“That’s why I’m careful about wearing jewelry when I’m around anything that can shock me. It used to piss off Doris because first I wouldn’t wear the big clunky silver ID bracelet she gave me. Then I wouldn’t wear my wedding ring, and she’d say it was so I could screw around on her.” Marino confides this as if it’s a new story, and at this stage of things very few of them are.
He hasn’t stopped talking about his ex-wife in all the years they’ve been apart, which is at least twenty. Doris was his high school sweetheart, an uncomplicated woman, long-suffering until she wasn’t anymore and ran off with another man. I know Marino hasn’t gotten over her. I just hope he doesn’t finally do it now because of my sister, and I try to block out what Benton said at the Faculty Club.
I secure the bags at the wrists and ankles with masking tape, making sure no evidence is added or lost during the trip to my headquarters.
“Now what?” Marino says at the sound of male voices outside the entrance of the tent.
I turn around as Velcro rips, and it’s Investigator Barclay again, poking his head inside.
“You need anything?” he calls out.
“Yeah as a matter of fact, Clay?” Marino yells back. “I need you to stop coming in here and asking us that!” He rolls his eyes, and slowly shakes his head.
He waits until Barclay is gone to ask about the “freaky pattern” we sometimes see in lightning strikes, usually on a victim’s chest or back. It reminds him of flying over the Low Country in Lucy’s helicopter, he says. All those tidal creeks branching out everywhere through the salt marshes and mud flats, and what Marino refers to is arborization.
Also called Lichtenberg figures, it’s the peculiar reddish pattern a lightning strike often leaves on the surface of the skin. If you don’t know what you’re looking at it’s a freakish sight, and what causes it isn’t completely understood. A good possibility is capillaries rupturing along the path the electric discharge takes through the body. And Elisa Vandersteel doesn’t have a hint of this.
What bothers me more is if she were struck in her back and a thousand volts passed through the gold pendant, stopping her heart, then where’s the exit? Lightning is predictable and it’s not. It’s as if it has a mind of its own, as if it’s alive. It wants to race to the ground like some wild beast burrowing, and it’s not uncommon to find an exit burn on the bottom of a victim’s foot.
She doesn’t have that either, nothing but dirt on her socks. There’s not an exit anywhere I can find, and I tell Marino I’d like to see the pendant Anya and Enya picked up. He walks back to his big scene case.
PAPER RATTLES AS I open what looks like a plain brown grocery bag, and I work it over the hair, the entire head, all the way to the base of the neck, using more masking tape. I tear it with my gloved hands instead of using a blade.
I like something I can remove easily once the body is on the table in the autopsy room. A hair, a fleck of paint, a fiber, DNA—it could be anything. I’ll move heaven and earth not to lose or contaminate it. But if one doesn’t understand my reasoning, what I’ve just done looks like an appalling way to treat a dead body. It’s what Marino calls a whack and sack. That’s your reward for getting hit by a train, killed in a plane crash, for being murdered. Dr. Death comes along and bags your pieces and parts like trash collected along the highway, according to him.
At least I repositioned her arms from straight up over her head to down by her sides so we can fit her into a final bag, the biggest one, a body pouch, and I’m reminded that death and dignity don’t belong in the same sentence. Opening drawers in my scene case, I find a sterile needle, and then Marino is back. I recognize the thickly contoured gold skull with its deep-set blackened eyes and gap-toothed grin.
I feel the weight of it inside its labeled bag, noting that the pendant doesn’t look damaged, just dusty. I touch the needle to it through clear plastic and feel the faint magnetic tug.
“It must be gold-plated steel or there’s some other alloy present. Gold is an excellent conductor of electricity but it wouldn’t get magnetized unless it’s not pure.” I return the bag to Marino, and my fatigue is on its way to crushing.
I don’t feel very good. I should take a break but there’s not time.
“If it was lightning,” Marino counters, “how come I didn’t hear any thunder around here late this afternoon or early evening? You can’t have lightning without thunder.”
