Postmortem

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Yes,” he said.

  He went very still as she touched his hands, careful of his injured thumb.

  “I’m going to very gently clean your fingers and your injuries with isopropyl alcohol,” she said. “So your own body secretions don’t interfere with the curing process. This shouldn’t hurt. At the most, a little sting. You let me know if you want me to stop.”

  He fell silent, watching her clean his hands, one finger at a time.

  “I’m trying to figure out why you’d be familiar with Dr. Wesley’s research study at McLean,” she said. “Since he hasn’t published anything yet. But I know the recruitment for subjects has been going on for a while and has been heavily advertised and publicized. I suppose that’s the answer?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Oscar said, staring down at his hands. “Nothing changes. People know why they’re hateful, and it changes nothing. You won’t change feelings. All the science in the world won’t change feelings.”

  “I don’t agree,” she said. “We tend to hate what we fear. And we hate less when we’re less afraid.”

  She squeezed the odorless compound over his fingertips, the extruder gun clicking each time she pressed the trigger.

  “Hopefully, the more enlightened we are, the less we fear and the less we hate. I’m covering each finger to the first knuckle, and when the compound is dry, it will roll off like one of those rubber fingertips people wear when counting money. This material is excellent for microscopic evaluation.”

  She used a wooden spatula to spread and smooth, and by the time she’d finished covering his multiple scratches and nail marks, the compound on his fingertips had begun to cure. It was interesting that he didn’t ask her why she’d want to get impressions of his fingertips, especially his fingernails, and also of the scratches and nail marks allegedly made by a stranger he said had attacked him. Oscar didn’t ask because he probably knew, and she didn’t really need these impressions for microscopic study as much as she needed him to see her taking them.

  “There. If you can just hold your hands up,” she said.

  She met his blue-green stare.

  “It’s cool in here,” she said. “I’m guessing sixty-eight degrees. It should set in about four minutes. I’m going to pull your gown back up for now so you’ll be more comfortable.”

  She smelled the pungent sweat of fear and confinement. She smelled unbrushed teeth and a trace of cologne. She wondered if a man would bother with cologne if his intention was to murder his lover.

  11

  Lucy hung her leather jacket on the coatrack and, without invitation, moved a chair next to Berger and opened a MacBook Air.

  “Excuse me,” Berger said, “I’m accustomed to people sitting on the other side of my desk.”

  “I need to show you something,” Lucy said. “You’re looking well. The same.”

  She openly appraised Berger.

  “No, I’m wrong,” Lucy decided. “You look better, maybe even better than the first time we met eight years ago when you had two more skyscrapers several blocks from here. When I’m flying the helicopter and the skyline first comes in view, it still looks like the city’s had its two front teeth knocked out. Then along the Hudson at maybe eight hundred feet and I pass Ground Zero, and it’s still a hole.”

  “It’s not something to make light of,” Berger said.

  “I’m definitely not making light of it. I just wish it would change. You know. So I don’t keep feeling like the bad guys won?”

  Berger couldn’t recall ever seeing Lucy in anything but tactical wear, and the tight threadbare jeans and black T-shirt she had on wouldn’t hide any type of weapon. The way she was dressed didn’t hide much at all, least of all that she had money. Her wide belt was crocodile with a Winston sabertoothed tiger buckle handcrafted of precious metals and stones, and the thick chain around her neck and its turquoise skull pendant was a Winston as well, and considered fine art and as expensive as such. She was remarkably fit and strong, and her mahogany hair with its shades of rose gold had been cut quite short. She could easily pass for a pretty boy model were it not for her breasts.

  Berger said, “Terri Bridges’s laptops.”

  She pointed to a table near the closed door, to the package wrapped in brown paper and neatly sealed with red evidence tape.

  Lucy glanced at the package as if its presence couldn’t have been more obvious.

  “I assume you’ve got a search warrant,” she said. “Anybody looked to see what’s on the hard drives yet?”

  “No. They’re all yours.”

  “When I find out what e-mail accounts she has, we’re going to need legal access to those as well. Quickly. And likely others, depending on who she was involved with—besides the boyfriend at Bellevue.”

  “Of course.”

  “Once I locate her e-mail hosting provider, check out her history, I’ll need passwords.”

  “I know the drill, believe it or not.”

  “Unless you want me to hack.” Lucy started typing.

  “Let’s refrain from using that word, please. In fact, I never heard you use it.”

  Lucy smiled a little as her agile fingers moved over the keyboard. She began a PowerPoint presentation.

  Connextions—The Neural Networking Solution

  “My God, you’re really not going to do this,” Berger said. “You have any idea how many of these things I see?”

  “You’ve never seen this.” Lucy tapped a key. “You familiar with computational neuroscience? Technology based on neural networking? Connections that process information very much the way the brain does.”

  Lucy’s index finger tap-tapped, a bulky silver ring on it. She had on a watch that Berger didn’t recognize, but it looked military, with its black face and luminous dial and rubber strap.

