The Scarpetta Factor

13

Lucy’s forensic computer investigative agency, Connextions, was located in the same building where she lived, the nineteenth-century former warehouse of a soap-and-candle company on Barrow Street in Greenwich Village, technically the Far West Village. Two-story brick, boldly Romanesque, with rounded arched windows, it was registered as a historic landmark, as was the former carriage house next door that Lucy had purchased last spring to use as a garage.

She was a dream for any preservation commission, since she had not the slightest interest in altering the integrity of a building beyond the meticulous retrofits necessary for her unusual cyber and surveillance needs. More relevant to any nonprofit was her philanthropy, which wasn’t without personal benefit, not that Jaime Berger had the slightest faith in altruistic motives being pure, not hardly. She had no idea how much Lucy had donated to de facto conflicts of interest, and she should have an idea, and that bothered her. Lucy should keep nothing from her, but she did, and over recent weeks, Berger had begun to feel an uneasiness about their relationship that was different from misgivings she’d experienced so far.

“Maybe you should get it tattooed on your hand.” Lucy held up her hand, palm first. “To cue yourself. Actors like cues. It all depends. ” She pretended to read something written on the palm of her hand. “Get a tattoo that says It all depends and look at it every time you’re about to lie.”

“I don’t need cues, and I’m not lying,” Hap Judd replied, maintaining his poise. “People say all kinds of things, and it doesn’t necessarily mean they did anything wrong.”

“I see,” Berger said to Judd as she wished Marino would hurry up. Where the hell was he? “Then what you meant in the bar this past Monday night, the night of December fifteenth, all depends on how one-in this case, me-interprets what you said to Eric Mender. If you stated to him that you can understand being curious about a nineteen-year-old girl in a coma and wanting to see her naked and perhaps touch her in a sexual manner, it’s all in the interpretation. I’m trying to figure out how I might interpret a remark like that beyond finding it more than a little troubling.”

“Good God, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. The interpretation. It’s not… It’s not the way you’re thinking. Her picture was all over the news. And it was where I was working then, the hospital she was in happened to be where I had a job,” Judd said with less poise. “Yeah, I was curious. People are curious if they’re honest. I’m curious for a living, curious about all kinds of things. Doesn’t mean I did anything.”

Hap Judd didn’t look like a movie star. He didn’t look like the type to have roles in big-budget franchises like Tomb Raider and Batman. Berger couldn’t stop thinking that as she sat across from him at the brushed-steel conference table in Lucy’s barnlike space of exposed timber beams and tobacco-wood floors, and computer flat screens asleep on paperless desks. Hap Judd was of average height, sinewy verging on too thin, with unremarkable brown hair and eyes, his face Captain America-perfect but bland, the sort of appearance that translated well on film but in the flesh wasn’t compelling. Were he the boy next door, Berger would describe him as clean-cut, nice-looking. Were she to rename him, it would be Hapless or Haphazard, because there was something tragically obtuse and reckless about him, and Lucy didn’t get that part, or maybe she did, which is why she was torturing him. For the past half-hour, she’d been all over him in a way that caused Berger a great deal of concern. Where the hell was Marino? He should have been here by now. He was supposed to be helping with the interrogation, not Lucy. She was out of bounds, was acting as if she had something personal with Judd, some a priori connection. And maybe she did. Lucy had known Rupe Starr.

“Just because I supposedly said certain things to a stranger in a bar doesn’t mean I did anything.” Judd had made this point about ten times now. “You have to ask yourself why I said what I supposedly did.”

“I’m not asking myself anything. I’m asking you,” Lucy said, her laser gaze holding his eyes.

“I’m telling you what I know.”

“You’re telling us what you want us to hear,” Lucy shot back before Berger got a chance to intervene.

“I don’t remember everything. I was drinking. I’m a busy person, have a lot going on. It’s inevitable I’m going to forget things,” Judd said. “You’re not a lawyer. Why’s she talking to me like she’s a lawyer,” he said to Berger. “You’re not a real cop, just some assistant or something,” he said to Lucy. “Who the hell are you to be asking me all these questions and accusing me?”

“You remember enough to say you didn’t do anything.” Lucy felt no need to justify herself, sure of herself at her conference table in her loft, a computer open in front of her, a map displayed on it, a grid of some area Berger couldn’t make out. “You remember enough to change your story,” Lucy added.

“I’m not changing anything. I don’t remember that night, whenever it was,” Judd answered Lucy as he looked at Berger, as if she might save him. “What the hell do you want from me?”

