I smiled at him as I unlocked my door. ‘Doesn’t have the important things like a siren and lights.’
He laughed. ‘Marino and me are in the same bowling league. His team’s the Balls of Fire, mine’s the Lucky Strikes. That ole boy’s about the worst sport I ever seen. Drinks beer and eats. Then thinks everybody’s cheating. He brought a girl the last time.’ He shook his head. ‘She bowled like the damn Flintstones, dressed like them, too. In this leopard-skin thing. All that was missing was a bone in her hair. Well, tell him we’ll talk.’
He walked off, his keys jingling.
‘Detective Grigg, thanks for your help,’ I said.
He gave me a nod and climbed into his Caprice.
When I designed my house, I made sure the laundry room was directly off the garage because after working scenes like this one, I did not want to track death through the rooms of my private life. Within minutes of my getting out of my car, my clothes were in the washing machine, shoes and boots in an industrial sink, where I scrubbed them with detergent and a stiff brush.
Wrapping up in a robe I kept hanging on the back of the door, I headed to the master bedroom and took a long, hot shower. I was worn out and discouraged. Right now, I did not have the energy to imagine her, or her name, or who she had been, and I pushed images and odors from my mind. I fixed myself a drink and a salad, staring dismally at the big bowl of Halloween candy on the counter as I thought of plants waiting to be potted on the porch. Then I called Marino.
‘Listen,’ I said to him when he answered the phone. ‘I think Benton should be here for this in the morning.’
There was a long pause. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Meaning you want me to tell him to get his ass to Richmond. Versus your telling him.’
‘If you wouldn’t mind. I’m beat.’ ‘No problem. What time?’
‘Whenever he wants. I’ll be down there all day.’
I went back to the office in my house to check e-mail before I went to bed. Lucy rarely called when she could use the computer to tell me how and where she was. My niece was an FBI agent, the technical specialist for their Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT. She could be sent anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.
Like a fretful mother, I found myself frequently checking for messages from her, dreading the day her pager went off, sending her to Andrews Air Force Base with the boys, to board yet another C-141 cargo plane. Stepping around stacks of journals waiting to be read and thick medical tomes that I recently had bought but had not yet shelved, I sat at my desk. My office was the most lived-in room in my house, and I had designed it with a fireplace and large windows overlooking a rocky bend in the James River.
Logging on to America Online, or AOL, I was greeted by a mechanical male voice announcing that I had mail. I had e-mail about various cases, trials, professional meetings and journal articles, and one message from someone I did not recognize. His user name was deadoc. Immediately, I was uneasy. There was no description of what this person had sent, and when I opened what he had written to me, it simply said, ten.
A graphic file had been attached, and I downloaded and decompressed it. An image began to materialize on my screen, rolling down in color, one band of pixels at a time. I realized I was looking at a photograph of a wall the color of putty, and the edge of a table with some sort of pale blue cover on it that was smeared and pooled with something dark red. Then a ragged, gaping red wound was painted on the screen, followed by flesh tones that became bloody stumps and nipples.
I stared in disbelief as the horror was complete, and I grabbed the phone.
‘Marino, I think you’d better get over here,’ I said in a scared tone.