Flesh and Blood (44 page)

I know how stubborn Briggs can be, and scuba diving is out of the question right now especially if strenuous underwater searching is involved. Hard-boiled Army he’s fearless. He thinks he’s invincible. He’s ungracious about aging and fiercely proud. He’ll kill himself if he’s not careful. I will have to outmaneuver him.

Stagnant air settles over me as I check the weather app on my phone. It’s already eighty-six degrees at five
A.M.
, hotter than South Florida, which is a balmy seventy-three with afternoon thunderstorms expected. The sound of traffic is a constant rush like a heavy surf or the wind. A power line hums. If diving is required then something needs to be recovered and I wonder what it is.

I look down at the illuminated swimming pool as blue as turquoise in the hot darkness four floors below. I can barely make out red umbrellas furled like rock candy swizzle sticks and white lounge chairs lined up like piano keys. I return to the coolness of the living room and check flights into Fort Lauderdale. There’s a nonstop Virgin America flight out of Newark in two and a half hours.

I’ll be on it but I’m not going to tell Lucy yet. She’ll try to come with me and she can’t. She’ll insist she send for a private plane and I’m not going to let her. Whatever is happening can’t involve her because it already does. Carrie Grethen. Lucy still has feelings, old powerful ones. Love, hate, lust, a murderous loathing, whatever it is it’s deadly not just to herself but also to everyone. I place a pod in the espresso machine. I listen to the pumping of hot water forced through injector holes as I replay our conversation from last night, recalling the look in her eyes and what I perceived. I smell the bold Brazilian blend flowing through the nozzle into a glass cup as I make the plane reservation.

I’ll let Lucy know what I’m doing after I’ve already taken off. She and Marino need to go home. They need to stay out of it. I leave my spandex shorts and top on and pull cargo pants and a polo shirt over them. I skip a shower. I don’t bother with makeup. I know what I’m going to do, and I pick up the espresso, black with a tan froth on top.

I’m about to try Benton again when he calls me first. I’m right about where he is and why. Rosado was murdered. He was shot. Briggs got in around midnight and did the autopsy. The reason it
isn’t finished yet
is biological evidence has yet to be recovered from the dive site, from the bottom of the sea.

“We have the rifle,” Benton continues to explain. “It was on the yacht. A PGF 300 Win Mag with a muzzle brake and rounds with solid copper bullets, Barnes one-ninety grain polished like jewelry.”

“Are any of them engraved?”

“No.”

“Did you find the tumbler? Did you find where the gunsmithing and hand loading were done?”

“Not yet but the rifle belongs to Elaine Rosado. There were no prints on it. After it was swabbed for DNA it was sprayed with a chemical reagent and a residue lit up like Saint Elmo’s fire.”

“Bleach. Someone wiped it down and made sure any DNA was destroyed.”

“Apparently Mrs. Rosado bought it for her husband,” Benton says. “Several times a year he did big game hunting in places like Tanzania, Montenegro, Cambodia, and apparently no one noticed the rifle was missing from a locked gun closet in their West Palm home.”

“What has Lucy said to you about Carrie?” I sit on the arm of the couch.

“After she left you last night we were on the phone. It sounds like Carrie is in league with Troy and that’s classic. It’s what she does so well. The male thinks he’s dominant and he couldn’t be more mistaken,” Benton says.

“Marino doesn’t believe it.”

“He doesn’t want to believe it,” Benton says. “Let me back up. I suspect the rifle was transported to West Palm Beach yesterday morning when Troy flew home on his father’s G-Five. At some point prior to the shooting it ended up on the yacht, which is where the police found it when they searched it last night.”

“What about spent cartridge cases? Did the police find those?”

“No. The magazine is missing and I’m guessing it went overboard, that Carrie tossed it. The Rosados know her as Sasha Sarin, the name on a passport and other documents stolen in Ukraine last year. When Troy flew down here yesterday there was a second passenger on the plane by that name.”

“Did Congressman Rosado know the real identity of the crisis manager he hired?”

“I’m sure not,” Benton says. “No one in his right mind would hire Carrie Grethen.”

