The Scarpetta Factor

2

Pete Marino was unsettled as he looked around the studio apartment, trying to read its personality and mood, trying to intuit what it had to tell him.

Scenes were like dead people. They had a lot to say if you understood their silent language, and what bothered him right away was that Toni Darien’s laptop and cell phone were gone, their chargers still plugged into the wall. What continued to nag at him was that there was nothing else that seemed to be missing or disturbed, the police by now of the opinion that her apartment had nothing to do with her murder. Yet he sensed someone had been in here. He didn’t know why he sensed it, one of those feelings he got at the back of his neck, as if something was watching him or trying to get his attention and he couldn’t see what it was.

Marino stepped back out into the hallway, where a uniformed NYPD cop was babysitting the apartment, no one allowed to go in unless Jaime Berger said so. She wanted the apartment sealed until she was satisfied she needed nothing more from it, had been adamant on the phone with Marino but also talking out of both sides of her mouth. Don’t get too hung up on her apartment, and treat it like the crime scene. Well, which was it? Marino had been around the block too many times to pay much attention to anyone, including his boss. He did his own thing. As far as he was concerned, Toni Darien’s apartment was a scene, and he was going to turn it inside out.

“Tell you what,” Marino said to the cop outside the door, his last name Mellnik. “Maybe give Bonnell a call. I need to talk to her about the missing laptop, the cell phone, make sure she didn’t take them.”

Bonnell was the NYPD case investigator who’d already been through the apartment earlier today with the Crime Scene Unit.

“What, you don’t got a phone?” Mellnik was leaning against the wall in the dimly lit hallway, a folding chair nearby at the top of the stairs.

When Marino left, Mellnik would move the chair back inside the apartment and sit until he needed a bathroom break or his replacement showed up for midnight shift. A fucking lousy job. Somebody had to do it.

“You’re so busy?” Marino said to him.

“Just because I’m hanging around with my thumb up my ass doesn’t mean I’m not busy. I’m busy thinking.” Tapping his gelled black hair, a short guy built like a bullet. “I’ll track her down, but like I was telling you? When I got here, the guy I relieved talked my ear off about it, about what the crime scene guys were saying. Like where’s her phone? Where’s her laptop? But they don’t think someone came in here and took them. No evidence of that. I think it’s pretty fucking obvious what happened to her. Why do people still jog in the park at night, especially females? Go figure.”

“And the door was locked when Bonnell and the crime scene guys got here?”

“I told you, the super unlocked it, a guy named Joe, lives on the first floor, other end.” Pointing. “You can see for yourself. There’s no sign somebody jimmied the lock, broke in. The door was locked, the shades down in the windows, everything undisturbed, normal. That’s what I was told by the guy here before me, and he witnessed what Crime Scene did, the whole thing.”

Marino was studying the doorknob, the deadbolt, touching them with his gloved hands. He got a flashlight out of his pocket, looking carefully, not seeing any obvious signs of forced entry. Mellnik was right. Nothing appeared damaged or recently scratched.

Marino said, “Find Bonnell for me, get the dispatcher too so I can get it from her direct. Because I’m going to be asked about it fifty times when the boss is back in town, if not sooner. Most people who take their laptops off-site also take the charger. That’s bothering me.”

“Crime Scene would have taken the charger if they took the computer. They didn’t take nothing,” Mellnik said. “Maybe the victim had an extra charger, that occur to you? If she took her laptop somewhere and had a charger at that location or, you know, just an extra one. That’s what I think happened.”

“I’m sure Berger will send you a handwritten thank-you for your hearsay opinion.”

“What’s it like working for her?”

“The sex is pretty good,” said Marino. “If she’d just give me a little more time to recover. Five, ten times a day, and even I get tuckered out.”

“Yeah, and I’m Spider-Man. From what I hear, men aren’t what wind her clock. I look at her and go, no way. Must be a vicious rumor because she’s powerful, right? Any woman who’s got her kind of power and prominence? You know what they say, doesn’t mean it’s true. Don’t get my girlfriend on the subject. She’s a firefighter. So right off, she’s either a lesbo or wearing a swimsuit in a calendar, that’s the assumption.”

