Predator

by Patricia Cornwell

  She thinks of Stevie claiming to have followed her footprints in the snow, follow them to the Hummer parked behind the Anchor Inn. She wonders how she could have accepted what Stevie said, not really questioned it. While Lucy’s footprints would have been obvious just outside the cottage, they would have gotten mixed in with other footprints along the sidewalk. It’s not as if Lucy was the only person in Ptown that morning. She thinks of the cell phone that belongs to a man named Doug, of the red handprints, of Johnny, and is sickened by how careless she has been, how myopic and self-destructive.

  Stevie probably never intended to meet Lucy at Deuce, just teased her, toyed with her the same way she did at Lorraine’s that night. Nothing is Stevie’s first time. She’s an expert in her games, her bizarre, sick games.

  “You see her anywhere?” Marino’s voice sounds in her ear.

  “I’m turning around,” she says. “Stay where you are.”

  She cuts over on 11th Street, then heads north on Washington Avenue past the courthouse as a white Chevy Blazer with dark, tinted windows drives past. She walks quickly, uneasily, suddenly not so brave, mindful of the pistol in her ankle holster and breathing hard.

  49

  Another winter storm covers Cambridge, and Benton can barely make out the houses across the street. Snow falls steeply and thickly, and he watches the whitening of the world around him.

  “I can put on more coffee, if you’d like,” Scarpetta says as she walks into the living room.

  “I’ve had enough,” he says, his back to her.

  “So have I,” she says.

  He hears her sit on the hearth, set a coffee mug on it. He feels her eyes on him and turns around, looking at her, not sure what to say. Her hair is wet and she has thrown on a black silk robe and is naked beneath it, and the satiny fabric caresses her body and reveals the deep hollow between her breasts because of the way she sits sideways on the hearth, bending into herself, her strong arms around her knees, her skin unblemished and smooth for her age. Firelight touches her short, blond hair and extremely handsome face, and fire and sunlight love her hair and her face the same way he does. He loves her, all of her, but right now he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to fix it.

  Last night she said she was leaving him. She would have packed her suitcase if she’d had one, but she never brings a suitcase. She has belongings here. This is her home, too, and all morning he has listened for the sound of drawers and closet doors, for the sound of her moving out and never coming back.

  “You can’t drive,” he says. “I guess you’re stuck.”

  Bare trees are delicate pencil strokes against luminous whiteness, and there isn’t a moving car in sight.

  “I know how you feel and what you want,” he says, “but you aren’t going anywhere today. Nobody is. Some of the streets in Cambridge don’t always get plowed right away. This is one of them.”

  “You have four-wheel drive,” she says, staring down at her hands in her lap.

  “We’re expecting two feet of snow. Even if I could get you to the airport, your plane’s not going anywhere. Not today.”

  “You should eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “How about an omelet with Vermont cheddar? You need to eat. You’ll feel better.”

  She watches him from the hearth, her chin resting on her hand. Her robe is tied tightly around her waist and she is sculpted in glossy black silk, and he desires her just as much as he always did. He desired her the first time they met some fifteen years ago. Both of them were chiefs. His fiefdom was the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, hers the Virginia medical examiner’s system. They were working an especially heinous case, and she walked into the conference room. He can still see the way she looked the first time he saw her, in a long, white lab coat with pens in the pockets over a pearl-gray pinstriped suit, a pile of case files in her arms. He was intrigued by her hands, strong and capable but elegant.

  He realizes she is staring at him.

  “Who were you on the phone with a little earlier?” he asks. “I heard you talking to someone.”

  She’s called her lawyer, he thinks. She’s called Lucy. She’s called someone to say she’s leaving him and means it this time.

  “I called Dr. Self,” she says. “Tried her, left her a message.”

  He is perplexed and shows it.

  “I’m sure you remember her,” she says. “Or maybe you listen to her on the radio,” she adds wryly.

  “Please.”

  “Millions of people do.”

