Flesh and Blood (37 page)

“Afternoon,” he says to Lucy. “This yours?”

“I’m just crew.” She secures the tires with bright yellow chocks.

“Kuster is pulling up,” Marino announces.

“Ready when I’m done.” Lucy’s not going anywhere until the helicopter has been refueled and she’s satisfied it’s safe from anyone who might be tempted to tamper with it.

She’s obsessive about locking the cabin, cockpit, baggage and battery compartments, the cowling, everything, and her precautions aren’t unusual. But I detect her vigilance is in overdrive and I know she’s armed, a Colt .45 in a concealment holster under her flight suit. I felt it when I hugged her in Boston. I asked her about it and she shrugged me off.

The security gate slides open on its tracks and Jack Kuster drives through in his dark blue SUV, parking a safe distance from the fuel truck. He rolls down his window.

“Sorry I’m late,” he calls out to us. “Been busy in the kitchen.”

I HAVE NO DOUBT
he’s spent the day preoccupied with the onerous task of mixing up ballistic gelatin, creating blocks or molded shapes of a hydrolyzed collagen derived from animal skin, connective tissue and bone.

We have a lot of control test fires to do before it gets dark. We’re almost out of time. The day has cheated us. It seems nothing is on our side and I watch Jack Kuster carefully, knowing him only by reputation, specifically the praises Marino sings. Kuster climbs out and grins boldly at Lucy as if they know each other and she doesn’t smile back. She holds his stare for an instant, then grabs up several hard cases and bags, whichever are the heaviest.

“The biggest problem was how to mimic bone, specifically the skull,” Kuster says as if he’s in the middle of a conversation I know nothing about. “I considered putting a motorcycle helmet on the jelly head but it would be too unwieldy. A problem for another day and I gave up after making a mess. That leaves us one to play with.” He means one molded gelatin block. “It’s not a situation I generally find myself in because usually we’re targeting center mass and not taking head shots.”

“There’s nothing usual about this killer,” I reply.

“Well he’s definitely aiming for the head, the upper spine unless he’s just damn lucky.”

“It’s not luck,” I answer. “Not three times. Possibly more if there are other shooting deaths we don’t know about.”

“There aren’t,” Lucy says as if she has information we don’t. “Three with more on the way. That’s the message we’re supposed to get. Number three out of seven.”

Because of the seven polished pennies on my wall but I don’t bring it up.

“My point is if he’s military or former, it’s not what he was taught.” Kuster rearranges gear in the back of the SUV, making room for what we brought. “We go for center mass.”

“Russian special forces don’t,” Lucy counters. “They’re trained for neck and head shots.”

“So now we’re looking for Russians?” Kuster stares at her.

“There’s an exodus of Russian-trained special ops because of what’s going on over there,” she says as if she’s been talking to Briggs. “That and hundreds of billions of dollars out the door, draining the economy. Not to mention drugs.”

Benton would know this too. The FBI gets briefed by the CIA. Lucy’s information probably came from him.

“It all depends on the weapon.” Marino shoves ammo boxes around. “There’s a shitload out there now that you didn’t have in Iraq.” He directs this at Kuster. “And yeah a shitload of stuff they’ve probably got overseas that’s not in circulation here, not public circulation anyway.”

“Smart guns, sniper rifles with computerized scopes and we do have them here,” Kuster says. “One ballistic gelatin head is what we got and I again apologize for that. I thought about getting a pig carcass. I still could if you’ve got time tomorrow, if you wanna hang around another day. I also know some pretty good bars.”

“No carcasses of pigs or anything else. The gelatin’s going to be bad enough in this weather.” I open a back door and tuck Lucy’s and my overnight bags on the floor because we’re running out of room.

“Who? You squeamish?” Kuster says to me.

“I don’t do tests on animals alive or dead.”

“But you’ll do them on people.”

“Deceased ones, yes. With signed consent.”

“You get signed consent from dead people?” His banter is a blend of flirting and needling that I have no patience for right now. “That sounds like quite a trick. Is that why they call you Doctor Death?”

“Whoever
they
is? You’ll have to ask them why they call me that.”

“You always this unfriendly?”

“Not always,” I reply.

“They’ve got this synthetic stuff that you don’t have to mix and it doesn’t stink,” Lucy comments as if Kuster was born yesterday.