“No shit. She in the Female Firefighters calendar? This year’s? I’ll order me a copy.”

“I said it was an assumption. So, my question. Is it an assumption about Jaime Berger? I got to admit, I’d love to know. It’s all over the Internet about her and Dr. Scarpetta’s-what is it, her daughter, her niece? The girl who used to be FBI and now does all Berger’s computer investigative stuff. I mean, does Jaime Berger hate men and that’s what motivates her to lock them up? Almost always it’s men she locks up, that is true. Not that females commit most sex crimes, but still. If anybody would know the real story, I guess it would be you.”

“Don’t wait for the movie. Read the book.”

“What book?” Mellnik sat down in his folding chair, slipped his phone out of the holder on his duty belt. “What book you talking about?”

“Maybe you should write it, you’re so curious.” Marino looked down the length of the hallway, brown carpet, dingy tan-painted walls, a total of eight units up here on the second floor.

“Like I was saying, I’ve been thinking I don’t want to do shit work like this all my life, maybe I should go into investigations, you know.” Mellnik kept on talking as if Marino was interested and they’d been friends for years. “Get assigned to Jaime Berger’s office like you, as long as she’s not a man-hater, that goes without saying. Or maybe to the FBI’s Joint Bank Robbery Task Force or Terrorism or something, where you go to a real office every day, get a take-home car, get treated with respect.”

“There’s no doorman,” Marino said. “The way you get into this building is a key, or you have to buzz somebody to let you in, like you did for me when I showed up. Once in the common area where the mailboxes are, you got a choice. You turn left, walk past four apartments, including the super’s, and take the stairs. Or you turn right and walk past the laundry room, the maintenance and the mechanical-systems closets, and a storage area, and take those stairs. Up two flights and conveniently here you are, not even six feet from Toni’s door. If someone got in her apartment, maybe had keys for some reason, he could have come in and left and not necessarily been seen by the neighbors. You been sitting here how long?”

“Just got here at two. Like I said, there was another officer here before that. I think once the body was found, they dispatched someone right away.”

“Yeah, I know. Berger had a little something to do with that. How many people you seen, you know, residents?”

“Since I got here? Nobody.”

“You heard running water, people walking around, noise coming from any of the other units?” Marino asked.

“From where I’ve been, either right here at the top of the stairs or just inside the door? It’s been real quiet. But I only been here, what?” Looking at his watch. “About two hours.”

Marino tucked the flashlight back into his coat pocket. “Everybody’s out this time of day. Not the building for you if you’re retired or a shut-in. One thing, there’s no elevator, so if you’re old or crippled or sick, this is a bad choice. There’s no rent control and it’s not a co-op, not a close-knit community, no residents who have been here for a long time, the average stay a couple of years. A lot of singles and couples with no kids. Average age, twenties and thirties. There are forty units, eight of them empty at the moment, and my guess is there aren’t a lot of Realtors showing up and buzzing the super. Because the economy sucks, which is one reason there are so many empty apartments to begin with, all vacated within the last six months.”

“How the hell do you know? You got psychic abilities like the Medium?”

Marino pulled a wad of folded paper from a pocket. “RTCC. Got a list of every resident in this building, who they are, what they do, if they ever been arrested, where they work, where they shop, what kind of car if they own one, who they fuck.”

“I never been over there.” He meant the Real Time Crime Center, or what Marino thought of as the command bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise, the information-technology center at One Police Plaza that basically ran NYPD’s starship operations.

“No pets,” Marino added.

“What do pets have to do with it?” Mellnik yawned. “Since they switched me to evenings, I’m so whacked. Can’t sleep worth shit. My girlfriend and me are like ships in the night.”

“In buildings where people aren’t home during the day, who’s going to take out the dog?” Marino continued. “Rents here start around twelve hundred. These aren’t the type of tenants who can afford dog walkers or want to be bothered. Other thing about that? Brings me back to my point. Not much going on, no eyes or ears. Not during the day, like I’m saying. If it was me, that would be when I’d show up to get inside her apartment if I was up to no good. Do it in plain view, when the street, the sidewalk are busy but the inside of the building isn’t.”

