Postmortem

by Patricia Cornwell

  He returned the book to its empty slot on a shelf.

  “I was telling you about The Air Loom Gang,” he said. “This apartment’s like a scene out of it. Bedlam.”

  “I know.”

  Their eyes met, as if he was waiting for her to tell him something.

  “Did you know Oscar had a bag packed with clothing on the ward, in case he got the urge to leave?” she said. “And that Morales brought him over here last night?”

  “I knew Oscar could leave whenever he chose,” he replied. “We’ve all known that.”

  “I just think it’s uncanny. Almost as if Morales was encouraging him to leave, wanted him out of the hospital.”

  “Why would you think that?” Benton asked.

  “Some things he said.”

  She glanced around at the open doorway, worrying Morales might suddenly walk in.

  “A feeling there was a fair amount of negotiating going on last night when he drove Oscar away from the scene, for example,” she said.

  “That wouldn’t be unusual.”

  “You understand the predicament I’m in,” she said, scanning old books again, and disappointed again.

  Oscar said the book with the CD would be in the second bookcase, left of the door, fourth shelf. The book wasn’t there. The fourth shelf was stacked with archival boxes, each of them labeled Circulars.

  “What should he have in his collection that he doesn’t, in your opinion? To make it more complete.” Benton said it for a reason.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “There’s a certain corrections officer named Jeb who tells me things. Unfortunately, Jeb tells a lot of people things, but he sure didn’t want you getting hurt today when you were in the infirmary, and he wasn’t happy at all with your making him step outside. When I called and found out Oscar was gone, Jeb and I had a chat. Anyway, what’s Oscar missing in here?”

  “I’m surprised he doesn’t have The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor. By Littleton Winslow.”

  “That’s interesting,” Benton said. “Interesting you would come up with that.”

  She tugged his sleeve and they got on the floor in front of the second bookcase.

  She started pulling archival boxes off the bottom shelf, and was beginning to feel unhinged, as if she’d lost her GPS, anything that might tell her which direction was the right one. She didn’t know who was crazy and who wasn’t, who was lying or telling the truth, who was talking and to whom, or who might turn up next that she wasn’t supposed to see.

  She opened an archival box and found an assortment of nineteenth-century pamphlets about mechanical restraints and water cures.

  “I would have thought he’d have it,” she said.

  “The reason he doesn’t is because there’s no such book,” Benton said, his arm against hers as they looked at pamphlets.

  His physical presence was reassuring, and she needed to feel it.

  “Not by that author,” Benton added. “The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor was written by Montagu Lomax about fifty years after Littleton Winslow, son of Forbes Winslow, wrote his famous Plea of Insanity, his Manual of Lunacy.”

  “Why would Oscar lie?”

  “Doesn’t trust anyone. Truly believes he’s being spied on. Maybe the bad guys will hear where he’s hidden his only proof, and so he’s cryptic with you. Or maybe he’s confused. Or maybe he’s testing you. If you care about him enough, you’ll come into this library just as you have, and figure it out. Could be a number of reasons.”

  Scarpetta opened another archival box, this one filled with circulars about Bellevue.

  Oscar had said that she and Benton would be interested in what he’d collected about Bellevue.

  She lifted out a manual on nursing, and an in-house published directory of the medical and surgical staff between 1736 and 1894. She picked up a stack of circulars and lectures going back to 1858.

  At the bottom of the box was a thumb drive attached to a lanyard.

  She pulled off her gloves, wrapped the thumb drive in them, and handed them to Benton.

  She got up and felt Morales before she saw him, in the doorway. She hoped he hadn’t seen what she’d just done.

  “We got to leave right now,” Morales said.

  He was holding a paper bag of evidence, the top of it sealed with red tape.

  Benton returned the archival box to its bottom shelf and got up, too.

  She saw no sign of the glove-wrapped thumb drive. He must have slipped it into his pocket.

