Patricia Cornwell - The Bone Bed

“The Coast Guard should have drysuits,” I say to Marino, as I settle into the Tahoe’s front passenger’s seat, and I know him.

He picked whatever was most recently washed and filled with gas, which likely was what Luke Zenner observed when he noticed Marino scouting out various vehicles in the parking lot. I smell the pleasant scent of Armor All and notice the dash is glossy, the carpet spotless. Marino likes a V8 engine, the bigger and louder a vehicle the better, and I’m reminded of how much he loathes the new fleet of SUVs I picked, Toyota Sequoias, fuel-efficient, practical, what I drive every day because I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.

“We always keep a couple drysuits in the storage lockers. I make sure of it with every scene truck.” Marino reminds me of his diligence, and I sense an unpleasant conversation coming on. “There’s two in back. I checked.”

“Good.” I fasten my shoulder harness and find my sunglasses as he backs up. “But hopefully whatever the Coast Guard has on board is better than ours, which isn’t saying much. The suits we have are pretty awful, intended for very basic search and rescue, and not evidence recovery.”

“Government surplus,” Marino complains, and he has something on his mind.

I can always tell.

“Crap that’s the lowest bid for Homeland Security or DoD, and then they don’t want it and it gets passed down the line at a deal,” he says. “Like those cartons for organ sections that said Fish Bait ? Back in our Richmond days? Remember?”

“It’s not exactly something one could forget.”

Marino started tweeting, maybe started drinking again, not long after I hired Luke, and I wonder if Luke said something to him in the parking lot a few minutes ago. I wonder if Luke asked where we were going and added the reminder that he is PADI trained and certified at a professional level, is a master instructor and rescue diver.

“Because you needed a shitload of plasticized cartons and it went out on bid?” Marino remembers fondly.

“And we used them, had no choice.”

“Yeah, if that happened now a defense attorney would have a field day with it.”

I think of Mildred Lott and what I likely face. Court is still on for me, as far as I know. If only I had been more careful. If only I hadn’t made a damn stupid comment that I fear will soon be all over the news.

“We may not need to go in at all unless she’s no longer close to the surface.” Marino stops the Tahoe at the black metal security gate. “In the photo Pam sent it looks like she’s within easy reach. Probably we can just pull the lines in and won’t even need a drysuit, but who the shit knows.”

“We shouldn’t assume it’s a she.”

“Nail polish.” He splays his hands as if he’s wearing it, then reaches up to the visor and pushes a button on the remote. “You could see it in the pic Pam sent.” He refers to the young-looking marine biologist as if they are instant friends. “Definitely nail polish. I couldn’t tell what color, though, maybe pink.”

“It’s best not to assume anything at all.”

“Well, we need our own damn dive team. I’ve been thinking about it, thinking of getting certified,” he says, and that will never happen.

Marino likes to comment that if God meant for us to breathe underwater he would have given us gills. He said it for Luke to hear, and I wonder if Marino has a clue that Luke just volunteered to buddy dive with me, if words were exchanged between the two of them in the parking lot.

“All the bodies we get out of water around here,” Marino continues. “Bays, lakes, rivers, the ocean. And the fire guys and the guardsmen and even rescue dive teams, they don’t want to deal with floaters.”

“That’s not what they’re in the business to deal with,” I remark, and whenever he is full of himself like this and talking nonstop I get ready to find out something I won’t be happy about.

“If we just had a boat. I got my captain’s license, and it would be nothing to be in business. A Zodiac Hurricane rigid-hull inflatable, a twenty-one-footer, two-forty-horsepower inboard jet would be plenty. Maybe we could try to get grant money for new drysuits and also a boat and keep it back here on a trailer and then we got our own way to handle things,” he says confidently. “I could be in charge of that easy. It’s what I know like the back of my hand.”

Traffic is heavy as we pull onto Memorial Drive, the gate frozen open behind us as other CFC employees turn into the lot.

“I’d make sure everything is stocked and stowed perfectly and deconned,” he says. “Would do everything by the book so no worries about some defense attorney saying evidence is contaminated. If you’re still going this afternoon, I should be with you. I don’t want you alone if it’s anywhere near Channing Lott.”

“I don’t think he’ll be in a position to do anything to me inside the federal courthouse, with marshals everywhere.”

“Problem is who a scumbag like that might have on the outside,” Marino says. “Someone with his money could pay anybody to do anything.”

“Apparently he didn’t bother paying anything when he decided to have his wife murdered.”

“No shit. Probably a good thing for him that he’s been locked up all this time. I wouldn’t want to promise some hit man a hundred g’s and then not ante up.”

“Do we have transport?”

“Yeah. Toby will be waiting at the Coast Guard base with one of the vans. I told him he doesn’t need to head out until at least an hour from now.”

On the other side of the busy street bending around our building, the river flows deep blue and sparkles in the sun, and leaves of hardwood trees along the embankment are beginning to turn yellow and red where the cold water chills the air. Fall is late this year, not a single frost yet, and most of the trees are green on the verge of brown. I fear we will transition straight to winter, which this far north can happen almost instantly.

“I know about the e-mail,” Marino finally says, and I figured he would get around to it eventually.

I can’t imagine Lucy didn’t tell him, and I say as much.

“How come you didn’t call me right away?” he asks.

Across the river are the high-rises of downtown Boston, and on the other side of them the inner and outer harbors and the Massachusetts Bay, where a fireboat waits for us. I hope the leatherback made it. I will feel sick to my soul if it drowned.

“I didn’t know if you were off the plane or why I should bother you with it,” I reply. “Some disturbed person who wanted to get a rise out of me and unfortunately succeeded. I hope it’s nothing more than an ugly prank.”

“You should have bothered me with it, because it could be interpreted as a threat. A threat to a government official. I’m surprised Benton wouldn’t see it that way.” Marino’s remark is more of a probe, as if he’s wondering as usual if Benton is vigilant about my safety or even a decent husband.

“Did Lucy also tell you where it was sent from? The IP?”

“Yeah, I’m aware. Maybe to make it look like it was one of us. Bryce, me, any of us who flew into Logan yesterday right about the time you got the e-mail. You need to ask who might want you to think that, who it might benefit if you don’t feel you can trust those you’re closest to.”

He switches into the right lane to turn onto the Longfellow Bridge, with its central towers that are shaped like salt and pepper shakers, and I think of Lucy searching my office a little while ago. We merge into a long line of cars crossing the river into Beacon Hill, rush hour barely moving, traffic stretching across the water and onto Cambridge Street for as far as I can see. I recall what she said about someone in our own backyard, someone we know, and I imagine Marino and her talking about it, speculating and accusing. It doesn’t take much to get her worked up and on the warpath.