What he says is true because lightning causes thunder. One can’t exist without the other. I propose that we might not detect so much as a rumble if the storm is twenty or thirty miles from here. We might not have a clue there’s anything to worry about as we step outdoors for a walk, a swim, a game of golf. But a flash of lightning can travel a great distance from the storm generating it.
“That’s where we get the expression a bolt out of the blue.” My tongue is making sticky sounds as I talk. “And when you look at a chaotic scene like this you can understand people coming up with such ridiculous things as an act of God or spontaneous human combustion. When what they probably were dealing with was a damn lightning strike.” I’m beginning to get irritable, to have sharp corners. “It would have been especially confusing if the nearest storm was many miles away, having already moved through.”
“Except no storm has moved through,” Marino says as Tailend Charlie violates my thoughts again, and I remember looking into the etymology after receiving the first mocking audio clip from him.
I say him but I don’t know if the person is male. For the sake of convenience I refer to him as such, and Benton believes it to be true. My profiler husband says my cyber-stalker-poet is a man, an older intelligent and highly educated one, and the question from the start is why he gave himself a handle that’s archaic British slang.
A tail-end Charlie, as it’s more typically spelled with a hyphen, can mean the last batsman in cricket. But it also can also refer to a gunner in the rear of a fighter plane or the last thunderstorm in a squall line. As I pass this along to Chicken Little Marino, I realize all I’m probably doing is reinforcing his fear that the sky really might fall on our heads.
“In other words, just when you think something’s over, the freakin’ worst is yet to come,” he complains as a whiff of rubbing alcohol fills my nostrils.
I watch him open packets of antimicrobial wipes, cleaning the six-inch plastic rulers we use as a scale when photographing evidence.
“One more curious coincidence in a day full of them.” I’m aware that my stomach is somewhat unsettled.
“Yeah but is it really a coincidence?” Marino places each disinfected ruler into a sterile bag, returning all of them to a labeled drawer in his photography case. “You’re saying it is, right? Because you only started getting those recordings a week ago. And now here we are.” His eyes dart around as sweat trickles down his shiny red face framed in Tyvek.
I’m not saying anything one way or another, and I don’t answer him as my patience rubs thinner. Everything is catching up with me. It’s as if I feel the earth shift beneath my feet, a sinkhole about to open up.
“And if you think about it, Doc, a bolt out of the blue is a tail-end Charlie because it’s the last part of a storm that’s moved on, right? Kind of like a last flash for good measure.”
I watch him drop wadded sanitizing wipes into the trash.
“What I’m saying is a rogue thunderbolt, in other words literally a tail-end Charlie, might be what killed this lady. Sure it could just be coincidental in a day full of shit like this—to quote you. It may have nothing to do with your rhyming troll.” His bloodshot eyes look at me. “But what if it does?”
I don’t reply because that’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want to give my fear a name or form. I don’t want to think or say it.
“What if it’s all connected somehow?” Marino continues poking a stick at it. “What if it’s all coming from the same source somehow? I mean we sure as hell have to consider it on top of everything else that’s been going o
n.”
It’s overwhelming to contemplate a link between Tailend Charlie and Elisa Vandersteel since both are linked to me. It might imply that Carrie Grethen is behind all of it. Behind everything, and I’m too worn down to read tea leaves, to speculate anymore. Instead I suggest to Marino that we rely on science. Since nothing else seems very trustworthy, I advise that he check with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“NOAA should be able to tell us everything that’s gone on weatherwise.” I unlock my phone and my vision is bleary. “We’ll find out if there was any thunderstorm activity within fifty miles of here.” I feel whoozy and peckish as I text Rusty and Harold that we’re ready to transport the body.
It’s getting close to midnight and time to clear out. I’ve done as much as I can at the moment. The tent was a Rubik’s Cube to set up, and we stopped taking breaks as the work dragged on stressfully, miserably. We’re behind and overheated. I feel dehydrated, my mood deteriorating precipitously, and I have a headache that’s getting worse.
