Dust (19 page)

“Never?” I question. “That strikes me as strange.”

“No drinking puddles!” Marino is the one barking.

“Were you the profiler on her case?” I don’t remember Benton ever telling me at the time that he was involved in Gabriela Lagos’s homicide.

“I was consulted, yes. Not about her but about Martin and what was in his diary” is all Benton says, and Marino has reached us.

Benton holds out his hand to encourage Quincy to come. “That’s a good boy.” He ruffles the German shepherd’s neck. “I can see you’re very well trained,” he says with quiet sarcasm.

“He’s sure as hell not being good,” Marino is grumpy and out of breath. “Don’t be a bad boy.” He pats his dog, thumping him on the sides. “You know what to do. Now, sit.”

Quincy doesn’t.

Not far up ahead but out of sight from where we wait is a Bank of America kiosk.

“At Mass Ave and Albany. It would have been an ideal place for the killer to leave his car,” Benton describes the very intersection where I get stopped on occasion when the circus train lumbers through.

The last time wasn’t that long ago, the first of December, when the long candy-apple-red train with gold lettering on the sides took forever to clatter past, headed into the MIT campus to park at the Grand Junction branch. I sat and imagined the exotic animals inside those cars, remembering when this same Florida-based circus performed in Miami several times a year during my childhood. The Cirque d’Orleans casts a shadow over my mood every time it sets up in an arena around here, reminding me of my past, of my father who used to take me to see the elephants walking trunk to tail along Biscayne Boulevard.

“He could have left his car there in the public lot.” Benton continues talking about where the killer may have parked as I hold Quincy by his leash and pet him. “And nobody would have paid attention. Cars are in and out of that lot at all hours because of the ATM. He left his vehicle and returned on foot probably right along these tracks. It would have been raining when he did. The footprints he left when he returned to the scene would be gone for the most part, just the partials we’ve noticed. The intact ones are from when he left the final time, possibly right before dawn when the rain had stopped.”

“If they’re his, he must be a pipsqueak,” Marino says. “Size-eight feet? What would that make him, maybe five feet? I’m betting it was a kid goofing around back here.”

“We can’t say with any degree of certainty how tall,” I reply. “The correlation of foot size and height isn’t an exact science. While we can estimate based on statistical data, it’s not possible to be precise.”

Marino repositions the scale, the same six-inch yellow plastic ruler he was using earlier only with a different label. “How about for once not talking like a nerd on
The Big Bang Theory
and just give me a garden-variety guess,” he picks on me.

“On average a male with a size-eight shoe is around five-foot-five. But that doesn’t mean the person who left these footprints is that height. There are short people with large feet and tall people with small ones.” I ignore his rude aside, which I suspect is more for Benton’s benefit than mine.

Marino can’t stop asserting himself because for one thing he’s stung by what Benton has predicted so far. The MIT maintenance worker Enrique Sanchez routinely leaves his truck overnight at the construction site. The pipe cutter is his and he uses his own tools on the job. He has a DUI. A second offense and he could lose his license so he never drinks and drives. Benton hasn’t been proven wrong about anything so far and Marino has shown his gratitude by causing trouble with his office in Boston, unwittingly adding more grist to Granby’s treacherous mill.

“Five-foot-five for the sake of argument?” Marino says to me. “A kid, someone short, whatever. Pretty damn stupid if he did what you think,” he fires at Benton. “It would have been a lot smarter to leave the body and then get the hell out. You return to the scene you could get caught.”

“It’s not possible for him to resist watching.” Benton is back to checking e-mails on his phone. “He has to witness the spectacle he creates.”

That word again.
Spectacle.

“He’s been back here before. He knew where to go and what to do. He was comfortable.” Benton continues looking through the eyes of the monster he’s after.

Through the eyes of Martin Lagos,
I think.

Or someone who had access to his DNA.
 

Specifically, someone who had access to his profile in the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System known as CODIS, and I indulge in imagining worse-case scenarios. I think it through, what I would do if I were a bad person skilled in computers or, more disturbing still, if I worked in a DNA lab and had evil intentions or did the bidding of someone corrupt who is powerful.

A DNA profile doesn’t look like a biological sample on a microscopic slide or the barcode on an autoradiograph. It’s not visual like a blood-spatter pattern or the loops and whorls of a fingerprint. In a database a profile is a series of numbers that are manually entered and assigned an identifier generated by the crime lab that conducted the analysis. It’s these numbers that are compared to an unknown profile run against a database like CODIS and when there’s a hit the numerical identifier is the link that leads to the name and personal information of who it is.

