Sharp Force, page 19
“Certainly sounds like an accidental drowning.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking.” I tell her that much.
“A suicide, and his wife and two little boys won’t get insurance money, my guess is.” The governor continues leaning on me.
“The investigation is far from over,” I reply.
“It’s been a while since we had lunch at the mansion and a proper conversation, Kay,” Roxane says in a hard tone. “We need to get something on the books right away.”
She ends the call without saying goodbye.
“I’m probably about to get fired,” I tell Benton as another passenger jet passes low overhead.
“It can happen whenever she decides. You knew that when she asked you to return to Virginia,” he answers simply, bluntly. “When the governor appoints someone, she can unappoint them in the blink of an eye. We’ve always known that’s the danger.”
“This isn’t like her, and what it tells me is she’s getting a lot of pressure behind the scenes,” I reply as a text from Laverne lands on my phone.
I’m expected at the governor’s mansion tomorrow at noon. The day after Christmas, and I sigh in frustration.
“Exactly what I was afraid of, as if I have time for this,” I tell Benton.
“Someone’s holding Roxane’s feet to the fire,” he says. “And it’s probably coming from Calvin Willard. Sometimes when people are angry and overly aggressive it’s because they’re scared.”
“Scared about what exactly? His chances in the next election?”
“He can’t be happy about what’s happened. He’s got to be worried about how his enemies will use it against him the same way they did with Biden and his son Hunter,” Benton says. “So far, Calvin Willard has been doing extremely well in the polls. But that can turn on a dime.”
“Do you think he persuaded Roxane to sic the trooper on us? Would she be that heavy-handed? Or maybe ham-fisted would be a better way to describe it.”
“It depends on what’s at stake for her,” Benton says.
“I don’t think it’s hard to guess based on the chatter out there. Roxane is hoping to be picked as Calvin Willard’s running mate.” I paint the picture. “I suspect there’s not much she wouldn’t do if it meant being vice president of the United States.”
“But why is she pushing you about Rowdy O’Leary?” Benton muses.
“Appearances as usual. Roxane wants to look hard on crime but compassionate toward victims. Beyond that, I don’t know,” I reply, and the Pitié Bridge is just ahead.
Two-lane with ornamental stone towers, the bridge connecting the mainland of Virginia to Mercy Island was built in the early 1800s. In French, pitié means pity or mercy, and long ago it wasn’t only the desperately ill who crossed over to the island, most never to return.
Countless people were exiled there as punishment. It was a way of solving a problem. Reasons for committal in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth included mental illness or the accusation of it. Also, political beliefs, epilepsy, syphilis, domestic trouble, immorality.
Even laziness and reading too many novels could send people away for the rest of their days. Most treatments were ineffective and a horror. Ice baths. Bloodlettings with leeches. Exorcisms. Insulin and other shock therapies. Holes cut into skulls to reduce brain pressure or release evil spirits.
They were notorious for performing lobotomies by inserting a needle through an eye socket to destroy brain tissue in the frontal lobe.
Where are you? Marino is texting, and I tell him.
He goes on to warn that a drone is flying over 13 Shore Lane.
Dana Diletti, he writes, and it’s to be expected.
In the past few years, she’s routinely utilized drones when filming outdoors, as do most television and film productions. It’s easier than a helicopter and a fraction of the price.
I was in the driveway and the f*cking thing would have given me a haircut if I had any, Marino adds.
The Potomac is ruffled and leaden in hazy sunlight, no water taxis or sailboats out this early on Christmas morning. I can see the runways of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport several miles upriver, the roar of low-flying jets constant as they take off and land.
A checkpoint has been set up at the entrance of the bridge. Four uniformed Alexandria police officers in winter gear are standing sentry, all traffic blocked by barricades and police cars. Benton stops the car, rolling down his window.
“Merry Christmas.” He shows his credentials to a female police sergeant who appears to be about my age.
