Postmortem

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Then you’re probably not talking about Oscar doing it. Since he never left.”

  “We don’t know what he did. Maybe he was in and out getting rid of shit. Like whatever was used around her neck. Where’d you park?” Morales asked.

  “Couple streets away,” Marino said. “Nobody saw me.”

  “Yeah, you’re real subtle, bro. Sounded like a three-hundred-pound cat climbing up the side of the building. Too bad you didn’t get here a little earlier,” Morales said. “See that lady on the phone?”

  He indicated the apartment where the woman in green pajamas was still on her couch, gesturing and talking.

  “Amazing how many people don’t pull down their shades,” Morales said.

  “That’s probably the real reason you’re up here,” Marino said.

  “The window to the left? Lights are off now, but maybe thirty minutes ago, blazing as bright as a movie premier, and there she was.”

  Marino stared at the dark window as if it would suddenly light up again and show him what he’d missed.

  “Out of the shower, off came the towel. Nice tits, I mean real nice,” Morales said. “Thought I would fall off the fucking roof. God, I love my job.”

  Marino would forgo seeing fifty naked women if it would spare him having to climb back down the ladder. Morales got to his feet, as comfortable up here as a pigeon, while Marino started scooting back toward the edge, his heart thudding again, and as he inched his way, he wondered what had gotten into him. All those years he flew on Lucy’s helicopters and jets. He used to love glass elevators and expansion bridges. Now he hated climbing up a stepladder to change a lightbulb.

  He watched Morales walk off in the direction of the satellite dish and got a weird feeling about him. Morales had gone to fancy schools. He was a doctor, or could be one, if he wanted. He was nice-looking, even if he went out of his way to make people think he was the leader of a street gang or some Latino gangster. He was one big contradiction, and it didn’t make sense he would climb up here to install a camera, with a cop sitting two floors below, securing a homicide scene, and not say anything. What if the cop had heard him up here?

  And Marino remembered what the neighbor had mentioned about a roof access, about seeing service people near the satellite dish. Maybe Morales hadn’t climbed up the ladder. Maybe he’d gotten up here another way—an easy way—and was too much of an asshole to let Marino in on the secret.

  Cold steel bit into his bare hands as he gripped the rungs and made his way down slowly. He didn’t know he had reached the ground until he felt it beneath his shoes, and he leaned against the side of the brownstone for a moment to calm down and catch his breath. He walked to the entrance and stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up to see if Morales was watching. Marino couldn’t see him.

  Attached to his keys was a small tactical light, and he directed the powerful beam at the lanterns on either side of the brownstone’s ivy-covered entrance. He checked the brick steps, the landing, then swept the beam over bushes and trash cans. He called the dispatcher and indicated he needed the officer inside Terri Bridges’s apartment to go to the building’s front door and let him in. He waited a minute, and the front door opened, and it wasn’t the same uniformed cop who had let him in earlier today.

  “Having fun yet?” Marino asked, moving past him into the foyer and shutting the door.

  “It’s starting to stink in there,” the officer said, and he looked all of sixteen. “Remind me never to eat chicken again.”

  Marino found two light switches to the left of the door. He tried them. One was for the outside lights, the other for the foyer.

  “You know if these are on a timer?” he asked.

  “They’re not.”

  “So how’d the entrance lights get on tonight?”

  “I turned them on when I got here maybe two hours ago. Why? You want ’em off?”

  Marino looked at the dark wooden stairs leading up to the second floor.

  He said, “No, leave them on. You been up there? Looks like the other residents aren’t back.”

  “I haven’t been anywhere. Stuck on my ass inside the door.” He nodded at the apartment door, which he’d left open a crack. “Nobody’s been inside the building. If it was me, I’d sure take my time coming back, especially if I was a woman living alone.”

