Flesh and Blood (26 page)

“It’s unlikely he was using drugs again,” I explain. “Rarely are drug smugglers also users. It sounds to me this was about money.”

I work the plastic zipper down the black pouch and it rustles as I spread it.

A
DEADLY COPPER FLOWER THAT
gleams like rose gold, the bullet has very little damage. It entered the body and plowed through vertebral bone and soft tissue before its kinetic energy was completely spent. I think about what Lucy said.

A light load
.

After Luke removed the projectile at autopsy he took a one-to-one or life-size photograph of it on a blue towel. I notice how substantial it looks displayed on my station’s computer screen, and I think about the long-range hunting bullet Lucy called an LRX.

“You can’t see the engraving on it with the unaided eye or a light microscope,” I’m explaining to Benton, who joined Anne and me moments ago.

Lucy has left, returning upstairs to her cyber lab and I sense that Benton is restless. He wants to head out to Cambridge PD with me but I’m not ready. He doesn’t know about the drug smuggling and he doesn’t know the oddity of a bullet that should have passed through Jamal Nari’s body and fragmented but did neither. Maybe it had a lighter than usual powder load. Maybe it slowed because it was fired from an extraordinary distance. Maybe it’s both.

“Not even a shadow of the number three unless you have the depth of field that SEM affords,” I add. “We don’t know that there wasn’t engraving on other bullets. If there had been anything left maybe the same thing would have been found.”

“It wasn’t on them,” Benton says.

“How can you be sure if there was nothing but frag so small some of it was powder?” Anne asks.

“Because it wouldn’t have been. Nineteen eighty-one and now a number three engraved on a bullet,” Benton says more to himself than to us.

“I’m beginning to think the person’s getting unhinged,” Anne replies.

“Or wants us to think we are.” Benton stares down at Nari’s body surrounded by black vinyl on top of the stainless steel carrier. “Ideas of reference are the interpretation of events as highly personal when they’re not. A date, a number on a bullet, a certain number of coins left on a wall, and it gets to the point that you don’t know if you’re assuming all of it is intended with you in mind or if it’s completely random. You start thinking you’re crazy.”

“Do you think what’s happening is random?” I ask.

“It isn’t. Including the atypical flight path.”

“Almost an impossible flight path,” I agree. “The bullet entered here.” I touch the back of Benton’s neck where the cervical spine meets the base of his skull, and I feel his warmth. “And lodged here.” I touch the left side of his lower chest at the level of the sixth rib.

As I smell his earthy cologne I’m reminded of our backyard this morning in the sun. Then I smell death. I’m aware of my nitrile-sheathed hands, of his fine attire and perfect grooming, unprotected beyond the blue papery booties he slipped on before he entered the autopsy room. Benton is comfortable in places where it doesn’t appear he belongs. He always seems untouched by the ugliness around him.

“The bullet traveled in an acutely downward direction, penetrating the left lung and chest wall and lodging under the skin,” I explain to him. “Bilateral fractures of pars interarticularis and complete disruption of the C-two, C-three junction with transection of the spinal cord, and no swelling of surrounding tissue, and no wonder. He didn’t live long enough to have a vital response. Death was due to traumatic spondylolisthesis, or hangman’s fracture.”

“Maybe the bullet was deflected and that’s how it ended up where it did?” Benton is trying to envision it and having the same problem I am.

No matter how many different ways I reconstruct the shooter’s and Nari’s positions in relation to each other, I can’t make sense of a bullet entering at the base of his skull and traveling straight down before lodging beneath the skin of his chest.

“Based on what you can see here on CT”—I open a scan on the display—“the wound track doesn’t show any sort of deflection. The trajectory is a fairly straightforward path downward and slightly to the left of the midline where the bullet stopped.”

“Obviously the shooter was elevated. Typically one might expect on a rooftop.” Benton looks at the scan, at the plane of the wound track, which shows the presence of hemorrhage downward through the neck to the left lung apex. “Except there’s a problem with that considering the location,” he adds.

I open a drawer and find a bullet probe, thirty inches long, black, made of a flexible fiberglass. I tell Anne we need Tyvek coveralls. What I intend to do next is going to be messy.