“I’ve had merrier ones,” she says, in ballistic gear, an MP5 submachine gun on a sling across her chest.
Her hair is cropped short, her face masked by aviator sunglasses. I remember the spate of freckles across her cheeks, and her thick figure and broad shoulders. I’ve encountered her before at several death scenes and inside the courthouse on King Street.
“Who you got riding shotgun?” she asks Benton while staring at me.
I can tell she knows who I am. But she’s doing her job.
“Doctor Scarpetta,” he says as I dig out my wallet, holding up my chief medical examiner’s shield.
“I thought I recognized you,” she says with a smile that seems genuine.
“How are things going?” Benton asks her.
“Now that the word is out, we’ve got a lot more people trying to cross the bridge,” she replies. “Just before you rolled up, we turned away at least a dozen rubberneckers who saw Dana Diletti running her mouth on TV. I expect it to get worse, and two drones are zipping around so far. Nothing I’d like better than to blast them out of the air with a shotgun. But no can do.”
“What makes you think there’s more than one?” Benton asks her. “And are we sure whose they are?”
“Definitely Dana Diletti’s. I’ve been watching her live coverage on my phone to see what she’s showing her TV audience. It’s obvious that her crew is flying a drone at the murder scene. Another one is monitoring people coming and going here on the bridge. In fact, there it is again.”
The sergeant points behind us, and we can see a quadcopter sailing in our direction like a flying black spider carrying a video camera attached to a gimbal. The drone abruptly halts into a wobbly hover above the checkpoint.
“This is what I’m talking about.” She scowls up at it.
I can hear the thing whining like a giant mosquito as it descends, now maybe twenty feet overhead. Rocking in the wind, it hangs in the air blatantly filming us.
“Where’s the person at the controls?” Benton asks the sergeant.
She stares off at Mercy Island, a dark green gash surrounded by water, the hospital peeking above trees on the other side of the bridge. Dana Diletti’s TV crew uses the checkpoint at the entrance to launch the drones, and police aren’t allowed to stop them, the sergeant explains.
“I’ve been told the inside of the TV van looks like NASA,” she continues. “All these control panels and stuff.”
The drone whines louder, aggressively dipping lower as if the pilot is listening and giving us the finger.
“Like I said, it’s nothing that a shotgun wouldn’t fix,” the sergeant says.
She stands by Benton’s open window, staring up contemptuously at the high-pitched annoyance.
“And it’s not right we have to put up with shit like this,” she complains. “The jerk in the van can probably hear everything we’re saying right now.”
“I have a feeling it won’t be a problem for long,” Benton replies as if he knows something we don’t. “I assume you’re also keeping track of anyone leaving the island.”
“Nobody has since we got here except cops in and out. But shift change is in an hour, and a lot of the hospital staff will be heading home.”
She keeps glancing up at the drone, the whining maddening.
“What about the staff coming in?” Benton asks her.
“We’ll check everyone, making sure no one unauthorized tries to sneak past us. Reporters for example.”
She returns Benton’s credentials.
“You’re good to go.” She pats his windowsill with a smile. “Y’all take care now.”
The police remove sawhorses and traffic cones to let us through, the drone following as we begin crossing the bridge. The aggressive quadcopter is directly over the back of our SUV, bird-dogging as if taunting and goading.
“The damn pilot probably picked up everything we were saying.” I watch in my visor mirror. “He’s having a good time messing with us.”
“I’d say that’s a safe bet.” Benton doesn’t seem concerned.
“The pilot knows who we are. Hell, we’re probably on live TV as we speak. Everyone can see your license plate in the process, by the way.”
“Sounds about right,” Benton replies as he drives, and now I’m hearing a helicopter, the thudding faint at first.
Then louder.
Next, it’s bearing down, and the drone zips straight up, speeding away as if escaping a large predator.
CHAPTER 24
I recognize the guttural roar of the twin-engine Doomsday Bird I’ve flown in on many occasions.