  “Why would you call her?” he asks.

  She tells him about David Luck and his prescription. She tells him that Dr. Self wasn’t the least bit helpful the first time she called.

  “No surprise. She’s a crackpot, an egomaniac. She lives up to her name. Self.”

  “Actually, she was well within her right. I don’t have jurisdiction. Nobody’s dead, as far as we know. Dr. Self doesn’t have to respond to any medical examiner at this point, and I’m not so sure I’d call her a crackpot.”

  “How about a psychiatric whore? Have you listened to her lately?”

  “Then you do listen to her.”

  “Next time, invite a real psychiatrist to speak at the Academy, not some radio jackass.”

  “It wasn’t my idea, and I made it clear I was against it. But the buck stops with Lucy.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Lucy can’t stand people like her.”

  “I believe it was Joe’s suggestion to invite Dr. Self as a guest lecturer, his first big coup when he started his fellowship. Getting a celebrity lined up for the summer session. That and getting on her show, a repeat guest. In fact, they’ve talked about the Academy on the air, which I’m not happy about.”

  “Idiot. They deserve each other.”

  “Lucy wasn’t paying attention. Never, of course, attended the lectures. She didn’t care what Joe did. There’s a lot she doesn’t seem to care about anymore. What are we going to do.”

  She isn’t talking about Lucy now.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a psychologist. You should know. You deal with dysfunctions and misery every day.”

  “I’m miserable this morning,” he says. “You’re right about that. I suppose if I were your psychologist, I might suggest that you’re venting your pain and anger on me because you can’t vent it on Lucy. You can’t get angry with someone who has a brain tumor.”

  Scarpetta opens the screen and places another split log on the fire, and sparks fly and wood pops.

  “She’s made me angry most of her life,” she confesses. “There’s never been anyone who tries my patience the way she does.”

  “Lucy’s an only child raised by a borderline personality disorder,” Benton says. “A hypersexual narcissist. Your sister. Add to the equation, Lucy is unusually gifted. She doesn’t think like other people. She’s gay. And all that equals someone who learned a long time ago to be self-contained.”

  “Someone supremely selfish, you mean.”

  “Insults to our psyche can make us selfish. She was afraid if you knew about the tumor you’d treat her differently, and that would play right into her secret fear. If you know, then somehow it becomes real.”

  She stares out the window behind him as if transfixed by the snow. Already it is at least eight inches deep, and cars parked along the street are beginning to look like snowdrifts, and even the neighborhood children are staying in.

  “Thank goodness I went to the store,” Benton comments.

  “On that subject, let me see what I can throw together for lunch. We should have a nice lunch. We should try to have a good day.”

  “You ever had a body that was painted?” he asks.

  “Mine or somebody else?”

  He smiles a little. “Decidedly not yours. There is nothing dead about your body. This case up here. The red handprints on her body. I’m wondering if it was done while she was alive or after she was killed. Wish there was a
way to tell.”

  She looks at him for a long moment, the fire moving behind her and sounding like the wind.

  “If he did it while she was alive, we’re dealing with a very different sort of predator. How terrifying and humiliating would that be?” he says. “To be restrained…”

  “Do we know she was restrained?”

  “There are some marks around her wrists and ankles. Reddish areas that the medical examiner lists as possible contusions.”

  “Possible?”

  “As opposed to postmortem artifact,” Benton says. “Especially since the body was exposed to the cold. That’s what she says.”

  “She?”

  “The chief here.”

  “Left over from the Boston ME office’s not-so-glorious past,” Scarpetta says. “Too bad. She single-handedly has pretty much ruined the place.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d look over the report. I have it on a disk. I want to know what you think of the bodypainting, of everything. It’s really important for me to know if he did it when she was alive or dead. Too bad we couldn’t scan her brain and replay what happened.”

  She treats it like a serious comment. “That’s a nightmare I’m not sure you want. Not even you would want to see that. Assuming it was possible.”

