Book of the Dead

Chapter 17

Sea Pines, the most exclusive plantation on Hilton Head Island.

For five dollars, one can buy a day pass at the security gate, and the guards, in their gray-and-blue uniforms, don’t demand identification. Scarpetta used to complain about it when she and Benton had a condo here, and the memories of those days are still painful.

“She bought the Cadillac in Savannah,” Investigator Turkington is saying as he drives Scarpetta and Lucy in his unmarked cruiser. “White. Which isn’t helpful. You got any idea how many white Cadillacs and Lincolns there are around here? Probably two out of three rental cars are white.”

“And the guards at the gate don’t remember seeing it, maybe at an unusual hour? The cameras pick up anything?” Lucy says from the front seat.

“Nothing useful. You know how it is. One person says maybe they saw it. Another person says no. My thought is he drove it out, not in, so they wouldn’t have noticed it anyway.”

“Depends on when he took it,” Lucy says. “She keep it in the garage?”

“It’s been observed parked in her driveway, as a rule. So it would strike me as unlikely he’s had it for a while. What?” He glances at her as he drives. “He somehow got hold of her keys, took her car, and she didn’t notice?”

“No telling what she noticed. Or didn’t.”

“You’re still sure the worst happened,” Turkington starts to say.

“Yes, I am. Based on facts and common sense.” Lucy has been bantering with him since he picked them up at the airport and made a smart-aleck comment about her helicopter.

He called it an eggbeater. She called him a Luddite. He didn’t know what a Luddite was, still doesn’t. She didn’t define it for him.

“But that doesn’t preclude her having been abducted for ransom,” Lucy says. “I’m not saying that’s impossible. I don’t believe it, but sure, it’s possible, and we should do exactly what we’re doing. Have every investigative agency looking.”

“Sure as hell wish we could have kept it out of the news. Becky says they’ve been chasing people away from the house all morning.”

“Who’s Becky?” Lucy asks.

“Chief of crime scene investigation. Like me, she’s got a second job as an EMT.”

Scarpetta wonders why that matters. Maybe he’s self-conscious about needing a second job.

“Then again, I guess you don’t have to worry about paying the rent,” he says.

“Sure do. It’s just mine’s a little bit more than yours.”

“Yeah, just a little. Can’t imagine what those labs are costing you. Or your fifty houses and Ferraris.”

“Not quite fifty, and how do you know what I’ve got?”

“Many departments using your labs yet?” he asks.

“A few. Still under construction, but we’ve got the basics. And we’re accredited. You get to choose. Us or SLED.” South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

“We’re faster,” she adds. “If you need something that’s not on the menu, we’ve got friends in high-tech places. Oak Ridge. Y-Twelve.”

“I thought they make nuclear weapons.”

“That’s not all they do.”

“You’re kidding. They do forensic stuff? Like what?” he asks.

“It’s a secret.”

“Doesn’t matter. We can’t afford you.”

“Nope, you can’t. Doesn’t mean we wouldn’t help.”

His dark glasses appear in the rearview mirror. He says to Scarpetta, probably because he’s had enough of Lucy, “You still with us back there?”

He wears a suit the color of cream, and Scarpetta wonders how he stays clean at crime scenes. She picks up on the more important points he and Lucy were discussing, reminds them that no one should assume anything at all, including when Lydia Webster’s Cadillac disappeared, because it appears she rarely drove anyway, only on occasion, for cigarettes, booze, some food. Sadly, driving wasn’t a good idea. She was too impaired. So the car could have been gone for days, and its disappearance may have nothing to do with the dog’s being gone. Then there are the images the Sandman e-mailed to Dr. Self. Both Drew Martin and Lydia Webster were photographed in bathtubs that seem to have been filled with cold water. Both of them look drugged, and what about what Mrs. Dooley saw? This case must be worked as a homicide, no matter what the truth may be. Because — and Scarpetta’s been preaching this for more than twenty years — you can’t go back.

Then she goes back into her own private place. She can’t help it. Her thoughts return to the last time she was in Hilton Head, when she cleared out Benton’s condo. It never entered her mind during the darkest of dark times that his murder might have been contrived to hide him from those who certainly would have killed him, given the chance. Where are those would-be hit men now? Did they lose interest, decide he was no longer a threat or worthy of retribution? She’s asked Benton. He won’t talk about it, says he can’t. She rolls down the window of Turkington’s car and her ring winks in the sun, but it doesn’t reassure her, and the good weather won’t last. Later today, yet another storm is supposed to roll in.

