Flesh and Blood

The windows of the corner first-floor apartment are small. The curtains are drawn, and the door they used to access their apartment has no patio or overhang. It must have been unpleasant hurrying inside when the weather was bad, especially if one was carrying groceries. It would have been awful in the ice and snow, treacherous in fact.

“So this is the exact way he came after he got out of his car,” Marino says as we walk through unbroken shade, chilly and still beneath leafy canopies, the earth pungent and spongy under my booted feet. “He carried three bags, walked around to the back of the house and let himself in with keys that are on the kitchen counter. There’s a knob lock and a dead bolt.”

“What about an alarm system?”

“He probably disarmed it when he went in unless it hadn’t been set, and I’ve got a call to the alarm company to find out the history for earlier today.” He glances at his phone. “Hopefully I’ll be getting that any minute.”

“Machado certainly handed off a lot of detail considering how much the two of you don’t seem to like each other at the moment.” I’m going to make him talk about it. “There’s no room in a homicide investigation for personal problems.”

“I’m a hundred percent focused.”

“If you were I wouldn’t have noticed that anything is wrong. I thought you were friends.”

His gloved hand turns a modern satin chrome knob that is an insult to the vintage oak front door.

“It’s completely closed now but when the first responding officers got here it was ajar.” He continues to ignore my questions.

I follow him in and stop just beyond the jamb, pulling the door shut. Opening my scene case I retrieve shoe covers for both of us as I glance around before stepping farther inside. The apartment is tiny, the kitchen and living area combined, the oak paneling painted chocolate brown. The wide board flooring is heavily varnished and scattered with colorful throw rugs. One bedroom, one bath, two windows across from me and two to my left, the drapes drawn, and I take my time near the door. I’m not done with him.

He and Machado are fighting and I wonder if it’s over a woman, and my thoughts dart back to Liz Wrighton. I’m rather startled but probably shouldn’t be. Single, in her late thirties, attractive, and I recall that when Marino worked for me, the two of them sometimes went shooting together or grabbed a few drinks after work. She’s been out sick since Monday and for some reason Machado knew about it.

“Did you mention to Machado that Liz has been out sick?” I ask.

“I didn’t know about it.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It isn’t.”

I look up at two rubbed bronze hanging fixtures shaped like inverted tulip bulbs. Cheap. What’s called antique inspired. Their bulbs are glaring, the dimmer switches near the door pushed up as bright as the lights will go. I doubt Jamal Nari did that when he came in with groceries and left the door ajar. I have a feeling Machado did plenty of looking around when he did his walk-through, and I suggest this to Marino. I ask him if the lights were on when the police got here or if Machado might have done it.

“I’m sure he turned them on so he could see anything in plain view before we got the warrant.” Marino is skimming through it, his mouth set angrily. “And guess what? I don’t see a sniper rifle on it. What if we find one in the closet or under the bed? It’s not like I didn’t damn tell him.”

“I don’t understand. Are you implying Joanna Cather shot her husband with a rifle they keep in the apartment?”

“I’m implying that Machado is being bullheaded and jerking me around. What he doesn’t want to hear is we’re probably looking for a special type of firearm. One that not so long ago wasn’t readily available to the public. So he’s not acknowledging anything I tell him.” Marino’s gloved hands pick up keys on the kitchen counter next to three upright brown paper Whole Foods bags. “A 5R. Like the rifle used in New Jersey.”

He’s talking about the engraving on the bullet made by the rifling of the barrel.

“Five lands and grooves with rolled leading edges,” he says. “And when do you see that in shooting cases?”

“I’m not sure I have.”

“I personally don’t know of any homicides where the shooter used a rifle with a 5R barrel except the two Jersey cases,” Marino says. “Even now there’s only a few models out there unless you custom-build, and most people don’t know crap about barrels or even think they’re important. But this shooter does because he’s damn smart. He’s a gun fanatic.”

“Or he somehow got hold of a gun like that …”

“We need to look for anything that might be related, put everything on a warrant including solid copper bullets, cartridge cases, a tumbler.” Marino talks over me. “Anything you can think of in any place we search including any vehicles like the wife’s rental car. But Machado’s fighting me. Basically he’s giving me the finger because if I’m right it’s a huge case and it’s mine not his.”