Lucy needed to back down. Berger had sent her plenty of signals, but she was ignoring them and shouldn’t be talking to Hap at all, not unless Berger directly asked her to explain details related to the forensic computer investigation, which they hadn’t even gotten to yet. Where was Marino? Lucy was acting like she was Marino, was taking his place, and Berger was beginning to entertain suspicions that hadn’t occurred to her before, probably because she knew enough already, and to doubt Lucy further was almost unbearable. Lucy wasn’t honest. She knew Rupe Starr and hadn’t mentioned it to Berger. Lucy had her own motive and she wasn’t a prosecutor, she wasn’t law enforcement anymore, and in her own mind had nothing to lose.

Berger had everything to lose, didn’t need some celebrity putting dents in her reputation. She had more than her share of dents, unfairly inflicted. Her relationship with Lucy hadn’t helped. Jesus, it had been anything but helpful. Unkind gossip and vile comments on the Internet. A dick-hating dyke, the dyke Jew DA Berger had made it to the top ten on a neo-Nazi hit list, her address and other personal information posted in hopes someone would do the right thing. Then there were the evangelical Christians reminding her to pack her bags for her one-way trip to hell. Berger had never imagined being honest would be so hard and so punishing. Appearing with Lucy in public, not hiding or lying, and it had hurt Berger, hurt her far more than she could have imagined. And for what? To be deceived. How deep did it go, where would it end? It would end, don’t worry. It will end, she kept telling herself. There would be a conversation at some point and Lucy would explain herself, and all would be fine. Lucy would tell her about Rupe.

“What we want is for you to tell the truth.” Berger got a chance to speak before Lucy could jump in. “This is very, very serious. We’re not playing games.”

“I don’t know why I’m here. I haven’t done anything,” Hap Judd said to her, and she didn’t like his eyes.

He was bold the way he stared at her, looking her up and down, aware of the effect it had on Lucy. He knew what he was doing, was defiant, and at times Berger sensed he was amused by them.

“I have a very strong feeling about sending someone to prison,” Berger said.

“I haven’t done anything!”

Maybe, maybe not, but he’d also not been helpful. Berger had given him almost three weeks to be helpful. Three weeks was a long time when someone was missing, possibly abducted, possibly dead, or, more likely, busy creating a new identity in South America, the Fiji islands, Australia, God knows where.

“That’s not the worst of it,” Lucy said to him, her green stare unwavering, her short hair shining rose-gold in the overhead lights. She was ready to pounce again like an exotic cat. “I can’t imagine what the inmates would do to a sick fuck like you.” She began typing, was in her e-mail now.

“You know what? I almost didn’t come at all. I came so close to not coming you wouldn’t even believe it,” he said to Berger, and the mention of prison had an effect. He wasn’t so smug. He wasn’t looking at her chest. “This is the shit I get,” he said, with no poise left. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to your fucking shit.”

He made no move to get up from his chair, a faded denim leg bouncing, sweat stains in the armpits of a baggy white shirt. Berger could see his chest move as he breathed, an unusual silver cross on a leather necklace moving beneath white cotton with each shallow breath. His hands were clenched on the armrests, a chunky silver skull ring shining, his muscles flexed tensely, veins standing out in his neck. He did have to sit here, could no more extricate himself right now than he could avert his gaze from a train wreck about to happen.

“Remember Jeffrey Dahmer?” Lucy said, not looking up as she typed. “Remember what happened to that sick fuck? What the inmates did? Beat him to death with a broom handle, maybe did other things to him with the broom handle. He was into the same sick shit you are.”

“Jeffrey Dahmer? You serious?” Judd laughed too loudly. It wasn’t really a laugh. He was scared. “She’s fucking crazy,” he said to Berger. “I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. I don’t hurt people.”

“You mean not yet,” Lucy said, a city grid on her screen, as if she was MapQuesting.

“I’m not talking to her,” he said to Berger. “I don’t like her. Fucking make her leave or I’m going to.”

“How ’bout I give you a list of people you’ve hurt?” Lucy said. “Starting with the family and friends of Farrah Lacy.”

“I don’t know who that is, and you can go fuck yourself,” he snapped.

“You know what a class-E felony is?” Berger asked him.

“I haven’t done anything. I haven’t hurt anyone.”

“Up to ten years in prison. That’s what it is.”

“In isolation for your own protection,” Lucy continued, ignoring Berger’s signals to back off, another screenshot of a map in front of her.

Berger could make out green shapes that represented parks, blue shapes that were water, in an area congested with streets. An alert tone sounded on Berger’s BlackBerry. Someone had just sent her an e-mail at almost three o’clock in the morning.

“Solitary confinement. Probably Fallsburg,” Lucy said. “They’re used to high-profile prisoners. The Son of Sam. Attica ’s not so good. He had his throat cut there.”

The e-mail was from Marino:

Mental patient possb connected to docs incident dodie hodge I found something at rtcc dont forget to ask your witness if he knows her I’m tied up will explain later

Berger looked up from her BlackBerry as Lucy continued to terrorize Hap Judd with what happened in prison to people like him.

