“What are you doing?” Berger asked.
“A year later,” Lucy went on, “you and Greg take the same flight to Sedona on the same weekend, rent the same car, stay in the same room of the same hotel, but the experience isn’t going to be identical. It’s altered by what has gone on in your life since then, altered by your emotions, your relationship, your health, his health, by what preoccupies you, preoccupies him, altered by the weather, the economy, road detours, renovations, every detail right down to the flower arrangements and chocolates on your pillows. Without being aware of it, you’re overlaying old files with new ones that aren’t identical, even if consciously you don’t notice the difference.”
“I’ll state this clearly,” Berger said. “I don’t like people snooping into my life or violating my boundaries.”
“Read what’s out there about you. Some nice, some not so nice. Read Wikipedia.” Lucy held her gaze. “I’m not saying anything that isn’t public information. You spent your honeymoon with Greg in Sedona. It’s one of your favorite places. How is he, by the way?”
“You have no right to research me.”
“I have every right. I wanted to know exactly what I’m dealing with. And I think I do. Even though you haven’t offered much in the way of honesty.”
“What have I said that you think is dishonest?”
“You haven’t said. You haven’t said anything,” Lucy replied.
“You have no reason to distrust me, and you shouldn’t,” Berger said.
“I’m not going to abort what I’m doing because of boundaries or a possible conflict of interest. Even if you order me to,” Lucy said. “I’ve downloaded everything onto my server, so if you want to take the laptops and walk out of here, go right ahead. But you won’t stop me.”
“I don’t want to fight with you.”
“It wouldn’t be smart.”
“Please don’t threaten me.”
“I’m not. I understand how threatened you might feel and how reason might dictate that you should try to remove me from this case, from everything. But the fact is, you don’t have the capabilities to stop me from what I’m doing. You really don’t. Information about my aunt was inside an apartment where a woman was just murdered. A thesis that Terri or someone was constantly working on and revising. I’d use the word obsessively. That should be what you and I are worried about. Not what other people think or whether they’re going to accuse us.”
“Accuse us of what?”
“Of having a conflict of interest. Because of my aunt. Because of anything.”
“I care what people think far less than you imagine,” Berger said. “Because I learned it’s better to make them think what I want them to think than to care about it. I’m pretty good at that. I’ve had to be. I’ve got to be certain Kay isn’t even remotely aware of what’s going on. I need to talk to her.”
“She would have told Benton,” Lucy said. “She would have told you. She never would have agreed to examine Oscar Bane if she was somehow acquainted with him or with Terri Bridges.”
“When I requested that she examine him, she was given virtually no information about the case. Including the name of the victim. So maybe she was acquainted with Terri but didn’t realize it until she got in that room with Oscar.”
“I’m telling you, by now she would have said something.”
“I don’t know about you,” Berger said, “but I find it unusual that a student didn’t make at least some effort to contact sources for a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation. Terri Bridges was writing about Kay and never contacted her or tried? Are we sure? Maybe she did, and Kay just doesn’t remember because she wasn’t interested.”
“She would remember and at the very least would have politely declined. Aunt Kay didn’t know this lady.”
“Do you really think you can be objective? That you can handle this? Or that you want to?”
“I can. And I want to,” Lucy said, her attention suddenly distracted by what was on a video screen.
SCARPETTAby Terri Bridgesstreamed by, the same words repeatedly, in different fonts and different sizes.
“It’s begun sorting by title page,” Lucy said. “Was she fucking crazy?”
The morgue was located at the lowest level, where it was convenient for vans and rescue vehicles to park in the bay as they brought in the dead and took them away.
The smell of industrial deodorizer was heavy on the air in a silent passageway of abandoned gurneys. Behind locked doors they passed were stored skeletal remains and specimens of brains, and then the grim conveyance of a dull steel elevator that lifted bodies upstairs, where they could be looked at from behind glass. Scarpetta had a special sympathy for those whose last image of someone they loved was that. In every morgue she’d ever managed, glass was unbreakable, and viewing rooms were civilized, with hints of life such as prints of landscapes and real plants, and the bereft were never unchaperoned.
Dr. Lester led them to the decomp room, usually restricted to remains that were badly decomposed, radioactive, or infectious, and a faint, lingering stench reached out to Scarpetta as if a special brand of misery was inviting her inside. Most doctors weren’t eager to work in there.
“Is there a reason you’ve got this body in isolation?” she said. “If so, now would be a good time to let us know.”
Dr. Lester flipped a switch. Overhead lights flickered on, illuminating one stationary stainless-steel autopsy table, several surgical carts, and a gurney bearing a body covered by a disposable blue sheet. A large flat- screen monitor on a countertop was split into six quadrants that were filled with rotating video images of the building and the bay.
Scarpetta told Benton to wait in the corridor while she stepped into the adjoining locker room and retrieved face masks, shoe and hair covers, and gowns. She pulled purple nitrile gloves from a box as Dr. Lester explained she was keeping the body in the decomp room because its walk-in refrigerator happened to be empty at the moment. Scarpetta barely listened. There was no excuse for why she hadn’t bothered to roll the gurney a brief distance away into the autopsy suite, which was much less of a biohazard and had no odor.
The sheet rustled when Scarpetta pulled it back, exposing a pale body with the long torso, large head, and stunted limbs that were characteristic of achondroplasia. What she noticed immediately was the absence of body hair, including pubic hair. She suspected laser removal, which would have required a series of painful treatments, and this was consistent with what Oscar Bane had said about Terri’s phobias. She thought about the dermatologist he had mentioned.
“I’m assuming she came in like this,” Scarpetta said, repositioning one of the legs to get a better look. “That you didn’t shave her.”
She, of course, couldn’t repeat information Oscar had given to her, and her frustration was acute.
“I certainly didn’t,” Dr. Lester said. “I didn’t shave any part of her. There was no reason.”
“The police say anything about it? They find anything at the scene, find out anything from Oscar, maybe from witnesses, about her hair removal or any other procedures she might have been getting?”
“Only that they noticed it,” Dr. Lester said.
Scarpetta said, “So there was no mention of someone she may have gone to, an office where she got this done. A dermatologist, for example.”
“Mike did say something about that. I have the name written down. A woman doctor here in the city. He said he was going to call her.”
“He found out about this doctor how?” Benton asked.
“Bills inside the apartment. As I understand it, he carried out a lot of bills, mail, things like that, and started going through them. The usual things. And it goes without saying, that leads to another speculation, that the boyfriend’s a pedophile. Most men who want a woman to remove all her pubic hair are pedophiles. Practicing or not.”
“Do we know for a fact the hair removal was the boyfriend’s idea?” Benton said. “How do you know it
