Kay Scarpet - The Last Precinct Part 6

"Need some help?" She looks at sweet onions, peppers and mushrooms on the cutting board. "Kind of hard getting around with only one hand."

"Pull up a stool," I tell her. "You can be impressed with my fending for myself." I exaggerate bravado as I finish opening the can with no help, and she smiles as she moves a bar stool from the other side of the counter and sits. She is still in her running clothes and has a look in her eye, a secret light, reminding me of the river catching the sun very early in the morning. I steady an onion with two fingers of my immobilized left hand and begin to slice.

"Remember our game?" I lay the onion slices flat and begin to chop. "When you were ten? Or can't you remember back that far? I certainly will never forget," I say in a tone meant to remind Lucy what an impossible brat she was as a child. "Bet you have no idea how many times I would have put you on admin leave, given the choice." I dare to push that painful truth. Maybe I am feeling bold because of my naked talk with Anna, which has left me unnerved and at the same time exhilarated.

"I wasn't that bad." Lucy's eyes dance because she loves to hear what a little terror she was when she was a child and would come stay with me.

I drop handfuls of chopped sweet onions in the sauce and stir. "Truth Serum. Remember that game?" I ask her. "I'd come home, usually from work, and I could tell by the look on your face that you'd been up to something. So I'd sit you in that big red chair in the living room, remember? It was by the fireplace in my old house in Windsor Farms. And I'd bring you a gla.s.s of juice and tell you it was truth serum. And you'd drink it and confess."

"Like the time I formatted your computer while you were gone." She is laughing hard.

"Ten d.a.m.n years old and you format my hard drive. I about had a heart attack," I recall.

"Hey, but I did back up all your files first. I just wanted to give you a bad moment." She is really enjoying this.

"Well, I almost sent you home." I wipe the fingertips of my left hand with a dishtowel, careful that my cast doesn't smell like onions as I experience a wave of sweet sadness. I don't really remember why Lucy came to stay with me on her first visit to Richmond, but I was not the child-rearing type and was new in the job and under tremendous pressure. There was some sort of crisis with Dorothy. Maybe she ran off and got married again, or maybe I was a sucker. Lucy adored me and I wasn't accustomed to being adored. Whenever I would visit her in Miami, she would follow me all over the house, everywhere I went, tenaciously moving with my feet like a soccer ball.

"You weren't going to send me home." Lucy is challenging me, but I catch the doubt in her eyes. The fear of not being wanted is based on fact in her life.

"Only because I felt inadequate to take care of you," I reply, leaning against the sink. "Not because I wasn't crazy about you, little rat fink that you were." She laughs again. "But no, I wouldn't have sent you home. Both of us would have been devastated. I couldn't." I shake my head. "Thank G.o.d for our little game. It was about the only way I could get to what was going on inside of you or what mischief you had engaged in while I was off somewhere, at work, whatever. So do I need to pour you juice or a gla.s.s of wine, or are you going to just go on and tell me what's happening with you? I wasn't born yesterday, Lucy. You aren't staying in a hotel for the heck of it. You're up to something."

"I'm not the first woman they've run off," she starts in.

"You would be the best woman they've run off," I answer.

"Remember Teun McGovern?"

"I'll remember her for the rest of my life." Teunp.r.o.nounced Tee-UnMcGovern was Lucy's ATF supervisor in Philadelphia, an extraordinary woman who was wonderful to me when Benton was killed. "Please don't tell me something's happened to Teun," I worry.

"She quit about six months ago," Lucy replies. "Seems ATF wanted her to move to L.A. and be the SAC of that field division. The worst a.s.signment on G.o.d's earth. n.o.body wants L.A."

A SAC is a special agent in charge, and very few women in federal law enforcement end up running entire field divisions. Lucy goes on to tell me McGovern's answer was to resign and start a private investigative business of sorts. "The Last Precinct," she says, getting more animated by the moment. "Pretty cool name, right? Based in New York. Teun's rounding up arson investigators, bomb guys, cops, lawyers, all kinds of people to help out, and in less than six months she's already got clients. It's sort of turned into a secret society. There's a real buzz on the street. When s.h.i.t hits, call The Last Precinctwhere you go when there's nowhere left."