“SARIN,” I REPEAT, AND
she must have found it enormously amusing when the opportunity presented itself, a person with the same name as a deadly nerve gas.

“The pilots described her as attractive, in her forties, thin with light blond hair and large framed glasses,” Benton says. “When she got on the jet with Troy yesterday morning she was carrying a guitar case. The same type of guitar Jamal Nari had and as you recall there was a case missing from his condo. Three guitars but only two cases.”

“A guitar case?” I’m baffled.

“I strongly suspect that’s what Carrie had the rifle in. If it was broken down it would fit just fine, a RainSong guitar case that she carried on board herself. One of the pilots noticed it because he’s a musician, and he said she buckled it into an empty seat and carried it off after they landed. She wouldn’t let them touch it.”

“She was in Nari’s house, unpacked his guitars and placed them back on their stands? Then stole one of the cases?”

“Yes.”

“When? Not after he was shot. There wouldn’t have been time,” I decide. “If he packed his guitars before he went out to run errands then Carrie must have gone inside their apartment while he and his wife were out.”

“Locks and alarm codes have never been a problem for her. She would have reveled in walking around the apartment, thrilled by the fantasy of what she was about to do. She stole something her next victim cared about, taking a souvenir, a symbol of him in advance. When he returned home and was carrying groceries inside he would have noticed his guitars were back on their stands and wondered how the hell that happened. It probably was one of the last things he ever thought.”

Benton recites all this as if it’s indisputable. He sounds dispassionate and sure of his facts as if he’s talking about a chronic illness that went into remission for years and now is back. He can predict its progression and every symptom, and I’m desperate to get to Florida. My anxieties are in overdrive as I envision what he describes, and I wonder if Carrie intended to kill Rand Bloom. What was he doing at the Rosado house? Was he meeting her and did they know each other?

In his former career with the Department of Justice Bloom made sure charges against the congressman were dropped. Rosado had a faithful ally and protector in Bloom. But he may have become a liability, a problem. He must have known about the drugs, the money laundering, assuming all of that is true. Maybe Bloom knew too much. Maybe Carrie didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. Or more likely she was just in the mood when she thrust a knife into his heart, and that’s what Benton thinks too.

“She felt like killing him whether she planned it or not,” he says. “And then she didn’t feel like killing Detective Henderson when he showed up. It was more fun to abduct and terrorize him and she’s reminding us she can be decent because in her mind she is. What motivates someone like this has little to do with expediency. Some of it is scripted. Some of it isn’t. But she has an end game, a goal. It’s Lucy. Carrie’s come back for Lucy.”

“To do what?” The thought of it is so enraging it’s all I can do to talk. “What exactly does the damn bitch want?”

“In her blighted fantasies she may think they’ll get together again.”

“Lucy’s in extreme danger.”

“All of us are. Maybe more than she is, frankly. Carrie wants to get to her and we’re in the way. In fact we’re weapons she can use to hurt her.”

“Was Carrie on the yacht when Rosado was killed?”

“She must have been.”

I walk into the bathroom to pack up my cosmetic bag as Benton goes on to describe the aftermath of the shooting. There was so much panic and chaos it wasn’t discovered right away that Troy was gone and most likely Carrie was with him.

“The yacht has a rigid inflatable tender, a twenty-foot RIB which also was gone,” Benton says as I zip up an overnight bag. “It’s presumed he took off in it. The crew was in the wheelhouse and the main galley at the time of the shooting and they couldn’t have seen anyone on the uppermost deck unless they were specifically monitoring that part of the yacht, which they weren’t. Positioning on the helipad would have placed the shooter thirty-six feet above the water and some sixty yards from where Rosado was killed.”

“It must be a very big yacht.”

“A hundred and seventy feet.”

“Why the helipad? What makes anybody think the shots were fired from up there?”

“That’s where the rifle was found. In a deck hatch where aviation equipment is kept, life vests, extra headsets, things like that. I just sent you CT images from the morgue and the video clip his wife took. She was filming her husband’s dive. It’s only about two minutes. When she realized something bad had happened she turned the camera off.”

