The Scarpetta Factor

16

There was no answer at room 412. Marino thudded the door with his big ham of a fist and started calling out Carley Crispin’s name.

“NYPD,” he said loudly. “Open up.”

He and Scarpetta listened and waited in a hallway that was long and elegant, with crystal sconces and a brown-and-yellow carpet, what looked like a Bijar design.

“I hear the TV,” Marino said, knocking with one hand and holding his tackle box field case in the other. “Kind of weird her watching TV at five in the morning. Carley?” he called out. “NYPD. Open up.” He motioned for Scarpetta to move away from the door. “Forget it,” he said. “She’s not going to answer. So now we play hardball.”

He slid his BlackBerry out of its holster and had to type in his password, and it reminded Scarpetta of the mess she’d caused and the dismal truth that she wouldn’t be standing here at all if Lucy hadn’t done something rather terrible. Her niece had set up a server and bought new high-tech smartphones as a ruse. She’d used and deceived everyone. Scarpetta felt awful for Berger. She felt awful for herself-for everyone. Marino called the number on the business card the night manager had given to him moments ago, he and Scarpetta walking toward the elevator. Assuming Carley was in her room and awake, they didn’t want her to hear what they were saying.

“Yeah, you’re going to need to get up here,” Marino said over his phone. “Nope. And I’ve knocked loud enough to wake the dead.” A pause, then, “Maybe, but the TV’s on. Really. Good to know.” He ended the call and said to Scarpetta, “Apparently, they’ve had a problem with the TV being played really loud and other guests complaining.”

“That seems a little unusual.”

“Carley hard of hearing or something?”

“Not that I’m aware of. I don’t think so.”

They reached the other end of the hall, near the elevator, where he pushed open a door that had a lighted exit sign over it.

“So if you wanted to leave the hotel without going through the lobby, you could take the stairs. But if you came back in you’d have to use the elevator,” he said, holding the door open, looking down flights of concrete steps. “No way you can enter the stairs from the street, for the obvious security reasons.”

“You’re thinking Carley came here late last night and left by taking the stairs because she didn’t want anyone to see her?” Scarpetta wanted to know why.

Carley, with her spike heels and fitted skirts, didn’t seem the type to take the stairs or exert herself if she could help it.

“It’s not as if she was secretive about staying here,” Scarpetta pointed out. “Which I also find curious. If you knew she was here or simply wondered if she might be, like I did, all you’d have to do is call and ask to be connected to her room. Most well-known people are unregistered so they can prevent that sort of privacy violation from occurring. This hotel in particular is quite accustomed to having celebrity guests. It goes back to the twenties, is rather much a landmark for the rich and famous.”

“Like, who’s it famous for?” He set his field case on the carpet.

She didn’t know off the top of her head, she said, except that Tennessee Williams had died in the Hotel Elysée in 1983, had choked to death on a bottle cap.

“Figures you’d know who died here,” Marino said. “Carley’s not all that famous, so I wouldn’t add her to the Guess Who Slept or Died Here list. She’s not exactly Diane Sawyer or Anna Nicole Smith, and I doubt most people recognize her when she walks down the street. I got to figure out the best way to do this.”

He was thinking, leaning against the wall, still in the same clothes he’d been wearing when Scarpetta had seen him last, about six hours ago. A peppery stubble shadowed his face.

“Berger said she can have a warrant here in less than two.” He glanced at his watch. “That was almost an hour ago when I talked to her. So maybe another hour and Lucy shows up with the warrant in hand. But I’m not waiting that long. We’re going in. We’ll find your BlackBerry and get it, and who knows what else is in there.” He looked down the length of the quiet hallway. “I listed the necessary facts in the affidavit, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink. Digital storage, digital media, any hard drives, thumb drives, documents, e-mails, phone numbers, with the thought in mind Carley could have downloaded what’s on your BlackBerry and printed it or copied it onto a computer. Nothing I like better than snooping on a snoop. And I’m glad Berger thought of Lucy. I don’t find something, she sure as hell will.”

It hadn’t been Berger who had thought of Lucy. It was Scarpetta, and she was less interested in her niece’s help at the moment than she was in seeing her. They needed to talk. It really couldn’t wait. After Scarpetta had sent the e-mail to Berger suggesting that the paragraph be added to the addendum insuring it was legal for a civilian to assist in searching Carley’s room, Scarpetta had talked to Benton. She’d sat down next to him and touched his arm, waking him up. She was going to a scene with Marino, would probably be with him much of the morning, and she had a serious personal matter to take care of, she’d explained. It was best Benton didn’t come with them, she’d told him before he could suggest it, and then his cell phone had rung. The FBI calling.

