Point of Origin

  The teal-painted barred door unlocked with an electronic click, and peace officers in blue uniforms were most courteous to Dr. Ensor, and also to me, since I clearly was her guest. Nonetheless, we were made to pass through a metal detector, and our pocketbooks were carefully gone through. I was embarrassed when reminded that one could enter with only enough medication for one dose, while I had enough Motrin, Immodium, Tums, and aspirin to take care of an entire ward.

  “Ma’am, you must not be feeling good,” one of the guards good-naturedly said.

  “It accumulates,” I said, grateful that I had locked my handgun in my briefcase, which was safely stored in the helicopter’s baggage compartment.

  “Well, I’m gonna have to hold on to it until you come out. It will be waiting right here for you, okay? So make sure you ask.”

  “Thank you,” I said, as if he had just granted me a favor.

  We were allowed to pass through another door that was posted with the warning, Keep Hands Off Bars. Then we were in stark, colorless hallways, turning corners, passing closed doors where hearings were in session.

  “You need to understand that legal aid attorneys are employed by the Legal Aid Society, which is a nonprofit, private organization under contract with New York City. Clearly, the personnel they have here are part of their criminal division. They are not on the Kirby staff.”

  She wanted to make sure I understood that.

  “Although, after a number of years here, they certainly may get chummy with my staff,” she kept talking as we walked, our heels clicking over tile. “The lawyer in question, who worked with Miss Grethen from the beginning, will most likely arch her back at any questions you might ask.”

  She glanced over at me.

  “I have no control over it,” she said.

  “I understand completely,” I replied. “And if a public defender or legal aid attorney didn’t arch his back when I appeared, I would think the planet had changed.”

  Mental Hygiene Legal Aid was lost somewhere in the midst of Kirby, and I could only swear that it was on the first floor. The director opened a wooden door for me, and then was showing me into a small office that was so overflowing with paper that hundreds of case files were stacked on the floor. The lawyer behind the desk was a disaster of frumpy clothing and wild frizzy black hair. She was heavy, with ponderous breasts that could have benefited from a bra.

  “Susan, this is Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner of Virginia,” Dr. Ensor said. “Here about Carrie Grethen, as you know. And Dr. Scarpetta, this is Susan Blaustein.”

  “Right,” said Ms. Blaustein, who was neither inclined to get up or shake my hand as she sifted through a thick legal brief.

  “I’ll leave the two of you, then. Susan, I trust you will show Dr. Scarpetta around, otherwise I will get someone on staff to do it,” Dr. Ensor said, and I could tell by the way she looked at me that she knew I was in for the tour from hell.

  “No problem.”

  The guardian angel of felons had a Brooklyn accent as coarse and tightly packed as a garbage barge.

  “Have a seat,” she said to me as the director disappeared.

  “When was Carrie remanded here?” I asked.

  “Five years ago.”

  She would not look up from her paperwork.

  “You’re aware of her history, of the homicide cases that have yet to go to trial in Virginia?”

  “You name it, I’m aware of it.”

  “Carrie escaped from here ten days ago, on June tenth,” I went on. “Has anyone figured out how that might have happened?”

  Blaustein flipped a page and picked up a coffee cup.

  “She didn’t show up for dinner. That’s it,” she replied. “I was as shocked as anyone when she disappeared.”

  “I bet you were,” I said.

  She turned another page and had yet to give me her eyes. I’d had enough.

  “Ms. Blaustein,” I said in a hard voice as I leaned against her desk. “With all due respect to your clients, would you like to hear about mine? Would you like to hear all about men, women, and children who were butchered by Carrie Grethen? A little boy abducted from a 7-Eleven where he’d been sent to buy his mother a can of mushroom soup? He’s shot in the head and areas of his flesh are removed to obliterate bitemarks, his pitiful body clad only in undershorts propped against a Dumpster in a freezing rain?”

  “I told you, I know about the cases.” She continued to work.

  “I suggest you put down that brief and pay attention to me,” I warned. “I may be a forensic pathologist, but I’m also a lawyer, and your shenanigans get nowhere with me. You just so happen to represent a psychopath who as we speak is on the outside murdering people. Don’t let me find out at the end of the day that you had information that might have spared even one life.”

  She gave me eyes, cold and arrogant, because her only power in life was to defend losers and jerk around people like me.

  “Let me just refresh your memory,” I went on. “Since your client has escaped from Kirby, it is believed she has either murdered or served as an accomplice to murder in two cases, happening within a matter of days of each other. Vicious homicides in which an attempt was made to disguise them by fire. These were predated by other fire-homicides which we now believe are linked, yet in these earlier ones, your client was still incarcerated here.”

  Susan Blaustein was silent as she stared at me.

  “Can you help me with this?”

  “All of my conversations with Carrie are privileged. I’m sure you must know that,” she remarked, yet I could tell she was curious about what I was saying.

  “Possible she was connecting with someone on the outside?” I went on. “And if so, how and who?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about Temple Gault?”

  “Privileged.”