The growing reservoir of information found in DNA databanks has been controversial since the testing was first introduced in the late 1980s. People worry about privacy. They worry about genetic discrimination and a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, which protect against search and seizure without probable cause. There’s a growing concern about DNA dragnets or trolling for suspects by taking samples from people within the geographic proximity of a crime.

I’ve heard the objections and fears for years and I don’t disagree with some of them. Even the most perfect scientific procedures can be misused and abused by imperfect human beings and it’s within the realm of possibility that a DNA profile could be deliberately altered. Numbers entered into a computer by an overworked lab technician can be accidentally corrupted. They can be tampered with. While I’m not aware of this happening, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t. There’s no guarantee that such a mistake or misdeed would be publicized, certainly not voluntarily.

If Martin Lagos’s identification number were substituted for another person’s in every database, we’d have no way of knowing the DNA profile wasn’t really his. It would be the ultimate identity theft and I can’t mention this now in front of Marino.

I watch him return the camera and scale to his scene case. Quincy is sitting on my foot and licking my hand.

“Let’s go,” Marino commands his dog who isn’t interested in going anywhere. “I’ll catch you at your office in a while,” he says to me, ignoring Benton. “Machado and I’ve got a few things to finish up such as finding Haley Swanson who’s ducking us now. Later I plan to drop by Gail Shipton’s condo, if you want to come.”

“You know what to do” is my response. “Make sure you get everything out of her medicine cabinet. I want to know what meds she might have been on. Let me know what’s inside her refrigerator and in her trash.”

“Jesus Christ,” he complains. “Am I wearing a T-shirt that says
Stupid
?”

I wait until he and Quincy are through the tunnel, headed back to Briggs Field. Then I suggest to Benton that he should consider possibilities that might explain the DNA recovered from the panties Julianne Goulet had on when her body was found.

“If one wanted to be one hundred percent certain the DNA is Martin Lagos’s,” I elaborate as we begin walking again, “the FBI should have checked it against the original analysis done by the Virginia labs in 1996. The profile also should have been compared to his mother’s. Her blood card from the autopsy my former northern district office did should still be in her file.”

“As I understand it, all of the appropriate steps have been taken,” Benton says with no inflection in his voice as if he’s parroting what he’s been told. “The DNA’s been verified as Martin Lagos’s. Nothing in the CODIS database has been entered in error or altered, I’m assured.”

“You actually asked the question?”

“I presented the possibility to Granby. It would have to be someone at his level to discreetly question the lab director in Quantico.”

“If you didn’t have people gunning for you before, now you certainly will.”

“Nothing is out of line. The DNA recovered from the panties shows a direct maternal relationship to Gabriela Lagos.”

“New analysis of her blood card was done?” I push him on this.

“I’m telling you what I was told,” he says in a way that continues to concern me.

“If it really is Martin Lagos’s DNA, that argues against him being dead,” I say to him. “The test results seem to support that he murdered Julianne Goulet unless his DNA got on the panties in some way other than his depositing it on them.”

“I’m thinking that’s the only other explanation.”

“What you’re suggesting would be rare if not impossible. Laboratory contamination after seventeen years wouldn’t make any sense.”

“I don’t think it would.”

“Semen, skin cells?” I suppose one or the other was what was recovered and tested.

“Blood,” Benton says.

“Visible blood. You’re right. That seems too obvious. Why would the killer leave his blood on a pair of panties? How could that happen and he didn’t notice and realize what it would mean when the panties were analyzed?”

“What if someone kept a sample of Martin’s blood all these years?” Benton asks.

“It would have had to be preserved properly. Frozen, in other words,” I say dubiously. “You’re talking about something planned well in advance by someone who knew what he was doing. And you have to ask why a blood sample of his would be stored to begin with. By whom and for what purpose?”

“What about people who exchange blood-vial jewelry? They wear it around their necks.” Benton is looking for any possible explanation because he has misgivings, sinister ones that he’s not going to verbalize.

He doesn’t want to openly accuse. He wants me to figure it out.

“What if he’d exchanged something like that with someone?” he asks.

“And seventeen years later this person uses it to frame him in multiple homicides?”

“I just know DNA from a blood sample was identified as Martin Lagos’s and I’m coming up with anything I can think of to explain how that could have happened, Kay. Besides the obvious.”

“The obvious being a problem with CODIS and your fear that people like Granby are lying to you.”

“I wish I’d never mentioned it to him.”

“Who else could you mention it to?”

“To you, to someone I trust with my life.” He doesn’t mention Lucy because he won’t. “I’m going around him every chance I get.”

Ahead of us a dark brick warehouse looms, its hundreds of windows blanked out by the sun.

