Scarpetta had said to Rose, I’m the most selfish person there is. It goes back to feeling shamed. I was different, not like other people. I know what it is to feel ostracized and shunned and shamed, and I’ve never wanted to do it to anyone else. Or have it done to me again. And the last thing I just said is what’s most important. It’s about my not wanting discomfort more than it’s really about anyone else. What a dreadful thing to know about yourself.
You’re the most different person I’ve ever met,Rose had said, and I can see why those girls didn’t like you, and why most people didn’t like you and maybe still don’t. It’s about people being small and your reminding them of it without trying to, and so they go out of their way to make you small as if that will somehow make them bigger. You know exactly how all that works, but who has the wisdom to figure it out while it’s going on? I would have liked you. If I’d been one of those nuns or one of the other girls, you would have been my favorite.
I probably wouldn’t have been.
You certainly would have. I’ve been following you around for twenty damn years, almost. And not because of the plush work conditions and all the jewelry and furs you give me and exotic vacations you take me on. I’m crazy about you. Was the first time you walked in that office. Do you remember? I’d never met a woman medical examiner and assumed the obvious. What a strange and difficult and unpleasant person you must be. Why else would a woman do this for a living? I hadn’t seen a picture of you and was sure you’d look like some creature that had just climbed out of a black lagoon or a plague pit. I’d already been planning on where I might go, maybe the medical college. Somebody over there would hire me. Because I didn’t think for a minute I’d stay with you, until I met you. Then I wouldn’t have left you for the world. I’m sorry I’m doing it now.
“I’m sure we could go back and check phone records, the office e-mail,” Scarpetta said in the car, to Benton, to Marino, to Berger.
“Not a priority this moment,” Berger said, turning around. “But Lucy’s been forwarding information to you that you’re going to want to look at when you get the chance. You need to see what Terri Bridges was writing, or we might assume it was her. Hard to say, since Oscar Bane could just as easily have a hand in it, or even be Lunasee, for all we know.”
“I got a list of evidence collected that corresponds to markers inside,” Marino said as he drove. “And scene diagrams. A set for each of you so you know what was where.”
Berger handed back two copies.
Marino turned onto a dark neighborhood street with lots of trees and old brownstones.
Benton observed, “Not well lit, and a lot of people appear to still be out of town for the holidays. Not a high-crime area.”
“Nope,” Marino said. “Nothing around here. Last complaint before the murder was someone playing music too loud.”
He parked behind an NYPD cruiser.
“One new wrinkle in this,” Berger said. “Based on some of the e-mails Lucy and I have been looking at, one has to wonder if Terri might have been seeing someone else.”
“Looks like nobody’s bothering to hide their damn police car,” Marino said, turning off the engine.
“Hide it?” Berger asked.
“Morales said he didn’t want them in plain view. In case the bogeyman came back. Guess he forgot to tell anyone who matters.”
“You mean cheating on Oscar,” Benton said, opening his door. “That maybe Terri was cheating on Oscar? I think we should leave our coats in the car.”
Blasts of cold air grabbed at Scarpetta’s suit and hair as she took off her coat, and then Marino climbed out, talking on his cell phone, obviously alerting the officer who was stationed inside the apartment that they had arrived. It was still an active crime scene and should be in the exact condition it was in when the police left shortly after one a.m., according to the reports Scarpetta had read.
The building’s front door opened, and Marino, Benton, Berger, and Scarpetta climbed up five steps and entered the foyer, where a uniformed officer was very serious about his assignment.
Marino said to him, “I see your car’s parked in front. I thought the latest order from headquarters was not to have your unit in plain view.”
“The other officer wasn’t feeling good. I think the smell, which isn’t much until you sit there for a while,” said the officer. “When I relieved him, I didn’t get instructions about not parking in front. You want me to move it?”
Marino said to Berger, “You got an opinion? Morales didn’t want it to look like there’s a police presence. Like I said. In case the killer returns to the crime scene.”
“He installed a camera on the roof,” the officer said.
“Glad it’s such a big friggin’ secret,” Marino said.
“The only person who could return to this apartment,” Benton said, “would be Oscar Bane, unless there are other people running around who have keys. And I have a hard time believing, as paranoid as he is, that he would show up here and try to get in.”
“Someone in his state of mind is more likely to show up at the morgue, in hopes of getting a last look at their person,” Scarpetta said.
She’d decided she’d had enough of being completely close-mouthed. There were ways to communicate necessary information without breaking patient-physician confidentiality.
Marino said to the officer, “Maybe it would be a good idea to step up patrol around the area of the ME’s office. In case Oscar Bane shows up, but do me a favor and don’t transmit nothing about him over the air so some reporter hears it, okay? We don’t need every dwarf on the East Side being stopped and questioned.”
As if the area around the Medical Examiner’s office was a popular hangout for little people.
“You need to get something to eat or do whatever, this is a good time,” Marino said.
“As much as I’d like to take you up on that, no, thank you,” the officer said, glancing at Berger. “My orders are to stay here. And I’ll need you to sign the log.”
“Don’t be so damn professional. Nobody bites, even Ms. Berger doesn’t,” Marino said. “And we need a little elbow room. You can hang out in the foyer, suit yourself. Or you can make a pit stop. I’ll give you a fifteen- minute heads-up before we’re ready to leave. Just don’t go to Florida or nothing.”
The officer opened the apartment door, and Scarpetta smelled cooked chicken that was well on its way to turning ripe. He collected his jacket from the back of a folding chair, and a copy of Philipp Meyer’s American Rust from the oak floor under it. Beyond that point the officer wasn’t allowed to venture for any reason, and should he be tempted, the small blaze-orange cones marking locations where evidence had been collected were a bright reminder. Didn’t matter if he needed water or food, or was desperate to use the bathroom, he had to call for a backup to cover for him while he took care of himself. He couldn’t even sit unless he brought his own chair.
Scarpetta opened her crime scene case just inside the door and retrieved a digital camera and a notepad and pen, and gave each person a pair of gloves. She took her usual survey without moving closer or speaking, noticing that except for the evidence markers, there was nothing out of place, and not the slightest indication that anything remotely violent had happened. The apartment was impeccable, and everywhere she looked, she saw traces of the rigid, obsessive woman who had lived and died here.
The floral upholstered couch and side chair in the living room straight ahead were perfectly arranged around a maple coffee table, and on top of it were magazines impeccably fanned, and in a corner a standard-size Pioneer flat screen that looked new and was precisely positioned to face the exact center of the sofa. Inside the fireplace was an arrangement of silk flowers. The ivory Berber rug was straight and clean.
Other than the cones, there was barely a hint that the police had been all over this place. In this new age of crime scene management, they would have been suited up in disposable clothing, including shoe covers. Electrostatic dust lifters would have been used to recover any impressions from the polished wood floors, and forensic lights and photography would have taken precedence over messy black powders. In sophisticated departments such as the NYPD, crime scene scientists neither created nor destroyed.
The living room flowed into the dining area and kitchen, the apartment small enough that Scarpetta could see the table set for dinner, and the makings of it on a countertop near the stove. No doubt the chicken was still in the oven, and God knows how long it would stay there, didn’t matter how rancid anything got by the time the landlord or Terri’s family were allowed free access to the place. It wasn’t the responsibility or the right of law enforcement to clean up the gore left in the wake of a violent death, whether it was blood or an uneaten holiday