The road winds through golf courses, and over short bridges that briefly span narrow canals and small ponds. On a grassy embankment, an alligator looks like a log, and turtles are quiet in the mud, and a snowy egret stands on stick legs in shallow water. The conversation in the front seat is centered on Dr. Self for a while, and light turns to shadow in the shade of huge oak trees. Spanish moss looks like dead, gray hair. Little has changed. A few new houses have been built here and there, and she remembers long walks and salt air and wind, and sunsets on the balcony, and the moment all of it came to an end. She envisions what she believed was him in the charred ruins of the building where he supposedly died. She sees his silver hair and incinerated flesh in the blackened wood and filth from a fire that was still smoldering when she arrived. His face was gone, nothing but burned bone, and his autopsy records were false. She was fooled. Devastated. Destroyed, and she is forever different because of what Benton did — far more different than she is because of Marino.

They park in the driveway of Lydia Webster’s sprawling white villa. Scarpetta remembers seeing it before, from the beach, and it seems surreal because of why they’re here. Police cars line the street.

“They got the place about a year ago. Some tycoon from Dubai had it before that,” Turkington says, opening his door. “Real sad. They’d just finished a massive renovation and moved in when the little girl drowned. I don’t know how Mrs. Webster stood being inside the place after that.”

“Sometimes people can’t let go,” Scarpetta says as they walk over pavers toward the double teakwood doors at the top of stone steps. “So they stay embedded in a place and its memories.”

“She get this in the settlement?” Lucy asks.

“Probably would have.” As if, in truth, there’s no doubt she’s dead. “Still in the middle of the divorce. Her husband’s into hedge funds, investments, whatever. Almost as rich as you are.”

“How about we stop talking about that,” Lucy says, annoyed.

Turkington opens the front door. Crime scene investigators are inside. Propped against a stucco wall in the foyer is a window with a broken pane of glass.

“The lady on vacation,” Turkington says to Scarpetta. “Madelisa Dooley. According to her statement, the glass was removed from the window when she came in through the laundry room. This pane here.” He squats and points to a pane of glass on the bottom right-hand side of the window. “It’s the one he removed and glued back. If you look, you can just barely see the glue. I made her think we didn’t find the broken glass when officers first looked here. I wanted to see if she changed her story, so I told her the glass wasn’t broken.”

“I guess you didn’t foam it first,” Scarpetta says.

“I’ve heard about that,” Turkington says. “We need to start doing it. My theory is, if Mrs. Dooley’s got her story right, something went on in the house after she left.”

“We’ll foam it before it’s wrapped up and transported,” Scarpetta says, “so we can stabilize the broken glass.”

“Help yourself.” He walks off toward the living room, where an investigator takes photographs of the clutter on the coffee table and another lifts up cushions from the couch.

Scarpetta and Lucy open their black cases. They put on shoe covers and gloves, and a woman in range pants and a polo shirt with FORENSICS in bold letters on the back walks out of the living room. She’s probably in her forties, with brown eyes and short, dark hair. She’s petite, and it’s difficult for Scarpetta to imagine that a woman so short and slight would want to go into law enforcement.

“You must be Becky,” Scarpetta says, and she introduces herself and Lucy.

Becky indicates the window leaning against the wall and says, “The lower-right pane of glass. Tommy must have explained.” She means Turkington, and she points a gloved finger. “A glass cutter was used, then the pane was glued back. The reason I noticed?” She’s proud of herself. “Sand stuck in the glue. See?”

They look. They can see it.

“So it appears when Mrs. Dooley came in looking for the owner,” Becky tells them, “the glass certainly could have been out of the window and on the ground. I find it credible she did what she said. Got the hell out of here, and then the killer straightened up after himself.”

Lucy inserts two pressurized containers into a holster that is attached to a mixing gun.

“Creepy to think about,” Becky says. “The poor lady was probably in here when he was. She said she felt like somebody was watching her. This that glue spray? I’ve heard of it. Holds the broken glass in place. What’s it made out of?”

“Mostly polyurethane and compressed gas,” Scarpetta says. “You taken photographs? Dusted for prints? Swabbed for DNA?”

Lucy photographs the window anyway, with and without a scale.

