Page 78 of Unnatural Death

“You said the assault rifle was linked to three previous crimes,” I reply as I’m waiting for her to tell me why she’s summoned me to her lab. “The substations are two so far. What’s the third?”

“This is why I wanted to talk to you in private, Doctor Scarpetta. The third one is the drive-by shooting at Old Town Market six weeks ago while you and Lucy were there. The same assault rifle was used. I’m supposed to examine the evidence, and it’s not my place to say what I think. Had you both been critically wounded or worse? Imagine what a coup for the pieces of shit behind all this.”

“Which pieces of shit?” I ask.

“The ones who’ve been doing a lot of bad things around here.”

“You think we were targeted.” I stare at the frag shining like rose gold on the video display, the metal twisted and razor sharp. I wonder which piece sliced into Lucy’s neck.

“It’s not my place to say,” Faye answers. “But yes, I believe you were targeted. And I don’t know how Lucy can’t be thinking it right about now.”

“You’ve talked to her?”

“I told her that the frag taken out of her neck at the hospital is connected to these dead terrorists. In other words, the shooting wasn’t random.”

“Who else knows?” I ask.

“Blaise Fruge, since the Old Town Market shooting is her case. I also informed the FBI, didn’t have a choice about that. Not even five minutes later, my phone rings and Patty Mullet starts bombarding me with questions,” Faye explains. “She asked if the ex-cons would have known who you and Lucy are and what you look like. What was their connection to Lucy or maybe to both of you?”

“They had no connection,” I reply. “The suggestion is absurd. And why would Patty askyouthese things?”

“She assumes Lucy and me are tight because Marino and I are. And because you and I are friendly. That’s all I can figure,” Faye says. “She asked me how someone might have known you were shopping at Old Town Market six weeks ago at two-fifteen in the afternoon. Was it a routine, a habit?”

“I can tell you that it definitely wasn’t,” I reply. “Unfortunately, Lucy and I don’t shop together very often, as busy as we are.”

That Saturday we’d invited Marino and Dorothy over for a cookout last minute. It promised to be a beautiful mid- September day, and I mandated that all of us should find time to enjoy it. I’d keep it simple, grilling beef and vegan burgers, making sour cream potato salad and mixing up margaritas.

“Lucy and I ran an errand to pick up a few things. We decided it only a couple of hours in advance,” I explain to Faye. “I don’t see how anyone could have known what we were doing unless there was a tracking device or we were under surveillance by other means.”

“Who drove?” she asks.

“We rode our bikes. I have a backpack for groceries as long as it’s not much. We were out on the Mount Vernon Trail, riding to Daingerfield Island. On the way home we stopped at the market.”

“Stupid question. But nobody posted anything on social media about your plans, did they by chance? Nothing was tweeted or whatever?”

“Absolutely not.”

“If you were targeted, then obviously someone knew what you were doing,” Faye says, getting up from her desk. “Possibly the person was spying.” She prints a photo of the matching bullet fragments.

Handing it to me with no explanation, she’s making sure I have proof of the ballistic evidence should I ever need it. She can say truthfully that I didn’t ask for it and she didn’t offer. Before she became a forensic scientist, Faye was a crime scene investigator and instructor. She doesn’t miss much and asks a lot of questions.

“It would seem somebody was monitoring us,” I say to her. “Assuming your suspicions are correct, and Lucy and I were the target of the drive-by shooting.”

“What did you do before you went out on your bike ride? That was in the afternoon. What about earlier?” Faye asks.

“Now and then I go to the office on Saturday mornings to take care of cases that can’t wait until Monday. Or if we’re overwhelmed and trying to catch up,” I reply. “It was one of those occasions when I needed to do this, and I was inside the autopsy suite by sevenA.M.”

“Who else was here?”

“Doctor Schlaefer, Marino and Fabian,” I reply. “Norm was working security. Although he mostly stayed in the breakroom as usual.”

“What about police?”

“Fruge stopped by to check on a case. Also, a couple of state police investigators dealing with motor vehicle fatalities.” Then I remember something I haven’t thought about since it happened.

Patty Mullet appeared at the morgue midmorning while I was finishing the autopsy of a sudden infant death. Doug Schlaefer was working on a bank robber shot to death by police. The FBI labs were handling the evidence, and Patty stayed long enough to collect the bullets removed from the body.

“Did she say anything to you?” Faye asks.

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