Dust (29 page)

“And nobody saw anything,” I suppose.

“That’s what they’re saying. Of course it’s bullshit.”

“IDs?” I notice Marino is in the same clothes he had on before dawn this morning when he showed up at my house in the pouring rain.

I can smell his excitement and stress, his musky male odor that turns rancid if he goes without sleeping or bathing and works nonstop. In another eight or twelve more hours he’ll stink so strongly of sour sweat and stale cigarettes, one will pick him up at ten paces.

“Dominic Lombardi. Or Dom, as he goes by, like the champagne. I guess this will be a bad year for Dom,” Marino says. “And hold on about the other one.”

He digs into a pocket, the latex glove resistant against the fabric, the cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth, one eye screwed shut. He flips pages in a notepad, holds it some distance from his face because he doesn’t have reading glasses on.

“I can’t pronounce this worth shit.
Jadwiga Caminska.
They call her Ika. His administrative assistant. That’s their expensive white SUVs here in the lot. Dom and Ika were visually identified preliminarily by the investigators from Concord PD, who you’ll meet,” he says to me. “They’ve been here before, this past Friday night late when Lombardi reported a possible intruder.”

“Was there one?” Lucy asks.

“Maybe.” He looks at her. “They searched every nook and cranny, spotted a shadow on a video recording picked up by a security camera at the main barn. Like somebody careful about the cameras because he knew what to look for and then cut the wires. Those quadrants on the video displays went black while Lombardi was at his desk at around midnight.” Marino doesn’t take his eyes off her. “He was so appreciative he promised to donate ten grand to the Concord PD Christmas fund, cash withdrawn from his bank two days ago, the withdrawal slip in his desk drawer but no sign of the money and Concord PD never got it.”

“The same amount found in the envelope under the footbridge,” Lucy says.

“You’d make a good cop.”

“Been there, done that.” Lucy stares back at him as if they’re in a standoff.

“So the killer probably stole it and any other cash he could grab.”

“Sounds like a reasonable deduction.” Lucy crosses her arms staring at him, goading him into confronting her about what I suspect she did.

Marino crushes the cigarette against a stone column and sparks go out as ashes drift down. He tucks the butt in a pocket, blowing one last stream of smoke off to the side away from us. Maybe Lucy was never invited to visit Double S but that doesn’t mean she’s never been here.

“I guess they didn’t catch the intruder,” Lucy then says and Marino glares at her.

“If you did what I think, just tell me why,” he says loudly.

“I can suggest why someone would,” she replies. “If you want to walk around and to see what’s going on, you have to take out those cameras. The ones along the driveway you can dodge but not until you’ve gotten past the barn unless you want to swim across the pond.”

“Two detectives show up and this intruder’s still walking around?” Marino is getting louder, almost yelling at her.

“They’d be looking in the barn where all the expensive horses are. Then they’d check the locks of everything else to make sure there wasn’t a problem. Then they’d call it a night.”

“Why would someone want to see what’s here?” Marino’s demeanor has gone from cocky and angry to incredulous.

“Maybe not to see what but who. Who he was sleeping with.”

“And was that determined?” Marino’s look turns to disbelief.

“You could ask the two detectives who showed up.” Lucy gestures toward the house. “But by the time they got here twenty-three minutes after Lombardi called nine-one-one Gail was long gone,” she says.

“Jesus Christ, it would have been nice if you’d fucking told me that earlier!” Marino’s frustration erupts. “Gail Shipton’s here Friday night and now she’s been murdered and you just mention it as a by the way?”

“I’ve known for a while she’s in collusion with the enemy, probably involved in insurance fraud and who knows what else,” Lucy says. “I’ve been trying to find an answer that’s provable.”

“Sleeping with the guy she’s suing,” Marino exclaims in disgust.

“Not because she wanted to,” Lucy says. “She needed money.”

“You said there are three,” I prompt Marino because I have a job to do.

