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

  Her anguish and terror come from where no one should have to go, a wrenching hopeless place. It’s not true that we are never given more than we can bear. Only it isn’t given. It simply happens.

  “It’s okay. No problem,” Marino says to the officer. “You can let her in.”

  CHAPTER 9

  JOANNA CATHER ISN’T WHAT I expected.

  I’m not sure what I imagined but not the tiny girlish woman weeping and staring glassy-eyed in grief and terror. She’s pretty in a delicate, fragile way like a porcelain doll that might break in half if you knocked her over, dressed in black leggings, boots and a pink COLDPLAY sweatshirt that hangs to her knees. She wears multiple rings and bracelets, her nails painted turquoise, and her long straw-blond hair is so straight it looks ironed.

  “Did you see them in Boston?” I indicate her sweatshirt and she stares blankly as if she doesn’t remember what she has on. “I’m Doctor Kay Scarpetta. I’m trying to think back to when it was. Maybe two summers ago.”

  My offhand reference to the British rock band and query about when it performed in the area reboots her shocked distraction, a tactic I learned early on when people are too fragmented by hysteria to give me what I need. I make a nongermane observation about the weather or what they’re wearing or anything at all we might have in common. It almost always works. I have Joanna’s attention.

  “You’re a doctor?” Her eyes fasten on me, and I’m mindful of the hard stiffness of the vest underneath my shirt, of my hands still gloved in purple nitrile, of my boots cocooned in boat-shaped blue shoe covers.

  “I’m handling Jamal’s case, the medical aspects of it.” I’m gentle but sure of my position, and I sense the beginning of trust.

  She pauses, staring with a hint of relief and says, “July two years ago. We had VIP backstage passes. We never miss them.”

  One of the band’s tour stops was Boston where they played for several nights, and Lucy got seats two rows back, center stage. We may have been at the same concert, perhaps near Joanna and her musician husband, all of us there on a rock-and-roll high.

  It happens in the blink of an eye. A lightning strike. A heart attack. A wrong place. A wrong time.

  “You . . . You saw Jamal,” she says to me. “What happened to him? He was shot?”

  “Preliminarily that’s the way it looks. I’m very sorry.”

  “The way it looks? You don’t know?”

  “He needs to be examined. Then I’ll have answers I can be sure of.” I’m next to her now as if she’s in my care, and I tell her I regret that I don’t have more information at the moment.

  I repeat how sorry I am for her terrible loss. I say all the right things as she starts crying again and this is exactly how Marino wants it to go. We’ve danced this dance since the beginning of our time. I’m the doctor who’s not here to accuse or cause further harm. The more he leans on her, the more she’ll bond with me, feeling I’m on her side. I know exactly how to insert myself without violating the boundaries of what I have a right to answer or ask. I also know how to be useful without saying a word.

  “We got it from here,” Marino tells the officer hanging back in the doorway. “Make sure none of the reporters out there get any closer to the house.”

  “What about the residents?” The officer whose silver name tag says T. J. HARDY watches me pull off my shoe covers and gloves and drop them in a red biohazard bag on the kitchen counter.

  I wear no personal protection clothing now, just my field clothes, which are official-looking with their many pockets and CFC crest. But I’m not threatening. I return to Joanna’s side as T. J. Hardy begins to explain that residents are trying to return to their apartments.

  “Two of them just pulled up in their cars, are in front of the house as we speak. They’re getting upset that we won’t let them back in.” His Massachusetts accent is elastic and strong, his r’s sounding like w’s.

  His voice triggers memories of him showing up in the autopsy room on several occasions for motor vehicle fatalities, and I’d had the distinct impression it was the last place he wanted to be. He’d collect personal effects and keep his distance from the steel tables. He’d avert his gaze, breathing out of his mouth because of the stench.

  “Positively ID them and escort them into their apartments,” Marino says to him. “I want their names and how to reach them. Email me the info ASAP. Nobody gets near the red SUV and the immediate area around it. We’re clear on that?”

