Scarpetta

by Patricia Cornwell

  She didn’t see the book Oscar had told her about, The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor, where he claimed to have hidden the CD. Her doubts about him proliferated. What kind of game was he playing with her?

  “And the photograph on the Internet this morning,” Lucy said. “Taken in the morgue here in New York. You were talking to Dr. Lester. Does that sound familiar?”

  “I have no recollection of anybody taking my picture when I’ve been there or I would have thought of it when I first saw the photo today.”

  “When you look at the photo again, fill in the background with a countertop and a security camera video display. Maybe you can figure out where the person might have been standing. Maybe that will tell you something.”

  “It would have been from the direction of an autopsy table. There are three of them in the autopsy suite, so maybe it was somebody there for another case. I promise I’ll think about it carefully, but not right now.”

  All she could think about right now was talking to Oscar again and telling him the book wasn’t here. She could imagine his reply. They must have gotten hold of the CD. That would explain the thread on the floor outside his door. They had gotten in. That’s what he would say. She hadn’t mentioned the book or the hidden CD to Morales or Benton. She couldn’t tell them the book and CD were there, and she couldn’t tell them that they weren’t. She was Oscar Bane’s physician. What had gone on between the two of them, within reason, remained confidential.

  “You got something to write with?” Lucy asked. “I’m giving you Dr. Elizabeth Stuart’s phone numbers. The dermatologist.”

  “I know who she is.”

  Lucy explained that the photograph was e-mailed to Terri Bridges on December 3, at around noon, from an Internet coffee shop across the street from Dr. Stuart’s office. She gave Scarpetta a cell phone number, and also a number for a time-share presidential suite at the St. Regis in Aspen, Colorado, and said Dr. Stuart always stayed there under her husband’s name, which was Oxford.

  “Ask for Dr. Oxford,” Lucy said. “Amazing what people will tell you, but I didn’t pass along all this to anyone else. Jaime has this thing about going through legal channels, imagine? Anyway, can you ask Morales something for me and then tell Benton to call me?”

  “I’m walking that way now.”

  “I’m in the foyer of Terri’s brownstone, logged on to the wireless network, which is accessible to all the apartments,” Lucy said. “And it’s broadcasting, meaning it’s visible to anybody on it. There’s a device on it.”

  Oscar’s home gym was in the master bedroom, his foil-tented bed in the midst of it, and Benton and Morales were talking.

  “What is it you want me to ask him, exactly?” Scarpetta said.

  She could see why Morales was popular with women and be-grudgingly respected but resented by just about everybody else, including judges. He reminded her of a couple of the star athletes on scholarship at Cornell when she was there as an undergraduate, these scrappy, supremely self-assured young men who compensated for their relatively small stature by being wiry and fast, brazen and outrageous. They listened to no one, had little regard for their team or coaches, and were intellectually lazy but scored points and were crowd pleasers. They weren’t nice people.

  “Just ask him if he’s aware that there’s a camera,” Lucy was saying.

  “I can answer that,” Scarpetta said. “He installed a surveillance camera on the roof. Marino knows about it. Is Jaime with you?”

  Scarpetta didn’t realize why she’d asked until the words were out. It was something she sensed, maybe had sensed it the first time she’d seen them together when Lucy was scarcely more than a child, at least in Scarpetta’s mind, practically a child. Berger was a good fifteen years older than Lucy.

  Why did it matter?

  Lucy certainly wasn’t a child.

  She was explaining to Scarpetta that Berger and Marino had gone across the street to talk to a witness. She hadn’t been with them for a good half-hour.

  Maybe it was the simple logic that a prosecutor as busy and important as Jaime Berger was unlikely to spend her evening inside a Greenwich Village loft watching a computer run a program. Anything Lucy discovered could have been relayed over the phone or electronically. While it was true that Berger was known for being hands-on and extremely energetic and fierce when it came to absorbing crime scenes in person and directing the evidence to be analyzed and quickly, and on occasion showing up at the morgue if there was an autopsy she wanted to see and Dr. Lester wasn’t the ME doing it, she didn’t watch computers. She didn’t pull up a chair in the labs and watch gas chromatography, microscopy, trace evidence examination, or low copy number DNA amplification in the works.

