The Scarpetta Factor

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I believe you always tell them that.”

  “Another detail of interest. Her socks were on the wrong feet,” Scarpetta said.

  “How can socks be on the wrong feet? Do you mean inside out?”

  “Running socks designed anatomically correctly for the right and left feet, and actually designated as such. An L on the left sock, an R on the right. Hers were on backwards, right sock on the left foot and left sock on the right.”

  “Possible she did that herself, didn’t notice when she was getting dressed?” Dr. Edison was putting on his suit jacket.

  “Possible, of course. But if she was that particular about her running attire, would she put her socks on the wrong feet? And would she be out running in the rain and cold and not wearing gloves, not wearing anything to keep her ears warm, and no coat, just a fleece? Mrs. Darien says Toni hated running in bad weather. She also can’t account for the unusual watch Toni had on. An oversized black plastic digital watch with the name BioGraph stamped on it, possibly collects some type of data.”

  “You Google it?” Dr. Edison got up from his desk.

  “And had Lucy do a search. She’ll look into it further after DNA’s done with it. So far no such watch or device called a BioGraph, it appears. I’m hoping one of Toni’s doctors or someone else she knew might have an idea why she was wearing it and what it is.”

  “You do realize your part-time is turning into full-time.” He picked up his briefcase and retrieved his coat from the back of the door. “I don’t think you’ve been back to Massachusetts once this entire month.”

  “It’s been a little busy here.” She got up and started collecting her belongings.

  “Who’s running your railroad there?”

  “The train tracks are fast leading back to Boston,” she said as she put on her coat and they walked out together. “A repeat of the old days, which is a shame. My northeastern district office in Water-town will be shut down, probably by summer. As if the Boston office isn’t overwhelmed enough.”

  “And Benton’s going back and forth.”

  “The shuttle,” Scarpetta said. “Sometimes Lucy gives him a lift on her helicopter. He’s been here a lot.”

  “Nice of her to help out with the watch, the BioGraph. We can’t afford her computer skills. But when DNA’s done with it and if Jaime Berger agrees, if there’s some sort of data in whatever the device is, I’d like to know what. I have a meeting at City Hall in the morning, in the bull pen with the mayor, et al. Our business is bad for tourism. Hannah Starr. Now Toni Darien. You know what I’m going to hear.”

  “Maybe you should remind them that if they continue to cut our budget, our business is going to be worse for tourism because we’re not going to be able to do our job.”

  “When I first started here in the early nineties, ten percent of all homicides in the country were committed right here in New York,” he said as they walked through the lobby, Elton John playing on the radio. “Twenty-three hundred homicides my first year. Last year, we had fewer than five hundred, a seventy-eight percent decrease. Everybody seems to forget that. All they remember is the latest sensational slaying. Filene and her music. Should I take away her radio?”

  “You wouldn’t,” Scarpetta said.

  “You’re right. People work hard here, and there’s not much to smile about.”

  They emerged into a cold wind on the sidewalk, First Avenue loud with traffic. Rush hour was at its peak, taxis careening and honking, and the wailing of sirens, ambulances racing to the modern Bellevue hospital complex several blocks away and to NYU’s Langone Medical Center next door. It was after five and completely dark out. Scarpetta dug in her shoulder bag for her BlackBerry, remembering she needed to call Benton.

  “Good luck tonight,” Dr. Edison said, patting her arm. “I won’t be watching.”

  Dodie Hodge and her Book of Magick in its black cover with yellow stars. She carried it with her everywhere.

  “Spells, rituals, charms, selling things like bits of coral, iron nails, small silk bags of tonka beans,” Benton was telling Dr. Clark. “We had some real issues with her at McLean. Other patients and even a few hospital employees buying into her self-professed spiritual gifts and seeking her counsel and talismans for a price. She claims to have psychic abilities and other supernatural powers, and as you might expect, people, particularly those who are troubled, are extremely vulnerable to someone like that.”

