Flesh and Blood (27 page)

I focus on newly planted trees with bright green leaves, and glass and granite high-rises in a part of Cambridge called Tech Square.

“I confess I’m not as accustomed to nasty smells.” Benton has cracked his window, and the air is rushing in loud and warmly humid. “Phantosmia. I’m not sure it’s real.”

“It is. Molecules of putrefaction become volatilized like pollution attaching to water molecules in the air and creating smog.”

“So I have the smog of death in my sinuses.”

“More or less.”

“Christ I hope I don’t stink.”

I lean close to him, and diamond-stitched black leather smells new as I nuzzle the curve of his jaw. “A little cedarwood, a little teak and just enough musk and a hint of cardamom. Bulgari.”

He smiles and kisses me, and we’re on Sixth Street now. There’s still plenty of light but piling gray clouds are advancing like armies. The temperature is on its way to hot. Tomorrow promises to be instant summer, volatile with bursts of rain and wind shifts to the south that could push the mercury up more than twenty degrees. There’s too much to do and nature is conspiring against me.

I must get to Marblehead before it storms, and I need to be in New Jersey tomorrow if possible. I intend to see where Gracie Smithers died before rain and wind scrub it away, and a shooting reconstruction is our last hope of understanding the physics of Jamal Nari’s homicide. The girl’s death is simpler and far crueler. What happened to Nari is sterile and enigmatic with its lack of human contact and explanation.

“It’s the equivalent of standing on a tall ladder and shooting straight down at someone who is leaning forward slightly.” I’m thinking about our efforts in the autopsy room, what some would view as unseemly and ghoulish.

“A very tall ladder,” Benton says and the Cambridge Police Department is just ahead, redbrick with green-tinted glass and art deco lamps.

“Not exactly ninety degrees or perpendicular,” I add. “The flight path was closer to seventy-five or eighty.”

“Parabolic drop.” Benton slows down more, the engine louder.

“What goes up must come down.”

“The heavier the round and the lighter the powder charge, the more the bullet’s going to lose velocity and gravity’s going to pull it down. Like these idiots who fire their guns up in the air and the bullets fall and hit people, the trajectory is vertical or almost.”

“That’s the important point. Unless an assailant is standing over his victim and firing straight down you don’t see a trajectory like this. Certainly not in distant shots. The seventy-five- or eighty-degree angle can’t possibly be an accidental phenomenon due to gravity. His spinal cord was severed at the base of his skull exactly as it was in the other cases we know of.”

“I agree,” Benton says. “What kind of elevation are we talking about?”

“That’s what we need to find out. I believe it’s key to who’s doing this. Someone damn good at shooting and damn good at math.”

In first gear now he drives down a concrete ramp that leads into the police department’s underground parking. He’s careful not to scrape the sloping nose of his car, and abruptly we are in shadows and the air through the vents is cooler.

“Right. Because bullet drop wouldn’t explain the flight path unless the shooter did the DOPE and the degree of drop was deliberate.” He refers to the military sniper term Data on Previous Engagement or DOPE, which factors in the type of round, the altitude, temperature, wind and barometric pressure.

“Wherever the shooter was, what he did was precisely calculated.” I’m sure of that.

“I just hope to hell you never have to show those photos in court. They’ll start calling you Doctor Zombie.”

I never intend indignity but death has no modesty and the only way to precisely envision the angle that Jamal Nari was shot was to stand him up. So I decided we would. I covered Benton in waterproof Tyvek, and I then hooked my elbows under the dead man’s arms while Anne secured him by the ankles. We lowered him to the floor, naked and sutured back up with white twine, and Benton helped hold him straight as I grabbed a camera and climbed a stepladder.

The body was so stiff I could have leaned it against a wall but limber would have been worse, a dead weight as unwieldy as a heavy coil of fire hose, 150 pounds minus the organs. Once rigor passed it would have taken more than the three of us to get Jamal Nari back on his feet, and what Benton said is true. I wouldn’t want to show the photos in court, the fiberglass probe protruding from the base of the skull like a black arrow as if he had been shot by Apollo, by a god from above and maybe he was. Only this god is an evil one.