I don’t have time to question Lucy further and maybe I don’t want to hear another word about what Gail Shipton had gotten into and what Carin Hegel will do when she finally finds out. Her case is over anyway. Lucy’s right. There isn’t one. It turned into a lie, a ruse. Double S made Gail desperate for money and what could be greater leverage than to wound someone and then offer to make the person whole again. And she was weak, maybe flawed beyond repair in more ways than one. Not just her heart with its leaky valve but all of her.

“Got no idea about the third victim,” Marino tells me. “She was in the kitchen when he attacked her, maybe opening the refrigerator or getting something out of a cupboard. You’ll see when you get there.”

“The staff doesn’t know who it is?” It’s hard for me to believe.

“They said Lombardi picked up somebody at the commuter rail station in downtown Concord this morning. They don’t know who, just that Lombardi left in his white Navigator and came back and had someone with him who obviously ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all they know but they’re probably lying.”

“Why would they lie?” Lucy asks.

“Because they’re probably used to lying about everything that goes on here,” Marino says. “Unlike the other two, she didn’t go down like a shot. I’m thinking the first slice didn’t get her right because she turned her head, maybe heard him coming up behind her. And then he finished her.” He makes a slashing motion with an imagined knife. “She walked a couple steps and collapsed where her body is behind a counter.”

“Have you found a weapon?” Lucy walks the length of the veranda, looking up at cameras and out at trees.

“Nope.” The way he stares at her is different now.

“And the guy in the hoodie wasn’t spotted with a weapon when he was running through the park,” she says.

“Nope. Haley Swanson wasn’t noted to have a weapon. That’s who we’re talking about.”

“Just because he was wearing a sweatshirt with Marilyn Monroe on it? You know for a fact who it is?” Lucy says.

“It’s unusual and that’s what Swanson had on this morning when he was questioned by police after being spotted near your aunt’s house. Two plus two, right?”

“As long as it doesn’t equal twenty-two,” Lucy says.

“Maybe Swanson was doing PR for them.”

“And part of doing PR was to kill Gail and spy on my aunt?” Lucy says. “I assume you think Swanson’s responsible for all of it.”

Marino doesn’t say anything. I can tell by the way he’s looking at her he has a begrudging respect and he’s gone from wanting Lucy out of his way to trying to figure out how he can use her.

“Has anybody touched the body in the kitchen or the other two?” I ask.

“Video and photographs and that’s it. I made sure everybody knows to give them a wide berth. But we won’t be able to keep the Feds out of here for long.”

“You won’t be able to keep them out of here at all,” Lucy says.

“You’d better make hay while the sun shines,” Marino says to me.

“And no one has so much as a clue who the dead lady in the kitchen might be.” It’s hard for me to believe no one does.

“We’ve not let anybody in here to take a look. Only essential personnel – in other words, cops.” Marino leans his shoulder against the doorframe.

He absently stares at his gloved hand, a yellowish nicotine stain on it that he rubs with his thumb. He’s been smoking up a storm and I wonder how many butts he has in his pocket. At least he knows better than to drop them at a crime scene.

“We can’t exactly have an open house,” he says. “A ranch hand or the housekeeper comes in and leaves DNA everywhere or starts touching things or puking.”

“Their DNA would be in here anyway,” Lucy says.

“I also don’t intend to walk around showing the staff photographs of dead people with their necks sawed through,” Marino retorts.

“But you’ve checked with them to see who should have been inside the house,” Lucy says.

“Jesus. Now I’ve got two of you on my ass.”

“I know who works here,” Lucy states in a way that conveys she’s not being difficult or even personal with him. “Names, ages, addresses. I know a lot more than I wish I did about these assholes. Describe the unidentified victim.”

“About your size, about your age,” he says. “Early thirties, I’m guessing as best I can because she doesn’t look so hot with her head practically cut off. Short dark hair. White. Scrawny and bony. Looks like she worked out a lot and might have had an attitude and wasn’t into men.”