“I know that earlier Lucy was on her way to HRT,” I’m saying to Benton. “She didn’t mention what she was up to.”
“She and Tron are doing aerial surveillance, among other things,” he explains as we watch the helicopter thudding low overhead, the noise deafening.
It begins a slow circuit of Mercy Island as we’re crossing the mile-long bridge. I can make out the weathered granite wall topped by iron spikes worthy of a medieval castle. Looming closer is the five-story psychiatric hospital with its leaded casement windows, its post-and-beam timber in a herringbone pattern.
“What are they looking for?” I watch the helicopter getting smaller as it flies past the island and begins looping back around.
“Whatever they can find,” Benton says. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Dana Diletti’s drones have a sudden loss of signal. And, oops, drop from the sky.”
“It would be most appreciated if we can carry out the body and load it into the van without the entire world watching.” I stare up at the Doomsday Bird roaring back toward the entrance, slower and lower.
“I believe Lucy’s making sure that happens,” Benton says.
The bridge ends at Pitié Lane, the only road in and out of Mercy Island. We slow down at the stone wall’s entrance. The narrow opening is barricaded by a security gate, a boxy metal-encased motor with a wooden arm that goes up and down. One easily could duck under or climb over to enter the grounds.
Standing guard are FBI uniformed officers in ballistic gear and heavily armed. They’re keeping an eye on Dana Diletti and her crew huddled near a silver cargo van with a rooftop satellite dish. She continues inching closer, her cameras pointed at us as Benton slows to a stop, humming down his window.
“Special Agent Benton Wesley, Secret Service.”
He displays his credentials to one of the FBI officers, nice-looking in dark blue, and extremely fit. Lucy’s helicopter passes overhead as loud as a tornado.
“I know who you are, sir. Good morning,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”
“And to you. How’s it going?” Benton asks.
“Not too bad.” The officer bends down, looking at me. “I realize they already cleared you through, and I know who you are. But I still need to see an ID.”
I hand over my medical examiner creds, leaving the peace officer wallet out of sight. I’m mindful of Dana Delitti in her bright red coat and fur hat, her cameras trained in our direction. I can tell she’s flustered by the blacked-out helicopter with its wide skids, radomes and gun mounts. She’s seen it before and can guess who’s at the controls.
The Doomsday Bird is making another slow circuit, the noise ruinous to filming, and that seems to be Lucy’s intention. She’s flying low enough that I can make out her silhouette in the cockpit’s right door window.
“… Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta and her Secret Service husband, Benton Wesley, have just arrived at the entrance…” Dana Diletti says loudly into her microphone.
She’s close enough to the gate that she could touch our SUV, staring at us as she broadcasts.
“As you can hear, we have this huge helicopter flying over.” She’s almost shouting. “What’s called the Doomsday Bird, typically flown by Doctor Scarpetta’s FBI niece, Lucy Farinelli… And it’s not a coincidence that we’ve lost our connection to the Eye in the Sky…!”
“Any luck with the security cameras?” Benton asks the FBI police officer.
“They’ve been checked and apparently aren’t working.” He looks up at small white domes mounted on either side of the wall’s opening.
“Then we don’t know if anybody drove in and out early this morning around the time of the home invasion,” Benton says.
“From what I understand, when the Alexandria police arrived, there were no tire tracks in the snow. But to be honest, we can’t be sure if that’s correct.”
“Don Horace was the first one on the scene,” Benton says. “And it’s the same story I heard.”
“I believe that’s the name. I don’t know him, and he was long gone by the time we showed up. But it started raining after midnight. Tire tracks wouldn’t have survived,” the officer says. “That’s probably why Horace didn’t see them.”
“And his focus was the victim about to bleed to death on a sidewalk. He was going to be stressed out, and in a hurry,” Benton replies. “How did he get through the gate?”