The elevator door opened and the Hotel Elysée’s night manager, Curtis, emerged, a middle-aged man with a mustache, dapper in a dark tweed suit. He accompanied them back down the hallway and tried the door of room 412, knocking and ringing the bell, noting the Do Not Disturb light. He commented that it was on most of the time, and he opened the door and ducked his head inside, calling out hello, hello, before stepping back into the hallway, where Marino asked him to wait. Marino and Scarpetta walked into the room and shut the door, no sign or sound of anyone home. A wall-mounted TV was on, the channel tuned to CNN, the volume low.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Marino said to her. “But because these BlackBerrys are so common, I need you to ID it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

They stood just inside the door, looking around a deluxe junior suite that was lived in by someone slovenly, someone possibly antisocial and depressed who had been staying here alone, Scarpetta deduced. The queen-size bed was unmade and strewn with newspapers and men’s clothing, and on the side table was a clutter of empty water bottles and coffee cups. To the left of the bed were a bowfront chest of drawers and a large window with the curtains drawn. To the right of that was the sitting area: two blue upholstered French armchairs with books and papers piled on them, a flame mahogany coffee table with a laptop and a small printer, and in plain view on top of a stack of paperwork, a touch-screen device, a BlackBerry in a smoke-gray protective rubberized case called a skin. Next to it was a plastic key card.

“That it?” Marino pointed.

“Looks like it,” Scarpetta said. “Mine has a gray cover.”

He opened his field case and pulled on surgical gloves, handing her a pair. “Not that we’re going to do anything we shouldn’t, but this is what I call exigent circumstances.”

It probably wasn’t. Scarpetta didn’t see anything that might suggest someone was trying to escape or get rid of evidence. The evidence appeared to be right in front of her, and no one was here but the two of them.

“I don’t suppose I should remind you about fruit of the poisonous tree.” She referred to the inadmissibility of evidence gathered during an unreasonable search and seizure. She didn’t put on the gloves.

“Naw, I have Berger to remind me. Hopefully she’s gotten her favorite judge out of bed by now, Judge Fable, what a name. A legend in his own mind. I went over the whole thing, the fact portion, on speakerphone, with her and a second detective she grabbed as a witness who will swear out the warrant with her in the presence of the judge. What’s known as double hearsay, a little complicated but hopefully no problem. Point is, Berger doesn’t take chances with affidavits and avoids like the plague being the affiant herself. I don’t care whose warrant it is or for what. Hopefully Lucy will roll up soon.”

He walked over to the BlackBerry and picked it up by its rubberized edges.

“The only surface good for prints is going to be the display, which I don’t want to touch without dusting it first,” he decided. “Then I’ll swab it for DNA.”

He squatted over the field case, retrieving black powder and a carbon-fiber brush, and Scarpetta turned her attention to the men’s clothing on the bed, getting close enough to detect a rancid smell, the stench of unclean flesh. She noted that the newspapers were from the past several days, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and was puzzled by a black Motorola flip phone on a pillow. Scattered on the rumpled linens were a pair of dirty khaki pants, a blue-and-white oxford-cloth shirt, several pairs of socks, pale-blue pajamas, and men’s undershorts that were stained yellow in the crotch. The clothing looked as if it hadn’t been washed in quite a while, someone wearing the same thing day after day and never sending it out to be laundered. That someone wasn’t Carley Crispin. These couldn’t be her clothes, and Scarpetta saw no sign of Carley anywhere she looked in this room. Were it not for Scarpetta’s BlackBerry being here, Carley wouldn’t come to mind for any reason at all.

Scarpetta looked in several wastepaper baskets without digging in them or emptying them on the floor. Crumpled paper, tissues, more newspapers. She walked toward the bathroom, stopping just inside the doorway. The sink and the marble around it, including the marble floor, were covered with cut hair, clumps of gray hair of different lengths, some of it as long as three inches, some as tiny as stubble. On a washcloth were a pair of scissors, a razor, and a can of Gillette shaving cream that had been purchased at a Walgreens, and another hotel key card next to a pair of eyeglasses with old-style square black frames.

