The Scarpetta Factor

by Patricia Cornwell

  Marino rustled as he walked closer to Scarpetta and said, “She had it on the whole time.”

  “She had on what?” Scarpetta said to him.

  “The watch and one of those sensors.” The part of his face that showed between the mask and the bouffant cap was flushed and he was sweating.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Geffner. “I’m sorry. I’m doing about twenty things at once. What about the devil?”

  “There’s a reason it’s called devil’s dung,” Geffner repeated, “and it might interest you to know that supposedly wolves are attracted to the odor of asafoetida.”

  The sound of papery feet. Lucy walking across the white-tile floor to a work station, checking various connections and unplugging a large flat-screen monitor. She walked to another work station node and disconnected that monitor.

  “Someone went to a fair amount of trouble to grind up asafoetida and what looks like asphalt and mix it with some kind of clear oil like a grapeseed oil, a linseed oil.”

  Lucy carried the video displays to where Scarpetta sat and set them on her desk. She plugged the monitors into a port hub and the screens began to illuminate, images rolling down slowly and hazily, then sharply defined. Lucy’s papery sounds as she returned to her MacBooks, to Marino, the two of them talking. Scarpetta caught the words fucking slow and ordered wrong. Lucy was aggravated.

  “I’m going to do gas chromatography-mass spec. FTIR. But with the microscope so far?” Geffner was saying.

  Charts and maps and screen shots rolling by. Vital signs and dates and times. Mobility and exposure to ambient light. Scarpetta scanned data from the BioGraph device, and she looked at the file she’d just opened on the computer screen in front of her. Microscopic images: curled silvery ribbons covered with a rash of rust, and what looked like fragmented bullets.

  “Definitely iron filings”—Geffner’s voice—“which were readily identifiable visually and with a magnet, and mixed in with this are dull gray particles, also heavy. They sunk to the bottom of a test tube filled with water. Maybe lead.”

  Toni Darien’s vital signs, locations, the weather, dates, and times, captured every fifteen seconds. At two-twelve p.m. this past Tuesday, December 16, the temperature was seventy degrees Fahrenheit, the intensity of ambient white light luminescence was five hundred lux, typical of indoor lighting, her pulse oximetry was ninety-nine percent, her heart rate sixty-four, her pace was five steps, and her location was her apartment on Second Avenue. She was home and awake and walking around. Assuming she was the one wearing the BioGraph device. Scarpetta was going to assume it.

  Geffner described, “I’ll verify with x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. Definitely quartz fragments, which I would expect with ground-up asphalt. I’ve touched a hot tungsten needle to some of the dark-brown and black sticky, viscous semisolid liquid material to see if it softened it, and it did. It does have a characteristic asphalt /petroleum odor.”

  What Scarpetta had smelled when she’d carried the FedEx box upstairs. Asafoetida and asphalt. She watched charts and maps slowly roll by. She followed Toni Darien’s journey as it carried her closer to death. At two-fifteen on December 16, her pace picked up and the temperature dropped to thirty-nine degrees. Humidity eighty-five percent, ambient light eight hundred lux, winds out of the northeast. She was outside, and it was cold and overcast, her pulse oximetry ninety-nine percent as her heart rate began to climb: sixty-five, sixty-seven, seventy, eighty-five, and climbing as minutes passed, heading west on East 86th Street at a pace of thirty-three steps per fifteen seconds. Toni was running.

  And Geffner was explaining, “I’m seeing what could be ground peppercorns, their physical properties and morphology characteristic for black, white, and red pepper. I’ll verify with GCMS analysis. Asafoetida, iron, lead, pepper, asphalt. The components of a potion that’s meant to be a curse.”

  “Or what Marino’s calling a stink bomb.” Scarpetta talked to Geffner while she followed Toni Darien west on East 86th Street.

  She turned south on Park Avenue, her pulse oximetry ninety-nine percent, her heart rate one hundred and twenty-three beats per minute.

  “Ritualistic black magic, but I can’t find anything that specifically identifies a certain sect or religion,” Geffner was saying. “Not Palo Mayombe or Santeria, nothing I’ve seen reminds me of what I associate with their rituals and sorcery. I just know your potion wasn’t meant to bring any good fortune your way, which gets me back to the contradiction. Wolves are supposed to be favorable, to have great powers of restoring peace and harmony, to have healing powers and bring good luck in hunting.”

