Skeleton key was one of her euphemisms for hack.
“I’m betting this binary-code address doesn’t convert into text that spells BioGraph, either.” Lucy typed on the other MacBook and opened a file. “If it did, my search engines would have found it, because they sure as hell know how to look for bit strings and their represented words or sequences.”
“Jesus,” Marino said. “Already I got no damn idea what the hell you’re talking about.”
He had been slightly nasty from the instant Scarpetta had met him downstairs in the lobby and escorted him to the eighth floor. He was upset about the bomb. He wasn’t going to tell her that, but after twenty years, he didn’t have to tell her. She knew him better than he knew himself. Marino was irritable because he was scared.
“I’ll start over and try to move my lips when I talk this time,” Lucy sniped back at him.
“Your mouth is covered. I can’t see your lips. I got to take off this cap at least. It’s not like I have any hair. I’m starting to sweat.”
“Your bald head will shed skin cells,” Lucy said. “Probably why you have such a dust problem in your apartment. This so-called watch was designed to sync with a laptop, is interfaceable with just about any kind of computer device because of the micro USB port. Probably because all kinds of people are wearing these so-called watches, collecting data just like Toni Darien was. Let’s convert binary to ASCII.”
She typed the string of ones and zeros into a field on the other MacBook and hit the return key. Instantly, the code was translated into text that gave Scarpetta pause—in fact, gave her the creeps.
It spelled Caligula.
“Wasn’t he the Roman emperor who burned down Rome?” Marino said.
“That was Nero,” Scarpetta said. “Caligula was probably worse. Probably the most demented, depraved, sadistic emperor in the history of the Roman Empire.”
“What I’m waiting for right now,” Lucy said, “is to bypass the username and password. To put it very simply, I’ve hijacked this site and what’s in the BioGraph so the programs on my server can help us out.”
“I think I saw a movie about him,” Marino said. “He had sex with his sisters and lived in the palace with his horse or something. Maybe he had sex with the horse, too. An ugly bastard. I think he was deformed.”
Scarpetta said, “A rather chilling name for a website.”
“Come on.” Lucy was impatient with the computer, with the programs working invisibly to grant her access to what she wanted.
“I told you about walking back and forth from there by yourself,” Marino said to Scarpetta, and he was thinking about the bomb, about what he’d just experienced at Rodman’s Neck. “When you’re on live TV, you should have security. Maybe you won’t argue about it anymore.”
He was assuming if he’d escorted her last night, he would have recognized that the FedEx package was suspicious and never would have let her touch it. Marino felt responsible for her safety, had a habit of going overboard about it, when the irony was, the most unsafe she’d ever been was with him not all that long ago.
“Caligula is probably the name of a proprietary project.” Lucy was busy on the other MacBook. “That’s my guess.”
“Thing is, what next?” Marino said to Scarpetta. “I feel like somebody’s warming up to something. That singing card Benton got yesterday at Bellevue. Then not even twelve hours later, the FedEx bomb with a voodoo doll. Jesus, it stunk. Can’t wait to hear what Geffner says.”
Geffner was a trace evidence examiner at the NYPD crime labs in Queens.
“I called him on my way over here and said he better start looking through the microscope the minute the bomb debris hits the door.” Marino glanced at his blue-paper sleeve, shoved it up with a latex-sheathed hand to check his watch. “He should be looking at it now. Hell, we should call him. Jesus. It’s almost noon. Like hot asphalt, rotten eggs, and dog shit, like a really filthy fire scene, like someone used an accelerant to burn up a friggin’ latrine. I almost gagged, and it takes a lot to make me puke. Plus dog fur. Benton’s patient? The whack job who called you on CNN? Hard for me to wrap my mind around her making something like that. Lobo and Ann said it was really nicely done.”
As if making a bomb that might blow off a person’s hands or worse was to be commended.
Lucy said, “And we’re in.”