At the back of the vanity were a single toothbrush and a tube of Sensodyne toothpaste that was almost used up, and a cleaning kit, an earwax pick. A silver Siemens charger unit was open, and inside it were two Siemens Motion 700 hearing aids, flesh-colored, full-shell in-the-ear type. What Scarpetta didn’t see was a remote control, and she walked back into the main room, careful not to touch or disturb anything, resisting the temptation to open the closet or drawers.

“Someone with moderate to severe hearing loss,” she said as Marino lifted prints off the BlackBerry. “State-of-the-art hearing aids, background noise reduction, feedback blocker, Bluetooth. You can pair them with your cell phone. Should be a remote control somewhere.” Walking around and still not seeing one. “For volume adjustment, to check on the battery power level, that sort of thing. People usually carry them in their pocket or purse. He might have it with him, but he’s not wearing his hearing aids. Which doesn’t make much sense, or maybe I should say it doesn’t bode well.”

“Got a couple good ones here,” Marino said, smoothing lifting tape on a white card. “I got no idea what you’re talking about. Who has hearing aids?”

“The man who shaved his head and beard in the bathroom,” she said, opening the room door and stepping back into the hallway, where Curtis the manager was waiting, nervous and ill at ease.

“I don’t want to ask anything I shouldn’t, but I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said to her.

“Let me ask you a few questions,” Scarpetta replied. “You said you came on duty at midnight.”

“I work midnight to eight a.m., that’s correct,” Curtis said. “I haven’t seen her since I got here. I can’t say I’ve ever seen her, as I explained a few moments ago. Ms. Crispin checked into the hotel in October, presumably because she wanted a place in the city. I believe because of her show. Not that her reason is any of my business, but that’s what I’ve been told. Truth is, she rarely uses the room herself, and her gentleman friend doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

This was new information, what Scarpetta was looking for, and she said, “Do you know the name of her gentleman friend or where he might be?”

“I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve never met him because of the hours I work.”

“An older man with gray hair and a beard?”

“I’ve never met him and don’t know what he looks like. But I’m told he’s a frequent guest on her show. I don’t know his name and can’t tell you anything else about him except he’s very private. I shouldn’t say it, but a bit odd. Never speaks to anyone. He goes out and gets food and brings it back in, leaves bags of trash outside his door. Doesn’t use room service or the phones or want housekeeping. No one’s in the room?” He kept looking at the cracked-open door of room 412.

“Dr. Agee,” Scarpetta said. “The forensic psychiatrist Warner Agee. He’s a frequent guest on Carley Crispin’s show.”

“I don’t watch it.”

“He’s the only frequent guest I can think of who is almost deaf and has gray hair and a beard.”

“I don’t know. I only know what I just told you. We have a lot of high-profile people who stay here. We don’t pry. Our only inconvenience with the man staying in this room is noise. Last night, for example, some of the other guests complained about his TV again. I do know based on notes left for me that several guests called the desk earlier in the evening and complained.”

“How early in the evening?” Scarpetta asked.

“Around eight-thirty, quarter of nine.”

She was at CNN at that time, and so was Carley. Warner Agee was in the hotel room with the TV turned on loud and other guests complained. The TV was still on when Scarpetta and Marino had walked in a little while ago, tuned to CNN, but the volume had been turned down. She imagined Agee sitting on the messy bed, watching The Crispin Report last night. If no one had complained after eight-thirty or a quarter of nine and the TV was on, he must have lowered the volume. He must have put his hearing aids on. Then what happened? He removed them and left the room after shaving his beard and head?

“If someone called asking for Carley Crispin, you wouldn’t necessarily know if she’s here,” Scarpetta said to Curtis. “Just that she’s a guest registered under her own name, which is what shows up on the computer when someone at the desk checks. She has a room in her name, but a friend has been staying in it. Apparently, Dr. Agee has. I’m making sure I understand.”

“That’s correct. Assuming you’re right about who her friend is.”

“Who is the room billed to?”

“I really shouldn’t-”

“The man who was staying in that room, Dr. Agee, isn’t there. I’m concerned,” Scarpetta said. “For a lot of reasons, I’m very worried. You have no idea where he might be? He’s hearing-impaired and doesn’t appear to have his hearing aids with him.”

“No. I haven’t seen him leave. This is most unsettling. I suppose that explains his habit of playing the TV so loud now and then.”

“He could have taken the stairs.”