“Under ordinary circumstances it should be both of yours.”

“Well the circumstances aren’t ordinary and I should be the lead investigator. He’s already run the wrong way with the ball.”

“Your hope is that it’s Machado who gets reassigned.”

“Maybe he will and maybe he should before there’s a bigger problem.”

“What bigger problem?” There’s more to this than Marino is saying.

“Like him pinning this murder on some kid who maybe was fooling around with the dead man’s wife. A kid didn’t do this,” Marino says but that’s not his reason. There’s something else.

He opens his scene case on the floor as I survey the sitting area.

A chesterfield brown leather sofa and two side chairs. A coffee table. A flat-screen TV has been dismounted from the wall and so have framed Jimi Hendrix, Santana and Led Zeppelin posters. In a corner are three black carbon fiber guitars on stands, iridescent like a butterfly wing when the light catches just right, and I get close to inspect.

RainSong.

“He must have really loved his guitars to get a tattoo,” I comment, and I’m in the kitchen now.

Four wall-mounted cabinets, a three-burner stove, an oven, a refrigerator. On the counter are a microwave, the keys and bags of groceries Nari carried in before he returned to his car and was shot to death. I work my hands into a pair of fresh gloves before inspecting what he bought.

“Sliced cheeses, coffee, jars of marinara sauce, pasta, butter, several different spices, rye bread, detergent, dryer sheets,” I go through the inventory. “Advil, Zantac, valerian. Prescriptions for Zomig, Clarinex, Klonopin filled at the CVS at nine this morning, possibly after he bought the groceries and right before he drove home.”

I look at Marino as he slides the trash can out from under the sink.

“Who does this much shopping for a long weekend?” I open the refrigerator.

There’s nothing inside but bottles of water and an open box of baking soda.

“I’m thinking the same thing you are. Something’s wrong with this picture.” Marino lifts the trash bag out of the can. “Nothing in it but a bunch of paper towels. They’re damp. It looks like they were used to wipe something down. What do the meds tell you?”

“It would seem that one or both of them suffer from headaches, possibly migraines in addition to allergies and stomach problems,” I reply. “And valerian is a homeopathic remedy for muscle spasms and stress. Some people use it to sleep. Klonopin is a benzodiazepine used for anxiety. The name on all of the prescriptions is Nari’s. That doesn’t necessarily mean his wife wasn’t sharing.”

Marino heads toward the bedroom and I follow him. Another former jewel that is sad to see, the oak flooring original to the house and painted brown. The crown molding like the paneled walls is painted an insipid yellow. On top of the double bed are two guitar cases, hard plastic and lined with plush red fabric, and on the handles are elastic bands from baggage tickets. There are nightstands and lamps, and near the open closet door are suitcases and stacks of taped-up Bankers Boxes.

On top of the dresser are two laptop computers plugged in and charging, and Marino’s gloved fingers tap the mouse pads and the screen savers ask for passwords. He returns to the living area. Then he’s back with evidence tape and plastic bags.

“They weren’t going away for just the weekend. It’s obvious they were moving.” I step inside the bathroom.

It’s not much bigger than a closet. The vintage claw-foot tub has been outfitted with a showerhead and a yellow plastic curtain on enclosure rings. There’s a white toilet, a sink and a single frosted window.

“Didn’t you mention that they just rented this apartment a few years ago?” I ask. “And now they’re moving again?”

“It sure looks that way,” Marino says from the bedroom.

“The guitars aren’t in their cases.” I direct my voice through the open doorway so he can hear me. “And I would think that’s significant since they were important to him. Almost everything else is packed up but not his guitars.”

“I don’t see a third case anywhere. Just the two on the bed,” Marino says and I hear him opening a door, I hear coat hangers scraping on a rod.

“There should be three. One for each guitar.”

“Nope and nothing in the closet.”

I open the medicine cabinet, the mirror old and pitted. There’s nothing inside. In the cabinet under the sink are nonlubricated condoms and Imodium. Boxes and boxes of them, and it’s unusual. I wonder why these were left in here when nothing else was. They’re perfectly arranged, the boxes lined upright like a loaf of sliced bread, each label facing out. None of them are open. I detect a chlorine smell. Possibly a bathroom cleanser that was stored in here before it was packed or thrown out.

