Depraved Heart

“Are you certain of the year Erin Loria started with the FBI?” I ask Lucy. “Nineteen-ninety-seven? As in the year you were there?”

“Not the only year I was there,” she says as I think about Erin Loria being married to a federal official who was appointed by the White House.

That’s not good. It’s not good at all. She’ll claim that he has no more influence in her cases than Benton has in mine. She’ll swear His Honor has no professional involvement with her, that both of them stay completely within the legal boundaries and guidelines. Of course it isn’t true. It never is.

“I realize you were at Quantico before and after 1997,” I’m commenting to Lucy as my thoughts continue to slam into each other like billiard balls. “That once you got started with the FBI you never really left.”

“Until they ran me out of Dodge,” she says as if it’s nothing that for all practical intents and purposes she was fired. “Even before I was an agent I was there summers, holidays, most weekends, every spare minute I had. You probably remember. I’d start arranging my classes so I could leave Charlottesville early Thursday morning and not come back until late Sunday. I was at Quantico more than I was in college.”

“Jesus,” Marino mutters. “Erin Loria was there when you were. And it’s not exactly a big place.”

“That’s right,” Lucy says.

“Another blast from the past just like Carrie. What did you step in during that informative time in your life, huh? Some Super Glue-like dog shit that you can’t clean off?”

He means formative, but Lucy and I ignore it. We don’t crack a smile. Not now as we perch on our hard, unforgiving seats in Lucy’s place of meditation, her church, her Stonehenge.

“You step in some special brand of it?” he’s saying. “And you not only still have it on your damn shoes but you’re tracking it everywhere for the rest of us to step in.”

“Which session?” I can’t believe this is happening.

“We overlapped,” she says. “Erin was at Quantico while I was an intern at ERF, while Carrie was there, yes. That’s true. And they were familiar with each other.”

“How familiar?” I ask it blandly.

“Familiar enough.” Lucy doesn’t flinch. “They got pretty friendly.”

“Jesus Christ.” Marino reaches around to his back and scratches another itch, real or perceived. “It’s hard to imagine that’s a coincidence in light of everything else. Whatever you sprayed out here doesn’t work, just so you know. I’ve got bites, big ones. You can see them from friggin’ outer space.”

“Erin and I were on the same floor in Washington Dorm but I don’t remember her very well except she was dismissive of me.” Lucy is talking as Marino continues to claw and swat and bitch. “I didn’t know her firsthand. I didn’t make friends with any of the new agents in training, not in that session, only in my own, which wasn’t until two years later. Mostly I recall that she was Miss Tennessee. It’s as far as she got in her beauty queen career, totally bombed the talent portion of the Miss America pageant, then went to law school, then applied to the FBI Academy. Great for undercover when you look like a Barbie doll, I guess. Well, hey. It gets you married to a judge, I guess. It gets you invitations to White House Christmas parties.”

“You were at Quantico at the same time. Meaning Erin would be familiar with your background beyond what would be in your personnel file.” I allude to the specter of Carrie.

Lucy doesn’t say a word.

“Carrie Grethen,” I’m out with it. “Erin would know about her for a number of reasons. Erin would know exactly who and what Carrie is.”

“Now she would,” Lucy says. “That’s for sure. But in 1997 no one had any idea what they were dealing with. Including me.”

As far as we know, Carrie hadn’t committed murder back then. She wasn’t a Ten Most Wanted criminal. She wasn’t locked up in a forensic psychiatric facility for the criminally insane and hadn’t escaped from it yet, and she hadn’t allegedly been killed in a helicopter crash off the coast of North Carolina. Certainly when she worked at the ERF she wasn’t a known felon or presumed dead, and she and Erin Loria might have been allies. They might have been friends. They might have had an affair and still be in communication, and what a bizarre notion that is to contemplate.

One of the most dangerous fugitives on the planet might be on amicable terms with an FBI agent married to a federal judge who was appointed by the president of the United States. My mind speeds through possible connections, adding two plus two and maybe getting four. Maybe getting five or some other wrong answer. Or maybe there’s no answer period.

But it bothers me considerably that even as Erin Loria was making her way to Lucy’s property barely two hours ago, I was sent a text message that included a link to a covert video recording Carrie made in Lucy’s dorm room while the former Miss Tennessee-turned-FBI-agent was living right down the hall. Worse, Carrie and Lucy argued about her in the recording.

“Hold up a second,” Marino says to Lucy. “Before we drink the Kool-Aid and start imagining all sorts of crazy crap let’s go back to when your house phone rang. Your software collected data on who it was. You discovered Special Agent Loria was leading the charge and then what?”

“Literally?”

“Blow by blow.”

“I knew she was in a vehicle moving fourteen miles per hour along the same road you were just on.” Lucy pulls up her legs, planting her feet on the boulder, wrapping her arms around her bent knees.

None of us can get comfortable in her outdoor church. Except the sun feels good even if the humidity is oppressive, and the stirring air is sluggish but pleasant when it touches my damp skin. It’s the kind of hot heavy weather that promises a violent storm, and one is predicted for this afternoon. I look up at thick dark clouds advancing from the south, and I fix on the helicopter loudly hovering near the water, hanging in the air like a huge black Orca float in a Macy’s parade.

“I knew when she placed the call she was about fifty yards from my gate,” Lucy describes, “and when I asked her what I could help her with she informed me the FBI had a warrant to search my house and any outbuildings associated with it. She ordered me to open the gate and leave it open, and within minutes five Bureau cars including a K-nine were in front of the house.”

“What time did you notice the helicopter?” I continue to watch it hover rock solid, now over dense woods to the left of Lucy’s house, which we can’t see from where we’re sitting.

“About the same time you rolled up.”

“Let me get this straight.” Marino frowns. “For some reason an FBI chopper just happened to be in Cambridge where we were working a case? And next it just happened to follow us here? Okay. Now I’m getting really hinky, you know, one of those really bad feelings that makes my hair stand up …”

“You don’t have any hair,” Lucy says.

“What bullshit are they pulling?” Marino glares up at the sky as if the FBI is God.

“Well they sure as hell aren’t going to tell me,” she says. “I don’t know where they’ve been flying or for what reason, and there hasn’t been time for me to check. After their cars showed up I no longer had privacy. It wasn’t a smart idea for me to check with ATC or tune into their freq to hear who was buzzing around and maybe why. Plus I had a lot of other things to attend to. The K-nine in particular is upsetting—intentionally. What I call being a real asshole.”

“Who?”

“Erin, I can only conclude. If she’s gathered any information about me she realizes that I have an English bulldog named Jet Ranger who’s so old he can hardly walk or see, and to have a Belgian Malinois searching the house would scare the hell out of him. Not to mention scaring Desi. Not to mention hassling Janet to the point she was about to deck someone. This is personal.”

Her green eyes are intense. She holds my stare.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that.” I’m cautious about what I say. “I wouldn’t take any of this personally,” I advise my niece even as I wonder about her. “All of us need to be coldly objective and think clearly right now.”

“It feels like someone is settling a score.”

“I admit I’m wondering the same thing,” Marino says.

“This is planned.” Lucy seems convinced. “It’s been planned for a while.”

“What score and who?” I inquire. “Not Carrie.”

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