BENTON PARKS IN
a reserved spot several spaces away from the police commissioner’s unmarked dark blue Ford. Gerry Everman is still here at this hour. Maybe he’s observing Leo Gantz through one-way glass. Then I think of Machado and hope we don’t run into him.

“I’m trying to figure out the best way to handle this.” By
this
Benton means Marino. “Leo Gantz’s confession is an interference and a nuisance at best and Marino’s going to want to cut him loose, to get whatever information he might have and then get him out of his hair.”

“It sounds like you don’t feel the same way.” I climb out of the car.

“I don’t,” he says as we walk past a row of white BMW motorcycles tricked out with emblems, lights and sirens.

“Why?”

He pushes open a door that leads inside the first floor of a modern building originally designed by a biotech company that sold out to the city. “The safest thing would be to keep him locked up for a while.”

“The safest thing for who?”

“The safest thing for Leo and that might be exactly what he wants.” Near the polished granite wall of elevators Benton nods at four uniformed police officers, young and bulky with muscle and ballistic gear, familiar-looking but I don’t know them.

They seem strangely congregated by the door and don’t nod back at him, riveting their attention on me and I already sense what’s coming. I feel uneasiness in my stomach and a cool wariness creeps up my neck. It occurs to me they were expecting us.

“How you doing, Doc?”

“What are you gentlemen up to tonight? It looks like you’re keeping the streets more than safe.”

“You know who’s in town.”

“I certainly do,” I reply while Benton is ignored.

“Mind if I ask you something?”

“Help yourself.”

“I got over a cold last month and am still congested.”

“Same thing and I can’t shake the cough,” another one says.

“Me too,” says yet another.

The four of them are talking at once, their attention on me as if Benton isn’t here. He’s calm and unflappable. He doesn’t register surprise at the ruse of a welcome or questions about medical advice from men who sound perfectly healthy. Tension and resentment toward the FBI have been palpable since the marathon bombings and the murder of MIT Officer Collier, a close colleague of Cambridge police, his department within the Cambridge city limits. The FBI is accused of not sharing intelligence and that’s nothing new but this time it’s as personal as it gets.

They continue bantering with me so they can stick it to my husband. This is for his benefit, passive-aggressive behavior on the way to bullying, and I’m convinced they saw us coming. Benton’s car draws attention. All it took was one cop spotting us and tipping off the others so they could lash out, and I can’t say that I blame them. Benton presses the elevator button again and I know he’s bothered even if he doesn’t show it. The doors slide open and we step inside.

“Good to see you, Doc.”

“Be safe out there,” I reply, and just as I’m certain we’ve escaped the worst I find out I’m wrong.

“Hey! We’re being rude leaving out the FBI.” A uniformed arm suddenly juts out and the shutting elevator doors bounce back into their frame.

“Excuse me?” The officer confronts Benton. “Maybe you got something to say?”

“About what?” But he knows.

“Why the FBI thinks it’s okay not to share information that might prevent cops from getting shot while they’re sitting in their cars.”

Benton leans against the open door, his hands in his pockets, his eyes steady on the four of them. And the officer removes his arm.

The officer steps back and says, “Wait until we know something you should be told. And we don’t pass it on. See how you feel if something happens to one of your damn agents.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Benton says.

“Really? Why not?”

“Because you’re better than that.”

“The FBI should apologize.”

“About a lot of things.” Fear and intimidation aren’t colors on Benton’s palette, and the doors slide shut and he meets my eyes. “The Bureau won’t. It never does.”

“Their hostility might be related to Machado. There’s no telling what he’s spreading around.”

“It’s not about him. They said what it’s about. They couldn’t have been clearer.”

“They shouldn’t take it out on you.”

“They should. I’m safe because I won’t go over their heads and complain,” he says. “The commissioner is here right now and they know I could head straight to his office. They also know I would never do it.”

W
E RIDE THE ELEVATOR
up and the confrontation downstairs reverberates. I try to quiet my inner voice but I can’t. I’m not a pessimist but I’m not a Pollyanna either.

