accept that when she is well behaved, it is an act of will or simply because it suits her. Morals have very little to do with it. It’s all about the end justifying the means.

  I study her carefully, even though I won’t see what’s there. Her face never gives away information that could really hurt her.

  I say to her, “I need to go ahead and ask you one thing.”

  “You can ask more than one.” She smiles and doesn’t look capable of hurting anything or anyone unless you recognize the strength and agility in her calm hands and the rapid changes in her eyes as thoughts flash behind them like lightning.

  “You aren’t involved in whatever this is.” I mean the small white box and the flybot wing inside it. I mean the dead man who is getting an MRI at McLean—someone we may have crossed paths with at a da Vinci exhibition in London months before 9/11, which Lucy incredibly believes was orchestrated from within our own government.

  “Nope.” She says it simply and doesn’t flinch or look the slightest bit uncomfortable.

  “Because you’re here now.” I remind her she works for the CFC, meaning she works for me, and I answer to the governor of Massachusetts, the Department of Defense, the White House. I answer to a lot of people, I tell her. “I can’t have—”

  “Of course you can’t. I’m not going to get you into trouble.”

  “It isn’t just you anymore—”

  “No need to have this conversation,” she interrupts again, and her
eyes blaze. They are so green they don’t look real. “Anyway, he doesn’t have thermal injury, right? No burns?”

  “None that I can see so far. That’s correct,” I reply.

  “Okay. So if someone poked him with a modified shark bang stick? You know, one of those speargun shafts with something like a shotgun cartridge attached to the tip? Only in this case, a tiny, tiny charge containing nanoexplosives?”

  I push the power button to start my desktop computer. “It wouldn’t look like what I just saw. It would look like a contact gunshot wound minus the patterned abrasion made by the muzzle of a gun. Even if we’re talking about using nanoexplosives as opposed to some type of firearm ammunition on the tip of a shaft or something shaftlike, you’re right, you’d see thermal injury. There should be burns at the entrance and also to underlying tissue. I assume you’re implying something like a flybot could be used to deliver nanoexplosives. Is that what you fear this so-called renegade scientist or more than one of them might be doing?”

  “Deliver. Detonate. Nanoexplosives, drugs, poisons. Like I said, let your imagination be the limit what a device like this might be capable of.”

  “I need to take a look at the security footage that shows the body bag leaking.” As I look for files in my computer. “I’m not going to have to go see Ron for that, am I?”

  Lucy comes around to my side of the desk and starts typing on my keyboard, entering her system administrator’s password that grants complete access to my kingdom.

  “Easy as pie.” She taps a key to open a file.

  “Nobody could get into my files without your knowing.”

  “Not in cyberspace. But I can’t know if someone’s been in your physical space, especially since I’m not up here all the time, in fact, not even most of the time, because I work remotely when I can,” she says, but I’m not sure I believe she wouldn’t know.

  In fact, I don’t believe it.

  “But no way anyone has gotten into your password-protected files,” she says, and that I do believe. Lucy wouldn’t permit it. “You can monitor the security cameras from anywhere, by the way. Even from your iPhone if you want. All you need is access to the Internet. I found this earlier and saved it as a file. Five-forty-two p.m. That’s what time it was yesterday when this was captured by a closed-caption security camera in the receiving area.”