  “Then she did,” I said. “Of course, she did. How could she not? Did you know she wrote to me, Ms. Blaustein, asking me to come see her and bring her Gault’s autopsy photos?”

  She said nothing, but her eyes were coming alive.

  “He was hit by a train in the Bowery. Scattered along the tracks.”

  “Did you do his autopsy?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why would Carrie ask you for the photos, Dr. Scarpetta?”

  “Because she knew I could get them. Carrie wanted to see them, blood and gore and all. This was less than a week before she escaped. I’m just wondering if you knew she was sending out letters like that? A clear indication, as far as I’m concerned, that she had premeditated all she was about to do next.”

  “No.”

  Blaustein pointed her finger at me.

  “What she was thinking was how she was being framed to take the heat because the FBI couldn’t find its damn way out of a paper bag and needed to hang all this on someone,” she accused.

  “I see you read the papers.”

  Her face turned angry.

  “I talked to Carrie for five years,” she said. “She wasn’t the one sleeping with the Bureau, right?”

  “In a way she was.” I honestly thought of Lucy. “And quite frankly, Ms. Blaustein, I’m not here to change your opinion of your client. My purpose is to investigate a number of deaths and do what I can to prevent others.”

  Carrie’s legal aid attorney began shoving around paperwork again.

  “It seems to me that the reason Carrie had been here so long is that every time an evaluation of her mental status came up, you made sure it was clear that she had not regained competency,” I went on. “Meaning she is also incompetent to stand trial, right? Meaning she is so mentally ill that she’s not even aware of the charges against her? And yet she must have been somewhat aware of her situation, or how else could she have trumped up this whole business about the FBI framing her? Or was it you who trumped that up?”

  “This meeting has just ended,” Blaustein announced, and had she been a judge, she would have slammed d
own the gavel.

  “Carrie’s nothing but a malingerer,” I said. “She played it up, manipulated. Let me guess. She was very depressed, couldn’t remember anything when it was important. Was probably on Ativan, which probably didn’t put a dent in her. She clearly had the energy to write letters. And what other privileges might she have enjoyed? Telephone, photocopying?”

  “The patients have civil rights,” Blaustein evenly said. “She was very quiet. Played a lot of chess and spades. She liked to read. There were mitigating and aggravating circumstances at the time of the offenses, and she was not responsible for her actions. She was very remorseful.”

  “Carrie always was a great salesperson,” I said. “Always a master at getting what she wanted, and she wanted to be here long enough to make her next move. And now she’s made it.”

  I opened my pocketbook and got out a copy of the letter Carrie had written to me. I dropped it in front of Blaustein.

  “Pay special attention to the return address at the top of it. One Pheasant Place, Kirby Women’s Ward,” I said. “Do you have any idea what she meant by that, or would you like me to hazard a guess?”

  “I don’t have a clue.” She was reading the letter, a perplexed expression on her face.

  “Possibly the one-place part is a play off One Hogan Place, or the address of the District Attorney that eventually would have prosecuted her.”

  “I don’t have a clue as to what was going through her mind.”

  “Let’s talk about pheasants,” I then said. “You have pheasants along the riverbank right outside your door.”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  “I noticed because we landed in the field there. And that’s right, you wouldn’t have noticed unless you waded through half an acre of overgrown grass and weeds and went to the water’s edge, near the old pier.”

  She said nothing, but I could tell she was getting unsettled.

  “So my question is, how might Carrie or any of the inmates have known about the pheasants?”

  Still, she was silent.

  “You know very well why, don’t you?” I forced her.

  She stared at me.

  “A maximum security patient should never have been in that field or even close to it, Ms. Blaustein. If you don’t wish to talk to me about it, then I’ll just let the police take it up with you, since Carrie’s escape is rather much a priority for law enforcement these days. Indeed, I’m sure your fine mayor isn’t happy about the continuing bad publicity Carrie brings to a city that has become famous for defeating crime.”

  “I don’t know how Carrie knew,” Ms. Blaustein finally said. “This is the first I’ve ever heard of fucking pheasants. Maybe someone on the staff said something to her. Maybe one of the delivery people from the store, someone from the outside, such as yourself, in other words.”

  “What store?”

  “The patient privilege programs allow them to earn credits or money for the store. Snacks, mostly. They get one delivery a week, and they have to use their own money.”

  “Where did Carrie get money?”

  Blaustein would not say.

  “What day did her deliveries come?”

  “Depends. Usually early in the week, Monday, Tuesday, late in the afternoon, usually.”

  “She escaped late in the afternoon, on a Tuesday,” I said.

  “That’s correct.” Her eyes got harder.

  “And what about the deliveryperson?” I then asked. “Has anybody bothered to see if he or she might have had anything to do with this?”

  “The deliveryperson was a he,” Blaustein said with no emotion. “No one has been able to locate him. He was a substitute for the usual person, who apparently was out sick.”

  “A substitute? Right. Carrie was interested in more than potato chips!” My voice rose. “Let me guess. The delivery people wear uniforms and drive a van. Carrie puts on a uniform and walks right out with her deliveryman. Gets in the van and is out of here.”