The black screen with the binary banner turned midnight-blue, and CALIGULA appeared across the center in what looked like three-dimensional silvery cast-metal letters. A typeface that was familiar. Scarpetta almost felt queasy.
“Gotham,” Lucy said. “That’s interesting. The font is Gotham.”
Marino’s paper gown rustled as he moved closer to see what she meant, his eyes bloodshot behind his safety glasses as he said, “Gotham? I don’t see Batman anywhere.”
The screen was prompting Lucy to press any key to continue. But she didn’t. She was intrigued by the Gotham font and what it might mean.
“Authoritative, practical, what’s known as the workman-like typeface of public places,” she said. “The sans-serif style you see in names and numbers on signs, walls, buildings, and the Freedom Tower cornerstone at the World Trade Center site. But the reason the Gotham font has gotten so much attention of late is Obama.”
“First I’ve heard of a font called Gotham,” Marino replied. “But then again, I don’t get the font newsletter or monthly magazine or go to fucking font conventions.”
“Gotham’s the typeface the Obama people used during his campaign,” Lucy said. “And you should pay attention to fonts, like I’ve told you how many times? Fonts are part of twenty-first-century documents examination, and you ignore them at your own peril. What they are and why someone might pick them for a specific communication can be telling and significant.”
“Why Gotham for this website?” Scarpetta envisioned the FedEx airbill and the immaculate, almost perfect handwriting on it.
“I don’t know, except the typeface is supposed to suggest credibility,” Lucy said. “Inspire trust. Subliminally, we’re supposed to take this website seriously.”
“The name Caligula inspires anything but trust,” said Scarpetta.
“Gotham is popular,” Lucy said. “It’s cool. It’s supposed to suggest all the right things if you want to influence someone into taking you or your product or a political candidate or maybe some type of research project seriously.”
“Or take a dangerous package seriously,” Scarpetta said, suddenly angry. “This typeface looks very similar if not identical to the style of printing on the package I got last night. I don’t guess you were able to see the box before it was shot with the PAN disrupter,” she asked Marino.
“Like I told you, the batteries they targeted were right behind the address. You said it referenced you as the chief medical examiner of Gotham City. So there’s this Gotham reference again. It bother anybody besides me that Hap Judd was in a Batman movie and fucks dead bodies?”
“Why would Hap Judd send Aunt Kay what you’re calling a stink bomb?” Lucy said, busy on the other MacBook.
“If the sick prick killed Hannah, maybe? Or maybe he’s got to do with Toni Darien, since he’s been in High Roller Lanes and probably met her, at the very least. The Doc did Toni’s autopsy and might end up being the ME on Hannah’s case, too.”
“So Aunt Kay gets a bomb delivered? And that’s going to prevent Hap Judd from being caught if Hannah’s body turns up or for who knows what?” Lucy said, as if Scarpetta wasn’t inside the lab with them anymore. “I’m not saying the asshole didn’t do something to Hannah or doesn’t know where she is.”
“Yeah, him and dead bodies,” Marino said. “Kind of interesting now that we know Toni may have been dead a few days before she was dumped. Wonder where she was and what fun someone was having with her. He probably did do that dead girl in the hospital fridge. Why else would he be in there fifteen minutes and come out with only one glove on?”
“But I don’t think he left
a bomb for Aunt Kay thinking that would scare her off the case or two cases or any cases. That’s retarded,” Lucy said. “And the Gotham font has nothing to do with Batman.”
“Maybe it does if the person’s into some sort of sicko game,” Marino argued.
The odor of fire and brimstone, and Scarpetta kept thinking about the bomb. A stink bomb, a different sort of dirty bomb, an emotionally destructive bomb. Someone who knew Scarpetta. Someone who knew Benton. Someone who knew their history almost as intimately as they did. Games, she thought. Sick games.
Lucy hit the return key and CALIGULA went away and was replaced by:
Welcome, Toni.