“Tell me about Dodie Hodge,” said Berger. “Your relationship with her.”

Judd looked baffled, then angry. He blurted out, “She’s a gypsy, a fucking witch. I’m the one who should be here as a victim the way that crazy bitch bothers me. Why the hell are you asking me? What’s she got to do with anything? Maybe she’s the one accusing me of something. Is she the one behind all this?”

“Maybe I’ll answer your questions when you answer mine,” Berger said. “Tell me the history of how you know her.”

“A psychic, a spiritual adviser. Whatever you want to call her. A lot of people-Hollywood people, really successful people, even politicians-know her, go to her for advice about money, their careers, their relationships. So I was stupid. I talked to her, and she wouldn’t stop bothering me. Calls my office in L.A. all the time.”

“Then she’s stalking you.”

“That’s what I call it. Yeah, exactly.”

“And this started when?” Berger asked.

“I don’t know. Last year. Maybe a year ago this past fall. I got referred.”

“By whom?”

“Someone in the business who thought I might get something out of it. Career guidance.”

“I’m asking for a name,” Berger said.

“I got to respect confidentiality. A lot of people go to her. You’d be amazed.”

“Go to her, or does she come to you?” Berger said. “Where do the meetings take place?”

“She came to my apartment in TriBeCa. High-profile people aren’t going to come to wherever she lives and risk being followed and maybe caught on camera. Or she does readings on the phone.”

“And how does she get paid?”

“Cash. Or if it’s a phoner, you mail a cashier’s check to a P.O. box in New Jersey. Maybe a few times I talked to her on the phone, and then cut her off because she’s so damn crazy. Yeah, I’m being stalked. We should talk about me being stalked.”

“Does she show up places where you are? Such as your apartment in TriBeCa, where you’re filming, places you frequent, such as the bar on Christopher Street here in New York?” Berger asked.

“She leaves messages all the time at my agent’s office.”

“She calls L.A.? Fine. I’ll give you a good contact at the FBI field office in L.A.,” Berger said. “The FBI handles stalking. One of their specialties.”

Judd didn’t reply. He had no interest in talking to the FBI in L.A. He was a cagey bastard, and Berger wondered if the person whose confidentiality he was protecting might be Hannah Starr. Based on what he’d just said, he first met Dodie around the same time his financial transactions with Hannah began. A year ago this past fall.

“The bar on Christopher Street,” Berger redirected, not satisfied that Dodie Hodge was related to anything that mattered and annoyed that Marino had interrupted her interrogation of someone she’d begun to strongly dislike.

“You can’t prove anything.” The defiance was back.

“If you really believe we can’t prove anything, why did you bother to show up?”

“Especially since you almost didn’t,” Lucy interrupted, busy on her MacBook. Typing e-mails and looking at maps.

“To cooperate,” Judd said to Berger. “I’m here to cooperate.”

“I see. You couldn’t fit cooperation into your busy schedule three weeks ago when you first came to my attention and I tried repeatedly to get hold of you.”

“I was in L.A. ”

“I forgot. They don’t have phones in L.A. ”

“I was tied up, and the messages I got weren’t clear. I didn’t understand.”

“Good, so now you understand and have decided to cooperate,” Berger said. “So, let’s talk about your little incident this past Monday-specifically, what happened after you left the Stonewall Inn at fifty-three Christopher Street late Monday night. You left with that kid you met, Eric. Remember Eric? The kid you smoked weed with? The kid you talked so openly with?”

“We were high,” Judd said.

“Yes, people say things when they’re high. You got high and told him wild-ass tales, his words, about what happened at Park General Hospital in Harlem,” Berger said.

They were naked beneath a down-filled duvet, unable to sleep, tucked into each other and looking out at the view. The Manhattan skyline wasn’t the ocean or the Rockies or the ruins of Rome, but it was a sight they loved, and it was their habit to open the shades at night after turning off the lights.

Benton stroked Scarpetta’s bare skin, his chin on top of her head. He kissed her neck, her ears, and her flesh was cool where his lips had been. His chest was pressed against her back, and she could feel the slow beat of his heart.

“I never ask you about your patients,” she said.

“Clearly I’m not much of a distraction if you’re thinking about my patients,” Benton said in her ear.

She pulled his arms around her and kissed his hands. “Maybe you can distract me again in a few minutes. I’d like to raise a hypothetical question.”

“You’re entitled. I’m surprised you have only one.”

“How would someone like your former patient know where we live? I’m not suggesting she left the package.” Scarpetta didn’t want to say Dodie Hodge’s name in bed.

