Flesh and Blood: A Scarpetta Novel (Scarpetta Novels Book 22)

“I can tell you what he’s tweeting,” Lucy says. “He claims that all he did was go there to talk, to give Nari’s wife a tennis trophy as a gift and he attacked him. He hit Leo in the head with it. So Leo came back later and shot him. Not one tweet,” she says this to me. “Ten of them telling the story.”

  “A TENNIS TROPHY,” I repeat. “It would be helpful if I can see it before I examine him.”

  “It never happened,” Marino says, and I think of the apartment on Farrar Street.

  I didn’t see a tennis trophy or any sign of a struggle. I think of the guitars and the possible presence of bleach, details I’m betting Leo Gantz doesn’t have a clue about. Who was inside that apartment? Who was it really and what was the person doing in there?

  I text Anne. I ask if she’s still in the building. I want to know what showed up in Nari’s CT scans, if she saw anything unusual including gastric contents that Luke Zenner described as interesting.

  “You need to keep in mind Leo’s tweets were from his house, from its wireless network,” Lucy continues to explain. “But not the one this morning that alluded to Jamal Nari’s death before it happened. The IP for that is the Sheraton in Cambridge, the business center. The tweet was sent from one of their computers at nine A.M. Then it was retweeted like crazy,” she adds as I read Anne’s response.

  She’ll stop by the receiving area where I’m still holding open the door, leaning against it. I listen to Lucy explain that the tweet sent from the Sheraton at nine o’clock this morning was from the Twitter account that uses the name Copperhead. Maybe at some level I expected it. Now I have a better idea why Benton is here and what he and Lucy have been doing.

  “In both cases a hotel computer in its business center was used,” she says. “It made tracing the tweets a dead end because the IP and the machine access code belong to a computer that’s used by the public, by guests in the hotel or any person wandering in to print their boarding pass or whatever.”

  “So you have no idea who Copperhead is?” I watch Anne emerge from the corridor, a long white lab coat flapping around her knees and a smile on her plain but pleasant face.

  “I know who it’s supposed to be,” Lucy says.

  CHAPTER 23

  GEORGIA SLIDES OPEN HER window in the center of the bright white receiving area.

  She says something to Anne as she walks through. Both of them laugh and Anne sasses her back, an inside joke that I don’t hear as I listen to what Lucy is saying about the identity of Copperhead.

  “It’s a Twitter account belonging to Michael Orland, who died in February,” she says and Marino looks amazed.

  “The piano guy?” he exclaims. “I saw him on Leno right before he quit. Maybe it was Idol. It wasn’t that long ago. I guess it could have been taped.”

  “That’s a shame.” Anne walks over to us.

  “This Michael Orland was a plumber,” Lucy says. “After he died someone hijacked his account.”

  “How do you know he’s dead?” I ask.

  “Twitter. His location, bio and contact info make it clear he’s the Michael Orland who was a hospital homicide in Florida this past February,” she says. “Six patients were given lethal doses of mivacurium chloride. There may have been others. A nurse was arrested and they’re still exhuming the bodies of other patients who suddenly stopped breathing. He was from not far from here, New Bedford, was visiting Saint Augustine and had an appendectomy. Soon after, he died. He was single, no kids. It’s a fairly typical example of it not occurring to anyone to delete a Twitter account. Some hackers have programs set up that do nothing but search for dormant users. Usually it means the person is dead or for some reason isn’t going to notice. Those are good accounts to hijack.”

  “Whoever did that must have known details about him,” Benton says. “There had to be a reason to pick his account.”

  I wonder if it was always called Copperhead and Lucy says yes.

  “I suppose plumbers work with copper a lot,” she adds. “Who knows why he picked it.”

  “Wouldn’t you need the person’s password to start tweeting as if you’re them?” Anne asks.

  “Knowing the password would be the easiest way,” Lucy says. “But certainly not the only way. Scam pages, malware, insecure passwords.”

