I check my phone with growing concern. Joe Henderson is supposed to meet us and he said to let him know when we were an hour out. I’ve texted him three times and left voice mails twice and there is no response. I call the police department’s investigative unit and the man who answers says that Henderson marked off duty at six P.M.
“Which is about the time I talked to him,” I reply. “He agreed to meet me.”
“On his own time as a courtesy.” It’s not a friendly thing to say.
“I wonder if you have a way to reach him. Special Agent Benton Wesley and I are maybe twenty minutes out. This is in reference . . .”
“Yes, ma’am. I know what it’s in reference to and you have an FBI agent with you? I’m wondering when the FBI got involved and why no one bothered to mention it?” He’s not hostile or rude but he’s not warm either.
“He happens to be with me.” I don’t offer that Special Agent Wesley is my husband.
“Hold on and let me see if Joe’s at home. You’re aware that we’re expecting severe weather?”
“That’s why I’m doing this now.”
I hear him calling a landline and I catch that his last name is Freedman and he’s a detective sergeant. He has a brief exchange with someone and I overhear that Joe Henderson was “meeting the medical examiner at the congressman’s house where the girl drowned.”
“Sure I know. My thought too and that was about oh-nineteen-hundred hours when you talked last and he planned to come home after he was done? Okay. Sure, makes sense,” Sergeant Freedman says to whomever he has on the landline. “He was buying a coffee at that time and since that was more than two hours ago chances are he’s been back and forth to Starbucks buying more coffee, addict that he is. How he sleeps at night I’ll never know.” He laughs. “That and babies, I get it. Thanks again. Sorry to bother you.”
Next Freedman is back with me and I’m told that cell reception can be bad on the Neck, possibly explaining why I can’t reach Investigator Henderson. He also might be getting coffee somewhere, maybe grabbing a sandwich while he’s at it. Something could have come up and then Freedman offers that maybe Henderson forgot.
“Forgot?” I repeat.
“He’s got a full plate. Not only on the job but he coaches soccer and he and his wife have three-month-old twins. Let me put it this way. Joe’s a great guy, one of our best investigators, but sometimes he’s got the attention span of a gnat.”
“Just so we’re clear,” I answer, “if he’s not there we’d like to check out the pool area and the grounds but we don’t want to alarm the neighbors.”
“Not much to worry about. The nearest neighbor’s about ten acres away. I was out there this morning when the body was found. It’s pretty desolate. Not sure why you’re doing this in the pitch-dark. That far out on the Neck and it can be a black hole, and if we get lightning you don’t want to be anywhere near it.”
“Time is of the essence.”
“I’ll make sure dispatch is reminded again so no one confuses you with a prowler.” He’s halfway joking but what registers is the word again.
Joe Henderson let his sergeant know about the plans, and information has gone out over the radio. The latter is unfortunate, and I think of Bloom’s pickup truck tailing us, I think of the handheld scanner that was inside it earlier today.
“If Investigator Henderson’s not there when we arrive I would like another unit as quickly as possible,” I inform Freedman and I’m completely professional.
“Hey I’ll show up myself.”
“Thank you.” There’s nothing light in my tone.
I end the call and Benton says, “They don’t seem to take this very seriously.”
“Most people would think that what I have in mind could wait until daylight assuming it’s necessary at all.”
“Then they don’t know you.”
“Not every investigator in the world thinks my vigilance is a good thing.” I’m no stranger to the gossip.
It gets back to me, usually passed along by Bryce. I’m obsessive. I’m a pit bull who doesn’t know when to let go. I overextend police resources and wear out my welcome. I’m Doctor Death. I’m a pain in the ass.
“Not to mention once manner has been established and then I overrule it, that doesn’t always set well either,” I reply. “The police in this case were comfortable that Gracie Smithers is an accidental drowning. They don’t understand that Doctor Kato is inexperienced. She’s not board certified and I won’t keep her once her fellowship is complete and I can’t say that anyway. I’ve just made everybody’s life a lot harder.”
“Doing what’s right always does,” Benton says.
FOR THE NEXT TEN minutes we wind in and out of narrow roads with different names that lead to large waterfront estates. Lighted windows glow in the dark but don’t begin to dispel it, and Benton brings up Julie Eastman, the New Jersey woman shot to death at the Edgewater Ferry this past April. He wants to know what Marino has told me about her.
“Only that he used to date her mother in high school,” I reply.
“Beth Eastman, the mother, still lives in Bayonne. She and Marino communicate on and off through Twitter.” He downshifts and the engine growls loudly in a lower octave.
“I assume this is from Lucy but it matters why exactly?”
“If somebody wanted to know who Marino knows it wouldn’t be hard.”
“Do Marino and his former high school sweetheart communicate through direct messages or through tweets? Because if it’s direct messages, that’s not public.”