I stir the simmering tomato sauce and taste a little. "Obviously you've been keeping up with Teun since you left Philadelphia." I drip in a few teaspoons of olive oil. "Darn. I guess this will be all right, but not for the salad dressing." I hold up the bottle and frown. "You press olive oil with the pits still in, it's like squeezing oranges with the rind still on and you get what you deserve."

"Why is it I don't a.s.sume Anna is an aficionado of things Italian?" Lucy dryly comments.

"We'll just have to educate her. Grocery list." I nod at a notepad and pen by the phone. "First item, extra virgin olive oil Italian integrate stylepitted before pressed. Mission Olives Supremo is a nice one, if you can find it. Not a trace of bitterness."

Lucy makes notes. "Teun and I have stayed in touch," she informs me.

"You're somehow involved in what she's doing?" I know this is where the conversation is headed.

"You could say that."

"Crushed garlic. In the refrigerated section, in little jars. I'm going to be lazy." I pick up a bowl of lean ground beef that I have thoroughly cooked and patted free of grease. "Not a good time for me to crush garlic myself." I stir the beef into the sauce. "How involved?" I go into the refrigerator and open drawers. Anna doesn't have fresh herbs, of course.

Lucy sighs. "G.o.d, Aunt Kay. I'm not sure you want to hear it."

Until very recently, my niece and I have talked little and not in depth. We have seen each other seldom over the past year. She moved to Miami, and both of us retreated behind bunkers after Benton's death. I try to read the stories hiding in Lucy's eyes and instantly begin to entertain possibilities. I am suspicious about her relationship with McGovern and was last 74 year when all of us were called out to a catastrophic arson scene in Warrenton, Virginia, a homicide disguised by fire that turned out to be the first of several masterminded by Carrie Grethen.

"Fresh oregano, basil and parsley," I dictate the grocery list. "And a small wedge of Parmesan Reggiano. Lucy, just tell me the truth." I look for spices. McGovern is about my age and singleor at least she was single last time I saw her. I shut a cupboard door and face my niece. "Are you and Teun involved?"

"We weren't that way."

"Weren't?"

"Actually, you're one to talk," Lucy says without rancor. "What about you and Jay?"

"He doesn't work for me," I reply. "I certainly don't work for him. I don't want to talk about him, either. We're talking about you."

"I hate it when you dismiss me, Aunt Kay," she quietly says.

"I'm not dismissing you," I offer as an apology. "I just worry when people who work together get too personal. I believe in boundaries."

"You worked with Benton." She points out another of my exceptions to my own rules.

I tap the spoon on the side of the pot. "I've done a lot of things in life that I tell you not to do. I tell you not to do them because I made the mistake first."

"Did you ever moonlight?" Lucy stretches her lower back and rolls her shoulders.

I frown. "Moonlight? Not that I recall."

"Okay. Truth serum time. I'm a felonious moonlighter and Teun's biggest backerthe major stockholder for The Last Precinct. There. The whole truth. You're going to hear it."

"Let's go sit." I direct us to the table and we pull out chairs.

"It all began accidentally," Lucy begins. "A couple years ago, I created a search engine for my own use. Meanwhile, all I was hearing about was the fortunes people were making on Internet technology. So I said what the h.e.l.l and sold the search engine for three quarters of a million dollars."

I am not shocked. Lucy's earning possibilities have been limited only by the profession she chose.

"Then I got another idea when we seized a bunch of computers during a raid," she continues. "I was helping restore deleted e-mail and it got me thinking about how vulnerable all of us are to having the ghosts of our electronic communications conjured up to haunt us. So I figured out a way to scramble e-mail. Shred it, figuratively speaking. Now there are a number of software packages for that sort of thing. I made a h.e.l.l of a lot of money off that brainstorm."