  “Jaime and Marino are across the street—not here, across the street from Terri’s apartment in Murray Hill,” Morales said, keyed up and impatient. “The witness who called in the animal-cruelty report? She’s not answering her phone or the intercom. The light’s out at the building’s entrance, and the outer door’s locked. Marino said when he was there earlier, the outer door wasn’t locked.”

  They were walking out of Oscar’s apartment. Morales didn’t bother resetting the alarm.

  “Apparently, there’s a fire escape ladder and a roof hatch,” he said, tense and impatient. “The roof hatch is propped open.”

  He didn’t bother with the deadbolt, either.

  28

  One tenant had returned home since Marino was here earlier, the man in 2C, the second floor. When Marino had walked around to the side of the building a few minutes ago, he could see lights on and the flickering of a TV behind opaque shades.

  He knew the tenant’s name because he knew the names of everyone. So far, the tenant, Dr. Wilson, a twenty-eight-year-old resident physician at Bellevue, wasn’t answering the intercom.

  Marino tried again, while Berger and Lucy stood by in the cold wind, watching and waiting.

  “Dr. Wilson,” Marino said, holding in the intercom button. “This is the police again. We don’t want to force our way into the building.”

  “You haven’t said what the problem is.” A man’s voice, presumably Dr. Wilson’s, answered through the speaker by the door.

  “This is Investigator Marino, NYPD,” Marino repeated himself, tossing Lucy his car keys. “We need to get into Two-D. Eva Peebles’s apartment. If you look out your window, you’ll see my unmarked dark blue Impala, okay? A female officer is going to turn on the grille lights so you can see for a fact it’s a police car. I understand your being reluctant to unlock the door, but we don’t want to forcibly enter the building. When you came in, did you see your neighbor?”

  “I can’t see anything. It’s too dark out,” the voice replied.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Marino said to nobody in particular, the button released so Dr. Wilson couldn’t hear him. “He’s been smoking pot, what you want to bet? So he doesn’t want to let us in.”

  “Is this Dr. Wilson?” Marino asked over the intercom.

  “I don’t have to answer your questions and I’m not going to unlock the front door. Not after what happened across the street. I almost didn’t come back.”

  One of his windows slid up, and the shade moved.

  Marino was sure the guy was stoned, and he remembered what Mrs. Peebles said about her neighbor who smoked pot. Son of a bitch. More worried about getting charged with possession than about whether the elderly widow in the apartment across from his might be in trouble.

  “Sir, I need you to unlock the front door right now. If you look out the window, you’re going to see the entrance light is out. Did you turn the light out when you came in earlier?”

  “I didn’t touch any lights,” the man’s voice said, and now he sounded nervous. “How do I know you’re police?”

  “Let me try,” Berger said, and she pushed the intercom button on the panel to the right of the door while Marino shone his flashlight on it, because they were completely in the dark.

  “Dr. Wilson? This is Jaime Berger with the district attorney’s office. We need to check on your neighbor, but we can’t do that if you don’t let us into the building.”

  “No,” the voice came back. “You get some other
real police cars here, maybe I’ll think about it.”

  “That probably made things worse,” Marino said to her. “He’s been in there smoking weed, I guarantee it. That’s why he opened his damn window.”

  Lucy was inside Marino’s car, and the high-intensity red and blue flashing lights started bouncing off glass.

  “I’m unmoved,” the voice came back again, even more resolute. “Anybody can buy those.”

  “Let me talk to him,” Berger said, shielding her eyes from the rapid bursts of blinding blue and red.

  “Tell you what, Dr. Wilson,” Marino said into the intercom. “I’m going to give you a number I want you to call, and when the dispatcher answers, you tell him there’s a guy outside your building who says he’s Investigator P. R. Marino, okay? Ask him to verify it, because they know I’m right here right now with Assistant District Attorney Jaime Berger.”

  Silence.

  “He’s not going to call,” Berger said.

  Lucy trotted back up the steps.

  Marino said to her, “How ’bout doing me another favor while I stand here and babysit.”