  Lucy caught Berger looking at it and said, “Maybe you’re familiar with illumination technology? Gaseous tritium, a radioactive isotope that decays and causes the numbers and other markings on the watch to glow so they’re easy to read in the dark? I bought it myself. You buy your Blancpain yourself? Or was it a gift?”

  “It was a gift to myself from myself. A reminder that time is precious.”

  “And mine’s a reminder that we should utilize what other people fear, because you don’t fear something unless it’s powerful.”

  “I don’t feel compelled to prove a point by wearing a radioactive watch,” Berger said.

  “A total, at most, of twenty-five millicuries, or an exposure of maybe point-one micro sievert over the period of a year. Same thing one gets from normal radiation. Harmless, in other words. A good example of people shunning something because they’re ignorant.”

  “People call me a lot of things, but not ignorant,” Berger said. “We need to get started on the laptops.”

  “The artificial system I’ve developed—am developing, actually,” Lucy said, “because the possibilities are infinite, and when considering infinity, one has to ask if by its very nature it transforms what’s artificial into something real. Because to me, artificial is finite. So to me, it follows that infinite will no longer be artificial.”

  “We need to get into this dead lady’s laptops,” Berger said.

  “You need to understand what we’re doing,” Lucy said.

  Her green eyes looked at Berger.

  “Because it will be you explaining everything in court, not me,” Lucy said.

  She started moving through the PowerPoint. Berger didn’t interrupt her this time.

  “Wet mind, another bit of jargon you don’t know,” Lucy said. “The way our brain recognizes voices, faces, objects, and orients them into a context that’s meaningful, revealing, instructive, predictive, and I can tell you’re not looking at any of this or even listening.”

  She removed her hands from the keyboard and studied Berger as if she were a question to be answered.

  “What I want from you is straightforward,” Berger said. “To go through e-mail, all files of any des
cription, re-create all deletions, recognize any patterns that might tell us the slightest thing about who, what, when, where. If she were murdered by somebody she knew, chances are good there’s something in there.” She indicated the packaged evidence on the table by the door. “Even if this is a stranger killing, there may be something she mentioned somewhere that could clue us in as to where this person might have come across her or where she came across him. You know how it works. You’ve been an investigator more years than you’re old.”

  “Not exactly.”

  Berger got up from her desk.

  “I’ll receipt these to you,” she said. “How did you get here?”

  “Since you don’t have a helipad, I took a cab.”

  Lucy had closed the office door when she’d come in. They stood in front of it.

  “I assumed one of your troops would give me a lift back to the Village and up the stairs, straight into my office,” Lucy said. “And I’ll sign the appropriate paperwork. Pro forma, maintaining the chain of evidence. All those things I learned in law enforcement one-oh-one.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Berger made the phone call.

  When she hung up, she said to Lucy, “You and I have one last thing to discuss.”

  Lucy leaned against the door, hands in the pockets of her jeans, and said, “Let me guess. That gossip column. Pedestrian programming, I might add. Do you believe in the Golden Rule? Do unto others?”

  “I’m not talking specifically about Gotham Gotcha,” Berger said. “But it raises an important issue I need to tell you about. Marino works for me. I’m taking for granted you can and will handle that.”

  Lucy put on her jacket.

  “I need your assurance,” Berger said.

  “You’re telling me this now?”

  “Until earlier this afternoon, I didn’t know there was a reason to have this conversation. By then, you and I had already agreed to meet. That’s the chronology of things. That’s why I’m bringing it up right now.”

  “Well, I hope you screen other people better than you did him,” Lucy said.

  “That’s a topic for you and Benton, since he’s the one who referred Marino to me last summer. What I read today is the first I’d heard of why Marino really left Charleston. I’ll reiterate what matters right now, Lucy. You have to handle it.”

  “That’s easy. I don’t intend to have anything to do with him.”

  “It’s not your choice to make,” Berger said. “If you want to work for me, you’ll have to handle it. He takes priority over you because—”

  “Glad to know your definition of justice,” Lucy interrupted. “Since I’m not the one who feloniously assaulted someone and then took a job under false pretenses.”

  “That’s not legally or literally true, and I don’t want to argue about it. The fact is, he’s completely involved in this investigation and I can’t remove him without repercussions. The fact is, I don’t want him off the case for a number of reasons, not the least of which is he already has a history with it since he took a complaint from the victim’s boyfriend a month ago. I’m not going to get rid of Marino because of you. There are other forensic computer experts. Just so we’re clear.”

  “There’s no one else who can do what I can. Just so we’re clear. But I’d rather end this before it starts. If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s not what I want.”

  “Does he know my aunt’s here?”

  “To use your aviation language, it seems I’m an air traffic controller at the moment,” Berger said. “Doing my best to keep things moving without people crashing into each other. My goal is strategic, gentle landings.”

  “What you’re saying is he knows she’s here.”

  “I’m not saying that. I haven’t talked to him about it, but that doesn’t mean others haven’t. Especially since he’s suddenly headline news. At least on the Internet. He may have known for a long time that Kay’s in and out of New York, but in light of their sullied past, it doesn’t surprise me he’s never mentioned anything about her to me.”