  “Seems she didn’t have psychic abilities when she stole those DVDs from the bookstore in Detroit. Or she might have predicted she’d get caught,” Dr. Clark said, moving along the road to truth, the destination just ahead.

  “If you ask her, she didn’t steal them. They were rightfully hers because Hap Judd is her nephew,” Benton said.

  “And this relationship is real, or another falsehood? Or, in your opinion, a delusion?”

  “We don’t know if she’s related to him,” Benton answered.

  “Seems like that would be easy enough to find out,” Dr. Clark said.

  “I placed a call to his agent’s office in L.A. earlier today.” Benton’s statement was a confession. He wasn’t sure why he’d just offered it, but he’d known he would.

  Dr. Clark waited, didn’t fill the silence, his eyes on Benton.

  “The agent didn’t confirm or deny, said she wasn’t in a position to discuss Hap Judd’s personal life,” Benton continued as the wave of anger came back, only bigger this time. “Then she wanted to know why I was asking about someone named Dodie Hodge, and the way she said it made me think she knew exactly who I was talking about, even though she was pretending otherwise. Of course, I was extremely limited in what I could divulge, simply said that I’d been given information and was trying to corroborate it.”

  “You didn’t say who you were or why you were interested.”

  Benton’s silence was his answer. Nathan Clark knew him very well, because Benton had allowed it. They were friends. He might be Benton’s only friend, the only one Benton permitted to enter his restricted areas, the only one other than Scarpetta, and even she had her limits, avoided areas she was afraid of, and this was all about the area she feared most. Dr. Clark was drawing the truth out of Benton, and Benton wasn’t going to stop it. It needed to be done.

  “That’s the problem with being former FBI, isn’t it?” Dr. Clark said. “Hard to resist going undercover, getting information any way you can. Even after how many years in the private sector?”

  “She probably thought I was a journalist.”

  “That’s how you identified yourself?”

  No answer.

  “As opposed to stating who you are and where you were calling from and why. But that would have been a HIPAA violation,” Dr. Clark went on.

  “Yes, it would have.”

  “What you did wasn’t.”

  Benton was silent, allowing Dr. Clark to go as far as he wanted.

  “We probably need to have a meaningful discussion about you and the FBI,” Dr. Clark said. “It’s been a while since we talked about those years when you were a protected witness and Kay thought you’d been murdered by the Chandonne family crime cartel, the darkest of times, when you were in hiding, living a horror beyond what most people can fathom. Perhaps you and I should explore how you’re feeling these days about your past with the FBI. Maybe it isn’t past.”

  “That was a long time ago. Another life ago. Another Bureau ago.” Benton didn’t want to talk about it and he did. He allowed Dr. Clark to keep going. “But it’s probably true. Once a cop.”

  “Always a cop. Yes, I know the cliché. I venture to say this is about more than clichés. You’re admitting to me that you acted like a law enforcement agent today, a cop, instead of a mental health practitioner whose priority is the welfare of his patient. Dodie Hodge has roused something in you.”

  Benton didn’t answer.

  “Something that’s never really been asleep. You just thought it had,” Dr. Clark continued.

  Benton
remained silent.

  “So, I’m asking myself, what might have been the trigger? Because Dodie’s not really the trigger. She’s not important enough. More likely she’s a catalyst,” Dr. Clark said. “Do you agree with me?”

  “I don’t know what she is. But you’re right. She’s not the trigger.”

  “I’m inclined to think Warner Agee’s the trigger,” Dr. Clark said. “In the past three weeks or so he’s been a frequent guest on the same show Kay’s on tonight, touted as the forensic psychiatrist to the FBI, the original profiler, the supreme expert on all things serial and psychopathic. You have strong feelings about him, understandably. In fact, you once told me you had homicidal feelings toward him. Does Kay know Warner?”

  “Not personally.”

  “Does she know what he did to you?”