“I suspect his head was bent as he lifted bags of groceries from the back of his car at the instant the bullet struck him,” I say to Benton. “Otherwise it likely would have exited from the front of his neck, in and out, and we probably wouldn’t have found it or what was left of it after it struck pavement, a tree, a building. A lighter powder charge or not. Have you heard from Marino?”

“He and Leo Gantz are at the station and almost ready for us. We need to figure out exactly where the shooter was when he killed Nari. There aren’t many high-rises in Cambridge and nothing like that near Farrar Street. The tallest apartment building around there is three stories. I doubt that would be high enough.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“It’s important we find that out because I believe the flight path isn’t a fluke,” he says.

“Lucy has suggested this particular bullet may have been hand-loaded with the intention of remaining largely intact and not exiting the body.” I pass that along and he has no discernible reaction.

Anne gives me a pair of white coveralls and I lean against the edge of the carrier and pull them on.

Then Benton says, “The shootout in Miami in 1986. The FBI outnumbered the suspects four to one, the two bank robbers shot multiple times with one hundred and ten grain hollowpoints that didn’t have sufficient stopping power. Two of ours dead and five wounded because we didn’t have the firepower, which began the big debate of light and fast ammo versus heavy and deep. The shooter who murdered Nari understands the concept and with this one particular round implemented the best of both. That’s my theory.”

“The recovered bullet is one-ninety grain,” I tell him. “Certainly that’s heavy.”

“But if a lighter powder charge was used the bullet’s not going to have the penetration required for exiting the body,” he says. “The engraving on it and the lighter powder charge were different from what was used in New Jersey.”

“You don’t think it’s the same rifle in the three cases?”

“I don’t think the motive is the same,” he says.

“The motive this time is he wanted the bullet recovered,” I suppose. “Because he’s sending us a message.”

“It would seem he’s sending you one,” Benton says.

“Well unless Leo Gantz is sending messages and has access to a high-power rifle and solid copper bullets super and subsonic, his confession isn’t going to hold up.” I point out the absurdity of it. “Especially if he claims he came up behind Nari and shot him at close range. I’m guessing he’s claiming the weapon was a handgun which he then conveniently dropped into the sewer.”

“Unfortunately I’ve heard of far more ridiculous confessions resulting in convictions,” Benton says. “The path of least resistance. Cops love confessions and some of them don’t care if they aren’t true.”

“Marino cares.” I spread the pouch open farther.

Bare feet and legs are pale, and I feel the chill of refrigerated dead flesh through the thin layer of my gloves as I check for broken bones and the slightest blush of contusions that might indicate Nari had an earlier struggle with Leo Gantz or anyone. Rigor mortis is complete, the muscles rigid, and I move up past the tattoos covering old scars caused by needles, up to the knees, the thighs and when I reach his genitals I get a surprise.

THE RING-STYLE CURVED BARBELL
enters through the urethra and exits through the top of the glans. I wonder if the piercing gave his wife pleasure or pain, and what the healing time was after Jamal Nari got it.

I check Luke’s report, and there it is under gross anatomy of the genitalia. “I’m glad he didn’t remove it,” I say.

“Why’s that?” Benton looks on, his demeanor typical. Not particularly surprised or curious.

“It’s an awkward item to return with someone’s personal effects. Unless it’s a precious metal or someone makes a specific request I leave it alone.”

“Yet one more example of not being able to judge a book by its cover,” Anne observes. “Drug smuggling and body piercing. You don’t find out who somebody really is until they end up here.”

I move up his torso. I check his arms and his hands, and when I get to his neck I touch my index finger to the wound at the back of it where the bullet entered and separated his brain from the rest of him. A small entrance wound no bigger than a buttonhole was the equivalent of a transformer blowing, and the lights went out instantly. He didn’t know what happened. He had no warning and not a moment of fear or pain.

“At least this killer is merciful,” I say to Benton.

“That’s not why,” he replies. “He’s not trying to be merciful. What he’s doing is practical. It’s tidy and efficient and he’s also showing off his remarkable skill. This person wants our admiration and he wants our fear.”