Lucy ignores him. “There’s no one here who fits that description or is that young. The three ranch hands and groundskeeper are forty-four, fifty-two, and one just turned sixty, originally from Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. The chef is French. He’s forty-nine. The housekeeper’s South American, forty-three, and claims to speak very little English. The partners in the business are two Americans and two Brits, men over forty, and then there was Lombardi and Caminska, who are rumored to have had more than a professional relationship. And, yes, they called her Ika, as in
Eeeka
, not
Icka
.” She mocks the way Marino pronounces it.

“Assailant entered the house the way you are, past the stone columns, on this porch, and he opened this door,” Marino says and he’s backing away from assuming it’s Haley Swanson we’re looking for.

“What about the lock?” Lucy indicates the brushed-nickel biometric lock as she pulls on gloves.

“It was blue skies until a couple hours ago and it’s possible when the weather was decent they’d leave the front door open with just this one shut.” He opens the inner storm door, a push-button lock all that separated the people of Double S from someone who cut their throats.

“Who says they kept the front door open?” Lucy doesn’t believe it and as I watch her I’m reminded of what it used to be like when she did this for a living.

When she was with the FBI and later with ATF she was so amazing they got rid of her. Maybe it’s in the Scarpetta DNA that we can’t work for anyone. We’re Lone Rangers and have to be in charge and walk right into trouble.

“I was told it could be an explanation,” Marino says. “A ranch hand I talked to said he’s seen it like that when it’s decent weather and a lot of people are in and out.”

“They’re lying,” Lucy says. “They know who it is.”

“It’s a good thing you got here. Now I can go home and forget about it.”

“The four partners are out of town so who was around to be in and out?” Lucy asks. “And it wasn’t toasty warm this morning even with the sun out.”

“There’s a back door and a basement door, both of them locked and dead-bolted. This is the way he came in, just like you are,” Marino says. “Maybe he had access because his fingerprint is scanned into the lock and he got in that way. In other words, it’s someone they knew.”

“That would be good if we have his fingerprint. You’re right,” Lucy says. “You can go home and forget about it.”

Marino tries not to smile. He works so hard to look severe he looks ridiculous.

“As security minded as they seem to be it’s hard for me to believe they’d leave the front doors open and unlocked,” I agree with Lucy.

“No way,” she says. “Have you checked what was picked up by the cameras?”

“Hell no. I’m stupid,” Marino says.

The open room has four offices in a row that are horseshoe-shaped consoles with built-in desks and drawers.

Each work area has a multilined phone and several video displays as if one is supposed to imagine financial experts constantly monitoring stock markets and investment accounts. I don’t notice a scrap of paper, not a single pencil or pen or hint that whoever works here has hobbies or family. The appearance is of a business that’s transparent, with partners engaged in open communication and camaraderie, yet there’s an empty, fake feeling as if I’m walking into a design showroom or a movie set. I don’t sense that anybody lived here even before people were dead.

On the far right side is a floating staircase with cables and plate-steel treads, the wall next to it old brick hung with modern art prints and across from it is a wall of light ash cabinetry. It’s a masculine space lacking warmth or creativity and at least four thousand square feet, I estimate. It adjoins a room that I can’t see into but I hear voices through the open door, a steel door with no window that’s been propped open with a magnetic stop. The two Concord detectives are inside what must be another office, the CEO’s private suite on the left wing of the building where Lombardi and his assistant are dead.

In the front office, at the back of it, is an open kitchen with exotic deep red wooden cabinetry, what looks like the Bois de Rose used to make musical instruments. From where I stand I can see the blood-streaked dark trousers, the white pockets turned inside out, and the bloody sneakers of the victim who remains unidentified. Her coagulating blood is spread over the wide-plank flooring behind a dramatic sculpture in zebrawood folded around a corner of a whitewashed wall to the left of the granite counter that blocks most of my view. I ask Marino about the pockets.

“Did the police go into them looking for identification?” I want to know.

“They were already inside out. Remember, he took their wallets, IDs, cash.”

