“So here’s what you’re going to try,” Lucy said. “You’re going to look at the monitors only when I think you should see something. If you continue to feel bad, I’ll spool off the data I want you to see, and you can look at it in static word-processing format. I’ll even break my rule and print stuff. Anyway, don’t look at the monitor. Let’s go back to what I was saying about what software protections are loaded on the laptops. I was suggesting we should see if we find the same software loaded on Oscar’s home computer. See if we find evidence he’s the one who purchased it. Can we get into his apartment?”
Lucy continued to say we, and Berger didn’t see how there could be a we .
It was completely reckless for there to be a we, Berger kept telling herself, kept trying to talk herself out of it, only to talk herself right back into it.
She shut her eyes and rubbed her temples and said, “It’s easy to assume it was Terri who was researching Kay. But how do we know Oscar wasn’t? Maybe these are his computers and he had them at Terri’s apartment for some reason. And no, right now we can’t get into his computer or computers. Whatever computers he has in his apartment. We don’t have his consent, and we don’t have probable cause.”
“His fingerprints on these laptops?”
They were on a nearby desk, both of them connected to a server.
“Don’t know yet,” Berger replied. “But that wouldn’t necessarily prove anything, since he was in and out of her apartment. Theoretically, we don’t know whose work this is. But what’s certain is Kay is a focus. You’ve made that point.”
“She’s more than a focus. Don’t look, but what’s happening right now? It’s sorting by footnotes. Ibid. this and that, and dates. Footnotes that seem to correlate with quotations from my aunt.”
“You’re saying Terri interviewed her?”
“Someone did, supposedly. Keep your eyes shut. The computer doesn’t need your help or approval. It’s sorting by references, thousands of them in parentheses, from multiple drafts of the same thesis. And hundreds of these parenthetical references pertain to interviews conducted at different times. Alleged interviews with my aunt.”
Berger opened her eyes and saw fragmented words and sentences streaming by and reattaching.
“Maybe they’re transcripts of interviews on CNN or newspaper interviews,” she suggested. “And you’re right. Next time I’ll ask. That just made me dizzy. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should leave.”
“Can’t be transcripts,” Lucy replied. “Not all of them or even most. Chronologically, that can’t be right. Scarpetta, November tenth, and Scarpetta, November eleventh, then the twelfth and thirteenth. No way. She didn’t talk to her. Nobody talked to her. This is bullshit.”
It was indescribably strange, looking at her looking at the monitors and bickering with her computer creation as if it were her best friend.
Berger realized Jet Ranger was under the desk, snoring.
“References to four different interviews that took place back-to-back, four days in a row,” Lucy said. “And again here. Three days in a row. See, that’s exactly what I mean. She doesn’t come to the city and go on TV every day of the week, and she rarely does newspaper interviews. And this one right here? No fucking way.”
Berger considered getting out of her chair and saying good-night. But the thought of riding in the back of a taxi right now was unbearable. She would be sick.
“Thanksgiving Day? Impossible.” Lucy seemed to be arguing with the data. “We were together in Massachusetts Thanksgiving Day. She wasn’t on CNN, and she sure as hell wasn’t giving an interview to a newspaper or some graduate student.”
The cold wind was biting, and the half-moon was high and small, illuminating nothing as Scarpetta and Benton walked to the morgue.
The sidewalk was almost deserted, the few people they passed seeming aimless with very little in life. A young man was rolling a joint. Another young man leaned against a wall, trying to stay warm. Scarpetta felt eyes on their backs, and she felt vaguely unsettled. She felt exposed and uneasy for reasons that were too layered for her to readily identify. Yellow taxis sped by, most of their lighted rooftop signs advertising banks and finance and loan companies, typical after Christmas, when people face the consequences of their holiday cheer. A bus boasted a banner ad for Gotham Gotcha, and anger touched Scarpetta like the tip of a spear.
Then she felt fear, and Benton seemed to sense it and he found her hand, and he held it as they walked.
“It’s what I get,” she said, thinking about the gossip column. “I did a pretty good job avoiding the limelight for twenty-something years. Now CNN and now this.”
“It’s not what you get,” he said. “It’s just the way things are. And it’s not fair. But nothing is. That’s why we’re headed where we are. We’re the experts in unfair. ”
“I won’t complain even one more time,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. It’s one thing to walk into the morgue. It’s another thing to be carried in.”
“You can complain all you want.”
“No, thank you,” she said, pulling his arm against her. “I’m all done.”
Lights from passing cars grazed the empty windows of Bellevue’s old psychiatric hospital, and across a side street from its iron gates was the blue-brick Medical Examiner’s office, where two white vans with blacked-out glass were parked along the curb, waiting to be sent on their next sad mission. Benton rang the buzzer as they stood in the cold on the top step at the entrance. He rang again and again, his patience fraying.
“She must have left,” he said. “Or maybe she decided not to show up.”
“That wouldn’t be as much fun,” Scarpetta said. “She likes to make people wait.”
Cameras were everywhere, and she imagined Dr. Lenora Lester watching them on a monitor and enjoying herself. Several more minutes, and just as Benton was determined to leave, Dr. Lester appeared behind the glass front door and unlocked it to let them in. She was wearing a long green surgical gown and round steel-rimmed glasses, her graying hair pinned up. Her face was plain and unlined except for the deep furrow that ran from the top of her nose halfway up her forehead, and her dark eyes were small and darted like squirrels dodging cars.
Inside the tired lobby, a photograph of Ground Zero filled most of a wall, and Dr. Lester told them to follow her, as if they had never been here before.
As usual, she talked to Benton.
“Your name came up last week,” she said, walking slightly ahead of them. “The FBI was here on a case. A couple agents, and one of their profilers from Quantico. Somehow we got on the subject of Silence of the Lambs, and I was reminded you were the head of the Behavioral Science Unit way back then. Weren’t you the main consultant for the film? How many days did they spend at the Academy? What were Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster like?”
“I was working a case somewhere,” he said.
“That’s a shame,” she said to him. “Back then Hollywood’s interest in us was rather refreshing. It was a good thing in many respects, because the public had such ridiculous stereotypes of what we’re like and what we do.”
Scarpetta refrained from saying that the movie hadn’t exactly helped dispel morbid myths, since the famous scene with the moth took place in a funeral home and not a modern autopsy suite. She didn’t point out that if anyone fit the unfortunate Grim Reaper stereotype of a forensic pathologist, it was Dr. Lester.
“Now? Not a day goes by I don’t get a call to consult about this show or that movie. Authors, screenwriters, producers, directors. Everybody wants to see an autopsy and tromp all over a crime scene. I’m so sick of it, I can’t tell you.”
Her long gown flapped around her knees as she walked in quick, clipped steps.
She said, “This case? Already I’ve had, must be a dozen phone calls. I suppose because it’s a dwarf. My first, actually. Very interesting. Mild lumbar lordosis, bowed legs, some frontal bossing. And megalencephaly, which is enlargement of the brain,” she explained, as if Scarpetta wouldn’t know what that was. “Common in people with achondroplasia. Doesn’t affect intelligence. In the IQ department, they’re no different than the rest of us. So it’s not as if this lady was stupid. Can’t blame what happened on that.”
“I’m not sure what you’re implying,” Benton said.