“One might speculate that if someone is sufficiently manipulative, that person might successfully extract information from others,” Benton said. “For example, there are staff members at McLean who know where our apartment is, since mail and packages are occasionally sent to me here.”

“And staff members would tell a patient?”

“I would hope not, and I’m not saying that’s what happened. I’m not even saying this person’s ever been to McLean, been a patient there.”

He didn’t need to say it. Scarpetta had no doubt that Dodie Hodge had been a patient at McLean.

“I’m also not saying she had anything to do with what was left at our building,” he added.

He didn’t need to say that, either. She knew Benton feared his former patient had left the package.

“What I will say is others might suspect she did, no matter what we discover to the contrary.” Benton spoke softly, the intimacy of his tone incongruous with the conversation.

“Marino suspects it and in fact is probably convinced of it, and you’re not convinced. That’s what you’re saying.” Scarpetta didn’t believe it.

She believed Benton was convinced about this former patient named Dodie who had brazenly called CNN. Benton was convinced she was dangerous.

“Marino might be right. And he might not be,” Benton said. “While someone like this particular former patient might be bad news and potentially harmful, it would be even more harmful if the package was sent by someone else and everyone has quit looking because they think they know the answer. And what if they don’t? Then what happens? What next? Maybe someone really gets hurt next time.”

“We don’t know what the package is. It could be nothing. You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“It’s something. I can already promise you that,” he said. “Unless you starred in a Batman movie and didn’t tell me, you’re not the chief medical examiner of Gotham City. I don’t like the tone of that. Not exactly sure why it bothers me as much as it does.”

“Because it’s snide. It’s hostile.”

“Maybe. The handwriting interests me. Your description that it was so precise and stylized it looked like a font.”

“Whoever wrote the address has a steady hand, maybe an artistic hand,” Scarpetta said, and she sensed he was thinking about something else.

He knew something about Dodie Hodge that was causing him to focus on the handwriting.

“You’re sure it wasn’t generated by a laser printer,” Benton said.

“I had quite a long time to look at it on the elevator. Black ink, ballpoint. There was sufficient variation in the letter formation to make it obvious the address was hand-printed,” she said.

“Hopefully there will still be something to look at when we get to Rodman’s Neck. The airbill might be our best evidence.”

“If we’re lucky,” she said.

Luck would be a big part of it. Most likely the bomb squad would foil any possible circuitry inside the FedEx box by blasting it with a PAN disrupter, more popularly known as a water cannon, which fires three to four ounces of water, propelled by a modified twelve-gauge shotgun round. The primary target would be the alleged explosive device’s power source-the small batteries that showed up on x-ray. Scarpetta could only hope that the batteries weren’t directly behind the hand-printed address on the airbill. If they were, there would be nothing left but soggy pulp to look at later this morning.

“We can have a general conversation,” Benton then said, sitting up a little, rearranging pillows. “You’re familiar with the borderline personality. An individual who has breaks or splits in ego boundaries and, given enough stress, can act out aggressively, violently. Aggression is about competing. Competing for the male, for the female, competing for the person most fit for breeding. Competing for resources, such as food and shelter. Competing for power, because without a hierarchy there can’t be social order. In other words, aggression occurs when it’s profitable.”

Scarpetta thought of Carley Crispin. She thought about the missing BlackBerry. She’d been thinking about her BlackBerry for hours. Anxiety was a tightness around her heart, no matter what she was doing; even while making love she felt fear. She felt anger. She was extremely upset with herself and didn’t know how Lucy would handle the truth. Scarpetta had been stupid. How could she be so stupid?

“Unfortunately, these basic primitive drives that might make sense in terms of the survival of a species can become malignant and nonadaptive, can get acted out in grossly inappropriate and unprofitable ways,” Benton was saying. “Because when all is said and done, an aggressive act, such as harassing or threatening a prominent person like you, is unprofitable for the initiator. The result will be punishment, a forfeiture of all those things worth competing for. Whether it’s commitment to a psychiatric facility or imprisonment.”

“So, I’m to conclude that this woman who called me on CNN tonight has a borderline personality disorder, can become violent, given sufficient stress, and is competing with me for the male, which would be you,” Scarpetta said.

“She called you to harass me, and it worked,” he said. “She wants my attention. The borderline personality thrives on negative reinforcement, on being the eye of the storm. You add some other unfortunate personality disorders to the mix, and you go from the eye of the storm to maybe the perfect storm.”

“Transference. All those women patients of yours don’t stand a chance. They want what I’ve got right now.”

