Point of Origin

  “Maybe this person doesn’t want us to see,” I said. “It’s very important that we not know he left a signature this time. And I think we need to run as exhaustive a computer search as we can, to see if anything even remotely similar to this has turned up anywhere else.”

  “You do that, and you bring in a lot of other people,” Marino said. “Programmers, analysts, guys who run the computers at the FBI and big police departments like Houston, L.A., and New York. I guarantee you, someone’s going to spill the beans and next thing this shit’s all over the news.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “It depends on who you ask.”

  • • •

  We caught a cab on Constitution and told the driver to head toward the White House and cut over to the six hundred block of Fifteenth Street. I intended to treat Marino to the Old Ebbitt Grill, and at half past five, we did not have to wait in line but got a green velvet booth. I had always found a special pleasure in the restaurant’s stained glass, mirrors, and brass gas lamps wavering with flames. Turtles, boars, and antelopes were mounted over the bar, and the bartenders never seemed to slow down no matter the time of day.

  A distinguished-looking husband and wife behind us were talking about Kennedy Center tickets and their son’s entering Harvard in the fall, while two young men debated whether lunch could go on the expense account. I parked my cardboard box next to me on the seat. Vessey had resealed it with yards of tape.

  “I guess we should have asked for a table for three,” Marino said, looking at the box. “You sure it doesn’t stink? What if someone caught a whiff of it in here?”

  “It doesn’t stink,” I said, opening my menu. “And I think it would be wise to change the subject so we can eat. The burger here is so good that even I break down now and then and order it.”

  “I’m looking at the fish,” he said with great affectation. “You ever had them here?”

  “Go to hell, Marino.”

  “All right, you talked me into it, Doc. Burger it is. I wish it were the end of the day so I could have a beer. It’s torture to come to a joint like this and not have Jack Black or a tall one in a frosted mug. I bet they make mint juleps. I haven’t had one of those since I was dating that girl from Kentucky. Sabrina. Remember her?”

  “Maybe if you describe her,” I absently said as I looked around and tried to relax.

  “I used to bring her into the FOP. You was in there once with Benton, and I came over and introduced her. She had sort of reddish blond hair, blue eyes, and pretty skin. She used to roller skate competitively?”

  I had no earthly idea whom he was talking about.

  “Well”—he was still studying the menu—“it didn’t last very long. I don’t think she would have given me the time of day if it wasn’t for my truck. When she was sitting high in that king cab you would’ve thought she was waving at everybody from a float in the Rose Bowl parade.”

  I started laughing, and the blank expression on his face only made matters worse. I was laughing so hard my eyes were streaming and the waiter paused and decided to come back later. Marino looked annoyed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said.

  “I guess I’m just tired,” I said, gasping. “And if you want a beer, you go right ahead. It’s your day off and I’m driving.”

  This improved his mood dramatically, and not much later he was draining his first pint of Samuel Adams while his burger with Swiss and my chicken Caesar salad were served. For a while we ate and drifted in and out of a conversation while people around us talked loudly and nonstop.

  “I said, do you want to go away for your birthday?” one businessman was telling another. “You’re used to going wherever you want.”

  “My wife’s the same way,” the other businessman replied as he chewed. “Acts like I never take her anywhere. Hell, we go out to dinner almost every week.”

  “I saw on Oprah that one out of ten people owe more money than they can pay,” an older woman confided to a companion whose straw hat was hanging from the hat rack by their booth. “Isn’t that wild?”

  “Doesn’t surprise me in the least. It’s like everything else these days.”

  “They do have valet parking here,” one of the businessmen said. “But I usually walk.”

  “What about at night?”

  “Shooo. Are you kidding? In D.C.? Not unless you got a death wish.”

  I excused myself and went downstairs to the ladies’ room, which was large and built of pale gray marble. No one else was there, and I helped myself to the handicap stall so I could enjoy plenty of space and wash my hands and face in private. I tried to call Lucy from my portable phone, but the signal seemed to bounce off walls and come right back. So I used a pay phone and was thrilled to find her at home.