“Photos, swabs. No prints. We’ll see about DNA, but I’d be shocked, as clean as it is,” Becky says. “He obviously cleaned the window, the entire window. I don’t know how it got broke. Looks like a big bird flew into it. Like a pelican or a buzzard.”

Scarpetta begins making notes, documenting areas of damaged glass and measuring them.

Lucy tapes the edges of the window frame and asks, “Which side do you think?”

“I’m thinking this was broken from the inside,” Scarpetta says. “Can we turn this? We need to spray the other side.”

She and Lucy carefully lift the window and turn it around, so it faces the other way. They lean it against the wall and take more photographs and make more notes while Becky stays out of the way and watches.

Scarpetta says to her, “I need a little help here. Can you stand over here?”

Becky stands next to her.

“Show me on the wall where the broken glass would be if the window were in situ. In a minute, I’ll look at where you removed it from, but for now, let’s get an idea.”

Becky touches the wall. “Course, I’m short,” she says.

“About the level of my head,” Scarpetta says, studying the broken glass. “This breakage is similar to what I see in car accidents. When the person isn’t belted and his head hits the windshield. This area isn’t punched out.” She points to the hole in the glass. “It simply received the brunt of the blow, and I’m betting there are some glass fragments on the floor. Inside the laundry room. Maybe on the windowsill, too.”

“I collected them. You thinking somebody hit their head on the glass?” Becky asks. “Wouldn’t you think there’d be blood?”

“Not necessarily.”

Lucy tapes brown butcher’s paper over one side of the window. She opens the front door and asks Scarpetta and Becky to step outside while she sprays.

“I met Lydia Webster once.” Becky keeps talking, and they’re on the porch. “When her little girl drowned and I had to come take photographs. I can’t tell you what that did to me, since I’ve got a little girl of my own. Still see Holly in her little purple swimsuit, just floating underwater upside down with her hair caught in the drain. We got Lydia’s driver’s license, by the way, have the info on an APB, but don’t get your fingers crossed on that one. She’s about your height. That would be about right if she ran into the glass and broke it. I don’t know if Tommy told you, but her wallet was right there in the kitchen. Doesn’t look like it was touched. I don’t think whoever we’re talking about here was motivated by robbery.”

Even outside, Scarpetta can smell the polyurethane. She looks out at large live oaks draped with Spanish moss, and a blue water tower peeking above pines. Two people on bicycles slowly ride past and stare.

“You can come back in.” Lucy is in the doorway, taking off her goggles and face mask.

The broken windowpane is covered in thick yellowish foam.

“So what do we want to do with it?” Becky asks, her eyes lingering on Lucy.

“I’d like to wrap it up and take it with us,” Scarpetta says.

“And check it for what?”

“The glue. Anything microscopic that’s adhering to it. The elemental or chemical composition of it. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it.”

“Good luck fitting a window under a microscope,” Becky jokes.

“And I’ll also want the broken glass you collected,” Scarpetta says.

“The swabs?”

“Anything you want us to test at the labs. Can we take a look at the laundry room?” Scarpetta says.

It is next to the kitchen, and inside to the right of the door, brown paper has been taped over the empty space where the window was removed. Scarpetta is careful how she approaches what is believed to be the killer’s point of entry. She does what she always does — stands outside and looks in, scanning every inch. She asks if the laundry room has been photographed. It has, and it’s been checked for footprints, shoe prints, fingerprints. Against one wall are four expensive washers and dryers, and against the opposite wall, an empty dog crate. There are storage closets and a large table. In a corner, a wicker laundry basket is piled with dirty clothes.

“Was this door locked when you got here?” Scarpetta asks of the carved teak door that leads outside.

“No, and Mrs. Dooley says it was unlocked, which is why she was able to walk right in. What I’m thinking is he removed the pane of glass and reached his hand inside. You can see”—Becky walks over to the paper-covered space where the window used to be—“if you removed the glass here, it’s easy to reach the deadbolt inside. That’s why we tell people not to have keyless deadbolts near glass. Of course, if the burglar alarm was on…”

“Do we know it wasn’t?”

“It wasn’t when Mrs. Dooley walked in.”

“But we don’t know if it was on or off when he did?”

“I’ve thought about that. Seems if it was on, the glass breakers,” Becky starts to say, then thinks again. “Well, I don’t guess cutting the glass would set them off. They’re noise-sensitive.”

