Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“Serenity comes from knowing what you can and can’t change,” Nancy the therapist had said when he’d presented his findings. “And what you can’t change, Pete, is that you’ve wasted at least twenty percent of your waking hours for the better part of half a century.”

It was either wisely fill days that were twenty percent longer or return to his bad ways, which wasn’t an option after the trouble they’d caused. He got interested in reading, keeping up with current events, surfing the Net, cleaning, organizing, repairing things, cruising the aisles of Zabar’s and Home Depot, and if he couldn’t sleep, hanging out at the Two, drinking coffee, taking Mac the dog for walks, and borrowing the ESU’s monster garage. He turned his crappy police car into a project, working on it himself with glue and touch-up paint as best he could, and bartering and finagling for a brand-new Code 3 undercover siren and grille and deck lights. He’d sweet-talked the radio repair shop into custom-programming his Motorola P25 mobile radio to scan a wide range of frequencies in addition to SOD, the Special Operations Division. He’d spent his own money on a TruckVault drawer unit that he installed in the trunk to stow equipment and supplies, ranging from batteries and extra ammo to a gear bag packed with his personal Beretta Storm nine-millimeter carbine, a rain suit, field clothes, a soft body armor vest, and an extra pair of Blackhawk zipper boots.

Marino turned on the wipers and squirted a big dose of fluid on the windshield, swiping clean two arches as he drove out of the Frozen Zone, the restricted area of One Police Plaza where only authorized people like him were allowed. Most of the windows in the brown-brick headquarters were dark, especially those on the fourteenth floor, the Executive Command Center, where the Teddy Roosevelt Room and the commissioner’s office were located, nobody home. It was after five a.m., had taken a while to type up the warrant and send it to Berger along with a reminder of why he was unable to show up for the interview of Hap Judd, and had it gone okay, and he was sorry not to be there but he had a real emergency on his hands.

He’d reminded her of the possible bomb left at Scarpetta’s building, and now he was concerned that the security of the OCME and even the NYPD and district attorney’s office might have been breached because the Doc’s BlackBerry had been stolen. On it were communications and privileged information that involved the entire New York criminal-justice community. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but he hadn’t shown up for Berger, his boss. He’d put Scarpetta first. Berger was going to accuse him of having a problem with his priorities, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’d accused him of that. It was the same thing Bacardi accused him of and why they weren’t getting along.

At the intersection of Pearl and Finest, he slowed at the white guard booth, the cop inside it a blurry shape waving at him behind fogged-up glass. Marino thought about calling Bacardi like he used to when it didn’t matter what time it was or what she was doing. At the beginning of their relationship, nothing was inconvenient, and he talked to her whenever he wanted and told her what was going on, got her input, her wisecracks, her constant comments about missing him and when they would get together next. He felt like ringing up Bonnell-L.A., as he now called her-but he sure as hell couldn’t do that yet, and he realized how much he was looking forward to seeing Scarpetta, even if it was work. He’d been surprised, almost didn’t believe it, when it was her on the phone saying she had a problem and needed his help, and it pleased him to be reminded that big-shot Benton had his limitations. Benton couldn’t do a damn thing about Carley Crispin stealing the Doc’s BlackBerry, but Marino could. He would fix her good.

The copper spire of the old Woolworth Building was pointed like a witch’s hat against the night sky above the Brooklyn Bridge, where traffic was light but steady, the noise of it like a surging surf, a distant wind. He turned up the volume on his police radio, listening to dispatchers and cops talking their talk, a unique language of codes and chopped-up communication that made no sense to the outside world. Marino had an ear for it, as if he’d been speaking it his entire life, could recognize his unit number no matter how preoccupied he was.

“… eight-seven-oh-two.”

It had the effect of a dog whistle, and he was suddenly alert. He got a spurt of adrenaline, as if someone had mashed down on the gas, and he grabbed the mike.

“Oh-two on the air, K,” he transmitted, leaving out his complete unit number, 8702, because he preferred a degree of anonymity whenever he could get it.

“Can you call a number?”

“Ten-four.”

The dispatcher gave him a number, and he wrote it down on a napkin as he drove. A New York number that looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He called it and someone picked up on the first ring.

“Lanier,” a woman said.

“Detective Marino, NYPD. The dispatcher just gave me this number. Someone there looking for me?” He cut over to Canal, heading to Eighth Avenue.

“This is Special Agent Marty Lanier with the FBI,” she said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”

Calling him at almost five a.m.? “What’s up?” he said, realizing why the number seemed familiar.

It was the 384 exchange for the FBI’s New York field office, which he’d dealt with plenty of times, but he didn’t know Marty Lanier or her extension. He’d never heard of her and couldn’t imagine why she was tracking him down so early in the morning. Then he remembered. Petrowski had sent photographs to the FBI, the images from the security camera that showed the man with the tattooed neck. He waited to see what Special Agent Lanier wanted.

She said, “We just got information from RTCC that’s got you listed as the contact for a data search request. The incident on Central Park West.”

It rattled him a little. She was calling about the suspicious package delivered to Central Park West at the very minute he was headed there to pick up Scarpetta.

“Okay,” he said. “You found something?”

“Computer got a hit in one of our databases,” she said.

The tattoo database, he hoped. He couldn’t wait to hear about the asshole in the FedEx cap who’d left the suspicious package for the Doc.

“We can talk about it in person at our field office. Later this morning,” Lanier said.

“Later? You saying you got a hit, but it can wait?”

“It’s going to have to wait until NYPD deals with the item.” She meant the FedEx package. It was locked in the day box at Rod-man’s Neck, and no one knew what was in it yet. “We don’t know if we have a crime reference to One Central Park West,” she added.

“Meaning you might have a crime reference to something else?”

“We’ll talk when we meet.”

“Then why you calling me now like it’s an emergency?” It irritated him considerably that the FBI had to call him right away and then wouldn’t tell him the details and was making him wait until it was convenient for them to pull together a friggin’ meeting.

“I assumed you were on duty, since we just got the information,” Lanier explained. “The time stamp on the data search. Looks like you’re pulling a midnight.”

Bureau cloak-and-dagger BS, he thought, annoyed. It wasn’t about Marino pulling a midnight shift. It was about Lanier. She was calling from a 384 exchange because obviously she was at the field office, meaning something was important enough for her to have gone in to work at this hour. Something big was going on. She was explaining to him that she would decide who else should be present at the meeting-translated, Marino wasn’t going to know jack shit until he got there, whenever the hell that might be. Much would depend on what the NYPD bomb squad determined about Scarpetta’s package.