Point of Origin

  “About a year. After a long run of ideal behavior.”

  “Ideal behavior,” I repeated.

  I thought of the cases in Baltimore, Venice Beach, and more recently in Warrenton. I wondered if it were possible that Carrie might have met up with her accomplice through e-mail, through a Web site or a chat room. Could it be that she committed computer crimes during her incarceration? Might she have been working behind the scenes, advising and encouraging a psychopath who stole human faces? Then she escaped, and from that point on her crimes were in person.

  “Is there anyone who’s been discharged from Kirby in the past year who was an arsonist, especially someone with a history of homicide? Anyone Carrie might have come to know? Perhaps someone in one of her classes?” I asked, just to be sure.

  Dr. Ensor turned off the overhead light and we returned to the hall.

  “No one comes to mind,” she said. “Not of the sort you’re talking about. I will add that a peace officer was always present.”

  “And male and female patients did not mix during recreational times.”

  “No. Never. Men and women are completely segregated.”

  Although I did not know for a fact that Carrie had a male accomplice, I suspected it, and I recalled what Benton had written in his notes at the end, about a white male between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-five. Peace officers, who were simply guards not wearing guns, might have insured that order was maintained in the classrooms, but I doubted seriously they would have had any idea that Carrie was making contact on the Internet. We boarded the elevator again, this time getting off on the third floor.

  “The women’s ward,” Dr. Ensor explained. “We have twenty-six female patients at the moment, out of one hundred and seventy patients overall. That’s the visitors’ room.”

  She pointed through glass at a spacious open area with comfortable chairs and televisions. No one was in there now.

  “Did she ever have visitors?” I asked as we kept walking.

  “Not from the outside, not once. Inspiring more sympathy for her, I suppose.” She smiled bitterly. “The women actually stay in there.”

  She pointed out another area, this one arranged with single beds.

  “She slept over there by the window,” Dr. Ensor said.

  I retrieved Carrie’s letter from my pocketbook and read it again, stopping at the fifth paragraph:

  LUCY-BOO on TV. Fly through window. Come with we

  Under covers. Come til dawn. Laugh and sing.

  Same ole song.

  LUCY LUCY LUCY and we!

  Suddenly I thought about the videotape of Kellie Shephard, and of the actress in Venice Beach who played bit parts on television shows. I thought of photo shoots and production crews, becoming more convinced that there was a connection. But what did Lucy have to do with any of this? Why would Carrie see Lucy on TV? Or was it simply that she somehow knew that Lucy could fly, could fly helicopters?

  There was a commotion around a corner, and female peace officers were herding the women patients in from recreation. They were sweating and loud, with tormented faces, and one was being escorted in a preventive aggressive device, or a PAD, which was a politically correct term for a restraint that chained wrists and ankles to a thick leather strap about the waist. She was young and white, with eyes that scattered when they fixed on me, her mouth bowed in a simpering smile. With her bleached hair and pale androgynous body, she could have been Carrie, and for a moment, in my imagination, she was. My flesh crawled as those irises seemed to swirl, sucking me in, while patients jostled past us, several making it a point to bump into me.

  “You a lawyer?” an obese black woman almost spat as her eyes smoldered on me.

  “Yes,” I said, unflinching as I stared back, for I had learned long ago not to be intimidated by people who hate.

  “Come on.” The director pulled me along. “I’d forgotten they were due up at this time. I apologize.”

  But I was glad it had happened. In a sense, I had looked Carrie in the eye and had not turned away.

  “Tell me exactly what happened the night she disappeared, please,” I said.

  Dr. Ensor entered a code into another keypad and pushed through another set of bright red doors.

  “As best anyone can reconstruct it,” she replied, “Carrie went out with the other patients for this same recreation hour. Her snacks were delivered, and at dinner she was gone.”

  We rode the elevator down. She glanced at her watch.

  “Immediately, a search began and the police were contacted. Not one sign of her, and that’s what continued to eat at me,” she went on. “How did she get off the island in broad daylight with no one seeing her? We had cops, we had dogs, we had helicopters . . .”

  I stopped her there, in the middle of the first floor hall.

  “Helicopters?” I said. “More than one?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Hard not to,” she replied. “They were circling and hovering for hours, the entire hospital was in an uproar.”

  “Describe the helicopters,” I said as my heart began to hammer. “Please.”

  “Oh gosh,” she answered. “Three police at first, then the media flew in like a swarm of hornets.”

  “By chance, was one of the helicopters small and white? Like a dragonfly?”

  She looked surprised.

  “I do remember seeing one like that,” she said. “I thought it was just some pilot curious about all of the commotion.”

  22

  LUCY AND I lifted off from Ward’s Island in a hot wind and low barometric pressure that made the Bell JetRanger sluggish. We followed the East River and continued to fly through the Class B airspace of La Guardia, where we landed long enough to refuel and buy cheese crackers and sodas from vending machines, and for me to call the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. This time I was connected to the director of student counseling. I took that as a good sign.

  “I understand your need to protect yourself,” I said to her from behind the shut door of a pay phone booth inside Signatures terminal. “But please reconsider. Two more people have been murdered since Claire Rawley was.”