When I hear familiar voices and Velcro ripping again, I’m dizzy and jumpy as I turn around. I almost lose my balance.
“… They’re just finishing up …” Investigator Barclay pushes through the tent’s opening.
I can’t see Benton but I hear him mention something about blocking in several police cars. He’ll be out of their way in a few minutes, he says in a commanding serious voice, and I feel a nudge of dread.
CHAPTER 32
LIKE I SAID? BE ready because it stinks like holy hell in there …” Barclay announces in a stage whisper.
He’s annoyingly present and officious as he holds open the tent flap for my important FBI husband, practically saluting him, showing him into our glaringly bright, baking-hot, airless, foul-smelling theater, where I’m about to pass out.
“Whatever you need, you know where I’ll be.”
“I’ve got it from here.” Benton has had his fill.
“I almost went with the FBI, you know. I got no problem working with you guys,” as if everybody else does. “Well you got my number if there are any other questions?”
“That’s it for now.” Benton’s politeness hardens like epoxy as he tells the overbearing obtuse investigator he can leave—that nobody minds.
As I listen I’m finding it difficult to kneel in the grass, to concentrate. I’m packing up my scene case, feeling a little drunk, and I wonder what questions Benton was asking Barclay. What were they discussing as the presumptuous investigator escorted him here? I slam down the lid of what’s nothing more than a big black toolbox.
“Bet you don’t know many agents who started out as police investigators? Because I would think that would be a big draw …”
“You need to go,” Benton snaps at Barclay.
And heavy plastic clasps snap. And my heart lurches. I feel strangely shaky and emotional.
Keep breathing. Keep moving.
SINCE I SAW BENTON last he’s taken off his suit jacket and his tie. The sleeves of his white shirt are folded up to his elbows, and the pistol holstered on his hip is exposed.
He didn’t drop by to say there’s a lovely bottle of French Chablis waiting at home. He’s here on official Bureau business, and I think of Lucy as my pulse hammers. I ask if she’s okay and feel a stab of nausea.
“She’s fine.” Benton watches me from just inside the tent, near the equipment cases.
I’m getting increasingly agitated. Hostility smolders and sparks like an aggravated dragon while I act like everything is normal.
“We need to talk, Kay.”
But I’m wondering how the hell he knows Lucy is fine unless he’s been in communication with her recently. And if so, why? Don’t gild the lily. Don’t sugarcoat. Just tell me what I don’t want to hear, tell the damn truth for once.
“Is she still working in the truck?” I hear myself ask even as I know the answer.
“No.” Benton stares at me, and Lucy wouldn’t still be here.
That was hours ago when we talked inside the air-conditioning, and the stench is putrid and pervasive now. I’m insulated in it like a foul rotting gauze that I taste in the back of my throat as the dragon salivates, swallowing hard.
For God’s sake, don’t throw up.
I’d never live it down, and I watch Investigator Barclay vanish through the tent flap, what’s become the wormhole to a parallel universe. He won’t go far. No doubt he’ll hover within earshot as he’s done most of the time Marino and I have been working in isolation, conversing in private, speculating secretly, gossiping just between the two of us, not realizing some asshole wannabe was out there listening.
No telling what Barclay relayed to my husband, in other words to the FBI. After what Marino and I have been through with this scene, and the biggest damn threat is one of our own. The thought penetrates furiously as my heart pounds harder, and my eyes are watering. I take deep slow breaths, blinking several times, well aware that a common symptom of heat exhaustion is irritability. But knowing that doesn’t do any good once you’re caught in a vortex of uncontrolled fury.
“Hey Benton? Did Dorothy get in okay?” Of course Marino would ask sweetly, warmly about a woman who devours men like tartare.
Innamorato pazzo! as my father used to say.
Marino is crazy in love. Now that I’m looking for it, I can see it plain as day, and I pay attention while Benton tells him in a leaden voice that Dorothy is fine.
Other than one of her absurdly ostentatious oversize designer bags being lost, that is. I don’t say it out loud.
