Postmortem

by Patricia Cornwell

“I’m trying to remember how tall Rodrick was,” Benton said, and his hair was very messy, his face covered with stubble that reminded Lucy of salt.

  Two all-nighters, back-to-back, and he looked like it.

  “Five-foot-ten,” Bacardi said. “One hundred and thirty-six pounds. Skinny and not strong. And not much of a fighter.”

  “We can say all of the victims have one thing in common,” Benton then said. “I should say all of the victims we know about. They were vulnerable. They were impaired or at a disadvantage.”

  “Unless the killer’s Oscar,” Berger reminded everybody. “Then the odds change. I don’t care if you’re a skinny kid on oxys. You’re not at a disadvantage, necessarily, if your assailant is only four feet tall. And I hate to keep saying it, but unless there’s another logical explanation for how his fingerprints turned up at Eva Peebles’s crime scene? And prints made by a size-five women’s shoe, a Brooks Ariel? And Oscar just happens to wear that exact same shoe, and he buys it in a size-five women’s?”

  “Can’t overlook the fact he’s disappeared, either,” Marino said. “He’s got to know we’re looking for him, and he’s choosing to be a fugitive. He could turn himself in. It would be in his best self-interest. He’d be safer.”

  “You’re talking about someone profoundly paranoid,” Benton said. “There is nothing on earth that would convince him it’s safe to turn himself in.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Berger said, looking at Scarpetta.

  She was going through autopsy photographs and didn’t notice Berger’s thoughtful stare.

  “I don’t think so,” Benton said, as if he knew what was on Berger’s mind. “He wouldn’t do it, not even for her.”

  Lucy decided that Berger must be hatching a plan for Scarpetta to make an appeal to Oscar.

  Morales said, “Don’t know how we’d get the message to him, anyway. Unless she calls his home phone. Maybe he can’t resist, is checking his messages.”

  “Never happen,” Benton said. “Be Oscar for a minute, get inside his mind. Who’s going to call him that he wants to hear from? The only person who mattered to him, the only person he seemed to trust, is dead. And I’m not sure how much he trusts Kay anymore. No matter. I don’t believe he’s checking his voicemail remotely. He already thinks he’s being monitored, spied on, which is the main reason he’s hiding, in my opinion. The last thing he’s going to do is take the chance he might end up on the enemy’s radar again.”

  “What about e-mail?” Morales asked. “Maybe if she sent him an e-mail? Sent it from Scarpetta six-twelve. I mean, he believes that really is you.”

  He looked at Scarpetta, who was looking up at everyone now, listening to them strategize about what she might do that could convince Oscar to turn himself in to the police. Lucy could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t interested in playing bait and switch with Oscar Bane. Except now she could. Confidentiality didn’t matter anymore. Oscar was a fugitive from justice. There were warrants out for his arrest and, barring some miracle, when he was apprehended, he would go to trial and he would be convicted. Lucy didn’t want to think about what might happen to him in prison.

  Lucy said, “I think he would assume we’ve been in his e-mail. He’s not going to log on to his account. Not unless he’s stupid or desperate or losing control. I agree with Benton. You want my suggestion? Try television. Unless he believes people can find him when he turns on a TV in a Holiday Inn, that’s probably the only thing he’s monitoring. He’s watching the news.”

  “You could make an appeal to him on CNN,” Berger said.

  “I think that’s genius,” Morales agreed. “Go on CNN and tell Oscar to please turn himself in. That it’s the best plan for his useless life, under the circumstances.”

  “He can call his local FBI field office,” Benton suggested. “Then he doesn’t have to worry about falling into the hands of some rural sheriff’s department that doesn’t know what the hell is going on. Depending on where he is.”

  “He calls the FBI, they’ll take the credit for his arrest,” Morales said.

  “Who gives a flying fuck who takes the credit,” Marino said. “I agree with Benton.”

  “So do I,” Bacardi said. “He should call the FBI.”

  “I appreciate everybody deciding on that for me,” Berger said. “But actually, I tend to agree with you. It’s much riskier if he ends up in the wrong hands. And if by some chance he’s no longer in the U.S., he can still call the FBI. As long as he ends up back here, I don’t care who gets him.”

