“I haven’t had much sleep, so I hope I’m not rambling,” I add. “But you know very well how dangerous she is, and I don’t have an idea what the ultimate goal is but I know she has one.”
“Why do you know that, Kay?”
“Because she always does, and I feel this is something really bad, that she’s looking to make a statement.”
“Certainly you know her better than I do,” he says, and I don’t like the way it feels when anybody points out that I know her at all.
“Based on information I’ve gotten from Lucy, it seems Carrie has been laying the groundwork for some sort of coup,” I explain. “She’s been planning something for years, and I’m concerned about more people being hurt or killed. I’m concerned about a lot of things.”
“Well I’m glad you reached out to me, and I’m always grateful for your input, especially about a matter you’ve had so much personal experience with. What did you want my help with specifically?” The secretary-general has a Connecticut accent, and he doesn’t sound surprised or impressed by anything I’ve said.
“Last time I visited you in Lyon we had a conversation over a very nice Bordeaux, and you made the comment that anything can be weaponized, and of course that includes fear.”
“Which is the point of terror.”
“If you can create a weapon that causes enough fear,” I explain, “the fear itself can cause damage that’s as paralyzing and destructive as any physical device like a bomb or a laser gun. Fear can make decent people behave irrationally and violently. And imagine suddenly worrying that something airborne might kill you as you ride your bike or swim in your pool.”
“Yes, I agree,” he says. “That would be extremely bad, especially if there really is a weapon involved. I understand your office is doing the autopsy this morning in the Vandersteel case.”
“We’re done,” I reply. “By the time we got to it we already had a pretty good idea that she’s an electrocution and most likely is a homicide. But what’s new and somewhat of a surprise is there may have been an earlier victim.”
“Where and how recently?”
“In Cambridge at the beginning of the week. In fact I’m fairly certain of it now, and that leads to my next question. Could there be others, including in places outside the United States? Cases of presumed lightning strikes or weird electrocutions, particularly if the person is around water and out in the open. It’s also possible there are victims who survived. I’m not sure Elisa Vandersteel would have died had the electrical current not hit a metal necklace she was wearing.”
“We’re thinking the same way,” Perry says. “You and I both know that things start small but the problem is, by the time we recognize these things, they’re no longer small.”
“If we’re not careful.”
“That’s right. And we must be very careful because local terror in Massachusetts or the U.S. can be a proving ground for something international,” he adds, and I tell him about Molly Hinders.
I DESCRIBE HER INJURIES, explaining that she was killed in Cambridge near the Charles River and so was Elisa Vandersteel.
Both of them were attacked as it was getting dark, meaning the visibility would have been poor, and moisture was a factor in each case. Molly was standing in wet grass as she sprayed a hose, and Elisa would have been sweaty. Moisture and electricity like each other.
“But it’s curious. Why would Carrie Grethen be interested in either of the women?” Perry wonders over the phone.
“If you want my opinion? Carrie wouldn’t be,” and it’s amazing how much I resist saying her name.
But I’m thinking of what Lucy said. If I make no effort to understand Carrie Grethen, I’ll never have a hope of stopping her. And I do know her. I know her far better than I let on to anyone, including myself.
“Carrie would be interested in Briggs,” I explain. “I can understand her targeting him, and mostly the choice is personal for her. Benton and I had worked with him for decades. You know how close I was to him. She’s paying us back. Mostly she’s paying me back.”
“For what?”
I start to give him my stock flip answer of who knows? But I do know what Carrie will never forgive, and it’s not really about Lucy or any of us. It’s about Temple Gault. I killed him in a confrontation, stabbed a knife in his thigh and severed his femoral artery. I knew exactly what I was doing, and he gave me no choice. Carrie’s never gotten over it, and according to Benton she’s never gotten over him.
“But there’s nothing personal about the victim selection with the other two,” Perry says.
“There probably is but probably not for Carrie Grethen,” I reply. “The more we’re seeing, the less likely it is that she’s working alone. So maybe her accomplice, her new Temple Gault, is killing the women while Carrie is on to bigger game like John Briggs or who knows who might be next.”
“You know the problem with accomplices, don’t you? They don’t always do what they’re told.”
“Suggesting Carrie might not have anything to do with the Vandersteel and Hinders cases.”
“If someone goes rogue.”
“That would make her very angry.”
“And her partners always go rogue. But let me ask you this first,” Perry says over the phone. “From an evidence standpoint what justifies your deciding these cases are homicides? Has something turned up that I wouldn’t know about?”
He wouldn’t know about certain developments because the FBI doesn’t yet, and I’m in no hurry to share the information. If the secretary-general of Interpol tells them, that’s his business.
“Something has turned up, and you’re about to be the only person I’ve told,” I reply as I watch the sun peek above the horizon, painting streaks of orange across Prussian blue. “I’ve not told the FBI or anyone what I’m about to say to you. We need to be extremely strategic about how the information is shared because it appears we’re dealing with a weapon that at least in part has been fashioned from a meteorite—”
“All right, hold on,” he interrupts me. “Say that again.”
