Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

Agee got off the bed to retrieve his full-shell hearing aids from the bathroom counter, and he looked in the mirror at his bearded face, his receding gray hair, the person staring back at him both familiar and strange. He knew himself and he didn’t. Who are you anymore? Opening a drawer, he noticed scissors and a razor, and he placed them on a small towel that was beginning to smell sour, and he turned on his hearing aids and the telephone was ringing. Someone complaining about the TV again. He lowered the volume, and CNN went from what had been barely discernible white noise to moderately loud noise that for people with normal hearing would be quite loud and jarring. He returned to the bed to begin his preparations, retrieving two cell phones, one a Motorola with a Washington, D.C., number that was registered to him, the other a disposable Tracfone he’d paid fifteen dollars for at a touristy electronics store in Times Square.

He paired his hearing aid’s Bluetooth remote with his Motorola cell phone and on his laptop logged on to the Web-based caption-telephone service. He clicked on Incoming Calls at the top of the screen and typed in his D.C. cell phone number. Using the disposable phone, he dialed the 1-800 number for the service, and after the tone was prompted to enter the ten-digit number he wanted to call-his D.C. cell phone number, followed by the pound sign.

The disposable phone in his right hand called the Motorola cell phone in his left, and it rang, and he answered it, holding it against his left ear.

“Hello?” In his normal deep voice, a voice both pleasant and reassuring.

“It’s Harvey.” In a nervous tenor voice, the voice of someone young, someone very upset. “Are you alone?”

“Yes, I’m alone. How are you? You sound distressed,” Agee said.

“I wish I hadn’t seen it.” The tenor voice faltering, about to cry. “Do you understand? I didn’t want to see something like that, to be involved. I should have stopped my car. I should have tried to help. What if she was still alive when I saw her being dragged out of the yellow cab?”

“Tell me exactly what you saw.”

Agee talking reasonably, rationally, comfortably settled into his role of psychiatrist, rotating the phones back and forth to his left ear as his conversation with himself was transcribed in real time by a captioner he’d never met or spoken to, someone identified only as operator 5622. Bold black text appeared in the Web browser window on Agee’s computer screen as he talked in two different voices on two different phones, interjecting mutterings and noises that sounded like a bad connection while the captioner transcribed only the impersonated Harvey Fahley’s dialogue:

“… When the investigator was talking to me she said something about the police knowing Hannah Starr is dead because of hair recovered, head hair that’s decomposed. (unclear) From where? Uh, she didn’t, the investigator didn’t say. Maybe they already know about a cabdriver because Hannah was seen getting into one? Maybe they know a lot they’ve not released because of the implication, how bad it would be for the city. Yes, exactly. Money. (unclear) But if Hannah’s decomposing head hair was found in a cab and nobody released that information, (unclear) bad, really bad. (unclear) Look, I’m losing you. (unclear) And I shouldn’t be talking anyway. I’m really scared. I need to get off the phone.”

Warner Agee ended the call and highlighted the text, copying it onto a clipboard and pasting it into a Word document. He attached the file to an e-mail that would land on Carley’s iPhone in a matter of seconds:

Carley:

Appended is a transcript of what a witness just told me in a phone interview. As Usual: Not for publication or release, as we must protect my source’s identity. But I hereby offer the transcript as proof in the event the network is questioned.-Warner

He clicked on send.

The set of The Crispin Report brought to mind a black hole. Black acoustical tile, a black table and black chairs on a black floor beneath a train yard of black-painted light rigs. Scarpetta supposed the implication was hard news sobriety and credible drama, which was CNN’s style and exactly what Carley Crispin didn’t offer.

“DNA isn’t a silver bullet,” Scarpetta said, live on the air. “Sometimes it isn’t even relevant.”

“I’m shocked.” Carley, in hot pink that clashed with her coppery hair, was unusually animated tonight. “The most trusted name in forensics doesn’t believe DNA is relevant?”

“That’s not what I said, Carley. The point I’m making is the same one I’ve been making for two decades: DNA isn’t the only evidence and doesn’t take the place of a thorough investigation.”

“Folks, you heard it right here!” Carley’s face, filler-plumped and paralyzed by Botox, stared into the camera. “DNA’s not relevant.”

“Again, that’s not what I said.”

“Dr. Scarpetta. Now, let’s be honest. DNA is relevant. In fact, DNA could end up being the most relevant evidence in the Hannah Starr case.”

“Carley…?”

“I’m not going to ask you about it,” Carley interrupted with a raised hand, trying a new ploy. “I’m citing Hannah Starr as an example. DNA could prove she’s dead.”

In studio monitors: the same photograph of Hannah Starr that had been all over the news for weeks. Barefoot and beautiful, a low-cut white sundress, on a sidewalk by the beach, smiling wistfully before a backdrop of palm trees and a variegated blue sea.

“And that’s what a lot of people in the criminal-justice community have decided,” Crispin continued. “Even if you’re not going to admit it in public. And by not admitting the truth”-she was beginning to sound accusatory-“you’re allowing dangerous conclusions to be made. If she’s dead, shouldn’t we know it? Shouldn’t Bobby Fuller, her poor husband, know it? Shouldn’t a formal homicide investigation be opened and warrants gotten?”

In the monitors, another photo that had been in circulation for weeks: Bobby Fuller and his tooth-whitened grin, in tennis clothes, in the cockpit of his four-hundred-thousand-dollar red Porsche Carrera GT.

“Isn’t it true, Dr. Scarpetta?” Carley said. “In theory, couldn’t DNA prove somebody’s dead? If you had DNA from hair recovered from some location, such as a vehicle, for example?”

“It’s not possible for DNA to prove a person is dead,” Scarpetta said. “DNA is about identity.”

“DNA could certainly tell us that the source of the hair found in a vehicle, for example, is Hannah.”

“I’m not going to comment.”

“And furthermore, if her hair showed evidence of decomposition.”

“I can’t discuss the facts of this case.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Carley said. “What is it you don’t want us to know? Maybe the inconvenient truth that experts like you might just be wrong about what really happened to Hannah Starr?”

Another recycled image on the monitors: Hannah in a Dolce & Gabbana suit, her long blond hair pulled back, glasses on, sitting at a Biedermeier desk in a corner office overlooking the Hudson.

“That her tragic disappearance might just be something entirely different from what everyone, including you, has assumed.” Carley’s questions, stated as facts, were taking on the tone of an F. Lee Bailey cross-examination.

“Carley, I’m a medical examiner in New York City. I’m sure you understand why I can’t have this conversation.”

“Technically, you’re a private contractor, not a New York City employee.”

“I’m an employee and answer directly to the chief medical examiner of New York City,” Scarpetta said.

Another photo: the 1950s blue brick façade of the NYC chief medical examiner’s office.