  Berger gave marching orders and had meetings to go over the results. It bothered Scarpetta to think of Lucy and Berger alone in that loft for hours. Scarpetta’s uneasiness about it likely went back to the last time she’d seen them together, five years ago, when she’d appeared unannounced at Berger’s penthouse.

  She hadn’t expected to discover Lucy there, confiding in Berger about what had happened in that hotel room in Szczecin, Poland, offering details that to this day Scarpetta didn’t know.

  She’d felt she was no longer the center of her niece’s life. Or perhaps she had seen it coming, that one day she wouldn’t be. That was the truth, her selfish truth.

  Scarpetta told Benton that Lucy needed to talk to him. He hesitated, waiting for a signal from her that she was all right.

  “I’m going to check his cabinets,” she said, and that was her signal.

  Benton should leave the bedroom so he could have a private conversation.

  “I’ll be down the hall,” Benton said, entering a number on his cell phone.

  Scarpetta could feel Morales watching her as she walked into Oscar’s bathroom. The more she saw of the way he lived, the more depressed she was by his obvious deteriorated mental state. Bottles in the medicine cabinet made it clear he believed his own nightmares, and the date on several prescription bottles validated the timeline, too.

  She found l-lysine, pantothenic and folic and amino acids, bone calcium, iodine, kelp, the sort of supplements taken by people who had suffered radiation damage or feared they had. Beneath the sink were large bottles of white vinegar that she suspected he was adding to his baths, and early last October he had filled a prescription for eszopiclone, which was used to treat insomnia. Since then, he had refilled the prescription twice, most recently at a Duane Reade pharmacy, on December twenty-seventh. The name of the prescribing doctor was Elizabeth Stuart. Scarpetta would call her, but not now and not here.

  She began going through a small closet where Oscar kept the expected over-the-counter medications and first-aid necessities such as Band-Aids, rubbing alcohol, gauze—and a lubricant called Aqualine. She was looking at it when Morales walked in. The price sticker was missing from the unopened jar, so she had no idea where it had been purchased.

  “Isn’t that sort of like Vaseline?” he asked.

  “Sort of,” she replied.

  “You think the labs can tell if this is the same stuff that was recovered from her vagina?”

  “It’s more commonly used as a healing ointment,” Scarpetta said. “To treat burns, irritated or cracked skin, atopic dermatitis, eczema, that sort of thing. None of which Oscar has, by the way. Popular with runners, bikers, race walkers. Rather ubiquitous. You can get it at any pharmacy and most grocery stores.”

  It almost sounded as if she was defending Oscar Bane.

  “Yeah. We know little Oscar’s quite the little walker, flat-footed fella that he is. The doorman says he goes out in his little warm-ups almost every day, no matter the weather. The ladder’s on the roof, how about that for strange? The building’s got no idea why. I’m thinking the little guy climbed up the fire escape and came in one of his windows, then went out through the roof access and pulled the ladder up behind him. That explains why it’s on the roof.”

  “W
hy might he do that?”

  “To get in.” Morales stared intensely at her.

  “And opening his window wouldn’t set off the alarm?” she asked.

  “It was set off. I called the alarm company to inves-ti-gate. Not long after Oscar checked out of Bellevue, yup, the alarm went off. The service called his apartment, and a man answered and said it was an accident and gave the password. It’s not that loud. The building wouldn’t have heard it, especially if it was deactivated quickly. So what do you think?”

  “I don’t have a thought about it.”

  “Shit, you have thoughts about everything, Dr. CNN. That’s what you’re known for. You’re known for all these amazing thoughts you have.”

  He walked to the closet she was searching. He bumped against her as he picked up the jar of Aqualine.

  “Chemically,” he said, “we could tell if this is the same stuff recovered from her body, correct?”

  “Certainly,” she said, “you could determine what it’s not, such as K-Y jelly, which has certain antiseptic and preservative additives like sodium hydroxide and methylparaben. Aqualine is preservative-free, mainly mineral oil and petrolatum. I’m pretty sure nothing like this was found in Terri’s apartment. At least it’s not on the evidence inventory, and I checked the medicine cabinet, looked around when I was just there. You would know better than anybody.”

  “Doesn’t mean he didn’t bring it in his murder kit, and leave with it. I’m not saying Oscar did, I’m saying the killer did. But I’m also not saying they aren’t the same person, either.”