  “No other women living alone,” Marino said. “Just the one whose apartment you’re babysitting. This one here.” He indicated the door on the other side of the foyer. “Two guys, both of them bartenders. Probably never here at night. Upstairs? Right above Terri Bridges, a guy who goes to Hunter College, supports himself walking dogs. The apartment on the other side, some Italian consultant with a British financial company that’s the actual tenant. In other words, one of those corporate rentals. The guy’s probably never here.”

  “Anybody talked to them?”

  “Not me, but I’ve run their backgrounds. Nothing jumps out. I get the impression from talking to her parents that she wasn’t the friendly type. She never talked about the other residents and didn’t seem to know them or have any interest. But hey, this ain’t the South. People don’t bake cakes for their neighbors so they can stick their nose into their business. Don’t mind me. I’m going to poke around up there for a few minutes.”

  “Just be careful because Investigator Morales is up on the roof.”

  Marino stopped on the bottom step and said, “What?”

  “Yeah, he went up there maybe an hour ago.”

  “He tell you why?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “He tell you to move your car?”

  “What for?”

  “Ask him,” Marino said. “He’s the big investigator with all the big ideas.”

  He climbed the steps, and on the second floor, in the ceiling between the two apartments, was a stainless-steel access hatch with an inside T-handle. Under it was an aluminum stepladder with slip-resistant treads, a fold-up safety bar, and a work tray with several screwdrivers in it. Nearby, a utility closet door was wide open.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

  He imagined Morales on the roof, laughing as he’d listened to Marino struggling down the fire escape, when all he’d had to do was direct him to the roof access. Marino could have climbed down five sturdy ladder steps inside a lighted building instead of thirty narrow rungs outside in the frigid dark.

  Marino folded the ladder and returned it to the closet.

  He was halfway back to his car when his cell phone rang. The display said Unknown, and he was sure it was Morales, pissed as hell.

  “Yo,” he answered cheerfully as he walked.

  “Marino?” It was Jaime Berger. “I’ve been trying to get hold of Morales.”

  There was a lot of background noise, what sounded like traffic, and he knew when she was irritated.

  “I just saw him,” he said. “He’s sort of unreachable this very minute.”

  “If you happen to talk to him, you might mention I’ve left three messages. I won’t leave a fourth. Maybe you can take care of my problem. Eighteen passwords so far.”

  “For just her?” He meant Terri Bridges.

  “All the same e-mail provider, but different usernames. For whatever reason. And her boyfriend’s got one. I’m getting out of a taxi now.”

  Marino heard her driver say something, and then Berger did, and then the taxi door shut and he could hear her better.

  “One second,” he said. “Let me get to my car.”

  His unmarked dark blue Impala was parked just ahead.

  “Where are you and what are you doing?” she said.

  “Long story. Morales mention anything to you about a case in Baltimore and one in Greenwich, Connecticut?”

  “I think I just made the point that I haven’t talked to him.”

  He unlocked his driver’s door and climbed in. He started the engine and opened the glove box, looking for a pen and something to write on.

  “I’ll e-mail som
e stuff to you, think I can do it from my BlackBerry,” he said. “And Benton should get it.”

  Silence.

  “If that’s all right with you, I’ll e-mail what I’ve got to him, too.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “You don’t mind me saying it, nobody’s talking to each other. An example of what I mean? You got any idea if the cops looked upstairs in Terri’s building last night? Like maybe checked the roof access and the ladder in the utility closet?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Nothing in the report. No photographs,” Marino said.

  “That’s interesting.”

  “The roof would have been an easy way to get in and out, and nobody sees you. There’s a fire-escape ladder on the west side of the brownstone—like I said, nobody sees you.”

  “Morales should know the answer to that.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure the subject will come up. And one other thing. We need Oscar’s DNA run through CODIS right away. Because of Baltimore and Greenwich. Have you gotten my e-mails?”

  “Should already be in the works. I’ve asked for answers tonight. Yes, I’ve gotten your e-mails,” Berger said. “Nice of Morales not to bother alerting me about two other possible cases.”

  “Meaning Oscar’s in CODIS or will be soon,” Marino said. “I’m sure Morales was going to get around to it.”