“I remind you she wasn’t attacked up here,” Mellnik said. “She was murdered while she was jogging in the park.”

“Find Bonnell. Get started on your investigative training early. Maybe you’ll grow up to be Dick Tracy.”

Marino walked back inside the apartment, leaving the door open. Toni Darien had lived like a lot of people just getting started, in a tiny space that Marino seemed to completely fill, as if the world suddenly had shrunk all around him. About four hundred square feet, he guessed, not that his apartment in Harlem was a hell of a lot bigger, but at least he had a one-bedroom, didn’t sleep in the friggin’ living room, and he had a backyard, a patch of artificial grass and a picnic table he shared with his neighbors, not much to brag about but more civilized than this. When he’d first showed up about half an hour ago, he’d done what he always did at a crime scene-gotten an overview without looking at anything in detail.

Now he’d pay closer attention, starting with the entranceway, enough space to turn around in and that was about it, with a tiny rattan table. On it was a Caesars Palace souvenir ashtray, maybe for Toni’s keys, which had been on a silver dice keychain found in a pocket of the fleece she was wearing when she was killed. Maybe she was like her old man, liked to gamble. Marino had checked him out, Lawrence Darien, a couple DUIs, had declared bankruptcy, and a few years ago was implicated in an offshore gambling ring in Bergen County, New Jersey. There were hints of ties to organized crime, possibly the Genovese crime family, the charges dropped, the guy a scumbag, a loser, a former bioelectrical engineer from MIT who had walked out on his family, was a deadbeat dad. Just the sort to set up his daughter for getting involved with the wrong kind of guys.

Toni didn’t look like a drinker. So far, she didn’t strike Marino as the partying type or someone given to compulsions, in fact the opposite, controlled, ambitious, and hard-driven, a fitness freak, a health nut. On the rattan table just inside the door was a framed photograph of her running in a race, maybe a marathon. She was nice-looking, like a model, with long, dark hair, tall and on the thin side, a typical runner’s body, no hips, no tits, a look of fierce determination on her face, pumping hard on a road packed with other runners, people off to the side cheering. Marino wondered who had taken the picture and when.

A few steps beyond the entranceway was the kitchen. A two-burner stove, a refrigerator, a single sink, three cabinets, two drawers, everything white. On the counter was a stack of mail, none of it opened, as if she’d walked in with it and set it down and got busy with other things or just wasn’t interested. Marino looked through several catalogs and circulars with coupons, what he called junk mail, and a flyer on bright pink paper alerting residents in the building that the water would be shut off tomorrow, December 19, from eight a.m. until noon.

Nearby was a stainless-steel drain rack, and in it a butter knife, a fork, a spoon, a plate, a bowl, a coffee mug with a Far Side cartoon on it, the kid at “Midvale School for the Gifted” pushing on a door that reads “PULL.” The sink was empty and clean, a sponge and bottle of Dawn liquid detergent, no crumbs on the counter, no food stains, the hardwood floor spotless. Marino opened the cabinet under the sink, finding a small garbage can lined with a white plastic bag. Inside were a banana peel that was brown and smelled pungent, a few withered blueberries, a soy milk carton, coffee grounds, a lot of paper towels.

He shook open a few of them, detecting what smelled like honey and citrus, like lemon-scented ammonia, maybe furniture and glass cleaners. He noticed a spray bottle of lemon-scented Windex, a bottle of a wood preserver containing beeswax and orange oil. It seemed Toni was very industrious, maybe obsessive, and had been cleaning and straightening up when she was home last. What did she use the Windex on? Marino didn’t see anything glass. He walked to the far wall, peeked behind the shades, wiped his gloved finger over a pane of glass. The windows weren’t filthy, but they also didn’t appear to have been recently cleaned. Maybe she’d used the Windex to clean a mirror or something, or maybe somebody else had been cleaning in here, getting rid of fingerprints and DNA or thinking he was. Marino returned to the kitchen, which took him fewer than ten steps. The paper towels from the trash went into an evidence bag. Check them for DNA.