  He asked her to return to his car and radio the dispatcher. She asked him what happened to his portable radio, or were police not bothering with portable radios anymore. He said he’d left his in the car and maybe she could grab it for him while she was requesting an unmarked backup unit and an entry tool kit, including a battering ram. She said it was an old door and they probably could pry it open with a Gorilla Bar, and he said he wanted more than just a Gorilla Bar, and that he wanted the prick doctor who was stoned on the second floor to get an eyeful of a Twin Turbo Ram like they used to bust in doors at crack houses, and maybe then they wouldn’t need to use it because the asshole would buzz them in. Marino told her to request an ambulance, just in case Eva Peebles needed one.

  She wasn’t answering her phone or the intercom. Marino couldn’t tell if any lights were on inside her apartment. The window that her computer was in front of was dark.

  He didn’t need to give Lucy radio codes or any further instructions. Nobody needed to teach Lucy a damn thing about being a cop, and as he watched her duck inside his car, he felt a tug from the past. He missed the old days when the two of them rode motorcycles together, went shooting, worked investigations, or chilled out with a six-pack, and he wondered what she was carrying.

  He knew she was carrying something. For one thing, there was no way in hell Lucy would run around unarmed, even in New York. And he knew a Pistol Pete jacket when he saw one, and he’d noticed hers the instant she’d gotten out of the cab while he and the other officer were loading the packaged chair into the back of the van. What looked like a black leather motorcycle jacket had an outside breakaway pocket big enough to hold just about any pistol imaginable.

  Maybe she was carrying the forty-caliber Glock with a laser sight that he’d given to her a year ago this past Christmas, when they were both in Charleston. Well, wouldn’t that be typical of his lousy luck. He’d never gotten around to transferring the title over to her before he’d vanished from her life, so if she did anything that was whacked out, the damn gun would be traced straight back to him. All the same, the idea that she might care enough about the gun to risk breaking New York law and maybe going to jail made him feel good. Lucy could have any gun she wanted. She could buy an entire gun factory, probably several of them.

  She climbed back out of his unmarked car as if it belonged to her, and jogged back to them, and he was thinking he should come right out and ask her if she was carrying, and if so, what, but he didn’t. She stood next to Berger. There was something between them and it hadn’t escaped his notice any more than the Pistol Pete jacket did. Berger didn’t stand or sit close to people. She never let anybody break through the invisible barrier that she had to have around her, or believed she had to have around her. She touched Lucy, leaned against her, and watched her a lot.

  Lucy handed Marino his portable radio.

  “You must be a little rusty. Been out of real policing too long?” Lucy said to him with a serious tone and straight face, what little he could see of her face in the dark. “Bad idea leaving your radio in the car. Little oversights like that? Next thing, somebody gets hurt.”

  “If I want to take one of your classes, I’ll sign up for it,” he said.

  “I’ll see if I have room.”

  He got on his portable radio and called the unit en route to find out where he was.

  “Coming around the corner now,” came the reply.

  “Hit your lights and siren,” Marino said.

  He pressed the intercom button.

  “Hello?” the voice answered.

  “Dr. Wilson. Unlock the door right now or we’re going to break it down!”

  A siren screamed, and he heard a buzz and he shoved open the door. He flipped a switch, turning on a light inside the small foyer, and directly ahead were the polished old oak stairs leading up, and he slid out his pistol as he got back on the air and told his backup to cut the lights and siren and stay put and watch the front of the building. He ran up the steps, Lucy and Berger right behind him.

  He could feel the cold air coming in from the open roof hatch when they reached the second floor, and the lights were out there, too. Marino searched the wall to flip them on. He could see the night sky through the opening in the ceiling, and he didn’t see a ladder, and his sense of urgency and his premonition grew. Most likely, the ladder was on the roof. He stopped at 2D and noticed the door wasn’t completely shut. He guided Berger to one side and briefly met Lucy’s eyes. His system was on high alert as he pushed the door open with his foot and it softly thudded against the inside wall.