She’s landed safely with almost all her luggage, Benton informs us about my vain self-important inconvenient sister who’s always treated her own flesh and blood like shit.
“But she’s finally in the car at least?” Marino has to make sure about his intended paramour. “Because I’ve not gotten a text from her in the last couple hours. She stopped answering.”
Sotto l’incantesimo! my father would declare. Marino is under the spell. He and Dorothy have been in contact even as I’ve been by his damn side working this motherfucking scene, and he never let on. Then I’m horrified that I just said something so hideous as that out loud. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I thought it but didn’t say it.
Marino’s not behaving as if I did. I look closely and suddenly there are two of him all in white like Pillsbury Doughboys. Neither seems offended. But I can’t tell and I close my eyes. Then I open them and Marino is by himself again and acting normal for him. I hope I didn’t say motherfucking. Not that I’m a prude. But I rarely talk like that. I’m not thinking straight. I’m about to erupt like a volcano. My electrolytes are in the toilet, and it’s bewildering.
“As long as she’s okay,” Marino is saying to Benton. “But the airport’s a nightmare because of the elevated terror alert and who knows why else.” He tries to be nonchalant about it and fails.
“She’s with Janet and Desi.” Benton’s eyes don’t leave me.
“Then she’s in the car on the way to their house?” Marino probes but Benton isn’t paying attention.
“We need to talk, Kay. I need you to come with me,” and I detect sadness beneath my husband’s iron will.
I push back my hood, my hair plastered to my scalp. I pick up my scene case, and it seems incredibly heavy as I make my way to him.
“What’s the matter, Benton?” Marino yells. “You getting bored hanging out with pencil necks? Couldn’t stand missing out on all the excitement? Wanted to drop by and see what real investigators do?”
He’s behind me, loud enough to break the sound barrier and not picking up on cues. Marino’s too busy making cracks about the FIBs, as he calls the FBI when he’s not calling them something worse. Then he falls silent mid-snark because Benton’s grim expression is as rigid as a mask. He’s oblivious to everything except me.
“Shit.” Marino realizes something is seriously off. “Hey? What’s going on?”
“You don’t look good, Kay.” Benton couldn??
?t be more gentle or somber. “I need you to sit down.”
He starts to touch me but I move away. I have blood on the cuffs of my sleeves. I need to decontaminate. I have to get out of this synthetic clothing before I suffocate. I feel claustrophobic wrapped up from stem to stern like a house under construction, and I’m breathing faster and shallower.
I will myself not to show that I’m on the brink of collapse. I’m keenly aware of the danger signs. One of them is not sweating enough. I’m not anymore.
“How about sitting down and drinking something?” Benton says because he’s thoughtful.
He always has been, from the first time we found ourselves in the same room together, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Benton was considerate and kind when he didn’t have to be, when most people weren’t. He didn’t follow the lead of his male compatriots and think of me as tits and ass in a lab coat. He never called me ma’am or Mrs. He’d say my name the way he still does. As if he meant it.
“Do we have Gatorade? Anything like that out here …?” He’s asking because he would do anything for me.
“Not that I’m seeing so far but I’ll keep digging.” Marino is crouching by his Harley-Davidson cooler bag, and I blearily watch his thick fingers find the small metal tongue.
I hear the sound of a zipper as I sit down on top of my scene case. I begin taking off my coveralls, and everything’s a struggle.
“We need to talk about Briggs,” Benton says.
“Is this about him canceling?” It sounds pathetically lame when I ask, like wishful thinking on my part.
I know that’s not why my husband, why Special Agent Benton Wesley has come for me. He didn’t show up to pass along information about my event with Briggs but to haul me away because the U.S. government wants what only I can give. Or give up, and that’s the more likely story. Whatever the FBI demands won’t be in my best interest. It never is one hundred percent of the time.
“I’m sorry,” Benton says as I reach down to pull off my dirty grass-stained shoe covers. “I didn’t want you hearing this from somebody else.”