I look while we talk, the empty ocean a ruffled dark blue, a red dive flag on a yellow float moving with the chop, and I overhear voices in the background talking about cutting up another cantaloupe. A woman—Elaine Rosado I assume—tells a member of the crew that the cantaloupe isn’t cold enough and she wants another martini. She points the camera at her husband, the recording herky-jerky at first and then steadier.

I see his image in high resolution, his scant dark hair plastered to his balding head, his heavy jowls and chin tan and stubbly. The amber lenses of his dive mask are looking directly at the camera as he holds up the BCD’s power inflator until he’s comfortable with his buoyancy. It’s a stiff chop and the regulator is in his mouth.

“You all right, hon?” his wife calls out. “It looks rough. Maybe you should just come back in and have a drink!” She laughs.

He forms a circle over his head with both gloved hands, giving the universal dive signal that he’s okay. Everything is fine, and he floats on the surface, waiting to descend the mooring line. I press pause.

“Who was he diving with?” I ask.

“The dive master had gone down first to make sure everything was clear around the wreck, making sure there were no other divers, specifically spear fishermen. As you know it’s legal to use scuba gear while spearfishing in Florida and there have been some accidents, both serious injuries and fatalities. There was someone shot in that area just the other day.”

“Ninety feet is a long way to go to do a recon,” I reply. “Rosado would have to wait on the surface for at least ten minutes and that’s a long time too, especially when he’s already got the regulator in his mouth. He’s going to suck in a lot of air in ten minutes.”

It occurs to me that the dive master may not have wanted to be anywhere near him. Maybe he was involved in the homicide. I suggest this to Benton.

“There’s no evidence of it and I don’t think so,” he says. “Apparently it was S-O-P for him to check out a site first to make sure no one else was diving it and that everything seemed safe, the visibility adequate etcetera. An Australian guy who works on the yacht full-time, he’d filled the tanks the day before, checked all the gear.”

“How much air was in Rosado’s tank?”

“He started out with thirty-three hundred PSI.”

“And when he died?”

“We don’t know and in a few minutes you’ll see why.”

I resume the video, and Rosado is floating alone. He looks at the dive computer on his wrist. His head jerks slightly forward and to the right, and next he’s facedown in the water. He’s just been shot. I back up, watching that part of it again and again as I remember what Jack Kuster said about starting out test fires at a thousand yards. If it was too far we could always “walk it in.” Sniper terminology.

When a shooter is attempting to hit a target he might fire multiple times, recalculating the DOPE, each shot landing closer and I look for water splashing. I scrutinize the rolling swells around Rosado, the dark blue water rising and falling, lifting and settling smoothly as he bobs with his mask on, his regulator in his mouth, waiting, leaning his head back, looking around.

There. A tiny splash, like a small fish breaking the surface. I back up and play it again, a splash, as if someone threw a rock. About ten feet from Rosado and I see another splash, this one closer and he seems to sense it. He turns to the left and instantly he’s facedown. Three seconds later there are two loud pops.

He’s lifted completely out of the water and spun through the air like a limp frog, and I study this for a while, zooming in, detecting the spray of blood in the bright blueness as his body is propelled by pressurized gas blasting. The regulator is out of his mouth, its hoses whipping around as he pirouettes before his mask and BCD rip off. He sinks into the water, his head caved in, one side of it gone.

“Bob? Oh my God! Bob! What’s happening!” his wife screams and then there are no images, no sounds, and I open another file, this one a CT scan from the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The entrance wound is in the back of the skull, just to the right of the lambdoidal suture, a small tangential hole. The solid copper open tip bullet expanded on impact, its four petals causing devastating damage as they buzz-sawed through the occipital, temporal and frontal lobes. The bullet exited through the left side of the mandible, which is missing as are most of the teeth and part of the skull.

“The flight path is downward from right to left,” I say to Benton. “It required at least four shots. If you replay the video clip and look closely you can see the shooter walking the bullets in closer until Rosado is hit. Then two more rapid shots struck the tank. That doesn’t sound like the other cases. Granted Rosado was a moving target, bobbing in a heavy surf but it doesn’t seem the same. I don’t believe it is.”

“Troy,” Benton says. “Someone who’s not experienced or skilled with a PGF or firearms in general.”