Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

It hadn’t been Berger who had thought of Lucy. It was Scarpetta, and she was less interested in her niece’s help at the moment than she was in seeing her. They needed to talk. It really couldn’t wait. After Scarpetta had sent the e-mail to Berger suggesting that the paragraph be added to the addendum insuring it was legal for a civilian to assist in searching Carley’s room, Scarpetta had talked to Benton. She’d sat down next to him and touched his arm, waking him up. She was going to a scene with Marino, would probably be with him much of the morning, and she had a serious personal matter to take care of, she’d explained. It was best Benton didn’t come with them, she’d told him before he could suggest it, and then his cell phone had rung. The FBI calling.

The elevator door opened and the Hotel Elysée’s night manager, Curtis, emerged, a middle-aged man with a mustache, dapper in a dark tweed suit. He accompanied them back down the hallway and tried the door of room 412, knocking and ringing the bell, noting the Do Not Disturb light. He commented that it was on most of the time, and he opened the door and ducked his head inside, calling out hello, hello, before stepping back into the hallway, where Marino asked him to wait. Marino and Scarpetta walked into the room and shut the door, no sign or sound of anyone home. A wall-mounted TV was on, the channel tuned to CNN, the volume low.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Marino said to her. “But because these BlackBerrys are so common, I need you to ID it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

They stood just inside the door, looking around a deluxe junior suite that was lived in by someone slovenly, someone possibly antisocial and depressed who had been staying here alone, Scarpetta deduced. The queen-size bed was unmade and strewn with newspapers and men’s clothing, and on the side table was a clutter of empty water bottles and coffee cups. To the left of the bed were a bowfront chest of drawers and a large window with the curtains drawn. To the right of that was the sitting area: two blue upholstered French armchairs with books and papers piled on them, a flame mahogany coffee table with a laptop and a small printer, and in plain view on top of a stack of paperwork, a touch-screen device, a BlackBerry in a smoke-gray protective rubberized case called a skin. Next to it was a plastic key card.

“That it?” Marino pointed.

“Looks like it,” Scarpetta said. “Mine has a gray cover.”

He opened his field case and pulled on surgical gloves, handing her a pair. “Not that we’re going to do anything we shouldn’t, but this is what I call exigent circumstances.”

It probably wasn’t. Scarpetta didn’t see anything that might suggest someone was trying to escape or get rid of evidence. The evidence appeared to be right in front of her, and no one was here but the two of them.

“I don’t suppose I should remind you about fruit of the poisonous tree.” She referred to the inadmissibility of evidence gathered during an unreasonable search and seizure. She didn’t put on the gloves.

“Naw, I have Berger to remind me. Hopefully she’s gotten her favorite judge out of bed by now, Judge Fable, what a name. A legend in his own mind. I went over the whole thing, the fact portion, on speakerphone, with her and a second detective she grabbed as a witness who will swear out the warrant with her in the presence of the judge. What’s known as double hearsay, a little complicated but hopefully no problem. Point is, Berger doesn’t take chances with affidavits and avoids like the plague being the affiant herself. I don’t care whose warrant it is or for what. Hopefully Lucy will roll up soon.”

He walked over to the BlackBerry and picked it up by its rubberized edges.

“The only surface good for prints is going to be the display, which I don’t want to touch without dusting it first,” he decided. “Then I’ll swab it for DNA.”

He squatted over the field case, retrieving black powder and a carbon-fiber brush, and Scarpetta turned her attention to the men’s clothing on the bed, getting close enough to detect a rancid smell, the stench of unclean flesh. She noted that the newspapers were from the past several days, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and was puzzled by a black Motorola flip phone on a pillow. Scattered on the rumpled linens were a pair of dirty khaki pants, a blue-and-white oxford-cloth shirt, several pairs of socks, pale-blue pajamas, and men’s undershorts that were stained yellow in the crotch. The clothing looked as if it hadn’t been washed in quite a while, someone wearing the same thing day after day and never sending it out to be laundered. That someone wasn’t Carley Crispin. These couldn’t be her clothes, and Scarpetta saw no sign of Carley anywhere she looked in this room. Were it not for Scarpetta’s BlackBerry being here, Carley wouldn’t come to mind for any reason at all.

Scarpetta looked in several wastepaper baskets without digging in them or emptying them on the floor. Crumpled paper, tissues, more newspapers. She walked toward the bathroom, stopping just inside the doorway. The sink and the marble around it, including the marble floor, were covered with cut hair, clumps of gray hair of different lengths, some of it as long as three inches, some as tiny as stubble. On a washcloth were a pair of scissors, a razor, and a can of Gillette shaving cream that had been purchased at a Walgreens, and another hotel key card next to a pair of eyeglasses with old-style square black frames.

At the back of the vanity were a single toothbrush and a tube of Sensodyne toothpaste that was almost used up, and a cleaning kit, an earwax pick. A silver Siemens charger unit was open, and inside it were two Siemens Motion 700 hearing aids, flesh-colored, full-shell in-the-ear type. What Scarpetta didn’t see was a remote control, and she walked back into the main room, careful not to touch or disturb anything, resisting the temptation to open the closet or drawers.

“Someone with moderate to severe hearing loss,” she said as Marino lifted prints off the BlackBerry. “State-of-the-art hearing aids, background noise reduction, feedback blocker, Bluetooth. You can pair them with your cell phone. Should be a remote control somewhere.” Walking around and still not seeing one. “For volume adjustment, to check on the battery power level, that sort of thing. People usually carry them in their pocket or purse. He might have it with him, but he’s not wearing his hearing aids. Which doesn’t make much sense, or maybe I should say it doesn’t bode well.”

“Got a couple good ones here,” Marino said, smoothing lifting tape on a white card. “I got no idea what you’re talking about. Who has hearing aids?”

“The man who shaved his head and beard in the bathroom,” she said, opening the room door and stepping back into the hallway, where Curtis the manager was waiting, nervous and ill at ease.

“I don’t want to ask anything I shouldn’t, but I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said to her.

“Let me ask you a few questions,” Scarpetta replied. “You said you came on duty at midnight.”

“I work midnight to eight a.m., that’s correct,” Curtis said. “I haven’t seen her since I got here. I can’t say I’ve ever seen her, as I explained a few moments ago. Ms. Crispin checked into the hotel in October, presumably because she wanted a place in the city. I believe because of her show. Not that her reason is any of my business, but that’s what I’ve been told. Truth is, she rarely uses the room herself, and her gentleman friend doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

This was new information, what Scarpetta was looking for, and she said, “Do you know the name of her gentleman friend or where he might be?”