  “Speculation. We don’t know how she got out.”

  “Oh, I think you do, Ms. Blaustein. And I’m wondering if you didn’t help Carrie with money, too, since she was so special to you.”

  She got to her feet and pointed her finger at me again.

  “If you’re accusing me of helping her escape . . .”

  “You helped her in one way or another,” I cut her off.

  I fought back tears as I thought of Carrie free on the streets, as I thought about Benton.

  “You monster,” I said, and my eyes were hot on hers. “I’d like you to spend just one day with the victims. Just one goddamn day, putting your hands in their blood and touching their wounds. The innocent people the Carries of the world butcher for sport. I think there would be some people who would not be too happy to know about Carrie, her privileges, and unaccounted source of income,” I said. “Others besides me.”

  We were interrupted by a knock on her door, and Dr. Ensor walked in.

  “I thought I might take you on your tour,” she said to me. “Susan seems busy. Are you finished up here?” she asked the legal aid attorney.

  “Quite.”

  “Very good,” she said with a chilly smile.

  I knew then that the director was perfectly clear on how much Susan Blaustein had abused power, trust, and common decency. In the end, Blaustein had manipulated the hospital as much as Carrie had.

  “Thank you,” I said to the director.

  I left, turning my back on Carrie’s defender.

  May you rot in hell, I thought.

  I followed Dr. Ensor again, this time to a large stainless steel elevator that opened onto barren beige hallways closed off with heavy red doors that required codes for entry. Everything was monitored by closed circuit TV. Apparently Carrie had enjoyed working in the pet program, which entailed daily visits to the eleventh floor, where animals were kept in cages inside a small room with a view of razor wire.

  The menagerie was dimly lit and moist with the musky smells of animals and wood chips, and the skittering of claws. There were parakeets, guinea pigs, and a Russian dwarf hamster. On a table was a box of rich soil thick with tender shoots.

  “We grow our own birdseed here,” Dr. Ensor explained. “The patients are encouraged to raise and sell it. Of course, we’re not talking mass production here. There’s barely enough for our own birds, and as you can see by what’s in some of the cages and on the floor, the patients tend to be fond of feeding their pets cheese puffs and potato chips.”

  “Carrie was up here every day?” I asked.

  “So I’ve been told, now that I’ve been looking into everything she did while she was here.” She paused, looking around the cages as small animals with pink noses twitched and scratched.

  “Obviously I didn’t know everything at the time. For example, coincidentally, during the six months Carrie supervised the pet program, we had an unusual number of fatalities and inexplicable escapes. A parakeet here, a hamster there. Patients would come in and find their wards in their cages, or a cage door open and a bird nowhere to be found.”

  She walked back out into the hallway, her lips firmly pressed.

  “It’s too bad you weren’t here on those occasions,” she wryly said. “Perhaps you could have told me what they were dying from. Or who.”

  There was another door down the hall, and this one opened onto a small, dimly lit room where there was one relatively modern computer and printer on a plain wooden table. I also noted a phone jack in the wall. A sense of foreshadowing darkened my thoughts even before Dr. Ensor spoke.

  “This was perhaps where Carrie spent most of her free time,” she said. “As you no doubt know, she has an extensive background in computers. She was extremely good about encouraging other patients to learn, and the PC was her idea. She suggested we find donors of used equipment, and we now have one computer and printer on each floor.”

  I walked over to the terminal and sat down in front of it. Hitting a key, I turned off the screen saver and l
ooked at icons that told me what programs were available.

  “When patients worked in here,” I said, “were they supervised?”

  “No. They were shown in and the door was shut and locked. An hour later, they were shown back to their ward.” She grew thoughtful. “I’d be the first to admit that I was impressed with how many of the patients have started learning word processing, and in some instances, spread sheets.”

  I went into America Online and was prompted for a username and password. The director watched what I was doing.

  “They absolutely had no access to the Internet,” she said.

  “How do we know that?”

  “The computers aren’t hooked up to it.”

  “But they do have modems,” I said. “Or at least this one does. It’s simply not connecting because there’s no telephone line plugged into the telephone jack.”

  I pointed to the tiny receptacle in the wall, then turned around to face her.

  “Any chance a telephone line might have disappeared from somewhere?” I asked. “Perhaps from one of the offices? Susan Blaustein’s office, for example?”

  The director glanced away, her face angry and distressed as she began to see what I was getting at.

  “God,” she muttered.

  “Of course, she may have gotten that from the outside. Perhaps from whoever delivered her snacks from the store?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The point is, there’s a lot we don’t know, Dr. Ensor. We don’t know, for example, what the hell Carrie was really doing when she was in here. She could have been in and out of chat rooms, putting feelers out in personals, finding pen pals. I’m sure you’ve kept up with the news enough to know how many crimes are committed on the Internet? Pedophilia, rape, homicide, child pornography.”

  “That’s why this was closely supervised,” she said. “Or supposed to have been.”

  “Carrie could have planned her escape this way. And you say she started working with the computer how long ago?”