I might sense something’s off but never guess I was communicating with a cyber being. A programmable entity. A spaceage Siri-or Alexa-type device with a powerfully familiar voice and face, a personality so believable that I feel an ache in my chest every time I’m given the latest demonstration.
“Guess who I have with me?” Lucy continues talking to someone no longer present.
“Hi, Janet.” I hide the grief I’m feeling. “It’s always nice to see you.”
“Hello.” She cuts her keen blue eyes toward the sound of my voice, staring right at me.
“You remember Aunt Kay, and how cool that she’s decided to show up for a birthday chat.” Lucy makes what seems like a trivial statement.
But the Janet on the screen hasn’t spoken to me before. I’ve been nothing more than an observer now and then, and haven’t asked her a question directly. You could say we’ve not officially met beyond my looking over Lucy’s shoulder or reviewing the video clips she sends.
“Of course, I remember,” Janet answers, her radiant smile just like days of old. “We’ve spoken many times. It’s always nice to see you too, Doctor Scarpetta,” as she’s always insisted on calling me.
“I bet you can figure out precisely how much time the two of you have spent together,” Lucy replies. “Let’s give Aunt Kay a taste of your medicine, go ahead and do the math.”
“It will be my pleasure,” she says brightly. “Doctor Scarpetta and I have been in each other’s company one thousand two hundred and twenty-one times since our first encounter.”
“And where was that?” Lucy’s attention is locked on the image on her screen like Narcissus staring at his reflection in the pond.
“We first met at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, when you and I were new agents,” Janet continues.
“And over the years, how often have you talked?”
“Doctor Scarpetta and I have spoken on the telephone twenty-two thousand, nine-hundred and six minutes and twenty-one seconds. Would you like to know how many e-mails and text messages we’ve exchanged?”
“Now you’re just showing off.” Lucy is pleased with what she’s wrought, and my fitness tracker alerts me that August Ryan has sent an e-mail.
“This could be important.” I open it. “The recording from the security gate, and we’re going to want to listen.”
“A recording of what?” Lucy asks.
“Not much as it turns out. The cameras at the entrance and exit of Colonial Landing were covered for an interval of almost an hour last Friday night.” I go on to repeat what August told me.
I rationalize that if Marino is working for me again, there’s no reason Lucy can’t. They’re investigative partners, and I could use any help I can get. I forward the file to her, and she opens it on a computer display, clicking on PLAY. All we see is darkness, the muddy image of the road leading to Colonial Landing’s walled brick entrance.
At 5:13 P.M., something is pulled over one camera, then the other, making a quiet crinkly plastic sound exactly as August described. Two minutes later, Gwen Hainey’s code, 1988, is entered, and the entrance gate slides open. There’s no car engine, no sound of anything driving through.
Just the wind and rain, then the faint strains of organ music getting louder, crescendoing like The Phantom of the Opera. But what we’re listening to isn’t Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“Next you hear the entrance gate close, and then nothing,” I say to Lucy. “Apparently, all was quiet until fifty-two minutes later.”
I fast-forward the recording almost to the end. We listen to the noise of the metal exit gate opening. Then the same eerie musical theme is playing again, and it’s enough to make one’s hair stand on end.
“That’s bizarre and rather terrifying. Have you ever heard this music before?” I ask.
“I might have. But horror themes all sound kind of similar to me.” She replays it. “Let’s ask Janet. Can you identify this music?”
“It’s from a TV show called Shock Theater,” she says without pause.
“Never heard of it,” I confess.
“HORROR FLICKS LIKE FRANKENSTEIN, Dracula, The Wolf Man, going back to the late nineteen forties.” Lucy looks at information on her phone that Janet data mines as fast as we can think.
The theme is on YouTube, and as we listen, I’m increasingly alarmed. Sensing the presence of a cunning intelligence, I envision the dead woman sprawled by the railroad tracks, her neck savagely slashed, her head barely attached, her hands gone.