  “Got it.”

  “You parked out there?” Marino directs this at Joanna, and she nods, not meeting his eyes.

  “What kind of vehicle?”

  “A Suburban. A rental. We’re moving things . . . We were supposed to move things around and needed something big.” She looks past him in a fixed wide-eyed stare.

  “You don’t own a car?” Marino asks.

  “We traded in both of ours on his new Honda.” Her voice quavers. “The red one out there.”

  “The cleanup crew wants to start picking up the spilled groceries. And . . .” T. J. Hardy glances at Joanna as he chooses his words. “And you know, start tidying things up.”

  Marino looks at me. “We’re done, right?”

  The body is at the CFC but I don’t mention it. The blood, the gore certainly need to be gone and I’m not going to say that either. I tell Marino that cleanup can get started, and Joanna quietly cries in spasms. Officer Hardy steps back outside. The solid sound of the oak door shutting startles her and her knees almost buckle. She gasps and holds a tissue over her nose and mouth, her eyes bloodshot and smeared with makeup.

  “Why don’t you come sit and let’s talk,” Marino says to her, and he introduces himself, adding, “Doctor Scarpetta is the chief medical examiner of Massachusetts and also works for the Pentagon.”

  “The Pentagon?” Joanna isn’t impressed and he just scared her.

  “It just means I have federal jurisdiction in certain cases.” I dismiss it as nothing.

  “What? You’re the fucking FBI.” The look in her eyes changes just like that.

  Marino had to brag and now I have to undo it. I explain I’m an Air Force special reservist affiliated with the Armed Forces Medical Examiners. She wants to know what that means. I tell her I assist the federal government with medical intelligence and help out with military matters but I also work for the state and my office is here in Cambridge. The more detail I give the more she glazes over. Wiping her eyes. Not listening. She doesn’t care about my pedigree. She’s not threatened by it and that’s what I want.

  “Point being you couldn’t be in better hands,” Marino adds. “She may have a few questions about medications, about any general health details she should know about your husband.”

  He’s says it as if I’m their family doctor and it’s a tried-and-true manipulation, a familiar one I wish wasn’t needed. Nari’s prescription drugs and health history have nothing to do with what killed him. A gun did. But Marino wants me present, and if Joanna thinks what he’s saying is a ploy she makes no indication. Instead she’s suddenly deflated as if there’s no point in fighting what can’t be changed. There’s no protest or argument that will make it untrue.

  “Where is he? Where’s Jamal?” Her tone is dead. “Why is that big black box set up in front of the house? I don’t understand. Was that where they put him? They wouldn’t let me look inside it. Is he in there? Where is he?”

  “He’s been taken to my office for examination.” I repeat what I’ve already told her. “The black enclosure was to ensure privacy and respect. Come sit down.” I touch her elbow and lead her to the couch, and she sits stiffly on the edge of it, wiping her eyes.

  “Who did this? Who would do this?” Her voice shakes and catches.

  “Well that’s what this is all about, Joanna. We gotta find that out.” Marino sets a chair directly across from her and sits down.
“I’m real sorry. I know how hard this is but I’ve got a lot of questions I need you to answer if you’re going to help us figure out what happened to Jamal, okay?”

  She nods. I sit down off to the side.

  “Starting with what time you left here this morning, where you were headed and why.” Marino has his notepad out.

  “I already told the other one that. He said Jamal was shot while he was getting groceries out of the car. That someone shot him.” She looks at me. “But you said you don’t know if he was shot.”

  “He needs to be examined so we can be sure of exactly what happened.” I avoid using the word autopsy.

  Her eyes race around the living room and then she stares at the three guitars. “Who did that? Her voice goes up a notch and is louder as she stares accusingly at us. “Jamal packed them in their cases. He’s so careful with his guitars. Who put them back on their stands?”

