Page 49 of Identity Unknown

“No.” I begin labeling test tubes as Marino arranges Post-its, envelopes, Sharpies, other supplies on the countertop.

Gus asks a question I don’t want to answer. “Did he suggest resuming your relationship?”

“He wanted to be friends. But also, more.”

“Friends with benefits, as they say?”

“That would have been acceptable to him on occasion. But it wasn’t to me.”

“You were seeing Benton Wesley by then,” Gus says.

“We weren’t actually together yet. But we were aware of our feelings for each other.”

“How would you describe your relationship with Sal since you’ve been married to Benton?” Gus goes on as if Benton isn’t present.

“We remained close friends and confidants over the years. But that’s all,” I reply, Benton’s face inscrutable.

“Nothing physical? No remnant of that long-ago romance? Not even a little bit on occasion as he suggested?” Gus says in his flat affect.

“No.”

“And if your text messages, your emails, etcetera were looked at, what we’d find would verify that?”

“They would.” I have no doubt that if the CIA wants to hack into such things, it can and possibly has.

“I’m not going to be disingenuous with you, Doctor Scarpetta. It’s important we know if Sal might have shared information with you that he shouldn’t have.” Gus gets around to what the government is most worried about.

“We’re wondering if you ever had a sense he might be passing on information to anyone who shouldn’t have it?” the NSA asks.

“That includes during those early days when you were with him in Rome. As you may have gathered, he’s been involved with us for a very long time. And I know you’re familiar with the termpillow talk,” Gus says before I can answer the disheartening suspicions. “If he divulged sensitive information to you at any time, it speaks to his character, I’m afraid. It speaks to other things he may have done and continued to do.”

What I’m hearing is that Sal was working with the intelligence community while we were together that summer. I was sleeping with a spy and had not the slightest inkling. The question is whose side was he on. Or that seems to be the shocking point.

“It’s important that we ask you about this on the record,” Bella is saying apologetically, and of course we’re being recorded. “We have very serious concerns about Sal’s activities. Especially of late. And now this. He’s dead. Bizarrely and horribly…,” she adds, her voice catching.

“For one thing, the timing is a problem.” Benton is looking directly at me again. “As you know, it’s about a four-hour drive from Alexandria to Green Bank, and he set out yesterday ateleven-thirty. When he called while getting gas in Weyers Cave, it was around one-thirty. I believe that’s what you told Lucy earlier.”

“Yes.”

“Which should have put him in the Green Bank area between three-thirty and fourP.M.,” Benton explains. “Not at seven when he met his colleagues at the Red Caboose. We know he didn’t go to the lodge first because he never checked in. And he didn’t go to the observatory. So where was he for three hours?”

“The interval can’t be accounted for,” Gus is saying. “The last time Sal’s phone signal was picked up was when he called you from the convenience store in Weyers Cave. After that he turned off his phone as he drove deeper into the Quiet Zone. We don’t know where he went or what he was doing.”

“What about satellite images?” I suggest.

“Forget it,” Lucy says. “He wasn’t under surveillance and therefore not a target.”

“It would be a crapshoot for a satellite in low Earth orbit to catch him driving somewhere in his truck,” General Gunner says. “And the spysats we have in the geostationary orbit aren’t going to pick him up from twenty-two thousand miles above the planet. He was completely off grid.”

“Are you sure he didn’t mention an errand he planned to run, some other stop?” Bella asks me.

“He didn’t.”

“Maybe somebody he hoped to see along the way?” she then suggests.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Someone he’d seen before, perhaps.” She holds my gaze. “We know from his credit card activity that last month he got gas at the same convenience store in Weyers Cave. The Little Rebel off Route Two-Fifty-Six. And he was there filling his truck last summer in June, July and August. Then again in January and March, as I mentioned. What was he doing in Weyers Cave? Who was he seeing?”