Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“The same picture you e-mailed to yourself,” Lucy said. “Let me guess. You don’t remember. I’ll remind you. You e-mailed it to yourself the same day it appeared in the news online. You sent the article about the car accident to yourself. I find that very interesting.”

She clicked the photograph back on the wall-mounted flat screen. The photograph of Farrah Lacy in her cheerleading uniform. Hap Judd averted his eyes.

He said, “I don’t know anything about a car accident.”

“Family’s coming home from Marcus Garvey Memorial Park in Harlem,” Berger said. “A pretty Saturday afternoon in July 2004, some guy talking on his cell phone runs a red light on Lenox Avenue, T bones them.”

“I don’t remember,” Judd said.

“Farrah had what’s called a closed head injury, which is basically an injury to the brain caused by a nonpenetrating wound,” Berger said.

“I don’t remember. I just sort of remember her being there at the hospital.”

“Right. You remember Farrah being a patient in the hospital where you worked. On life support in the ICU. Sometimes you went into the ICU to draw blood, you remember that?” Berger asked him.

He didn’t reply.

“Isn’t it true that you had a reputation for being a skilled phlebotomist?” Berger asked.

“He could get blood from a stone,” Lucy said. “According to what one of the nurses said to Marino.”

“Who the hell’s Marino?”

Lucy shouldn’t have brought him up. Referencing Berger’s investigators or anyone she used in a case was her prerogative, not Lucy’s. Marino had talked to a few people at the hospital, over the phone and very carefully. It was a delicate situation. Berger felt a heightened sense of responsibility because of who the potential defendant was. Lucy clearly didn’t share her concerns, seemed to want Hap Judd ruined, maybe the same way she’d felt about the air traffic controller a few hours earlier and the linesman she reprimanded in the FBO. Berger had overheard every word through the bathroom door. Lucy was after blood, maybe not just Hap Judd’s blood, maybe a lot of people’s blood. Berger didn’t know why. She didn’t know what to think anymore.

“We have a lot of people looking into your situation,” Berger said to Judd. “Lucy’s been running you and all kinds of data through her computers for days.”

Not entirely true. Lucy had spent maybe one day on it remotely from Stowe. Once Marino had begun the process, the hospital was cooperative, e-mailing certain information without protest because it was a personnel issue, a matter pertaining to a former employee, and Marino had suggested as only he could that the more helpful Park General was, the more likely the matter could be resolved diplomatically, discreetly. Warrants and court orders and a former employee who was now famous, and the situation would be all over the news. Unnecessary when maybe nobody was going to be charged with anything in the end, and what a shame to put Farrah Lacy’s family through so much pain again, and wasn’t it pitiful the way everybody sued these days, Marino had said, or words to that effect.

“Let me refresh your memory,” Berger said to Hap Judd. “You went into the ICU, into the room next to Farrah’s on the night of July sixth, 2004, to draw blood from a different patient, this one quite elderly. She had terrible veins, so you volunteered to take care of her, since you could get blood from a stone.”

“I can show you her chart,” Lucy said.

Another bluff. Lucy could show no such thing. The hospital absolutely hadn’t given Berger’s office access to other patients’ confidential information.

“I can pull up the video of you going in there with your gloves on, with your cart, going into her room.” Lucy was unrelenting. “I can pull up video of every room you ever went into at Park General, including Farrah’s.”

“I never did. This is lies, all lies.” Judd was slumped down in his chair.

“You sure you didn’t go into her room that night while you were up there on the ICU?” Berger said. “You told Eric you did. You said you were curious about Farrah, that she was really pretty, that you wanted to see her naked.”

“Fucking lies. He’s a fucking liar.”

“He’ll say the same thing under oath on the witness stand,” Berger added.

“It was just talk. Even if I did, it was just to look. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“Sex crimes are about power,” Berger said. “Maybe it made you feel powerful to rape a helpless teenage girl who was unconscious and never going to tell, made you feel big and powerful, especially if you were a struggling actor who could barely get minor roles in soap operas back then. I imagine you were feeling pretty bad about yourself, sticking needles in the arms of sick, cranky people, mopping floors, getting ordered around by nurses, by anybody, really, you were so low on the food chain.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head side to side. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, it seems you did, Hap,” Berger said. “I’ll continue to refresh your memory with a few facts. July seventh, it was in the news that Farrah Lacy was going to be disconnected from life support. At the very time she was disconnected, you came to work even though the hospital hadn’t summoned you. You were a per-diem employee, only on duty when you were called. But the hospital didn’t call you on the afternoon of July seventh, 2004. You showed up anyway and took it upon yourself to clean the morgue. Mopping the floor, wiping down stainless steel, and this is according to a security guard who’s still there and happens to be in a video clip we’re about to show you. Farrah died and you headed straight up to the tenth floor, to the ICU, to wheel her body down to the morgue. Sound familiar?”

He stared at the brushed steel tabletop and didn’t reply. She couldn’t read his affect. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe he was calculating what he was going to say next.

“Farrah Lacy’s body was transported by you down to the morgue,” Berger repeated. “It was captured on camera. Would you like to see it?”

“This is fucked up. It’s not what you’re saying.” He rubbed his face in his hands.

“We’re going to show you that clip right now.”

A click of the mouse, and then another click and the video began: Hap Judd in scrubs and a lab coat, wheeling a gurney into the hospital morgue, stopping at the shut stainless-steel refrigerator door. A security guard entering, opening the refrigerator door, looking at the tag on top of the shroud covering the body, and saying, “What are they posting her for? She was brain-dead and had the plug pulled.” Hap Judd saying, “Family wants it. Don’t ask me. She was fucking beautiful, a cheerleader. Like the dream girl you’d take to the prom.” Guard saying, “Oh, yeah?” Hap Judd pulling the sheet down, exposing the dead girl’s body, saying, “What a waste.” The guard shaking his head, saying, “Get her on in there, I got things to do.” Judd wheeling the gurney inside the refrigerator, his reply indistinguishable.

Hap Judd scraped back his chair and got up. “I want a lawyer,” he said.

“I can’t help you,” Berger said. “You haven’t been arrested. We don’t Mirandize people who haven’t been arrested. If you want a lawyer, up to you. No one is stopping you. Help yourself.”

“This is so you can arrest me. I assume you’re going to, which is why I’m here.” He looked uncertain, and he wouldn’t look at Lucy.

“Not now,” Berger said.

“Why am I here?”

“You’re not being arrested. Not now. Maybe you will be, maybe you won’t. I don’t know,” Berger said. “That’s not why I asked to talk to you three weeks ago.”