  “Basil would like me to see it.”

  “Yes, dear Basil,” she says, not at all happy about Basil Jenrette’s intrusion into Benton’s life.

  “Theoretically,” he says, “would you want to see it? Would you want to see the replay if it were possible?”

  “Even if there were a way to replay a person’s final moments,” she replies from the hearth, “I’m not sure how reliable it would be. I suspect the brain has the remarkable capacity to process events in a way that ensures the least amount of trauma and pain.”

  “Some people disassociate, I suspect,” he says as her cell phone rings.

  It’s Marino.

  “Call extension two forty-three,” he says. “Now.”

  50

  Extension 243 is the fingerprints lab. It is also a favorite forum for Academy staff, a place to gather and talk about evidence that requires more than one type of forensic analysis.

  Fingerprints are no longer just fingerprints. They can be a source of DNA, not just the DNA of whoever left them but the DNA of the victim the perpetrator touched. They can be a source of drug residues or a material that was on the person’s hands, perhaps ink or paint, that requires analysis by such lofty instruments as the gas chromatograph or the infrared spectrophotometer or the Fourier transform infrared microscope. In the old days, a piece of evidence usually walked onstage alone. Now, with the sophistication and sensitivity of scientific instruments and processes, a solo becomes a string quartet or a symphony. The problem remains what to collect first. Testing for one thing can eradicate another. So scientists get together, usually in Matthew’s lab. They debate and decide what should be done and who goes first.

  When Matthew received the latex gloves from Daggie Simister’s scene, he was faced with a plethora of possibilities, none of them foolproof. He could put on cotton examination gloves, and on top of those wear the inside-out latex gloves. By using his own hands to fill out otherwise-limp latex, he makes it easier to lift and photograph latent prints. But in doing so, he runs the risk of ruining any possibility of fuming prints with superglue or looking for them with an alternate light source and luminescent powders or processing them with chemicals such as ninhydrin or diazafluoren. One process can interfere with another, and once the damage is done, there is no going back.

  It is half past eight, and the inside of his small lab right now looks like a mini staff conference, with Matthew, Marino, Joe Amos and three scientists gathered around a large transparent plastic box, the glue tank. Inside it are two inside-out latex gloves, one bloody, hanging from clips. Small holes have been cut into the bloody glove. Other areas of the latex, inside and out, were swabbed for DNA in such a way as not to disturb any possible prints. Then Matthew had to decide door number one, door number two, door number three, as he likes to describe a deliberation that involves just as much instinct, experience and luck as good science. He chose to place the gloves, a foil pack of superglue and a dish of warm water inside the tank.

  What that produced was one visible print, a left thumbprint preserved in hard, whitish glue. He lifted it with black gel lifter, then photographed it.

  “The gang’s all here,” he is saying to Scarpetta over speakerphone. “Who wants to start?” he asks the people assembled around the examination table. “Randy?”

  DNA scientist Randy is an odd little man with a big nose and a lazy eye. Matthew has never liked him much, and is reminded why the instant Randy starts to talk.

  “Well what I was given were three potential sources of DNA,” Randy says in his typically pedantic way. “Two gloves and two earprints.”

  “That’s four.” Scarpetta’s voice enters the room.

  “Yes sir, I meant four. The hope, of course, was to get DNA from the outside of the one glove, and primarily that meant from the dried blood, and perhaps DNA from the inside of both gloves. I already got DNA from the earprints,” he reminds everybody, “which I managed to swab nondestructively by avoiding what might be considered individual variations or potentially characteristic features such as the inferior extension of the anthelix. As you know, we ran that profile in CODIS and came back empty-handed, but what we just found out is the DNA from the earprint matches the DNA inside one of the gloves.”

  “Just one?” Scarpetta’s voice asks.

  “The bloody one. I didn’t get anything off the other glove. I’m not sure it was ever worn.”