Toni had kept her cereal in the refrigerator, several boxes of whole-grain Kashi, more soy milk, blueberries, cheeses, yogurt, romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, a plastic container of pasta with what looked like a Parmesan sauce, maybe takeout, or maybe she’d eaten dinner somewhere and had carried the leftovers home. When? Last night? Or was the last meal she’d eaten inside her apartment a bowl of cereal with a banana and blueberries, and a pot of coffee-breakfast? She didn’t eat breakfast this morning, that was for damn sure. Did she eat breakfast here yesterday morning, then was gone all day and maybe ate dinner out, some Italian place? Then what? Came home, put her leftover pasta in the refrigerator, and at some point during the rainy night went jogging? He thought about her stomach contents, was curious what Scarpetta had found during the autopsy. He’d tried to reach her a couple of times this afternoon, had left her several messages.

The hardwood floor creaked under Marino’s big booted feet as he moved around, stepping back into the living area. Traffic on Second Avenue was loud, car engines and honking and people on the sidewalk. The constant noise and activity could have given Toni a false sense of security. It was unlikely she would have felt isolated here, one level above the street, but she probably kept her shades down after dark so no one could see in. Mellnik claimed the shades were down when Bonnell and the crime scene guys got here, suggesting the shades had been closed by Toni. When? If her last meal here had been yesterday morning, she didn’t bother opening her shades when she got up? She obviously liked to look out the windows, because she’d set a small table and two chairs between them. The table was clean, a single straw place mat on it, and Marino imagined her sitting there yesterday morning, eating her cereal. But with the shades down?

Between the windows was a flat-screen TV on a single-arm wall mount, a thirty-two-inch Samsung, the remote control on the coffee table near a love seat. Marino picked up the remote, pushed the power button to see what she’d been watching last. The TV blinked on to Headline News, one of the anchors talking about the murder of “a Central Park jogger whose name has not yet been released by the authorities,” cutting over to Mayor Bloomberg making a statement about it, then Police Commissioner Kelly, the usual things the politicians and people in charge said to reassure the public. Marino listened until the subject turned to the latest outrage over the bailout of AIG.

He set the remote back on the coffee table, exactly where he’d found it, pulled his notepad out of a pocket, wrote down the channel the TV had been on, wondering if the crime scene guys or Bonnell had noticed. Probably not. He wondered when Toni had been watching the news. Was that the first thing she did when she got up in the morning? Did she turn on the news during the day or watch it before she went to sleep? When she’d been watching the news last, where had she been sitting? The way the wall-mounted arm was tilted, the TV was facing the double bed. It was covered with a light-blue satin spread, three stuffed animals on the pillows: a raccoon, a penguin, and an ostrich. Marino wondered if someone had given them to her, maybe her mother, not likely from a boyfriend. They didn’t look like something a guy would give as a gift, unless maybe he was gay. Marino nudged the penguin with a glove-sheathed finger, looking at the tag, then checked the other two. Gund. He wrote it down.

Next to the bed was a table with a drawer. Inside were a nail file, a few double-A batteries, a small bottle of Motrin, a couple of old paperbacks, true crime: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: An American Nightmare and Ed Gein-Psycho. Marino wrote down the titles, flipped through each paperback, looking to see if Toni might have made notes, not finding any. Tucked between the pages of The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was a receipt dated November 18, 2006, when the paperback apparently had been purchased secondhand from Moe’s Books in Berkeley, California. A woman living alone reading scary shit like this? Maybe someone had given them to her. He put them in an evidence bag. They’d go to the labs, check them for prints, for DNA. Just a feeling he had.

To the left of the bed was the closet, the clothing inside it hip, sexy: leggings, tunic sweaters with bright designs, low-cut screen-print tops, spandex, a couple of sleek dresses. Marino didn’t recognize the labels, not that he was an expert in fashion design. Baby Phat, Coogi, Kensie Girl. On the floor were ten pairs of shoes, including Asics running shoes like she’d been wearing when she was murdered, and a pair of sheepskin Uggs for winter weather.