There is nothing diplomatic about my next question. Does ATF know she invented technology that might foil law enforcement efforts to restore the e-mail of the bad guys? Lucy replies that someone was going to come up with the technology, and the privacy of law-abiding people needs to be protected, too. ATF doesn't know about her entrepreneurial activities or that she has been investing in Internet inventions and stocks. Until this moment, only her financial adviser and Teun McGovern are privy to the fact that Lucy is a multimillionaire who has her own helicopter on order.

"So that's how Teun was able to start up her own business in a prohibitively expensive city like New York," I figure.

"Exactly," Lucy says. "And it's why I'm not going to fight ATF, or at least one good reason. If I do battle with them, then the truth about what I've been up to on my own time would probably come out. Internal Affairs, the Inspector General's Office, everyone would dig. They'd find more nails to drive into my reputation as they hang me on their bureaucratic, bulls.h.i.t cross. Why the h.e.l.l would I want to do that to myself?"

"If you don't fight injustice, others will suffer from it, Lucy. And maybe those people won't have millions of dollars, a helicopter and a company in New York to fall back on as they try to start a new life."

"That's exactly what The Last Precinct is all about," she replies. "Fighting injustice. I'll fight it in my own way.

"Legally, your moonlighting is not within the scope of the case it appears ATF is making against you, Lucy," the lawyer in me speaks.

"Making money on the side speaks to my veracity, supposedly, though, doesn't it?" She plays the other side.

"Has ATF accused you of lacking veracity? Have they called you dishonest?"

"Well, no. That won't be in any letter from them. For sure. But truth is, Aunt Kay, I broke the rules. You aren't supposed to make money from another source while you're employed by ATF, the FBI or any other federal law enforcement agency. I don't agree with that prohibition. It's not fair. Cops get to moonlight. We don't. Maybe I've always known my days with the feds are numbered." She gets up from the table. "So I took care of my future. Maybe I was just sick of everything. I don't want to spend the rest of my life taking orders from other peo-pie."

"If you want to leave ATF, make it your choice, not theirs."

"It is my choice," she says with a trace of anger. "Guess I'd better get to the store."

I walk her to the door, arm in arm. "Thank you," I tell her. "It means everything to me that you let me know."

"I'm going to teach you how to fly helicopters." She puts on her coat.

"May as well," I say. "I've been in a lot of unfamiliar airs.p.a.ce today. I guess a little more isn't going to matter."["_Toc37098908"]

CHAPTER 6.

THE RUDE JOKE FOR YEARS HAS BEEN THAT VIR-ginians go to New York for art and New Yorkers come to Virginia for garbage. Mayor Giuliani almost started another civil war when he made that snipe during his much-publicized war with Jim Gilmore, Virginia's governor at the time, over Manhattan's right to ship megatons of northern trash to our southern landfills. I can only imagine the reaction when word gets out that now we have to go to New York for justice, too. As long as I have been the chief medical examiner of Virginia, Jaime Berger has been the head of the s.e.x crimes unit for the district attorney's office in Manhattan. Although we have never met, we are often mentioned together. It is said that I am the most famous female forensic pathologist in the country and she is the most famous female prosecutor. Until now, the only reaction I might have had to such a claim is that I don't want to be famous and don't trust people who are, and female should not be an adjective. n.o.body talks about successful men in terms of a male doctor or male president or male CEO.

Over the past few days, I have spent hours on Anna's computer researching Berger on the Internet. I resisted being impressed but can't help it. I didn't know, for example, that she is a Rhodes scholar or that after Clinton was elected she was short-listed for attorney general and, according to Time magazine, was privately relieved when Janet Reno was appointed instead. Berger didn't want to give up prosecuting cases. Supposedly, she has turned down judgeships and staggering offers from private law firms for the same reason, and is so admired by her peers that they established a public service scholarship in her name at Harvard, where she spent her undergraduate years. Strangely, very little is said about her personal life except that she plays tennis.e.xtremely well, of course. She works out with a trainer three mornings a week at a New York athletic club and runs three or four miles a day. Her favorite restaurant is Primola. I take some comfort in the fact that she likes Italian food.