“Suggesting the alarm wasn’t on when the other pane of glass was broken. Suggesting he was inside the house at that point. Unless the glass was broken at an earlier time. And I doubt it.”

“Me, too,” Becky agrees. “Seems like you’d get that fixed to keep the rain and bugs out. Or at least pick up the broken glass. Especially since she kept the dog in there. I’m wondering if maybe she struggled with him. Tried to run for the door to get away. Night before last, she set off her alarm. Don’t know if you knew that. This was a fairly regular occurrence, because she’d get so drunk and forget the alarm was on and open the slider, which instantly set it off. Then she couldn’t remember her password when the service called her. So we’d get dispatched.”

“No record of her alarm going off since then?” Scarpetta says. “Have you had a chance to get the history from the alarm company? For example, when did it go off last? When was it armed and disarmed last?”

“The false alarm I mentioned is the last time it went off.”

Scarpetta says, “When the police responded, do they remember seeing her white Cadillac?”

Becky says no. The officers don’t remember the car being there. But it could have been in the garage. She adds, “It appears she set the alarm about the time it got dark on Monday, and then it was unset later on at nine or so, then reset it. Then unset it again at four-fourteen the next morning. Meaning yesterday.”

“And not reset after that?” Scarpetta says.

“It wasn’t. This is just my opinion, but when people are drinking and drugging, they don’t keep normal hours. Sleep during the day on and off. Get up at strange hours. So maybe she unset the alarm at four-fourteen to take the dog out, maybe to smoke, and the guy was watching her, maybe had been watching her for a while. Stalking her, I’m saying. For all we know, he may already have cut out the glass and was just waiting back here in the dark. There’s bamboo and bushes along this side of the house and no neighbors home, so even with the floodlights on, he could hide back here and no one was going to see him. It’s weird about the dog. Where is he?”

“I’ve got someone checking on that,” Scarpetta says.

“Maybe he can talk and solve the case.” Joking.

“We need to find him. You never know what might solve a case.”

“If he ran off, someone would have found him,” Becky says. “It’s not like you see basset hounds every day, and people notice loose dogs around here. The other thing is, if Mrs. Dooley was telling the truth, then he must have stayed with Mrs. Webster for a while, maybe kept her alive for hours. The alarm was unset at four-fourteen yesterday, and Mrs. Dooley found the blood and everything around lunchtime — about eight hours later, and he was probably still inside the house.”

Scarpetta examines the dirty clothes inside the laundry basket. On top is a T-shirt that is loosely folded, and with a gloved hand, she picks it up and lets it fall open. It’s damp and streaked with dirt. She gets up and looks inside the sink. The stainless steel is spotted from splashing water, and a small amount of water is pooled around the drain.

“I’m wondering if he used this to clean the window,” Scarpetta says. “It still feels damp, and it’s dirty, as if someone used it as a cleaning rag. I’d like to seal it in a paper bag, submit it to the labs.”

“To look for what?” Becky asks that question again.

“If he held this, we might get his DNA. Could be trace evidence. I guess we’d better decide which labs.”

“SLED’s fine and dandy but will take forever. If you can help us with your labs?”

“That’s why we’ve got them.” Scarpetta looks at the alarm keypad near the door that leads into the hallway. “Maybe he disarmed the alarm when he came in. I don’t think we should assume he didn’t. An LCD touchpad instead of buttons. A good surface for prints. And maybe DNA.”

“That would mean he knew her if he unset the alarm. Makes sense when you think about how long he was in the house.”

“It would mean he’s familiar with this place. It doesn’t mean he knew her,” Scarpetta says. “What’s the code?”

“What we call the ‘one, two, three, four, walk right in my door’ code. Probably preset, and she never bothered to change it. Let me make sure about the labs before we start receipting everything to you. I need to ask Tommy.”

He’s in the foyer with Lucy, and Becky asks him about the labs, and he says it’s amazing what’s going private these days. Some departments are even hiring private cops.

“We will be,” Lucy says, handing Scarpetta a pair of yellow-tinted goggles. “We had them in Florida.”

Becky gets interested in the hard case open on the floor. She looks at the five flashlight-shaped forensic high-intensity light sources, the nickel nine-volt batteries, the goggles, and multiport charger. “I’ve been begging the sheriff to get us one of these portable Crime-lites. Each one of them’s a different bandwidth, right?”