“Saying someone was wearing Martin Lagos’s blood in a vial on a necklace and then decided to use it to frame him?” I play it out. “Days, not to mention years, without being air-dried or properly stored and you can forget it. The blood would have decomposed, the DNA destroyed by bacteria or UV light if it was exposed to the sun.”

“What if it had been kept in a lab for some reason?”

“Not our labs in Virginia or Washington either,” I remind him. “There would have been no blood drawn, obviously, because there was no case, no autopsy, not if Martin Lagos jumped off the Fourteenth Street Bridge and his body was never found. When the police worked his mother’s murder and realized he was missing, I assume they got his DNA profile from a toothbrush, his hairbrush, something like that.”

“Yes,” Benton answers. “I’m not saying it isn’t his blood. I’m saying I don’t understand how it got there and I don’t trust it worth a damn. It’s what someone wants us to think.”

“What does the BAU say about what you’re suggesting?” I can only imagine the reaction.

“They think I’ve been doing this too long.”

“You won’t retire. That’s not you.”

He’s not going to teach somewhere or be one more former FBI profiler out there who’s a hired gun or on TV whenever there’s a big crime or a big trial.

“I’m pissing everybody off and talking to you without authorization. I’ve talked to Lucy and you know that without my saying it,” Benton says. “If they find out, well why should I even care anymore? As far off course as this has gotten and what it very likely means…Christ, Granby and all of them can go to hell.”

It’s almost eleven a.m. when we reach the back parking lot of my seven-story, titanium-skinned building that is shaped like a bullet with a geodesic glass roof.

The anti-climb fence is tall and PVC-coated black, and above it satellite dishes and antennas bloom silvery white from the rooftops of MIT labs that back up to the CFC on three sides. Transmissions travel invisibly nearly at the speed of light, many of them classified, a lot of them military and related to secret government projects.

My phone rings and I look up at Bryce’s window bright with sunlight as if I might spot him, which isn’t possible. But old habits don’t die easily. The glass in my building is one-way. We can see out but no one can see in. My chief of staff may have us in his sights but I can’t tell.

“The Tooth Whisperer left about twenty minutes ago,” he says of Dr. Adams. “It’s Gail Shipton, all right. One of these people with a great mouth because there’s so much wrong with it? I guarantee she was picked on in school just like me.”

I enter my code at the electric gate. It beeps and for a moment nothing happens. I’ve been out five days and Marino no longer works here and I’m reminded that it took the two of us to run this place. I try my code again.

“Possibly an exposure to tetracycline as a child, causing tooth discoloration. You know those ugly spotted and pitted teeth that make you hate school because kids are so mean?” Bryce says as the gate shivers to life.

It begins to slide open on its track slowly, shakily, still not working properly since the last time it was repaired several weeks ago. There’s no one to supervise the security engineer now that Marino isn’t here. He used to hover over whoever answered the service call but those days are gone. I’m having a hard time believing it.

“I had a tooth like that because of a fever. Of course it was a front tooth and my nickname was chalk tooth. ‘Bryce can write on the blackboard with his tooth.’ I didn’t smile the entire time I was growing up.”

On the other side of the limping-open gate our white vans and crime scene trucks are parked haphazardly and I notice they’re dirty. The mobile mass casualty trailer is grimy, too. Marino would throw a fit if he hadn’t quit and I suppose we’ll have to find an affordable washing and detailing company that can be trusted and is willing to service our equipment on-site. It’s just one more housekeeping concern to take up with Bryce, who’d rather talk than breathe.

“Plenty of restorations, all of it costing a pretty penny. But then again she was rich enough to sue someone for a hundred mil, according to what’s all over the news,” he’s saying. “I don’t mean it disrespectfully.”

“Benton and I are here,” I remind Bryce, who manages to find something in common with almost every dead body passing through. “Why don’t we have this conversation inside, preferably a little later? I have evidence rounds to make, then I need to get started on her and check on everybody else.”

I unbutton my coat and remember I’m carrying a gun. Only law enforcement can be armed inside my building. All CFC personnel, including me, are supposed to leave firearms at the security desk, where they’re locked inside a ten-gauge steel pistol cabinet. Not that everybody complies. Marino never did. I have no doubt Lucy doesn’t. I release the fanny pack’s clip in back.

“Of course you’re here. I can see you on closed-circuit camera and out the window, take your pick. The gate is alllll-mossst oppp-en” – he exaggerates how slow it is – “and there you and Benton are, the happy couple walking through, and you’re pushing the button to close it behind you, which will take an hour. Get a load of those big, bad blaze-orange boots. Let me guess. He’s got nothing to change into because his luggage is in Marino’s car, am I right? Benton flew in with Lucy and landed at the scene and you asked Marino to hang on to his belongings, which are now held hostage. Meaning he’ll be in those awful boots all day. Tell him to come upstairs and see me.”