The manager looked down the hallway, the exit sign glowing red at the end of it. “This is most disconcerting. What is it you’re hoping to find in there?” Looking back at room 412.

Scarpetta wasn’t going to give him information. When Lucy showed up with the warrant, he’d get a copy of it and an idea of what they were looking for.

“And if he left by the stairs, no one would have seen him,” she continued. “The doormen don’t wait on the sidewalk late at night, certainly not when it’s this cold. Who is the room billed to?” she again asked.

“To her, to Ms. Crispin. She came in and stopped by the desk around eleven-forty-five last night. Again, I wasn’t here. I got here a few minutes later.”

“Why would she stop by the desk if she’d been a guest here since October?” Scarpetta asked. “Why wouldn’t she just go straight up to her room?”

“The hotel uses magnetic key cards,” Curtis said. “No doubt you’ve had the experience of not using your card for a while and it doesn’t work. Whenever new keys are made, we have a record of it on the computer, which includes the checkout date. Ms. Crispin had two new keys made for her.”

This was more than a little perplexing. Scarpetta asked Curtis to think about what he was suggesting for a moment. If Carley had a friend-Dr. Warner Agee-staying in her room, she wouldn’t leave him with an expired key.

“If he’s not registered or paying the bill,” she explained, “he wouldn’t have the authority to have a new key issued if the old one expired because the checkout date encoded on it had been exceeded. He couldn’t extend the reservation himself, I would assume, if he’s not the one paying the bill and his name isn’t even on the reservation.”

“That’s true.”

“Then maybe we can conclude her key wasn’t expired, and maybe that’s not really why she had two new ones made,” Scarpetta said. “Did she do anything else when she stopped by the front desk last night?”

“If you’ll give me a moment. Let me see what I can find out.” He got on his phone and made a call. He said to someone, “Do we know if Ms. Crispin was locked out of her room, or did she simply stop by the desk for new keys? And if so, why?” He listened. Then he said, “Of course. Yes, yes, if you would do that right now. I’m sorry to wake him up.” He waited.

A call was being made to the desk clerk who would have dealt with Carley late last night, someone who probably was at home, asleep. Curtis kept apologizing to Scarpetta for making her wait. He was getting increasingly distressed, dabbing his brow with a handkerchief and clearing his throat often. Marino’s voice drifted out of the room, and she could hear him walking around. He was talking to someone on the phone, but Scarpetta couldn’t make out what he was saying.

The manager said, “Yes. I’m still here.” Nodding his head. “I see. Well, that makes sense.” He tucked his phone back in the pocket of his tweed jacket. “Ms. Crispin came in and went straight to the desk. She said she hadn’t been to the hotel for a while and worried her key wouldn’t work and her friend was hard of hearing. She worried he might not hear her if she knocked on the door. You see, her reservation was month-to-month, and the last time she renewed it was November twentieth, meaning the key would have expired tomorrow, Saturday. So the reservation needed to be extended if she intended to keep the room, and she went ahead and renewed it and was given two new keys.”

“She extended the reservation until January twentieth?”

“Actually, she extended it only through the weekend. She said she likely would be checking out of the room on Monday the twenty-second,” Curtis said, staring at the partially opened door of room 412.

Scarpetta could hear Marino moving around in there.

“He never saw her leave,” Curtis added. “The person working the desk when she came in saw her take the elevator up, but he didn’t see her come back down. And I certainly haven’t seen her, either, as I’ve said.”

“Then she must have taken the stairs,” Scarpetta said. “Because she’s not here and neither is her friend, presumably Dr. Agee. To your knowledge, when Ms. Crispin has been here in the past, has she ever taken the stairs?”

“Most people don’t. I’ve never heard anyone mention she did. Now, some of our high-profile guests try to be very discreet about their comings and goings. But frankly, Ms. Crispin doesn’t seem to be what I’d call shy.”

Scarpetta thought about the hair clippings in the sink. She wondered if Carley had let herself into the room and might have seen what was in the bathroom. Or maybe Agee was still in the room when she showed up to drop off Scarpetta’s stolen BlackBerry. Had they left together? Both of them taking the stairs and leaving Scarpetta’s stolen BlackBerry in the room? Scarpetta envisioned Agee with his shaved face and head and no hearing aids and possibly no glasses, sneaking down the stairs with Carley Crispin. It didn’t make sense. Something else had happened.