  “I’m sure,” Berger said.

  “I’ll leave word about the DNA with the investigator in Baltimore I hooked up with,” Marino said. “Not that I’m holding my breath we’re going to get a hit with Oscar on those other two cases. I don’t know. Something’s not right about it. Doesn’t work for me thinking he did those. And his girlfriend.”

  Marino always knew when Berger took somebody seriously. She didn’t interrupt or change the topic of conversation. He kept talking because she kept listening, both of them careful about being too specific, since he was on a cell phone.

  “These other two cases I’ve sent you info on?” Marino said. “The part I left out is what I was just told over the phone. They got junk DNA. A mixture of other people’s DNA.”

  “Like we did in this one here?” Berger asked.

  “I don’t want to go into all this now for security reasons,” Marino said. “But if you could maybe get a message to Benton. I know he’s here. I know he’s in the city. Morales says he is and that they’re going to the morgue later. We can all keep hoping we don’t bump into each other. I’m just going ahead and saying it. No point in running around the fat-ass elephant in the room.”

  “They’re not at the morgue yet. Dr. Lester’s been delayed.”

  “That’s the only kind of laid she’s ever been,” Marino said.

  Berger laughed.

  “I’d say within the hour everyone will be there,” she said, and her tone was entirely different.

  As if she found him interesting and amusing, and maybe didn’t hate him.

  “Benton and Kay,” she added.

  She was letting Marino know, and in doing so, it was her way of saying she wasn’t his enemy. No, it was better than that. She was telling him she might just trust and respect him.

  “But it would be helpful if all of us got together,” he said. “Have a case discussion. I asked the investigator from Baltimore to come. She should be here in the morning. She can be here whenever we want.”

  “That’s fine,” Berger said. “What I want right now is for you to get me the passwords and account histories associated with the usernames I’m about to give you. I’ve already faxed a letter instructing the provider to put a freeze on the accounts so they stay active. And one other thing. If anybody else calls for this info, they don’t get it. You make that clear to whoever you talk to. I don’t care if it’s the White House, the passwords aren’t to be given to anybody else. I’m on my cell.”

  She must be referring to Oscar Bane. Marino couldn’t imagine who else would know what Terri’s and Oscar’s usernames and e-mail providers were, and without them, one couldn’t get the passwords. The car’s interior light was off, and he left it off. An old habit. He used his flashlight to write down the usernames and other information she gave him.

  Marino said, “Is Oscar still on the ward?”

  “Obviously, that’s one concern.” She didn’t sound as all-business as she usually did.

  She sounded almost friendly, and maybe curious, as if she’d never given Marino much thought, and now she was.

  “I don’t think for much longer,” she added. “And there are some other developments. I’ll be at a forensic computer group called Connextions, which I have a feeling you’re familiar with. Here’s the number.”

  She gave it to him.

  “I’ll try to grab the phone before Lucy does,” Berger said.

  16

  Jet Ranger was almost deaf and quite lame, and was seriously compromised in the potty department. Lucy’s elderly bulldog was not a native New Yorker.

  His dislike of concrete and asphalt posed a serious problem in a city where soulless people were known to sprinkle red pepper in sparse patches of dirt or grass that might surround an occasional tree. The first time Jet Ranger got a snootful when sniffing for just the right spot, Lucy figured out correctly that the shop nearest the puny maple was to blame, and handled the matter swiftly and without reprimand or explanation.

  She’d walked in early the next morning, flung twenty ounces of crushed red pepper all over the shop, and in case the dumbstruck owner missed the point, dumped a generous dose in the urine-stinking back room on her way out the back door. Anonymously, she reported Save My Sole shoe repair to PETA.

  She walked her slow, arthritic bulldog a good half-hour before success, and as a result was late. When she reached her building, a Baggie of poop in hand, Berger was silhouetted in the waving gaslight of lanterns against old brick and iron railings, waiting by the three steps that led up to Lucy’s heavy oak front door.