“Violet, blue, blue-green, and green spectra,” Lucy says. “And this handy broad-bandwidth white light”—she picks it up—“with interchangeable filters in blue, green, and red for contrast enhancement.”

“Works good?”

“Body fluids, fingerprints, drug residues, fibers, or trace evidence. Yup. Works good.”

She selects a violet light in the 400-to 430-nanometer range and she, Becky, and Scarpetta walk into the living room. All the shades are open, and beyond them is the black-bottom pool where Holly Webster drowned, and beyond that dunes, sea oats, the beach. The ocean is calm, and sunlight flashes in the tide like small silver fish.

“There’s plenty of footprints in here, too,” Becky offers as they look around. “Bare footprints, shoe prints, all of them small, probably hers. It’s strange, because there’s no evidence he wiped down the floors before he left — like he must have done to the window. So you would think there’d be shoe prints. This shiny stone, what is it? I’ve never seen blue tiles like this. It looks like the ocean.”

“That’s probably what it’s supposed to look like,” Scarpetta says. “Sodalite blue marble, maybe lapis.”

“No shit. I had a ring made out of lapis once. I can’t believe someone’s got a whole floor of it. Hides the dirt pretty good,” she says, “but it sure as hell hasn’t been cleaned in recent memory. A lot of dust and stuff, the entire house is like that. You shine a flashlight at an angle and you see what I mean. I just don’t understand why it doesn’t appear he left a single shoe print, not even in the laundry room where he came in.”

“I’m going to wander around,” Lucy says. “What about upstairs?”

“I don’t think she was using the upstairs. Doubt he went up there. It’s undisturbed. Just guest rooms, an art gallery, and game room up there. Never seen a house like this. Must be nice.”

“Not for her,” Scarpetta says, looking at the long, dark hair all over the floor, at the empty glasses and bottle of vodka on the table in front of the couch. “I don’t think this place gave her a moment’s happiness.”

Madelisa hasn’t been home an hour when the doorbell rings.

In the past, she wouldn’t have bothered to ask who’s there.

“Who is it?” she calls out from behind the locked door.

“Investigator Pete Marino from the medical examiner’s office,” a voice says, a deep voice with an accent that reminds her of the North, of Yankees.

Madelisa suspects what she feared. The lady in Hilton Head is dead. Why else would someone from the medical examiner’s office show up here? She wishes Ashley hadn’t decided to run errands the minute they got home, leaving her alone after what she’d been through. She listens for the basset hound. Thank goodness he’s quiet in the spare bedroom. She opens the front door and is terrified. The huge man is dressed like a motorcycle thug. He’s the monster who killed that poor woman, and he followed Madelisa home to kill her next.

“I don’t know anything,” she says, trying to shut the door.

The thug blocks the door with his foot, walks right into the house. “Easy does it,” he says to her, and he opens his wallet, shows her his badge. “Like I said. I’m Pete Marino from the ME’s office.”

She doesn’t know what to do. If she tries to call the police, he’ll kill her on the spot. Anybody can buy a badge these days.

“Let’s sit down and have us a little talk,” he says. “I just got word about your visit to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Department in Hilton Head.”

“Who told you about that?” She feels a little better. “Did that investigator get hold of you, and why would he? I told him everything I know. He didn’t believe me, anyhow. Who told you where I live? Now, that concerns me. I cooperate with the authorities, and they give out my home address.”

“We got a little problem with your story,” Pete Marino says.

Lucy’s yellow goggles look at Scarpetta.

They are in the master bedroom, and the shades are down. On top of the brown silk bedspread, several stains and smears fluoresce neon green in the high-intensity violet light.

“Could be seminal fluid,” Lucy says. “Could also be something else.” She scans the bed with the light.

“Saliva, urine, sebaceous oils, sweat,” Scarpetta says. She leans close to a large luminescent spot. “I don’t smell anything,” she adds. “Hold the light right here. Problem is, no telling when the spread was cleaned last. I don’t think housekeeping was a priority. Typical of people who are depressed. Bedspread goes to the labs. What we need is her toothbrush, hairbrush. Of course, the tumblers on the coffee table.”

“On the back steps, there’s an ashtray full of cigarette butts,” Lucy says. “I don’t think her DNA’s going to be a problem. Or her footprints, fingerprints. The problem’s him. He knows what he’s doing. These days, everybody’s an expert.”

