The Scarpetta Factor

by Patricia Cornwell

  “What makes you think Eric’s a groupie?” Berger asked.

  “He comes up to me at the bar. You know, I’m minding my own business, having a drink, and he asks me for my autograph. I make the mistake of being nice, and next thing we’re walking and he’s asking me all this shit about myself, obviously hoping I’m gay, which I’m not, never been even once.”

  “Is Eric gay?”

  “He hangs out at the Stonewall Inn.”

  “So do you,” Berger said.

  “I told you, I’m not gay and never have been.”

  “An unusual venue for you,” Berger observed. “The Stonewall Inn is one of the most famous gay establishments in the country, a symbol of the gay rights movement, in fact. Not exactly a hangout for straights.”

  “If you’re an actor, you hang out in all kinds of places so you can play all types of characters. I’m a method actor, you know, I do research. That’s my thing, where I get my ideas and figure it out. I’m known for rolling up my sleeves and doing whatever it takes.”

  “Going to a gay bar is research?”

  “I got no problem with where I hang out, because I’m secure with myself.”

  “What other types of research, Hap? You familiar with the Body Farm in Tennessee?”

  Judd looked confused, then incredulous. “What? You’re breaking into my e-mail now?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “So I ordered something from them. For research. I’m playing an archaeologist in a movie and we excavate this plague pit, you know, with skeletal remains. Hundreds and thousands of skeletons. It’s just research, and I was even going to see if I could go down there to Knoxville so I have an idea what it’s like to be around something like that.”

  “Be around bodies that are decomposing?”

  “If you want to get it right, you’ve got to see it, smell it, so you can play it. I’m curious what happens, you know, when a body’s been in the ground or lying around somewhere. What it looks like after a lot of time passes. I don’t have to explain this to you, explain acting to you, my damn career to you. I haven’t done anything. You’ve violated my rights, going into my e-mail.”

  “I don’t recall my saying we’d gone into your e-mail.”

  “You must have.”

  “Data searches,” she replied, and he was looking her in the eye or looking around but not looking her up and down anymore. He did that only when Lucy was here. “You borrow computers that are connected to a server, you order something online, it’s amazing the trail people leave. Let’s talk some more about Eric,” Berger said.

  “The fucking fag.”

  “He told you he was gay?”

  “He was hitting on me, okay? It was obvious, you know, him asking me about myself, my past, and I mentioned I’d had a lot of different jobs, including being a tech at a hospital part-time. Fags hit on me all the time,” he added.

  “Did you bring up your former hospital job, or did he?”

  “I don’t remember how it came up. He started asking me about my career, how I’d started out, and I told him about the hospital. I talked about what kinds of things I’d done while I tried to get my acting going good enough to support me. Stuff like helping out as a phlebotomist, collecting specimens, even helping out in the morgue, mopping the floors, rolling bodies in and out of the fridge, whatever they needed.”

  “Why?” Lucy said as she returned with a Diet Pepsi and a bottle of water.

  “What do you mean ‘Why’?” Judd craned his head around, and his demeanor changed. He hated her. He made no effort to hide it.

  “Why take shit jobs like that?” She popped open the Diet Pepsi can, set it in front of Berger, and sat down.

  “All I’ve got is a high-school diploma,” he said, not looking at her.

  “Why not be a model or something while you were trying to make it as an actor?” Lucy picked up where she left off, insulting him, taunting him.

  A part of Berger paid attention while another part of her was distracted by a second message tone sounding on her BlackBerry. Goddamn it, who was trying to reach her at four o’clock in the morning? Maybe Marino again. Too busy to show up, and now he was interrupting her again. Someone was. Might not be him. She slid the BlackBerry closer as Hap Judd continued to talk, directing his answers to her. Better check her messages, and she subtly entered her password.

  “I did some modeling. I did whatever I could to make money and get real-life experience,” he said. “I’m not afraid to work. I’m not afraid of anything except people fucking lying about me.”