  Morales’s brown eyes were intense on hers. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and at the same time angry.

  “But you’re on the money about nothing being in her apartment,” he said. “Last night I didn’t know we were looking for a lubricant because the autopsy hadn’t been done yet. But I did look when I went back.”

  This was the first she’d heard that he’d gone back, and she thought about Terri’s guest room office and Marino’s comment that it appeared someone had groomed the carpet in there.

  “After your buddy Marino found her laptops, I went back and checked out the place to make sure there wasn’t anything else missed,” Morales said. “By then I knew the autopsy results, had talked to Pester Lester. So I poked around for a lubricant. Nope, not there.”

  “We noticed the carpet in her office,” she said.

  “I bet you did,” he said. “My mama taught me to clean up after myself, straighten the fringe on the rug, be dutiful and responsible. Speaking of, guess I’d better bag up a few of these things. Did I tell you I got a search warrant just in case we found something good?”

  He flashed her a bright, toothy smile and winked.

  They returned to the bedroom with its gym equipment and foil tent. She opened a closet and scanned a shelf that had more foam-lined helmets and several antennas. She rifled through clothing, most of it casual, and noted plastic panels in the pockets of several blazers, yet another type of shield, and she remembered Oscar’s anxious comment in the infirmary about not having any protection with him.

  On the floor were pairs of small snow boots, dress shoes, Nikes, and a wicker basket filled with hand grips, jump ropes, ankle weights, and a deflated fitness ball.

  She picked up the Nikes. They looked old and not suitable for a serious athlete with potential joint and foot problems.

  “These are the only running shoes?” she asked Morales. “Seems like he would have a better pair than this. In fact, multiple pairs.”

  “I keep forgetting what they call you,” he said.

  He moved next to her.

  “Eagle eye,” he said. “Among other things.”

  He was close enough for her to see faint reddish freckles scattered over his light brown skin, and she smelled his loud cologne.

  “Wears a Brooks Ariel made especially for people who overpronate and need a lot of stability,” he said. “Kind of an irony.”

  He waved his hand around the bedroom.

  “I’d say your fan Oscar could use all the stability he can get,” Morales added. “Good for flat-footed people. Wide-bodied, unique tread pattern. I got the pair he was wearing last night and dropped it off at the labs. With his clothes.”

  “Meaning he wore what, exactly, when he checked himself out of Bellevue a little while ago?” she asked.

  “Another eagle-eye question.”

  She kept inching away from him, and he continued to crowd her. She was almost in the closet, and she placed the Nikes back on the floor and stepped around and away from him.

  “Last night when I agreed to take him to the crazy hotel,” Morales said, “I made a little deal. I said if he’d let me have his clothes, we’d stop by his apartment first so he could get a jump-out bag. Then he’d be all set when he was ready to leave.”

  “Sounds like you were expecting he wouldn’t stay long.”

  “I was expecting exactly that. He wasn’t going to stay long because his reason for being there was to see Benton and, most of all, you. He got his dream come true and he boogied.”

  “He came in here by himself last night to get his so-called jump-out bag of clothes?”

  “Wasn’t under arrest. Could do what he wanted. I waited in the car, and he went in, took him maybe ten minutes. Max. Maybe that’s why his little booby trap thread was on the floor. He forgot to drape it over the top of the door when he was leaving. He was a little upset.”

  “Do we know what was in his jump-out bag?”

  “One pair of jeans, a navy blue T-shirt, another pair of his Brooks running shoes, socks, underwear, and a zip-up wool coat. The ward’s got an inventory. Jeb went through it. You met Jeb.”

  She didn’t say anything as they stood near the aluminum-foil tent, eye to eye.

  “The corrections officer outside your door this afternoon. Making sure you were safe,” he said.

  She was startled by Rod Stewart singing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”

  The music ringtone on Morales’s personal digital assistant, a hefty and expensive one.

  He pressed his Bluetooth earpiece and answered, “Yeah.”

  She walked out and found Benton inside the library, his gloved hands holding a copy of a book, The Air Loom Gang.

  Benton said, “About a machine controlling someone’s mind back in the late seventeen hundreds. You okay? I didn’t want to interfere. Figured you’d yell if you needed me to crush him into a cube.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “Read that loud and clear.”

  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 comp
lete.” 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.