“If Eddings had figured it out,” Lucy said, “they never could have pulled it off.”
“Exactly,” I said. “If any of us had figured it out in time, this wouldn’t be happening.” I watched a woman in a lab coat maneuver Toto’s arms to lift a box. “Tell me,” I said, “what was Loren McComb’s demeanor when Janet interviewed her?”
“Detached. Absolutely no emotion.”
“Hand’s people are very powerful. “I guess so if you can help your boyfriend one minute and they can get you to murder him the next.” Lucy was watching her robot, too, and didn’t seem pleased by what she was seeing.
“Well, wherever the Bureau is detaining Ms. McComb, I hope it’s where the New Zionists can’t find her.”
“She’s secluded,” Lucy said as Toto suddenly stopped in his tracks and the box thudded heavily to the floor.
“What have you got the shoulder joint’s rpm set at?” she called out.
“Eight.”
“Let’s lower it to five. Damn.” She rubbed her face again. “That’s all we need.”
“Well, I’m going to leave you and go on back to Jefferson,” I said as I got up.
She got a strange look in her eyes. “You staying on the security floor, as usual?” she asked.
“Yes.” I
“I guess it doesn’t matter, but that’s where Loren McComb is,” she said.
In fact, my suite was next to hers, but unlike me, she was confined. As I sat up in bed for a while trying to read, I could hear her TV through the wall. I listened to her switch channels, and then recognized “Star Trek” sounds as she watched an old episode rerun.
For hours we were only several feet apart and she did not know it, I imagined her calmly mixing hydrochloric acid and cyanide in a bottle, and directing gas into the compressor’s intake valve. Instantly, the long black hose would have violently jerked in the water, and then only the river’s sluggish current would have moved it anymore.
“See that in your sleep,” I said to her, though she could not hear me. “in your sleep for the rest of your life. Every single goddamn night.” I angrily snapped off my lamp.
CHAPTER 13
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, FOG WAS DENSE BEYOND my windows, and Quantico was quieter than usual.
I did not hear a single gunshot on any range, and it seemed the Marines were sleeping in. As I walked out of double glass doors leading to the area where the elevators were, I heard security locks click free next door to my room.
I punched the down button and glanced around as two female agents in conservative suits walked on either side of a light-skinned black woman who was staring straight at my face as if we had met before. Loren McComb had defiant dark eyes, and pride ran deep within her, as if it were the spring that fed her survival and made all that she did flourish.
“Good morning,” I said with no feeling.
“Dr. Scarpetta,” one of the agents somberly greeted me as the four of us boarded the elevator together.
We were silent to the first floor, and I could smell the sour staleness of this woman who had taught Joel Hand how to build a bomb. She was wearing tight faded jeans, sneakers and a long, full white blouse that could not hide an impressive build that must have contributed to Eddings’ fatal error. I stood behind her and her wardens and watched the sliver of her face that I could see. She licked her lips often, staring straight ahead at doors which did not open soon enough for me.
Silence was thick like the fog outdoors, and then we were released on the first floor. I took my time getting off, and I watched the two agents lead McComb away without laying a finger on her. They did not have to, because they could, were it needed, just like that. They escorted Loren McComb down a corridor, then turned into one of the myriads of enclosed walkways called gerbil tubes, and I was surprised when she paused to look back at me again. She met my unfriendly stare and moved on, one step closer to what I hoped would be a long pilgrimage in the penitentiary.