you sexually inhibited.
Quite the opposite. When you’ve explored every inch of the
human body so many times that you haven’t the least bit of self-consciousness or revulsion about it, there isn’t anything out of
bounds sexually, and there’s plenty of experimentation to be had. . . .
“Can you forward this to Kay?” Berger said when the section of text abruptly stopped. “So when she gets a chance, maybe she can give it her attention. Maybe she’ll have thoughts, insights we don’t.”
“Supposedly from one of the interviews this past Thanksgiving,” Lucy said. “Which I know she didn’t give. Not that she’d ever talk like this to anyone.”
“I’m noticing a creative use of fonts. Your opinion?”
“The writer, Terri or whoever, does a lot with fonts,” Lucy agreed.
She was doing her best to be calm, but she was outraged. Berger sensed it, and she was waiting. In the past, Lucy’s anger was something to be feared.
“And in my opinion, there’s symbolism involved,” Lucy was saying. “In this phony interview, for example, when Terri’s asking questions, I’m going to say it’s Terri, the font is Franklin Gothic and it’s in bold. Arial in smaller type for my aunt’s phony answers.”
“Then symbolically, Terri has superseded Kay in importance,” Berger said.
“It’s worse than that. For your purists in the word-processing world, Arial has a very bad rep.” Lucy studied text as she talked. “It’s been called homely, common, lacking in character, and is considered a shameless imposter. There are plenty of articles about it.”
She avoided Berger’s eyes.
“An imposter?” Berger prodded her. “As in plagiarism, copyright violation? What are you talking about?”
“It’s considered a rip-off of Helvetica, which was developed in the nineteen-fifties and became one of the most popular typefaces in the world,” Lucy said. “To the untrained eye, there’s no difference between Helvetica and Arial. But to a purist, a professional printer or print designer, Arial’s a parasite. The irony? Some young designers think Helvetica is based on Arial instead of the other way around. Do you see the significance symbolically? Because it’s scary, at least to me.”
“Of course I see it,” Berger said. “It could suggest that Terri and Kay have switched places in terms of their being world-renowned forensic experts. Rather much what Mark David Chap-man did before he killed John Lennon. He was wearing a name tag with Lennon’s name on it. Rather much what Sirhan Sirhan did when he allegedly made the comment that by assassinating Bobby Kennedy, he’d become more famous.”
“The change in fonts is a progression,” Lucy said. “The more recent the drafts, the more pronounced it is, the prominence of Terri’s name and an implied negativity toward my aunt.”
“A change that suggests Terri’s emotional attachment to Kay was turning hostile, dismissive. I should say the author. But for the sake of simplicity, I’ll keep saying Terri,” Berger speculated. “Rather much what happened between Kay and Marino, now that I think of it. He worshipped her. Then wanted to destroy her.”
“It’s not that simple, and it’s not the same,” Lucy said. “Marino had a reason to be in love with my aunt. He knew her. Terri didn’t have a reason to feel anything about her. It was delusional.”
“We’re assuming she was an aficionado of typefaces. Let’s go back to that,” Berger said, continuing her assessment.
Lucy was different—genuinely so. Fiery, yes. But not reactive the way she used to be, and in Berger’s opinion, Lucy used to teeter on the edge of violence. That used to be her default, and it had made her completely unsafe.
“I definitely think she was well versed in fonts,” Lucy said. “She uses different ones for footnotes, the bibliography, chapter headings, table of contents. Most people don’t do that when they’re writing a thesis. They might change point size and use italics but not all this artsy use of fonts. In fact, the most common typeface is usually the default on a number of word-processing packages, including the one Terri was using. For the most part, the actual text is in Times New Roman.”
“Examples,” Berger said, writing on her legal pad. “What fonts does she use, and for what and why? Theoretically.”
“For footnotes, Palatino Linotype, which is highly legible both on a computer screen and when printed. For the bibliography, Bookman Old Style. Also legible. Chapter headings, she picked MS Reference Sans Serif, which is typically used in headlines. Again, it’s rare to find this many different typefaces, especially in an academic paper. What it suggests to me is her writing was highly personalized. It wasn’t just about the writing.”
Berger looked at her for a long moment.
“How the hell do you know all this off the top of your head?” she said. “Fonts? I never even pay attention to them. I can’t even tell you what font I use when I’m writing my briefs.”
“You use the same default for text that Terri did. Times New Roman, designed for the London Times. A typeface that’s narrow, so it’s economical, but very readable. I saw printouts on your desk when I was in your office earlier today. In forensic computer work, what seems the most trivial detail might be significant.”
“Which may be the case here.”
“I can tell you this much with certainty,” Lucy said. “These different fonts were deliberate choices, because she had to select them. Now whether she attached symbolism to them in terms of how she felt about herself or someone else, such as my aunt? Don’t know. But my opinion? The whole thing is sick, and it was well on its way to becoming sicker. If Terri really is the author and she were still around, I would consider her dangerous to my aunt. Maybe even physically dangerous. At the very least, she’s defaming someone she never even met.”
“Kay would have to prove it was untrue. And how would she prove that the anecdote about the coffee cup isn’t true, for example? How do you know it isn’t true?”
“Because she would never do anything like that.”
“I don’t believe you’re in a position to know what Kay does in private,” Berger said.
“Of course I’m in a position to know.” Lucy met her eyes. “So are you. Ask anyone if she’s ever made fun of dead bodies or allowed anyone else to. Ask anyone who’s ever been in the morgue with her or at a crime scene if she enjoys gruesome cases and wishes she’d autopsied people like Ted Bundy. I hope this doesn’t all come out in court.”
“I was talking about the coffee cup. Why does it disturb you to imagine Kay as a sexual person? Have you ever allowed her to be human? Or is she the perfect mother, or worse, one who isn’t perfect enough?”
“I admit I used to have a problem with that, competing for her attention, not allowing her to have flaws or real feelings,” Lucy said. “I was a tyrant.”
“No more?”
“Maybe Marino was the final radiation, the last dose of chemo. Unintentionally, he cured something somewhat malignant in me, and actually, my aunt and I are better off. I realized she has a life quite apart from mine, and that’s fine. It’s more than fine. It’s better. It’s not that I didn’t know it before. But in retrospect, I didn’t feel it. And now she’s married. If Marino hadn’t done what he did, I don’t think Benton would have gotten around to getting married.”
“You act as if the decision was his alone. She had no input?” Berger studied her.
“She’s always let him be what he is. She would have continued to. She loves him. She probably couldn’t be with anybody else, in truth, because there are three things she can’t abide and won’t tolerate. Being controlled, betrayed, or bored. Any one of them, and she’d rather be alone.”
“Sounds like a few other suspects I know,” Berger said.
“Probably true,” Lucy said.
“Well,” Berger said, returning her attention to what was on the computer screen. “Unfortunately, what’s on these laptops is evidence, and people involved in the case will read it. And yes, it could become public.”
“It would destroy her.”
“It won’t destroy her,” Berger said. “But we’ve got to find out where this information came from. I don’t think it was fabricated from whole cloth. Terri, or whoever wrote this, knows too much. Benton and Kay’s first meeting in Richmond twenty years ago, for example.”
“They didn’t start their affair then.”
“How can you know that?”
