Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“What about fibers from a newer vehicle?” Scarpetta asked.

“So far all I’ve seen from what you submitted are a lot of the waste fibers.”

“Consistent with her body being transported in a car,” Scarpetta said. “But not likely a yellow cab.”

Four-ten p.m. Toni Darien time, and something happened. Something sudden and swift and devastatingly decisive. In the span of thirty seconds, her pace went from two steps to zero and her mobility stopped. She wasn’t moving her arms or legs, any part of her body, and her pulse oximetry had dropped: ninety-eight percent, then ninety-seven. Her heart rate slowed to sixty.

“I anticipated you’d mention that because of what’s all over the news,” Geffner said. “The average age of a yellow cab in New York City is less than four years old. You can imagine the miles that are put on those things. Not likely, and in fact extremely improbable, the chrome-yellow paint chip came from a yellow cab. Some old vehicle, don’t ask me what.”

Four-sixteen p.m. Toni Darien time. She became mobile again, but she wasn’t walking, her pace registering zero on the pedometer built into her watch. Mobile but taking no steps, probably not upright. Someone else was moving her. Pulse oximetry was ninety-five percent, heart rate fifty-seven. Same ambient temperature and illumination. She was in the same part of the mansion, and she was dying.

“… Other trace is rust. And microscopic particulate like sand, rocks, clays, decayed organic matter, plus some insect pieces and parts. In other words, dirt.”

Scarpetta imagined Toni Darien being struck from behind, a forceful single blow to the left back of her head. She would have collapsed instantly, fallen to the floor. She wasn’t conscious anymore. Four-twenty p.m., and the oxygen saturation of her blood was ninety-four percent and her heart rate was fifty-five. She was mobile again. There was a lot of motion, but her pace remained zero. She wasn’t walking. Someone was moving her.

“… I can send you images of that,” Geffner was saying, and Scarpetta was scarcely listening. “Pollen, hair fragments that show insect damage, insect fecal matter, and of course dust mites. A lot of those all over her, and I doubt they came from Central Park. Maybe from whatever she was transported in. Or someplace with a lot of dust.”

Charts rolling by. Peaks and bumps on actigraphy graphs. Consistent motion every fifteen seconds, minute after minute. Someone moving her repetitively, rhythmically.

“… Which are microscopic arachnids, and I would expect an abundance of them in an old carpet or a room with a lot of dust. Dust mites die if there’s nothing to feed on anymore, such as sloughed-off skin cells, which is mainly what they’re after inside the house…”

Four-twenty-nine p.m. Toni Darien time. Pulse oximetry ninety-three percent, heart rate forty-nine beats per minute. She was becoming hypoxic, the low oxygen saturation of her blood beginning to starve her brain as it swelled and bled from its catastrophic injury. Peaks and bumps on actigraphs, her body moving in a rhythm of waves and lines, a repeatable pattern over an extended time measured in seconds, in minutes.

“… in other words, house dust…”

“Thank you,” Scarpetta said. “I’ve got to go,” she said to Geffner, and she got off the phone.

The training lab was silent. Graphs and charts and maps rolling by on two large flat screens. She sat mesmerized as the rhythm continued, but different now, in fits and starts and at some intervals extreme and then quiet, and then it would begin again. At five p.m. Toni Darien time, her pulse oximetry was seventy-nine, her heart rate thirty-three. She was in a coma. One minute later the actigraph flatlined because the motion had stopped. Four minutes later there was no further mobility and the ambient illumination suddenly diminished from three hundred lux to less than one. Someone had turned out the lights. At five fourteen p.m. Toni Darien died in the dark.

Lucy opened the trunk of Marino’s car as Benton and a woman climbed out of a black SUV and walked swiftly across Park Avenue. It was past five o’clock, nighttime and cold, and a fitful wind whipped the flag over the Starr mansion entrance.

“Anything?” Benton said, flipping up the collar of his coat.

“We’ve walked around trying to see in the windows, detect any kind of activity inside. So far nothing,” Marino said. “Lucy thinks there’s a scrambler, and I think we should go in with a ram and a shotgun and not wait for ESU.”

“Why?” the woman’s dark shape asked Lucy.

“Do I know you?” Lucy was edgy and unfriendly, frantic inside.

“Marty Lanier, FBI.”

“I’ve been here before,” Lucy said, unzipping a bag and sliding open a drawer in the TruckVault Marino had installed in his trunk. “Rupe hated cell phones and didn’t allow them in his house.”

“Industrial espionage-” Lanier started to suggest.

Lucy cut her off. “He hated them, thought they were rude. If you were inside and tried to use your phone or log on to the Internet, you didn’t get a signal. He wasn’t committing espionage. He was worried about other people doing it.”

“I would think there might be a lot of dead zones in there,” Benton said of the limestone building with its tall windows and wrought-iron balconies, reminiscent of hôtels particuliers, the grand private homes Lucy associated with the heart of Paris, with the Île Saint-Louis.

She was familiar with the hôtel Chandonne inhabited by the corrupt nobility Jean-Baptiste had descended from. The Starr mansion was similar in its style and scale, and somewhere inside were Bonnell and Berger, and Lucy was going to do whatever it took to get in and find them. She surreptitiously tucked a Rabbit Tool inside the bag, then was obvious about packing the thermal imaging scope she had given to Marino for his last birthday, what was basically a handheld FLIR, the same technology she had on her helicopter.

“As much as I hate political considerations,” Lanier then said.

“It’s a valid point,” Benton said, his voice brittle with impatience, and he sounded anxious and frustrated. “We kick in the door and they’re sitting in the living room having coffee. My bigger worry is a hostage situation and we cause it to escalate. I’m not armed.” He said it to Marino, said it like an accusation.

“You know what I’ve got,” Marino said to Lucy, giving her an unspoken instruction.

Special Agent Lanier acted as if she didn’t hear the exchange or notice Lucy grabbing a black soft case about the size of a tennis racket but with Beretta CX4 embroidered on it. She handed it to Benton and he slipped it over his shoulder, and she shut the trunk. They didn’t know who was inside the mansion or nearby but were expecting Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. Either he was Bobby Fuller or someone else, and he worked with others, those who did his bidding, people who were evil and would stoop as low as low got. If Benton had an encounter, he didn’t intend to defend himself with bare fists but a compact carbine that shot nine-millimeter rounds.

“I recommend we call ESU and get the entry team here.” Lanier was cautious, not wanting to tell NYPD how to do its job.

Marino ignored her, staring at the house as he asked Lucy, “And that was when? You were here last and saw a jamming system when?”

“A couple years back,” she said. “He had one since the early nineties, at least. The kind of high-power jamming system that can paralyze RF bands between twenty and three thousand megahertz. The radios NYPD has are eight hundred megahertz and wouldn’t be worth shit in there, and neither would cell phones. A little tactical advice? I agree.” She looked at Lanier. “Get ESU here now, the A team, because breaking down the door’s not the hard part. It’s what you do if you’re met with resistance, since you don’t know who or what the fuck’s in there. You force your way in all by yourself and maybe get your ass blown off or get crucified by Mother Blue. Take your pick.”