I switch my phone to speaker so Benton can hear.

“I’ve got extra sneakers he can borrow. Black leather that won’t look too terrible,” Bryce’s voice sounds in the parking lot and I wonder who else knew about Benton’s flight home.

I’m not surprised Bryce was informed. The question is when did he find out and from whom?

“I think we wear the same size or close enough,” he says.

“You knew he was coming home today?” I look at Benton busy e-mailing with his phone.

He’s preoccupied with conveying information that his colleagues may disagree with or ignore and he’s being extremely careful, more so than he’s ever had to be. Agents, most of them young, who started out regarding him as a legend and now want to take his place, want to show they’re more fit for the job he does, and that’s to be expected. But the other isn’t. Benton suspects conspiracy and sabotage and it very well may not be his imagination.

“Well, of course I had an inkling. I did have errands to run,” Bryce says mysteriously. “Tomorrow’s his birthday and I wasn’t sure if you’d remember, as sick as you’ve been. Not to mention decorating for Christmas, so he walks into a happy, festive house?”

“You found out when, and who did you tell?”

“Lucy and I had conversations. I mean, you don’t have a tree or a single light, not one candle in a window,” he lectures me. “That was painfully loud and clear every time I dropped things off, such a dark, unfriendly house, with no fire on the hearth not even a week before Christmas? Could it be more depressing? I imagined poor Benton coming home. He can’t hear me, can he? And, yes, the gate needs to be adjusted again. I’m watching it
not
shut, stammering like it’s having a seizure or trying to say something. I’ll try to do it from in here.”

“The problem is it wasn’t properly adjusted the last time it was supposedly serviced.” I tuck the fanny pack under my arm, feeling the weight and shape of what’s inside it.

“You’re telling me? This morning cars were backed up onto the street, it’s so damn slow, and I almost got smacked by a Honda Element and guess who would have paid the piper even though it wasn’t my fault? A tin lizzie like that hitting my big bad X-Six, can you imagine? Well, I should say Ethan’s. I can’t exactly afford a BMW on my salary. Speaking of – what the hell is Lucy driving and what is that you just took off? Are you wearing a gun? Since when?”

“I don’t want any information about the ID or anything else released yet,” I tell him as we walk past Marino’s empty spot where he won’t be parking his design-flawed pickup truck anymore. “Who else knows that Benton was coming home?”

“If I’m not mistaken, you’re packing a pistol. Sexy, but how come? And why such an ugly accessory, that big black bulky thing? Don’t they make them in leather or cheerful colors? I could tell Cambridge PD to release the information. Then it’s their discretion and not our problem.”

“That’s probably best as long as we’re absolutely positive —”

“It took Dr. Adams all of half an hour,” Bryce interrupts again. “Apparently in addition to everything else she had a recent extraction of number twenty —”

“Bryce, who did you tell that Benton was coming home and when? It’s important I know —”

“A healing socket with a titanium post for an implant yet to be
installed
. I know that’s not the right word for it.”

“Bryce…?”

“I realize crowns aren’t installed like crown molding, excuse the pun.” He drops his voice for emphasis. “Well, it’s not exactly a pun except the
crown
part of it.”

I lift the box cover of the jackshaft operator next to the bay and scan my thumb into the biometric lock.

“Not that I’m sure what a number twenty is,” Bryce continues talking nonstop. “But I think it’s a molar.”

“Did Lucy tell you Benton was flying in today?” I press a button and the torque motor starts. The massive metal shutter door lurches up loudly.

“Of course. I encouraged her to fly her big bird to D.C. and airlift him out. Did someone ruin your surprise? I promise it wasn’t me.”

If Bryce knew, there’s no telling who else did, not that I’m sure it explains anything. In fact, I don’t see how it does. Even if he were indiscreet, how would the killer have found out such a detail, assuming Benton’s suspicions are valid? Why would it matter when he was flying home? Maybe the killer can’t resist watching the spectacle he creates but that doesn’t mean the victim selection or the timing has anything to do with Benton. It’s more likely that Granby is capitalizing on Benton’s deepest fears, wearing him down and upsetting him, knowing full well what it would do to him if he thought anything he’s published might influence a violent predator. Benton very well may be paranoid by now, and based on what he’s just told me I wouldn’t blame him.