She wanted it again. She wanted his attention and didn’t want to talk anymore about work, about problems, about human beings who were horrors. She wanted to be close to him, to feel that nothing was off-limits, and her yearning for closeness was insatiable because she couldn’t have what she wanted. She’d never had what she wanted with Benton, and that was why she still wanted him, wanted him palpably. It was why she’d wanted him to begin with, felt drawn to him, felt an intense desire for him the first time they’d met. She felt the same way now, twenty years later, a desperate attraction that fulfilled her and left her empty, and sex with him was like that, a cycle of taking and giving and filling and emptying and then rearming the mechanism so they could go back for more.

“I do love you, you know,” she said into his mouth. “Even when I’m angry.”

“You’ll always be angry. I hope you’ll always love me.”

“I want to understand.” She didn’t and probably couldn’t.

When she was reminded, she couldn’t understand the choices he’d made, that he could have left her so abruptly, so finally, and never checked on her. She wouldn’t have done what he did, but she wasn’t going to bring that up again.

“I know I’ll always love you.” She kissed him and got on top of him.

They rearranged themselves, knew intuitively how to move, the days long past when they needed to consciously calculate which was whose best side or the limits before fatigue and discomfort set in. Scarpetta had heard every permutation of the expected jokes about her skills in anatomy and what a bonus that must be in bed, which was ridiculous, not even that, because she didn’t find it amusing. Her patients were with rare exception dead, and their response to her touch therefore moot and not helpful. That didn’t mean the morgue hadn’t taught her something vital, because certainly it had. It had conditioned her to refine her senses, to see, smell, and feel the most subtle nuances in people who could no longer speak, unwilling people who needed her but could give nothing back. The morgue had empowered her with strong, capable hands and strong cravings. She wanted warmth and touch. She wanted sex.

Afterward, Benton fell asleep, a deep sleep. He didn’t stir when she got out of bed, her mind moving rapidly again, anxieties and resentments swarming back again. It was a few minutes past three a.m. She faced a long day that would inform her as it unfolded, one of those days that was what she called “unscripted.” The range at Rodman’s Neck and her possible bomb, and perhaps the labs, and maybe the office to dictate autopsy reports and catch up on phone calls and paperwork. She wasn’t scheduled to do autopsies, but that could always change depending on who was out and what came in. What to do about her BlackBerry. Maybe Lucy had answered her. What to do about her niece. She’d been acting so odd of late, so easily irritated, so impatient, and then what she’d done about the smartphones, swapping them out and not asking permission, as if that was generous and considerate. You should go back to bed and get some rest. Fatigue and everything seems worse, Scarpetta told herself. Going back to sleep wasn’t a possibility right now. She had things to take care of, needed to deal with Lucy, get it over with. Tell her what you did. Tell her how stupid her Aunt Kay is.

Lucy probably was the most technically gifted person Scarpetta had ever known, curious about the way everything worked from the day she was born, putting this and that together and taking them apart, always confident she could improve the functioning of whatever it was. Such a proclivity plus a massive insecurity plus an overriding need for power and control and the result was a Lucy, a wizard who could easily destroy just as much as she fixed, depending on her motive and mostly on her mood. Swapping out phones without permission had not been an appropriate act, and Scarpetta still didn’t understand why her niece suddenly had done it. In the past she would have asked. She wouldn’t have become the self-appointed system administrator for everyone without permission, without so much as a warning, and she was going to be incensed when she learned the truth about Scarpetta’s folly, her foolishness. Lucy would say it was like not looking before you cross the street, like walking into the tail rotor.

Scarpetta dreaded the lecture she was certain to get when she confessed to disabling the password on her BlackBerry two days after receiving it, her frustration had been that great. You shouldn’t have, you absolutely shouldn’t have-the thought was caught in a loop in her mind. But every time she’d pulled the device out of its holster she’d had to unlock it. If she didn’t use it for ten minutes, it was locked again. Then the last straw, scaring the hell out of herself when her typos had resulted in her entering the password incorrectly six times in a row. Eight failed attempts-it was clearly written in Lucy’s instructions-and the BlackBerry rather much self-destructed, everything in it eradicated like those tape recordings in Mission: Impossible.

When Scarpetta had e-mailed Lucy that the BlackBerry had been “misplaced,” she’d neglected to mention the detail about the password. If someone had her smartphone, it would be a very bad thing, and Scarpetta was deeply afraid of that, and she was afraid of Lucy, and most of all she was afraid of herself. When did you start becoming so careless? You carried a bomb into your apartment and you disabled the password on your smartphone. What the hell’s the matter with you? Do something. Fix something. Take care of things. Don’t just fret.