It is now Wednesday, early evening, and Lucy and I are Christmas shopping. I have browsed and purchased as much as I can stomach, my mind poisoned by worries, my arm itching like mad inside its plaster coc.o.o.n, my craving for tobacco akin to l.u.s.t. Lucy is somewhere inside Regency Mall taking care of her own list, and I search for a spot where I might evade the churning herd. Thousands of people have waited until three days before Christmas to find thoughtful, special gifts for those significant people in their lives. Voices and constant motion combine in a steady roar that shorts out thoughts and normal conversation, and piped-in holiday music jars my already vibrating nerves out of phase. I face plate gla.s.s in front of Sea Dream Leather, my back to discordant people who, like unskilled fingers on a piano, rush and stop and force without joy. Pressing my cell phone tight against my ear, I yield to a new addiction. I check my voice mail for what must be the tenth time today. It has become my slender, secret connection to my former existence. Tapping into my messages is the only way I can go home.

There are four calls. Rose, my secretary, checked in to see how I am holding up. My mother left a long complaint about life. AT&T customer service tried to reach me about a billing question, and my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, needs to talk to me. I call him right away.

"I can hardly hear you," his scratchy voice sounds in one ear, my hand covering the other. In the background, one of his children is crying.

"I'm not in a good place to talk," I tell him.

"Me, either. My ex is here. Joy to the world."

"What's up?" I say to him.

"Some New York prosecutor just called me."

Jolted, I will myself to sound calm, almost indifferent, when I ask him this person's name. He tells me Jaime Berger reached him at home several hours ago. She wanted to know if he a.s.sisted in the autopsies I performed on Kim Luong and Diane Bray. "That's interesting," I comment. "Isn't your number unlisted?"

"Righter gave it to her," he informs me.

Paranoia heats up. The wound of betrayal flares. Righter gave her Jack's number and not mine? "Why didn't he tell her to call me?" I ask.

Jack pauses as another child adds to the upset chorus in his house. "I don't know. I told her I didn't officially a.s.sist. You did the posts. I'm not listed on the protocols as a witness. Said she really needs to speak to you."

"What was her response when you told her that?" I ask.

"Started asking me questions, obviously has copies of the reports."

Righter again. Copies of the medical examiner's initial report of investigation and the autopsy protocols go to the commonwealth's attorney's office. I feel dizzy. It now seems that two prosecutors have spurned me, and fear and bewilderment gather like an army of fiery ants, teeming over my interior world, stinging my very psyche. What is happening is uncanny and cruel. It is beyond anything I have ever imagined in my most unsettled moments. Jack's voice sounds distant through static that seems a projection of the chaos in my mind. I make out that Berger was a very cool customer and sounded as if she was on a car phone, and then something about special prosecutors. "I thought they were only brought in for the president or Waco or whatever," he says as the cell suddenly clears and he yellsto his ex-wife, I a.s.sume"Can you take them in the other room? I'm on the phone! Jesus," he blurts out to me, "don't ever have kids."

"What do you mean, special prosecutor!" I inquire. "What special prosecutor?"

Jack pauses. "I guess I'm a.s.suming they're bringing her here to try the case because Fighter Righter doesn't want to," he replies with sudden nervousness. In fact, he sounds evasive.

"It appears they had a case in New York." I am careful what I say. "That's why she's involved, or so I'm told."

"You mean a case like ours?"

"Two years ago."

"No s.h.i.t? News to me. Okay. She didn't say anything about that. Just wants to know about the ones here," Jack tells me.

"How many for the morning, so far?" I inquire about our case load for tomorrow.