“Is Ernie in today?” I ask. “I’ve got trace evidence to drop off to him and we’ve got a fence post and bolt cutter coming in for tool marks. Plus DNA. So if you’ll alert Gloria, and while you’re at it also check on the tox lab, the additional screens I want in the suicide from last week, Sakura Yamagata, I want a rush on everything as quickly as humanly possible.”

“Tell me something new.”

“This is new. I’m very concerned about what we might be dealing with around here.”

“You’re not going to give me a clue?”

“I’m not,” I reply. “I also need you to find out when Dr. Venter, the chief in Baltimore, could have a word with me.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Bryce says. “And Ernie’s in the evidence bay, working on the totaled car from that drunk driver Anne’s this minute scanning. Plus we got a possible OD on the way, probably a suicide, a woman whose husband got killed in a motorcycle crash exactly one year ago to the day. One Happy Holidays deserves another, as they say. An average of ten suicides per week since Thanksgiving. Has it gotten worse?”

“More than twenty-five percent worse.”

“Well, now my day is totally ruined.”

Through the widening space beneath the door I see Lucy’s huge SUV inside where it really shouldn’t be. But she parks where she wants whether she’s driving one of her supercars or roaring up on a motorcycle, rules meaning nothing to her. I note the two gurneys haphazardly abandoned against a wall, a body pouch wadded up on top of one of them. A hose is sloppily coiled near a floor drain, the spray nozzle leaking.

“Why are we working up a car from a motor-vehicle fatality?” I ask Bryce.

“Because lawyers are calling.”

“Lawyers are always calling. That’s not a reason.”

“Not just any. Carin Hegel.”

“What exactly does she want?” I ask.

“She wouldn’t say.”

Benton and I duck under the door rolling up as he communicates with someone, typing with his thumbs. I press the
Stop
button just inside, then I press
Close
. I turn on lights. All of the storage cabinets are locked at least and the floor is clean. I don’t smell any bad odors.

“I think it’s something to do with the blood alcohol so maybe you should talk to Luke. Lawsuits and more lawsuits,” Bryce says as the heavy door rolls back down, clanking and humming. “Would it be okay with you if I have pizzas sent in from Armando’s? By early afternoon we’re going to have a full house and I don’t mean dead people. You need to eat, for once, and I have a change of clothing for you all laid out. The usual navy blue suit fresh from the dry cleaner and sensible low-heeled pumps plus brand-new stockings with no picks or runs.”

“Where am I going? I’m not even supposed to be in today.” I stop by the hose and turn off the water all the way.

“I’m interviewing Marino’s replacement, remember?” Bryce says. “Jennifer Garate, rhymes with
karate
. She’s worked in New York City as a death investigator for the past five years and was a physician’s assistant before that? We went over her application some weeks ago, but of course we went through a lot of them. She was very pleasant on the phone and Luke seems to like her photograph a little too much. I admit I thought it a bit odd that she had it taken on a beach wearing what I call
bootyfits
, hot yoga shorts or whatever to show off what she’s got, which is quite something I guess. You’re here, thank God, and can weigh in. Maybe Benton would since he’s in the neighborhood?”

“No,” I answer. “Benton wouldn’t.” I turn off speakerphone because Benton isn’t listening.

I imagine he’s dealing with his field office or the BAU and politics are kicking into a higher gear. I wonder if the FBI will begin looking for Martin Lagos around here, looking for someone Benton is convinced is dead. Already I’m calculating what to do about any DNA results we may get from the panties on Gail Shipton’s body or from the mentholated ointment recovered from the grass. For the first time in my career I don’t trust what might happen to any profiles my DNA lab uploads into CODIS.

“Well, it’s only the most important position in terms of how it affects absolutely everything.” Bryce is back in my earpiece. “You end up with a shitty lead investigator and you know what they say? Garbage in, garbage out.”

We walk through the bay as big as a hangar. Parked off to one side is my niece’s two-ton black SUV built of ballistic hardened steel, according to her, with an explosives protection system, surveillance cameras, searchlights, a survival kit, a siren, and strobes. It has a black box like an aircraft and a PA system with loudspeakers, among other things. I’ve not had a chance to ask her what such an ominous-looking vehicle costs or why she suddenly feels the need for one.

“Who wants to spend the rest of our lives with a bully who crashes on an inflatable bed when he’s drunk, picks up women on Twitter, and lives in a house that’s become a stop on the tacky tour?” Bryce exclaims. “I won’t forgive Marino for using e-mail to walk off the job. Not even the decency to tell me to my face. Anyway, what’s your answer about Armando’s and can I rob petty cash?”

At the top of a ramp the door that leads into the lower level opens. Lucy is dressed in a black flight suit that accentuates her slender, strong build, her bright green eyes, and her rose-gold hair that she’s cut boyishly short.