“Does your hotel’s computer system keep a log for when rooms are entered and exited by using these magnetic key cards?” Scarpetta thought it unlikely but asked anyway.

“No. Most hotel systems, at least none I know of, would not have something like that. Nor do they have information on the cards.”

“No names, addresses, credit card numbers. Nothing like that encoded on the cards,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” he replied. “Stored on the computer but not the card. The cards open the doors and that’s all. We don’t have logs. In fact, most hotel cards, at least ones I’m familiar with, don’t even have the room number encoded on them, no information of any sort except the checkout date.” He looked at room 412 and said, “I guess you didn’t find anybody. Nobody’s in there.”

“Detective Marino is in there.”

“Well, I’m glad,” Curtis said, relieved. “I didn’t want to think the worst about Ms. Crispin or her friend.”

He meant he didn’t want to think one or both of them were dead inside that room.

“You don’t need to wait up here,” Scarpetta told him. “We’ll let you know when we’re done. It may be a while.”

The room was quiet when she walked back in and shut the door. Marino had turned off the TV and was standing in the bathroom, holding the BlackBerry in a gloved hand, staring at what was all over the sink and the marble countertop and the floor.

“Warner Agee,” she said, pulling on the gloves Marino had given to her earlier. “That’s who’s been staying in this room. Probably not Carley, probably not ever. It would appear she showed up last night around eleven-forty-five, my guess, for the express purpose of giving Warner Agee my BlackBerry. I need to borrow yours. I can’t use mine.”

“If that’s who did this, not good,” Marino said, entering the password on his BlackBerry, handing it to her. “I don’t like that. Shaving off all your hair and walking out with no hearing aids or glasses.”

“When’s the last time you checked OEM, SOD? Anything going on we should know?” She was interested in any updates from the Office of Emergency Management or the Special Operations Division.

Marino got a strange look on his face.

“I can check,” she added. “But not if someone’s in the hospital or been arrested or taken to a shelter or wandering the streets. I’m not going to know anything unless the person is dead and died in New York City.” She entered a number on Marino’s BlackBerry.

“The GW Bridge,” Marino said. “No way.”

“What about the bridge?” As the phone rang in the OCME’s Investigations Unit.

“The guy who jumped. Around two a.m. I watched it on a live feed when I was at RTCC. About sixty maybe, bald, no beard. A police chopper was filming the whole friggin’ thing.”

A medicolegal investigator named Dennis answered the phone.

“Need to check on what’s come in,” Scarpetta said to him. “We get a case from the GW Bridge?”

“Sure did,” Dennis said. “A witnessed descent. ESU tried to talk him down, but he didn’t listen. They do have it all on video. The police chopper filmed it, and I said we’d want a copy.”

“Good thinking. Do we have any thoughts on an ID?”

“The officer I talked to said they got nothing to go on about that. A white male, maybe in his fifties, his sixties. He had no personal effects that might tell us who he is. No wallet, no phone. You’re not going to get a good visual on him. He looks pretty bad. I think the drop from where he was on the bridge is at least a couple hundred feet. You know, like a twenty-story building. You aren’t going to want to show anyone his picture.”

“Do me a favor,” Scarpetta said. “Go downstairs and check his pockets. Check anything that might have come in with him. Take a photo and upload it to me. Call me back while you’re still with the body.” She gave him Marino’s number. “Any other unidentified white males?”

“None that no one has a clue about. We think we know who everybody is so far. Another suicide, a shooting, a pedestrian hit, an OD, guy came in with pills still in his mouth. That’s a first for me. Anybody in particular you’re looking for?”

“We might have a missing psychiatrist. Warner Agee.”

“Why does that sound sort of familiar? Nobody with that name, though.”

“Go check the jumper and call me right away.”

“He looked familiar,” Marino said. “I was watching it happen while I was sitting there, and I kept thinking he looked familiar.”

Scarpetta walked back in the bathroom and picked up the key card on top of the vanity, holding it by its edges.

“Let’s dust it. And the one on the coffee table. We’ll want to get some of the hair and his toothbrush, whatever’s needed for an ID. Let’s do it now while we’re here.”