  At four minutes and thirty seconds past three p.m., Toni passed 63rd Street, still jogging south on Park Avenue. The intensity of ambient light was less than seven hundred lux, the relative humidity one hundred percent. It had gotten more overcast and was raining. Her pulse oximetry was the same, her heart rate up to one forty. Grace Darien had said that Toni didn’t like to jog in gloomy weather. But she was doing it, running in the cold and rain. Why? Scarpetta kept looking at data as Geffner kept talking.

  “The only witchcraft connection I could find is the Navajo word for ‘wolf’—mai-coh—means ‘witch.’ A person who can transform himself into something or someone else if he puts on a wolf skin. According to myth, witches or werewolves change shape so they can travel unnoticed. And the Pawnees used wolf skins and fur to protect their treasures and for various magical ceremonies. I’ve been looking up what I can as we’ve been moving things along in here. Don’t want you to think I’m the world’s expert on hexes and mumbo jumbo and folklore.”

  “I guess the question’s going to be if it’s the same person who sent the singing Christmas card.” Scarpetta was thinking of Benton’s former patient Dodie Hodge, and she was looking at data rolling by.

  Pulse oximetry the same, but Toni’s heart rate was dropping. At the corner of Park and East 58th she must have stopped running. Heart rate one thirty-two, one thirty-one, one thirty, and dropping. She was walking south on Park Avenue in the rain. The time was now eleven past three p.m.

  Geffner said, “I think the question is what the person who made your stink bomb might have to do with the Toni Darien homicide.”

  “Would you please repeat that?” Scarpetta asked as she looked at a GPS screen shot captured by Toni Darien’s BioGraph watchlike device at three-fourteen this past Tuesday afternoon. A red arrow on a topographic map pointing to a Park Avenue address.

  Hannah Starr’s mansion.

  “What did you say about Toni Darien?” Scarpetta asked, looking at more GPS screen shots, thinking she was misinterpreting, but she wasn’t.

  Toni Darien’s run had taken her to the Starrs’ address. That was why she was jogging in gloomy weather. She was meeting someone.

  “More wolf fur,” Geffner said. “Fragments of guard hairs.”

  Pulse oximetry ninety-nine percent. Heart rate eighty-three and dropping. GPS screen shot after screen shot as minutes passed and Toni’s heart rate dropped, returning to its resting rate. The sound of shoe covers on tile. Marino and Lucy were walking toward Scarpetta.

  “You see where she is?” Lucy’s eyes were intense behind the safety glasses. She was making sure Scarpetta understood the significance of the GPS data.

  “I’m nowhere near done with analyzing what you submitted in the Darien case.” Geffner’s voice inside the training lab. “But mixed in with the samples you submitted yesterday are fragments of wolf hair, guard hair, microscopic fragments that are similar to what I just saw when I looked at the fur from the voodoo doll. White, black, coarse. I might not have been able to identify it as wolf fur because it’s not intact enough, but it crossed my mind. That or canine. But after seeing what came in with your bomb? That’s what I’m thinking it is. In fact, willing to bet.”

  Marino frowned, and he was very agitated when he said, “You’re saying it’s not dog fur. It’s wolf fur, and it’s in both cases? In Toni Darien’s case and the bomb case?”

/>   “Marino?” Geffner sounded confused. “That you?”

  “I’m here. In the lab with the Doc. What the hell are you talking about? You sure you didn’t get something mixed up?”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. The DNA lab I was telling you about, Dr. Scarpetta?”

  “I agree,” she replied. “We should get the species of wolf identified, make sure they’re the same, that the hairs in both cases are from Great Plains wolves.”

  She listened to him, and she looked at data. Temperature thirty-eight degrees, relative humidity ninety-nine percent, heart rate seventy-seven. Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, at three-seventeen p.m., the temperature was sixty-nine degrees and the humidity was thirty percent: Toni Darien had walked inside Hannah Starr’s house.

