Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“NGI. Next Generation Identification. Still in development.”

“But up and running, I hear.” The person Marino had heard it from was Lucy.

“We’re talking extremely advanced technology that’s spread over a multiyear time frame. I know the early phases have been implemented, which includes IAFIS, CODIS, I think the Interstate Photo System, IPS. Not really sure what else, you know, with the economy being what it is. A lot of stuff’s been cut back.”

“Well, I hear they got a tattoo database,” Marino said.

“Oh, sure.”

“So I say we cast a bigger net in our hunt and do a national, maybe even international, search on this FedEx shitbag,” Marino suggested. “That’s assuming you can’t search the FBI database, their NGI, from here.”

“No way. We don’t share. But I’ll shoot them your tattoo. No problem. Well, he’s not on the bridge anymore.” Petrowski meant the jumper. Was finally curious but only in a bored way.

“That can’t be good.” Marino looked at the flat screen, realizing he’d missed the big moment. “Shit. I see the ESU guys but not him.”

“There he is.”

Helicopter searchlights moving over the jumper on the ground, a distant image of his body on the pavement. He’d missed the air bag.

“The ESU guys are going to be pissed” was Petrowski’s summary of the situation. “They hate it when that happens.”

“What about you send the FBI this photo with the tattoo”-looking at the alleged FedEx guy on the data wall-“while we try a couple other searches. FedEx. Maybe FedEx uniform, FedEx cap. Anything FedEx,” Marino said.

“We can do that.” Petrowski started typing.

The hourglass returned to the data wall, twirling. Marino noticed the wall-mounted flat screen had gone black, the police helicopter video feed terminated because the jumper was terminated. He suddenly had an idea why the jumper looked familiar, an actor he’d seen, what was the movie? The police chief who got in trouble with a hooker? What the hell was the movie? Marino couldn’t think of the name. Seemed to happen a lot these days.

“You ever seen that movie with Danny DeVito and Bette Midler? What the hell was it called?” Marino said.

“I got no idea.” Petrowski watched the hourglass and the reassuring message, Your report is running. “What’s a movie got to do with anything?”

“Everything’s got to do with something. I thought that was the point of this joint.” Marino indicated the big blue room.

Eleven records found.

“Now we’re cooking,” Marino said. “Can’t believe I ever used to hate computers. Or the dipshits who work with them.”

In the old days, he did hate them and enjoyed ridiculing the people who worked with them. No longer. He was becoming quite accustomed to uncovering critical information through what was called “link analysis,” and transmitting it electronically almost instantly. He’d grown quite fond of rolling up on a scene to investigate an incident or interview a complainant and already knowing what a person of interest had done in the past and to whom and what he looked like, who he associated with or was related to, and if he was dangerous to himself or to others. It was a brave new world, Marino liked to say, referencing a book he’d never read but maybe would one of these days.

Petrowski was displaying records on the data wall. Reports on assaults, robberies, a rape, and two shootings in which FedEx was either a reference to packages stolen, words uttered, occupations, or in one case, a fatal pit bull attack. None of the data associated with any of the reports were useful until Marino was looking at a Transit Adjudication Bureau summons, a TAB summons from this past August first, big as life on the data wall. Marino read the last name, the first name, the Edgewater, New Jersey, address, the sex, race, height, and weight.

“Well, what do you know. Look who popped up. I was going to have you run her next,” he said as he read the details of the violation:

Subject was observed boarding a NY Transit bus at Southern Boulevard and East 149th Street at 1130 hours and became argumentative with another passenger the subject claimed had taken her seat. Subject began to yell at the passenger. When this officer approached the subject and told her to stop yelling and sit down, she stated, “You can just FedEx your ass to hell because it’s not me who did anything. That man over there is a rude son of a bitch.”

“Doubt she’s got a skull tattoo,” Petrowski said ironically. “Don’t think she’s your man with the package.”

“Fucking unbelievable,” Marino said. “You print that out for me?”

“You should count how many times per hour you say ‘fuck.’ In my house, would cost you a lot of quarters.”

“Dodie Hodge,” Marino said. “The fucking loony tune who called CNN.”

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.