“I worry about hacking,” Benton says. “I worry we’re dealing with someone who has extreme cyber skills, explaining the tweets we can’t trace and possibly explaining your credit card fraud. That’s been recent, just the past few months and it’s happening repeatedly. Every time you get a new card it happens again, and while I’ve not wanted to plant unfounded fears in your mind, I’ve been concerned that there might be a breach in security.”
“You blew it off this morning when I brought it up.”
“I didn’t want to ruin our vacation.”
“Well it’s ruined so go ahead and ruin it some more.”
“Lucy claims it’s impossible anyone could be getting past the CFC firewalls but I don’t share her confidence,” Benton says.
“When did you start thinking this way?”
“It’s entered my mind in recent weeks. As the day has worn on my suspicions have intensified.”
“Well I do share Lucy’s confidence. I’m not sure the NSA could get past her firewalls, Benton.” I’m not exaggerating.
By the time Lucy was a teenager she was interning for the FBI and was instrumental in developing their Criminal Artificial Intelligence Network, CAIN. Creating machine language from source code comes as naturally to her as handling powerful machines, and protecting her domain from viruses and malware is automatic and unrelenting. A breach of computer security is something my niece would take extremely personally. It would be a fatal error. She wouldn’t let it happen.
“It’s easy to get complacent,” Benton says.
“You feel Lucy has gotten complacent?”
“She doesn’t lack confidence,” he repeats. “So much confidence that sometimes she isn’t objective. That’s the problem with narcissists.”
“Now she’s a narcissist. A sociopath and a narcissist. How fortunate for her that she has someone close who can profile her.”
“Come on, Kay,” he says quietly. “She is what she is but that doesn’t mean she’s bad. It just means that she could be.”
“Everybody could be.”
“That’s absolutely true.”
“Are you having misgivings about her that you haven’t shared with me?” I think of her aloofness, her paranoia and her reason for why she’s no longer wearing Janet’s family ring.
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.” I don’t take my eyes off him.
“We’ve had conversations that concern me about her state of mind,” he says. “Her thinking that people like Jen Garate are out to get her et cetera . . .”
“Et cetera?” I won’t let him breeze past the remark. “As in more than one person who is out to get her?”
“References and allusions that are disturbing. Suffice it to say I worry that recent events in her personal life have had a destabilizing effect.”
“What recent events?”
“Whatever might be going on between Janet and her in addition to evidence that her computer empire is being breached and her adamance that it isn’t possible,” he says. “Well it is. And the more she protests, the more I have my doubts.”
“About what?”
“About who’s really doing it.”
“Are you suggesting Lucy is contriving all of this? The untraceable tweets to me, the credit card fraud?” I stare at him, stunned. “Are you thinking that Lucy might be shooting people too?”
“Contriving is a good word for it,” he replies evasively. “Someone is contriving something.”
“And the motive of whoever might be contriving what’s been happening of late?”
“The tweets like the pennies and possibly somebody using your credit card may be for attention.”
“The bullet with a three etched on it?” I add. “The same thing?”
“Yes. A calling card from someone invisible who’s in our faces.”
“Lucy is in our faces.” My eyes are locked on his sharp unsmiling profile as he hints at a hypothesis that for me is out of the question.
“I’m not ready to go that far. I don’t ever want to go that far, Kay. But put it this way—somebody is way too interested in us.”
“Is this why you were so angry back there that you practically blew the pickup truck off the road?”
“I don’t like it.” Benton’s jaw is set hard again. “I’m not nice when we’re messed with no matter who the hell is doing it.”
“And the other New Jersey victim? How might that person fit?”
“Jack Segal,” Benton replies and the Rosado property is up ahead.
The driveway hooks sharply to the right and is unlighted but I notice there are lights on inside the house.
“He was opening his restaurant, in back of it unlocking the door when he was shot,” Benton says.
“Does Marino have some link to him too?”
“No,” Benton says. “But you do.”
“I do?”
“His son was Dick Segal.”
“I have no idea.” But the name touches some buried place.
“When you were with the OCME in Manhattan, Jack Segal’s son Dick allegedly committed suicide. This was about five years ago. He supposedly jumped off the G.W. Bridge and the family protested the autopsy for religious reasons,” Benton says and the case comes back to me. “They had their rabbi pay you a visit, and there was a fair amount of anger in the Jewish community when you did an autopsy anyway.”
“Without a CT scanner there was no choice. It was the law, and it’s a good thing we abided by it since it turned out Dick Segal had help going off that bridge. I found evidence of ligature marks, and several boys from his school were suspects but were never indicted because there wasn’t sufficient evidence.”
“Again something that could be known,” Benton says. “The case is public information if you know where to look. If we were to chart everything on a whiteboard it starts looking like a web, and you have to be honest enough to consider who might be in the center of it.”
“If you know something I don’t,” I start to say and my heart is constricted by dread.
“I don’t know anything for a fact. But whatever the truth, we will have to face it. No matter what it is.”