  Her eyes found Morales.

  She added, “Credit isn’t an issue.”

  He stared back at her. He looked at Lucy and winked. The mother-fucking prick.

  Scarpetta said, “I’m not going on CNN and asking him to turn himself in. That’s not who I am. It’s not what I do. I don’t take sides.”

  “You’re not serious,” Morales said. “You telling me you don’t go after the bad guys? Dr. CNN always gets the bad guy. Come on. You don’t want to ruin your reputation over a dwarf.”

  “What she’s telling you is she’s the advocate of the victim,” Benton said.

  “Legally, that’s correct,” Berger said. “She doesn’t work for me or the defense.”

  “If everybody’s finished speaking on my behalf and has no further questions, I’d like to go home,” Scarpetta said, getting up and getting angrier.

  Lucy tried to remember the last time she’d seen her aunt as angry as she was right now, especially before an audience. It wasn’t like her.

  “What time do you expect Dr. Lester to start Eva Peebles’s case? I mean really start it. I’m not asking what time she said she’d start it. I don’t intend to show up down there and sit around for hours. And unfortunately, I can’t start the case without her. It’s unfortunate she’s doing it at all.”

  Scarpetta looked directly at Morales, who had called Dr. Lester from the scene.

  “I don’t have control over that,” Berger said. “I can call the chief medical examiner, but that’s not a good idea. I think you understand. They already think I’m a meddler down there.”

  “That’s because you are,” Morales said. “Jaime the Meddler. Everybody calls you that.”

  Berger ignored him and got up from her chair. She looked at her very expensive watch.

  She said to Morales, “Seven o’clock is what she said, is that right?”

  “That’s what Pester Lester said.”

  “Since you seem to be so chummy with her, maybe you could check and make sure she really is going to start the case at seven, so Kay doesn’t take a taxi down there after being up all night, and then sit.”

  “You know what?” Morales said to Scarpetta. “I’ll go pick her up. How ’bout that? And I’ll call you when we’re en route. I’ll even swing by and get you.”

  “That’s the best idea you’ve had in a while,” Berger said to him.

  Scarpetta said to both of them, “Thanks, but I’ll get myself there. But yes, please call me.”

  When Berger returned from seeing Scarpetta and Benton to the door, Marino wanted more coffee. Lucy followed Berger into her spacious kitchen of stainless steel, wormy chestnut, and granite, deciding she had to say something now. How Berger responded would determine if there was a later.

  “You heading out?” Berger’s tone turned familiar as she met Lucy’s eyes and opened a bag of coffee.

  “The whiskeys in your bar,” Lucy said, rinsing the coffeepot and refilling it.

  “What whiskeys?”

  “You know what whiskeys,” Lucy said.

  Berger took the pot from her and filled the coffeemaker.

  “I don’t,” she said. “Are you telling me you want an eye opener? I wouldn’t have thought you’re the type.”

  “There’s nothing funny about this, Jaime.”

  Berger flipped up the on switch and leaned against the counter. She really didn’t seem to know what Lucy was talking about, and Lucy didn’t believe
her.

  Lucy mentioned the Irish whiskey and the Scotch that were in her bar.

  “They’re on the top shelf behind glass, in your own damn bar,” Lucy said. “You can’t miss them.”

  “Greg,” Berger said. “He collects. And I did miss them.”

  “He collects? I didn’t know he was still around,” Lucy said, feeling worse, maybe the worst she’d ever felt.

  “What I mean is those are his,” Berger said with her usual calm. “If you start opening cabinets in there, you’ll see a fortune in small-batch this and single-malt that. I did miss them. They never entered my mind, because I don’t drink his precious whiskeys. Never did.”

  “Really?” Lucy said. “Then why does Morales seem to know you have them?”

  “This is ridiculous, and it’s neither the time nor the place,” Berger said very quietly. “Please don’t.”

  “He looked right at them as if he knew something. Has he ever been here before this morning?” Lucy said. “Maybe the Tavern on the Green gossip is more than that.”