“All you need to do is whelp your siren, and a sensor opens it up,” the officer says. “Not secure at all, in other words. These days, you can find a recording on your phone and do it. I know because I tried. Now we have a remote.” He holds it up.
Benton’s attention is on indented areas in the puddled grass to the left of the entrance.
“Looks like someone may have driven over there.” He points. “Or maybe parked.”
“I noticed that too,” the officer says. “But you can’t tell anything, no tread pattern, just ruts. And we don’t know how long they’ve been there.”
“It’s possible the killer didn’t drive in,” Benton decides. “Maybe he parked outside the wall and went the rest of the way on foot. Who was going to see him at that hour and in that weather?”
Dana Diletti and her crew look angry and helpless, staring up at the Doomsday Bird. I imagine Lucy enjoying herself as she makes her disruptive orbits. I watch as she lumbers in from the river at an altitude of several hundred feet, going maybe sixty knots, getting larger, louder, more alarming.
Suddenly, the TV van’s door slides open, an upset man wearing a headset boiling out.
“Cut! Cut! Cut!” he screams, and Dana Diletti motions for the cameras to stop filming.
She’s stunned. Then furious that her drone pilot would dare interrupt as if he’s the director.
“What’s happening?” she shouts at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Both are down!” he exclaims, gesturing wildly. “BOTH OF THEM ARE FUCKING DOWN!”
He must mean that the drones are.
“How could you let that happen?” Dana Diletti looks like she might kill him.
“Not my damn fault!”
“Then whose is it?” Her beautiful face is contemptuous.
Lucy has been up to her usual signal jamming. She’s just blinded the Eye in the Sky, and I’m delighted. But I don’t show it as I watch from the entrance gate, the FBI police officer a statue by Benton’s open window. They’re riveted to the drama unfolding.
“Where are they?” Dana Diletti asks the pilot in an acid tone. “Do we even know?”
“No, I don’t know!” He glares at our car and the FBI police officers.
I guess him to be in his forties, wiry in faded jeans, a gray hoodie and snow boots with leather uppers. He’s wearing a baseball cap, Hollywood, CA on the back of it.
“They can’t fucking do this! The same fucking thing they did last time!” he shrieks, the film crew looking on, frustrated and useless.
He storms over to them, sloshing through icy puddles, complaining and gesturing, so incensed it occurs to me that he might hit someone. He continues shooting us hateful glances as the helicopter gets quieter, retreating toward the Maryland shore on the other side of the Potomac.
Ripping off his headset, the drone pilot clamps it around his neck. He stalks over to the three officers clustered near the barricades, accusing them of violating his civil rights, calling them fascists and Nazis. All the while he’s flipping us off behind his back.
“You can’t shoot my drones out of the air! It’s illegal!” he yells.
“Sir, you need to calm way down. You need to back way off,” an officer orders, a woman solidly built, her long brown hair lifted by the wind.
“Don’t tell me what to fucking do!” He holds up his phone, filming her.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“I don’t have to tell you a fucking thing!” he menaces.
“Don’t get any closer and show me some form of identification.” She’s not smiling, her left hand near her taser. “A driver’s license. Something with your picture on it.”
“You can’t ask me that!”
“I can and did,” she answers with flat calm.
“This is why people hate police!”
“Show me an ID, sir.”
He pulls his wallet out of a back pocket as he continues to film with his phone. Awkwardly producing his driver’s license one-handed, he shoves it at her.
“Enzo Satterly, an Arlington address, is that you?” She makes sure everyone can hear her.
“Abuse of power!” he snarls. “Police brutality! This is what it looks like, folks.”
“Nobody’s done anything to you, sir. We just need to make sure who you are, and that you don’t interfere with the investigation going on.”
“This is private property, and we have permission to be here! Our First Amendment right.” He’s almost in her face.
“The island is an active crime scene, and the only one giving permission is us. You need to back away from me, sir. Don’t make me tell you again,” she warns, and her partners have moved in closer.
