Cause of Death

  "Geez, what's the matter?" Marino asked when I jumped. "You (lot POST-traumatic stress syndrome?"

  "I'm sure I do," I said. "Were you in the building?"

  "Nope, but not far away. I heard about your full fire alarm on the radio and thought I'd check it out."

  He hitched up his police belt with all its heavy gear, his eyes roaming the crowd. "You mind telling me what the hell's going on'? You finally get a case of spontaneous combustion?"

  "I don't know exactly what's going on. But what I've been told is that someone apparently tripped a false alarm that set off the deluge system throughout the entire building. Why are You here?"

  "I see Fielding way over there." Marino nodded. "And Rose. They're all together. You look cold as shit."

  "You were just in the area?" I asked, because when he was evasive, I knew something was up.

  "I could hear the damn alarm all the way on Broad Street," he said.

  As if on cue, the awful clanging across the street suddenly stopped. I stepped closer to the parking deck wall and looked over the top of it as I worried more about what I would find when all of us were allowed to return to the building. Fire trucks rumbled loudly in parking lots, and firefighters in protective gear were entering through several different doors.

  "When I saw what was going on," he added, "I figured you'd be up here. So I thought I'd check on you."

  "You figured right," I said, and my fingernails had turned blue. "You know anything about this Henrico case, the forty five cartridge case that seems to have been fired by the same Sig P220 that killed Danny?" I asked as I continued to lean against the cold concrete wall and stare out at the city.

  "What makes you think I'd find anything out that fast'?"

  "Because everybody's scared of you."

  "Yeah, well they sure as hell should be."

  Marino moved closer to me. He leaned against the wall, only facing the other way, for he did not like having his back to people, and this had nothing to do with manners.

  He adjusted his belt again and crossed his arms at his chest, He avoided my eyes, and I could tell he was angry.

  "On December eleventh," he said, "Henrico had a traffic stop at 64 and Mechanicsville Turnpike. As the Henrico officer approached the car, the subject got out and ran, and the officer pursued on foot. This was at night." He got out his cigarettes. "The foot pursuit crossed the county line into the city, eventually ending in Whitcomb Court." He fired his lighter. "No one's real sure what happened, but at some point during all this, the officer lost his gun."

  It took a moment for me to remember that several years ago the Henrico County Police Department had switched from nine-millimeters to Sig Sauer P220 .45 caliber pistols.

  "And that's the pistol in question?" I uneasily asked.

  "Yup." He inhaled smoke. "You see, Henrico's got this policy. Every Sig gets entered into DRUGFIRE in the event this very thing happens."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Right. Cops lose their guns and have them stolen like anybody else. So it's not a bad thing to track them after they're gone, in case they're used in the commission of crimes."

  "Then the gun that killed Danny is the one this Henrico officer lost," I wanted to make sure.

  "It would appear that way." -It was lost in the projects about a month ago," I went on. "And now it's been used for murder. It was used on Danny."

  Marino turned toward me, flicking an ash. "At least it wasn't you in the car outside the Hill Cafe."

  There was nothing I could say.

  "That area of town ain't exactly far from Whitcomb Court and other bad neighborhoods," he said. "So we could be talking about a carjacking, after all."

  "No." I still would not accept that. "My car wasn't taken."

  "Something could have happened to make the squirrel change his mind," he said.

  I did not respond.

  "It could have been anything. A neighbor turns a light on. A siren sounds somewhere. Someone's burglar alarm accidentally goes off. Maybe he got spooked after shooting Danny and didn't finish what he started."

  "He didn't have to shoot him." I watched traffic slowly rolling past on the street below. "He could have just stolen my Mercedes outside the cafe. Why drive him off and walk him down the hill into the woods?" My voice got harder.

  "Why do all of that for a car you don't end up taking?"

  "Things happen," he said again. "I don't know."

  "What about the tow lot in Virginia Beach," I said.

  "Has anybody checked with them?"

  "Danny picked up your ride around three-thirty, which is the time they told you it would be ready."

  "What do you mean, the time they told me'?"

  "The time they told you when you called."

  I looked at him and said, "I never called."

  He flicked an ash. "They said you did."

  "No." I shook my head. "Danny called. That was his job. He dealt with them and my office's answering service."

  "Well, someone who claimed to be Dr. Scarpetta called.

  Maybe Lucy'?"

  "I seriously doubt she would say she was me. Was this person who called a woman'?"

  He hesitated. "Good question. But you probably should ask Lucy, just to make sure she didn't call."