Resentment of the Feds is at an endless boil, rattling nonstop like scalding water in a pot. It doesn’t come and go anymore like it did when I was getting started. Now it’s chronic. Absolute power has corrupted and the absence of checks and balances seems complete. There’s no place to go but the media, and cops like the ones we just encountered can’t do that without permission from the brass, which they’ll never get.

“Terrorists score points when they inspire people to act indecently, to misuse what they are sworn to protect.” I watch the floors slowly go by. “It started with 9/11 and is building momentum. Our government spies and lies. Those trusted to uphold and enforce the law use it to their advantage instead.”

“Not everyone. We don’t.”

“We probably do. Just not abusively and all of the time.”

“Without monitoring what’s going on in cyberspace we couldn’t begin to anticipate the next catastrophic move,” Benton says and I again recall what Briggs intimated about intelligence gathered by the CIA, probably by spies in Russia.

Money, drugs and thugs flowing into this country.

“We work around what gets in the way,” Benton adds.

“Like Lucy does.”

“We have to dance. We can learn something from Leo Gantz.”

“About what? Lying?”

“His is a very calculated dance motivated by a desire to stay safe, to escape a danger that is real but unknown at the moment.”

“You say that as if you know it for a fact.”

The doors slide open and we step off the elevator.

“It seems to me Leo caused his own danger by tweeting for attention,” I then say.

“For attention but not for the usual reason. To inspire hatred and it has,” Benton answers. “Especially among certain factions who applaud his allegedly committing murder.”

By factions he means people who are anti-Muslim and that continues to be the irony. Jamal Nari was mistaken for a Muslim with terrorist ties when he was neither. A former heroin addict turned drug smuggler, he was a gifted guitarist who didn’t play for the right reason anymore. A troubled teacher with penis piercing and old needle scars, he didn’t merit hating. His life was a struggle. It was sadly mundane and he was held hostage by his own demons. Had he not died this morning he was headed in that direction.

Lucy has been going through his laptop. He had booked a noon flight today to Canada and it wasn’t the first time. He’d been in and out of Toronto on average twice a month since March, probably smuggling drugs, probably liquid cocaine, easy to dilute and reconvert to powdered form, nothing lost except your freedom or your life eventually and inevitably. His routine was to check a suitcase and one of his graphite guitars that he loved so much it merited a tattooed endorsement on his shoulder. He played at live music hot spots, The Horseshoe Tavern, Dominion on Queen and Polyhaus, but what drove him wasn’t his rhythm and blues funk or his rock-and-roll riffs.

He wanted money. Judging by the number of condoms inside his stomach when he was murdered he could have been making anywhere from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars cash per month from his trips to Canada alone. Lucy has been following his trail through his emails. What she can’t determine is why it appears he turned into a drug mule possibly only three months ago except that was about the time his lawsuit completely stalled. The case continued to cost him with no end in sight. In a way his turning to crime is Rand Bloom’s fault, and I’m wondering if it wasn’t his influence that caused it.

“I hope this goes away before it’s time to eat.” Benton is still preoccupied with the odor trapped in his nose.

“I have something that will help as soon as we get where we’re going,” I reply as we follow a corridor to the end.

HE OPENS THE DOOR
to the Investigative Unit, a large open space of grayish blue carpet and cubicles in a grid, the typical police department ice cube tray.

We stop at the front desk where no one is sitting. On one side is a wall of plateglass windows, on the other a line of shut wooden doors, some of the rooms with windows, some without. I hear detectives on phones and the quiet tapping of computer keys. There is no one to greet us and no one pays us any mind as we head in the direction of the interview rooms.

Benton is texting, using one thumb and then he stops, pausing us closer to the soundproof rooms with their shut windowless doors. I can’t hear a thing, not even a murmur. Then a door in the middle of the wall opens and Marino steps out holding his phone. He closes the door behind him and walks toward us. His feet make a brushing sound over carpet. He motions for us to follow him to his cubicle in the very back.