didn’t flinch, but his face was tense and his forehead was beaded with sweat.
She peeled open a buccal brush, and he swabbed the inside of his cheek, and his hands trembled.
“Now please make him leave.” He meant the corrections officer. “You don’t need him here. I’m not talking with him here.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” the officer said. “It’s not your choice.”
Oscar was silent. He stared at the wall. The officer looked at Scarpetta, waiting to see what she was going to do.
“You know,” she decided, “I think we’ll be fine.”
“I’d rather not do that, Doc. He’s pretty keyed up.”
He didn’t seem keyed up, but she didn’t comment. What he seemed was dazed and upset, and on the verge of hysteria.
“What you mean is chained up like Houdini,” Oscar said. “It’s one thing to be in lockup. But I don’t need to be shackled like some serial killer. I’m surprised you didn’t roll me out in a Hannibal Lecter cage. The staff here obviously doesn’t know that mechanical restraints in psychiatric hospitals were abolished in the mid-nineteenth century. What have I done to deserve this?”
He raised his cuffed hands and was sputtering, he was so incensed.
“It’s because ignorant people like you think I’m a circus freak,” he said.
“Hey, Oscar,” the guard replied. “Here’s a news flash. You’re not in a normal psychiatric hospital. This is the prison ward you checked yourself into.” He said to Scarpetta, “I’d prefer to stay, Doc.”
“A freak. That’s what ignorant people like you think.”
“We’re fine,” she repeated to the officer, and she could understand why Berger was exercising caution.
Oscar was quick to point out anything he perceived as unfair. He was quick to remind everyone he was a little person, when in fact that wasn’t the first thing people probably noticed about him, unless he was standing. Certainly, it wasn’t what had caught her attention the instant she’d walked into the infirmary. His different-colored eyes had flashed at her, and seemed a more startling green and blue in contrast to the brightness of his teeth and hair, and although his features weren’t flawless, the way they fit together had invited her to stare, to study. She continued to wonder just what it was that Oscar Bane reminded her of. Perhaps a bust on an ancient gold coin.
“I’ll be right out here,” the officer said.
He left, shutting the door, which like every door on the ward had no handles. Only the corrections officers had keys, so it was important to keep the double-cylinder deadbolt in the locked position. If the bolt was out, the door wasn’t going to shut all the way and accidentally trap a member of the staff or visiting consultant such as herself inside a small room with a two-hundred-pound man who’d just dismembered some woman he’d met in a bar, for example.
Scarpetta picked up the tape measure and said to Oscar, “I’d like to measure your arms and legs. Get your exact height and weight.”
“I’m four foot and a quarter,” he said. “I weigh one hundred and nine pounds. I wear a size-five shoe. Sometimes a four. Or a six and a half if it’s a woman’s. Sometimes a five and a half. It depends on the shoe. I have a wide foot.”
“Left arm from the glenohumeral joint to the tip of your third finger. If you don’t mind holding your arms as straight as you can. That’s perfect. Sixteen and one-eighth inches for the left. Sixteen and two-eighths for the right. Not unusual. Most people’s arms aren’t precisely the same length. Now your legs, if you can hold them straight out. I’m going to measure from your acetabulum, your hip joint.”
She felt it through the thin cotton of his gown, and measured the length of his legs to the tip of his toes, and the shackles clacked quietly and his muscles bulged as he moved. His legs were only about two inches longer than his arms, and slightly bowed. She wrote down the measurements and retrieved other paperwork from the countertop.
“Let me confirm what they gave me when I got here,” she said. “You’re thirty-four, your middle name is Lawrence. You’re right-handed, according to this,” and she got as far as his date of birth and address in the city before he interrupted her.
“Aren’t you going to ask why I want you here? Why I demanded it? Why I made sure Jaime Berger was informed I wouldn’t cooperate unless you came? Screw her.” His eyes were watering and his voice wavered. “Terri would still be here if it wasn’t for her.”
He turned his head to the right and looked at the wall.
“Are you having trouble hearing me, Oscar?” Scarpetta asked.
“My right ear,” he said in a voice that intermittently shook and changed octaves.
“But you can hear with your left ear?”
“Chronic ear infections when I was a boy. I’m deaf in my right ear.”
“Do you know Jaime Berger?”
“She’s cold-blooded, doesn’t give a shit about anybody. You’re nothing like her. You care about victims. I’m a victim. I need you to care about me. You’re all I’ve got.”
“In what way are you a victim?” Scarpetta labeled envelopes.
“My life’s been ruined. The person who means most to me is gone. I’ll never see her again. She’s gone. I have nothing left. I don’t care if I die. I know who you are and what you do. I would even if you weren’t famous. Famous or not, I would know who and what you are. I had to think fast, very fast. After finding . . . after finding Terri . . .” His voice cracked, and he blinked back tears. “I told the police to bring me here. Where I’d be safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“I said I might be a danger to myself. And they asked, ‘What about to others?’ And I said no, only to myself. I requested solitary confinement on the prison ward because I can’t be in general population. They’re calling me the Midget Murderer up here. Laughing at me. The police have no probable cause to arrest me, but they think I’m deranged and don’t want me disappearing, and I do have money and a passport, because I come from a good family in Connecticut, although my parents aren’t very kind. I don’t care if I die. In the minds of the police and Jaime Berger, I’m guilty.”
“They’re doing what they can to accommodate you. You’re here. You met with Dr. Wesley. Now I’m here,” Scarpetta reminded him.
“They’re just using you. They don’t care about me.”
“I promise not to let anybody use me.”
“They already are. To cover their asses. They’ve already convicted me, aren’t looking for anybody else. The real killer’s out there somewhere. He knows who I am. Someone will be next. Whoever did this will do it again. They have a motive, a cause, and I was warned but I didn’t think they meant Terri. It never occurred to me they intended to hurt Terri.”
“Warned?”
“They communicate with me. I have these communications.”
“Did you tell the police this?”
“If you don’t know who they are, you have to be careful who you tell. I tried to warn Jaime Berger a month ago about how unsafe it was for me to come forward with what I know. But I never imagined I was putting Terri at risk. They never communicated with me about Terri. So I didn’t know about that, about the danger to her.”
He wiped tears with the backs of his hands, and his chains clanked.
“How did you warn Jaime Berger? Or try to warn her?”
“I called her office. She’ll tell you. Get her to tell you what a cold-blooded human being she is. Get her to tell you how much she cares. She doesn’t.” Tears rolled down his face. “And now Terri’s gone. I knew something bad was going to happen, but I didn’t know it would be to her. And you’re wondering why. Well, I don’t know. Maybe they hate little people, want to wipe us off the planet. Like the Nazis did to the Jews, the homosexuals and gypsies, the handicapped, the mentally ill. Whoever threatened Hitler’s Master Race ended up in the ovens. Somehow they’ve stolen my identity and my thoughts, and they know everything about me. I reported it but Berger didn’t care. I demanded to have mind justice, but she wouldn’t even get on the phone with me.”
“Tell me about mind justice.”
