“Hit your lights and siren,” Marino said.
He pressed the intercom button.
“Hello?” the voice answered.
“Dr. Wilson. Unlock the door right now or we’re going to break it down!”
A siren screamed, and he heard a buzz and he shoved open the door. He flipped a switch, turning on a light inside the small foyer, and directly ahead were the polished old oak stairs leading up, and he slid out his pistol as he got back on the air and told his backup to cut the lights and siren and stay put and watch the front of the building. He ran up the steps, Lucy and Berger right behind him.
He could feel the cold air coming in from the open roof hatch when they reached the second floor, and the lights were out there, too. Marino searched the wall to flip them on. He could see the night sky through the opening in the ceiling, and he didn’t see a ladder, and his sense of urgency and his premonition grew. Most likely, the ladder was on the roof. He stopped at 2D and noticed the door wasn’t completely shut. He guided Berger to one side and briefly met Lucy’s eyes. His system was on high alert as he pushed the door open with his foot and it softly thudded against the inside wall.
“Police!” he yelled, and he had his gun out, gripped in both hands, the barrel pointed up. “Anybody here? Police!”
He didn’t have to tell Lucy to shine her light into the room. She was already doing it, and then her arm snaked past his shoulder and she flipped a switch, and an old, ornate chandelier cast the room in a soft glow. Marino and Lucy stepped inside and motioned for Berger to stay behind them. Then nobody moved for a moment. They looked around, and sweat was cool as it rolled down Marino’s back and sides, and he wiped his forehead with his sleeve as his eyes darted to the tan corduroy recliner he’d been sitting in earlier, and the couch where Mrs. Peebles had been drinking her bourbon. The wall-mounted flat-screen TV was on, the volume off, and the Dog Whisperer was silently talking to a snarling beagle.
Old wooden Venetian blinds were drawn in all the windows. Lucy was close to the computer on the desk, and she tapped a key. The computer screen filled with what looked like the Gotham Gotcha website gone berserk.
Gotham Gotcha!was rearranging into OH C THA MAGGOT! And the New York skyline was black against flashing red, and the Christmas tree from Rockefeller Center was upside down in Central Park, and a snowstorm struck and lightning flashed and thunder clapped inside FAO Schwarz right before the Statue of Liberty seemed to blow up.
Berger quietly stared at it. She stared at Lucy.
“Go on,” Lucy told Marino, indicating she’d cover Berger and him while he began clearing the apartment.
He checked the kitchen, a guest bath, the dining room, and then he faced the closed door leading into what he assumed was the master area. He turned the cut-glass knob and pushed the door open with his toe as he swept the bedroom with his gun. It was empty, the king-size bed neatly made and covered with a plaid quilt with dogs embroidered on it. On the nightstand was an empty glass, and in a corner was a small pet carrier but no sign of a dog or cat.
Lamps had been removed from the two nightstands and placed on either side of an open doorway, illuminating the edge of black-and-white tile. He positioned himself to one side of the bathroom as he quietly approached, and swung his gun around and pointed it as he noticed a slight movement before he could see what it was.
Eva Peebles’s frail nude body was suspended by satiny gold rope that was looped once around her neck and tied to a chain in the ceiling. Her wrists and ankles were tightly lashed with translucent plastic straps, her toes barely touching the floor. Cold air blowing through an open window had created an eerie oscillation, the body slowly twirling in one direction, then the other, as the rope twisted and untwisted, again and again.
Scarpetta feared that the person who murdered seventy-two-year-old Eva Peebles had also killed Terri Bridges. She feared that person might be Oscar Bane.
The thought had entered her mind the minute she’d entered the bedroom and seen the lamps on the floor and the body suspended by a gold rope that had been removed from a drapery in the dining room and attached to a short length of iron chain. The alabaster half-globe light fixture that had been attached to the chain’s S-link was inside the tub, on top of folded clothing that she could tell from where she was taking photographs in the doorway had been cut open at the seams and removed from the victim after her ankles and wrists were bound, most likely while she was still alive.
On the shut white toilet lid were several unmistakable shoeprints no bigger than a boy’s, with a distinctive tread pattern. It appeared the assailant had stood there to access the overhead fixture, and from that height, someone four feet tall could have managed quite well, especially if the person was strong.
If Oscar Bane was the killer after all, Scarpetta had misinterpreted and misjudged, in part based on what a tape measure had told her, and she’d been steered by her integrity as a physician, and there was no room for mistakes or confidentiality when people were dying. Maybe she should have kept her opinions to herself and encouraged the police to find Oscar immediately or aggressively prevented his release from Bellevue to begin with. She could have given Berger cause to arrest him. Scarpetta could have said a number of things, not the least of which was that Oscar had faked his injuries, had lied to the police about them, lied about an intruder, lied about why his coat was in the car, lied about a book and a CD in his library. The ends would have justified the means, because he’d be off the street, and possibly Eva Peebles wouldn’t be dangling from her ceiling.
Scarpetta had been acting too much like Oscar’s goddamn doctor. She’d made the mistake of caring about him, of feeling compassion. She should stay away from suspects, restrict herself to people who can’t suffer anymore and therefore are easier to listen to, to question, to examine.
Berger returned to the bedroom and stood at a sensible distance, because she was experienced with crime scenes and wasn’t wearing the disposable protective clothing that covered Scarpetta from head to toe. Berger wasn’t the sort to allow her curiosity to override her coolheaded judgment. She knew exactly what to do and what not to do.
“Marino and Morales are with the only person currently at home,” Berger said. “A guy you’d never want for your family doctor, whose apartment, as I understand it, is about fifty degrees because the windows are open. You can still smell the pot in there. We’ve got officers outside to make sure nobody else enters the building, and Lucy’s dealing with the computer in the living room.”
“The neighbor,” Scarpetta asked. “He didn’t notice the damn roof hatch was open and all the lights were out? When the hell did he get home?”
She was still surveying before touching anything, the body slowly twirling in the uneven light of the lamps.
“What I know so far is this,” Berger said. “He says he returned home around nine, at which time the lights weren’t out and the roof hatch wasn’t open. He fell asleep in front of the TV and didn’t hear a thing, assuming someone entered the building.”
“I’d say it’s a safe assumption that someone entered the building.”
“The ladder to the roof hatch is kept in a utility closet up here—same scenario as across the street. Benton says the ladder is definitely on the roof. It appears the assailant was either familiar with this building or with buildings set up like this one, like Terri’s, and found the ladder. He went out through the roof and pulled the ladder up after him.”
“And the theory about how he got in?”
“Theory of the moment is she must have let him in. Then he turned out the lights on his way up to her apartment. She must have known him or had reason to trust him. And the other thing. The neighbor says he didn’t hear any screams. Which is interesting. Possible she didn’t scream?”
“Let me tell you what I’m seeing,” Scarpetta said. “And then you can answer your own question. First, even without moving any closer, I can tell by her suffused face, her tongue protruding from her mouth, the sharp angle of the noose high under her chin and tightly knotted behind her right ear, and the absence of any other apparent ligature marks, that the cause of death is probably going to be asphyxiation by hanging. In other words, I don’t think we’re going to find that she was garroted or strangled by a ligature first, and then her dead body was suspended by a drapery cord from a light-fixture chain.”
“I still can’t answer my question,” Berger said. “I don’t know why she wouldn’t have screamed bloody
