Read Online Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell - Free Book Online Page A

a panel of the lightweight aluminum skin. “If I didn’t think anything significant or incriminating had been recorded, I wouldn’t have deleted them.” Using a small but powerful SureFire flashlight, she inspects the engine and its mounts.
    “Why not?”
    Before she can answer, Marino walks over to me and says to no one in particular, “I got to make a visit. Anybody else needs to, now’s the time.” As if he’s the chief steward and reminding us that there is no restroom on the helicopter. He’s trying to make up to me.
    “Thanks, I’m fine,” I tell him, and he walks off across the dark ramp, back to the terminal.
    “If it were me, this is what I’d do after he’s dead,” Lucy continues as the strong light moves over hoses and tubing, as she makes sure nothing is loose or damaged. “I’d download the video files immediately by logging on to the webcam, and if I didn’t see anything that worried me, I’d leave them be.”
    She climbs up higher to check the main rotor, its mast, its swash plate, and I wait until she is back on the tarmac before I ask, “Why would you leave them be?”
    “Think about it.”
    I follow her around the helicopter so she can climb up and check the other side. She almost seems amused by my questions, as if what I’m asking should be obvious.
    “If they’re deleted after he’s dead, then someone else did it, right?” she says, checking under cowling, the light probing carefully.
    Then she drops back down to the ramp.
    “Of course he couldn’t do it after he was dead.” I wait to answer her, because she could get hurt climbing all over her helicopter, especially when she’s up around the rotor mast. I don’t want her distracted. “So that’s why you would leave them if you were the one spying on him and knew he was dead or were the one responsible for his death.”
    “If I were spying on him, if I followed him so I could kill him, hell, yes, I’d leave the last video recordings made, and I wouldn’t grab the headphones from the scene, either.” She shines the brilliant light along the fuselage again. “Because if people saw him wearing them out there in the park or on his way to the park, why are they now missing? The headphones are rather beefy and noticeable.”
    We walk around to the nose of the helicopter.
    “And if I take the headphones, I’d have to take his satellite radio, too, dig in his coat pocket and get that out, have to take time to go to all this trouble after he’s on the ground, and hope nobody saw me. And what about earlier files downloaded somewhere, assuming the spying has gone on for a while? How is that explained if there’s no recording device that shows up and we find recordings on a home computer or server somewhere? You know what they say.” She opens an access panel above the pitot tube and shines the light in there. “For every crime, there are two—the act itself and then what you do to cover it up. Be smarter to leave the headphones, the video files, alone, to let cops or someone like you or me assume he was recording himself, which is what Marino believes, but I doubt it.”
    She reconnects the battery. Her rationale for disconnecting it whenever she leaves the helicopter for any period of time is that if someone manages to get inside the cockpit and is lucky while fiddling with the throttle and switches, they could accidentally start the engine. But not if the battery is disconnected. Doesn’t matter her hurry, Lucy always does a thorough preflight, especially if she’s left her aircraft unattended, even if it’s on a military base. But it doesn’t escape my attention that she is checking everything more thoroughly than usual, as if she suspects something or is uneasy.
    “Everything A-okay?” I ask her. “Everything in good shape?”
    “Making sure of it,” she says, and I feel her distance more strongly. I sense her secrets.
    She trusts no one. She shouldn’t. I never should have trusted some people, either,