“No,” Scarpetta says. “They just think they are.”

She takes off her goggles, and the green fluorescence on the bedspread disappears. Lucy turns off the Crime-lite and takes off her goggles, too.

“What are we doing?” she says.

Scarpetta is studying a photograph she noticed when they first came into the bedroom. Dr. Self sits on a living-room set, and across from her is a pretty woman with long, dark hair. Television cameras are rolled in close. People in the audience are clapping and smiling.

“When she was on Dr. Self’s show,” Scarpetta says to Lucy. “But what I wasn’t expecting is this other one.”

Lydia with Drew Martin and a dark, swarthy man Scarpetta assumes is Drew’s coach, Gianni Lupano. The three of them smile and squint in the sun on center court of the Family Circle Cup Tennis Center on Daniel Island, a few miles from downtown Charleston.

“So, what’s the common denominator?” Lucy says. “Let me guess. Dr. Self-ish.”

“Not this past tournament,” Scarpetta says. “Look at the difference in the pictures.” She points to the photograph of Lydia with Drew. She points to the photograph of Lydia with Dr. Self. “The marked deterioration. Look at her eyes.”

Lucy turns on the bedroom light.

“When this picture was taken at the Family Circle Cup stadium, Lydia certainly didn’t look like someone chronically abusing alcohol and prescription drugs,” she says.

“And pulling out her hair,” Lucy says. “I don’t understand why anybody does that. Head hair, pubic hair. Everywhere. That picture of her in the tub? She looks like she’s missing half her hair. Eyebrows, eyelashes.”

“Trichotillomania,” Scarpetta says. “Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Anxiety. Depression. Her life was a living hell.”

“If Dr. Self’s the common denominator, then what about the lady murdered in Bari? The Canadian tourist. There’s no indication she was ever on Dr. Self’s show or knew her.”

“I think that might be when he got his first taste of it.”

“Taste of what?” Lucy asks.

“Taste of killing civilians,” Scarpetta says.

“That doesn’t explain the Dr. Self connection.”

“Sending photographs to her indicates he’s created a psychological landscape and a ritual for his crimes. And it also becomes a game, serves a purpose. Removes him from the horror of what he’s doing, because to face the fact that he’s sadistically inflicting pain and death might be more than he can bear. So he has to give it a meaning. He has to make it cunning.” She retrieves a very unscientific but practical packet of Post-its from her crime scene case. “Rather much like religion. If you do something in the name of God, that makes it okay. Stoning people to death. Burning them at the stake. The Inquisition. The Crusades. Oppressing people who aren’t just like you. He’s given a meaning to what he does. My opinion, anyway.”

She probes the bed with a bright white light, and uses the sticky side of Post-its to collect any fibers, hairs, dirt, or sand she sees.

“Then you don’t think Dr. Self is personally significant to this guy? That she’s just a prop in his drama? That he just latched on to her because she’s there. On the air. A household name.”

Scarpetta places the Post-its in a plastic evidence bag and seals it with yellow crime scene tape that she labels and dates with a Sharpie. She and Lucy begin to fold the bedspread.

“I think it’s extremely personal,” Scarpetta replies. “You don’t place someone in the matrix of your game or psychological drama if it isn’t personal. I can’t answer the why part of it.”

A loud ripping noise as Lucy tears a large sheet of brown paper from its roll.

“For example, he may have never met her. Same thing stalkers do. Or he might have,” Scarpetta says. “For all we know, he’s been on her show or has spent time with her.”

They center the folded spread on the paper.

“You’re right. One way or other, it’s personal,” Lucy decides. “Maybe he kills the woman in Bari and does all but confess it to Dr. Maroni, perhaps thinking Dr. Self will find out. Well, she doesn’t. So now what?”

“He feels even more ignored.”

“Then what?”

“Escalation.”

“What happens when Mother doesn’t pay attention to her profoundly disturbed and damaged child?” Scarpetta asks as she wraps.

“Let me think,” Lucy says. “The child grows up to be me?”

Scarpetta cuts off a strip of yellow tape and says, “What a terrible thing. Torture and kill women who were guests on your show. Or do it to get your attention.”

The sixty-inch flat-screen television talks to Marino. It tells him something about Madelisa that he can use against her.

“That a plasma screen?” he asks. “Must be the biggest one I’ve ever seen.”