  The first e-mail, sent a few minutes ago, was from Marino:

  Going to need a search warrant asap re incident involves the doc im emailing facts of the case in a few

  “I’m not grossed out by anything,” Judd went on. “I’m one of these people who does what it takes. I didn’t grow up with anything handed to me.”

  Marino was saying he was drafting a search warrant that he would be e-mailing to Berger shortly. Then it would be her job to check the accuracy and language and get hold of a judge she could call at any hour, and go to his residence to get the warrant signed. What search warrant, and what was so urgent? What was going on with Scarpetta? Berger wondered if this was related to the suspicious package left at her building last night.

  “That’s why I can play the roles I do and be convincing. Because I’m not scared, not of snakes or insects,” Judd was saying to Berger, who was listening carefully and dealing with e-mails at the same time. “I mean, I could do like Gene Simmons and put a bat in my mouth and breathe fire. I do a lot of my own stunts. I don’t want to talk to her. I’m going to leave if I have to talk to her.” He glared at Lucy.

  The second e-mail, which had just landed, was from Scarpetta:

  Re: Search Warrant. Based on my training and experience, I think the search for the stolen data storage device will require a forensic expert.

  Clearly Marino and Scarpetta had been in touch with each other, although Berger had no idea what stolen device was involved or what needed to be searched. She couldn’t imagine why Scarpetta hadn’t given this same instruction to Marino so he could include a forensic expert in the addendum of the warrant he was drafting. Instead, Scarpetta was telling Berger directly that she wanted a civilian to help with the search, someone who knew about data storage devices, such as computers. Then Berger figured it out. Scarpetta needed Lucy to be present at the scene and was asking Berger to make sure that happened. For some reason, it was very important.

  “That was quite a stunt you pulled in the hospital morgue,” Lucy said to Judd.

  “I didn’t pull a stunt.” Directing everything to Berger. “I was just talking, saying I thought it might be going on, maybe when the funeral homes showed up and because she was really pretty and not all that banged up for someone hurt that bad. I was halfway kidding, although I have wondered what some of these funeral home people are into, and that’s the truth. I was suspicious about some of the ones I came across. I think people do all kinds of stuff if they can get away with it.”

  “I’ll quote you on that,” Lucy said. “Hap Judd says people do whatever they can get away with. An instant Yahoo! headline.”

  Berger said to her, “Maybe now’s a good time to show him what we’ve found.” She said to Judd, “You’ve heard of artificial intelligence. This is more advanced than that. I don’t suppose you were curious about why we asked you to meet us here.”

  “Here?” He looked around the room, a blank expression on his Captain America face.

  “You mandated the time. I mandated the place. This high-tech minimalist space,” Berger said. “See all the computers everywhere? This is a forensic computer investigative firm. ”

  He didn’t react.

  “That’s why I picked this location. And let me clarify. Lucy is an investigative consultant retained by the district attorney’s office, but she’s quite a lot more than that. Former FBI, ATF, I won’t bother with her résumé, would take too long, but yo
ur describing her as not a real cop isn’t quite accurate.”

  He didn’t seem to understand.

  “Let’s go back to when you worked at Park General,” Berger said.

  “I really don’t remember—well, almost nothing, not much about that situation.”

  “What situation?” Berger asked, with what Lucy liked to describe as her “millpond calm.” Only when Lucy said it, she didn’t mean it as a compliment.

  “The girl,” he said.

  “Farrah Lacy,” Berger said.

  “Yes, I mean, no. I’m trying to, what I’m saying is it was a long time ago.”

  “That’s the beauty of computers,” Berger said. “They don’t care if it was a long time ago. Especially Lucy’s computers, her neural networking applications, programming constructs that mimic the brain. Let me refresh your memory about your long-ago days at Park General. When you entered the hospital morgue, you had to use your security card. Sound familiar?”

  “I guess. I mean, that would be the routine.”

  “So, every time you used your security card, your security code was entered into the hospital computer system.”