  “I not only don’t have to answer that, I won’t. And I can’t.” Berger said it without an edge, almost gently. “Maybe you could be so kind as to ask who wants coffee and what they might want in it?”

  Lucy walked out of the kitchen and didn’t ask anyone anything. She unplugged her power supply. She calmly looped the cord around her hand and tucked it into a pocket of her nylon case. Then the MacBook went inside.

  “Got to head back to my office,” she said to everyone as Berger returned.

  Berger asked about coffee, as if everything was fine.

  “We haven’t listened to the nine-one-one tape,” Bacardi suddenly remembered. “I want to hear it, anyway. Don’t know about everyone else.”

  “I should hear it,” Marino said.

  “I don’t need to hear it,” Lucy said. “Someone can e-mail the audio file to me if they want me to hear it. I’ll be in touch if I have any new information. I’ll see myself out,” she said to Jaime Berger without looking at her.

  30

  “Poor doormen,” Scarpetta said. “I think I spooked them more than usual.”

  When they arrived at their luxury apartment building, one glimpse of her crime scene case and the doormen always stayed clear. But this early morning, the reaction was stronger than usual because of the news. A serial killer was terrorizing New York’s East Side, and may have killed before, years earlier, in Maryland and Connecticut, and Benton and Scarpetta looked pretty scary themselves.

  They stepped onto the elevator and rode up to the thirty-second floor. The minute they were inside the door, they started undressing.

  “I wish you wouldn’t go down there,” Benton said.

  He yanked off his tie as he took off his jacket, his coat already draped over a chair.

  “You’ve gotten swabs, you know what killed her. Why?” he said.

  Scarpetta replied, “Maybe just once today people will treat me as if I have a mind of my own or even half the one I used to have.”

  She dropped her suit jacket and blouse into the biohazard hamper near the door, a practice so normal for them, it only rarely occurred to her what an odd sight they would be if anybody was watching, perhaps with a telescope. Then she thought of the new helicopter the NYPD had gotten, something Lucy had mentioned. It had a camera that could recognize faces up to two miles away, or something like that.

  Scarpetta unzipped her pants and tugged them off, and she grabbed a remote from the Stickley mission oak coffee table in a living room full of Stickleys and Poteet Victory oils on canvas. She closed the electronic blinds. She felt rather much like Oscar, hiding from everyone.

  “I’m not sure you agreed with me,” she said to Benton, both of them in their underwear and holding their shoes. “And by the way, this is us. Are you happy? This is what you married. Someone who has to change when she comes through the door because of the antisocial places she visits.”

  He took her in his arms and buried his nose in her hair.

  “You’re not as bad as you think,” he said.

  “I’m not sure how you mean that.”

  “No, I did agree with you. Or yes, I did. If it weren’t—” He held out his left arm behind her head, still holding her close, and looked at his watch. “Quarter past six. Shit. You might have to leave in a minute. That part I don’t agree with you about. No. Babysitting Dr. Lester. I’m going to pray for a big storm that prevents you from going anywhere. See your favorite painting in here? Mister Victory’s Balancing Elements? I’m going to pray to the Great Spirit that the elements will be balanced, and you’ll stay home and take a shower with me. We can wash our shoes together in the shower like we used to do after crime scenes. And then you know what we did after that.”

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So you agree about my not going on television,” she said. “And please do pray. I don’t want to babysit her. Everything you said is true. I know what happened to Eva Peebles. She and I discussed it in her bathroom. I don’t need to discuss it with Dr. Lester, who doesn’t listen and isn’t as open-minded as Eva Peebles was. I’m tired and stressed out and sound like it. I’m angry. I’m sorry.”

  “Not at me,” he said.

  “Not at you,” she said.

  He stroked her face, her hair, and looked deep into her eyes, the way he did when he was trying to find something he’d lost, or perhaps thought he’d lost.

  “It’s not about protocols or whose side you’re on,” he said. “It’s about Oscar. It’s about everybody who’s been brutalized. When you’re not sure who’s doing what or how or why, it’s better to stay behind the scenes. This is a good time to stay away from Dr. Lester. To carry on quietly. Jesus,” he suddenly said.