  “They make colorful ones in the little dispensaries,” Berger’s shadowy face said as it looked at the Baggie. “Ones that aren’t transparent.”

  Lucy dropped Jet Ranger’s job well done into a trash barrel. She said, “Hope you haven’t been waiting long. He’s not a city boy. Must have had a real grass yard with a white picket fence in an earlier life. His name’s Jet Ranger, as in the first helicopter I ever owned. Jet Ranger, meet Jaime. He doesn’t know any tricks, like shaking hands or high-fives or hovering. He’s pretty simple, aren’t you, boy?”

  Berger squatted to rub Jet Ranger’s neck, not seeming to care that her long shorn mink coat spilled around her on the dirty sidewalk and she was blocking foot traffic. People detoured around her in the cold dark as she kissed the top of the bulldog’s head, and he licked her chin.

  “That’s impressive,” Lucy said. “He doesn’t like most people. Funny thing about living with an asshole. I don’t mean me. Whoever owned him before me. I’m sorry,” she said to her dog, petting him and touching Berger’s shoulder as she did. “I shouldn’t openly discuss your painful and private past or use the word owned. That was rude of me. I don’t really own him,” she said to Berger. “In fact, I have to pay him a considerable sum to let me feed him, pet him, take him out, sleep with him.”

  “How old?” Berger asked.

  “Not sure.” Lucy massaged Jet Ranger’s spotted ears. “Not long after I moved here, I was leaving the West Thirtieth heliport after flying in from Boston, and saw him trotting along the West Side Highway. You know that panicky look, when a dog’s lost? He was limping.”

  Lucy covered Jet Ranger’s ears so he wouldn’t hear the rest.

  “No collar,” she said. “Obviously dumped out of a car, probably because he’s old, got bad hips, half blind. You know, not fun anymore. They usually don’t live past ten. He’s probably pretty close.”

  “People suck,” Berger said, getting up.

  “Come on,” Lucy said to her dog. “Don’t be upset by Jaime’s coat. I’m sure
every one of those poor little minks died of natural causes.”

  “We should have the passwords soon,” Berger said. “Maybe that will help explain the rest of it.”

  “I don’t know what the rest of it is, since I barely know the first of it. We’re just getting started,” Lucy said. “But there’s enough for me to be worried about my aunt. And I’m worried.”

  “I got that when you called.”

  Lucy inserted an interactive key into a Mul-T-Lock Mortise cylinder, and the alarm system began to beep as she opened the front door. She entered a code on the keypad and the beeping stopped, and she shut the door behind them.

  “When you see what I’m talking about, your first impulse will be to fire me,” Lucy said. “But you won’t.”

  Shrew considered herself a crackerjack Web administrator, but she was no programmer. She was no information technology expert.

  She sat at her computer, watching the Gotham Gotcha home page continue its maniacal loop while a technician from the Web hosting company told her over the phone that the problem was a buffer overflow. He explained that the number of users attempting to access certain information on the site had exceeded the server’s enormous capacity and at this moment the situation was so out of control, millions of people per minute were clicking on a photograph in the dark room, and this, in the technician’s opinion, could mean but one thing: “A worm,” he said. “Or basically, a virus. But nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s really more of a mutant worm.”

  “How could a worm, mutant or otherwise, have infiltrated the programming?” Shrew asked.

  “It’s likely that a remote unprivileged user somehow executed arbitrary code and exploited the buffer overflow vulnerabilities of the Web proxy server. Whoever did this is extremely sophisticated.”

  He went on to say that typically what happened was someone sent an attachment containing a worm that wasn’t recognized by any virus-detection program known to the industry. This worm mimicked users opening an image that took up a lot of space, “such as a photograph,” he said, adding that “this self-replicating worm mimics millions of people opening the same image at the same time, which causes the server to run out of memory, and in addition, it would appear that this worm is also performing the malicious action of destroying data. In other words, it’s an odd mutation of a worm, a macro virus. And possibly a Trojan horse if, for example, it’s also spreading the virus to other programs, which is what I fear.”