  “Are you packing?” I asked.

  “Can you hear an echo yet?” she said.

  “Ummm. Maybe.”

  “Well, I can. You ought to see this place.”

  “Speaking of that, are you up for visitors?”

  “Where are you?” Her tone turned suspicious.

  “The Old Ebbitt Grill. At a pay phone downstairs by the rest rooms, to be exact. Marino and I were at the Smithsonian this morning, seeing Vessey. I’d like to stop by. Not only to see you, but I have a professional matter to discuss.”

  “Sure,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Can I bring anything?”

  “Yeah. Food.”

  There was no point in retrieving my car, because Lucy lived in the northwest part of the city, just off Dupont Circle, where parking would be as bad as it was everywhere else. Marino whistled for a cab outside the grill, and one slammed on its brakes and we got in. The afternoon was calm and flags were wilted over roofs and lawns, and somewhere a car alarm would not stop. We had to drive through George Washington University, past the Ritz and Blackie’s Steakhouse to reach Lucy and Janet’s neighborhood.

  The area was Bohemian and mostly gay, with dark bars like The Fireplace and Mr. P’s that were always crowded with well-built, body-pierced men. I knew, because I had been here many times in the past to visit my niece, and I noted that the lesbian bookstore had moved and there seemed to be a new health food store not too far from Burger King.

  “You can let us out here,” I said to the driver.

  He slammed on the brakes again and swerved near the curb.

  “Shit,” Marino said as the blue cab raced away. “You think there’re any Americans in this town?”

  “If it wasn’t for non-Americans in towns like this, you and I wouldn’t be here,” I reminded him.

  “Being Italian’s different.”

  “Really? Different from what?” I asked at the two thousand block of P Street, where we entered the D.C. Cafe.

  “From them,” he said. “For one thing, when our people got off the boat on Ellis Island, they learned to speak English. And they didn’t drive taxi cabs without knowing where the hell they was going. Hey, this place looks pretty good.”

  The cafe was open twenty-four hours a day, and the air was heavy with sautéing onions and beef. On the walls were posters of gyros, green teas, and Lebanese beer, and a framed newspaper article boasted that the Rolling Stones had once eaten here. A woman was slowly sweeping as if it were her mission in life. She paid us no mind.

  “You relax,” I said to Marino. “This shouldn’t take but a minute.”

  He found a table to smoke while I went up to the counter and studied the yellow lit-up menu over the grill.

  “Yes,” said the cook as he pressed sizzling beef and slapped and cut and tossed browning chopped onions.

  “One Greek salad,” I said. “And a chicken gyro in pita and, let me see.” I perused. “I guess a Kefte Kabob Sandwesh. I guess that’s how you say it.”

  “To go?”

  “Yes.”

  “I call you,” he said as the woman swept.

  I sat down with Marino. There was a TV, and he was watching Star Trek through a swarm o
f loud static.

  “It’s not going to be the same when she’s in Philly,” he said.

  “It won’t be.”

  I stared numbly at the fuzzy form of Captain Kirk as he pointed his phaser at a Klingon or something.

  “I don’t know,” he said, resting his chin in his hand as he blew out smoke. “Somehow it just don’t seem right, Doc. She had everything all figured out and had worked hard to get it that way. I don’t care what she says about her transferring, I don’t think she wants to go. She just doesn’t believe she’s got a choice.”

  “I’m not sure she does if she wants to stay on the track she’s chosen.”

  “Hell, I believe you always got a choice. You see an ashtray anywhere?”

  I spotted one on the counter and carried it over.

  “I guess now I’m an accomplice,” I said.

  “You just nag me because it gives you something to do.”

  “Actually, I’d like you to hang around for a while, if that’s all right with you,” I said. “It seems I spend half my time trying to keep you alive.”

