Dr. Self returns from the other side of horror and closes the image on her screen. She reaches for the phone and calls Benton Wesley’s office, and her instincts immediately tell her that the unfamiliar woman who answers is young, overestimates her importance, has an entitlement attitude, and therefore is probably from a wealthy family and was hired by the hospital as a favor and is a thorn in Benton’s side.
“And your first name, Dr. Self?” the woman asks, as if she doesn’t know who Dr. Self is, when everyone at the hospital knows.
“I’m hoping Dr. Wesley has finally gotten in,” Dr. Self says. “He’s expecting my call.”
“He won’t be in until about eleven.” As if Dr. Self is no one special. “May I ask what you’re calling about?”
“That’s quite all right. And you are? I don’t believe we’ve met. Last time I called, it was someone else.”
“No longer here.”
“Your name?”
“Jackie Minor. His new research assistant.” Her tone turns grand. She probably hasn’t finished her Ph.D. yet, assuming she ever will.
Dr. Self charmingly says, “Well, thank you very much, Jackie. And I assume you took the job so you could assist in his research study, what is it they call it? Dorsolateral Activation in Maternal Nagging?”
“DAMN?” Jackie says in surprise. “Who calls it that?”
“Why, I believe you just did,” Dr. Self says. “The acronym hadn’t occurred to me. You’re the one who just said it. You’re quite witty. Who was the great poet…Let me see if I can quote it: ‘Wit is the genius to perceive and the metaphor to express.’ Or something like that. Alexander Pope, I believe. We’ll meet soon enough. Very soon, Jackie. As you probably know, I’m part of the study. The one you call DAMN.”
“I knew it was someone important. Which is why Dr. Wesley ended up staying here this weekend and asked me to come in. All they put is
“It must be quite demanding working for him.”
“Absolutely.”
“With his worldwide reputation.”
“That’s why I wanted to be his RA. I’m interning to be a forensic psychologist.”
“Brava! Very good. Perhaps I’ll have you on my show someday.”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, you should, Jackie. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about expanding my horizons into
“That’s all anybody’s interested in anymore,” Jackie agrees. “Just turn on the TV. Every single show is about crime.”
“So, I’m just at the brink of thinking about production consultants.”
“I’d be happy to accommodate a conversation with you about that anytime.”
“Have you interviewed a violent offender yet? Or perhaps sat in on one of Dr. Wesley’s interviews?”
“Not yet. But I absolutely will.”
“We’ll meet again, Dr. Minor. It is
“As soon as I take my quals and find time to really focus on my dissertation. We’re already planning my hooding ceremony.”
“Of course you are. One of the finest moments in our lives.”
In centuries past, the stucco computer lab behind the old brick morgue was a quarters for horses and grooms.
Fortunately, before there was an architectural review board that could put a stop to it, the building was converted into a garage/storage facility that is now, as Lucy calls it, her make-do computer lab. It’s brick. It’s small. It’s minimal. Construction is well in the works on a massive facility on the other side of the Cooper River, where land is plentiful and zoning laws are toothless, as Lucy puts it. Her new forensic labs, when completed, will have every instrument and scientific capability imaginable. So far they manage fairly well with fingerprint analysis, toxicology, firearms, some trace evidence, and DNA. The Feds haven’t seen anything yet. She will put them to shame.
Inside her lab of old brick walls and fir-wood flooring is her computer domain, which is secured from the outside world by bullet-and hurricane-proof windows, the shades always drawn. Lucy sits before a work station that is connected to a sixty-four-gigabyte server with a chassis built of six U mountable racks. The kernel — or operating system interfacing the software with the hardware — is of her own design, built with the lowest assembly language so she could talk to the motherboard herself when she was creating her cyberworld — or what she calls the Infinity of Inner Space (IIS), pronounced IS, the prototype of which she sold for a staggering sum that’s indecent to mention. Lucy doesn’t talk about money.
Along the top of the walls are flat video screens constantly displaying every angle and sound captured by a wireless system of cameras and embedded microphones, and what she’s witnessing is unbelievable.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” she says loudly to the flat screen in front of her.
Marino is giving Shandy Snook a tour of the morgue, different angles of them on the screens, their voices as clear as if Lucy is with them.
Boston, the fifth floor of a mid-nineteenth-century brownstone on Beacon Street. Benton Wesley sits at his desk gazing out his window at a hot-air balloon drifting above the common, above Scotch elms as old as America. The white balloon slowly rises like a huge moon against the downtown skyline.
His cell phone rings. He puts on his wireless earpiece, says, “Wesley,” and hopes like hell it’s not some emergency that has to do with Dr. Self, the current hospital scourge, perhaps the most dangerous one ever.
“It’s me,” Lucy says in his ear. “Log on now. I’m conferencing you.”
Benton doesn’t ask why. He logs on to Lucy’s wireless network, which transfers video, audio, and data in real time. Her face fills the video screen of the laptop on his desk. She looks fresh and dynamically pretty, as usual, but her eyes are sparking with fury.
“Trying something different,” she says. “Connecting you to security access so you can see what I’m seeing right now. Okay? Your screen should split into four quadrants to pick up four angles or locations. Depending on what I choose. That should be enough for you to see what our so-called friend Marino is doing.”
“Got it,” Benton says as his screen splits, allowing him to view, simultaneously, four areas of Scarpetta’s building scanned by cameras.
The buzzer in the morgue bay.
In the upper-left corner of the screen, Marino and some young, sexy but cheap-looking woman in motorcycle leather are in the upstairs hallway of Scarpetta’s office, and he’s saying to her, “You stay right here until she gets signed in.”
“Why can’t I go with you? I’m not afraid.” Her voice — husky, a heavy southern accent — is transmitted clearly through the speakers on Benton’s desk.
“What the hell?” Benton says to Lucy over the phone.
“Just watch,” she comes back. “His latest girl wonder.”
“Since when?”
“Oh, let’s see. I think they started sleeping together this past Monday night. The same night they met and got drunk together.”
Marino and Shandy board the elevator, and another camera picks them up as he says to her, “Okay. But if he tells the Doc, I’m cooked.”
“Hickory-dick-or-y-Doc, she’s got you by the cock,” she says in a mocking singsong.
“We’ll get a gown to hide all your leather, but keep your mouth shut and don’t do nothing. Don’t freak out or do nothing, and I mean it.”
“It’s not like I’ve never seen a dead body before,” she says.
The elevator doors open and they step out.
“My father choked on a piece of steak right in front of me and my family,” Shandy says.
“The locker room’s back there. The one on the left.” Marino points.
“Left? Like when I’m facing which way?”