“That would be too easy. He wants it to be disgusting.” Marino’s face is slick with sweat.

“We don’t have it in our budget to buy premade stuff that’s not disgusting.” Kuster’s attention is fixed on Lucy.

“I’m going inside to pay.” She trots across the ramp, her boots light on the blacktop, and somehow she manages to look cool in the sweltering heat.

“You can’t afford me,” Kuster calls after her.

“Not in the market,” she fires back at him.

“Here we go.” Marino glowers at both of them.

“How much by the pound?” Kuster yells.

“Out of season.” She pushes through the glass door leading inside the FBO.

“No kidding she’s out of season all right,” Marino says in a loaded way but Kuster isn’t listening.

The more he flirts with Lucy, the more she’ll flirt back in the way she flirts. I’d be the first to admit that he’s a compelling man, in his forties, tall and muscular like a clean-cut Ken doll in cotton twill desert-colored BDU pants and a beige T-shirt, a Smith & Wesson .40 cal in a pancake holster. I have no doubt he’s already been told he doesn’t have what it takes to wind Lucy’s clock. Marino would have repeated his favorite cliché and offered all the details. He might have gone so far as to suggest there are things going on that are suspicious, weird coincidences that are too close to home. Marino and his big mouth.

He opens the SUV’s front passenger’s door as if he and Kuster are partners and I’m a civilian ride-along. I fasten my shoulder harness. I sit quietly. I can’t get out of my mood or begin to fully understand it. I’m angry with Marino. I’m angry with everyone.

“What’s new?” Kuster props an arm on the back of the seat, turning to talk to me, his handsome face tan with a blush of a burn on his nose, his eyes grayed-out by sunglasses.

“The FBI’s been turning the Rosado estate and the sailboat inside out,” Marino answers for me.

I send Benton an email, telling him we’re safely on the ground, and at the same time a text message lands from Bryce.

My email password’s not working is yours?

Mine is fine
, I reply.

Can you ask Lucy?

“Rand Bloom’s gray pickup truck was recovered from long-term parking at Logan,” Marino is saying. “And remember the white truck you told me about? The one that hit a car at the Edgewater Ferry the day before Julie Eastman was shot? You said it looked like a U-Haul bobtail?”

“You think you found it,” Kuster says rather than asks and I’m reminded again of the boxy white construction truck we saw when we were driving to Nari’s crime scene.

It also looked like a U-Haul bobtail. Marino blared his horn at it and the driver pulled over to let us pass. The killer may have been right in front of us and we had no idea. It’s just like everything else. We’re being played, made fools of, following the monster’s master plan. How amusing we must be.

“Left at a marina not far from the Rosado house in Marblehead Neck.” Marino continues passing along the latest developments, details that I feel certain won’t help us. “Plates removed, nothing inside except bleach. You could smell it a block away.”

“So the person driving it, probably the killer, ditched it. Then after he killed Rand Bloom he left in his pickup truck and skipped town,” Kuster replies as if it’s a fact.

And tailed Benton’s car, played cat and mouse with us on the highway.

“That sucks but I already knew about it,” Kuster says.

If he already knew then the FBI has contacted him, and my anger spikes. They’re asking questions, poking around, and I stare at the back of Marino’s head. What has he been saying deliberately and thoughtlessly? What CFC business has he divulged without having the common sense to anticipate the harm it might do? The FBI shunned Lucy back in the day and it would shun her now but in a far different way. It would be a different type of judgment, one that could rob her of her freedom and her life.

“A day late a dollar short, that’s the Bureau for you. Another waste of taxpayer dollars at work,” Marino says as Lucy emerges from the FBO, jogging to the SUV.

“Who’s she again?” Kuster asks me, and I don’t believe he doesn’t know and I don’t know how anyone can be playful right now. “Your daughter, your little sister? She really fly that big bird all by herself?”

Lucy slides in back with me.

“Bryce’s email,” I say to her. “A problem?”

“A security situation. I’ll explain later,” she says.

I glance at my watch. It’s quarter of five. We have at most three hours of usable daylight left.

T
HE DRIVE TO THE
Morris County Sheriff’s Department training center and firing range is thirty minutes in the late afternoon traffic.