  “That’s kind of an irony considering how you spend the rest of your time, Doc.”

  “Your order!” the cook called out.

  “How ’bout getting me a couple of those baklava things. The one with pistachios.”

  “No,” I said.

  9

  LUCY AND JANET lived in a ten-story apartment building called The Westpark that was in the two thousand block of P Street, a few minutes’ walk away. It was tan brick with a dry cleaner downstairs and the Embassy Mobile station next door. Bicycles were parked on small balconies, and young tenants were sitting out enjoying the balmy night, drinking and smoking, while someone practiced scales on a flute. A shirtless man reached out to shut his window. I buzzed apartment 503.

  “Who goes there?” Lucy’s voice came over the intercom.

  “It’s us,” I said.

  “Who’s us?”

  “The us with your dinner. It’s getting cold,” I said.

  The lock clicked free to let us into the lobby, and we took the elevator up.

  “She could probably have a penthouse in Richmond for what she pays to live here,” Marino commented.

  “About fifteen hundred a month for a two-bedroom.”

  “Holy shit. How’s Janet going to make it alone? The Bureau can’t be paying her more than forty grand.”

  “Her family has money,” I said. “Other than that, I don’t know.”

  “I tell you, I wouldn’t want to be starting out these days.”

  He shook his head as elevator doors parted.

  “Now back in Jersey when I was just revving up my engines, fifteen hundred could’ve kept me in clover for a year. Crime wasn’t like it is, and people were nicer, even in my bad-ass neighborhood. And here we are, you and yours truly, working on some poor lady who was all cut up and burned in a fire, and after we finish with her, it will be somebody else. It’s like what’s-his-name rolling that big rock up the hill, and every time he gets close, down it rolls again. I swear, I wonder why we bother, Doc.”

  “Because it would be worse if we didn’t,” I said, stopping before the familiar pale orange door and ringing the bell.

  I could hear the deadbolt flip open, and then Janet was letting us in. She was sweating in FBI running shorts and a Grateful Dead T-shirt that looked left over from college.

  “Come in,” she said with a smile as Annie Lennox played loudly in the background. “Something smells good.”

  The apartment was two bedrooms and two baths forced into a very tight space that overlooked P Street. Every piece of furniture was stacked with books and layered with clothing, and dozens of boxes were on the floor. Lucy was in the kitchen, rattling around in cupboards and drawers as she gathered silverware and plates, and paper towels for napkins. She cleared a space on the coffee table and took the bags of food from me.

  “You just saved our lives,” she said to me. “I was getting hypoglycemic. And by the way, Pete, nice to see you, too.”

  “Damn, it’s hot in here,” he said.

  “It’s not so bad,” Lucy said, and she was sweating, too.

  She and Janet filled their plates. They sat on the floor and ate while I propped up on an armrest of the couch and Marino carried in a plastic chair from the balcony. Lucy was in Nike running shorts and a tank top, and dirty from head to heel. Both young women looked exhausted, and I could not imagine what they were feeling. Surely this was an awful time for them. Every emptying of a drawer and taping shut a box had to be another blow to the heart, a death, an end to who you were at that time in your life.

  “The two of you have lived here, what? Three years?” I asked.

  “Close to it,” said Janet as she speared a forkful of Greek salad.

  “And you’ll stay in this same apartment,” I said to Janet.

  “For the time being. There’s really no reason to move, and when Lucy pops in and out, she’ll have some room.”

  “I hate to bring up an unpleasant subject,” Marino said. “But is there any reason Carrie might know where you guys live?”

  There was silence for a moment as both women ate. I reached over to the CD player to turn down the volume.

  “Reason?” Lucy finally spoke. “Why would there be a reason for her to know anything about my life these days?”

  “Hopefully there’s no reason at all,” Marino said. “But we got to think about it whether you two birds like it or not. This is the sort of neighborhood she would hang in and fit right in, so I’m asking myself, if I was Carrie and back out on the street, would I want to find where Lucy is?”