"Five so far. Including a weirdo one that's going to be a pain in the b.u.t.t. Young white malemaybe Hispanicfound inside a motel room. Looks like the room was torched. No ID. A needle stuck in his arm, so we don't know if he's a drug OD or smoke inhalation."

"Let's not talk about it over a cell phone," I cut him off, looking around me. "We'll talk about it in the morning. I'll take care of him."

A long, surprised pause is followed by, "You sure? Because I..."

"I'm sure, Jack." I have not been to the office at all this week. "See you then."

I am supposed to meet Lucy in front of Waldenbooks at seven-thirty, and I venture back out into the churning herd. I have no sooner parked myself at the appointed spot when I notice a familiar, big, sour-looking man riding up the escalator. Marino bites into a soft pretzel and licks his fingers as he stares at the teenage girl one step above him. Her tight jeans and sweater leave no mysteries about her curves, dips and elevations, and even from this distance, I can tell Marino is mapping her routes and imagining what it would be like to travel them.

I watch him carried along crowded steps of steel, heavily involved with the pretzel, chewing with his mouth open, l.u.s.ting. Faded, baggy blue jeans ride below his swollen gut, and his big hands look like baseball mitts protruding from the sleeves of a red NASCAR windbreaker. A NASCAR cap covers his balding head and he wears ridiculous Elvis-size wire-rim gla.s.ses. His fleshy face is furrowed by discontent and has the slack, flushed look of chronic dissipation, and I am startled by an awareness of how miserable he is in his own body, of how much he wars against flesh that by now fails him with a vengeance. Marino reminds me of someone who has taken terrible care of his car, driving it hard, letting it rust and fall apart, and then violently hating it. I imagine Marino slamming down the hood and kicking the tires.

We worked our first case together shortly after I moved here from Miami, and he was surly and condescending and positively boorish from the start. I was certain that by accepting the chief medical examiner's position in Virginia I had made the biggest mistake of my life. In Miami, I had earned the respect of law enforcement and the medical and scientific community. The press treated me reasonably well and I enjoyed a rise to minor stardom that gave me confidence and rea.s.surance. Gender did not seem an issue until I met Peter Rocco Marino, begotten of hardworking Italian stock in New Jersey, a former New York cop, now divorced from his childhood sweetheart, father of a son he never talks about.

He is like the harsh lighting in dressing rooms. I was relatively comfortable with myself until I saw my reflection in him. This minute, I am unsettled enough to accept that the flaws he holds up to me are probably true. He notices me against the gla.s.s storefront, tucking my phone back into my satchel, shopping bags at my feet, and I wave at him. He takes his time maneuvering his bulk through prepossessed people who right now aren't thinking about murderers or trials or New York prosecutors.

"What are you doing here?" he asks me as if I am trespa.s.sing.

"Buying your Christmas present," I say. He takes another bite of pretzel. It appears he has purchased nothing but the pretzel. "And you?" I inquire.

"Came to sit on Santa's lap and get my picture took."

"Don't let me stop you."

"I paged Lucy. She told me where in this zoo you was probably at. I thought you might need someone to carry your bags, being that you're a little shorthanded at the moment. How you gonna do autopsies with that thing on?" He indicates my cast.

I know why he is here. I detect the distant roar of information headed my way like an avalanche. I sigh. Slowly but surely I am surrendering to the fact that my life is only going to get worse. "Okay, Marino, now what?" I ask him. "What's happened now?"

"Doc, it's going to be in the paper tomorrow." He bends over to pick up my bags. "Righter called me a little while ago. The DNA matches. Looks like Wolfman whacked that weather lady in New York two years ago, and apparently the a.s.shole's decided he's feeling up to leaving MCV and ain't fighting extradition to the Big Applejust happy as a clam to get the h.e.l.l out of Virginia. Kind of a weird coincidence the son of a b.i.t.c.h decides to leave town the same day as Bray's memorial service."

"What memorial service?" Thoughts crash into each other from all directions.

"At Saint Bridget's."