  “And you’ve never said anything about her to him?” Lucy’s eyes were shadowed by anger. “Like, how’s Kay? How’s she like working for CNN? How’s married life treating her? Gee, I really should try to have coffee with her some time when she’s in the city.”

  “Marino and I don’t chat. It’s never been my desire to be his new Scarpetta. I’m not Batman, and I don’t need a Robin. No insult toward Kay intended.”

  “Lucky for you, now that you know what Robin did to Batman.”

  “I’m not entirely sure what happened,” Berger said as her phone rang. “I believe your car’s here.”

  Scarpetta peeled off the hardened silicone and placed it in plastic evidence bags. She opened a cabinet and found antiseptic wipes and antibacterial ointment, then untied Oscar’s gown in back and lowered it around his waist again.

  “You’re sure it was a flex-cuff?” she asked.

  “You see them on TV,” Oscar said. “The police, the military, use them to tie people up like bags of garbage.”

  “This shouldn’t hurt.”

  Oscar didn’t move as she began cleaning his wounds again and gently applying ointment.

  “They had no right to touch her,” he said. “I was already holding her, so what difference did it make if it had been me who picked her up and put her on the stretcher? Instead of those assholes putting their hands all over her. They took the towel off her. I saw them. When they were making me leave the bathroom. They took the towel off her. Why? You know why. Because they wanted to see her.”

  “They were looking for evidence. For injuries.”

  She carefully pulled up his gown and tied it in back.

  “They didn’t need to take the towel off,” he said. “I told them there wasn’t any blood except the scratches on her legs. It’s like he hit her with something. Maybe a board. I don’t know where he got a board. Or where they got one. I didn’t see anything that might have made those scratches on her legs. Her face was dark red. There was a line around her neck. As if he strangled her with a rope or something. Whatever it was, it wasn’t around her neck anymore. The police didn’t need to take the towel off to see that, to take her pulse, to look at her wrists. You could look at her and see she was dead. I’m cold. Is there a blanket in here?”

  Unable to find one, Scarpetta took off her lab coat and draped it over his shoulders. He was shivering. His teeth were chattering.

  “I sat on the floor next to her, petting her hair, her face, talking to her,” he said. “I called nine-one-one. I remember feet. Black ankle boots and dark pants moving in the doorway. I had the towel over her and was holding her.”

  He stared at the wall.

  “I heard voices telling me to get away from her. They grabbed me. I started screaming I wasn’t going to leave her. But they made me. They wouldn’t let me see her even one more time. I never saw her again. Her family lives in Arizona, and that’s where she’ll go, and I’ll never see her again.”

  “You said your online college is based in Arizona.”

  “Her father’s the dean,” he said to the wall. “That’s why she ended up going there. They call it Gotham College as if it’s here in New York, but it’s really nowhere except there’s a building in Scottsdale, probably because it’s a nice place to live, much cheaper to live there. Her parents have a big house near Camelback Mountain. We never went to Scottsdale together because the next meeting isn’t until March. She’s not on the faculty, but she would have gone. . . . Well, she was supposed to fly there early this morning, to be in Scottsdale for a few days.”

  “When you were in her apartment last night, did you see her luggage? Was she packed?”

  “Terri doesn’t leave things out unless she’s about to use them. And she knows it upsets me to see her suitcase if I’m not going with her. It would have ruined our night.”

  “Were you invited to go to Scottsdale with her?”

 
“She wanted a chance to tell them about me first.”

  “After three months, they didn’t know she was seeing you?”

  “They’re very protective of her. Stiflingly controlling.” He continued to face the wall, as if he was talking to it. “She didn’t want to tell them unless she was sure. I told her it was no wonder she was obsessive-compulsive. It’s because of them.”

  “What did she feel she needed to be sure of?”

  “Of me. That we’re serious. I fell harder for her than she did for me.”

  He continued mixing up tenses, the way people often do when someone they love has just died.

  “I knew right away what I wanted. But her parents . . . Well, if it didn’t work out, she didn’t want to explain. She’s always been afraid of them, afraid of their disapproval. It says a lot about her that she finally had the courage to move out. They have two other children who aren’t little people, and they went to universities and do what they want. But not Terri. She’s the smartest one in the family. One of the smartest people I know. But not her. They kept her at home until she was twenty-five, until she couldn’t take it anymore because she wanted to amount to something. She got into a fight with them, and she left.”

  “How could she afford New York?”

  “It was before I knew her. But she said she had money in savings, and they continued to help her some, not much, but some. Then she made amends with them, and I think they came to see her once and didn’t like where she lived. They increased whatever it is they give her, and she moved into the apartment where she is now. That’s what she told me. To give them credit, they’ve supported her, at least financially.”

  His face turned very red with anger, and his short gold hair seemed as bright as metal.

  “With people like that, there are always strings attached,” he then said. “I suspect they started controlling her long distance. I watched her obsessive-compulsiveness get worse. I began to notice an increasingly anxious tone to her e-mails. Even before we’d met. And over the past few months it’s just gotten worse and worse. I don’t know why. She can’t help it. I have to see her. Please let me see her. I have to say good-bye! I hate the police. Fuck them.”