Marino put on a fresh pair of gloves and took the key card from her. He started dusting it while she picked up her BlackBerry and checked her visual voicemail. There were eleven new calls since she’d used her phone at seven-fifteen last night when she’d talked to Grace Darien before heading over to CNN. Since then, Mrs. Darien had tried to call three more times, between ten and eleven-thirty p.m., no doubt because of what was all over the news, thanks to Carley Crispin. The other eight new calls were listed as Unknown, the first one at five past ten p.m., the last one at close to midnight. Benton and Lucy. He’d tried to reach her while she was walking home with Carley, and Lucy probably had tried after hearing the news about the bomb scare. Scarpetta could tell by the green icons next to the new voicemails that none had been accessed, and they could have been. Visual voicemail didn’t require the telephone subscriber’s password, only the BlackBerry’s password, which, of course, was disabled.

Marino changed gloves again and started on the second hotel key card as Scarpetta debated whether she should access her new voicemails remotely, borrowing his phone. She was especially interested in those left by Mrs. Darien, whose distress would be unimaginable after hearing about the yellow taxi and the bogus information about Hannah Starr’s hair being found in one. Mrs. Darien probably thought what a lot of people would, that her daughter had been killed by some predator who also had killed Hannah, and if the police had released information sooner, maybe Toni never would have gotten into a cab. Don’t be stupid again, Scarpetta thought. Don’t open any files until Lucy gets here. She scrolled through instant messages and e-mails. Nothing new had been read.

She wasn’t seeing any evidence that anyone had looked at what was on her BlackBerry, but she couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t possible for her to tell if someone had looked at PowerPoint presentations or scene photographs or any files she’d already perused. But she had no reason to believe Warner Agee had gotten around to looking at what was on her BlackBerry, and that was perplexing. Certainly he would have been curious about phone messages left by the mother of the murdered jogger. What rich information for Carley to leak on her show. Why hadn’t he? If Carley had gotten here around eleven-forty-five, he wasn’t dead by then, assuming he was the man on the GW Bridge some two and a half hours later. Depression and not caring anymore, she thought. Maybe that was it.

Marino was finished with the key cards, and she got another pair of gloves from him, their used ones a tidy pile on the floor, like magnolia petals. She took the key that had been on the bathroom vanity and tried it on the room door. The light flashed yellow.

“Nope,” she said, and she tried the other key that had been on the coffee table near her BlackBerry, and the light flashed green and the lock made a promising click. “The new one,” she said. “Carley left my BlackBerry and a new key for him and must have kept a key for herself.”

“The only thing I can think of is he wasn’t here,” Marino said, using a Sharpie to label an evidence bag he neatly arranged with others inside his field case.

Scarpetta was reminded of the old days when he used to deposit evidence, a victim’s personal effects, police equipment, in whatever was handy, usually walking out of a crime scene with multiple brown-paper grocery bags or recycled boxes that he would slam shut in the Bermuda Triangle of a trunk that might also have fishing gear, a bowling ball, and a case of beer in it. Somehow he’d managed to never lose or contaminate anything that mattered, and she could recall but a few instances when his lack of discipline posed so much as a minor setback in a case. Mostly he’d always been a threat to himself and anyone who depended on him.

“She shows up and stops by the desk because she doesn’t have much choice. She needs to make sure she has a key that works, and she wants to change the reservation, then upstairs she lets herself in and finds him gone.” Marino was trying to figure out what Carley had done when she’d gotten here last night. “Unless she decided to use the john while she was here, no reason for her to notice what was in there. All his hair, his hearing aids. Me, personally? I don’t think she saw all that or him. I think she left your phone and a new key and then snuck out, taking the stairs, wanting to draw as little attention to herself as possible because she was up to no good.”

“So maybe he was out for a while, wandering around.” Scarpetta’s mind was on Agee. “Thinking about it. Thinking about what he intended to do. Assuming he did something tragic.”

Marino snapped shut his field case as his phone rang. Looking at the display, he handed it to Scarpetta. It was the office.

“Nothing in his pockets, which were inside out,” Dennis said. “From the police already going through them, looking for something that might ID him, contraband, a weapon, whatever. They put a few things in a bag, some loose change and what looks like a really small remote control. Maybe something that goes to a boom box or satellite radio?”

“Does it have a manufacturer’s name on it?” Scarpetta asked.

“Siemens,” and Dennis spelled it.

Someone started knocking on the door, and Marino answered it as Scarpetta said to Dennis, “Can you tell if the remote’s turned on?”

“Well, there’s a little window, you know, a display.”

