dinner.
“Let me ask the obvious question,” Scarpetta said to no one in particular. “Is there any possibility she wasn’t the intended victim? Even remotely possible? Since there’s another apartment across from this one, and what? Two more upstairs?”
“I always say everything’s possible,” Berger replied. “But she opened the doors. Or if someone else did, he or she had keys. There would seem to be a connection between her and the person who killed her.” To Marino she said, “You mentioned the roof access? Anything new about that?”
“A text message from Morales,” he replied. “He said when he got to the scene last night, the ladder was exactly where he found it after installing the roof camera. In the utility closet.”
Marino had a look on his face as he said that, as if he knew a joke he wasn’t about to share.
“I’m assuming nothing new. Nobody of interest in terms of a possible suspect or witness among the other tenants?” Berger asked Marino, continuing the conversation just inside the apartment door.
“According to the landlord, who lives on Long Island, she was a real quiet lady except when she had a complaint. One of those who had to have everything just right,” Marino said. “But what’s a little interesting is, it was something she couldn’t take care of herself, she’d never let the landlord in to fix it. She’d say she’d get someone to take care of it. He said it was like she was making notes of all the problems in case he got any ideas about raising the rent.”
“Sounds like the landlord might not have been too fond of her,” Benton said.
“He called her demanding more than once,” Marino said. “Always e-mailed him, though. Never called, as if she was building a court case, is the way he put it.”
“We can get Lucy to locate those e-mails,” Berger said. “We know which of her eighteen usernames she used for complaining to the landlord? I don’t think it was Lunasee, unless we just didn’t come across anything to or from him while I was with Lucy a little while ago. And by the way, I’ve asked her to forward anything to me she might find. So all of us are rather much online with her while she continues to go through the laptops removed from this apartment.”
“It’s the one called Railroadrun, like running her railroad. My interpretation,” Marino said. “The landlord said that’s the e-mail address he’s got for her. Anyway, point being, it appears she was a royal pain in the butt.”
Scarpetta said, “Also appears she had somebody who helped her when she needed something fixed.”
“Well, I have my doubts it was Oscar,” Berger said. “No references to anything like that in the e-mails we’ve seen so far. Nothing—such as her asking him to come over and unstop the toilet or change a lightbulb in the ceiling. Although his height might have made at least a few tasks rather difficult.”
“There’s the ladder in the closet upstairs,” Marino said.
Scarpetta said, “I’d like to wander through alone first.”
She found the tape measure in her crime scene case and slipped it into her suit jacket pocket, and looked at the evidence inventory that told her which cone corresponded to which item that had been removed from the scene. Some six feet inside the door, to her left, was cone number one, and this was where the flashlight had been found, described as a black metal Luxeon Star with two Duracell lithium batteries, and in working condition. It wasn’t plastic, as Oscar had described, which may or may not be of any consequence, except that a metal flashlight would be a serious weapon, suggesting Oscar hadn’t struck himself very hard at all to cause the bruises she’d examined.
The cones numbered two through four corresponded to shoe prints lifted from the hardwood floor, described only as having a running shoe-type tread pattern with the approximate dimensions of six and a half by four inches. That was small, and as Scarpetta scanned the list, she noted that a pair of sneakers had been removed from Terri’s closet. Size five, women’s Reeboks, white with pink trim. A size-five woman’s shoe would not be six and a half inches from heel to toe, and as Scarpetta recalled looking at Terri’s feet in the morgue, she remembered them as smaller than that, because of her disproportionately short toes.
She suspected the shoewear impressions recovered near the door were Oscar’s, and likely had been left when he’d gone in and out of the apartment, back to his car, to leave his coat and do whatever else he might have done after discovering the body.
That was assuming his story was true, for the most part.
Other impressions lifted from the floor were of interest because they had been left by bare feet, and Scarpetta recalled seeing several photographs that had been taken in oblique lighting. She had assumed the bare footprints were Terri’s, and the location of them was significant.
All were clustered just outside the master bathroom where Terri’s body had been found, and Scarpetta wondered if Terri had put on body lotion or oil, perhaps after her shower, and that’s why the bare footprints had been visible on the hardwood floor, all in close proximity to one another. She wondered what it might mean if Terri hadn’t taken her slippers off until she’d been about to enter the area of the apartment where she was murdered. Had she been attacked the instant she’d opened her front door, and had she resisted or been forced to the master bedroom in back, wasn’t there a good chance her slippers would have come off earlier?
In all of her years working homicide scenes, it had been Scarpetta’s experience that bedroom slippers, one or both, rarely stayed on once the violent encounter occurred. People literally were scared out of them.
She walked as far as the dining room, and from here the smell of cooked chicken was stronger and more unpleasant, the kitchen just ahead, and then the guestroom/office, according to the detailed computer-aided drafting or CAD of the apartment’s interior and its dimensions that was included in the paperwork Marino had assembled.
The dining room table was meticulously set, blue-rimmed plates on two starchy spotless blue mats opposite each other, the stainless flatware shiny and exact in its placement, everything just right to the extreme of fussiness, of obsessiveness. Only the flower arrangement was less than perfect, the button poms beginning to hang their heads, and petals had fallen from the larkspur like tears.
Scarpetta pulled out chairs, checking the blue-velvet cushions for indentations left by someone kneeling to compensate for a dramatically shortened reach. If Terri had climbed up to set the table, she had groomed the nap afterward. All of the furniture was the standard size, the apartment not handicap-equipped. But as Scarpetta began opening closets and cupboards, she found a step stool with a handle, a grabbing tool, and another tool similar to a fireplace poker that Terri probably had used for prodding and pulling.
In the kitchen, there was chaos in the corner beneath the microwave, drips of blood and smears that had dried a blackish-red, presumably from Oscar cutting his thumb while grabbing a pair of kitchen shears that were no longer here. The wooden block of knives was gone and, like the shears, most likely sent to the labs. On the stove was the pot of uncooked spinach, the handle turned inward, the way people do when they are safety-minded. The chicken in the oven smelled pungent and was stuck to the bottom of the deep aluminum pan, grease coagulated around it like yellow wax.
Cooking utensils and pot holders were in a neat line on the counter, as were basil, a set of salt and pepper mills, and cooking sherry. In a small ceramic bowl were three lemons, two limes, and a banana that was turning a speckled brown. Nearby was a cork pump, which Scarpetta considered a gadget that ruined the ritual and romance of opening a bottle, and an unopened chardonnay, a decent one for the money. Scarpetta wondered if Terri might have removed the wine from the refrigerator an hour or so before Oscar was due to arrive, again assuming she had been killed by someone other than him. If she had, a possible explanation was she’d done some research and knew that white wine should be served cool, not cold.
Inside the refrigerator was a bottle of champagne, also a decent one for the money, as if Terri had followed every recommendation she could find, possibly on the Internet, as if her Bible was Consumer Reports. Apparently, no purchase she made was based on passion or playfulness. Whether it was a TV or stemware or china, all of it was the selection of a well-informed shopper who did nothing in a hurry or on a whim.
In refrigerator drawers were fresh broccoli, peppers, onions, and lettuce, and deli packages of sliced turkey and Swiss cheese that according to their labels had been purchased from a grocery store on Lexington Avenue, several blocks from here, on Sunday, along with the food for last night’s dinner. Salad dressings and condiments in the refrigerator door were low-calorie. In cupboards were crackers, nuts, soups, all low-sodium. The liquor, like everything else, was the best brand for the price: Dewar’s. Smirnoff. Tanqueray. Jack Daniel’s.
Scarpetta removed the rim from the trash can, not surprised it was brushed steel, which would neither