“Cleaned out the cash and whatever else he wanted and probably threw the wallets into the pond on his way out of here.” Lucy starts walking around. “A perfect place to dump stuff, across from the barn, you’d go right past it if you’re heading into the woods on foot, getting the hell out of here.”

I scan work areas with their ergonomic chairs, all exactly arranged with no sign of violence, and again I’m struck by the vacant feeling. During office hours on a Wednesday morning and only three people were inside except for their killer.

“The DVR’s gone,” Marino then tells Lucy – reluctantly, it seems, as if he hates to admit she’s right about something.

“Check off a second point for unpremeditated,” she replies.

“You’d have to know where to look and what for.” Marino hunches a shoulder, wiping his sweaty face on his shirt. He tends to overheat anyway and now his blood pressure is up because he’s a cop again who smokes again.

“How hard would that be?” Lucy asks.

We’re having this discussion in the entryway near the officer at his laser-mapping station, where black hard cases are open on the floor. A yellow power cord connected to a charging station is plugged into a wall, and the officer and his scanner are in sleep mode, waiting. He doesn’t look at us. He doesn’t want to appear he’s listening to people who aren’t talking to him.

“There’s a closet in the other room with all the components for surround sound, the server and wireless networks, their phone system and security stuff.” Marino walks over to my scene case near the stairs and picks it up.

“The server.” Lucy’s like a snake spying a lizard and she strikes. “Double S’s server. Now we’re talking.”

She walks over to the desks against a wall, four of them in a row. Nudging a chair with her knees, she rolls it out of the way and picks up the phone.

“But you’d have to know what a DVR is.” Marino hands my field case to me. “Most people wouldn’t think of it unless they’re familiar with security cameras.”

“It’s not rocket science and it may be someone who’s been here before. We need to get the server to my lab.” Lucy looks at the display on the desk phone and pushes a key. “Concord PD can receipt it here and I can take it in.”

She walks to each desk and does the same thing, checking the phones. Then she returns to the first one and picks it up again.

“You might want to write this down,” she says to Marino. “None of these phones have made any outgoing calls since last Friday as if nobody’s been working in the front office. With the exception of this one.” She indicates the phone she’s holding and she gives him a number. “Lambant and Associates,” she reads the display.

“What?” Marino walks over and looks. “Well, big surprise. So I’m right. Haley Swanson was here and he called his office.”

“Someone did,” Lucy says. “Someone made an outgoing call from here to that number at nine fifty-six this morning and was on the phone for twenty-seven minutes. If the guy running through the park was spotted around eleven then whoever was on the phone here probably hung up right about the time everybody got killed.”

“We know who that guy is, the one in the hoodie with Marilyn Monroe on it and now we know he was in here using the phone.” Marino has it all figured out again. “Haley Swanson.” He’s latched on to that conviction all over again. “Lambant’s the crisis management firm where Gail Shipton’s gender-bender friend works,” Marino says and Lucy just looks at him.

“One might conclude they’ve been handling Double S’s PR,” I suggest. “Possibly Swanson is who Lombardi picked up at the train station this morning.”

“Exactly,” Marino says.

“I guess we know how Gail met him, at any rate, both of them in thick with Double S,” Lucy says with nothing in her tone. “Did you confirm who she was with at the Psi last night?”

“She was there talking to someone who wasn’t a regular. It could have been Swanson and that would make sense since he’s the one who reported her missing. It was really crowded and Gail was jammed at the bar with a lot of other people. That’s what witnesses have said and it’s as good as we’re going to get.”

“Why would someone take the commuter train here instead of driving?” I point out. “Why would a PR person do that?”

“Haley Swanson,” Lucy says dubiously. “And I guess we’re to conclude that about an hour, an hour and a half later, he killed everyone and fled.”

“It’s not for you to conclude anything,” Marino says rudely.

“Earlier today we were told he was driving an Audi SUV,” I remind him.

“We’re looking for it. It’s not at his apartment in Somerville and not at his business in Boston,” Marino says. “The people who work at his PR firm haven’t seen him or his SUV today but he called them.”