  “That’s peculiar,” Scarpetta’s puzzled voice says.

  “Of course, Matthew assisted because I’m not really up on ear anatomy, and prints of any type are his department more than mine,” Randy adds, as if it matters. “As I’ve just pointed out, we got the DNA from the earprints, specifically from the areas of the helix and the lobe. And it’s obviously from the same person who was wearing one of the gloves, so I suppose you could conjecture that whoever pressed their ear against the glass at the house where those people disappeared was the same individual who murdered Daggie Simister. Or at least was wearing at least one latex glove at her crime scene.”

  “How many times did you sharpen your damn pencil while you did all that?” Marino whispers.

  “What’s that?”

  “Wouldn’t want you to leave out even one fascinating little detail,” Marino says quietly, so Scarpetta can’t hear. “I bet you count the cracks in the sidewalk and set your timer when you have sex.”

  “Randy, please continue,” Scarpetta says. “And nothing in CODIS. That’s a shame.”

  He goes on in his long-winded, convoluted way to confirm yet again that a search of the Combined DNA Index system database known as CODIS was unsuccessful. Whoever left the DNA isn’t in the database, possibly suggesting that the person has never been arrested.

  “It also came up empty-handed with DNA from blood found in that beach shop in Las Olas. But some of those samples aren’t blood,” Randy says to the black telephone on the counter. “I don’t know what it is. Something that caused a false positive. Lucy mentioned the possibility it might be copper. She thinks what might be reacting to luminol is the fungicide that’s used down here to prevent the canker. You know, copper sprays.”

  “Based on?” Joe asks, and he’s another staff member Matthew can’t stand.

  “There was a lot of copper at the Simister scene, inside and out.”

  “Which samples, specifically, were human blood at Beach Bums?” Scarpetta’s voice asks.

  “The bathroom. Samples from the storage-area floor aren’t blood. May be copper. Also the trace from the station wagon. The carpet in the front seat driver’s side that reacted to luminol. Also not blood. Another false positive. Again, could be copper.”

  “Phil? You around?”

  “Right here,”
Phil, the trace evidence examiner, says.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” Scarpetta’s voice then says and she sounds like she means it. “I want the labs in overdrive.”

  “I thought we already were. About to over-torque, in fact.” Joe couldn’t keep his mouth shut if he were drowning.

  “All biological samples that haven’t already been analyzed, I want them analyzed ASAP,” Scarpetta’s voice says and it’s sounding more adamant. “Including any potential sources of DNA taken from the house in Hollywood, the one where the two boys and two women disappeared. Everything in CODIS. We’re going to treat everybody as if they’re dead.”

  The scientists, Joe and Marino look at each other. They’ve never heard Scarpetta say anything quite like that.

  “Now that’s optimism for you,” Joe remarks.

  “Phil, how about running the carpet sweepings, the trace from the Simister case and trace from the station wagon—trace from everything—through SEM-EDS,” Scarpetta’s voice says. “Let’s see if in fact it’s copper.”

  “It must be everywhere down here.”

  “No, it’s not,” Scarpetta’s voice says. “Not everybody uses it. Not everybody has citrus trees. But so far in the cases we’re dealing with, that is a common denominator.”

  “What about the beach shop? I wouldn’t think there are citrus trees around there.”

  “You’re right. Good point.”

  “Then let’s just say some of that trace is positive for copper….”

  “That will be significant,” Scarpetta’s voice says. “We have to ask why. Who tracked it into the storeroom. Who tracked it into the station wagon and now we’re going to have to go back to the house where the people disappeared, look for copper in there, too. Anything interesting about the red paint-like substance we found on the floor, the chunks of concrete we brought in?”

  “Henna pigment, definitely not what you see in top-coats, wall paints,” Phil replies.

  “What about temporary tattoo or bodypaints?”

  “Certainly could be, but if it’s alcohol-based, we wouldn’t detect that. The ethanol or isopropanol would have evaporated by now.”