She’s overweight, with heavy-lidded eyes, and could use a good dentist. Her dentures remind him of a white picket fence, and her hairstylist ought to be shot. She sits on a floral-print couch, her hands fidgety.

She says, “My husband and his toys. I don’t know what it is, except big and expensive.”

“Must be something watching a game on that thing. Me? I’d probably sit in front of it, never get a damn thing done.”

Which is probably what she does. Sit in front of the TV like a zombie.

“What do you like to watch?” he asks.

“I like crime shows and mysteries, because I can usually figure them out. But after what just happened to me, I’m not sure I can watch anything violent ever again.”

“Then you probably know a lot about forensics,” Marino says. “Seeing as how you watch all these crime shows.”

“I was on jury duty about a year ago and knew more about forensics than the judge did. That doesn’t say much about the judge. But I know a few things.”

“How about image recovery?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“As in photographs, videotapes, digital recordings that have been erased.”

“Would you like some iced tea? I can make it.”

“Not right now.”

“I think Ashley’s going to pick up some Jimmy Dengate’s. You ever had fried chicken from there? He’ll be home any minute, and maybe you’d like some.”

“What I’d like is for you to quit changing the subject. See, with image recovery, it’s next to impossible to totally get rid of a digital image that’s on a disk or memory stick or whatever. You can delete stuff all day and we can get it back.” This isn’t entirely true, but Marino has no compunction about lying.

Madelisa looks like a cornered mouse.

“You know what I’m getting at, don’t you?” Marino says, and he’s got her where he wants her but he doesn’t feel good about it, and he himself isn’t quite sure what he’s getting at.

When Scarpetta called him a while ago and said Turkington is suspicious about what Mr. Dooley erased because he kept mentioning it during the interview, Marino said he’d get an answer. More than anything right now, he wants to please Scarpetta, make her think something’s still worthwhile about him. He was shocked she called him.

“Why are you asking me?” Madelisa says, and she begins to cry. “I said, I don’t know anything other than what I already told that investigator.”

She continues glancing past Marino toward the back of her small, yellow house. Yellow wallpaper, yellow carpet. Marino’s never seen so much yellow. It looks like an interior decorator peed on everything the Dooleys own.

“The reason I bring up image recovery is I understand your husband erased part of what he videotaped out there on the beach,” Marino says, unmoved by her tears.

“It was just me standing in front of the house before I had permission. That’s the only thing he erased. Of course, I never did get permission, because how could I? It’s not that I didn’t try. I have manners.”

“I really don’t give a shit about you and your manners. What I care about is what you’re hiding from me and everybody else.” He leans forward in the recliner chair. “I know damn well you’re not being totally honest with me. Why do I know that? Because of science.”

He doesn’t know anything of the sort. To recover deleted images from a digital recorder isn’t a given. If it can be done at all, the process is painstaking and would take a while.

“Please don’t,” she begs him. “I’m so sorry, but please don’t take him. I love him so much.”

Marino has no idea what she’s talking about. It occurs to him she means her husband, but he isn’t sure.

He says, “If I don’t take him, what then? How do I explain it when I leave here and I’m asked?”

“Pretend you don’t know about it.” She cries harder. “What difference does it make? He didn’t do anything. Oh, the poor baby. Who knows what he’s been through. He was shaking and had blood on him. He didn’t do anything except get scared and escape, and if you take him you know what will happen. They’ll put him to sleep. Oh, please, let me keep him. Please! Please! Please!”

“Why did he have blood on him?” Marino asks.

In the master bathroom, Scarpetta shines a flashlight obliquely over an onyx floor the color of tigereye.

“Bare footprints,” she says from the doorway. “Smallish. Maybe hers again. And more hair.”

“If what Madelisa Dooley says is to be believed, he had to have walked around in here. This is so weird,” Becky says as Lucy shows up with a small blue-and-yellow box and a bottle of sterile water.

Scarpetta steps inside the bathroom. She pulls open the tiger-striped shower curtain and shines the light inside the deep copper tub. Nothing, then something catches her attention, and she picks up what looks like a piece of broken white pottery that for some reason was between a bar of white soap and a dish hooked to the side of the tub. She examines it carefully. She gets out her jeweler’s lens.

“Part of a dental crown,” she says. “Not porcelain. A temporary that somehow got broken.”

“I wonder where the rest of it is,” Becky says, crouching in the doorway and peering at the floor, turning on her flashlight and shining it in all directions. “Unless it’s not recent.”

