Flesh and Blood. Patricia Cornwell
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in the trash have no odor at all. Bleach destroys DNA. Something else was used to wipe out the drawers. Two different types of evidence, two different means of eradicating it. Possibly two different people. I sit back down. I give Marino a look that he understands. Jamal Nari’s killer may have been inside this apartment at some point, and I think of Machado again at the same instant Marino asks Joanna about him.
“I know you two talked.” He keeps the annoyance out of his voice and there’s no sign of it on his face.
But I know what he feels. Machado shouldn’t have offered details to her. He shouldn’t have said her husband was shot. If she’d said it first it would have been significant.
“You told Detective Machado you were in Tilton, New Hampshire. At the Tanger Outlets?” Marino asks her.
“He was shot in broad daylight by his car?” She’s trembling hard and maybe this time for a different reason. “Did anyone see who did it or try to help?”
When he doesn’t answer as he flips through pages in his notepad, she gets more agitated and anger glints.
“Did anyone try to get an ambulance? Didn’t anyone try to help him?” She’s asking me this.
“It was a fatal injury.” I select my words carefully.
“You mean there was nothing that could have been done. Nothing at all?”
“Your husband died very quickly.”
“I’m hoping you might know something that will help us,” Marino says.
She glares at him. “I have no idea who did this.”
“Detective Machado called your cell when you were on your way to New Hampshire.” Marino baits the trap.
“I was already there at the luggage store.”
“Was it Tanger or Merrimack?” Marino frowns, flipping pages. He looks confused. “You know the one in Tanger or the bigger outlet mall about an hour from here?”
“The bigger one. I was returning a bag with a broken zipper and he called. I asked him how he got my number and I thought maybe it was the police harassing us again.”
“As I remember it the FBI was investigating your husband not the police. In light of your bad experience it’s real important you make that distinction, Joanna.” Marino is leaning forward, his big gloved hands on his big knees. “We’re not the FBI. We’re not the ones who put you through all that.”
“It’s never been the same.” She shreds the tissue in her lap. “Is that why? Because of that someone targeted Jamal? We got a lot of hateful things from people. On the Internet. Mail. Stuff left by our cars at school and here.”
“Is that what you think?” Marino is baiting her again.
He knows what she offered to Machado when she first got the news. About the student she was helping. About a robbery gone bad.
“I don’t know what to think!” Tears flood her eyes and spill down her cheeks, streaking her makeup, the flesh around her eyes a mascara smear.
Marino slowly gets up from his chair. He walks to the kitchen, looks at the bags of groceries. He peers through the open bedroom doorway, looks at the luggage, the stacks of taped-up Bankers Boxes. His black gloved thumbs type on his BlackBerry.
“What did you say the name of the luggage store is?” he asks from the kitchen, turning his broad back to us.
“What?” She seems numb.
“The luggage store where you took the bag with the broke zipper.”
“It was just a luggage store. I … I don’t remember the name of it.”
“Tommy Bahama? Nautica?” He’s checking, seeing what stores are located in the outlet mall she claims to have visited.
“Yes,” she says.
“Yes?” Marino walks back to us, his footsteps heavy, the blue plasticized paper shoe covers making a sliding sound over hardwood. His feet look as big as Frankenstein’s.
“It could have been one of them,” she says warily.
“Ms. Cather, you don’t remember what kind of luggage you own? The suitcases in the bedroom are Rockland. A leopard pattern with pink trim, and I’m guessing those are yours. The others are American Tourister, black, and I’m guessing those are your husband’s.”
“How do you expect me to think of something like that right now?” She knows she’s been caught.
“If you find the receipt maybe it will refresh your memory.” Marino reseats himself, looking right at her as she blushes, staring down at her hands and when she talks her mouth sounds dry.
“Okay. I think I have it. I think it’s in my wallet. It should be there.” Her tongue sounds sticky as she continues evasions she knows are failing.
I go to the refrigerator and get her a bottle of water while she sits and Marino waits. Her pocketbook is on the couch and she starts digging inside it, inside her wallet, but it’s an act and not a skillful one. There’s no receipt. It’s useless to pretend.
“You know anything about cell towers, Ms. Cather?” Marino is scrolling through text messages, and she’s not Joanna anymore.
He’s gotten information and is distancing himself. His tone has chilled. He’s playing the role he’d already scripted and getting external validation for it, finding out things that aren’t good for her.
“Cell towers?” She takes a swallow of water, talking to him but looking at me. “I know what they are. But I don’t know anything about them.”
“That surprises me. The FBI didn’t tap your phones? They didn’t check out your locations or more specifically his? They weren’t in your email when they thought Jamal was a terrorist?” he says.
“How could I possibly know what they did? It’s not like they tell you.”
“They would have notified your lawyer.”
“Jamal would know more about it than I do. He’s who they were after. It was his lawyer not mine.” She’s crying again but there’s anger and beneath it is rage. Beneath all of it is grief that hurts so much it’s physical. And fear. Whatever she’s afraid of is prompting her to lie.
“I need you to tell the truth whatever it is,” Marino says. “But first I’m going to remind you of your rights. I always like to get that out of the way …”
“My rights?” She looks bewildered, her eyes on me as if I might save her. “You think I did this? Are you arresting me?”
“It’s just a preventive measure,” Marino replies casually. “I’m making sure you know you don’t have to talk to us. Nobody’s forcing you. If you’d rather have an attorney present that’s what we’ll do. What about the attorney your husband used? Maybe you want to call whoever that was? We’ll sit here and wait until he shows up or he can meet us at the station.”
He goes on bluffing and Mirandizing while she stares at him without blinking, her eyes turning hard and furious, thoughts flickering like static on an old TV. She’s been through this before when the FBI raided their home and hauled away her husband in handcuffs.
“I don’t want a lawyer,” she says and a calm comes over her, flat and still. “I would never do anything to physically hurt Jamal.”
I notice her use of the word physically. It seems important she make the distinction between hurting her husband physically as opposed to in some other way. I think of the boy on the bicycle she was seen chatting with.
“We