Scarpetta

     He covered the mouthpiece with his hand while he peed.

     “I’m still hung up on the wheelchair,” Bacardi said.

     “What it means,” he said, when it was safe to talk again, “is there’s a different mixture of DNA profiles. In other words, you didn’t get a hit on the old lady from Palm Beach, because her DNA wasn’t on your victims. For whatever reason. I think you should come up here and sit down with everyone. As soon as possible, like tomorrow morning,” Marino said. “You got a car?”

     “Whenever you guys need. I can be there in a few hours.”

     “It’s my belief,” Marino said, “when things are this different, they got something in common.”

Chapter 15

     “Nobody’s accusing anybody of anything,” Benton said on the phone, talking to Scarpetta’s administrative assistant, Bryce. “I was just wondering when you looked at it first thing, what might have entered your mind . . . Really . . . That’s a very good point . . . Well, that’s interesting. I’ll tell her.”

     He hung up.

     Scarpetta was only halfway paying attention to whatever he and Bryce had been discussing. She was far more interested in several photographs of Terri Bridges’s master bathroom, and had placed them in a row on a space she’d cleared on Benton’s desk. They showed a spotless white ceramic-tile floor and a white marble countertop. Next to a sink with ornate gold fixtures was a built-in vanity arranged with perfumes, a brush, and a comb. Attached to the rose-painted wall was a gold-framed oval mirror, and it was askew, but so slightly it was barely perceptible. As far as she could tell, it was the only thing in the bathroom that looked even remotely disturbed.

     “Your hair,” Benton said to her as his printer woke up.

     “What about it?”

     “I’ll show you.”

     Another close-up of the body, this one taken from a different angle after the towel had been removed. Terri’s achondroplastic features were more typical than Oscar’s. She had a somewhat flattened nose and pronounced forehead, and her arms and legs were thick and about half the length they ought to be, her fingers thick and stubby.

     Benton swiveled around and removed a sheet of paper from the printer, and handed it to her.

     “Do I have to look at that again?” she said.

     It was the photograph from this morning’s Gotham Gotcha column.

     “Bryce said for you to take a good look at your hair,” Benton said.

     “It’s covered,” she said. “All I can see is a little fringe of it.”

     “His point. It used to be shorter. He showed the photo to Fielding, who shares his opinion.”

     She ran her fingers through her hair, realizing what Bryce and Fielding meant. Over the past year, she’d let her hair grow out another inch.

     “You’re right,” she said. “Bryce—Mr. Hygiene—is always nagging me about it. It’s that in-between length where I can’t completely cover it, and yet it’s not long enough to tuck in. So there’s always a little fringe of it exposed.”

     “He and Fielding both say the same thing,” Benton said. “This photograph was taken recently. As recently as the past six months, because both of them believe this was taken since they started working for you. They’re basing this on the length of your hair, the watch you’re wearing, and the face shield is the same type you use.”

     “It’s just a face shield. Not like our fancy safety glasses with different neon-colored frames to cheer up the place.”

     “Anyway, I’m inclined to agree with them,” Benton said.

     “That says something. Because, obviously, if it was taken in Watertown, they’re on the list of suspects. And they don’t recall noticing anybody else taking it?”

     “That’s the difficulty,” Benton said. “Everybody and their brother who’s through your place, as I pointed out earlier, could have done it. You can tell from your demeanor, the expression on your face, that you had no idea it was being taken. A quick picture taken with a cell phone. That’s my guess.”

     “It wasn’t Marino, then,” she said. “He’s certainly not been within camera range.”

     “I suspect he hates having that column on the Internet even more than you do, Kay. It wouldn’t make any sense to think Marino’s behind this.”

     She looked through more photographs of Terri Bridges’s body on the bathroom floor, perplexed by the thin gold chain around her left ankle. She handed a close-up to Benton.

     “Oscar told the police he’d never seen it before,” he said. “And since you don’t seem to know where it came from, I’m going to conclude that either Oscar told you he knew nothing about it or he didn’t mention it at all.”

     “Suffice it to say, I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “But it doesn’t look like something she’d wear. For one thing, it doesn’t fit. It’s much too tight. Either she’d had the bracelet for a long time and had gained weight, or someone gave it to her without realizing or even caring what size she needed. I don’t think she bought it for herself, in other words.”

     “So I’ll make my sexist comment,” Benton said. “A man is more likely to make a mistake like that than another woman. Had a woman bought this for her, she likely would be aware that Terri has thick ankles.”

     “Oscar knows all about dwarfism, of course,” Scarpetta said. “He’s extremely body-conscious. He’s less likely to buy the wrong size because he’s intimately familiar with her.”

     “That, and he denied having ever seen the bracelet before.”

     “If the person you were in love with would see you only once a week at a predetermined time and place of her choosing, what might enter your mind after a while?” Scarpetta said.

     “She’s seeing someone else,” Benton said.

     “Another question. If I’m asking about the bracelet, what does that imply?”

     “Oscar never mentioned it to you.”

     “I suspect Oscar has a deep-seated fear that Terri was seeing someone,” Scarpetta replied. “To consciously deal with that would be to inflict an injury he can’t endure. I don’t care how shocked he was when he discovered her body, if that’s really what happened. He should have noticed the ankle bracelet. His not bringing it up says far more than if he had volunteered it, in my opinion.”

     “He fears it was a gift from someone else,” Benton said. “Of interest to us, of course, is if she really was seeing someone else. Because that person could be her killer.”

     “Possibly.”

     “It could also be argued that Oscar killed her because he discovered she was seeing someone else,” Benton said.

     “Do you have any reason to think she was?” she asked.

     “I’m going to accept that you don’t know the answer, either. But if she was, and he gave her a piece of jewelry, why would she wear it when Oscar was coming over?”

     “I suppose she could say she bought it herself. But I don’t know why she’d wear it at all. It didn’t fit.”

     She looked at another photograph of clothing in the tub, as if dropped there: pink bedroom slippers, and a pink robe slit open from the collar to the cuffs, and a red lacy bra, unhooked in front with the straps cut.

     She leaned across the desk, handing the photograph to him.

     “Most likely her wrists were already bound behind her back when the killer removed her robe, her bra,” she said. “That would explain cutting the straps, cutting open the sleeves.”

     “Suggesting she was quickly subdued by her assailant,” he said. “A blitz attack. She didn’t see it coming. Whether it was after she opened her door, or after he was already inside her apartment. He bound her so he could control her. Then he dealt with getting her clothing off.”

     “He didn’t need to cut her clothing off if his goal was to sexually assault her. All he had to do was open the front of her robe.”

     “To induce terror. Total domination. All consistent with a sadistic sexual homicide. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t Oscar. Doesn’t mean it was.”