  “We don’t talk about that time,” Benton replied. “We’ve tried to move on, to start over. There’s a lot I can’t talk about, but even if I could, she doesn’t want to, wouldn’t want to. Truthfully, the more I analyze it, I’m not sure what she remembers, and I’ve been careful not to push her.”

  “Maybe you’re afraid of what might happen if she remembers. Maybe you’re afraid of her anger.”

  “She has every right to feel it. But she doesn’t talk about it. I believe she’s the one who’s afraid of her anger,” Benton said.

  “What about your anger?”

  “Anger and hate are destructive. I don’t want to be angry or hateful.” Anger and hate were eating a hole in his stomach, as if he’d just swallowed acid.

  “I’m going to assume you’ve never told her the details about what Warner did to you. I’m going to assume that seeing him on TV and in the news has been extremely upsetting, has opened the door to a room you’ve done your best not to enter,” Dr. Clark said.

  Benton didn’t comment.

  “Possible you might be considering that Warner deliberately targeted the same show Kay is on because he relishes being in direct competition with you? I believe you’ve mentioned to me that Carley Crispin has been pushing to get both you and Kay on at the same time. In fact, I think she’s gone so far as to say that on the air. Believe I saw or heard that somewhere. You refuse to go on that show, and rightly so. And then what happens? Warner is on instead. A conspiracy? A plot against you on Warner’s part? Is this all about his competition with you?”

  “Kay is never on any show when other people are, doesn’t participate in panels, refuses to be part of what she calls The Hollywood Squares of alleged experts yelling at each other and arguing. And she’s almost never on that show, on The Crispin Report.”

  “The man who tried to steal your life from you after you returned from the dead is becoming a celebrity expert, is becoming you, the man he has most envied. And now he’s appearing on the same show, the same network, your wife is on.” Dr. Clark made his point again.

  “Kay’s not on that show regularly and is never on when other people are,” Benton repeated. “Only a guest now and then on Carley’s show—against my advice, I might add. Twice she’s been on as a favor to the producer. Carley needs all the help she can get. Her ratings are slipping. Actually, this fall, more like an avalanche.”

  “I’m relieved you’re not defensive or evasive about this.”

  “I just wish she’d stay away from it, that’s all. Away from Carley. Kay’s too fucking nice, too fucking helpful, feels she has to be the world’s teacher. You know how she is.”

  “Easily recognized these days, I imagine. Somewhat difficult for you? Perhaps threatening?”

  “I wish she’d stay off TV, but she has to live her life.”

  “As I understand it, Warner stepped into the limelight about three weeks ago, about the time Hannah Starr disappeared,” Dr. Clark then said. “Prior to that he was behind the scenes over there. Very rarely a face on The Crispin Report.”

  “The only way someone uninteresting and uncharismatic, a nobody, can get on prime-time TV is to talk to Carley with gross inappropriateness about a sensational case. To be a fucking whore, in other words.”

  “I’m relieved you don’t have an opinion about Warner Agee’s character.”

  “It’s wrong, completely wrong. Even someone as fucked up as that knows it’s wrong,” Benton said.

  “So far you’ve been unwilling to say his name or reference him directly. But maybe we’re getting warmer.”

  “Kay doesn’t know the details of what happened in that motel room in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2003.” Benton met Dr. Clark’s eyes. “She doesn’t know the details of anything, not really, doesn’t know the intricacies of the machine, the design of the machine that drove the operation. She thinks I masterminded the whole thing, chose to go into a protected witness program, that it was completely my idea, that I’m the one who profiled the Chandonne cartel and predicted I would be dead, that everyone around me would be dead, if the enemy wasn’t led to believe I was already dead. If I were alive, they would have come after me, come after Kay, come after everyone. Sure. Well, get in line, and they came after Kay anyway, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne did, and it’s a miracle she’s alive. It wasn’t how I would have handled it. I would have handled it the way I eventually did, take out the people trying to take me out, trying to take Kay and others out. I would have done what I needed to do without the machine.”

  “What is the machine?”