  Detective Bonnell parked in front of a limestone mansion that reminded Berger of Newport, Rhode Island, of massive monuments from an era in America when staggering wealth was made from coal, cotton, silver, and steel, from tangible commodities that scarcely existed anymore.

  “I don’t get it.” Bonnell was staring at the limestone façade of a residence that took up the better part of a city block just a few minutes’ walk from Central Park South. “Eighty million dollars? Who the hell has money like that?” The expression on her face was a mixture of awe and disgust.

  “Not Bobby anymore,” Berger said. “At least not that we know of. I assume he’ll have to sell it, and nobody’s going to buy it unless it’s some sheikh from Dubai.”

  “Or if Hannah shows up.”

  “She and the family fortune are long gone. One way or the other,” Berger said.

  “Jesus.” Bonnell looked at the mansion, and she looked at cars and pedestrians going past. She was looking at everything except Berger. “It makes me think we’re really not on the same planet as some people. My place in Queens? I wouldn’t know what it’s like to live somewhere and not hear assholes yelling and cars honking and sirens morning, noon, and night. The other week, I had a rat. It ran across the bathroom floor and disappeared behind the toilet, and that’s all I think about every time I go in there, if you know what I mean. It’s probably not true they can come up from the sewer.”

  Berger unfastened her seat belt and tried Marino on her BlackBerry again. He wasn’t answering, and neither was Lucy. If they were still inside the DNA Building, they either weren’t getting a signal or weren’t allowed to have their cell phones with them, depending on which lab or work space they were in. The OCME’s forensic biological sciences facility was probably the largest, most sophisticated one in the world. Marino and Lucy could be anywhere in there, and Berger didn’t feel like calling the damn switchboard and tracking them down.

  “I’m about to go into the interview on Park Ave,” she left Marino another message. “So I might not be able to answer when you call back. Wondering what you found in the lab.”

  Her voice sounded cool, her tone flat and unfriendly. She was angry with Marino, and she didn’t know what she felt about Lucy, grief or fury, love or hate, and something else that was a little bit like dying. What Berger knew about dying, at any rate. She imagined it must be like sliding off the side of a cliff, hanging on until you lose your grip, and on your way down wondering who to blame. Berger blamed Lucy, and she blamed herself. Denial, looking the other way, maybe the same thing Bobby was doing when he continued e-mailing Hannah every day.

  For three weeks Berger had known about the photographs taken in 1996 at the very mansion she and Bonnell were about to enter, and Berger’s response was to hop aboard avoidance, to pick up the pace and outrun what she couldn’t handle. If anybody knew about untruthfulness and its derailments, Berger did. She talked to evasive, unrealistic people all the time, but that hadn’t made a difference—knowing better never does when one is about to suffer, about to lose it all—and she’d ridden hard and fast until this morning. Until Bonnell had tracked her down at the FBI field office to pass along information she thought the prosecutor would want to know.

  “I’m just going to say this before we go inside,” Berger said. “I’m not a weak person, and I’m not a coward. Seeing a few photographs taken twelve years ago is one thing. What you told me is another. I had reason to believe Lucy knew Rupe Starr when she was in college, but no reason to believe she was financially involved with Hannah as recently as six months ago. Now the story has changed and we will act accordingly. I want you to hear this directly, because you don’t know me. And this isn’t a good way to start.”

  “I didn’t mean to do anything out of line.” Bonnell had said this several times. “But what Lucy found in Warner Agee’s hotel room, in his computer? Now it involves my case because of him impersonating my witness, Harvey Fahley. And we don’t know how deep it’s going to get, what all these people are involved in, especially with the implications of organized crime and what you were telling me about the French guy with the genetic disorder.”

  “You don’t have to keep explaining yourself.”

  “It’s not that I wanted to snoop or that I was curious and abused my privileges or position as a police officer. I wouldn’t have asked RTCC if I wasn’t legitimately concerned about Lucy’s credibility. I was going to have to depend on her, and I’ve heard some things. She was paramilitary once, wasn’t she? And got fired from the FBI or ATF. Her helping you out with Hannah Starr had nothing to do with me. But now it does. I’m the lead detective in the Toni Darien case.”

  “I understand.” And Berger did.

