Black notice (5 page)

"I got a right to be upset!"

"All right then, leave." My patience had walked off. "You're interfering with my concentration. You're interfering with everything. Go take a shower and throw back a few shots of bourbon."

The Luma-Lite was ready and I put on the protective glasses. Marino was quiet.

"I'm not leaving," he finally said.

I gripped the fiber-optics wand like a soldering iron. The intense pulsing blue light was as thin as pencil lead, and I began scanning very small areas.

"Anything?" he asked.

"Not so far."

His sticky booties moved closer as I worked slowly, inch by inch, into places that could not be reached by the broad scan. I leaned the body forward to probe behind the back and head, then between the legs. I checked the palms of his hands. The Luma-Lite could detect body fluids such as urine, semen, sweat and saliva, and of course, blood. But again, nothing fluoresced. My back and neck ached.

"I'm voting for him being dead before he ended up in here," Marino said.

"We'll know a lot more when we get him downtown."

I straightened up and the rapid-fire light caught the corner of a carton Marino had displaced when he'd fallen. The tail of what looked like the letter Y blazed neon green in the dark.

"Marino," I said. "Look at this."

Letter by letter I illuminated words that were French and written by hand. They were about four inches high and an odd boxy shape, as if a mechanical arm had formed them in square strokes. It took me a moment to make out what they said.

"Bon voyage, le laup-garou," I read.

Marino was leaning over me, his breath in my hair. "What the hell's a loup-garou?"

"I don't know."

I examined the carton carefully. The top of it was soggy, the bottom of it dry.

"Fingerprints? You see any on the box?" Marino asked.

"I'm sure there're prints all over the place in here," I replied. "But no, none are popping out."

"You think whoever wrote this wanted someone to find it .

"Possibly. In some kind of permanent ink that fluoresces. We'll let fingerprints do their thing. The box goes to the lab, and we need to sweep up some of the hair:on the floor for DNA, if it's ever needed. Then do photographs and we're out of here:'

"May as well get the coins while I'm at it," he said.

"May, as well," I said, staring toward the container's opening.

Someone was looking in. He was backlit by bright sunlight and a blue sky and I could not make out who it was.

"Where are the crime-scene techs?" I asked Marino.

"Got no idea."

!"Goddamn it!" I said.

"Tell me about it," Marino said.

"We had two homicides last week and things weren't like this."

"You didn't go to the scenes, either, so you don't know what they were like," he said, and he was right.

"Someone from my office did. I would know if there was a problem . . :'

"Not if the problem wasn't obvious, you wouldn't," he told me. "And the problem sure as hell wasn't obvious because this is Anderson's first case. Now it's obvious."

"What?"

"Brand spanking new detective. Hell, maybe she stashed this body in here herself so she'd have something to do."

"She says you told her to call me."

"Right. Like I can't bother, so I dis you, and then you get pissed off at me. She's a fucking liar," he said.

An hour later we were done. We walked out of the foulsmelling dark, returning to the warehouse. Anderson stood in the open bay next to ours, talking to a man I recognized as Deputy Chief A1 Carson, head of investigations. I realized it was he whom I had seen at the mouth of the container earlier. I moved past her without a word and greeted him as I looked out to see if the removal service had shown up yet. I was relieved to see two men in jumpsuits standing by their dark blue van. They were talking to Shaw.

"How are you, Al?" I said to Deputy Chief Carson.

He'd been around as long as I had. He was a gentle, quiet man who had grown up on a farm.

"Hangin' in, Doc" he said. "Looks like we got a mess on our hands."

"Looks like it," I agreed.

"I was out and thought I'd drop by to make sure everything's all right."

Carson didn't just "drop by" scenes. He was uptight and looked depressed. Most important, he paid no more attention to Anderson than the rest of us did.

"We've got it covered," Anderson outrageously broke rank and answered Deputy Chief Carson. "I've been talking to the port director . . ."

Her voice trailed off when she saw Marino. Or maybe she smelled him first.

"Hey, Pete," Carson said, cheering up. "What you know, old boy? They got some new dress code in the uniform division I don't know about?"

"Detective Anderson," I said to her as she got as far away from Marino as she could. "I need to know who's working this case. And where are the crime-scene techs? And why did the removal service take so long to get here?"

"Yeah, This is how we do undercover work, boss. We take our uniforms off," Marino was saying loudly.

Carson guffawed.

"And why, Detective Anderson, weren't you in there collecting evidence and helping in any way possible?" I continued grilling her.

"I don't answer to you," she said with a shrug.

"Let me tell you something;" I said in a tone that got her attention. "I'm exactly who you answer to when there's a dead body." .

". . . bet Bray had to go undercover a lot, too. Before rising to the top. Types like her, they gotta be on top," Marino said with a wink.

The light blinked out in Carson's eyes. He looked depressed again. He looked tired, as if life had pushed him as far as he could go.

"Al?" Marino got serious. "What the fuck's going on? How come nobody showed up at this little party?"

A gleaming black Crown Victoria was driving toward the parking lot.

"Well, I've got to head on," Carson abruptly said, his face etched with his mind elsewhere. "Let's hook up at the F. O. P It's your turn to buy the beer. Remember when Louisville beat Charlotte and you lost the bet, old boy?"Then Carson was gone without acknowledging Anderson in any way, because it was clear he had no power over her.

"Hey, Anderson?" Marino said, pounding her back.

She gasped, clamping her hand over her nose and mouth.