  Anne looks perplexed. She also looks happy, a light in her eyes that didn’t used to be there. I notice her hair is long and there are blond highlights in it. All must be fine with Luke. She meets my eyes, waiting to hear what I need from her.

  “Can you put Jamal Nari’s CT scans up on the screen at my station?” I ask. “The essential ones of his injuries and anything else that might be significant.”

  “There are significant findings all right. Have you talked to Luke?”

  “Not about details.”

  “What findings?” Marino asks.

  “Put it this way, if he hadn’t been shot he likely would have ended up here anyway,” she says. “Do you want me to go into it now?”

  “I don’t.” Not in front of everyone, and I’d rather see what she’s alluding to and have a chance to think my own thoughts. “And please find Ernie. I believe he’s still here. Perhaps he can meet me in the autopsy room so I can turn this over to him.” I still have the Baggie of pennies in hand. “I’m sorry to hold you up. I know you’re carpooling these days.”

  “Luke’s gone. A dental appointment.” She glances at the digital time display on a stainless steel cooler door. “I’m supposed to pick him up in an hour,” she adds as Lucy moves next to me with her iPad.

  She shows me the hijacked Twitter account called Copperhead, explaining that the avatar was recently changed to a fingerprint, black on white, what looks like an inked print on a ten-print card. The plumber from New Bedford tweeted 311 times until February 10, the day before he died. The tweets resumed some three months later when the account was used to send me the poem on Mother’s Day. A month later Copperhead tweeted a second time. The Sheraton hotel is very close to here.

  “I WOULDN’T BOTHER WITH IAFIS,” Lucy says sarcastically, enlarging the avatar with her fingers.

  “No pores, bifurcations, ridge endings, cores or anything.” I point out there would be no characteristics to enter into the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System or any other database. “There’s no minutiae at all. It’s not an inked patent print or a livescan.”

  “It’s Photoshopped, fake, like someone’s laughing at us,” she says. “An image that’s actually a logo someone dragged across a browser window onto a desktop.”

  She executes a search for us, entering the key words fingerprint and logo. A gallery of fingerprint designs appear on her iPad display. One of them is exactly like the Copperhead avatar.

  “What’s the point?” Marino says. “Assuming you think there is one.”

  “It’s not identifiable,” she replies. “It’s generic. Someone thinks it’s funny.”

  “A taunt,” Benton agrees. “Taunts that are escalating.”

  “I guess what we’re supposed to take from this is the hospital homicide in Florida has nothing to do with the shootings. His identity was stolen plain and simple,” Marino decides, and every time he shifts his position, his foot touches the floor scale and a weight flickers on the digital display on the wall. “So we don’t need to tie ourselves in knots about a dead plumber.”

  “For the most part that’s right,” Benton replies. “There’s not going to be an obvious link between the shooter and this Twitter account. The killer isn’t someone who died in Florida. But how and why the Copperhead account was hijacked is critical to know.”

  “I checked everyone Orland followed and those who followed him,” Lucy says to me. “I did that when the poem was tweeted to you last month. A total of a hundred and six people, almost the same number as when he was alive. Some of them may not know he died and others probably didn’t feel good
about unfollowing someone who did. And a few of these people are dead too, his stepdad for example. He lived in Worcester and committed suicide a couple of years ago.”

  “Then he was a CFC case,” I point out.

  “That’s right.”

  “Whose?” I have a bad feeling I know.

  “Yours,” she says. “A chemist who killed himself with cyanide.”

  I remember it. I can almost smell the bitter almond odor of his blood when I opened him up.

  “We’ve also been reviewing the security camera recordings.” Benton confirms what he and Lucy have been doing this afternoon. “Now we’ll check again to make sure it wasn’t Leo Gantz who entered the Sheraton and helped himself to a computer in the business center.”

  “Or the hotel in Morristown,” Lucy adds. “The computer someone used there to tweet the poem last month. We’ve got that security recording too.”