  “Along with recordings made by the security cameras,” Lucy added. “Along with your e-mails, because they resided on the hospital server, which routinely backs up its data, meaning they still have electronic records from when you were there. Including whatever you wrote on—whatever desktop computer you happened to borrow at the hospital. And if you logged in to private e-mail accounts from there, oh, well, those too. Everything’s connected. It’s just a matter of knowing how. I won’t tax you with a lot of computer jargon, but that’s what I do in this place. I make connections the same way the neurons in your brain are making them right this minute. Inputs, outputs, from sensory and motor nerves in your eyes, your hands, signal flows that the brain pieces together to accomplish tasks and solve problems. Images, ideas, written messages, conversations. Even screenwriting. All of it interconnected and forming patterns, making it possible to detect, decide, and predict.”

  “What screenwriting?” Hap Judd’s mouth was dry, sounded sticky when he talked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Lucy started typing. She pointed a remote at a flat screen mounted on a wall. Judd reached for his bottle of water, fumbled with the cap, took a long swallow.

  The flat screen divided into windows, each filled by an image: a younger Hap Judd in scrubs walking into the hospital morgue, grabbing latex gloves out of a box, opening the stainless-steel walk-in refrigerator; a newspaper photograph of nineteen-year-old Farrah Lacy, a very pretty, light-skinned African American in a cheerleading outfit, holding pompoms and grinning; an e-mail; a page from a script.

  Lucy clicked on the page from the script and it filled the entire screen:

  CUT TO:

  INT. BEDROOM, NIGHT

  A beautiful woman in the bed, covers pulled back, bunched around her bare feet. She looks dead, hands folded over her chest in a religious pose. She’s completely nude. An INTRUDER we can’t make out moves closer, closer, closer! He grips her ankles and slides her limp body down to the foot of the bed, parting her legs. We hear the clinks of his belt being unbuckled.

  INTRUDER

  Good news. You’re about to go to heaven. As his pants drop to the floor.

  “Where did you get that? Who the hell gave it to you? You have no right going into my e-mail,” Hap Judd said loudly. “And it’s not what you think. You’re setting me up!”

  Lucy clicked the mouse and the flat screen filled with an e mail:

  Hey too bad about whats her ass. Fuck her. I dont mean littereally. Call if U want a stiff one.

  Hap

  “I meant a drink.” Words sticking. His voice shook. “I don’t remember who . . . Look, it had to be a stiff drink. I was asking someone if they wanted to meet me for a drink.”

  “I don’t know,” Lucy said to Berger. “Sounds like he assumed we interpreted ‘stiff one’ as something else. Maybe a dead body? You should try spell-check sometime,” Lucy said to him. “And you should be careful what you do, what you e-mail, what you text-message on computers that are connected to a server. Like a hospital server. We can sit here all week with you if you want. I’ve got computer applications that can connect every piece of your entire screwed-up make-believe life.”

  It was a bluff. At this point, they had very little, not much more than writing he’d done on hospital computers, his e-mails, whatever had resided on the server back then, and some images from security cameras and morgue log entries from the two-week period Farrah Lacy had been hospitalized. There hadn’t been time to sift through anything else. Berger had been afraid if she delayed talking to Hap Judd, she’d never get the chance. This was what she called a “blitz attack.” If she didn’t like the way she felt about it before, now she was really out of her comfort zone. She felt doubt. Serious doubt. The same doubts she’d been feeling all along, only much worse now. Lucy was driving this. She had a destination in mind. She didn’t seem to care how she got there.

  “I don’t want to see anything else,” Judd said.

  “Just tons of stuff to go through. My eyes are crossed.” Lucy tapped the MacBook with an index finger. “All downloaded. Things I doubt you remember, got no idea about. Not sure what the cops would do with this. Ms. Berger? What would the cops do with this?”

  “What worries me is what happened while the victim was still alive,” Berger said, because she had to play it out. She couldn’t stop now. “Farrah was in the hospital two weeks before she died.”