  No one said a word.

  “And I think we all know what the answer is,” he went on. “Now finding where the doc lives is no big problem. It’s been in the newspapers enough, and if you find her, you find Benton. But you?”

  He pointed at Lucy.

  “You’re the challenge, because Carrie’d been locked up for several years by the time you moved here. And now you’re moving to Philly, and Janet’s left here alone. And to be honest, I don’t like that worth a damn, either.”

  “Neither of you is listed in the phone book, right?” I asked.

  “No way,” Janet said, and she was listlessly picking at her salad.

  “What if someone called this building and asked for either of you?”

  “They’re not supposed to give out info like that,” Janet said.

  “Not supposed to,” Marino sardonically said. “Yeah, I’m sure this joint’s got state-of-the-art security. Must be all kinds of high profile people living here, huh?”

  “We can’t sit around worrying about this all of the time,” Lucy said, and she was getting angry. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

  “Let’s talk about the Warrenton fire,” I said.

  “Let’s do.”

  “I’ll be packing in the other room,” Janet appropriately said, since she was FBI and not involved in this case.

  I watched her disappear into a bedroom, and then I said, “There were some unusual and disturbing findings during the autopsy. The victim was murdered. She was dead before the fire started, which certainly points at arson. Have we made any further headway on how the fire might have been set?”

  “Only through algebra,” Lucy said. “The only hope here is fire modeling, since there’s no physical evidence that points at arson, only circumstantial evidence. I’ve spent a lot of time fooling around with Fire Simulator on my computer, and the predictions keep coming back to the same thing.”

  “What the hell is Fire Simulator?” Marino wanted to know.

  “One of the routines in FPEtool, the software we use for fire modeling,” Lucy patiently explained. “For example, we’ll assume that flashover is reached at six hundred degrees Celsius—or one thousand, one hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit. So we plug in the data we know, such as the vent opening, area of surface, energy available from the fuel, fire virtual point of origin, room l
ining materials, wall materials, and so on and so on. And at the end of the day, we should get good predictions as to the suspect, or the fire in question. And guess what? No matter how many algorithms, procedures, or computer programs you try with this one, the answer’s always the same. There’s no logical explanation for how a fire this fast and hot could have started in the master bathroom.”

  “And we’re absolutely sure it did,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” Lucy said. “As you probably know, that bathroom was a relatively modern addition built out from the master bedroom. And if you look at the marble walls, the cathedral ceiling we recovered, you can piece together this really narrow, sharply defined V pattern, with the apex pointing somewhere in the middle of the floor, most likely where the rug was, meaning the fire developed really fast and hot in that one spot.”

  “Let’s talk about this famous rug,” Marino said. “You light it, and what kind of fire do we get?”

  “A lazy flame,” Lucy answered. “Maybe two feet tall.”

  “Well, that didn’t do it,” I said.

  “And what’s also really telling,” she went on, “is the destruction to the roof directly above. Now we’re talking flames at least eight feet high above the fire’s origin, with the temperature reaching about eighteen hundred degrees for the glass in the skylight to melt. About eighty-eight percent of all arsons are up from the floor, in other words the radiant heat flux . . .”

  “What the hell’s radiant flux?” Marino wanted to know.

  “Radiant heat is in the form of an electromagnetic wave, and is emitted from a flame almost equally in all directions, three hundred and sixty degrees. Following me so far?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “A flame also emits heat in the form of hot gases, which weigh less than air, so up they go,” Lucy, the physicist, went on. “A convective transfer of heat, in other words. And in the early stages of the fire, most of the heat transfer is convective. It moves up from its point of origin. In this case, the floor. But after the fire was going for a while and hot gas-smoke layers formed, the dominant form of heat transfer became radiant. It was at this stage that I think the shower door fatigued and fell on top of the body.”