  Firefighters were emerging from the building, and I knew that soon we would be allowed to return to our offices. We Would spend the rest of the day checking everything, speculating and complaining as we hoped that no more cases came in.

  "The arm-no's the thing that's really eating at me," Marino then said.

  "Frost should be back in his lab within the hour," I said, but Marino did not seem to care.

  "I'll call him. I'm not going up there in all this mess."

  I could tell he did not want to leave me and his mind was on more than this case, "Something's troubling you," I said.

  "Yeah, Doc. Something always is."

  "What this time?"

  He got out his pack of Marlboros again, and I thought of my mother, whose constant companion now was an oxygen tank, because she once had been as bad as him.

  "Don't look at me like that," he warned as he fished for his lighter again.

  "I don't want you to kill yourself. And today you seem to be really trying."

  "We're all going to die."

  "Attention," blared a fire truck's P.A. system. "This is the Richmond Fire Department. The emergency has ended.

  You may reenter the building," sounded the mechanical broadcast with its jarring repetitive beeps and monotonous tones. "Attention.. "The emergency has ended. You may reenter the building.

  "Mc." Marino went on, unmindful of the commotion, "I want to croak while I'm drinking beet-, eating nachos with chili and sour cream, sniokino, downing shots of lack Black and watching the game."

  "You may as well have sex while you're at it." I did not smile, for I found nothing amusim' about his health risks.

  "Doris cured me of sex." Marino was serious, too, as He referred to the woman he'd been married to most of his life.

  "When did you hear from her last"" I asked, as I realized she was probably the explanation for his mood.

  The buildings and homes were thick with shadows, and anyone could wait in them and not be seen.

  I looked across at my new car, and the small yard beyond it where the dog lay in wait. He was silent just now, and I walked north on the sidewalk for several yards to see what he might do. But he did not seem interested until I neared his yard. Then I heard the low, evil growling that raised the hair on the back of my neck. By the time I was unlocking my car door, he was on his hind legs, barking and shaking the fence.

  "You're just guarding your turf, aren't you, boy?" I said. "I wish you could tell me what you saw last night."

  I looked at the small house as an upstairs window suddenly slid up.

  "Bozo, shut up!" yelled a fat man with tousled hair.

  "Shut up, you stupid mutt!" The window slammed shut.

  "All right,
Bozo," I said to the dog who was not really called Outlaw, unfortunately for him. "I'm leaving you alone now." I looked around one last time and got into my car.

  The drive from Daigo's restaurant to the restored area on Franklin where police had found my former car took less than three minutes if one were driving the posted speed. I turned around at the hill leading to Sugar Bottom, for to drive down there, especially in a Mercedes, was out of the question. That thought led to another.

  I wondered why the assailant would have chosen to remain on foot in a restored area with a Neighborhood Watch program as widely publicized as the one here. Church Hill published its own newsletter, and residents looked out their windows and did not hesitate to call the cops, especially after shots had been tired. It seemed it might have been safer to have casually returned to my car and driven a safe distance away.

  Yet the killer did not do this, and I wondered if he knew this area's landmarks but not the culture because he really was not from here. I wondered if he had not taken my car because his own was parked nearby and mine was of no interest. He didn't need it for money or to get away. That theory made sense if Danny had been followed instead of happened upon. While he was eating dinner, his assailant could have parked, then returned to the cafe on foot and waited in the dark near the Mercedes while the dog barked.

  I was passing my building on Franklin when my pager vibrated against my side. I slipped it off and turned on its light so I could see. I had neither radio nor phone yet, and made a quick decision to turn into the OCME back parking lot. Letting myself in through a side door, I entered our security code, walked into the morgue and took the elevator upstairs. Traces of the day's false alarm had vanished, but Rose's death certificates suspended in air were an eerie display. Sitting behind my desk, I returned Marino's page.

  "Where the hell are you?" he said right off.

  "The office," I said, staring up at the clock.

  "Well, I think that's the last place you ought to be right now. And I bet you're alone. You eaten yet?"

  "What do you mean, this is the last place I should be right now?"

  "Let's meet and I'll explain."

  We agreed to go to the Linden Row Inn, which was downtown and private. I took my time because Marino lived on the other side of the river, but he was quick. When I arrived, he was sitting at a table before the fire in the parlor. Off duty, he was drinking a beer. The bartender was a quaint older man in a black bow tie, and he was carrying in a big bucket of ice while Pachelbel played.

  "What is it?" I said to Marino as I sat. "What's happened now?"

