“Where do you get your hair removal done?”
“A dermatologist on East Seventy-ninth. Laser removal. Other painful things I’ll never bother with again.”
“What about Terri? Did she go to this same dermatologist?”
“She referred me to her. Dr. Elizabeth Stuart. She has a big practice and is well respected. Terri’s been going to her for years.”
Scarpetta wrote down Dr. Stuart’s name and asked about any other doctors or other practitioners Terri might have seen, and Oscar said he didn’t know or he didn’t remember, but he was sure there would be records of that type of information in Terri’s apartment. She was impeccably well organized, he said.
“She never threw anything away that might be important, but everything has its proper place. If I draped my shirt over a chair, she was going to hang it up. I could barely finish eating before the dishes were in the dishwasher. She hated clutter. Hated things out of place. Her pocketbook, her raincoat, her snow boots, whatever it was, she tucked it out of sight even if she planned to use it again five minutes later. I realize that’s not normal.”
“Is her own hair cut short like yours?”
“I keep forgetting you never saw her.”
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t.”
“She didn’t cut her hair short, but she keeps it very clean. If she went somewhere, the minute she got back inside, she’d take a shower and wash her hair. Never a bath. Because you’re sitting in dirty water. That’s what she says, constantly. She uses a towel once, and then it went into the wash. I know it’s not normal. I told her she might want to talk to someone about her anxiety, that she’s obsessive-compulsive, not severely but has some of the symptoms. She didn’t wash her hands a hundred times a day or walk around the cracks in the sidewalk or refuse take-out food. Nothing like that.”
“What about when you had sex? Any extra precautions because of her vigilance about cleanliness?”
“Just that I’m clean. We shower afterwards, wash each other’s hair, and usually have sex again in the shower. She likes having sex in the shower. She calls it clean sex. I wanted to see her more than once a week. But that was all. Once a week. Always the same day, exact same time. Probably because she’s so organized. Saturday at five. We’d eat and make love. Sometimes we’d make love the minute I got there. I didn’t sleep there. She likes to wake up alone and get started on her work. My DNA’s all over her house.”
“But you didn’t have sex with her last night.”
“You already asked me that!”
He clenched his fists and the veins stood out in his muscular arms.
“How could I!”
“I’m just making sure. You understand why I have to ask.”
“I always use condoms. You’ll find them in the drawer by her bed. My saliva would be on her.”
“Because . . . ?”
“Because I held her. I tried mouth-to-mouth. When I knew she was gone, I kissed her face. I touched her. I had her in my arms. My DNA’s on her.”
“This and this.” Scarpetta touched bruises on his sternum. “When he hit you with the flashlight?”
“Some of them. Maybe some from hitting the floor. I don’t know.”
Bruises change color with time. They can indicate the shape of the object that caused them. His were reddish-purple. There were two on his chest, one on his left thigh, all about two inches wide and slightly curved. The most Scarpetta could say was they were consistent with a flashlight’s rim, and that he had been struck with what appeared to be moderate force around the same time he’d received his other injuries.
She took close-up photographs, aware of how easy it would be for him to throttle her with his forearm. She wouldn’t be able to scream. In minutes she would be dead.
She felt his body heat and smelled him. Then the air between them was cool again as she stepped back and returned to the counter, and began documenting injuries and making other notes while he watched her back. She could feel his mismatched eyes, only they weren’t as warm. They felt like cool drops of water. His devotion, his idealization, was beginning to chill. To him she wasn’t bigger than life on CNN. She was a woman, a real person who was disappointing him, betraying him. Almost without exception, that was the path of hero worship, because it was never really about the object of it.
“Nothing’s any better than it was thousands of years ago,” Oscar said to her back. “The fighting, the ugliness, the lies and hatefulness. People don’t change.”
“If you believe that,” she asked, “why would you want to go into psychology?”
“If you want to figure out where evil comes from, you have to follow where it goes,” he said. “Did it end up in a stab wound? Did it end up in the decapitated head of a hiker? Did it end up in discrimination? What part of our brain remains primitive in a world where violent aggression and hatred are counterproductive to survival? Why can’t we knock out that part of our genetic coding the way we knock out genes in mice? I know what your husband’s doing.”
He talked fast and in a flinty tone while she retrieved a silicone casting extruder gun and a polyvinylsiloxane refill cartridge from her crime scene case.
“The research he’s doing into that sort of thing. At his Harvard hospital, McLean. Using MRI. Functional MRI. Are we any closer to figuring it out? Or will we just keep tormenting, torturing, raping and killing and starting wars and committing genocide and deciding some people don’t deserve basic human rights?”
Locking the cartridge in place, she removed the pink cover cap and pressed the trigger, squeezing the white base and clear catalyst on a paper towel until there was a steady flow. She attached the mixing tip and returned to the table, explaining she was going to use a silicone compound on his fingertips and his injuries.
“This is very good for taking elastic impressions of rough or smooth surfaces, such as your fingernails and even your fingerprint pads,” she said. “There are no harmful side effects, and your skin should have no reaction to it. The scratches and nail marks are scabbed over and this shouldn’t hurt them, but if at any point you want me to stop, just tell me. I’m confirming I have your consent to do this.”
“Yes,” he said.
He went very still as she touched his hands, careful of his injured thumb.
“I’m going to very gently clean your fingers and your injuries with isopropyl alcohol,” she said. “So your own body secretions don’t interfere with the curing process. This shouldn’t hurt. At the most, a little sting. You let me know if you want me to stop.”
He fell silent, watching her clean his hands, one finger at a time.
“I’m trying to figure out why you’d be familiar with Dr. Wesley’s research study at McLean,” she said. “Since he hasn’t published anything yet. But I know the recruitment for subjects has been going on for a while and has been heavily advertised and publicized. I suppose that’s the answer?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Oscar said, staring down at his hands. “Nothing changes. People know why they’re hateful, and it changes nothing. You won’t change feelings. All the science in the world won’t change feelings.”
“I don’t agree,” she said. “We tend to hate what we fear. And we hate less when we’re less afraid.”
She squeezed the odorless compound over his fingertips, the extruder gun clicking each time she pressed the trigger.
“Hopefully, the more enlightened we are, the less we fear and the less we hate. I’m covering each finger to the first knuckle, and when the compound is dry, it will roll off like one of those rubber fingertips people wear when counting money. This material is excellent for microscopic evaluation.”
She used a wooden spatula to spread and smooth, and by the time she’d finished covering his multiple scratches and nail marks, the compound on his fingertips had begun to cure. It was interesting that he didn’t ask her why she’d want to get impressions of his fingertips, especially his fingernails, and also of the scratches and nail marks allegedly made by a stranger he said had attacked him. Oscar didn’t ask because he probably knew, and she didn’t really need these impressions for microscopic study as much as she needed him to see her taking them.
“There. If you can just hold your hands up,” she said.
She met his blue-green stare.
“It’s cool in here,” she said. “I’m guessing sixty-eight degrees. It should set in about four minutes. I’m going to pull your gown back up for now so you’ll be more comfortable.”
She smelled the pungent sweat of fear and confinement. She smelled unbrushed teeth and a trace of