Linens were folded and stacked on an overhead shelf, next to a cardboard box, which he pulled down, looked inside it. DVDs, movies, mostly comedies and action, the Ocean’s Eleven series, another gambling theme. She liked George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Ben Stiller. Nothing very violent, nothing scary like the paperbacks by her bed. Maybe she didn’t buy DVDs anymore, watched movies, including horror if that was what she was into, on cable, had Pay-Per-View. Maybe she watched movies on her laptop. Where the hell was her laptop? Marino took photographs and more notes.

It had entered his mind that so far he hadn’t seen a winter coat. A few Windbreakers and a long red wool coat that looked out of style, maybe from high school, maybe a hand-me-down from her mother or someone, but what about a serious winter coat for when she walked around the city on a day like today? A parka, a ski jacket, something down-filled. There was plenty of casual wear, plenty of running clothes, including fleeces and shells, but what about when she went to work? What about when she went out on errands or to dinner or ran in really cold weather? No heavy winter coat had been found on or near her body, just a fleece, which struck Marino as incongruous with the miserable weather last night.

He stepped inside the only bathroom, turning on the light. A white sink, a white tub and shower combined, a blue shower curtain with fish on it and a white liner. Several framed photographs on the white tile walls, more pictures of her running, not the same race as in the other photograph he’d looked at in the entranceway. She had on different bib numbers, must run a lot of races, must really be into it, and also into perfume, had six bottles of different fragrances on the counter, designer brands. Fendi, Giorgio Armani, Escada, and he wondered if she had gotten them in a discount store, or maybe ordered them online for seventy percent off like he had done about a month ago, shopping early for Christmas.

Only now he was thinking it was a bad idea to give Georgia Bacardi a perfume called Trouble that he’d gotten for $21.10, a huge discount because it didn’t have a box. When he’d found it on eBay, it had seemed funny and flirty. Not so funny now, the two of them were having trouble, all right. So much trouble all they did was fight, their visits and phone calls less frequent, all the same warnings. History repeating itself. He’d never been in a relationship that lasted or he wouldn’t be seeing Bacardi to begin with, would be happily married, maybe still be with Doris.

He opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, knowing one of the first things Scarpetta would ask was what he’d found inside it. Motrin, Midol, athletic tape, Band-Aids, sterile cushions, a friction block stick for blisters, and a lot of vitamins. There were three prescriptions, all for the same thing but filled at different times, most recently right before Thanksgiving. Diflucan. Marino was no pharmacist, but he knew about Diflucan, knew what the hell it meant if the woman he liked was on it.

Maybe Toni had a chronic problem with yeast infections, maybe she was having sex a lot, or maybe it had to do with all the jogging she did. Wearing tights or fabrics that didn’t breathe, like patent leather or vinyl. Trapping moisture is the number-one enemy was what Marino had always been told, that and not washing laundry in hot enough water. He’d heard of women putting their panties in the microwave, and somebody he used to date back in his Richmond PD days had quit wearing them altogether, claiming that circulating air was the best prevention, which was fine by him. Marino took an inventory of everything in the medicine cabinet and under the sink, mostly cosmetics.

He was still in the bathroom, taking photographs, when Mellnik appeared, talking on his phone, indicating with a thumbs-up that he’d tracked down Detective Bonnell.

Marino took the phone from him and answered, “Yeah.”

“What can I help you with?” A woman’s voice, pleasant-sounding, low-pitched, the way Marino liked.

He didn’t know Bonnell, had never heard of her before today. That wasn’t necessarily surprising in a police department the size of the NYPD, some forty thousand cops, about six thousand of them detectives. Marino jerked his head at Mellnik, indicating for him to wait in the hall.

“I need some information,” Marino said over the phone. “I work with Berger and don’t think you and me have met.”

“I deal with ADAs directly,” she said. “Which is probably why you and I have never met.”

“Never heard of you. How long you been in Homicide?”

“Long enough to know better than to triangulate.”

“You a mathematician?”

“If Berger wants information, she can call me.”

