Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist

Colin opens a back door of the Coastal Regional Crime Laboratory, and we step out into the heat and glare as thunder rumbles and a volatile sea of dark clouds rolls closer. It is a few minutes after four p.m., the wind gusting out of the southwest at about thirty knots, blowing Lucy’s helicopter back into last week, she tells me over the phone.

“We had to land in Lumberton to refuel yet a third time after waiting out rain showers and bad viz in Rocky Mount,” she says. “Endless boredom over pine trees and hog farms. Smoke everywhere from controlled burning. I think next time Benton might take the bus.”

“Marino left for the airport a few minutes ago, and it looks like a big storm is getting close,” I tell my niece, as I accompany Colin across a wide expanse of asphalt tarmac used for staff parking and deliveries, the air so thick with humidity I can almost see it.

“We’ll be fine,” Lucy says. “VFR all the way, and should be there in maybe an hour, an hour-fifteen, unless I end up vectoring around Gamecock Charlie and following the coast down from Myrtle Beach. The scenic route but slower.”

Gamecock Charlie is a Military Operations Area airspace used for training and maneuvers that are neither publicized nor safe for nonparticipating or civilian aircraft that happen to be nearby. If an MOA is active, or “hot,” it’s wise to stay away.

“You know what I always say. Never be in a hurry to have a problem,” I tell her.

“Well, I think it’s hot, based on what I’ve been picking up on Milcom,” Lucy goes on, referring to military communications or UHF monitoring. “I don’t really want to get into the middle of intercepts, low-altitude tactics, aerobatics, whatever.”

“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t.”

“Not to mention avoiding drones, some aircraft buzzing around that’s remotely controlled by a computer in California. You ever notice how many military bases and restricted areas there are around here? That and deer stands. I don’t guess you know what happened yet.” She means what happened to Kathleen Lawler. “You don’t sound very happy.”

“We’re getting ready to find out, hopefully.”

“Usually you’re more than hopeful.”

“This isn’t usual. We were given a hard time at the prison, and I don’t sound happy because I’m not.” I envision Tara Grimm’s face as she planted herself in the doorway of the cell, glaring at me, and then what happened after that with the guard who supervised Kathleen Lawler’s hour of exercise.

According to Officer Slater, a big woman with a defiant air and resentful eyes, nothing out of the ordinary occurred this morning between eight and nine o’clock, when Kathleen was escorted out to walk “just like she’s been doing” since she was transferred to Bravo Pod, she told us, after we were escorted to the exercise cage right before we left. I asked if there was any indication Kathleen might have felt unwell or uncomfortable.

Was she, for example, complaining of being tired or dizzy or having difficulty breathing? Any chance she might have been stung by an insect? Was she limping? Did she seem to be in pain? Did she mention anything at all about the way she felt this morning, and Officer Slater reported that Kathleen griped about the heat, repeating much of the same information we’ve been told multiple times now.

Kathleen would walk around the cage and periodically lean against the chain-link fencing, Officer Slater said. Kathleen did stoop down to retie one of her sneakers several times, we were told, and it could be that one of her feet was bothering her, but she didn’t mention anything about burning herself. It wouldn’t have been possible for her to burn herself in Bravo Pod, Officer Slater stated with unnecessary defensiveness, parroting what Tara Grimm had told us.

“So I don’t know why you’d get a notion like that,” Officer Slater said to me as she looked at the warden. Inmates don’t have use of microwaves in Bravo Pod, and the water from the taps isn’t hot enough to cause a burn. Now and then, Kathleen asked for a drink while inside the cage and said her throat was a little scratchy, maybe from pollen or dust or she was “trying to catch something like the flu, and she might of mentioned she was feeling sleepy.”

“What might Kathleen have meant by ‘sleepy’?” I inquired, and the officer seemed to be annoyed by that. “Well, sleepy,” she repeated, as if she was sorry she said it and wanted to take it back. There’s a difference between being sleepy and fatigued, I explained. Physical activity can make one fatigued, as can illness, I pointed out. But sleepiness by my definition indicates feeling drowsy, having difficulty keeping one’s eyes open, and this can occur when someone is sleep-deprived but also when certain conditions such as low blood sugar are to blame.

Officer Slater’s answer was to cut her eyes at Tara Grimm and say to Colin and me that Kathleen complained she wished she hadn’t eaten so close to going outside in the heat and humidity. Eating a big meal might have given her indigestion, and maybe she was having heartburn, she wasn’t sure, but Kathleen was always complaining about the food at the GPFW, Officer Slater let us know.

Kathleen “fussed” about the food whether it was delivered to her cell in Bravo Pod or when she was eating in the chow hall. She talked about food all the time, usually complaining it wasn’t any good or there wasn’t enough, “but it was always something she was unhappy about,” Officer Slater said, and the inflection of her voice and the shifting of her eyes as she continued to talk gave me the same feeling I got when I was talking to Kathleen yesterday. Officer Slater was mindful of the warden and not the truth.

“What’s Benton doing?” I ask Lucy.

“Talking to the Boston field office.”

“Do we have an update?” I want to know about Dawn Kincaid.

“Not that I know of, but he looks intense out there on the ramp, where no one can hear him as usual. You want him?”

“I don’t want to hold you up. We’ll talk when I see you. I don’t know who might be here.” What I’m suggesting is she could run into Jaime Berger, who still hasn’t bothered to return my phone call.

“Maybe it will be her problem,” Lucy says.

“I’d rather it isn’t anybody’s problem. I’d rather you don’t have an unpleasant encounter.”

“Gotta pay for gas.”

I smell creosote and Dumpsters baking in the sun as Colin and I reach the morgue, a windowless pale yellow cinder-block building flanked by HVACs and an industrial backup generator on one side and the bay on another. Beyond the back fence, tall pines sway in the wind, and in the distance, lightning shimmers in blooming black clouds and I can see veils of rain far off to the southwest, a bad storm heading this way from Florida. The huge metal shutter door is rolled up, and we walk through an empty concrete space to another door that Colin unlocks with a key.

“We probably autopsy on average two per year, and then another five or six that we sign out after a view.” He picks up where he left off when Lucy called, explaining the types of cases he typically gets from the GPFW.

“If I were you, I’d review all of them for however many years Tara Grimm has been the warden,” I reply.

“Mostly we’re talking cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver disease, congestive heart failure,” Colin says. “Georgia’s not exactly known for compassionate release if an inmate is terminally ill. That’s all we need. Convicted felons getting out early because they’re dying of cancer and they rob a bank or shoot someone.”

“Unless the inmate died in hospice, in other words, a death that was beyond questioning, I’d go back and look,” I suggest.