Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“Is it Fresca or Fresco?” Benton was asking Judy.

“Fresca. As in the soda. Had a glass of it in my hand when Bud walked into the apartment with her in a bakery box. For my birthday. That should have been my first clue, all the holes in the top. I thought it was a cake and then she barked.”

“I bet she did,” said Benton.

Fresca began tugging the leash and barking at a shattering pitch, piercing Scarpetta’s ears, stabbing deep into her brain. Hy persalivating, her heart skipping. Don’t get sick. The elevator stopped, and the heavy brass doors crept open. Red and blue lights flashed through the lobby’s front glass door, freezing air sweeping in with half a dozen cops in dark-navy BDUs, tactical jackets, and boots, operator belts heavy with battery holders, mag pouches, batons, flashlights, and holstered pistols. A cop grabbed a luggage cart in each hand and wheeled them out the door. Another made his way straight to Scarpetta as if he knew her. A big man, young, with dark hair and skin, muscular, a patch on his jacket depicting gold stars and the cartoonish red bomb of the bomb squad.

“Dr. Scarpetta? Lieutenant Al Lobo,” he said, shaking her hand.

“What’s going on here?” Judy demanded.

“Ma’am, we’re going to need you to evacuate the building. If you could just step outside until we’re clear in here. For your own safety.”

“For how long? Lord, this isn’t fair.”

The lieutenant eyed Judy as if she looked familiar. “Ma’am, if you’ll please go outside. Someone out there will direct you… ”

“I can’t stay outside in the cold with my dog. This certainly isn’t fair.” Glaring at Scarpetta.

“What about the bar next door?” Benton suggested. “Okay if she goes over there?”

“They don’t allow dogs in the bar,” Judy said indignantly.

“I bet if you ask them nicely.” Benton walked her as far as the front door.

He returned to Scarpetta and took her hand, and the lobby was suddenly a chaotic, noisy, drafty place, with the elevator doors dinging open and squad members heading upstairs to begin an evacuation immediately above, below, and on either side of Scarpetta and Benton ’s apartment, or what the lieutenant called “the target.” He began machine-gunning questions.

“I’m pretty sure there’s no one left on our floor, the twentieth floor,” Scarpetta answered. “One neighbor didn’t answer and doesn’t seem to be home, although you should check again. The other neighbor is her.” She meant Judy.

“She looks like someone. One of those old shows like Carol Bur-nett. Just one floor above you?”

“Two. There are two above ours,” Benton said.

Through glass Scarpetta watched more emergency response trucks pull up, white with blue stripes, one of them towing a light trailer. She realized traffic had stopped in both directions. The police had closed off this section of Central Park West. Diesel engines rumbled loudly, approaching sirens wailed, the area around their building beginning to look like a movie set, with trucks and police cars lining the street and halogen lights shining from pedestals and trailers, and red and blue emergency strobes stuttering nonstop.

Members of the bomb squad opened bin doors on the sides of the trucks, grabbing Pelican cases and Roco bags and sacks, and harnesses, and tools, trotting up the steps with armloads and piling them on luggage carts. Scarpetta’s stomach had settled down, but there was a cold feeling in it as she watched a female bomb squad tech open a bin and lift out a tunic and trousers, eighty-something pounds of heavily padded tan fire-retardant armor on hangers. A bomb suit. An unmarked black SUV pulled up, and another tech climbed out and let his chocolate Lab bound out of the back.

“I need you to give me as much information as you can about the package,” Lobo was saying to the concierge, Ross, standing behind the desk, looking dazed and scared. “But we need to take it outside. Dr. Scarpetta, Benton? If you’ll come with us.”

The four of them went out to the sidewalk, where the halogen lights were so bright they hurt Scarpetta’s eyes and the rumbling of diesel engines resonated like an earthquake. Cops from patrol and the Emergency Service Unit were sealing the perimeter of the building with bright yellow crime-scene tape, and people were assembling by the dozens across the street, inside the deep shadows of the park and sitting on the wall, talking excitedly and taking photographs with cell phones. It was very cold, and arctic blasts bounced off buildings, but the air felt good. Scarpetta’s head began to clear, and she could breathe better.

“Describe the package,” Lobo said to her. “How big?”

“Midsized FedEx box, I’d say fourteen by eleven and maybe three inches thick. I set it on the middle of the coffee table in the living room. Nothing between it and the door, so it should be easily accessible to you or, if need be, to your robot. I left our door unlocked.”

“How heavy would you estimate?”

“Maybe a pound and a half at most.”

“Did the contents shift around when you moved it?”

“I didn’t move it much. But I’m not aware of anything shifting,” she said.

“Did you hear or smell anything?”

“I didn’t hear anything. But I might have smelled something. A petroleum-type smell. Tarry but sweet and foul, maybe a sulfurous pyrotechnic smell. I couldn’t quite identify it, but an offensive odor that made my eyes water.”

“What about you?” Lobo asked Benton.

“I didn’t smell anything, but I didn’t get close.”

“You notice an odor when the package was delivered?” Lobo asked Ross.

“I don’t know. I sort of have a cold, like I’m real stopped up.”

“The coat I was wearing, and my gloves,” Scarpetta said to Lobo. “There’re on the hallway floor in the apartment. You might want to bag them, take them with you, to see if there’s any sort of residue.”

The lieutenant wasn’t going to say it, but she’d just given him quite a lot of information. Based on the size and weight of the package, it couldn’t contain more than a pound and a half of explosives and wasn’t motion-sensitive, unless some creative timing mechanism had been rigged to a tilt switch.

“I didn’t notice anything unusual at all.” Ross was talking fast, looking at the drama on the street, lights flashing on his boyish face. “The guy put it on the counter and turned around and left. Then I placed it behind the desk instead of in back because I knew Dr. Scarpetta would be returning to the building soon.”

“How’d you know that?” Benton asked.

“We have a TV in the break room. We knew she was on CNN tonight…”

“Who’s we?” Lobo wanted to know.

“Me, the doormen, one of the runners. And I was here when she left to go over there, to CNN.”

“Describe the person who delivered the FedEx,” Lobo said.

“Black guy; long, dark coat; gloves; a FedEx cap; a clipboard. Not sure how old but not real old.”

“You ever seen him before making deliveries or pickups at this building or in the area?”

“Not that I remember.”

“He show up on foot, or did he park a van or truck out front?”

“I didn’t see a van or anything,” Ross answered. “Usually they park wherever they can get a space and show up on foot. That’s pretty much it. What I noticed.”

“What you’re saying is you got no idea if the guy was really FedEx,” Lobo said.

“I can’t prove it. But he didn’t do anything to make me suspicious. That’s pretty much what I know.”

“Then what? He set down the package, and what happened next?”

“He left.”

“Right that second? He made a beeline to the door? You sure he didn’t linger, maybe wander around, maybe go near a stairwell or sit in the lobby?”