“I wonder where the building empties garbage?” I ask.

“There’s a Dumpster.”

“Someone should go through it to see what they might have tossed.” I return to the bedroom.

I notice the Bankers Box on top of the stack. The tape has been cut. Someone opened it. The lid is marked bathroom. I take a look. It’s half empty, nothing inside except a few toiletries that appear to have been rummaged through. I look at the other boxes, eleven of them and they’re taped up. They look undisturbed and I get the same weird feeling I had when I noticed the condoms and Imodium in the cabinet.

“You gotta see this.” Marino is opening dresser drawers now. “More of the same, friggin’ unbelievable. Something was definitely going on. Like they were on the damn run.”

“If so he didn’t exactly make it very far,” I reply as I hear voices outside the apartment.

“Maybe that’s why. Someone decided to stop him.” The dresser drawer he pulls open is completely empty and wiped clean.

I can see the swipe marks and lint of the wet paper towels used, perhaps the ones he found in the kitchen trash. I suggest he bag them as evidence.

“Let’s make sure it was only dust and dirt being cleaned out of drawers,” I add as the voices get closer and sound argumentative, a man and a woman. She’s extremely upset.

“No question about it.” Marino checks the drawers in the nightstands and they’re empty. They also have been wiped clean. “They were getting the hell out of Dodge. And I’m guessing someone good with a rifle wasn’t happy about it.”

We return to the living room as the voices get louder.

“Ma’am, you need to hold here,” the male voice says from the other side of the front door. “You can’t go in until I check with the investigator …”

“This is where we live! Let me in!” a woman screams.

“You need to hold here, ma’am.” And the door opens, and a uniformed officer steps halfway inside, blocking the woman behind him.

“Jamal! Jamal! No!”

Her screams pierce the quiet apartment as she tries to push past the officer, a heavyset man, gray hair, in his fifties, an impassive air I associate with cops who have been at it too long, and I try to place him. Ticketing parked cars. Picking up personal effects in the autopsy room.

“Let me in! Why won’t you tell me anything! Let me in! What’s happening? What’s happening?”

Her anguish and terror come from where no one should have to go, a wrenching hopeless place. It’s not true that we are never given more than we can bear. Only it isn’t given. It simply happens.

“It’s okay. No problem,” Marino says to the officer. “You can let her in.”

9

Joanna Cather isn’t what I expected.

I’m not sure what I imagined but not the tiny girlish woman weeping and staring glassy-eyed in grief and terror. She’s pretty in a delicate, fragile way like a porcelain doll that might break in half if you knocked her over, dressed in black leggings, boots and a pink Coldplay sweatshirt that hangs to her knees. She wears multiple rings and bracelets, her nails painted turquoise, and her long straw-blond hair is so straight it looks ironed.

“Did you see them in Boston?” I indicate her sweatshirt and she stares blankly as if she doesn’t remember what she has on. “I’m Doctor Kay Scarpetta. I’m trying to think back to when it was. Maybe two summers ago.”

My offhand reference to the British rock band and query about when it performed in the area reboots her shocked distraction, a tactic I learned early on when people are too fragmented by hysteria to give me what I need. I make a non-germane observation about the weather or what they’re wearing or anything at all we might have in common. It almost always works. I have Joanna’s attention.

“You’re a doctor?” Her eyes fasten on me, and I’m mindful of the hard stiffness of the vest underneath my shirt, of my hands still gloved in purple nitrile, of my boots cocooned in boat-shaped blue shoe covers.

“I’m handling Jamal’s case, the medical aspects of it.” I’m gentle but sure of my position, and I sense the beginning of trust.

She pauses, staring with a hint of relief and says, “July two years ago. We had VIP backstage passes. We never miss them.”

One of the band’s tour stops was Boston where they played for several nights, and Lucy got seats two rows back, center stage. We may have been at the same concert, perhaps near Joanna and her musician husband, all of us there on a rock-and-roll high.

It happens in the blink of an eye. A lightning strike. A heart attack. A wrong place. A wrong time.

“You … You saw Jamal,” she says to me. “What happened to him? He was shot?”