  He returned to the hamper and fished out his pants. He reached into a pocket and pulled out the thumb drive still wrapped in the pair of purple gloves.

  “This,” he said. “This is important. Maybe the Great Spirit just heard my prayer.”

  Scarpetta’s cell phone rang. It was Dr. Kiselstein at Y-12.

  She said to him before he could say anything, “Lucy said it got there safely. I apologize a thousand times. I hope you weren’t waiting. I’m not sure where.”

  Dr. Kiselstein’s German-accented voice in her earpiece: “Since I usually don’t receive samples from private jets, I treated myself and listened to music on the iPod my wife gave me for Christmas. So small, I could wear it as a tie clip. It was no problem. I know McGhee-Tyson, the Air National Guard base, except, as I said, usually not the jet of a millionaire. Usually a C-one-thirty or some other cargo plane bringing us something from Langley that NASA won’t admit to. Like faulty heat shields. Or prototypes, which I like much better because nothing bad has happened. Of course, when they are strange deliveries from you, it’s always bad. But I do have some results, as this is timely, I realize. No official report of the analysis. That will be a while.”

  Benton gave up hovering. He touched her cheek and headed to the shower.

  “What we have, basically, is an ointment that is mixed with blood, possibly sweat, and silver salts, and along with this are fibers of wood and cotton,” Dr. Kiselstein said.

  Scarpetta moved toward the sofa. She got a pen and notepad from an end-table drawer and sat down.

  “Specifically, silver nitrate and potassium nitrate. And carbon and oxygen, as you would expect. I’m e-mailing images to you, taken at different magnifications up to one thousand-X. Even at fifty-X you can see the blood, and the silver-rich regions are quite bright due to their higher atomic number. You can also see silver nitrate in the wood—small, whitish silver-rich specks evenly dispersed over the surface.”

  “Interesting it’s evenly dispersed,” she said. “Same with the cotton fibers?”

  “Yes. Visible at higher magnifications.”

  To her an even dispersement implied something that might have been manufactured as opposed to a random transference due to con
tamination. If what she suspected was correct, however, they were likely dealing with both.

  She asked, “What about skin cells?”

  “Yes, definitely. We are still at the lab, and this will be going on for a day or two. No rest for the wicked. And this is very difficult because you sent many samples. What I’m calling you about is just two of them. One from each case. The chair and a swab. You might think the cotton and wood fibers are from the swabs you used on the body, and yes, maybe no. I can’t tell you. But not so with the chair, because you didn’t swab the chair seat?”

  “No. That wasn’t touched.”

  “Then we can conclude the cotton and wood fibers in the material on the chair cushion are there for another reason, perhaps transferred by the ointment, which presents a challenge as it’s nonconductive. That requires us to use variable pressure, which maintains the high vacuum in the gun needed to create the electron beam as the rest of the chamber is backfilled with dry filtered air. And we have reduced the scattering of the electron beam by minimizing the working distance. I suppose I am making excuses. The ointment is difficult to image because the electron beam actually melts it, I’m afraid. It will be better when it dries.”

  “Silver nitrate applicators for cauterizing skin, possibly? That’s what comes to my mind right away,” she said. “Which might explain the presence of blood, sweat, skin cells. And a mixture of different DNA profiles if we’re talking about a communal jar of a healing ointment. If we’re talking about a source being, perhaps, a medical office? For example, a dermatologist?”

  “I won’t ask about your suspects,” Dr. Kiselstein said.

  “Anything else interesting about the chair?”

  “The frame is iron with trace elements of gold in the paint. There was no one sitting in it when we placed it in the chamber. Suspects and punishment aren’t my department.” They hung up.

  Scarpetta tried Dr. Elizabeth Stuart’s numbers and got voicemail. She didn’t leave a message and stayed on the sofa, thinking.

  She believed she was dealing with Marino just fine until she decided to call him and realized she didn’t have his cell phone number. So she called Berger, and the way the prosecutor answered, it was as if she knew who it was and that the call was personal.