“That’s not what I’m thinking.” I tell her that much.
“A suicide, and his wife and two little boys won’t get insurance money, my guess is.” The governor continues leaning on me.
“The investigation is far from over,” I reply.
“It’s been a while since we had lunch at the mansion and a proper conversation, Kay,” Roxane says in a hard tone. “We need to get something on the books right away.”
She ends the call without saying goodbye.
“I’m probably about to get fired,” I tell Benton as another passenger jet passes low overhead.
“It can happen whenever she decides. You knew that when she asked you to return to Virginia,” he answers simply, bluntly. “When the governor appoints someone, she can unappoint them in the blink of an eye. We’ve always known that’s the danger.”
“This isn’t like her, and what it tells me is she’s getting a lot of pressure behind the scenes,” I reply as a text from Laverne lands on my phone.
I’m expected at the governor’s mansion tomorrow at noon. The day after Christmas, and I sigh in frustration.
“Exactly what I was afraid of, as if I have time for this,” I tell Benton.
“Someone’s holding Roxane’s feet to the fire,” he says. “And it’s probably coming from Calvin Willard. Sometimes when people are angry and overly aggressive it’s because they’re scared.”
“Scared about what exactly? His chances in the next election?”
“He can’t be happy about what’s happened. He’s got to be worried about how his enemies will use it against him the same way they did with Biden and his son Hunter,” Benton says. “So far, Calvin Willard has been doing extremely well in the polls. But that can turn on a dime.”
“Do you think he persuaded Roxane to sic the trooper on us? Would she be that heavy-handed? Or maybe ham-fisted would be a better way to describe it.”
“It depends on what’s at stake for her,” Benton says.
“I don’t think it’s hard to guess based on the chatter out there. Roxane is hoping to be picked as Calvin Willard’s running mate.” I paint the picture. “I suspect there’s not much she wouldn’t do if it meant being vice president of the United States.”
“But why is she pushing you about Rowdy O’Leary?” Benton muses.
“Appearances as usual. Roxane wants to look hard on crime but compassionate toward victims. Beyond that, I don’t know,” I reply, and the Pitié Bridge is just ahead.
Two-lane with ornamental stone towers, the bridge connecting the mainland of Virginia to Mercy Island was built in the early 1800s. In French, pitié means pity or mercy, and long ago it wasn’t only the desperately ill who crossed over to the island, most never to return.
Countless people were exiled there as punishment. It was a way of solving a problem. Reasons for committal in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth included mental illness or the accusation of it. Also, political beliefs, epilepsy, syphilis, domestic trouble, immorality.
Even laziness and reading too many novels could send people away for the rest of their days. Most treatments were ineffective and a horror. Ice baths. Bloodlettings with leeches. Exorcisms. Insulin and other shock therapies. Holes cut into skulls to reduce brain pressure or release evil spirits.
They were notorious for performing lobotomies by inserting a needle through an eye socket to destroy brain tissue in the frontal lobe.
Where are you? Marino is texting, and I tell him.
He goes on to warn that a drone is flying over 13 Shore Lane.
Dana Diletti, he writes, and it’s to be expected.
In the past few years, she’s routinely utilized drones when filming outdoors, as do most television and film productions. It’s easier than a helicopter and a fraction of the price.
I was in the driveway and the f*cking thing would have given me a haircut if I had any, Marino adds.
The Potomac is ruffled and leaden in hazy sunlight, no water taxis or sailboats out this early on Christmas morning. I can see the runways of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport several miles upriver, the roar of low-flying jets constant as they take off and land.
A checkpoint has been set up at the entrance of the bridge. Four uniformed Alexandria police officers in winter gear are standing sentry, all traffic blocked by barricades and police cars. Benton stops the car, rolling down his window.
“Merry Christmas.” He shows his credentials to a female police sergeant who appears to be about my age.