Marino was used to people trying to bypass him to get to Berger. He was used to hearing all types of bullshit about why someone had to talk to her and couldn’t possibly talk to him. Bonnell hadn’t been in Homicide very long, or she wouldn’t be so pushy and defensive, or maybe she’d heard rumors, had decided without benefit of directly dealing with Marino that she didn’t like him.

“You know, she’s a little busy right now,” he said. “That’s why she’s got me answering questions for her, doesn’t want to start her day tomorrow with a phone call from the mayor wondering what the hell she’s doing to prevent further damage to the tourist industry, what’s left of it. A week before Christmas a jogger in Central Park gets raped and murdered, and maybe you change your mind about bringing the wife and kids here to see the Rockettes.”

“I guess she hasn’t talked to you.”

“Yeah, she’s talked to me. Why do you think I’m in Toni Darien’s apartment?”

“If Berger wants information from me, she’s got my number,” Bonnell said. “I’m happy to take care of whatever she needs.”

“Why are you giving me the runaround?” Marino was already pissed and he hadn’t been on the phone a minute yet.

“When did you talk to her last?”

“Why are you asking?” Something was going on. Something Marino didn’t know about.

“Maybe it would be helpful if you’d answer my question,” Bonnell said. “It works both ways. You ask me. I ask you.”

“You guys hadn’t even cleared the scene at the park this morning when I was talking to her. The second she was notified, she got on the phone with me, since she’s in charge of this friggin’ investigation.” Now Marino was the one sounding defensive. “I’ve been on the fucking phone with her on and off all day.”

Not exactly true. He’d talked to Berger three times, most recently about three hours ago.

“What I’m trying to say,” Bonnell continued, “is maybe you should be talking to her again instead of talking to me.”

“If I wanted to talk to her, I’d call her. I’m calling you because I’ve got questions. You got a problem with that?” Marino said, walking around the apartment, agitated.

“I might.”

“What’d you say your first name is? And don’t give me your initials.”

“L.A. Bonnell.”

Marino wondered what she looked like and how old she was. “Nice to meet you. I’m P.R. Marino. As in Public Relations, a special talent of mine. I’m just confirming you guys didn’t take in Toni Darien’s laptop and cell phone. That they weren’t here when you showed up.”

“They weren’t. Just the chargers.”

“Toni had a pocketbook or billfold? Other than a couple empty purses in her closet, I’m not seeing anything that she might have routinely carried. And I doubt she would have taken a purse or billfold with her when she was out jogging.”

A pause, then, “No. Didn’t see anything like that.”

“Well, that’s important. It would seem if she had a pocketbook, a billfold, they’re missing. You collect anything in here for the labs?”

“At present we’re not considering the apartment a crime scene.”

“Curious why you would absolutely rule it out, categorically decide it’s not connected in any shape or form. How do you know the person who killed her isn’t someone she knew? Someone who’s been inside her place?”

“She wasn’t killed inside it, and there’s no evidence it was broken into or anything’s been stolen or tampered with.” Bonnell said it like a press release.

“Hey. You’re talking to another cop, not the fucking media,” Marino said.

“The only thing unusual is her missing laptop and cell phone.

And maybe her pocketbook and billfold. Okay, I agree we need to figure that out,” Bonnell said in a less wooden tone. “We should get into details later, when Jaime Berger’s back and we can sit down.”

“Seems to me like maybe you should be more worried about Toni’s apartment, maybe worried someone might have gone into it and taken these things that are missing.” Marino wasn’t going to let it go.

“There’s nothing to say she didn’t take these items somewhere herself.” Bonnell definitely knew something she wasn’t going to tell him over the phone. “For example, she could have had her cell phone with her when she was running in the park last night and the perpetrator took it. Maybe when she went out running, she left from some other location, a friend’s house, a boyfriend’s house. Hard to know when she was home last. Hard to know a lot of things.”

“You’ve talked to witnesses?”

“What do you think I’ve been doing? Hanging out at the mall?” She was getting pissed off, too.

“Like here in the building,” Marino said, and after a pause that he interpreted as her unwillingness to answer, he added, “I’m going to be passing all this to Berger the minute I get off the phone from talking to you. I suggest you give me the details so I don’t have to tell her I had a problem with cooperation.”

