10

Kay Scarpetta 6 - From Potter’s Field

Lucy had finished her run and showered by the time I returned to the room. Dinner was being served in the cafeteria, but she was at ERF working.

‘I’m going back to Richmond tonight,’ I said to her on the phone.

‘I thought you were spending the night,’ she said, and I detected disappointment.

‘Marino’s coming to get me,’ I said.

‘When?’

‘He’s on his way. We could have dinner before I go-‘

‘Okay. I’d like Jan to come.’

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘We should include Marino, though. He’s already on the road.’

Lucy was silent.

‘Why don’t you and I visit alone first?’ I suggested.

‘Over here?’

‘Yes. I’m cleared as long as you let me through all those scanners, locked doors, X-ray machines and heat-seeking missiles.’

‘Well, I’ll have to check with the attorney general. She hates it when I call her at home.’

‘I’m on my way.’

The Engineering Research Facility was three concrete-and- glass pods surrounded by trees, and one could not get into the parking lot without stopping at a guard booth that was no more than a hundred feet from the one at the Academy’s entrance. ERF was the FBI’s most classified division, its employees required to scan their fingerprints into biometric locks before Plexiglas doors would let them in. Lucy was waiting for me in front. It was almost eight p.m.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘There are at least a dozen cars in the parking lot,’ I said. ‘Do people usually work this late?’

‘They drift in and out at all hours. Most of the time I never see them.’

We walked through a vast space of beige carpet and walls, passing shut doors leading into laboratories where scientists and engineers worked on projects they could not discuss. I had only vague notions of what went on here beyond Lucy’s work with CAIN. But I knew the mission was to technically enhance whatever job a special agent might have, whether it was surveillance, or shooting or rappelling from a helicopter, or using a robot in a raid. For Gault to have gotten inside here was the equivalent of him wandering freely through NASA or a nuclear power plant. It was unthinkable.

‘Benton told me about the photograph that was in your desk,’ I said to Lucy as we boarded an elevator.

She keyed us up to the second floor. ‘Gault already knows what you look like, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s seen you before - at least twice.’

‘I don’t like that he might now know what you look like,’ I said pointedly.

‘You’re assuming he has the photograph.’