“Preliminarily that’s the way it looks. I’m very sorry.”

“The way it looks? You don’t know?”

“He needs to be examined. Then I’ll have answers I can be sure of.” I’m next to her now as if she’s in my care, and I tell her I regret that I don’t have more information at the moment.

I repeat how sorry I am for her terrible loss. I say all the right things as she starts crying again and this is exactly how Marino wants it to go. We’ve danced this dance since the beginning of our time. I’m the doctor who’s not here to accuse or cause further harm. The more he leans on her, the more she’ll bond with me, feeling I’m on her side. I know exactly how to insert myself without violating the boundaries of what I have a right to answer or ask. I also know how to be useful without saying a word.

“We got it from here,” Marino tells the officer hanging back in the doorway. “Make sure none of the reporters out there get any closer to the house.”

“What about the residents?” The officer whose silver name tag says t. j. hardy watches me pull off my shoe covers and gloves and drop them in a red biohazard bag on the kitchen counter.

I wear no personal protection clothing now, just my field clothes, which are official-looking with their many pockets and CFC crest. But I’m not threatening. I return to Joanna’s side as T. J. Hardy begins to explain that residents are trying to return to their apartments.

“Two of them just pulled up in their cars, are in front of the house as we speak. They’re getting upset that we won’t let them back in.” His Massachusetts accent is elastic and strong, his r’s sounding like w’s.

His voice triggers memories of him showing up in the autopsy room on several occasions for motor vehicle fatalities, and I’d had the distinct impression it was the last place he wanted to be. He’d collect personal effects and keep his distance from the steel tables. He’d avert his gaze, breathing out of his mouth because of the stench.

“Positively ID them and escort them into their apartments,” Marino says to him. “I want their names and how to reach them. Email me the info ASAP. Nobody gets near the red SUV and the immediate area around it. We’re clear on that?”

“Got it.”

“You parked out there?” Marino directs this at Joanna, and she nods, not meeting his eyes.

“What kind of vehicle?”

“A Suburban. A rental. We’re moving things … We were supposed to move things around and needed something big.” She looks past him in a fixed wide-eyed stare.

“You don’t own a car?” Marino asks.

“We traded in both of ours on his new Honda.” Her voice quavers. “The red one out there.”

“The cleanup crew wants to start picking up the spilled groceries. And …” T. J. Hardy glances at Joanna as he chooses his words. “And you know, start tidying things up.”

Marino looks at me. “We’re done, right?”

The body is at the CFC but I don’t mention it. The blood, the gore certainly need to be gone and I’m not going to say that either. I tell Marino that cleanup can get started, and Joanna quietly cries in spasms. Officer Hardy steps back outside. The solid sound of the oak door shutting startles her and her knees almost buckle. She gasps and holds a tissue over her nose and mouth, her eyes bloodshot and smeared with makeup.

“Why don’t you come sit and let’s talk,” Marino says to her, and he introduces himself, adding, “Doctor Scarpetta is the chief medical examiner of Massachusetts and also works for the Pentagon.”

“The Pentagon?” Joanna isn’t impressed and he just scared her.

“It just means I have federal jurisdiction in certain cases.” I dismiss it as nothing.

“What? You’re the fucking FBI.” The look in her eyes changes just like that.

Marino had to brag and now I have to undo it. I explain I’m an Air Force special reservist affiliated with the Armed Forces Medical Examiners. She wants to know what that means. I tell her I assist the federal government with medical intelligence and help out with military matters but I also work for the state and my office is here in Cambridge. The more detail I give the more she glazes over. Wiping her eyes. Not listening. She doesn’t care about my pedigree. She’s not threatened by it and that’s what I want.

“Point being you couldn’t be in better hands,” Marino adds. “She may have a few questions about medications, about any general health details she should know about your husband.”

He’s says it as if I’m their family doctor and it’s a tried-and-true manipulation, a familiar one I wish wasn’t needed. Nari’s prescription drugs and health history have nothing to do with what killed him. A gun did. But Marino wants me present, and if Joanna thinks what he’s saying is a ploy she makes no indication. Instead she’s suddenly deflated as if there’s no point in fighting what can’t be changed. There’s no protest or argument that will make it untrue.