I feel time. It’s tangible like a strong headwind pushing us back into a past that yawns forbidden and immutable. Lucy holds something close to her that she won’t share and I sense that eventually I will recognize whatever it is. She’s absorbed in her iPad while I stress over tests and reconstructions that I have no faith will catch a killer who has gone viral on the Internet. Since we left Boston
Copperhead
is trending, Lucy has informed us. I can’t abide the attention evil people get.

I don’t like the reminder that much of my energy is spent building a case instead of stopping the person responsible. It’s my job to prepare for future juries, for future attorneys, to make sure I’ve explored every molecule of an investigation and documented all of it. But that’s not enough and I’m beyond being conservative. I’m not sure I’m capable of it anymore.

Alone in my frustrated defiant thoughts I watch the scenery of handsome old homes, of horse farms behind neat fences, and meadows and parks with outcrops of purplish pudding stone. Foliage is lush and shadows dapple the roads, on West Hanover Avenue now, in and out of brightness that hurts my eyes. Lucy is busy on the Internet and I have my back to her as I stare out the window.

You’re making this too personal
.

I keep telling myself that but it does no good, and for an instant I’m sentimental. Hand-painted signs advertise homegrown produce the Garden State is famous for, and I swallow hard. I feel choked up with emotions I didn’t expect. If only life were different. I’d like to pick out sweet corn, tomatoes, herbs and apples. I long to smell their freshness and feel their potential. Instead what’s around me is like a noxious fog. Deceit. Lucy has her own agenda and she and Benton have been talking.

She’s lying to me and so is he.

Kuster slows the SUV as the sprawling complex comes into sight. The brick and glass crime labs back up to the training academy, a vast tarmac surrounded by shot-up and burned-out buildings, and cars and overturned buses used for simulated scene investigation, for firefighting, K-9 and SWAT.

Beyond are miles of rolling empty grassland with berms and range towers, and momentarily we’re bumping over a dirt road not much wider than a path, thick dust clouding up. Recent violent storms hit here first but you’d never know it. The earth has been baked bone dry by the sudden heat, still oppressive at this hour, hovering at almost ninety degrees. Tomorrow will be hotter.

We park behind one of many elevated wooden structures with corrugated green metal roofs, nothing under them but concrete pads, unpainted wooden shooting benches, sandbags, folding chairs. We get out and begin gathering our gear, and Kuster grabs a large black case, a precision guided firearm, a PGF that implements the drone technology of a tracking scope and guided trigger.

“SWAT’s latest greatest,” he continues to explain as we haul equipment through the hammering heat, setting it on the concrete pad, on the sturdy wooden benches. “I’m not saying the killer is using a PGF but he could be.”

“Where does one get them?” I ask.

“The market’s mostly wealthy big game hunters, and some law enforcement and the military but not many yet. It’s new technology. Twenty, thirty thousand dollars a pop, and you’re on a list. It’s a relatively small clientele with no good place to hide if you’re a proud owner.”

“Is anybody looking at these lists?”

“Here come the Feds. Their specialty is pencils and lists.” Marino is typically snide.

“I wanted you to see what’s possible,” Kuster says to me as he continues checking out Lucy and ignoring Marino’s bluster. “A bull’s-eye at a thousand yards is easy as pie. A novice could hit it. Even Lucy could.”

“Where’s the soft bullet trap you dreamed up?” Marino snaps open the gun case that is tagged as evidence.

“Right there.” He points.

In a weed-infested area of grass below and to the left of where we’re setting up is another concrete pad, this one with no roof. At the edge of it and pointing downrange is a section of steel pipe approximately four inches in diameter and six feet long. It’s wrapped in a thick foam material typically used for winterizing and “packed with fiberfill real tight,” Kuster describes.

“And I got some special loaded subsonic rounds for low velocity,” he adds. “Three hundred Win Mags, one-ninety grain LRX, magnum primer, ten grains of Alliant Unique powder. It’s not what was used but it will tell us something.”

“If you don’t think it’s what was used then why bother?” Lucy asks.

“For one thing nobody’s got to go downrange and try to find it. And for another the bullet remains intact, its open tip doesn’t petal and I get to see the rifling picture-perfect and how about you make yourself useful.” He’s turned up the flame on his flirting. “In the back of the SUV are a headless manikin and an ice chest. Be a good do bee and bring my friend Ichabod and the jelly head here, plus the toolbox.”