  “That’s interesting,” Marino says. “There’s two cases on the bed. Where’s the third one?”

  “You had no right! Touching his things, you had no right!”

  “We didn’t touch his guitars,” Marino says and I think of Machado.

  But he wouldn’t do that. I look across the room at the guitars, different shapes, black carbon fiber, one a matte finish, two shiny and shimmering with mother-of-pearl inlays. Upright on stands, a rubber gooseneck clamped over the strings. Facing out. Perfectly, precisely arranged, and I get out of my chair. I walk over to them and detect the vague chlorine smell of bleach, what I smelled in the bathroom. Someone was inside this apartment here who shouldn’t have been, and then I check the kitchen again.

  The paper towels in the trash have no odor at all. Bleach destroys DNA. Something else was used to wipe out the drawers. Two different types of evidence, two different means of eradicating it. Possibly two different people. I sit back down. I give Marino a look that he understands. Jamal Nari’s killer may have been inside this apartment at some point, and I think of Machado again at the same instant Marino asks Joanna about him.

  “I know you two talked.” He keeps the annoyance out of his voice and there’s no sign of it on his face.

  But I know what he feels. Machado shouldn’t have offered details to her. He shouldn’t have said her husband was shot. If she’d said it first it would have been significant.

  “You told Detective Machado you were in Tilton, New Hampshire. At the Tanger Outlets?” Marino asks her.

  “He was shot in broad daylight by his car?” She’s trembling hard and maybe this time for a different reason. “Did anyone see who did it or try to help?”

  When he doesn’t answer as he flips through pages in his notepad, she gets more agitated and anger glints.

  “Did anyone try to get an ambulance? Didn’t anyone try to help him?” She’s asking me this.

  “It was a fatal injury.” I select my words carefully.

  “You mean there was nothing that could have been done. Nothing at all?”

  “Your husband died very quickly.”

  “I’m hoping you might know something that will help us,” Marino says.

  She glares at him. “I have no idea who did this.”

  “Detective Machado called your cell when you were on your way to New Hampshire.” Marino baits the trap.

  “I was already there at the luggage store.”

  “Was it Tanger or Merrimack?” Marino frowns, flipping pages. He looks confused. “You know the one in Tanger or the bigger outlet mall about an hour from here?”

  “The bigger one. I was returning a bag with a broken zipper and he called. I asked him how he got my number and I thought maybe it was the police harassing us again.”

  “As I remember it the FBI was investigating your husband not the police. In light of your bad experience it’s real important you make that distinction, Joanna.” Marino is leaning forward, his big gloved hands on his big knees. “We’re not the FBI. We’re not the ones who put you through all that.”

  “It’s never been the same.” She shreds the tissue in her lap. “Is that why? Because of that someone targeted Jamal? We got a lot of hateful things from people. On the Internet. Mail. Stuff left by our cars at school and here.”

  “Is that what you think?” Marino is baiting her again.

  He knows what she offered to Machado when she first got the news. About the student she was helping. About a robbery gone bad.

  “I don’t know what to think!” Tears flood her eyes and spill down her cheeks, streaking her makeup, the flesh around her eyes a mascara smear.

  Marino slowly gets up from his chair. He walks to the kitchen, looks at the bags of groceries. He peers through the open bedroom doorway, looks at the luggage, the stacks of taped-up Bankers Boxes. His black gloved thumbs type on his BlackBerry.

  “What did you say the name of the luggage store is?” he asks from the kitchen, turning his broad back to us.

  “What?” She seems numb.

  “The luggage store where you took the bag with the broke zipper.”

  “It was just a luggage store. I . . . I don’t remember the name of it.”

  “Tommy Bahama? Nautica?” He’s checking, seeing what stores are located in the outlet mall she claims to have visited.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “YES?” MARINO WALKS BACK to us, his footsteps heavy, the blue plasticized paper shoe covers making a sliding sound over hardwood. His feet look as big as Frankenstein’s.