Lucy walked in, handing Marino a manila envelope and taking off her black leather bomber jacket. She was dressed for flying, in cargo pants, a tactical shirt, and lightweight boots with rubber soles. Slung over her shoulder was the dark earth-colored PUSH pack, Practical Utility Shoulder Hold-all, that she carried everywhere, an off-duty bag with multiple mesh and stash pockets and pouches, and probably in one of them a gun. She slipped the pack off her shoulder, unzipped the main compartment, and slid out a MacBook.

“There should be a power button,” Scarpetta said, watching Lucy open her computer as Marino directed her attention to Scarpetta’s BlackBerry, the two of them talking in low voices that Scarpetta blocked out. “Press it until you think you’ve turned off the remote,” she instructed Dennis. “Did you send a photo?”

“You should have it. I think this thing’s off now.”

“Then it must have been on while in his pocket,” Scarpetta said.

“I’m thinking it was.”

“If it had been, the police wouldn’t have seen anything in the display that would identify him. You don’t see messages like that until you power up whatever it is. Which is what you need to do now. Hold the button down again to power it up and see if you get any sort of system message. Similar to when you power up your phone and your number appears on the display. I think the remote you have belongs to a hearing aid. Actually, two hearing aids.”

“There’s no hearing aids with the body,” Dennis told her. “Of course, they probably would come off when you jump from a bridge.”

“Lucy?” Scarpetta said. “Can you log on to my office e-mail and open a file just sent? A photograph. You know my password. It’s the same one you enabled for my BlackBerry.”

Lucy placed her computer on the console under the wall-mounted TV. She started typing. An image appeared on the computer screen, and she dug into her pack and pulled out a VGA adapter and a display cable. She plugged the adapter into one of the computer’s ports.

“I got something in the display. If lost, please contact Dr. Warner Agee.” And Dennis recited a phone number. “Now, that’s something.” His excited voice in Scarpetta’s ear. “That makes my night. What’s two-oh-two? Isn’t that the area code for Washington, D.C.?”

“Call the number and let’s see what happens.” Scarpetta had a pretty good idea.

Lucy was plugging the cable into the side of the wall-mounted TV when the cell phone rang on the bed inside the hotel room. The ringtone was loud, Bach’s Fugue in D Minor, and a gory image of a dead body on a gurney filled the flat screen on the wall.

“That’s the guy on the bridge,” Marino said, walking closer to the TV. “I recognize the clothes he had on.”

The black body pouch was unzipped and spread wide, the shaved and beardless face covered with dark dried blood and deformed beyond recognition. The top of his head was fragmented, blood and brain extruding from the torn tissue edges of his badly lacerated scalp. His left mandible was fractured in at least one place, his jaw gaping and crooked, bared lower teeth bloody and broken and some of them gone, and his left eye was almost completely avulsed, the orb barely attached to the socket. The dark jacket he had on was torn at the shoulder seams, and his left trouser seam was split, and the jagged end of his femur protruded from torn khaki fabric like a snapped-off stick. His ankles were bent at unnatural angles.

“He landed feetfirst and then hit on his left side,” Scarpetta said as the cell phone stopped ringing on the bed and Bach’s Fugue quit. “I suspect his head struck some abutment on the bridge on his way down.”

“He had on a watch,” Dennis said over the phone. “It’s in the bag with the other effects. Smashed. An old silver metal Bulova on a stretch band that stopped at two-eighteen. I guess we know his time of death. You want me to call the police with the info?”

“I have the police with me,” Scarpetta said. “Thank you, Dennis. I’ll take care of it from here.”

She ended the call, and Marino’s BlackBerry started ringing as she was handing it back to him. He answered and started walking around.

“Okay,” he said, looking at Scarpetta. “But it will probably be just me.” He got off the phone and told her, “Lobo. He just got to Rodman’s Neck. I need to head out.”

“I’ve barely gotten started here,” she said. “His cause and manner of death aren’t going to be hard. It’s the rest of it.”

The autopsy she needed to perform on Dr. Warner Agee was a psychological one, and her niece might just need one, too. Scarpetta retrieved her kit bag from where she’d left it on the carpet against the wall, just inside the door. She pulled out a transparent plastic evidence bag that had a FedEx envelope and Dodie Hodge’s singing Christmas card inside. Scarpetta hadn’t looked at the card. She hadn’t listened to it. Benton had given it to her when she’d left without him earlier this morning.

She said to Marino, “You probably should take this with you.”