She needed to eat, that was part of the problem, her stomach sour from having nothing in it. If she ate something, she’d feel better. She needed to do something with her hands, engage them in an act that was healing, an act besides sex. Preparing food was restorative and soothing. Making one of her favorite dishes, paying attention to details, helped return order and normalcy. It was either cook or clean, and she’d done enough cleaning, could still catch the scent of Murphy Oil Soap as she walked through the living room and into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator, scanning for inspiration. A frittata, an omelet, she wasn’t hungry for eggs or bread or pasta. Something light and healthy, and with olive oil and fresh herbs, like an Insalata Caprese. That would be good. It was a summer dish, to be served only when tomatoes were in season, preferably handpicked from Scarpetta’s own garden. But in cities like Boston and New York, wherever there was a Whole Foods or gourmet markets, she could find heirloom tomatoes all year round, rich Black Krims, lush Brandywines, succulent Caspian Pinks, mellow Golden Eggs, sweetly acidic Green Zebras.

She selected a few from a basket on the counter and placed them on a cutting board, quartering them into wedges. She warmed fresh buffalo mozzarella to room temperature by enclosing it in a zip-lock bag and submerging it in hot water for several minutes. Arranging the tomato and the cheese in a circular pattern on a plate, she added leaves of fresh basil and a generous dribble of cold-pressed unfiltered olive oil, finishing with a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. She carried her snack to the adjoining dining room, with its view due west of lighted apartment high-rises and the Hudson, and the distant air traffic in New Jersey.

She took a bite of salad as she opened the browser on her MacBook. Time to deal with Lucy. She’d probably answered her by now. May as well face the music and deal with the missing BlackBerry. It wasn’t a trivial worry, nothing trifling about it, and had been on Scarpetta’s mind since she’d first noticed it gone, and now it was an obsession. For hours she’d been trying to recall what was on it, trying to imagine what someone might have access to, while a part of her wished she could return to a past when her biggest concern was snooping, someone flipping through a Rolodex or riffling through the call sheets, autopsy protocols, and photographs that routinely were on her desk. In the old days, her answer to most potential indiscretions and leaks was locks. Highly sensitive records went into locked file cabinets, and if there was something on her desk that she didn’t want others to see, she locked her office door while she was out. Plain and simple. Just good common sense. All manageable. Just hide the key.

When she was the chief medical examiner of Virginia and her office got its first computer, that, too, was manageable and she’d felt no great fear of the unknown, felt she could handle the bad with the good. Of course, there were glitches in security, but all was fixable and preventable. Cell phones hadn’t been a significant problem back then, not at first, when her distrust of them had more to do with the potential use of scanners for eavesdropping and, more mundanely, people developing the uncivilized and reckless habit of having conversations that could be overheard. Those dangers didn’t begin to compare to ones that existed today. There was no adequate description for what she found herself fretting about regularly. Modern technology no longer seemed like her best friend. It bit her often. This time it may have bitten her badly.

Scarpetta’s BlackBerry was a microcosm of her personal and professional life, containing phone numbers and e-mail addresses of contacts who would be incensed or compromised if an ill-intended individual got hold of their private information. She was most protective of the families, of those left behind in the wake of a tragic death. In a way, these survivors became her patients, too, depending on her for information, calling her about a detail they suddenly remembered, a question, a theory, simply needing to talk, often at anniversaries or at this time of year, the holidays. The confidences Scarpetta shared with the families and loved ones of decedents were sacred, the most sacred aspect of her work.

How unspeakably awful if the wrong person, a person who worked for a cable news network, for example, came across some of these names, many of them associated with highly publicized cases, a name like Grace Darien. She was the last person Scarpetta had talked to, at about seven-fifteen p.m., after getting off the conference call with Berger, hurrying to get ready for CNN. Mrs. Darien had called Scarpetta’s BlackBerry, near hysteria because the press release that identified Toni Darien by name also had stated she’d been sexually assaulted and beaten to death. Mrs. Darien had been confused and panicked, had assumed a blow to the head was different from being beaten to death, and nothing Scarpetta could tell her had been reassuring. Scarpetta hadn’t been dishonest. She hadn’t been misleading. It wasn’t her press release, wasn’t her wording, and as difficult as it was, Mrs. Darien needed to understand why Scarpetta couldn’t go into any more detail than she already had. She was so sorry, but she simply couldn’t discuss the case further.

“Remember what I said?” Scarpetta had been changing her clothes while she talked to her. “Confidentiality is critical, because some details are known only by the killer, the medical examiner, and the police. That’s why I can’t tell you more at this time.”

Here she was, the torchbearer for discretion and ethical conduct, and for all she knew, someone had found Grace Darien’s information in a BlackBerry that wasn’t password-protected and had contacted the distraught woman. Scarpetta couldn’t stop thinking about what Carley had blasted all over the news, the detail about the yellow cab and its allegedly connecting Toni Darien to Hannah Starr, and the false information about Hannah’s decomposing head hair being found. Of course a journalist, especially a cold-blooded, desperate one, would want to talk to the Grace Dariens of the world, and the list of possible egregious violations caused by Scarpetta’s missing smartphone was getting longer as she remembered more. She continued conjuring up names of contacts she’d been keeping since the beginning of her career, first on paper, then eventually in electronic format, exported from cell phone to cell phone as she upgraded, finally ending up in the device Lucy had bought.