  I think of the copper bullet, the frag, the pennies, all of it pitted from being polished in a tumbler. I don’t see how there can be any doubt that the person sending the tweets is a killer who has used a sniper rifle to murder at least three people since late December. He probably has been on my property. Copperhead might be someone I know.

  “So why would a kid confess to something like this?” Marino is asking Benton.

  “There could be a number of reasons. Attention would be one. I recommend you get him to your department, into an interrogation room. Kay and I will meet you there when you’re ready.”

  Benton wants to observe Leo Gantz behind one-way glass. He wants to watch while I examine his injuries and Benton doesn’t want him to have a clue that anybody is looking.

  “It’s best you talk to him alone at his house first.” Now Benton is coaching Marino. “He’s going to be high from all of the attention, his limbic system in overdrive because his name is trending on the Internet. I suspect the phone in their house is ringing nonstop. And he’s also going to be scared out of his mind. That’s probably starting as we speak. It will be acute when you arrive. Aggression won’t work with him. Don’t bully.”

  “Are you telling me nobody’s responded to his house yet?” Marino looks shocked. “Not Machado or your guys?”

  “They haven’t. There’s a perimeter in the neighborhood to make sure he doesn’t run. But it’s invisible. Agents are out of sight and nobody’s gone in or approached the residence. And Machado’s not an issue. He won’t be showing up anywhere.”

  “OK.” Marino nods and suspicion shows in his eyes.

  It’s coming to him. There was never any real threat that Machado would run the case into the ground. Marino senses he was manipulated but he’s not sure how or why or if it matters.

  “When you talk to Leo, you need to be his friend,” Benton continues to advise. “Can you do that? Don’t bully him.”

  “Who says I bully?” Marino scowls.

  “I’m telling you what will be effective. You need to treat him as if he’s a victim. He’ll respond to that because in his mind he’s been mistreated and misunderstood. In his mind he’s lost everything.”

  “The hell he has. He deserves to lose everything.”

  “Treat him like a victim, Pete. Even if you believe he isn’t one,” Benton repeats slowly.

  CHAPTER 24

  WORK AT THE CFC flows in a circle, logical and precisely planned, a thoughtful clinic, I like to think.

  The first stop is the digital platform floor scale, high-tech with a low-tech measuring rod near the door where Benton, Lucy and I were talking to Marino before he left moments ago. After a weight and measurement, the newest case is accessioned at the security desk where I’m now standing, the box of cannolis in one hand, the sealed Baggie of pennies in the other.

  “Would you like these or know someone who would?” I set the pastry box on the counter of Georgia’s open window.

  “They went to a lot of trouble to get those for you. What with this gridlock traffic and all.”

  “Yes and it would be a shame to waste them.”

  “Well I don’t want to know how many points they are, and tomorrow morning I weigh in.” She sighs as she opens the lid. “Why are you doing this to me, Doctor Scarpetta? You trying to sabotage Weight Watchers?”

  “Never.”

  “Seven pounds and five to go.”

  “Congratulations. Do you like peanut butter?”

  “Oh no.” She groans. “The devil is here.”

  “Don’t forget they need to be refrigerated.”

  “What are these?” Lucy asks about the pennies and I tell her.

  “Why didn’t you let me know?” She holds the coins up to the light.

  “I just did.”

  “I’m talking about the minute you found them.” She’s serious and anger flashes.

  “When you were buzzing the house?” I smile at her. “You were a little busy.”

  “The date’s interesting.” She returns the Baggie to me.

  “I know.”

  1981. The year Lucy was born and I’m not going to discuss it in front of Georgia or anyone. Neighborhood kids playing a prank or a symbolic gesture for my birthday, and I’m reminded of how light of heart I was when this day started. Everything has turned heavy and savage. As the hours pass and events unfold, the coins burn brighter in my mind and I know the date on them isn’t random.