  He was dressed in a black golf shirt, and his belly strained against the knitted fabric and flowed roundly over the waistband of his jeans. The ashtray was already littered with cigarette butts, and I suspected the beer he was drinking wasn't his first or last.

  "Would you like to hear the story of your false alarm this afternoon, or has someone gotten to you first?" He lifted the mug to his lips.

  "No one has gotten to me about much of anything. Although I've heard a rumor about some radioactivity scare," I said as the bartender appeared with fruit and cheese. "Pellegrino with lemon, please," I ordered.

  "Apparently, it's more than a rumor," Marino said.

  "What?" I gave him a frown. "And why would you know more about what's going on inside my building than I do?"

  "Because this radioactive situation has to do with evidence in a city homicide case." He took another swallow of beer. "Danny Webster's homicide, to be exact."

  He allowed me a moment to grasp what he had just said, but my limits were unwilling to stretch.

  "Are you implying that Danny's body was radioactive?" I asked as if he were crazy.

  "No. But the debris we vacuumed from the inside of your car apparently is. And I'm telling you, the guys that did the processing are scared shitless, and I'm not happy about it either because I poked around inside your ride, too.

  That's one thing I got a big damn problem with like some people do with spiders and snakes. It's like these guys who got exposed to Agent Orange in Nam, and now they're dying of cancer."

  The expression on my face now was incredulous.

  "You're talking about the front seat passenger's side of my black Mercedes?"

  Yeah, and if I were you, I wouldn't drive it anymore.

  How do you know that shit won't get to you over a long time?"

  "I won't be driving that car anymore," I said. "Don't worry. But who told you the vacuumings were radioactive?"

  "The lady who runs that SEM thing."

  "The scanning electron microscope."

  "Yeah. It picked up uranium, which set the Geiger counter off. Which I'm told has never happened before."

  "I'm sure it hasn't."

  "So next we have a panic on the part of security, which are right down the hall, as you know," he went on. "And this one guard makes the executive decision to evacuate the building. Only problem is, he forgets that when he breaks the glass on the little red box and yanks the handle, he's also going to set off the deluge system."

  "To my knowledge," I said, "it's never been used. I could see how someone might forget. In fact, he mignight, that his death isn't a random crime motivated by robbery, gay bashing or drugs. I think his killer waited for him, maybe as long as an hour, then confronted him as he returned to my car in the dark shadows near the magnolia tree on Twenty-eighth Street. You know that dog, the one who lives right there? He barked the entire time Danny was inside the Hill Cafe, according to Daigo."

  Marino regarded me in silence for a moment. "See, that's what I was just saying. You went there tonight."

  "Yes, I did."

  His jaw muscles bunched as he looked away. "That's exactly what I mean."

  "Daigo remembers the dog barking nonstop."

  He said nothing.

  "I was there earlier and the dog doesn't bark unless you get close to his property. Then he goes berserk. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  His eyes came back to me. "Who's going to hang out there for an hour when a dog's acting like that? Come on, Doc."

  "Not your average killer," I answered as my drink appeared. "That's my point."

  I waited until the bartender served us, and after he was gone from our table I said, "I think Danny may have been a professional hit."

  "Okay." He drained his beer. "Why? What the hell did that kid know? Unless he was into drugs or some type of organized crime."

  "What he was into was Tidewater," I said. "He lived there. He worked in my office there. He was at least peripherally involved in the Eddings case, and we know whoever killed Eddings was very sophisticated. That, too, was premeditated and carefully planned."

  Marino was thoughtfully rubbing his face. "So you're convinced there's a connection."

  "I think nobody wanted us to know there was. I think whoever is behind this assumed he would look like a carjacking gone bad or some other street crime."

  "Yeah, and that's what everybody still thinks."

  "Not everybody." I held his eyes. "Absolutely, not everybody."

  "And you're convinced Danny was the intended victim, saying this was a professional hit."

  "it could have been me. It could have been him to scare me," I said. "We may never know."

  "You got tox yet on Eddings?" He motioned for another round.

  "You know what today was like. Hopefully, I'll know something tomorrow. Tell me what's going on with Chesapeake."

  He shrugged. "Don't got a clue."

  "How can you not have a clue?" I impatiently said.

  "They must have three hundred officers. Isn't anybody working on Ted Eddings' death?"

  "Doesn't matter if they have three thousand officers. All you need is one division screwed up, and in this instance it's homicide. So that's a barricade we can't get around because Detective Roche is still on the case."

  "I don't understand it," I said.

  "Yeah, well, he's still on your case, too."

  I didn't listen
for he wasn't worth my time.

  "I'd watch my back, if I were you." He met my eyes.