Hundreds of names were in Scarpetta’s contacts subfolder, she guessed, many of them people who might never trust her again if someone like Carley Crispin called them on their cell phones, on their direct lines, or at home. Mayor Bloomberg, Commissioner Kelly, Dr. Edison, countless powerful officials here and abroad, in addition to Scarpetta’s extensive network of forensic colleagues and physicians and prosecutors and defense attorneys, and her family, friends, doctors, dentist, hairstylist, personal trainer, housekeeper. Places she shopped. What she ordered on Amazon, including books she read. Restaurants. Her accountant. Her private banker. The list got longer the more she thought about it, longer and more troubling. Saved voicemails that were visualized on the screen and could be played without entering a password. Documents and PowerPoint presentations that included graphic images she’d downloaded from e-mails-including Toni Darien’s scene photographs. The one Carley had shown on the air could have come from Scarpetta’s phone, and then her anxieties turned to IM, instant messaging, all those applications that allowed and prompted constant contact.

Scarpetta didn’t believe in IM, considered such technologies a compulsion, not an improvement, possibly one of the most unfortunate and foolhardy innovations in history, people typing on tiny touch screens and keypads while they should be paying attention to rather important activities such as driving, crossing a busy street, operating dangerous machinery, such as aircraft or trains, or sitting in a classroom, a lecture hall, attending Grand Rounds or the theater or a concert, or paying attention to whoever was across from them in a restaurant or next to them in bed. Not long ago, she caught a medical student on rotation in the New York office instant messaging during an autopsy, pushing tiny keys with latex-sheathed thumbs. She’d kicked him out of the morgue, expelled him from her tutelage, and encouraged Dr. Edison to ban all electronic devices from any area beyond the anteroom, but that was never going to happen. It was too late for that, would be turning back the hands on the clock, and no one would comply.

The cops, the medicolegal investigators, the scientists, the pathologists, the anthropologists, the odontologists, the forensic archaeologists, the mortuary, the ID techs and security guards, weren’t going to give up their PDAs, iPhones, BlackBerrys, cell phones, and pagers, and despite her continual warnings to her colleagues about disseminating confidential information via instant messaging or even e-mails or, God forbid, taking photographs or making video recordings on these devices, it happened anyway. Even she had fallen prey to sending text messages and downloading images and information far more than was wise, had gotten somewhat lax about it. These days she spent so much time in taxis and airports, the flow of information never pausing, never giving anyone a break, almost none of it password-protected, because she’d gotten frustrated, or maybe because she didn’t like feeling controlled by her niece.

Scarpetta clicked on her inbox. The most recent e-mail, sent just minutes ago, was from Lucy, with the provocative subject heading:

FOLLOW THE BREAD CRUMBS

Scarpetta opened it.

Aunt Kay: Attached is a GPS data log of tactical tracking updated every 15 secs. I’ve included only key times and locations, beginning at approx. 1935 hours when you hung your coat in the makeup room closet, presumably the BlackBerry in a pocket. A pic is worth a thousand words. Go through the slideshow and form your own conclusion. I know what mine is. Needless to say, I’m glad you’re safe. Marino told me about the FedEx. -L

The first image in the slideshow was what Lucy called a “bird’s eye of the Time Warner Center,” or basically a close-on aerial view. This was followed by a map with the street address, including the latitude and longitude. Unquestionably, Scarpetta’s BlackBerry had been at the Time Warner Center at seven thirty five p.m., when she first arrived at the north tower entrance on 59th Street, was cleared through security, took the elevator to the fifth floor, walked down the hallway to the makeup room, and hung her coat in the closet. At this point, only she and the makeup artist were in the room, and it wasn’t possible anyone could have gone into the pocket of her coat during the twenty-some minutes she was in the chair, being touched up and then just sitting and waiting, watching Campbell Brown on the television that was always on in there.

As best Scarpetta could recall, a sound technician miked her at around eight-twenty, which was at least twenty minutes earlier than usual, now that she thought about it, and she was led to the set and seated at the table. Carley Crispin didn’t appear until a few minutes before nine and sat across from her, sipped water with a straw, exchanged pleasantries, and then they were on the air. During the show and until Scarpetta left the building at close to eleven p.m., the location of her BlackBerry, according to Lucy, remained the same, with one proviso:

If your BB was moved to a different location at the same address-to another room or another floor, for example-lat and long coordinates wouldn’t change. So can’t tell. Only know it was in the building.