Then:
Do you want to sync data? Yes No
Lucy answered yes and the next message she got was:
Toni, your scales are three days overdue. Would you like to complete them now? Yes No
Lucy clicked on Yes, and the screen faded and was replaced by another one:
Please rate how well these adjectives describe how you felt today.
This was followed by choices such as elated, confused, content, happy, irritable, angry, enthusiastic, inspired, each list of questions followed by a five-point scale, ranging from 1 for very little or not at all to 5 for extreme.
“If Toni was doing this every day,” Marino said, “would it be on her laptop? And maybe that’s why it’s missing?”
“It wouldn’t have been on her laptop. What you’re seeing resides on this website’s server,” Lucy said.
“But she hooked up her watch to her laptop,” Marino said.
“Yes. To upload information and to charge it,” Lucy said. “The data collected by this watchlike device weren’t for her use and wouldn’t have lived on her laptop. She not only wouldn’t have any use for the data but she wouldn’t have the software needed to aggregate it, to sort it, to make it meaningful.”
Lucy was being prompted by more questions and was answering them on the screen because she wanted to see what would happen next. She rated her moods as very little or not at all. Were Scarpetta answering the questions, she might just rate her own moods as extreme right now.
“I don’t know,” Marino said. “I can’t stop thinking this Caligula project might explain why maybe someone went inside her apartment and took her laptop and her phone and who knows what else.” His safety glasses looked at Scarpetta and he said, “We don’t know it was Toni on the security recording, you’re right about that. Just because the person had on what looked like her coat. How hard would that be if you were close to her same size and maybe had on similar running shoes? She wasn’t a small person, thin but tall. About five-ten, right? I don’t see how it could have been her going into her building Wednesday night at around quarter to six and leaving at seven. You think she’s been dead since Tuesday. And now this Caligula thing’s saying maybe the same thing. She hasn’t done her questionnaire for three days.”
“If it’s true that someone impersonated her on the security recordings,” Lucy said, “then he had her coat or one very similar and the keys to her apartment.”
“She was dead at least thirty-six hours,” Scarpetta said. “If her apartment keys were in her pocket and her killer knew where she lived, it wouldn’t have been hard to take the keys, let himself in, remove what he wanted from the scene, then return her keys to her pocket when he dumped her body in the park. Maybe this person had her coat, too. Maybe she was wearing it when she went out last. It might explain why she didn’t seem to be dressed warmly when her body was found. Maybe some of her clothing was missing.”
“That’s a lot of trouble and a lot of risk,” Lucy said. “Somebody didn’t plan very well. Seems all the calculating is after the fact, not prior to the crime. Maybe more of an impulse crime and the killer was someone she knew.”
“If she’d been communicating with him, that might be the reason for her missing laptop and her phone.” Marino was stuck on that. “Text messages stored on her phone. Maybe when you finally get into her e-mail. Maybe she was e-mailing these Caligula people or there are documents on her computer that are incriminating.”
“Then why leave the BioGraph device on her body?” Lucy said. “Why take the chance someone might do what we’re doing right now?”
Scarpetta said, “It may be that her killer wanted her computer, her phone. But that doesn’t mean there was a single rational reason. Maybe the absence of a reason is why the BioGraph wasn’t removed from her body.”
“There’s always a reason,” Marino said.
“Not the kind of reason you’re talking about, because this may not be the type of crime you’re talking about,” Scarpetta said, and she thought about her BlackBerry.
She reconsidered the motive for the theft, had a feeling she might be wrong about why Carley Crispin wanted the BlackBerry, that it wasn’t simply about what Carley had said when they were walking past Columbus Circle after leaving CNN: “I bet you could talk anybody into it you wanted, with the connections you have.” As if to imply that Scarpetta wouldn’t have a problem enticing guests to appear on a TV show, assuming she had her own show, and from that Scarpetta had assigned a motive to her missing smartphone. Carley wanted information, wanted Scarpetta’s contacts, and maybe she did in fact help herself to scene photographs while she’d had the chance. But possibly the BlackBerry ultimately wasn’t intended for Carley or even Agee but for someone else. Someone cunning and evil. The last person to have the BlackBerry was Agee, and maybe he would have passed it on to a third party had he not killed himself.