  “It could have been one of them,” she says warily.

  “Ms. Cather, you don’t remember what kind of luggage you own? The suitcases in the bedroom are Rockland. A leopard pattern with pink trim, and I’m guessing those are yours. The others are American Tourister, black, and I’m guessing those are your husband’s.”

  “How do you expect me to think of something like that right now?” She knows she’s been caught.

  “If you find the receipt maybe it will refresh your memory.” Marino reseats himself, looking right at her as she blushes, staring down at her hands and when she talks her mouth sounds dry.

  “Okay. I think I have it. I think it’s in my wallet. It should be there.” Her tongue sounds sticky as she continues evasions she knows are failing.

  I go to the refrigerator and get her a bottle of water while she sits and Marino waits. Her pocketbook is on the couch and she starts digging inside it, inside her wallet, but it’s an act and not a skillful one. There’s no receipt. It’s useless to pretend.

  CHAPTER 10

  YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT cell towers, Ms. Cather?” Marino is scrolling through text messages, and she’s not Joanna anymore.

  He’s gotten information and is distancing himself. His tone has chilled. He’s playing the role he’d already scripted and getting external validation for it, finding out things that aren’t good for her.

  “Cell towers?” She takes a swallow of water, talking to him but looking at me. “I know what they are. But I don’t know anything about them.”

  “That surprises me. The FBI didn’t tap your phones? They didn’t check out your locations or more specifically his? They weren’t in your email when they thought Jamal was a terrorist?” he says.

  “How could I possibly know what they did? It’s not like they tell you.”

  “They would have notified your lawyer.”

  “Jamal would know more about it than I do. He’s who they were after. It was his lawyer not mine.” She’s crying again but there’s anger and beneath it is rage. Beneath all of it is grief that hurts so much it’s physical. And fear. Whatever she’s afraid of is prompting her to lie.

  “I need you to tell the truth whatever it is,” Marino says. “But first I’m going to remind you of your rights. I always like to get that out of the way . . .”

  “My rights?” She looks bewildered, her eyes on me as if I might save her. ??
?You think I did this? Are you arresting me?”

  “It’s just a preventive measure,” Marino replies casually. “I’m making sure you know you don’t have to talk to us. Nobody’s forcing you. If you’d rather have an attorney present that’s what we’ll do. What about the attorney your husband used? Maybe you want to call whoever that was? We’ll sit here and wait until he shows up or he can meet us at the station.”

  He goes on bluffing and Mirandizing while she stares at him without blinking, her eyes turning hard and furious, thoughts flickering like static on an old TV. She’s been through this before when the FBI raided their home and hauled away her husband in handcuffs.

  “I don’t want a lawyer,” she says and a calm comes over her, flat and still. “I would never do anything to physically hurt Jamal.”

  I notice her use of the word physically. It seems important she make the distinction between hurting her husband physically as opposed to in some other way. I think of the boy on the bicycle she was seen chatting with.

  “We don’t own a gun so I don’t know why you think . . . Except it’s easiest, isn’t it?” Her eyes are hot and resentful on Marino as he reads a message that landed on his phone. “All of you people are the same.”

  “You weren’t in New Hampshire today,” he says as a matter of fact, typing a reply to someone who is texting him. “Let’s talk about where you really were.”

  BEFORE SHE CAN ANSWER Marino lets her know he has proof of exactly where she’s been since seven-fifteen A.M. He knows every mile she drove and every call she made on her cell phone including three to a moving company.

  “But I’d rather you tell me the details yourself,” he adds. “I’d rather give you a chance to be truthful so maybe I start feeling better about you than I do right this minute.”

  “I’ve been falsely accused.” She directs this to me and she’s not talking about her husband’s homicide.

  I can tell she means something else.

  “When Detective Machado reached you on your cell phone,” Marino asks her, “what did he say to you exactly?”