Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“I think we should get out here,” Lobo said, stopping the Tahoe midway in the explosive demolition range, about a hundred yards downwind of where Scarpetta’s package was locked up. “Keep my truck out of the way. They get upset when you accidentally blow up city property.”

Marino climbed out, careful where he stepped, the ground uneven with rocks and scrap metal and frag. He was surrounded by a terrain of pits and berms built of sandbags, and rough roadbeds leading to day boxes and observation points of concrete and ballistic glass, and beyond was the water. For as far as he could see, there was water, a few boats far off in the distance and the Yacht Club on City Island. He’d heard stories about vessels coming loose from their moorings and drifting with the tides, ending up on the shores of Rodman’s Neck and civilian tow services not fighting over the job of retrieving them, some saying you couldn’t pay them enough. Finders keepers, it ought to be. A World Cat 290 with twin Suzuki four-strokes high and dry in sand and cobble, and Marino would brave a hailstorm of bullets and shrapnel as long as he didn’t have to give it back.

Bomb tech Ann Droiden was up ahead, in a Tactical Duty Uniform, TDUs, dark-blue canvas seven-pocket pants, probably lined with flannel because of the weather, a parka, ATAC Storm Boots, and amber-tinted wraparound glasses. She didn’t wear a hat, and her hands were bare as she clamped the steel tube of a PAN disrupter to a folding stand. She was something to look at but probably too young for Marino. Early thirties, he guessed.

“Try and behave yourself,” Lobo said.

“I believe she should be reclassified to a weapon of mass destruction,” Marino said, and he always had a hard time not openly gawking at her.

Something about her strong-featured good looks and amazingly agile hands, and he realized she reminded him a little of the Doc, of what she was like when she was that age, when they’d just started working together in Richmond. Back then, for a woman to be the chief of a statewide medical examiner’s system as formidable as Virginia ’s was unheard of, and Scarpetta had been the first female medical examiner Marino had ever met, maybe even ever seen.

“The phone call made from the Hotel Elysée to CNN. It’s just a thought I had, and I’ll mention it even if it sounds far-fetched, because this lady’s, what, in her fifties?” Lobo got back to the conversation they’d started in the SUV.

“What’s Dodie Hodge’s age got to do with her making the call?” Marino said, and he wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing, leaving Lucy and Scarpetta alone at the Hotel Elysée.

He didn’t understand what was going on over there, except that Lucy sure as hell knew how to take care of herself, was probably better at it than Marino, if he was honest. She could shoot a lollipop off its stick at fifty yards. But he was tied in knots, trying to figure things out. According to Lobo, the phone call Dodie Hodge made to CNN last night traced back to the Hotel Elysée. That was the number captured by caller ID, yet Dodie Hodge wasn’t a guest at the hotel. The same manager Marino had dealt with earlier said there was no record of anybody by that name ever staying there, and when Marino had provided Dodie’s physical description, based on information he’d gotten when he was at RTCC, the manager had said absolutely not. He had no idea who Dodie Hodge was, and furthermore, no outgoing call had been made to The Crispin Report’s 1-800 number last night. In fact, no outgoing call had been made from the Hotel Elysée at the precise time-nine-forty-three-when Dodie had called CNN and was put on hold before she was put on the air.

“How much do you know about spoofing?” Lobo said, as he and Marino walked. “You heard of buying these Spoof Cards?”

“I’ve heard of it. Another pain-in-the-ass thing for us to fucking worry about,” Marino said.

He wasn’t allowed to use his cell phone on the range, nothing that emitted an electronic signal. He wanted to call Scarpetta and tell her about Dodie Hodge. Or maybe he should tell Lucy. Dodie Hodge might have some sort of connection to Warner Agee. He couldn’t call anyone, not on the demolition range, where there was at least one possible bomb locked up in a day box.

“Tell me about it,” Lobo was saying as they walked and icy wind blasted in from the Sound, through the fence and between berms. “You buy these perfectly legal Spoof Cards and can make any number you want appear in the caller ID screen of whoever you’re calling and trying to spoof.”

Marino contemplated that if Dodie Hodge had a connection to Warner Agee, who obviously had a connection to Carley Crispin, whose show Agee had been on multiple times this fall, and Dodie had called last night, maybe the three of them were connected. This was crazy. How could Agee, Dodie, and Carley be connected, and why? It was like all those offshoots on the data wall at RTCC. You search one name and find fifty others linked to it, reminding him of Saint Henry’s Catholic School, of the cluttered tree branches he’d draw on the chalkboard when he was forced to diagram compound sentences in English class.

“A couple months ago,” Lobo went on, “my phone rings and there’s this number on my caller ID. It’s the number for the fucking switchboard at the White House. I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ So I answer and it’s my ten-year-old daughter trying to disguise her voice, and she says, ‘Please hold for the president.’ I’m not amused. This is my cell phone I use for work, and it’s like my heart stopped for a minute.”

If there was one name all the offshoots had in common, Marino asked himself, what would it be?

“Turns out she got the Spoof Card and the idea from one of her friends, some boy who’s maybe eleven,” Lobo said. “You go on the Internet, the number for the White House is right there. It’s fucked up. Like every time we figure out how to stop this bullshit, there’s something else out there to defeat our efforts.”

Hannah Starr, Marino decided. Except now it seemed that the one thing everybody had in common was the Doc, he worried. That’s why he was walking through the explosives range in the freezing cold at dawn. He turned up the collar of his coat, his ears so cold they were about to fall off.

He said to Lobo, “Seems like if you buy a SpoofCard, you can get traced through the carrier.”

Ann Droiden was walking toward the white metal day box with an empty milk jug. She held it under a tank and started filling it with water.

“If the carrier’s served with a subpoena, maybe you’ll get lucky, but that’s assuming you’ve got a suspect. You got no suspect, how the hell do you know who the fake number traces back to, especially if they don’t use their own phone to make the call? It’s a fucking nightmare,” Lobo said. “So this Dodie Hodge lady, saying she’s clever, at least as clever as a ten-year-old, could have spoofed to get us off the scent. Maybe she spoofed when she called The Crispin Report last night, and it looks like she’s at the Hotel Elysée when, truth is, we don’t know where the hell she is. Or maybe she was setting up this Agee guy you were telling me about. Maybe she didn’t like him, like a really bad practical joke. But the other thought is what makes you so sure she sent the singing card, for example?”

“She’s singing on it.”

“Who says?”

“ Benton. He should know, since he spent time with her in the bin.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s the one who sent the card. We should be careful of assumptions, that’s all. Shit, it’s cold. And nothing we do out here lets me wear gloves that are worth a damn.”

Droiden set the jug of water on the ground near a big black hard case that held twelve-gauge shotgun cartridges and components of the PAN disrupter, the water cannon. Nearby was a portable metal magazine and several Roco gear and equipment bags, big ones that likely held more equipment and gear, including the bomb disposal suit and helmet she’d be putting on when she was set up and ready to retrieve the package from the day box. She squatted by the open case and picked up a black plastic plug, a screw-on breech, and one of the shotgun cartridges. A diesel engine sounded in the distance-an EMS ambulance showing up, parking on the dirt road, at the ready in case all didn’t go according to plan.