"How you like working for Carson? Pretty nice guy, huh?" he said.

She backed away and he stayed with her. Even I was rather appalled by Marino and his stinking uniform pants, filthy gloves and booties. His undershirt would never be white again, and there were big holes where seams had succumbed to his big belly. He got so close to Anderson, I thought he might kiss her.

"You stink!" She tried to get away from him.

"Funny how that happens in a job like this."

"Get away from me!"

But he wouldn't. She darted this way and that, and with each step he blocked her like a mountain until she was pressed against supersacks of injectable carbon bound for the West Indies.

"Just what the fuck do you think you're doing?" His words grabbed her by the collar. "We get some rotting body in a cargo container in a fucking international shipping port where half the people don't speak fucking English and you decide you're gonna handle things all by yourself?"

Gravel popped outside in the parking lot, the black Crown Victoria driving fast.

"Miss Junior Detective gets her first case. And may as well have the chief medical examiner show up, along with a few helicopter news crews?"

"I'm turning you in to internal affairs," Anderson yelled at him. "I'm taking out a warrant on you!"

"For what? Stinking?"

"You're dead!"

"No. What's dead is that guy in there." Marino pointed at the container. "What's dead is your ass if you ever have to testify about this case in court."

"Marino, come - on*" I said as the Crown Victoria brazenly drove onto the restricted dock.

"Hey!" Shaw was running after it, waving his arms. "You can't park there!"

"You're nothing but a used-up, washed-up, redneck loser;" Anderson said to Marino as she trotted off.

Marino yanked off gloves inside out and freed himself of his blue plasticized paper booties by stepping down on the heel of each with the opposite toe. He picked up his soiled white uniform shirt by the clip-on tie, which didn't stay attached, so he stomped them as if they were a fire to put out. I quietly collected them and dropped them and mine into a red biological hazard bag.

"Are you quite finished?" I asked him.

"Ain't even begun," Marino said, staring out as the driver's door of the Crown Victoria opened and a uniformed male officer climbed out.

Anderson rounded the side of the warehouse and walked quickly toward the car. Shaw was hurrying, too, dockworkers looking on as a striking woman in uniform and sparkling brass climbed out-of the back of the car. She looked around as the world looked back. Someone whistled. Someone else did. Then the dock sounded like referees protesting every foul imaginable.

"Let me guess;" I said to Marino. "Bray:"

The air was filled with the static of greedy flies, their volume turned up high by warm weather and time. The removal service attendants had carried the stretcher into the warehouse and were waiting for me.

"Whooo," one of the attendants said, shaking his head, a bad expression on his face. "Lordy, lordy."

"I know, I know," I said as I pulled on clean gloves and booties. "I'll go in first. This won't take long. I promise."

"Fine by me, you want to go first."

I went back inside the container and they came after me, choosing their steps carefully, stretcher held tight at their waists like a sedan chair. Their breathing was labored behind their surgical masks. Both were old and overweight and should not have been lifting heavy bodies anymore.

"Get it by the lower legs and feet," I directed. "Real careful, because the skin's going to slip and come off. Let's get him by his clothing as best we can."

They set down the stretcher and bent over the dead man's feet.

"Lordy," one of them muttered again.

I hooked my arms under the armpits. They took hold of the ankles.

"Okay. Let's lift together on the count of three," I said. "One, two, three."

The men struggled to maintain their balance. They huffed and backed up. The body was limp because rigor mortis.had come and left, and we centered it onto the stretcher and wrapped it in the sheet. I zipped up the body bag and the attendants carried their client away. They would drive him to the morgue, and there I would do all I could to make him talk to me.

"Damn!" I heard one of them say. "They don't pay me enough for this."

"Tell me."

I followed them out of the warehouse into sunlight that was dazzling and air that was clean. Marino was still in his filthy undershirt, talking to Anderson and Bray on the dock. I gathered from the way he was gesturing that the presence of Bray had restrained him somewhat. Her eyes landed on me as I got close. She did not introduce herself, so I went first without offering my hand.

"I'm Dr. Scarpetta," I said to her.

She returned my greeting with vague regard, as if she had not a clue as to who I was or why I was there.

"I think it would be a good idea for the two of us to talk;" I added.

"Who did you say you are?" Bray asked.

"Oh, for Chrissake!" Marino erupted. "She knows damn well who you are."

"Captain." Bray's tone had the effect of a riding whip cracking.

Marino got quiet. Anderson, did, too.

"I'm the chief medical examiner." I told Bray what she already knew. "Kay Scarpetta."

Marino rolled his eyes. Anderson's expression puckered with resentment and jealousy when Bray motioned for me to step away from them. We moved to the edge of the dock, where the Sirius towered above us and barely stirred in the ruffled muddy-blue current.

"I'm so sorry I didn't recognize your name at first," she began.

I didn't say a word.

"That's very ungracious of me," she went on.

I remained silent.

"I should have gotten around to meeting you before now. I've been so busy. So here we are. And it's a good thing, really. Perfect timing, you might say"-she smiled-"that we should meet like this."

Diane Bray was a haughty beauty with black hair and perfect features. Her -figure was stunning. Dockworkers could not take their eyes off her.

"You see," she went on in her same cool tone, "I have this little problem. I supervise Captain Marino, yet he seems to think he works for you."

"Nonsense." I finally spoke.

She sighed.

"You have just robbed the city of the most experienced, decent homicide detective it's ever known, Chief Bray," I told her. "And I should know."