I tell him about panguite as I keep thinking about what Ernie said.
You’d have to go around testing space rocks in every museum in the world …
Before he mentioned that, I wasn’t thinking about museums. But now I am.
“Of course someone could have bought pieces of meteorites on the Internet but they wouldn’t necessarily contain panguite. So we need to consider how someone acquired it and then had the ability to engineer it into something dangerous,” I’m explaining to Tom Perry. “For example, was it stolen from a collection somewhere? Just as priceless art can be heisted from museums, so can rare rocks.”
“Obviously you’ve not talked to Benton yet,” Perry says, and I imagine the secretary-general’s smiling eyes and easygoing manner.
No matter how busy he is, he never acts like he’s in a hurry. Some of the nicest, longest business lunches I’ve ever had have been with him in Lyon, and he knows French wines dangerously well for an American.
“Obviously you’ve talked to Benton if you’re asking me that. I’ve not talked to him since he left here with Lucy, headed to Maryland,” I reply as light flares mirror bright on the surrounding Harvard and MIT apartment and academic buildings.
CHAPTER 43
SHADOWS MOVE OVER BRICK and granite. In the distance the skyline of downtown Boston is more sharply outlined and begins to glitter as the sun rises higher in the cloudless sky.
“Do you know who William Portison is?” Tom Perry says, and I’m betting Benton has talked to the man Elisa Vandersteel once worked for.
“Lucy says he’s a tech CEO in London, clearly very wealthy,” I reply. “The address for their Mayfair house is what Elisa had on her driver’s license. We found it near her body.”
“He’s an alum of MIT, and so is his ne’er-do-well brother, both of them British. One is a mega-success worth billions and the other just as smart but missing a few wires or they’r
e crossed or something. I’d call Theo in the spectrum, a whack-job genius.”
“Theo?” I look out at pastel streaks changing in shape and intensity as sunlight flickers like shiny fish in the slow-moving current of the river across the street.
“Theodore Portison. He goes by Theo when he’s not using an alias.”
Rowers in colorful racing shells slice through the water, and rush-hour traffic sounds like a faraway train, a strong wind, a steady rain.
“Why would he use an alias?” I ask.
“He’s paranoid people are out to get him. So he runs and hides, this is according to the brother,” Perry says, and I feel sure the information actually came from Benton.
I seriously doubt the secretary-general of Interpol talked to William Portison himself, and my husband can get the most sensitive information from a stone.
“How old is the brother?” I ask.
“Theo Portison is forty-seven, single, never married. He taught quantum physics at MIT until he was fired about twenty years ago, and this has been checked out and verified.”
He means that Benton has checked it out.
“Theo moved back to Cambridge about a year ago, and in fact I’m guessing that even as we speak he’s either been visited by the FBI or is about to be,” Perry lets me know, and I wonder where Marino is as all this is going on.
“Why was Theo fired?” I inquire, and I glance at new messages, and there’s still nothing from Benton or Lucy.
“The short answer again is he’s crazy,” Perry says as I look out at the sunrise. “The long one is he was causing problems with female students. Apparently he would be overly attentive and then he’d start stalking them. Specifically what got him fired is he planted surveillance devices in one girl’s dorm room. If you’re going to spy? Maybe don’t pick someone at MIT who’s as smart as you are. He got caught.”
“And what has he been doing for the past twenty years?” I ask.
“I don’t think he has to do anything. His wealthy brother takes care of him, and in many ways always has. For a long time Theo lived with their mother in London but she died a few years back. As you’re probably gathering, he has an adjustment disorder, to put it kindly.”
“Would it be fair to say that the authorities have had their eye on Theo Portison for a while? I’m wondering if he has terrorist or radicalized leanings and it was brought to someone’s attention?” After a long empty pause I ask, “Tom? Hello? Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes it would be fair,” and that’s as far as he’ll go in letting me know that the Portisons aren’t a new problem.
What they are is a different one. Especially Theo.
“Is there a reason Theo would be in possession of panguite or have access to it?” I ask the secretary-general, bringing us back to the traces of meteorite Ernie found.
“Well that’s interesting because William Portison’s business is aerospace technologies, and they build rockets among other things,” Perry says. “He’s into cars, space travel, timepieces, all sorts of things including rocks, and has his own museum, and guess who helped him with it? His limited brother. I think Theo is William’s Rain Man aide-de-camp.”
“Then it’s likely Theo was acquainted with Elisa Vandersteel since she was living with his brother’s family for the past two or so years. Is the rock collection in the house?” I ask, and there’s much more to what Perry is saying than meets the eye.
“He keeps his collection in a safe room with a gun vault door.”
“Someone needs to find out if anything is missing,” I reply. “Specifically if any type of space rock is missing, and if so, what it is and most importantly what is the provenance. Where did he get it?” I explain what we need to be finding out. “The mineral fingerprint of the meteorite might be the only real evidence in this case. We can match it if it turns up again.”
“But wouldn’t Theo know that if he used to help with the museum?”