“I’ve had merrier ones,” she says, in ballistic gear, an MP5 submachine gun on a sling across her chest.
Her hair is cropped short, her face masked by aviator sunglasses. I remember the spate of freckles across her cheeks, and her thick figure and broad shoulders. I’ve encountered her before at several death scenes and inside the courthouse on King Street.
“Who you got riding shotgun?” she asks Benton while staring at me.
I can tell she knows who I am. But she’s doing her job.
“Doctor Scarpetta,” he says as I dig out my wallet, holding up my chief medical examiner’s shield.
“I thought I recognized you,” she says with a smile that seems genuine.
“How are things going?” Benton asks her.
“Now that the word is out, we’ve got a lot more people trying to cross the bridge,” she replies. “Just before you rolled up, we turned away at least a dozen rubberneckers who saw Dana Diletti running her mouth on TV. I expect it to get worse, and two drones are zipping around so far. Nothing I’d like better than to blast them out of the air with a shotgun. But no can do.”
“What makes you think there’s more than one?” Benton asks her. “And are we sure whose they are?”
“Definitely Dana Diletti’s. I’ve been watching her live coverage on my phone to see what she’s showing her TV audience. It’s obvious that her crew is flying a drone at the murder scene. Another one is monitoring people coming and going here on the bridge. In fact, there it is again.”
The sergeant points behind us, and we can see a quadcopter sailing in our direction like a flying black spider carrying a video camera attached to a gimbal. The drone abruptly halts into a wobbly hover above the checkpoint.
“This is what I’m talking about.” She scowls up at it.
I can hear the thing whining like a giant mosquito as it descends, now maybe twenty feet overhead. Rocking in the wind, it hangs in the air blatantly filming us.
“Where’s the person at the controls?” Benton asks the sergeant.
She stares off at Mercy Island, a dark green gash surrounded by water, the hospital peeking above trees on the other side of the bridge. Dana Diletti’s TV crew uses the checkpoint at the entrance to launch the drones, and police aren’t allowed to stop them, the sergeant explains.
“I’ve been told the inside of the TV van looks like NASA,” she continues. “All these control panels and stuff.”
The drone whines louder, aggressively dipping lower as if the pilot is listening and giving us the finger.
“Like I said, it’s nothing that a shotgun wouldn’t fix,” the sergeant says.
She stands by Benton’s open window, staring up contemptuously at the high-pitched annoyance.
“And it’s not right we have to put up with shit like this,” she complains. “The jerk in the van can probably hear everything we’re saying right now.”
“I have a feeling it won’t be a problem for long,” Benton replies as if he knows something we don’t. “I assume you’re also keeping track of anyone leaving the island.”
“Nobody has since we got here except cops in and out. But shift change is in an hour, and a lot of the hospital staff will be heading home.”
She keeps glancing up at the drone, the whining maddening.
“What about the staff coming in?” Benton asks her.
“We’ll check everyone, making sure no one unauthorized tries to sneak past us. Reporters for example.”
She returns Benton’s credentials.
“You’re good to go.” She pats his windowsill with a smile. “Y’all take care now.”
The police remove sawhorses and traffic cones to let us through, the drone following as we begin crossing the bridge. The aggressive quadcopter is directly over the back of our SUV, bird-dogging as if taunting and goading.
“The damn pilot probably picked up everything we were saying.” I watch in my visor mirror. “He’s having a good time messing with us.”
“I’d say that’s a safe bet.” Benton doesn’t seem concerned.
“The pilot knows who we are. Hell, we’re probably on live TV as we speak. Everyone can see your license plate in the process, by the way.”
“Sounds about right,” Benton replies as he drives, and now I’m hearing a helicopter, the thudding faint at first.
Then louder.
Next, it’s bearing down, and the drone zips straight up, speeding away as if escaping a large predator.
CHAPTER 24
I recognize the guttural roar of the twin-engine Doomsday Bird I’ve flown in on many occasions.
