rust nor show finger smudges. To open its lid, one stepped on a pedal and didn’t have to touch anything that might be dirty. Inside the custom-fit white polyethylene bag were wrappers from the roaster chicken and the spinach, and an abundance of crumpled paper towels, and the green paper from the flowers on the table. She wondered if Terri had used the kitchen shears to snip off about three inches of the stems, which were still bound in their rubber band, then cleaned the shears and returned them to the cutlery block.
There was no receipt because the police had found it last night, and it was listed in the inventory. Terri had bought the flowers for eight dollars and ninety-five cents yesterday morning at a local market. Scarpetta suspected the rather pitiful little spring bouquet had been an afterthought. She found it sad to think of someone so lacking in creativity, spontaneity, and heart. What a hellish way to live, and what a shame she had done nothing about it.
Terri had studied psychology. She certainly would have known she could have been treated for her anxiety disorder, and had she chosen that course, it might have changed her destiny. It was likely her compulsions had led, even if indirectly, to the reason strangers were now inside her apartment and investigating every aspect of who she was and how she had lived.
Beyond the kitchen, on the right, was the small guest room that was an office. There was nothing in it but a desk, an adjustable chair, a side table with a printer, and, against a wall, two filing cabinets that were empty. Scarpetta stepped back out into the hallway and looked toward the apartment door. Berger, Marino, and Benton were in the living room, examining the evidence inventory and discussing the significance of the small orange cones.
“Does anybody know if these filing cabinets were empty when the police got here?” Scarpetta asked.
Marino flipped through his list and said, “Mail and personal papers, is what it says they took. A file box of stuff like that was removed from the closet.”
“Meaning nothing was taken from actual filing cabinets,” Scarpetta supposed. “That’s rather interesting. There are two of them in here with nothing in them, not even an empty folder. As if they’ve never been used.”
Marino came toward her and asked, “What about dust?”
“You can look. But Terri Bridges and dust weren’t compatible. There’s no dust, not a speck.”
Marino entered the guest room office and opened the filing cabinets, and Scarpetta noted the indentations his booted feet left in the deep-pile dark blue wall-to-wall carpet. She realized there were no other indentations at all, except those left by her when she’d walked in, and that was odd. The police might be fastidious about not tracking dirt and evidence in and out of a scene, but they weren’t about to bother brushing the carpet when they were done.
“It’s as if no one was in here last night,” she said.
Marino closed file drawers.
He said, “Doesn’t look to me like anything was in there, unless someone wiped down the bottom of the drawers. No dust outline of any hanging files that might have been there. But the cops was in here.”
He finally met her eyes, and his were tentative.
“You can see on the list the file box was taken out of the closet in here.” He frowned, looking at the carpet, apparently noticing the same thing she had. “Well, that’s fucking weird. I was in here this morning. That closet there”—he pointed—“is where her suitcases were, too.”
He opened the closet door, where draperies in dry-cleaning bags hung from the rod and more luggage was neatly upright on the floor. Everywhere he stepped, he flattened the pile of the carpet.
“But it’s like nobody walked in here or else came in after the fact and swept the carpet,” he said.
“I don’t know,” Scarpetta said. “But what I’m hearing you say is nobody has walked through this apartment since last night except you. When you came in earlier today.”
“Well, maybe I lost weight, but I don’t float off the ground,” Marino said. “So where the hell are my footprints?”
On the floor near the desk, a magnetic power connecter was plugged into the wall, and Scarpetta found this curious, too.
“She packed her laptops for the trip home to Arizona and left a power connecter behind?” she said.
“Somebody’s been in here,” Marino said. “Probably that fucking Morales.”
Lucy was alone in her loft, her old bulldog asleep by her chair.
She read more e-mails from Terri and Oscar as she talked to Scarpetta over the phone:
Date: Sun, 11 November 2007 11:12:03
From: “Oscar”
To: “Terri”
See, I told you Dr. Scarpetta wasn’t that kind of person. Obviously, she just didn’t get your earlier messages. Amazing how what’s under your nose and obvious sometimes works. Are you going to copy me on the e-mails?
Date: Sun, 11 November 2007 14:45:16
From: “Terri”
To: “Oscar”
No. That would be a violation of her Privacy.
This project has now risen to the stars. I’m in awe! So happy!
“What’s under her nose and obvious? It’s like she tried something, or he did, and got what he or she or both of them wanted,” Lucy said into her jawbone wireless earpiece. “What the hell’s she talking about?”
“I don’t know what was under her nose, but she’s mistaken. Or not being truthful,” Scarpetta replied.
“Probably untruthful,” Lucy said. “Which was why she wouldn’t let Oscar see e-mails from you.”
“There can’t be any e-mails from me,” Scarpetta said again. “I need to ask you about something. I’m standing in the middle of Terri Bridges’s apartment, and it’s not a good place for us to be having this conversation. Especially over cell phones.”
“I got you your cell phone. Remember? It’s special. You don’t have to worry. Neither do I. Our phones are secure.”
Lucy talked as she opened each e-mail account and looked in the e-mail trash for anything useful that might have been deleted.
She said, “May have given Oscar a reason to resent you as well. His girlfriend’s obsessed with her hero, who finally has answered her—he’s led to believe. And she won’t let him see the e-mails. Sounds like you might have created a problem you didn’t know anything about.”
“Or have anything to do with,” Scarpetta said. “What type of power supplies do her laptops use? That’s my simple question.”
One of Terri’s e-mail accounts was empty, and Lucy had saved that one for last, assuming Terri had created it but simply never gotten around to using it. As Lucy opened the trash folder, she was stunned by what she found.
“Wow,” Lucy said. “This is unbelievable. She deleted everything yesterday morning. One hundred and thirty-six e-mails. She deleted them one right after another.”
“Not a USB but a magnetized power cord? What was deleted?” Scarpetta asked.
“Hold on,” Lucy said. “Don’t go anywhere. Stay on with me and we’ll look at this together. You might want to get Jaime, Benton, Marino in there and put me on speakerphone.”
All of the deleted e-mails were between Terri and another user with the name Scarpetta612.
Six-twelve—June 12—was Scarpetta’s birthday.
The Internet service provider address was the same as that of the eighteen accounts that were assumed to be Terri’s, but Scarpetta612 wasn’t listed in the history. It hadn’t been created on this laptop, nor was that account accessed by this laptop or—based on the dates of the e-mails Lucy was already seeing—Scarpetta612 would be listed in the history along with the other eighteen accounts.
It would be in the history if Terri had created Scarpetta612. But there was no evidence she had, not so far.