  On the ledge of the security desk outside the glass is the handwritten log, heavy and bound in black leather, a permanent record of every case since the medical examiner’s system was established in Massachusetts. The large volumes go back to the 1940s and are stored in our records room along with hard copies of files that include DNA cards and in the old days toe tags. Now we use a RFID smart band embedded with a chip that is created on the 3-D printer. All I need is a handheld scanner to tell me who is inside our coolers and freezers.

  “Can I help you with anything right now?” Benton is busy with his phone, his electronic tether, looking down at it, a strand of silver hair on his brow that he absently pushes away.

  “What would you like to do?” I ask him.

  “What I’d like to do? Sit on our balcony in Miami, look at the ocean, have a drink.” He lifts his eyes and holds my gaze, and he’s elegant in his pinstripes and gray like a CEO or an expensive lawyer.

  “Sounds good to me,” says Georgia, her golden hair smartly layered and it used to be black with a simple cut, and she has makeup on and then there’s her diet.

  All of it is since she started working here several months ago, a nice-looking woman, early forties, former Transit Police, and it doesn’t escape my notice she’s very aware of Lucy who doesn’t return the attention. Thank God for that. I don’t want one of my most recent hires to be the reason my niece is no longer wearing her partner’s ring. It seems to be open season on flirting and fraternizing. Liz with Machado. Georgia with Lucy. Luke and Anne. Jen Garate and her come-hither looks and invasive exchanges with everyone including me. When did my workplace become such a soap opera? What happened to boundaries?

  “Until Marino is ready for us I want to continue reviewing what we were looking at upstairs. If you have no objections,” Benton says this to Lucy.

  “You can pick up where we left off,” she answers. “I’m happy to help.”

  “I need you to stay with me,” I say to her.

  We’re going to talk. That’s not negotiable, and I review the log entries, stopping on Gracie Smithers who was just picked up. Marblehead Neck, some twenty miles north of here, a fourteen-year-old white female, a possible drowning. Her body was discovered at eight o’clock this morning in the swimming pool of a house on Ocean Avenue, and I tell Lucy the address.

  “Do you mind seeing what you can find on this?” I ask her as Benton places a call, stepping away from us.

  “What’s on your mind?” She’s entering a search field on her i
Pad.

  “It strikes me as strange that the kids she allegedly was with would run off and not report to the police or anybody that she drowned,” I reply.

  “Doctor Kato signed her out as an accident.” Georgia is checking her computer. “It’s not pending. Only toxicology is. She’s got the manner of death as final and that’s what’s on the death certificate too.”

  “The trouble’s just begun,” I predict.

  “According to police the pool cover pulled loose and the kids were drinking.” Georgia reads what’s on her display, and I remember what Jen said about the water being frigid and her dry suit leaking.

  “It’s on the market. Being sold furnished, available immediately.” Lucy has pulled up the property.

  “Sounds like it’s unoccupied, at least it was last night,” I reply. “I wonder how she and her friends knew it was. You wouldn’t help yourself to someone’s pool without permission if you thought they were home.”

  “Friends as in more than one? Do we know how many?” Lucy asks.

  “Harold and Rusty seemed to think there were several and probably got this from the police. Maybe Jen did too. But what the information was based on I don’t know since it appears whoever she was with left her body in the pool and didn’t call for help. And how did these friends get to and from the house? Did someone drive?”

  “Maybe they’re local.” Lucy shows me a slide show of photographs.

  THE BIG HOUSE LOOKS turn of the century, gray with white trim, a slate roof, sweeping verandas and tall brick chimneys. It soars dramatically from a rocky rise with wooden steps leading down to a narrow beach, and the black bottom pool is L-shaped with a granite deck.

  I remember what the temperature was last night, a low of sixty and on the ocean it would have been quite chilly. It would seem the pool wasn’t heated and likely had been winterized and not reopened yet. The chlorine level would be high and unsuitable for swimming. What would possess teenagers to jump on a pool cover in the dark? Not much about this is adding up.