First Family (12 page)

He could’ve and perhaps should have sold Atlee a long time ago. But that was not an option. Cameron had loved the place and parting with it would mean, for Quarry, finally parting with her. He could not do that, no more than he could kill his own son. Though it frightened him how close he’d come to doing just that. It was the Quarry insanity streak. Day by day, year by year, it kept growing stronger, like the tentacles of a tumor creeping murderously through his brain.

He settled down on the couch and reached for his bottle of gin. Yet before he took a drink, he changed his mind, rose, slipped on his boots, and grabbed the truck keys off a wobbly-legged table.

Two minutes later he was back on the road, staring up at a sky punctured with so many stars that night almost seemed turned into day. He rolled down the window, cranked up some tunes, and drank his gin. The heat of a southern night hit him in the face. He hated air conditioning. Atlee had never had it, nor any vehicle he’d ever owned. A man should sweat. Running away from sweat was akin to running from what made you human.

His old truck ate up twenty miles, veering from dirt to gravel to macadam, and then bouncing onto asphalt heated slick from the hot day.

And then he was there. Been here a thousand times before. Each visit was the same and also different.

He knew everyone by first name. Visiting hours were long since over but they didn’t care. This was Sam Quarry. Everybody knew Sam Quarry because everybody knew Tippi Quarry. They’d named her after the actress. Cameron Quarry had loved the movie with all
those crazy birds. Their youngest daughter, Suzie, the one who’d married and divorced the black fellow, now lived in California doing something, only her father didn’t quite know what. He was pretty sure if he
did
know he’d disapprove. Daryl had been the baby.

Only my damn baby just killed a mother of three children.

Yet neither of them had ended up like Tippi. She had just turned thirty-six last month. She’d been here for thirteen years, eight months, and seventeen days. He knew that because he marked the time off on a mental calendar like he was scratching off his remaining days on earth. And, in a way, he was doing that too. She had never once set foot outside the cinderblock walls of this place. And she never would.

Quarry’s long legs directed him automatically to his oldest child’s room. He opened the door just as he had so many times before. The room was dark. He scooted over to the chair that his butt had graced so often he’d worn off the paint. The trach was in her neck, the way they did it for long-term usage, because, for among other reasons, it was easier to keep clean than when it was down the throat. The attached ventilator was pumping away, keeping her lungs inflated. The vitals sign monitor beeped away. One end of an oxygen tube ran to the central line in the wall, and the other end was inserted in his daughter’s nostrils. An IV drip with a computerized distribution device was hooked up to her and kept a flow of drugs and nutrients running to a central entry point cut into her skin near the woman’s collarbone.

Quarry had a little ritual. He’d stroke her hair that wound around her neck and lay against her shoulder. How many times had he wrapped that hair around his finger when Tippi had been a little girl? Then he’d touch her forehead, a forehead that had crinkled up when he’d given his infant daughter a bath. Then he kissed her on the cheek. As a child the skin and lump of bone underneath had been smooth and pleasant to the touch. Now it was withered and hard long before it should have been.

His ritual complete, he took her hand in his, sat back down, and
started talking to her. As he did, his mind wandered through the phrases the doctors had given him and Cameron when it had happened.

Massive blood loss.

Oxygen deprivation in the brain.

Coma.

And finally:
Irreversible.

Words no parent would ever want to hear about their child. She was not dead, but she was as close to dead as one technically could be while still breathing with the aid of a machine and expensive drugs. He slipped the book from his jacket pocket and started reading to her by the small light on the nightstand he clicked on.

The book was
Pride and Prejudice.
Jane Austen’s most famous novel had been his daughter’s favorite, ever since she had plucked it off the library shelves at Atlee as a high-spirited teenager. Her profound enthusiasm for the story had led Quarry to read it as well, in fact several times. Before Tippi had ended up here, Quarry had always seen his daughter as a real-life version of Elizabeth Bennet from Austen’s tale. Elizabeth was the intelligent, lively, and quick-to-judge main protagonist. However, after Tippi had come to this place Quarry had reevaluated his daughter’s alter ego in the story and decided she was actually more like the oldest daughter, Jane Bennet. Sweet but timid, sensible but not as clever as Elizabeth. However, her most distinctive trait was to see only good in others. It had led to happiness for Jane in the story, but it had been devastating for Tippi Quarry in real life.

An hour later he rose and said what he always said. “You rest easy, honey, Daddy’ll be back soon. I love you, baby.”

He drove back to Atlee. As he lay on the couch with his gin, his last fleeting image before he fell asleep was Tippi young and smiling at her daddy.

T
HE
U
NITED
A
IRLINES FLIGHT
Tuck Dutton had been on had not arrived late. In fact, it had arrived twenty minutes
early
due to a straight-in approach at Dulles and an early pushback from the gate in Jacksonville.

Michelle said, “So he had at least fifty minutes free instead of thirty. Maybe over an hour.”

They were sitting over a cup of coffee the next morning at a café in Reston near their office. To get the press off their backs, Sean had given a statement that hadn’t said much, but was enough to give them some breathing room. But they had not gone back to the office, and were staying at a hotel just in case the reporters got the primal itch to attack again.

“That’s right.”

“You think he was in on it?”

“If he was, why not just stay out of it? Why come back and get your head busted in?”

“To throw off suspicion.”

“Motivation?”