“She and I don’t have a problem with cooperation.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way. I asked you a question. Who have you talked to?”

“A couple of witnesses,” Bonnell said. “A man who lives on her floor says he saw her come in late yesterday afternoon. Said he’d just gotten home from work and was on his way out to the gym and saw Toni come up the stairs. She unlocked her apartment door while he was walking in the hallway.”

“Walking in her direction?”

“There are stairs at either end of her hallway. He was taking the stairs near his apartment, not the stairs near hers.”

“So he didn’t get close, didn’t get a good look, is what you’re saying.”

“We should get into the details later. Maybe when you talk to Jaime again you can tell her all of us should sit down,” Bonnell answered.

“You need to be telling me the details now, and that’s indirectly a directive from her,” Marino said. “I’m trying to picture what you just described. The guy saw Toni from his end of the hallway, from about a hundred feet away. You talked to this witness yourself?”

“An indirect directive. That’s a new one. Yes, I talked to him myself.”

“His apartment number?”

“Two ten, three doors down from the victim’s, on the left. The other end of the hall.”

“So I’ll stop by on my way out,” Marino said, pulling out his folded report from RTCC, looking to see who lived in apartment 210.

“Don’t think he’s going to be there. Told me he was on his way out of town for a long weekend. He had a couple of overnight bags and a plane ticket. I’m a little concerned you’re off track.”

“What do you mean ‘off track’?” Goddamn it. What hadn’t he been told?

“I mean your info and mine might be different,” Bonnell replied. “I’m trying to tell you something, one of your indirect directives, and you’re not paying attention.”

“Let me share. I’ll tell you my info and maybe you’ll tell me yours. Graham Tourette,” Marino read from the RTCC data report. “Forty-one years old, an architect. My info is what I find out by taking the time to look. I got no idea where you’re getting your info, but it doesn’t appear to me you’re bothering to look.”

“Graham Tourette is who I talked to.” Bonnell wasn’t as prickly now. What she sounded was cautious.

“This Graham Tourette guy friendly with Toni?” Marino asked.

“Said he wasn’t. Said he didn’t even know her name, but he’s sure he saw her go into her apartment yesterday around six o’clock. He said she was carrying her mail. What looked like letters, magazines, and a flyer. I don’t like getting into all this over the phone, and my call waiting’s going crazy. I should go. When Jaime gets back, we’ll sit down.”

Marino hadn’t said anything about Berger being out of town. It was occurring to him that Bonnell had talked to her and wasn’t going to tell him what had been said. Berger and Bonnell knew something that Marino didn’t.

“What flyer?” he then asked.

“A flyer on bright pink paper. He said he recognized it from a distance because everyone got one that day-yesterday.”

“You check Toni’s mailbox when you were here?” Marino asked.

“The super opened it for me,” Bonnell said. “You’ve got to have a key. Her keys were in her pocket when she was found in the park. I’ll put it to you this way. We’ve got a sensitive situation on our hands.”

“Yeah, I know. Sexual homicides in Central Park tend to be sensitive situations. I saw the scene photographs, no thanks to you. Had to get them from the OCME, their death investigators. Three keys on a lucky-dice keychain that turned out not to be so lucky.”

“The mailbox was empty when I checked it this morning, when I was there with CSU,” Bonnell said.

“I got a home phone for this Tourette guy but no cell. Maybe e-mail me what you got on him in case I want to talk to him.” Marino gave her his e-mail address. “We need to take a look at what the security camera recorded. I’m assuming the building’s got one in front, or maybe there’s one nearby and we can take a look at who was coming and going. I think it would be a good idea for me to talk to some of my contacts at RTCC, ask them to link to that camera live.”

“What for?” Bonnell was sounding frustrated now. “We got a cop sitting in there twenty-four-seven. You think someone’s going to come back for more, saying where she lived is somehow connected to her murder?”