“Where is he? Where’s Jamal?” Her tone is dead. “Why is that big black box set up in front of the house? I don’t understand. Was that where they put him? They wouldn’t let me look inside it. Is he in there? Where is he?”

“He’s been taken to my office for examination.” I repeat what I’ve already told her. “The black enclosure was to ensure privacy and respect. Come sit down.” I touch her elbow and lead her to the couch, and she sits stiffly on the edge of it, wiping her eyes.

“Who did this? Who would do this?” Her voice shakes and catches.

“Well that’s what this is all about, Joanna. We gotta find that out.” Marino sets a chair directly across from her and sits down. “I’m real sorry. I know how hard this is but I’ve got a lot of questions I need you to answer if you’re going to help us figure out what happened to Jamal, okay?”

She nods. I sit down off to the side.

“Starting with what time you left here this morning, where you were headed and why.” Marino has his notepad out.

“I already told the other one that. He said Jamal was shot while he was getting groceries out of the car. That someone shot him.” She looks at me. “But you said you don’t know if he was shot.”

“He needs to be examined so we can be sure of exactly what happened.” I avoid using the word autopsy.

Her eyes race around the living room and then she stares at the three guitars. “Who did that?” Her voice goes up a notch and is louder as she stares accusingly at us. “Jamal packed them in their cases. He’s so careful with his guitars. Who put them back on their stands?”

“That’s interesting,” Marino says. “There’s two cases on the bed. Where’s the third one?”

“You had no right! Touching his things, you had no right!”

“We didn’t touch his guitars,” Marino says and I think of Machado.

But he wouldn’t do that. I look across the room at the guitars, different shapes, black carbon fiber, one a matte finish, two shiny and shimmering with mother-of-pearl inlays. Upright on stands, a rubber gooseneck clamped over the strings. Facing out. Perfectly, precisely arranged, and I get out of my chair. I walk over to them and detect the vague chlorine smell of bleach, what I smelled in the bathroom. Someone was inside this apartment here who shouldn’t have been, and then I check the kitchen again.

The paper towels in the trash have no odor at all. Bleach destroys DNA. Something else was used to wipe out the drawers. Two different types of evidence, two different means of eradicating it. Possibly two different people. I sit back down. I give Marino a look that he understands. Jamal Nari’s killer may have been inside this apartment at some point, and I think of Machado again at the same instant Marino asks Joanna about him.

“I know you two talked.” He keeps the annoyance out of his voice and there’s no sign of it on his face.

But I know what he feels. Machado shouldn’t have offered details to her. He shouldn’t have said her husband was shot. If she’d said it first it would have been significant.

“You told Detective Machado you were in Tilton, New Hampshire. At the Tanger Outlets?” Marino asks her.

“He was shot in broad daylight by his car?” She’s trembling hard and maybe this time for a different reason. “Did anyone see who did it or try to help?”

When he doesn’t answer as he flips through pages in his notepad, she gets more agitated and anger glints.

“Did anyone try to get an ambulance? Didn’t anyone try to help him?” She’s asking me this.

“It was a fatal injury.” I select my words carefully.

“You mean there was nothing that could have been done. Nothing at all?”

“Your husband died very quickly.”

“I’m hoping you might know something that will help us,” Marino says.

She glares at him. “I have no idea who did this.”

“Detective Machado called your cell when you were on your way to New Hampshire.” Marino baits the trap.

“I was already there at the luggage store.”

“Was it Tanger or Merrimack?” Marino frowns, flipping pages. He looks confused. “You know the one in Tanger or the bigger outlet mall about an hour from here?”

“The bigger one. I was returning a bag with a broken zipper and he called. I asked him how he got my number and I thought maybe it was the police harassing us again.”

“As I remember it the FBI was investigating your husband not the police. In light of your bad experience it’s real important you make that distinction, Joanna.” Marino is leaning forward, his big gloved hands on his big knees. “We’re not the FBI. We’re not the ones who put you through all that.”

“It’s never been the same.” She shreds the tissue in her lap. “Is that why? Because of that someone targeted Jamal? We got a lot of hateful things from people. On the Internet. Mail. Stuff left by our cars at school and here.”