Point of Origin (34 page)

She turned around and clung to me the way she used to when she was a frightened child starved for someone who cared. Her tears wet my neck, and for a while we stood in the middle of a room still packed with computer equipment and school books, and plastered with posters of her adolescent heroes.

'It's my fault, Aunt Kay. It's all my fault. I killed him!' she cried out.

'No,' I said, holding her tight as my own tears flowed.

'How can you ever forgive me? I took him away from you!'

'That's not the way it is. You did nothing, Lucy.'

'I can't live with this.'

'You can and you will. We need to help each other live with this.'

'I loved him, too. Everything he did for me. Getting me started with the Bureau, giving me a chance. Being supportive. About everything.'

'It's going to be all right,' I said.

She pulled away from me and collapsed on the edge of the bed, wiping her face with the tail of her sooty blue shirt. She rested her elbows on her knees and hung her head, staring at her own tears falling like rain on the hardwood floor.

'I'm telling you, and you've got to listen,' she said in a low, hard voice. 'I'm not sure I can go on, Aunt Kay. Everybody has a point. Where it begins and ends.' Her breath shook. 'Where they can't go on. I wish she had killed me instead. Maybe she would have done me a favor.'

I watched her with gathering resolve as she willed herself to die before my eyes.

'If I don't go on, Aunt Kay, you've got to understand and not blame yourself or anything,' she muttered, wiping her face with her sleeve.

I went over to her and lifted her chin. She was hot and smoky, her breath and body odor bad.

'You listen to me,' I said with an intensity that would have frightened her in the past. 'You get this goddamn notion out of your head right now. You are glad you didn't die, and you aren't committing suicide, if that's what you're implying, and I believe it is. You know what suicide is all about, Lucy? It's about anger, about payback. It's the final fuck-you. You will do that to Benton? You will do that to Marino? You will do that to me?'

I held her face in my hands until she looked at me.

'You're going to let that no-good piece of trash Carrie do that to you?' I demanded. 'Where's that fierce spirit I know?'

'I don't know,' she whispered with a sigh.

'Yes you do,' I said. 'Don't you dare ruin my life, Lucy. It's been damaged enough. Don't you dare make me spend the rest of my days with the echo of a gunshot sounding on and on in my mind. I didn't think you were a coward.'

'I'm not.'

Her eyes focused on mine.

'Tomorrow we fight back,' I said.

She nodded, swallowing hard.

'Go take a shower,' I said.

I waited until I heard the water in her bathroom running, and then went into the kitchen. We needed to eat, although I doubted either of us felt like it. I thawed chicken breasts and cooked them in stock with whatever fresh vegetables I could find. I was liberal with rosemary, bay leaves, and sherry, but nothing stronger, not even pepper, for we needed to be soothed. Marino called twice while we were eating, to make certain we were all right.

'You can come over,' I said to him. 'I've made soup, although it might be kind of thin by your standards.'

'I'm okay,' he said, and I knew he did not mean it.

'I've got plenty of room, if you'd like to stay the night. I should have thought to ask you earlier.'

'No, Doc. I got things to do.'

'I'm going to the office first thing in the morning,' I said.

'I don't know how you can,' he replied in a judgmental way, as if my thinking about work meant I wasn't showing what I should be showing right now.

'I have a plan. And come hell or high water, I'm going to carry it out,' I said.

'I hate it when you start planning things.'

I hung up and collected empty soup bowls from the kitchen table, and the more I thought about what I was going to do, the more manic I got.

'How hard would it be for you to get a helicopter?' I said to my niece.

'What?' She looked amazed.

'You heard me.'

'Do you mind if I ask what for? You know, I can't just order one like a cab.'

'Call Teun,' I said. 'Tell her I'm taking care of business and need all of the cooperation I can get. Tell her if all goes as I'm hoping, I'm going to need her and a team to meet us in Wilmington, North Carolina. I don't know when yet. Maybe right away. But I need free rein. They're going to have to trust me.'

Lucy got up and went to the sink to fill her glass with more water.

'This is nuts,' she said.

'Can you get a helicopter or not?'

'If I get permission, then yes. Border Patrol has them. That's usually what we use. I can probably get one in from D. C.'

'Good,' I said. 'Get it as fast as you can. In the morning I'm hitting the labs to confirm what I think I already know. Then we may be going to New York.'

'Why?'

She looked interested but skeptical.

'We're going to land at Kirby and I intend to get to the bottom of things,' I answered her.

Marino called again at close to ten, and I reassured him one more time that Lucy and I were as fine as could be expected, and that we felt safe inside my house, with its sophisticated alarm system, lighting, and guns. He sounded bleary and thick, and I could tell he had been drinking, his TV turned up loud.

'I need you to meet me at the lab at eight,' I said.

'I know, I know.'

'It's very important, Marino.'

'It's not like you need to tell me that, Doc.'

'Get some sleep,' I said.

'Ditto.'

But I couldn't. I sat at my desk in my study, going through the suspicious fire deaths from ESA. I studied the Venice Beach death, and then the one from Baltimore, struggling to see what, if anything, the cases and victims had in common besides the point of origin and the fact that although arson was suspected, investigators could find no evidence of it. I called the Baltimore police department first, and found someone in the detective division who seemed amenable to talking.

'Johnny Montgomery worked that one,' the detective said, and I could hear him smoking.

'Do you know anything about it?' I asked.

'Best you talk to him. And he probably will need some way of knowing you're who you say you are.'

'He can call me at my office in the morning for verification.' I gave him the number. 'I should be no later than eight. What about e-mail? Does Investigator Montgomery have an address I could send a note to?'

'Now that I can give you.'