“I know that earlier Lucy was on her way to HRT,” I’m saying to Benton. “She didn’t mention what she was up to.”
“She and Tron are doing aerial surveillance, among other things,” he explains as we watch the helicopter thudding low overhead, the noise deafening.
It begins a slow circuit of Mercy Island as we’re crossing the mile-long bridge. I can make out the weathered granite wall topped by iron spikes worthy of a medieval castle. Looming closer is the five-story psychiatric hospital with its leaded casement windows, its post-and-beam timber in a herringbone pattern.
“What are they looking for?” I watch the helicopter getting smaller as it flies past the island and begins looping back around.
“Whatever they can find,” Benton says. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Dana Diletti’s drones have a sudden loss of signal. And, oops, drop from the sky.”
“It would be most appreciated if we can carry out the body and load it into the van without the entire world watching.” I stare up at the Doomsday Bird roaring back toward the entrance, slower and lower.
“I believe Lucy’s making sure that happens,” Benton says.
The bridge ends at Pitié Lane, the only road in and out of Mercy Island. We slow down at the stone wall’s entrance. The narrow opening is barricaded by a security gate, a boxy metal-encased motor with a wooden arm that goes up and down. One easily could duck under or climb over to enter the grounds.
Standing guard are FBI uniformed officers in ballistic gear and heavily armed. They’re keeping an eye on Dana Diletti and her crew huddled near a silver cargo van with a rooftop satellite dish. She continues inching closer, her cameras pointed at us as Benton slows to a stop, humming down his window.
“Special Agent Benton Wesley, Secret Service.”
He displays his credentials to one of the FBI officers, nice-looking in dark blue, and extremely fit. Lucy’s helicopter passes overhead as loud as a tornado.
“I know who you are, sir. Good morning,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”
“And to you. How’s it going?” Benton asks.
“Not too bad.” The officer bends down, looking at me. “I realize they already cleared you through, and I know who you are. But I still need to see an ID.”
I hand over my medical examiner creds, leaving the peace officer wallet out of sight. I’m mindful of Dana Delitti in her bright red coat and fur hat, her cameras trained in our direction. I can tell she’s flustered by the blacked-out helicopter with its wide skids, radomes and gun mounts. She’s seen it before and can guess who’s at the controls.
The Doomsday Bird is making another slow circuit, the noise ruinous to filming, and that seems to be Lucy’s intention. She’s flying low enough that I can make out her silhouette in the cockpit’s right door window.
“… Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta and her Secret Service husband, Benton Wesley, have just arrived at the entrance…” Dana Diletti says loudly into her microphone.
She’s close enough to the gate that she could touch our SUV, staring at us as she broadcasts.
“As you can hear, we have this huge helicopter flying over.” She’s almost shouting. “What’s called the Doomsday Bird, typically flown by Doctor Scarpetta’s FBI niece, Lucy Farinelli… And it’s not a coincidence that we’ve lost our connection to the Eye in the Sky…!”
“Any luck with the security cameras?” Benton asks the FBI police officer.
“They’ve been checked and apparently aren’t working.” He looks up at small white domes mounted on either side of the wall’s opening.
“Then we don’t know if anybody drove in and out early this morning around the time of the home invasion,” Benton says.
“From what I understand, when the Alexandria police arrived, there were no tire tracks in the snow. But to be honest, we can’t be sure if that’s correct.”
“Don Horace was the first one on the scene,” Benton says. “And it’s the same story I heard.”
“I believe that’s the name. I don’t know him, and he was long gone by the time we showed up. But it started raining after midnight. Tire tracks wouldn’t have survived,” the officer says. “That’s probably why Horace didn’t see them.”
“And his focus was the victim about to bleed to death on a sidewalk. He was going to be stressed out, and in a hurry,” Benton replies. “How did he get through the gate?”