“Could have gone down the drain. We should check the trap. Could be anywhere.” Scarpetta thinks she sees a trace of dried blood on what she estimates is almost half of a crown from what she believes is a front tooth. “We have any way of knowing if Lydia Webster has been to the dentist lately?”

“I can check it out. There’s not that many dentists on the island. So unless she went elsewhere, it shouldn’t be hard to track down.”

“It would have to be recent, very recent,” Scarpetta says. “I don’t care how much you neglect your hygiene, you don’t ignore a broken crown, especially on a front tooth.”

“Could be his,” Lucy says.

“That would be even better,” Scarpetta says. “We need a small paper envelope.”

“I’ll get it,” Lucy says.

“I don’t see anything. If it broke in here, I don’t see the rest of it. I guess it could still be attached to the tooth. I broke a crown once and part of it was still stuck to the little nub that’s left of my tooth.” Becky looks past Scarpetta, at the copper tub. “Talk about the biggest false-positive on the planet,” she adds. “This will be a new one for the books. One of the few times I need to use luminal, and the damn tub and sink are copper. Well, we can forget it.”

“I don’t use luminol anymore,” Scarpetta says, as if the oxidizing agent is a disloyal friend.

Until recently, it was a forensic staple and she never questioned using it to find blood no longer visible. If blood had been washed away or even painted over, the way to know was to mix up a spray bottle of luminol and see what fluoresced. The problems have always been many. Like a dog that wags its tail at all the neighbors, luminol is excited by more than the hemoglobin in blood and is, unfortunately, quite responsive to a number of things: paint, varnish, Drano, bleach, dandelions, thistle, creeping myrtle, corn. And, of course, copper.

Lucy retrieves a small container of Hemastix for a presumptive test, looking for any residue of what may be scrubbed-away blood. The presumptive test says blood might be there, and Scarpetta opens the box of Bluestar Magnum and removes a brown glass bottle and a foil pack, and a spray bottle.

“Stronger, longer-lasting, don’t have to use it in total darkness,” she explains to Becky. “No sodium perborate tetrahydrate, so it’s nontoxic. Can use it on copper because the reaction will be a different intensity, a different color spectrum, and will have a different duration than blood.”

She has yet to see blood inside the master bathroom. Despite what Madelisa claimed, the most intense white light revealed not the slightest stain. But this is no longer surprising. By all indications so far, after she fled from the house, the killer meticulously cleaned up after himself. Scarpetta selects the finest setting on the spray bottle’s nozzle and pours in four ounces of sterile water. To this she adds two tablets. She gently stirs with a pipette for several minutes, then opens the brown glass bottle and pours in a sodium hydroxide solution.

She begins to spray, and spots and streaks and shapes and spatters luminesce bright cobalt blue all over the room. Becky takes photographs. A little later, when Scarpetta has finished cleaning up after herself and is repacking her crime scene case, her cell phone rings. It’s the fingerprint examiner from Lucy’s labs.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he says.

“Don’t ever start a conversation like that with me unless you mean it.” Scarpetta isn’t joking.

“The print on the gold coin.” He’s excited, talking fast. “We got a hit — the unidentified little boy who was found last week. The kid from Hilton Head.”

“Are you sure? You can’t be sure. It makes no sense.”

“May not make sense, but there’s no doubt about it.”

“Don’t say that, either, unless you mean it. My first reaction is there’s an error,” Scarpetta says.

“There’s not. I pulled his ten-print card from the prints Marino took in the morgue. I visually verified it. Unquestionably, the ridge detail from the partial on the coin matches the unidentified kid’s right thumbprint. There’s no mistake.”

“A fingerprint on a coin that’s been fumed with glue? I don’t see how.”

“Believe me, I’m with you. We all know the fingerprints of prepubescent kids don’t last long enough to fume. They’re mostly water. Just sweat instead of the oils, amino acids, and all the rest that comes with puberty. I’ve never superglued a kid’s prints and don’t think you could. But this print is from a kid, and that kid is the one in your morgue.”

“Maybe that’s not how it happened,” Scarpetta says. “Maybe the coin was never fumed.”

“Had to be. There’s ridge detail in what sure looks like superglue, the same as if it had been fumed.”

“Maybe he had glue on his finger and touched the coin,” she says. “And left his print that way.”