  There was a long silence.

  Then Dr. Chris Booth said, “Can you come in person?”

  “I was planning to,” I told her.

  “All right then.”

  I called Teun McGovern next to tell her what was going on.

  “I think Carrie escaped from Kirby in the same white Schweizer we saw flying over Kenneth Sparkes’s farm when we were working the scene,” I said.

  “Does she fly?” McGovern’s confused voice came back.

  “No, no. I can’t imagine that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Whoever she’s with,” I said. “That’s the pilot. Whoever helped her escape and is doing all this. The first two cases were warm-ups. Baltimore and Venice Beach. We might never have known about them, Teun. I believe Carrie waited to drag us in. She waited until Warrenton.”

  “Then you’re thinking Sparkes was the intended target,” she thoughtfully stated.

  “To get our attention. To make sure we came. Yes,” I said.

  “Then Claire Rawley figures in how?”

  “That’s what I’m going to Wilmington to find out, Teun. I believe she’s somehow the key to all of this. She’s the connection to him. Whoever he is. And I also believe that Carrie knows I will think this, and that she’s expecting me.”

  “You think she’s there.”

  “Oh yes. I’m betting on it. She expected Benton to come to Philadelphia, and he did. She expects Lucy and me to come to Wilmington. She knows how we think, how we work, at least as much about us as we know about her.”

  “You’re saying that you’re her next hits.”

  The thought was cold water in my stomach.

  “Intended ones.”

  “Not a chance we can take, Kay. We’ll be there when you land. The university must have a playing f
ield. We’ll get that arranged very discreetly. Whenever you land to refuel or whatever, page me and we’ll keep up with each other.”

  “You can’t let her know you’re there,” I said. “That will ruin it.”

  “Trust me. She won’t,” McGovern said.

  We flew out of La Guardia with seventy-five gallons of fuel and an unbearably long flight to look forward to. Three hours in a helicopter was always more than enough for me. The weight of the headsets and the noise and vibration gave me a hot spot on the top of my head and seemed to rattle me loose at the joints. To endure this beyond four hours generally resulted in a serious headache. We were lucky with a generous tail wind, and although our airspeed showed one hundred and ten knots, the GPS showed our ground speed was actually one hundred and twenty.

  Lucy made me take the controls again, and I was smoother as I learned not to overcontrol and fight. When thermals and winds shook us like an angry mother, I gave myself up to them. Trying to outmaneuver gusts and updrafts only made matters worse, and this was hard for me. I liked to make things better. I learned to watch for birds, and now and then I spotted a plane at the same time Lucy did.

  Hours became monotonous and blurred as we snuggled up to the coastline, over the Delaware River and on to the Eastern Shore. We refueled near Salisbury, Maryland, where I used the bathroom and drank a Coke, then continued into North Carolina, where hog farms slaughtered the topography with long aluminum sheds and waste treatment lagoons the color of blood. We entered the airspace of Wilmington at almost two o’clock. My nerves began to scream as I imagined what might await us.

  “Let’s go down to six hundred feet,” Lucy said. “And lower the speed.”

  “You want me to do it.” I wanted to make sure.

  “Your ship.”

  It wasn’t pretty, but I managed.

  “My guess is, the university’s not going to be on the water, and is probably a bunch of brick buildings.”

  “Thank you, Sherlock.”

  Everywhere I looked I saw water, condominium complexes, and water treatment and other plants. The ocean was to the east, sparkling and ruffled, oblivious to dark, bruised clouds gathering on the horizon. A storm was on its way and did not seem to be in a hurry but threatened to be bad.

  “Lord, I don’t want to get grounded here,” I said over my mike as sure enough, a cluster of Georgian brick buildings came into view.

  “I don’t know about this.” Lucy was looking around. “If she’s here. Where, Aunt Kay?”

  “Wherever she thinks we are.” I sounded so sure.

  Lucy took over.

  “I’ve got the controls,” she said. “I don’t know if I hope you’re right or not.”

  “You hope it,” I answered her. “In fact, you hope it so much it scares me, Lucy.”

  “I’m not the one who brought us here.”

  Carrie had tried to ruin Lucy. Carrie had murdered Benton.

  “I know who brought us here,” I said. “It was her.”

  The university was close below us, and we found the athletic field where McGovern was waiting. Men and women were playing soccer, but there was a clearing near the tennis courts, and this was where Lucy was to land. She circled the area twice, once high, once low, and neither of us spotted any obstructions, except for an odd tree here and there. Several cars were on the sidelines, and as we settled to the grass, I noted that one of them was a dark blue Explorer with a driver inside. Then I realized that the intramural soccer game was coached by Teun McGovern in P.E. gym shorts and shirt. She had a whistle around her neck, and her teams were co-ed and very fit.

  I looked around as if Carrie were observing all this, but skies were empty, and nothing offered even the scent of her. The instant we were on the ground and in flight idle, the Explorer drove across the grass and stopped a safe distance from our blades. It was driven by an unfamiliar woman, and I was stunned to see Marino in the passenger’s seat.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said to Lucy.

  “How the hell did he get here?” She was amazed, too.