“Well he’s not getting either, not from me.” I press my fingers into the area of the chest where the intact bullet was removed.

There’s no bogginess, no contusion or tissue response. By the time the bullet penetrated the lung and chest wall, Nari was dead. Picking up a scalpel from a cart I cut through the twine that sutures the Y-incision, opening him up again. The odor is intense and foul and I reach inside with both hands and lift the heavy plastic bag out. It’s transparent, filled with sectioned organs and a bloody fluid, and I set it inside the sink. I reposition myself at the back of his head and work my hands under the shoulders, and Anne helps me turn him on his side.

The fiberglass probe slides easily into the entrance wound at the base of his skull and I thread it along the track, making slight adjustments as I feel resistance from ribs, but not from organs because they’ve been removed. I’m careful not to force, finally stopping. The tip of the probe peeks out of a small incision in the chest that Luke made when he removed the bullet.

I lower the body to the carrier and step away, contemplating the best solution to a significant problem. Rigor is set. Breaking it in muscles of the abdomen, the lower back and pelvis would be like bending iron. It will begin passing in several hours and be mostly gone by morning but I can’t wait.

“I could use your help,” I say to Benton. Then to Anne, “I need a footstool and a camera. But first we need to suture him back up.”

A
HALF HOUR LATER I’M
in an Audi R8, black with carbon fiber blades on the sides. The V10 engine’s guttural rumble draws stares from people who admire powerful cars and don’t care what they cost or that they guzzle gas like a binge drinker.

Lucy and her supercharged modes of getting around in life seem to be wearing off on Benton. It’s not that he didn’t have an appreciation of the exotic and expensive but he wasn’t conspicuous in his consumption until his FBI boss committed suicide last year. Not sorry or sad, a well-deserved ending to a story rife with the abuse of power and the deliberate destruction of innocents, and that is the truth about how Benton felt. He showed sympathy only to the family Ed Granby left.

In private, my husband didn’t care what drove the head of the Boston Division to lock the doors of his house and hang himself. Benton didn’t care that he didn’t care and then his attitude began penetrating every region of his psyche. He decided he would do what he wants. He would say what he wants, buy what he wants, give away what he wants and be selfish if it was honestly merited. Critical and judgmental people be damned.

A midlife crisis would be another explanation but it wouldn’t be an accurate one. Granby was maniacal in his efforts to end Benton’s career and eradicate his legacy. He tried to marginalize and emasculate and ended up dead. It was the justice most people secretly wish for but will never express and Benton was liberated in a way I didn’t expect. Bad people rarely get what’s coming to them and good guys really don’t win because the damage exceeds the punishment, assuming there’s any punishment at all. Prison and even the death penalty don’t undo a sexual homicide or mass murders or bring back a child abused and killed by a pedophile. I heard the bleak remarks and observations so often I stopped listening. Benton used to be cynical. He’s not anymore.

In East Cambridge now, armed and dangerous in Italian sunglasses, a shoulder holster under his jacket, he has one hand on the wheel. A black leather and titanium bracelet is loose on his wrist, and he turns his growly car left on Bent Street, downshifting. The engine roars like a dragon.

“The damn smell is caught way up inside my nose.” He’s complained about it several times since we drove away from the CFC.

“It goes with the turf,” I repeat.

“I don’t usually get up close and personal with someone who’s been autopsied.”

“That wasn’t typical and you were a good sport.” It seems trivial to say but I’m sincere.

“You don’t seem bothered. Maybe your sense of smell has gotten desensitized.” He’s said that before too. He says it often.

“Quite the opposite thankfully. Odors have their own story to tell and the secret is to block them out after they’re no longer relevant.”

“I can only do that with what I hear and see.” He’s thinking about his cases, which are the same as mine but our experiences are different.

Vastly and darkly different, the monsters he meets are fond of video-recording the pain and terror they inflict so they can replay it later as they fantasize. I’ve seen enough to know I prefer the cold forlornness of bodies that can’t suffer anymore. I’m left with sensations, not much color, shades of red, a little green, a little yellow, mostly odors and the inanimate noises of metal against metal, wheels rolling, water slapping against tables and floors and drumming against steel.