After that, at almost eleven p.m., when Carley Crispin and Scarpetta left the Time Warner Center, the BlackBerry left the Time Warner Center, too. Scarpetta followed its journey in the log, in the slideshow, clicking on a bird’s-eye, this one Columbus Circle, and then another bird’s-eye of her apartment building on Central Park West, which was captured at eleven-sixteen p.m. At this point, one might conclude that Scarpetta’s BlackBerry was still in her coat pocket and what the WAAS receiver was tracking and recording every fifteen seconds was her own locations as she walked home. But that couldn’t be the case. Benton had tried to call her numerous times. If the BlackBerry was in Scarpetta’s coat pocket, why didn’t it ring? She hadn’t turned it off. She almost never did.

More significant, Scarpetta realized, when she’d entered her building, her BlackBerry hadn’t. The next images in the slideshow were a series of bird’s-eye aerial photos, maps, and addresses that showed a curious journey her BlackBerry had taken, beginning with a return to the Time Warner Center, then following Sixth Avenue and coming to a stop at 60 East 54th Street. Scarpetta enlarged the bird’s-eye, studying a cluster of granite grayish buildings tucked amid high-rises, cars, and cabs frozen on the street, recognizing in the background the Museum of Modern Art, the Seagram Building, the French Gothic spire of Saint Thomas Church.

Lucy’s note:

60 E. 54th is Hotel Elysée which has, notably, the Monkey Bar-not “officially open” unless you’re in the know. Like a private club, very exclusive, very Hollywood. A hangout for major celebs and players.

Was it possible the Monkey Bar was open now, at three-seventeen a.m.? It would appear, based on the log, that Scarpetta’s BlackBerry was still at the East 54th Street address. She remembered what Lucy had said about latitude and longitude. Maybe Carley hadn’t gone to the Monkey Bar after all but was in the same building.

Scarpetta e-mailed her niece:

Bar still open, or is BB possibly in the hotel?

Lucy’s reply:

Could be the hotel. I’m in a witness situation or I’d go there myself.

Scarpetta:

Marino can, unless he’s with you.

Lucy:

I think I should nuke it. Most of your data are backed up on the server. You’d be fine. Marino’s not with me.

She was saying she could remotely access Scarpetta’s BlackBerry and eradicate most of the data stored on it and the customiza tion-in essence, return the device to its factory settings. If what Scarpetta suspected was true, it was a little late for that. Her BlackBerry had been out of her possession for the past six hours, and if Carley Crispin had stolen it, she’d had plenty of time to get her hands on a treasure trove of privileged information and may have helped herself earlier, explaining the scene photograph she put on the air. Scarpetta wasn’t about to forgive this, and she would want to prove it.

She wrote:

Do not nuke. The BB and what’s in it are evidence. Please keep tracking. Where is Marino? Home?

Lucy’s reply:

BB hasn’t moved from that location in the past three hours. Marino is at RTCC.

Scarpetta didn’t answer. She wasn’t going to mention the password problem, not under the circumstances. Lucy might decide to nuke the BlackBerry, despite what she’d been instructed, since she didn’t seem to need permission these days. It was rather astonishing what Lucy was privy to, and Scarpetta felt unsettled, was nagged by something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Lucy knew where the BlackBerry was, seemed to know where Marino was, seemed invested in everyone in a way that was different from the past. What else did her niece know, and why was she so intent on keeping tabs on everyone, or at least having the capability? In case you get kidnapped, Lucy had said, and she hadn’t been joking. Or if you lose your BlackBerry. If you leave it in a taxi, I can find it, she’d explained.

It was strange. Scarpetta thought back to when the sleek devices had appeared and marveled over the premeditation, the exactness and cleverness, of how Lucy had managed to surprise them with her gift. A Saturday afternoon, the last Saturday in November, the twenty-ninth, Scarpetta remembered. She and Benton were in the gym working out, had appointments with the trainer, followed up by the steam room, the sauna, then an early dinner and the theater, Billy Elliot. They had routines, and Lucy knew them.

She knew the gym in their building was one place they never took their phones. The reception was terrible, and it wasn’t necessary, anyway, because they could be reached. Emergency calls could be routed through the fitness club’s reception desk. When they had returned to their apartment, the new BlackBerrys were there, a red ribbon around each, on the dining-room table with a note explaining that Lucy, who had a key, had let herself in while they were out and had imported the data from their old cell phones into the new devices. Words to that effect and detailed instructions. She must have done something similar with Berger and Marino.

Scarpetta got up from the dining-room table. She got on the phone.

“Hotel Elysée. How may I help you?” a man with a French accent answered.

“Carley Crispin, please.”

A long pause, then, “Ma’am, are you asking me to ring her room? It’s quite late.”