  Marino stared at us through the windshield as we waited out our two minutes and shut down. He didn’t smile and wasn’t the least bit friendly when I climbed into the back of the car while Lucy tied down the main rotor blades. McGovern and her soccer players went on with their staged game, paying no attention to us at all. But I noticed the gym bags beneath benches on the sidelines, and I had no doubt what was inside them. It was as if we were expecting an approaching army, an ambush by enemy troops, and I could not help but wonder if Carrie had made a mockery of us once again.

  “I wasn’t expecting to see you,” I commented to Marino.

  “You think it’s possible USAirways could fly somewhere without dumping your ass out in Charlotte first?” he complained. “Took me as long to get here as it probably did you.”

  “I’m Ginny Correll.” Our driver turned around and shook my hand.

  She was at least forty, a very attractive blond dressed primly in a pale green suit, and had I not known the truth, I might have assumed she was on the university’s faculty. But there was a scanner and a two-way radio inside the car, and I caught a flicker of the pistol in the shoulder holster beneath her jacket. She waited until Lucy was inside the Explorer, and then began turning around in the grass as the soccer game went on.

  “Here’s what’s going on,” Correll began to explain. “We didn’t know whether the suspect or suspects might be waiting for you, following you, whatever, so we prepared for that.”

  “I can see that you did,” I said.

  “They’ll be heading off the field in about two minutes, and the important point is we got guys all over the place. Some dressed as students, others hanging out in town, checking out the hotels and bars, things like that. Where we’re heading now is the student counseling center, where the assistant director’s going to meet us. She was Claire Rawley’s counselor and has all her records.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Just so you know, Doc,” Marino said, “we got a campus police officer who thinks he may have spotted Carrie yesterday in the student union.”

  “The Hawk’s Nest, to be specific,” Correll said. “That’s the cafeteria.”

  “Short dyed red hair, weird eyes. She was buying a sandwich, and he noticed her because she stared holes in him when she walked past his table, and then when we started passing her photo around, he said it might have been her. Can’t swear to it, though.”

  “It would be like her to stare at a cop,” Lucy said. “Jerking people around is her favorite sport.”

  “I’ll also add that it’s not unusual for college kids to look like the homeless,” I said.

  “We’re checking pawn shops around here to see if anybody fitting Carrie’s description might have bought a gun, and we’re also checking for stolen cars in the area,” Marino said. “Assuming if she and her sidekick stole cars in New York or Philadelphia, they aren’t going to show up here with those plates.”

  The campus was an immaculate collection of modified Georgian buildings tucked amid palms, magnolias, crepe myrtles, and lobolly and long-leaf pines. Gardenias were in bloom and when we got out of the car, their perfume clung to the humid, hot air and went to my head.

  I loved the scents of the South, and for a moment, it did not seem possible that anything bad could happen here. It was summer session, and the campus was not heavily populated. Parking lots were half full, with many of the bike racks empty. Some of the cars driving on College Road had surfboards strapped to their roofs.

  The counseling center was on the second floor of West-side Hall, and the waiting area for students with health problems was mauve and blue and full of light. Thousand-piece puzzles of rural scenes were in various stages of completion on coffee tables, offering a welcome distraction for those who had appointments. A receptionist was expecting us and showed us down a corridor, past observation and group rooms, and spaces for GRE testing. Dr. Chris Booth was energetic with kind, wise eyes, a
woman approaching sixty, I guessed, and one who loved the sun. She was weathered in a way that gave her character, her skin deeply tanned and lined, her short hair white, and her body slight but vital.

  She was a psychologist with a corner office that overlooked the fine arts building and lush live oak trees. I had always been fascinated by the personality behind offices. Where she worked was soothing and unprovocative but shrewd in its arrangement of chairs that suited very different personalities. There was a papasan chair for the patient who wanted to curl up on deep cushions and be open for help, and a cane-back rocker and a stiff love seat. The color scheme was gentle green, with paintings of sailboats on the walls, and elephant ear in terra cotta pots.

  “Good afternoon,” Dr. Booth said to us with a smile as she invited us in. “I’m very glad to see you.”

  “And I’m very glad to see you,” I replied.

  I helped myself to the rocking chair, while Ginny perched on the love seat. Marino looked around with self-conscious eyes and eased his way into the papasan, doing what he could not to be swallowed by it. Dr. Booth sat in her office chair, her back to her perfectly clean desk that had nothing on it but a can of Diet Pepsi. Lucy stood by the door.

  “I’ve been hoping that someone would come see me,” Dr. Booth began, as if she had called this meeting. “But I honestly didn’t know who to contact or even if I should.”

  She gave each of us her bright gray eyes.

  “Claire was very special—and I know that’s what everyone says about the dead,” she said.

  “Not everyone,” Marino cynically retorted.

  Dr. Booth smiled sadly. “I’m just saying that I have counseled many students here over the years, and Claire deeply touched my heart and I had high hopes for her. I was devastated by news of her death.”

  She paused, staring out the window.

  “I saw her last about two weeks prior to her death, and I’ve tried to think of anything I could that might hold an answer as to what might have happened.”

  “When you say you saw her,” I said, “do you mean in here? For a session?”