  “I want to make sure you do,” Bonnell said. “You’re the DA, the head of the Sex Crimes Unit. I’ve only been in homicide a year and we’ve not worked together yet. It’s not a good way to start for me, either. But I’m not going to accept a witness at face value, no questions asked, just because she’s someone you know—a friend. Lucy will be my witness, so I had to check out a few things.”

  “She’s not my friend.”

  “She’ll end up on the stand if Toni’s case goes to court. Or if Hannah’s does.”

  “She’s not just a friend. You and I both know what she is,” Berger said, and emotions shook inside her. “I’m sure I was on that damn data wall in RTCC for all the world to see. She’s more than a friend. I know you’re not naïve.”

  “The analysts out of respect didn’t put Lucy’s info on the wall. Or anything about you. We were at a work station going through the data, all the links found. I’m not trying to get into your business. I don’t care what people do in their personal lives unless it’s illegal, and I didn’t expect RTCC to turn up what they did about Bay Bridge Finance. That connects Lucy directly to Hannah. I’m not saying it means Lucy’s involved in fraud.”

  “We’re going to find out,” Berger said.

  “If he’ll tell us or if he knows.” Bonnell meant Bobby. “And he might not, for the same reason Lucy might not. Some people who have that kind of money don’t know the details because other people do the investing and management and all the rest. That’s what happened to Bernie Madoff’s victims. Same thing. They didn’t know, and they didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Lucy isn’t the type not to know,” Berger said, and she also knew Lucy wasn’t the type to let it go.

  Bay Bridge Finance was a brokerage that purportedly specialized in portfolio diversification ventures such as timber, mining, petroleum extraction, and real estate, including high-end waterfront apartments in South Florida. Based on what Berger knew about the magnitude of fraud perpetrated by that Ponzi-scamming entity exposed not so long ago, chances were good that Lucy’s losses were massive. She intended to find out what she could from Bobby Fuller, not only about Hannah’s finances but also her affair with Hap Judd, whose proclivities were deeply disturbing and possibly dangerous. It was time to confront Bobby about Hap and a number of things, to present him with myriad links in hopes he could enlighten them, and he seemed willing. When Berger had reached him on his cell phone less than an hour ago, he’d said he would be happy to talk with Bonnell and her as l
ong as it wasn’t in a public place. Like last time, they needed to meet him here.

  “Let’s go,” Berger said to Bonnell, and they got out of the unmarked car.

  It was cold and very windy, and dark clouds streamed across the sky the way they did when a front was moving in. Probably a high-pressure system, and tomorrow would be clear skies, what Lucy called “severe clear,” but bitterly cold. They followed the walkway off the avenue, and over the mansion’s grand entranceway was a green-and-white flag with the Starr coat of arms, a rampant lion and a helmet and the motto Vivre en espoir, live in hope. An irony, Berger thought. Hope was the one emotion she didn’t feel right now.

  She pushed a button on an intercom that had Starr on it and Private Residence. She burrowed her hands in the pockets of her coat as she and Bonnell waited in silence in the wind, the flag snapping loudly, mindful that they were likely being monitored by closed-circuit cameras and that anything they said might be overheard. The loud click of a deadbolt, and the ornately carved mahogany entry door opened, and then the shape of someone in the black-and-white uniform of a housekeeper showed through spaces in the wrought-iron gate.

  Nastya, Berger presumed, was letting them in without asking who they were over the intercom because she knew, had observed them on a security monitor, and they were expected. Her legal immigration status had been all over the news, and several photographs were in circulation, accompanied by rumors of the services she supplied Bobby besides cooking his dinner and making his bed. The housekeeper the press had dubbed “Nasty” was in her mid-thirties, with pronounced cheekbones, olive skin, and striking blue eyes.

  “Please come in.” Nastya stepped aside.

  The foyer was travertine marble with open arches and a twenty-foot coffered ceiling centered by an antique chandelier of amethyst and smoky-quartz glass. Off to one side, a stairway with an elaborate iron railing curved upstairs, and Nastya asked them to follow her to the library. Berger remembered it was on the third floor, toward the back of the mansion, an enormous interior room where Rupe Starr had spent a lifetime accumulating an antiquarian library worthy of a university or a palace.