“People commit murder and return to the scene of the crime, not always for the sole reason that they’re paranoid and trying to cover their tracks,” Scarpetta explained. “Sometimes it’s to relive a violent act that was gratifying. Maybe in Toni’s case it’s more than one motivation. Her phone, her laptop are souvenirs, and they also were a means of impersonating her before her body was found, to throw us off track about her time of death by pretending to be her and using her cell phone to send a text message to her mother at around eight p.m. Wednesday night. Manipulations, games, and fantasy, emotionally driven, sexually driven, sadistically driven. A blend of motivations that created a malignant discord. Like so much in life. It isn’t just one thing.”
Lucy finished answering the mood rating questions and a Submit box appeared on the screen. She clicked on it and got the confirmation that her completed scales had been successfully sent to the site for review. For review by whom? Scarpetta wondered. A study sponsor who was a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, a research assistant, a graduate student. Who the hell knew, but there would be more than one of them. Probably a large faculty of them. These invisible sponsors could be anyone and could exist anywhere and were engaged in a project that obviously was intended to make predictions about human behavior that would prove useful to someone.
“It’s an acronym,” Lucy said.
On the screen:
THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING IN THE CALCULATED INTEGRATION OF GPS UPLOADED LIGHT AND ACTIVITY STUDY.
“CALIGULA,” Scarpetta said. “I still don’t see why anyone would choose an acronym like that.”
“Suffered chronically from nightmares and insomnia.” Lucy was skimming through files on her other MacBook, Googles about Caligula. “Used to wander the palace all night long waiting for the sun to come up. The name might have to do with that. If, for example, the study’s related to sleep disorders and the effects of light and darkness on moods. His name was derived from the Latin word caliga, which means ‘little boot.’ ”
Marino said to Scarpetta, “Your name means ‘little shoe.’”
“Come on, guys,” Lucy said under her breath, talking to her neural networking programs and search engines. “Sure as hell would be easier if I could take this to my office.” She meant the BioGraph device.
“It’s all over the Internet about Scarpetta meaning ‘little shoe’ in Italian,” Marino went on, his eyes uneasy behind thick plastic. “The little shoe, the little gu
mshoe, the little lady with the big kick.”
“Now we’re cooking,” Lucy said.
Data were rolling down her screen, a stew of letters, symbols, numbers.
“I wonder if Toni knew exactly what was being collected by the thing she was wearing on her wrist morning, noon, and night,” Lucy said. “Or if whoever killed her did.”
“Unlikely she did,” Scarpetta said. “The details of whatever theory researchers hope to prove aren’t advertised or disseminated publicly. The subjects themselves don’t know the details, only generalities. Otherwise, they can skew the results.”
“Must have been something in it for her,” Marino said. “Wearing that watch all the time. Answering questions every day.”
“She may have had a personal interest in sleep disorders, seasonal affective disorder, who knows what, and saw an ad for a study or someone gave her information. Her mother said she was moody and affected by gloomy weather,” Scarpetta said. “Usually people involved in research studies get paid.”
She thought about the father, Lawrence Darien, and his aggressive attempts at claiming Toni’s personal effects and her dead body. A bioelectrical engineer from MIT. A gambler and a drunk with ties to organized crime. When he’d made a scene at the morgue, maybe what he’d really been after was the BioGraph watch.
“Unbelievable what’s stored inside this thing.” Lucy pulled a stool in front of her MacBooks and sat, looking at raw data that had been stored inside Toni’s BioGraph device. “Obviously a combination actigraphy data logger with a highly sensitive accelerometer or bimorph element in a two-layer piezoelectric sensor that basically measures gross motor activity. I’m not seeing anything that strikes me as military or government.”
“What would you expect?” Marino asked. “If this was CIA or something.”
The Scarpetta Factor Page 39