Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

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.