Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“Does your hotel’s computer system keep a log for when rooms are entered and exited by using these magnetic key cards?” Scarpetta thought it unlikely but asked anyway.

“No. Most hotel systems, at least none I know of, would not have something like that. Nor do they have information on the cards.”

“No names, addresses, credit card numbers. Nothing like that encoded on the cards,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” he replied. “Stored on the computer but not the card. The cards open the doors and that’s all. We don’t have logs. In fact, most hotel cards, at least ones I’m familiar with, don’t even have the room number encoded on them, no information of any sort except the checkout date.” He looked at room 412 and said, “I guess you didn’t find anybody. Nobody’s in there.”

“Detective Marino is in there.”

“Well, I’m glad,” Curtis said, relieved. “I didn’t want to think the worst about Ms. Crispin or her friend.”

He meant he didn’t want to think one or both of them were dead inside that room.

“You don’t need to wait up here,” Scarpetta told him. “We’ll let you know when we’re done. It may be a while.”

The room was quiet when she walked back in and shut the door. Marino had turned off the TV and was standing in the bathroom, holding the BlackBerry in a gloved hand, staring at what was all over the sink and the marble countertop and the floor.

“Warner Agee,” she said, pulling on the gloves Marino had given to her earlier. “That’s who’s been staying in this room. Probably not Carley, probably not ever. It would appear she showed up last night around eleven-forty-five, my guess, for the express purpose of giving Warner Agee my BlackBerry. I need to borrow yours. I can’t use mine.”

“If that’s who did this, not good,” Marino said, entering the password on his BlackBerry, handing it to her. “I don’t like that. Shaving off all your hair and walking out with no hearing aids or glasses.”

“When’s the last time you checked OEM, SOD? Anything going on we should know?” She was interested in any updates from the Office of Emergency Management or the Special Operations Division.

Marino got a strange look on his face.

“I can check,” she added. “But not if someone’s in the hospital or been arrested or taken to a shelter or wandering the streets. I’m not going to know anything unless the person is dead and died in New York City.” She entered a number on Marino’s BlackBerry.

“The GW Bridge,” Marino said. “No way.”

“What about the bridge?” As the phone rang in the OCME’s Investigations Unit.

“The guy who jumped. Around two a.m. I watched it on a live feed when I was at RTCC. About sixty maybe, bald, no beard. A police chopper was filming the whole friggin’ thing.”

A medicolegal investigator named Dennis answered the phone.

“Need to check on what’s come in,” Scarpetta said to him. “We get a case from the GW Bridge?”

“Sure did,” Dennis said. “A witnessed descent. ESU tried to talk him down, but he didn’t listen. They do have it all on video. The police chopper filmed it, and I said we’d want a copy.”

“Good thinking. Do we have any thoughts on an ID?”

“The officer I talked to said they got nothing to go on about that. A white male, maybe in his fifties, his sixties. He had no personal effects that might tell us who he is. No wallet, no phone. You’re not going to get a good visual on him. He looks pretty bad. I think the drop from where he was on the bridge is at least a couple hundred feet. You know, like a twenty-story building. You aren’t going to want to show anyone his picture.”

“Do me a favor,” Scarpetta said. “Go downstairs and check his pockets. Check anything that might have come in with him. Take a photo and upload it to me. Call me back while you’re still with the body.” She gave him Marino’s number. “Any other unidentified white males?”

“None that no one has a clue about. We think we know who everybody is so far. Another suicide, a shooting, a pedestrian hit, an OD, guy came in with pills still in his mouth. That’s a first for me. Anybody in particular you’re looking for?”

“We might have a missing psychiatrist. Warner Agee.”

“Why does that sound sort of familiar? Nobody with that name, though.”

“Go check the jumper and call me right away.”

“He looked familiar,” Marino said. “I was watching it happen while I was sitting there, and I kept thinking he looked familiar.”

Scarpetta walked back in the bathroom and picked up the key card on top of the vanity, holding it by its edges.

“Let’s dust it. And the one on the coffee table. We’ll want to get some of the hair and his toothbrush, whatever’s needed for an ID. Let’s do it now while we’re here.”

Marino put on a fresh pair of gloves and took the key card from her. He started dusting it while she picked up her BlackBerry and checked her visual voicemail. There were eleven new calls since she’d used her phone at seven-fifteen last night when she’d talked to Grace Darien before heading over to CNN. Since then, Mrs. Darien had tried to call three more times, between ten and eleven-thirty p.m., no doubt because of what was all over the news, thanks to Carley Crispin. The other eight new calls were listed as Unknown, the first one at five past ten p.m., the last one at close to midnight. Benton and Lucy. He’d tried to reach her while she was walking home with Carley, and Lucy probably had tried after hearing the news about the bomb scare. Scarpetta could tell by the green icons next to the new voicemails that none had been accessed, and they could have been. Visual voicemail didn’t require the telephone subscriber’s password, only the BlackBerry’s password, which, of course, was disabled.

Marino changed gloves again and started on the second hotel key card as Scarpetta debated whether she should access her new voicemails remotely, borrowing his phone. She was especially interested in those left by Mrs. Darien, whose distress would be unimaginable after hearing about the yellow taxi and the bogus information about Hannah Starr’s hair being found in one. Mrs. Darien probably thought what a lot of people would, that her daughter had been killed by some predator who also had killed Hannah, and if the police had released information sooner, maybe Toni never would have gotten into a cab. Don’t be stupid again, Scarpetta thought. Don’t open any files until Lucy gets here. She scrolled through instant messages and e-mails. Nothing new had been read.

She wasn’t seeing any evidence that anyone had looked at what was on her BlackBerry, but she couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t possible for her to tell if someone had looked at PowerPoint presentations or scene photographs or any files she’d already perused. But she had no reason to believe Warner Agee had gotten around to looking at what was on her BlackBerry, and that was perplexing. Certainly he would have been curious about phone messages left by the mother of the murdered jogger. What rich information for Carley to leak on her show. Why hadn’t he? If Carley had gotten here around eleven-forty-five, he wasn’t dead by then, assuming he was the man on the GW Bridge some two and a half hours later. Depression and not caring anymore, she thought. Maybe that was it.

Marino was finished with the key cards, and she got another pair of gloves from him, their used ones a tidy pile on the floor, like magnolia petals. She took the key that had been on the bathroom vanity and tried it on the room door. The light flashed yellow.

“Nope,” she said, and she tried the other key that had been on the coffee table near her BlackBerry, and the light flashed green and the lock made a promising click. “The new one,” she said. “Carley left my BlackBerry and a new key for him and must have kept a key for herself.”