Page 9 of Identity Unknown

Font Size:

Page 9 of Identity Unknown

“I don’t believe it’s the point, and a UAP would be a pretty difficult thing to fake, I should think,” Benton replies. “But that doesn’t mean we’re dealing with a flying saucer, extraterrestrials, interdimensional beings or whatever.”

“Why would someone do this to Sal? Do you have an idea? For what purpose?”

“He had direct access to sensitive information that our enemies want.”

“And you think that was the motive?”

“I think it was a motive. Not the only one.”

“Whose?”

“That’s the question.”

“Why leave him in the Oz theme park?” I continue thinking about who owns it. “I find that detail particularly disturbing. Possibly because I’ve been there and can see it so vividly in my head. But the park belongs to Ryder Briley, whose daughter I just autopsied.”

“Yes, I’m aware. I agree that it’s troubling,” Benton says. “What I can tell you is the Oz theme park isn’t random. I suspect it was picked deliberately in part to shock and degrade. Perhaps to make a mockery of the ET Whisperer. Or maybe it’s personal for other reasons.”

“Personal for whom?”

“As you’ve mentioned, Lucy used to love it when you took her there,” he says. “It was a very special place.”

“What could that possibly have to do with the UAP, the unidentified craft detected in the area?” I ask, baffled.

“We’re missing too much data to know what’s going on, Kay. But every precaution must be taken, and we apologize in advance for any inconvenience.”

When my husband begins a statement withwe,I usually won’t be happy about what follows, and this is no exception. He goes on to explain that the location of Sal Giordano’s autopsy and other details will be disclosed to me at the appropriate time. There’s no point in trying to coax him for further information. He’s not going to give it.

“Again, we regret the inconvenience.” What he’s saying is that I won’t be conducting the postmortem examination in my building.

Nor will I be using the Remote Mobile Operating Theater Environment semi tractor-trailer in my parking lot. We resort to the REMOTE in potentially hazardous cases, but the Secret Service has something else in store.

“As sensitive as this is, we don’t think the body should be examined in any of your district offices. We have another locationbetter suited,” Benton says, and my first thought is Dover Air Force Base, where all military-related fatalities are handled.

I’m familiar with its port mortuary, having worked there on occasion. But when I push him about it, he indicates that the body isn’t destined for Dover, Delaware. I won’t know where I’m going until I get there.

“I’m sorry we can’t tell you anything more for now,” Benton adds.

“I understand the need for secrecy.” I tuck in my shirt. “But I have to insist that we work Sal’s case together with reasonable transparency. I’m not responding to the scene and then letting the Secret Service completely shut me out. I have to do the job up to my standards and swear to my findings under oath.”

“Our labs and yours will conduct independent examinations of all evidence except the body itself,” Benton promises. “We’ll do our best to keep the details from the public for as long as possible. How we manage what happens when the news finally breaks is what I’m about to address in a SCIF.”

He has colleagues waiting for him inside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, and I don’t know when we’ll see each other or talk again. It’s been this way from the start of our time together, but that doesn’t necessarily make it easy.

We first met when a serial killer began raping and strangling women in Richmond not long after I’d moved there. Benton was the star psychological profiler at what was then the FBI Academy’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Handsome and from old New England money, he had a beautiful wife and family. He dressed likeGQand drove a BMW.Assuming he was a legend in his own mind, I was prepared to dislike him intensely.

But when he walked into my conference room that hot June afternoon, he wasn’t at all what I anticipated, the attraction electric. I stare at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of my office bathroom door, thinking about the decades that have passed. What I envision and feel inside don’t match the image reflected back, and the loss of Sal is knocking out pixels I forgot I had.

He wasn’t my first love or the most important. But he came along when I needed it most, and without him I wouldn’t have been ready for Benton. Swiping Carmex over my lips, I brush on mineral sunblock, the overhead light shadowing the lines in my face, the hollowed areas carved by the years. My field clothes are unflattering, the cargo pants and polo shirt a bit snug after multiple washings in scalding water.

Or that’s what I blame it on, and I can imagine what my sister, Dorothy, would say. Her voice is always at the back of my thoughts as I dissect myself as thoroughly as everything else.

Turning off the light, I emerge from the bathroom to discover that my secretary has opened our connecting office door. She’s spraying Lysol as she walks in holding a datebook and a pen while wishing me a fine top of the day.

“Always wise to disinfect a bit when you’ve just come up from the morgue,” Shannon Park explains, spraying some more, tucking the can in one of her many pockets. “Can’t be too careful these days.” Her typically cheery face is haunted.

“Yes indeed, I can always tell when you’ve just been in here,” I reply pointedly, and no doubt she was eavesdropping while I talked to Benton.

That means she knows about Sal Giordano, explaining her somber demeanor. A retired court stenographer, Shannon is a snoop withbat ears, as Marino describes her. Most people don’t take her seriously, writing her off as an eccentric. They tend to talk freely when she’s around, and I couldn’t be happier that I hired her. I no longer have to dread what I’ll find when I come to work. I’m not worried about her sabotaging me the way my last secretary did.




Top Books !
More Top Books

Treanding Books !
More Treanding Books