  “Police!” he yelled, and he had his gun out, gripped in both hands, the barrel pointed up. “Anybody here? Police!”

  He didn’t have to tell Lucy to shine her light into the room. She was already doing it, and then her arm snaked past his shoulder and she flipped a switch, and an old, ornate chandelier cast the room in a soft glow. Marino and Lucy stepped inside and motioned for Berger to stay behind them. Then nobody moved for a moment. They looked around, and sweat was cool as it rolled down Marino’s back and sides, and he wiped his forehead with his sleeve as his eyes darted to the tan corduroy recliner he’d been sitting in earlier, and the couch where Mrs. Peebles had been drinking her bourbon. The wall-mounted flat-screen TV was on, the volume off, and the Dog Whisperer was silently talking to a snarling beagle.

  Old wooden Venetian blinds were drawn in all the windows. Lucy was close to the computer on the desk, and she tapped a key. The computer screen filled with what looked like the Gotham Gotcha website gone berserk.

  Gotham Gotcha! was rearranging into OH C THA MAGGOT! And the New York skyline was black against flashing red, and the Christmas tree from Rockefeller Center was upside down in Central Park, and a snowstorm struck and lightning flashed and thunder clapped inside FAO Schwarz right before the Statue of Liberty seemed to blow up.

  Berger quietly stared at it. She stared at Lucy.

  “Go on,” Lucy told Marino, indicating she’d cover Berger and him while he began clearing the apartment.

  He checked the kitchen, a guest bath, the dining room, and then he faced the closed door leading into what he assumed was the master area. He turned the cut-glass knob and pushed the door open with his toe as he swept the bedroom with his gun. It was empty, the king-size bed neatly made and covered with a plaid quilt with dogs embroidered on it. On the nightstand was an empty glass, and in a corner was a small pet carrier but no sign of a dog or cat.

  Lamps had been removed from the two nightstands and placed on either side of an open doorway, illuminating the edge of black-and-white tile. He positioned himself to one side of the bathroom as he quietly approached, and swung his gun around and pointed it as he noticed a slight movement before he could see what it was.

  Eva Peebles’s frail nude body was suspended by satiny gold rope that was looped once around her neck and tied to a cha
in in the ceiling. Her wrists and ankles were tightly lashed with translucent plastic straps, her toes barely touching the floor. Cold air blowing through an open window had created an eerie oscillation, the body slowly twirling in one direction, then the other, as the rope twisted and untwisted, again and again.

  Scarpetta feared that the person who murdered seventy-two-year-old Eva Peebles had also killed Terri Bridges. She feared that person might be Oscar Bane.

  The thought had entered her mind the minute she’d entered the bedroom and seen the lamps on the floor and the body suspended by a gold rope that had been removed from a drapery in the dining room and attached to a short length of iron chain. The alabaster half-globe light fixture that had been attached to the chain’s S-link was inside the tub, on top of folded clothing that she could tell from where she was taking photographs in the doorway had been cut open at the seams and removed from the victim after her ankles and wrists were bound, most likely while she was still alive.

  On the shut white toilet lid were several unmistakable shoeprints no bigger than a boy’s, with a distinctive tread pattern. It appeared the assailant had stood there to access the overhead fixture, and from that height, someone four feet tall could have managed quite well, especially if the person was strong.

  If Oscar Bane was the killer after all, Scarpetta had misinterpreted and misjudged, in part based on what a tape measure had told her, and she’d been steered by her integrity as a physician, and there was no room for mistakes or confidentiality when people were dying. Maybe she should have kept her opinions to herself and encouraged the police to find Oscar immediately or aggressively prevented his release from Bellevue to begin with. She could have given Berger cause to arrest him. Scarpetta could have said a number of things, not the least of which was that Oscar had faked his injuries, had lied to the police about them, lied about an intruder, lied about why his coat was in the car, lied about a book and a CD in his library. The ends would have justified the means, because he’d be off the street, and possibly Eva Peebles wouldn’t be dangling from her ceiling.