“Husbands kill their wives with astonishing regularity,” said Michelle. “Which is all the
motivation
I need never to walk down the aisle.”

“And Willa?”

Michelle shrugged. “Maybe that’s all part of the plot. Kidnap Willa but we’ll find her somewhere safe and sound.”

“Presumably this would all cost money. There must be a record of that.”

She said, “It would be good if we could get a look at Tuck’s financials.”

“I know where his office is.”

“We going there now?”

“After we see the ME. I talked to her. She just finished with Pam Dutton’s post.”

“So you
do
know the lady?”

“I’m just a friendly guy.”

“That’s what scares me.”

Lori Magoulas was about forty-five years old, short and stocky with bottle-blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

After Sean introduced Michelle, Magoulas said, “Surprised to hear from you, Sean. Thought you’d gone to lose yourself at that lake of yours.”

“D.C. just has that pull, Lori.”

Lori looked skeptical. “Right. I can’t wait to get out of here and find
my
lake.”

She led them down a tiled floor corridor where other people in baggy hospital scrubs hovered over the dead. They stopped at one stainless steel table where Pam Dutton lay, her body permanently marked by the slashed throat as well as the standard Y-incision Magoulas had carved into her.

“What did you find?”

“She was in good health. Would’ve probably led a long life but for that,” she said, pointing at the woman’s mangled neck.

“What about the blood levels?”

Magoulas pecked on a laptop situated on a desk next to the steel table, and studied some figures that appeared on the screen. “As best as I can figure, taking into account what was left on the rug and on her clothes, she’s missing about a pint.”

“Presumably they took it with them?”

“The wound dissected the carotid sheath, slicing open the left common carotid artery and the left jugular. She would’ve bled out in a few minutes.”

“What’s your best guess of how it went down?” asked Michelle.

“Judging from the angle of the stab wound and the trace under the nails, I’d say she was grabbed from behind and her throat was cut. She might have reached back and gouged her attacker in the face. We found a good deal of tissue and blood under her cuticles. She must have ripped the guy pretty good. Probably didn’t improve his mood.”

“Certain it was a guy?” Sean said, drawing a scowl from Michelle.

“We also found beard stubble with the blood and tissue.”

“Just confirming,” Sean said to his partner.

“So if the
left
jug and carotid were cut, that means the assailant was probably right-handed if he struck from behind,” said Michelle.

“That’s right.” She picked up a small plastic bottle. Inside were several strands of a black material.

“Found some of these under her right thumbnail and left index finger and another caught in her hair.”

Michelle squinted at the evidence. “Looks like nylon.”

“From a mask?” Sean opined.

“The guy I saw wore a black mask,” said Michelle. “Pam reaches back, gouges at his face with her hands. She gets the nylon under her nails.”

“Did you see anything else?” asked Magoulas.

“Not really. I’m pretty observant, but the guy was shooting at me with an MP5. Came within an inch of shredding me instead of a tree. I decided it was smarter to stay alive than to get a positive ID on the shooter.”

Magoulas looked at her wide-eyed. “Works for me.”

“Anything on the letters on her arms?” Sean asked, as he indicated them on the body. They were harder to read now because of the discoloration of Pam’s decaying skin. The dead flesh seemed to be absorbing the permanent ink. Rather than letters, they now appeared to be some sort of skin disease, or else the symbols of some insane human cataloguing process.

“I’m a pathologist, not a linguistic expert. It’s black ink, probably from a broad-tipped pen like a Sharpie, written in block letters, and the penmanship, in my humble opinion, isn’t great. I’m fluent in
Spanish, but that’s not Spanish. It’s not any other Romance language. It’s obviously not Chinese or Russian. Wrong alphabet.”

“Maybe an African tribal language?” suggested Sean.

Michelle said, “But like Russian and Chinese I don’t think they’d be using an English alphabet. Maybe it’s just gibberish to throw us off.”

“Okay, anything else of interest?” Sean asked.

“Yeah, that’s some serious red hair the lady had. I’ve cut up lots of redheads, but she takes the cake. I almost needed sunglasses to do the post.”

“And how is that relevant to the investigation?” asked Michelle.

“He didn’t ask for
relevant
, he asked for
interest
.” She added with a grin, “Hey, even MEs need to lighten up every once in a while. Otherwise, it could get depressing around here.”

“Okay,” said Sean. “I’ll play along. Anything else of
relevance
?”

“Lady’s had kids.”

“We know that.”

“Two C-sections.” She indicated the old suture tracks on Pam’s belly paralleling the Y-cut. They looked like faded zippers.

“And the third vaginally,” added Sean.

“Impossible,” said Magoulas.

“What?” Sean said sharply.

“The visual exam showed her pelvic bones were unusually configured and her birth canal was abnormally narrow: The X-ray film confirmed those conclusions. And while it’s hard to tell at the autopsy level, she appears to have had an SI joint dysfunction; she was probably born with it. Bottom line, no ob-gyn would’ve gone the vaginal route with the lady unless they wanted to lose their malpractice insurance; way too risky. She’d have to deliver by C.”

She glanced at Sean and Michelle, whose gazes were locked on Pam Dutton’s savaged belly, as though the answers they craved would float from there and into them.

“Is that relevant?” asked Magoulas, looking at them inquisitively.

Sean finally pulled his gaze away from the old surgical scars and the more recent incision. “You could say it’s of interest.”