multiple pairs of gloved hands digging through them and sliding hangers around. The police had rooted through quite a variety of high-heel platform pumps and sandals with stiletto heels, rhinestones, chains, and ankle straps, in different sizes, ranging from three to five.
“Finding ones that fit is one of the biggest challenges,” Scarpetta commented, looking at the pile of shoes. “An ordeal, and I’m going to venture a guess she did a lot of her shopping over the Internet. Possibly all of it.”
She returned a pair of studded flip-flops to the carpet beneath a hanging rod, which, unlike everything else she’d noticed in the apartment, had been installed lower than usual, so Terri could reach it without a tool or a step stool.
She said, “I’ll also stick with my theory that she was influenced by consumer reviews. Possibly even for her provocative tastes.”
“I’d give this maybe three stars,” Marino said, holding up a thong he’d just pulled out of a drawer. “But you ask me, the thing about rating underwear? It all depends on who’s wearing it.”
“Victoria’s Secret. Frederick’s of Hollywood,” Scarpetta observed. “Open mesh and fishnet. Lace teddies, crotchless panties. A corset. She was wearing a red lace shelf bra under her robe, and it’s very difficult for me to imagine she wasn’t wearing panties to match.”
“I don’t think I know what a shelf bra is.”
“It rather much does what the name implies,” she said. “The object of the game, to enhance and accentuate.”
“Oh. The one he cut off her. Doesn’t look like it would cover anything important.”
“It wouldn’t, and wasn’t supposed to,” she said. “That’s why she would have been wearing it to begin with, assuming it wasn’t the killer’s idea.”
Scarpetta returned the lingerie to its drawer and for a moment couldn’t look at Marino as she remembered the sounds and smells of him, and his shocking strength. It wasn’t until later that she’d felt him, when pain mapped out where he’d been in damaged flesh that burned and throbbed all the way to the bone.
“That and all the condoms,” Marino said.
He had his back to her, opening drawers in a nightstand. The condoms had been collected by the police.
“You see from the pictures, she must have had a hundred condoms in this top drawer,” he said. “Maybe this is a Benton question, but if she was a neat freak—”
“Not if.”
“In other words, she was uptight. Everything had to be exactly right. So does it make sense for someone like that to have this wild side?”
“You mean for someone obsessive-compulsive to like sex?”
“Yeah.”
Marino was sweating, and his face was red.
“Makes perfect sense,” Scarpetta said. “Sex was a way to relieve her anxiety. Perhaps the only acceptable way for her to be uninhibited, to give up control. Or better put, to delude herself into thinking she was giving up control.”
“Yeah. She gave it up as long as it was according to her plan.”
“Meaning she never really gave it up. She couldn’t possibly. That’s not how she was programmed. Even when she appeared to be giving up control—during sex, for example—she wasn’t. Because it wasn’t Oscar or someone else who decided what she would buy. I doubt it was he or any of her partners who decided what she would wear or whether she would have body hair. Or even whether Oscar would have body hair. My guess is she decided what they would and wouldn’t do. And where and when and how.”
She remembered what Oscar had said about Terri’s liking his body perfectly sculpted and perfectly clean and smooth. She liked sex in the shower. She liked to be dominated, to be tied up.
“She called the shots,” Scarpetta said. “Until the end. That was the fun part for the person who killed her—controlling her absolutely.”
“It makes you wonder if Oscar finally couldn’t take it anymore,” Marino said, stopping short of whatever else he was about to say.
Scarpetta stood in the bathroom doorway and looked in at the white marble and French gold fixtures, and the corner soaking tub with its showerhead and curtain pulled back. She looked at the polished, veined grayish stone floor and imagined the contusions Terri would have had if her assailant had sexually assaulted her on it, and was fairly certain that didn’t happen. The weight of the assailant, even if the person were a hundred and nine pounds, like Oscar, would have caused contusions in areas that contacted the floor, especially if her wrists were tightly bound behind her.
Scarpetta outlined her thoughts to Marino as she studied the gilt-framed oval mirror above the vanity, and the chair with the gold metal back shaped like a heart. Her reflection looked back at her. Then Marino’s chest was in the mirror as he looked at everything she was looking at.
“If he wanted to watch her die,” Marino said, “maybe he also wanted to watch her being raped. But as I’m standing here looking at the mirror, I don’t see how that could have happened if he was a normal-size person. If he’d been standing behind her, I’m saying. Well, I don’t see how he could have.”
“I’m also not so sure she could have been raped without exhibiting at least some injury,” Scarpetta said. “If her wrists had been strapped together behind her back and he had gotten on top of her, even if it was on the bed, she likely would have had abrasions or contusions or both, posteriorly. Not to mention the bed didn’t look touched, based on the photographs. And the clothing on them didn’t look disturbed.”
“She had no injuries to her back.”
“None.”
“You’re pretty sure her wrists was already bound.”
“I can’t prove it. But his cutting her robe and bra off suggests she was bound at the time.”
“What makes you so sure she was bound behind her back instead of in front? I know that’s what Oscar told the police. Is that what you’re basing it on?”
Scarpetta held out her wrists, the left one on top of the right, as if they were bound by a single strap.
“I’m basing it on the pattern of the furrow on her wrists, where the groove was the deepest, where there was sparing, et cetera,” she said. “If she’d been bound in front, it’s likely the strap would have been inserted under this wrist”—she indicated her right one—“with the locking block a little to the right of her right wrist bone. If they’d been bound behind her back, the position would have been reversed.”
“The killer right-handed or left-handed, in your opinion?”
“Based on the direction he pulled the strap during tightening? Consistent with someone left-handed, assuming he was facing her when he bound her. For what it’s worth, Oscar’s dominant hand is his right one. And I probably shouldn’t tell you that.”
She and Marino put on fresh gloves, and she stepped inside the bathroom and lifted the vanity chair and set it in the middle of the floor. She measured the height of it from its turned-up metal foot to the black fabric seat, which had darker areas, stained areas, that added to her theory.
“Possibly residues of the lubricant,” she said. “Nobody noticed because it was never considered that she might have been sitting in this chair when she was garroted, in front of the mirror. Maybe some tissue and blood on the legs from her thrashing. Let me see.”
She looked with a magnification lens.
“I can’t tell. But maybe not. Not really surprised. Since her injuries are to the tops of her legs, not the backs of them. You still carry those little tactical lights that can blind people?”
Marino dug into his pocket and pulled out his flashlight and gave it to her. She got down on her knees and shone the light under the vanity, illuminating smears of dark dried blood under the counter’s edge, not visible unless one was on the floor, looking. She found more blood on the underside of the vanity drawer, which was unpainted plywood. Marino squatted, and she showed him.
She took photographs.
“I’m going to swab all this, but not the chair,” she said. “What we’re going to do is wrap it up, and it goes to La Guardia. Can you step out for a minute and tell Jaime we need an officer who can escort this chair to Lucy’s jet and be on that jet and receipt it to Dr. Kiselstein at the airport in Knoxville? Lucy can set it up. In fact, knowing
