Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

ESU cops were getting off the elevator, escorting other residents out of the building.

“You positive the FedEx guy came in and went straight to your desk, then turned around and went straight back out?” Lobo asked Ross.

Ross was staring in astonishment at the caravan coming toward the building, squad cars escorting a fourteen-ton truck-mounted bomb disposal Total Containment Vessel.

He exclaimed, “Holy shhhh… Are we having a terrorist attack or something? All this because of that FedEx box? You kidding me?”

“He maybe go over by the Christmas tree there in your lobby? You’re sure he didn’t go near the elevators?” Lobo persisted. “Ross, you paying attention? Because this is important.”

“Holy mother.”

The white-and-blue bomb truck, its TCV in back covered by a black tarp, parked directly in front of the building.

“Little things can go a long way. Even the tiniest detail matters,” Lobo said. “So I’m asking you again. The FedEx guy. He go anywhere at all, even for a second? To the john? To get a drink of water? He look at what’s under the Christmas tree in the lobby?”

“I don’t think so. Jesus Christ.” Gawking at the bomb truck.

“You don’t think so? That’s not good enough, Ross. I need to be absolutely sure where he did and didn’t go. Do you understand why? I’ll tell you why. Anyplace he might have gone, we’ve got to check to make sure he didn’t set some device somewhere nobody’s thinking about. Look at me when I’m talking to you. We’re going to check the recordings from your security cameras, but it’s quicker if you tell me right now what you observed. You sure he wasn’t carrying anything else when he entered the lobby? Tell me every detail, the smallest one. Then I’m going to look at the recordings.”

“I’m pretty sure he came straight in, handed me the box, and went straight back out,” Ross said to him. “But I got no idea if he did anything outside the building or maybe went anywhere else. I didn’t follow him. I had no reason to be concerned. The computer for the camera system’s in the back. That’s all I can think of.”

“When he left, which way did he go?”

“I saw him go out this door”-waving a hand at the glass front door-“and that was it.”

“This was what time?”

“A little after nine.”

“So the last time you saw him was about two hours ago, two hours fifteen.”

“I guess.”

Benton asked Ross, “Was he wearing gloves?”

“Black ones. They might have been lined with rabbit fur. When he was handing me the box, I think I saw fur sticking out of the gloves.”

Lobo suddenly stepped away from them and got on his radio.

“You recall anything else-anything at all-about the way he was dressed?” Benton asked Ross.

“Dark clothes. Seems like he might have had on dark boots and dark pants. And a long coat, you know, like below his knees. Black. Collar up, gloves on, like I said, maybe fur-lined, and the FedEx cap. That’s it.”

“Glasses?”

“Sort of tinted ones, flash ones.”

“Flash ones?”

“You know. Sort of mirrored. Another thing? I’m just remembering. I thought I smelled cigarettes, maybe matches. Like maybe he’d been smoking.”

“I thought you were stopped up, couldn’t smell anything,” Benton reminded him.

“It just entered my head. I think maybe I did smell something like cigarettes.”

“But that’s not what you think you smelled,” Benton said to Scarpetta.

“No,” she answered, not adding that maybe what Ross had detected was sulfur, what smelled like a lighted match, and that was what had reminded him of cigarettes.

“What about this man Ross is describing,” Benton said to her. “You see anybody fitting that description when you were walking back here, or maybe earlier, when you headed over to CNN?”

She thought about it but came up with nothing, and it occurred to her. “The clipboard,” she asked Ross. “Did he ask you to sign anything?”

“No.”

“Then what was the clipboard for?”

Ross shrugged, his breath a white vapor when he talked. “He didn’t ask me to do anything. Nothing. Just handed me the package.”

“He say specifically to give it to Dr. Scarpetta?” Benton asked.

“He said to make sure she got it, yeah. And he said her name, now that you mention it. He said, ‘This is for Dr. Scarpetta. She’s expecting it.’ ”

“FedEx usually that specific, that personal? Isn’t that a little unusual? Because I’ve never heard FedEx make comments like that. How would he know she was expecting something?” Benton said.

“I don’t know. I guess it was a little unusual.”

“What was on the clipboard?” Scarpetta got back to that.

“I really didn’t look. Maybe receipts, package slips. Am I going to get in trouble for this? My wife’s pregnant. I don’t need any trouble,” said Ross, who didn’t look nearly old enough to be married and a father.

“I’m wondering why you didn’t call the apartment to tell me a package had arrived,” Benton said to him.

“Because the FedEx guy said it was for her, like I told you, and I knew she’d be back pretty soon and assumed, now that we’re replaying all this, she was expecting it.”

“And you knew she’d be back soon because?”

“He was working the desk when I left around eight,” Scarpetta answered for Ross, “and he wished me good luck on the show.”

“How did you know she was on a show tonight?” Benton asked.

“I’ve seen commercials, ads for it. Just look.” Ross pointed at the top of a building on the other side of Columbus Circle, where news breaks on CNN’s scrolling ticker could be seen from blocks away. “Your name’s up in freakin’ lights.”

Below the CNN neon-red marquee, Scarpetta’s off-camera comment crawled around the top of the skyscraper:

… connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling is “antiquated” and not based on credible data. On tonight’s Crispin Report, Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta connected Hannah Starr and a murdered jogger and said FBI profiling…

Pete Marino materialized in the middle of the barricaded street, backlit by a blaze of halogen lights, as if he had emerged from the afterlife.

Rotating beacons flashed across his big weathered face and un-stylish wire-rimmed glasses, and he was tall and broad in a down jacket, cargo pants, and boots. Pulled low over his bald head was an NYPD cap with an Aviation Unit patch over the bill, an old Bell 47 helicopter that brought to mind M*A*S*H. A gift from Lucy, a backhanded one. Marino hated flying.

“I’m assuming you made Lobo’s acquaintance,” Marino said when he reached Scarpetta and Benton. “He taking good care of you? I don’t see no hot chocolate. Right about now bourbon would be good. Let’s go sit in my car before you get frostbit.”

Marino started walking them to his car, parked north of the bomb truck, which was flooded by halogens on light poles. Cops had removed the tarp and lowered a steel ramp, a special one Scarpetta had seen on other occasions in the past, with serrated tread the size of saw teeth. If you tripped and fell on the ramp, it would shred you to the bone, but if you stumbled while carrying a bomb, you had a bigger problem. The Total Containment Vessel, or TCV, was mounted on the diamond-steel flatbed and looked like a bright-yellow diving bell sealed shut by a spider yoke that an ESU cop loosened and removed. Beneath it was the lid, about four inches thick, and the ESU cop attached a steel cable to it, using a winch to lower it to the flatbed. He pulled out a wood-framed nylon-webbed tray, placed the winch control on it, and clamped the cable out of the way, making preparations for the bomb tech whose job it would be to lock Scarpetta’s suspicious package inside fourteen tons of high-tensile steel before it was driven away to be defeated by New York’s finest.