I heard him open a drawer, and then he gave me what I needed.

'Seems I've heard of you before,' the detective said thoughtfully. 'If you're the ME I'm thinking of. I know it's a lady. A good-looking one, too, based on what I've seen on TV. Hmmm. You ever get up to Baltimore?'

'I went to medical school in your fair city.'

'Well, now I know you're smart.'

'Austin Hart, the young man who died in the fire, was also a student at Johns Hopkins.' I prodded him.

'He was also a homo. I personally think it was a hate crime.'

'What I need is a photograph of him and anything about his life, his habits, his hobbies.' I took advantage of the detective's momentary lapse.

'Oh yeah.' He smoked. 'One of these pretty boys. I heard he did modeling to pay his way through med school. Calvin Klein underwear ads, that sort of thing. Probably some jealous lover. You come to Baltimore next, Doc, and you got to try Camden Yards. You know about the new stadium, right?'

'Absolutely,' I replied as I excitedly processed what he had just said.

'I can get you tickets if you want.'

'That would be very nice. I'll get in touch with Investigator Montgomery, and I thank you so much for your help.'

I got off the phone before he could ask me about my favorite baseball team, and I immediately sent Montgomery an e-mail that outlined my needs, although I felt I already had enough. Next I tried the Pacific Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, which covered Venice Beach, and I got lucky. The investigator who had worked Marlene Farber's case was on evening shift and had just come in. His name was Stuckey, and he did not seem to require much verification from me that I was who I claimed to be.

'Wish somebody would solve this one for me,' he said right off. 'Six months and still nothing. Not one tip that's turned out to be worth anything.'

'What can you tell me about Marlene Farber?' I asked.

'Was on General Hospital now and then. And Northern Exposure. I guess you've seen that?'

'I don't watch much TV. PBS, that's about it.'

'What else, what else? Oh right. Ellen. No big parts, but who knows how far she might have gone. Prettiest thing you ever saw. Was dating some producer, and we're pretty sure he had nothing to do with what happened. Only thing that guy really cared about was coke and screwing all the young stars he got parts for. You know, after I got the case, I went through a bunch of tapes of shows she was on. She wasn't bad. It's a shame.'

'Anything unusual about the scene?' I asked.

'Everything was unusual about that scene. Don't have a clue how a fire like that could have started in the master bathroom on the first floor, and ATF couldn't figure it out, either. There wasn't anything to burn in there except toilet paper and towels. No sign of forcible entry, either, and the burglar alarm never went off.'

'Investigator Stuckey, were her remains by chance found in the bathtub?'

'That's another freaky thing, unless she was a suicide. Maybe set the fire and cut her wrists or something. A lot of people cut their wrists in the tub.'

'Any trace evidence to speak of?'

'Ma'am, she was chalk. Looked like she'd been in the crematorium. There was enough left of the torso area for them to ID her through X-rays, but beyond that, we're talking a few teeth, pieces and parts of bones, and some hair.'

'Did she by chance do any modeling?' I then asked.

'That, TV commercials, magazine ads. She made a pretty good living. Drove a black Viper and lived in a damn nice house right on the ocean.'

'I'm wondering if you could e-mail photos and any reports to me.'

'Give me your address, and I'll see what I can do.'

'I need them fast, Investigator Stuckey,' I said.

I hung up and my mind was whirling. Each victim was physically beautiful and involved in photography or television. It was a common denominator that could not be ignored, and I believed that Marlene Farber, Austin Hart, Claire Rawley, and Kellie Shephard had been selected for a reason that was important to the killer. This was where everything unraveled. The pattern fit that of a serial killer, like Bundy, who selected women with long straight hair who resembled his estranged girlfriend. What didn't fit was Carrie Grethen. In the first place, she had been locked up in Kirby when the first three deaths had occurred, and her MO had never been anything like this.

I was baffled. Carrie was not there and yet she was. I dozed for a while in my chair, and at six A. M., I came to with a start. My neck burned from being bent in the wrong position, and my back was achy and stiff. I got up slowly and stretched, and knew what I had to do but wasn't certain I could. Just the thought filled me with terror, and my heart kicked in with violent force. I could feel my pulse pounding like a fist against a door, and I stared at the brown paper bags Marino had placed in front of a bookcase packed with law reviews. They were taped shut and labeled, and I picked them up. I followed the hallway to Benton's room.

Although we typically had shared my bed, the opposite wing of the house had been his. Here he had worked and stored his day-to-day belongings, for as both of us had gotten older, we had learned that space was our most reliable friend. Our retreats made our battles less bloody, and absences during the day made nights more inviting. His door was open wide, as he had left it. The lights were out, the curtains drawn. Shadows got sharper as I stood, frozen for an instant, staring in. It required all of the courage I had ever demonstrated in my life to turn on the overhead light.

His bed with its bold blue duvet and sheets was neatly made, because Benton was always meticulous, no matter his hurry. He had never waited for me to change his linens or attend to his laundry, and part of this was due to an independence and strong sense of self that never really relented, not even with me. He had to do it his way. In that regard, we were so much alike, I marveled we had ever gotten together. I collected his hairbrush from the dresser, because I knew it might be useful for a DNA comparison, should there be no other avenue for identification. I went to the small cherry bedside table to look at the books and thick file folders stacked there.

He had been reading Cold Mountain, and had used the torn flap of an envelope to mark his place not quite halfway through. Of course, there were the pages of the latest revision of a crime classification manual he was editing, and the sight of his scratchy penmanship crashed me to earth. I tenderly turned manuscript pages and trailed my fingers over the barely legible words he had penned as tears ambushed me again. Then I set the bags on the bed and ripped them open.