He turns into the paved driveway and I note an unmarked black Tahoe. It’s parked near the three-story house that I recognize from photographs. Investigator Joe Henderson is here and it appears he might be inside, which is an unanticipated bonus. I had no expectation that we would be allowed to wander at will through every part of Congressman Rosado’s property.
We get out and I’m aware of the wind, the surf, the soft thuds of the car doors shutting and the alarm going off inside my head as I notice several things at once. The back door of the house is slightly ajar, light seeping out onto the brick landing and the steps, and Benton is sliding the pistol out of the holster under his jacket. There is no sign of anyone. Yet the lights are on in certain rooms of the house and the unmarked Tahoe didn’t just get here.
Benton touches the hood and confirms it’s cold. On the console between the front seats is a take-out cardboard carrier with two large coffees, the lids on, napkins, wooden stirrers and sugar packets tucked between them. The portable radio charger is empty, the driver’s door locked. Benton has the Glock pointed down by his side as he walks away from the SUV, scanning, listening, tense because I’m with him but it isn’t safe for me to sit alone in his car.
He heads toward the back door of the house, his footsteps light like a cat’s, completely silent on old pavers with recently trimmed borders, the grass spreading out on either side lush and well cared for. He makes sure I stay behind him. But if there’s a problem there’s no good place for me to be. He climbs the steps and at the top nudges the door open a little with his toe. He calls inside for Joe Henderson, shouting several times and no one answers. He pushes the door open wider. I have my phone ready to call the police and Benton holds up a finger, pausing me.
“Dispatch already notified patrol,” he says quietly and I get his meaning.
Anybody monitoring the Marblehead frequencies would know we were headed here, and I glance at the time on my phone. My call to the investigative unit was twenty-four minutes ago. Prior to that at about six P.M. I called looking for Henderson to alert him that Gracie Smithers is a homicide, and dispatch raised him on the air and gave him my number. He got hold of me and we talked.
“FBI!” Benton yells, standing to one side of the door, his body shielding me. “Henderson? Anybody in there identify yourself now!”
The wind rushes in from the sea, shaking trees and careening around the house in a low whistle. Silence, no people sounds, no sign of anybody around, and he holds his stance, the butt of the pistol gripped in both hands, pointing out and up, his index finger laid across the trigger guard.
“Call for backup,” he says. “Give them the Tahoe’s plate number, make sure it’s his.”
I make the call. Almost instantly I’m startled by the broadcast, a dispatcher requesting a backup, and Benton kicks open the door all the way. Ten feet inside and off to the left a portable radio is on the hardwood floor.
CHAPTER 36
ACRES OF TERRACED ROCKERY span the back of the property, and it’s as black as ink, a thick darkness broken by a distant perimeter of throbbing red and blue. Beams of high intensity LED flashlights crisscross the terrain as police search for Joe Henderson.
Marked units and detectives’ cars are parked behind the Tahoe, his take-home police SUV, and we have no idea where he is. He doesn’t answer his phone and there was no sign he got much farther than the front door when he entered the house, which is furnished but sterile.
A thorough walk-through took no more than thirty minutes and there was nothing in the cupboards or closets, no personal effects, not linens or even soap, only furniture, window treatments, and bottles of water and beer in the bar refrigerator. The house felt unlived in with an air of neglect. Toilets hadn’t been flushed in a while, and when I ran water in the sinks it was brown at first.
Yet someone was inside earlier, someone other than Henderson we’re sure. This person turned on lights in the mudroom, a hallway, the bar and the kitchen, possibly leaving through the back door without clos
ing it all the way. The detective accompanying us, the sergeant whose last name is Freedman, said Henderson had no plan to enter the house. He had no key or warrant. He must have done the same thing Benton did. He saw the door was ajar.
“Until a couple hours ago this was an accidental drowning.” Freedman continues to talk as we follow a stone path toward the water, flashlights in hand, and I detect fear, high-pitched like a dog whistle. “We had no reason to search the house or secure it. The kids were never inside it.”
He’s talking about Gracie Smithers and Troy Rosado.
“That we know of,” Benton reminds him. “I’m going to bet that Troy has a way to get in if he wants.”
“When we got here this morning after the body was found the back door was locked,” Freedman says.
“And the alarm log?” Benton asks.
“I sure as hell didn’t wear the right shoes for this.” Freedman is short, heavy with a barrel-shaped chest, and the dress shoes he’s wearing with his suit aren’t compatible with walking over slippery leaves and rocks. “The Realtor’s not very helpful about remembering exactly what time she does her checks of the place, in and out almost every day, nothing routine, just when she’s in the area because of worries about vandalism.”
“I’m not aware that’s much of a problem around here,” I reply. “Marblehead is considered safe with very little violence or property crime. But then I don’t need to be telling you that.”
“I’m passing on what she told me, and the problem with the alarm log is she can’t say with certainty if she was in the house at a certain time. For example the log shows the alarm was turned off at ten-fifteen last night and it was never reset.”