“All you need to do is whelp your siren, and a sensor opens it up,” the officer says. “Not secure at all, in other words. These days, you can find a recording on your phone and do it. I know because I tried. Now we have a remote.” He holds it up.
Benton’s attention is on indented areas in the puddled grass to the left of the entrance.
“Looks like someone may have driven over there.” He points. “Or maybe parked.”
“I noticed that too,” the officer says. “But you can’t tell anything, no tread pattern, just ruts. And we don’t know how long they’ve been there.”
“It’s possible the killer didn’t drive in,” Benton decides. “Maybe he parked outside the wall and went the rest of the way on foot. Who was going to see him at that hour and in that weather?”
Dana Diletti and her crew look angry and helpless, staring up at the Doomsday Bird. I imagine Lucy enjoying herself as she makes her disruptive orbits. I watch as she lumbers in from the river at an altitude of several hundred feet, going maybe sixty knots, getting larger, louder, more alarming.
Suddenly, the TV van’s door slides open, an upset man wearing a headset boiling out.
“Cut! Cut! Cut!” he screams, and Dana Diletti motions for the cameras to stop filming.
She’s stunned. Then furious that her drone pilot would dare interrupt as if he’s the director.
“What’s happening?” she shouts at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Both are down!” he exclaims, gesturing wildly. “BOTH OF THEM ARE FUCKING DOWN!”
He must mean that the drones are.
“How could you let that happen?” Dana Diletti looks like she might kill him.
“Not my damn fault!”
“Then whose is it?” Her beautiful face is contemptuous.
Lucy has been up to her usual signal jamming. She’s just blinded the Eye in the Sky, and I’m delighted. But I don’t show it as I watch from the entrance gate, the FBI police officer a statue by Benton’s open window. They’re riveted to the drama unfolding.
“Where are they?” Dana Diletti asks the pilot in an acid tone. “Do we even know?”
“No, I don’t know!” He glares at our car and the FBI police officers.
I guess him to be in his forties, wiry in faded jeans, a gray hoodie and snow boots with leather uppers. He’s wearing a baseball cap, Hollywood, CA on the back of it.
“They can’t fucking do this! The same fucking thing they did last time!” he shrieks, the film crew looking on, frustrated and useless.
He storms over to them, sloshing through icy puddles, complaining and gesturing, so incensed it occurs to me that he might hit someone. He continues shooting us hateful glances as the helicopter gets quieter, retreating toward the Maryland shore on the other side of the Potomac.
Ripping off his headset, the drone pilot clamps it around his neck. He stalks over to the three officers clustered near the barricades, accusing them of violating his civil rights, calling them fascists and Nazis. All the while he’s flipping us off behind his back.
“You can’t shoot my drones out of the air! It’s illegal!” he yells.
“Sir, you need to calm way down. You need to back way off,” an officer orders, a woman solidly built, her long brown hair lifted by the wind.
“Don’t tell me what to fucking do!” He holds up his phone, filming her.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“I don’t have to tell you a fucking thing!” he menaces.
“Don’t get any closer and show me some form of identification.” She’s not smiling, her left hand near her taser. “A driver’s license. Something with your picture on it.”
“You can’t ask me that!”
“I can and did,” she answers with flat calm.
“This is why people hate police!”
“Show me an ID, sir.”
He pulls his wallet out of a back pocket as he continues to film with his phone. Awkwardly producing his driver’s license one-handed, he shoves it at her.
“Enzo Satterly, an Arlington address, is that you?” She makes sure everyone can hear her.
“Abuse of power!” he snarls. “Police brutality! This is what it looks like, folks.”
“Nobody’s done anything to you, sir. We just need to make sure who you are, and that you don’t interfere with the investigation going on.”
“This is private property, and we have permission to be here! Our First Amendment right.” He’s almost in her face.
“The island is an active crime scene, and the only one giving permission is us. You need to back away from me, sir. Don’t make me tell you again,” she warns, and her partners have moved in closer.