  “The Bureau, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, the government, a certain individual who gave tainted advice. That was the machine set into motion because of this tainted advice, because of self-serving advice.”

  “Warner’s advice. His influence.”

  “There were certain people behind the scenes influencing the suits. One person in particular who wanted me out of the way, wanted me punished,” Benton said.

  “Punished for what?”

  “For having a life that this individual wanted. I was guilty of that, it would seem, although anyone who knows my life might wonder why anyone would want it.”

  “If they know your interior life, perhaps,” Dr. Clark said. “Your torments, your demons, perhaps. But on the surface, you’re pretty enviable, would appear to have everything. Looks, a pedigree that includes money, you were FBI, their star profiler, and now you’re a prominent forensic psychologist affiliated with Harvard. And you have Kay. I can see why someone might covet your life.”

  “Kay thinks I was a protected witness, went under deep cover for six years and, after I came out, resigned from the Bureau,” Benton said.

  “Because you turned on the Bureau and lost all respect for it.”

  “Some people believe that’s the reason.”

  “Does she?”

  “Probably.”

  “When the truth is you’ve felt the Bureau turned on you and lost all respect for you. That it betrayed you because Warner did,” Dr. Clark said.

  “The Bureau invited opinions from its expert and got information and advice. I can see why there would have been concern about my safety. Regardless of any biased influence, those in decision-making positions had very good reason to be concerned. I can see why they’d be concerned about my stability after the fact, after what I’d been through.”

  “Then you think Warner Agee was right about the Chandonnes and the necessity of faking your death? Then you think he was right about your stability and deciding that you were no longer fit for duty?”

  “You know the answer. I was fucked,” Benton said. “But I don’t think television appearances are about a rivalry with me. I suspect it’s about something else that has nothing to do with me, at least not directly. I could have done without the reminder, that’s all. I could have done without it.”

  “It is interesting. Warner’s been quiet, if not invisible, for the entirety of his rather lengthy and not particularly noteworthy career,” Dr. Clark said. “Now, suddenly, he’s all over the national news. Admittedly, I’m perplexed and possibly off base about what the real motive might be. Not sure it’s about you, or
at least not entirely about you and his envy or lust for fame. I agree with you. It’s probably about something else. So, what might it be? Why now? Perhaps he’s simply in it for the money. Maybe like a lot of people, he’s in financial trouble, and at his age, that’s damn scary.”

  “News shows don’t pay for guest appearances,” Benton answered.

  “But guest appearances, if titillating and provocative enough, if they improve a show’s ratings, can lead to other ways of getting paid. Book deals, consulting.”

  “It’s very true that a lot of people have lost their retirement and are looking for ways to survive. Personal gain. Ego gratification. No way for me to know the motivation,” Benton replied. “Except it’s obvious that Hannah Starr has presented an opportunity for him. Had she not disappeared, he wouldn’t be on TV, he wouldn’t be getting all this attention. Like you said, before that, he was behind the scenes.”

  “Him and he. Pronouns. We’re talking about the same person after all. This is progress.”

  “Yes. Him. Warner. He’s unwell.” Benton felt defeat and relief at the same time. He felt grief, and he felt drained. “Not that he was ever well. He’s not a well person, never was, never will be. Destructive and dangerous and remorseless, yes. A narcissist, a sociopath, a megalomaniac. But he’s not well, and at this stage of his miserable life, likely is decompensating further. I venture to say he’s motivated by his insatiable need for validation, by whatever he perceives is his reward if he goes public with his obsolete and unfounded theories. And maybe he needs money.”

  “I agree he’s unwell. I just don’t want you to be unwell,” Dr. Clark said.

  “I’m not unwell. I admit I haven’t enjoyed seeing his fucking face all over the fucking news and having him take fucking credit for my career or even mentioning my name, the fucking bastard.”

  “Would it make you feel any better to know my sentiments about Warner Agee, who I’ve met more times than I’d like to remember over the years?”

  “Knock yourself out.”