“It depends on whether his brother knows the details of what he bought or was given. William Portison might have acquired part of a meteorite and not known its precise elemental composition,” as I hear the lock buzz free in my office door.
“Scotland Yard will be interested in all this, I’m sure,” Perry says, adding to my suspicions that the authorities have more than one fish to fry.
I END THE CALL as Marino walks in, and I’m reminded of his privileged character.
I haven’t gotten around to deleting his fingerprint from certain biometric locks, including the one to the parking-lot gate, the pedestrian door that leads into the building and also the door to my office. It’s been years since he headed investigations here. But I can’t bring myself to eradicate all traces of him, and as I watch him walk in, I notice he’s still in his same sweaty clothes he was working in earlier although he got rid of the navy jacket long ago.
He hasn’t showered. That’s apparent as he hovers by my desk like a predatory bird. On a scale of one to ten with ten the highest, I’d rate Marino’s anger right now at a hundred. He’s in what I think of as a white rage, his face livid, his eyes granite as he clenches his jaw muscles.
“You look about as pissed as I’ve ever seen you, and I hope it’s not at me,” I start to say.
“The fuckers,” he growls, and I can see the pulse in his temple as a reddish-purple thrush creeps up his neck. “I’m sitting down with the guy and really getting somewhere, and the assholes showed up in fucking SWAT gear and had the mother-effing helicopter thundering over the damn house. When they realize it’s just me and some local nutjob they call off the dogs, and then Mahant walks in like the new sheriff’s come to town.” Marino dusts off his hands. “The end.”
“What do you mean the end? And who are you talking about?”
“Bryce’s cranky next-door neighbor,” Marino says to my shock. “I was just getting to the bottom of why he made the bogus nine-one-one call about you.”
“Marino …?” as I think of what Tom Perry just told me about Theo Portison.
He’s either been visited by the FBI or is about to be.
“It was exactly what Bryce said,” Marino is talking fast and without pause. “To get him back for insulting him, and what better way to hurt him than to drag the big chief Doctor Scarpetta into the mix so maybe he gets fired—”
“What did you just call me?”
“Big chief?” Marino shrugs. “It’s what he called you, not me.”
“That’s what Tailend Charlie calls me in some of the mocking audio clips.”
“Well you can tell the FBI that but I’m not helping them a damn bit.”
“Are you saying that they just showed up at Theo Portison’s door while you were sitting in the living room with him?” I then ask.
“Who the hell’s Theo Portison?” Marino scowls, looming over me. “Bryce’s neighbor is John Smyth with a y, the English spelling. And I guess it’s not enough for the Feds to take over the Vandersteel and Briggs cases but now they’re looking into crank nine-one-one calls? I mean what the hell?”
“Did Mahant or someone tell you why they were there?”
“When do they ever tell us anything?”
“His name is Theodore Portison, and apparently he’s known for having aliases because he gets paranoid.” I push back my chair from my desk. “He was fired by MIT twenty years ago, and he knew Elisa Vandersteel. It’s quite possible he’s Tailend Charlie.” I get up and take off my lab coat. “We’ll see if I get any more audio files after this.”
“Well they grabbed him,” Marino says as we walk to my door. “They ended up arresting him.”
“For what?”
“Hell if I know. But they’ve been digging through his landfill of a place. Shit. It’s my case, Doc.”
“The important thing is he was caught.”
“But Carrie hasn’t been.”
“One down is better than nothing. Assuming he’s Tailend Charlie, that he’s the one who
killed these two women.”
“And has been harassing you, me, Benton. Using voice-altering software or whatever? Why?”
“Ask Benton,” I reply. “But I’m betting it has to do with fantasies and power, and maybe the delusional thinking of a damaged brain mixed in. Does Theo Portison by chance have a drone?”
“He’s got shit all over the place including what look like robot parts. The inside of his house looks like Sanford and Son. Think crazy-ass inventor meets homeless person, and it looks like his kitchen is also a lab, and part of it was under a plastic tent like he was making crystal meth or something.”
“Does he have a cough?” I ask, and we’re following my curved corridor to the elevator.
“He says he’s got chronic lung disease, and I can’t remember whose fault he said it was. He’s one of those people who pretty much blames everyone for everything.”
“I’m not surprised he has lung disease.”
“Why?” Marino looks at me. “Just because of a cough?”
“If he works with nanotubes and doesn’t do it in an appropriate clean room or under a HEPA-rated local capture hood—in other words a protected environment—he could have a serious respiratory problem from inhaling fibers and particles too small to see. And as you may remember, the phony Interpol investigator who called you had a cough. That’s what you said. And maybe not so coincidentally, so did the phony Interpol investigator who called Benton.”
“Nanotubes?”
I tell Marino about that next, and we’re in the elevator now, the building restored to its usual sanctity and rhythm. People are coming in to work, and the FBI is no longer here. I’m sure Theodore Portison will keep them busy for a while, and Mahant may decide never to watch an autopsy again.
“I never did have any pizza,” Marino says as the elevator slowly descends.
“That was a long time ago and you weren’t here. How did you know about it?” I ask.