“Never know who decides to walk past,” Marino said. “Killers are curious, paranoid people. Sometimes they live across the friggin’ street or are the boy next door. Who the hell knows? Point being, if RTCC can link up live with whatever security camera network is involved, we can make sure we capture the video ourselves, make sure it doesn’t get accidentally recorded over. Berger will want the video, which is the bigger point. She’ll want the WAV file of the nine-one-one call made by whoever discovered the body this morning.”

“It wasn’t just one,” Bonnell replied. “Several people called as they drove past, thought they saw something. Since this has hit the news, the phones are ringing off the hook. We should talk. Let’s you and me talk. You’re not going to shut up, so we may as well have a face-to-face.”

“We’ll also be getting Toni’s phone records, getting into her e-mail,” Marino went on. “Hopefully there’ll be some logical explanation about the cell phone, the laptop, like maybe she left them at a friend’s house. Same thing with her pocketbook and billfold.”

“Like I said, let’s talk.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing.” Marino wasn’t going to let Bonnell call the shots. “Maybe someone will come forward, say Toni was visiting and went out for a run and never came back. We find her laptop and phone, we find her pocketbook and billfold, maybe I’ll feel a little better. Because I’m not feeling so good right this minute. You happen to notice the framed picture of her on the little table when you first come through her door?” Marino stepped into the entranceway, picked up the photograph again. “She’s running in a race, wearing bib number three forty-three. There are a couple others in the bathroom.”

“What about them?” Bonnell said.

“She’s not wearing headphones or an iPod in any of the pictures. And I’m not seeing anything like an iPod or Walkman in her apartment, either.”

“And?”

“And this is what I’m talking about. The danger of having your friggin’ mind made up,” Marino said. “Marathon runners, people into running races, aren’t allowed to listen to music. It’s prohibited. When I was living in Charleston, it was front-page news when they had the Marine Corps Marathon. They threatened to disqualify the runners if they showed up with headphones.”

“And this is leading to what point you’re trying to make?”

“If someone came up behind you and hit you in the back of the head, maybe you’d have a better chance of hearing it coming if you weren’t listening to music full blast. And it would appear that Toni Darien didn’t listen to music when she ran. Yet someone managed to come up behind her and whack her in the back of the head without her even turning around. That bother you at all?”

“You don’t know that the killer didn’t confront her and she turned away, ducked, or whatever to protect her face,” Bonnell said. “And she wasn’t hit exactly in the back of the head, sort of on the left side, behind her left ear. So maybe she’d started turning around, was reacting, but it was too late. Maybe you’re making some assumptions because you’re missing information.”

“Usually when people react and try to protect themselves, their reflex is to raise their arms, their hands, and then they get defense injuries,” Marino said. “She doesn’t have any in the scene photos I’ve looked at, but I’ve not talked to Scarpetta yet, and when I do I’ll confirm. It’s like Toni Darien had no idea and suddenly was on the ground. That seems a little unusual for someone running after dark, someone who maybe is used to being aware of her surroundings because she runs a lot and doesn’t wear headphones.”

“She was running in a race last night? What makes you think she never wore headphones? Maybe she had them on last night and the killer took her iPod, her Walkman.”

“Everything I know about serious runners is they don’t wear headphones whether they’re in a race or not, especially in the city. Just look around. Tell me any serious runners you see in New York who are wearing headphones so they can drift in the bike lane or get run over by drivers not paying attention or get mugged from behind.”

“You a runner?”

“Look. I don’t know what information you have that you’re obviously not sharing, but my information from eyeballing what’s under my nose is we should be careful about jumping to conclusions when we don’t know jack shit,” Marino said.

“I agree. The same thing I’m trying to convey to you, P.R. Marino.”

“What’s L.A. stand for?”

“Other than a city in California, nothing. You want to call me by something other than Bonnell or asshole, you can call me L.A.”

Marino smiled. Maybe she wasn’t hopeless. “Tell you what, L.A.,” he said. “I was going to head to High Roller Lanes in a few minutes. Why don’t you meet me there. You bowl?”

“I think you have to have an IQ less than sixty or they won’t rent you shoes.”

“More like seventy. I’m pretty good,” Marino said. “And I got my own shoes.”