  “Twelve days, exactly,” Lucy said. “On life support, never regained consciousness. Five of those days, Hap was on duty, working at the hospital. You ever go into her room, Hap? Maybe help yourself to her while she was in a coma?”

  “You’re the one who’s sick!”

  “Did you?”

  “I told you,” he said to Berger. “I don’t even know who she is.”

  “Farrah Lacy,” Berger repeated the name. “The nineteen-year-old cheerleader whose picture you saw in the news, the Harlem News. That same picture we just showed you.”

  “The same picture you e-mailed to yourself,” Lucy said. “Let me guess. You don’t remember. I’ll remind you. You e-mailed it to yourself the same day it appeared in the news online. You sent the article about the car accident to yourself. I find that very interesting.”

  She clicked the photograph back on the wall-mounted flat screen. The photograph of Farrah Lacy in her cheerleading uniform. Hap Judd averted his eyes.

  He said, “I don’t know anything about a car accident.”

  “Family’s coming home from Marcus Garvey Memorial Park in Harlem,” Berger said. “A pretty Saturday afternoon in July 2004, some guy talking on his cell phone runs a red light on Lenox Avenue, T bones them.”

  “I don’t remember,” Judd said.

  “Farrah had what’s called a closed head injury, which is basically an injury to the brain caused by a nonpenetrating wound,” Berger said.

  “I don’t remember. I just sort of remember her being there at the hospital.”

  “Right. You remember Farrah being a patient in the hospital where you worked. On life support in the ICU. Sometimes you went into the ICU to draw blood, you remember that?” Berger asked him.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Isn’t it true that you had a reputation for being a skilled phlebotomist?” Berger asked.

  “He could get blood from a stone,” Lucy said. “According to what one of the nurses said to Marino.”

  “Who the hell’s Marino?”

  Lucy shouldn’t have brought him up. Referencing Berger’s investigators or anyone she used in a case was her prerogative, not Lucy’s. Marino had talked to a few people at the hospital, over the phone and very carefully. It was a delicate situation. Berger felt a heightened sense of responsibility because of who the potential defendant was. Lucy clearly didn’t share her concerns, seemed to want Hap Judd ruined, maybe the sam
e way she’d felt about the air traffic controller a few hours earlier and the linesman she reprimanded in the FBO. Berger had overheard every word through the bathroom door. Lucy was after blood, maybe not just Hap Judd’s blood, maybe a lot of people’s blood. Berger didn’t know why. She didn’t know what to think anymore.

  “We have a lot of people looking into your situation,” Berger said to Judd. “Lucy’s been running you and all kinds of data through her computers for days.”

  Not entirely true. Lucy had spent maybe one day on it remotely from Stowe. Once Marino had begun the process, the hospital was cooperative, e-mailing certain information without protest because it was a personnel issue, a matter pertaining to a former employee, and Marino had suggested as only he could that the more helpful Park General was, the more likely the matter could be resolved diplomatically, discreetly. Warrants and court orders and a former employee who was now famous, and the situation would be all over the news. Unnecessary when maybe nobody was going to be charged with anything in the end, and what a shame to put Farrah Lacy’s family through so much pain again, and wasn’t it pitiful the way everybody sued these days, Marino had said, or words to that effect.

  “Let me refresh your memory,” Berger said to Hap Judd. “You went into the ICU, into the room next to Farrah’s on the night of July sixth, 2004, to draw blood from a different patient, this one quite elderly. She had terrible veins, so you volunteered to take care of her, since you could get blood from a stone.”

  “I can show you her chart,” Lucy said.

  Another bluff. Lucy could show no such thing. The hospital absolutely hadn’t given Berger’s office access to other patients’ confidential information.

  “I can pull up the video of you going in there with your gloves on, with your cart, going into her room.” Lucy was unrelenting. “I can pull up video of every room you ever went into at Park General, including Farrah’s.”