Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

The screen went black and prompted her for a username and password. In a banner at the top was a long string of zeros and ones that Scarpetta recognized as binary code.

“That’s odd,” she said.

“Very odd,” Lucy said. “It doesn’t want us to know its name. It’s encrypted in binary, which is meant to be a deterrent, to be off-putting. If you’re one of these people who surf the Net and somehow find this site, you have to go to some trouble to even have a hint what you’ve landed on. Even then, you can’t get into it unless you’re authorized or have a skeleton key.”

Skeleton key was one of her euphemisms for hack.

“I’m betting this binary-code address doesn’t convert into text that spells BioGraph, either.” Lucy typed on the other MacBook and opened a file. “If it did, my search engines would have found it, because they sure as hell know how to look for bit strings and their represented words or sequences.”

“Jesus,” Marino said. “Already I got no damn idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

He had been slightly nasty from the instant Scarpetta had met him downstairs in the lobby and escorted him to the eighth floor. He was upset about the bomb. He wasn’t going to tell her that, but after twenty years, he didn’t have to tell her. She knew him better than he knew himself. Marino was irritable because he was scared.

“I’ll start over and try to move my lips when I talk this time,” Lucy sniped back at him.

“Your mouth is covered. I can’t see your lips. I got to take off this cap at least. It’s not like I have any hair. I’m starting to sweat.”

“Your bald head will shed skin cells,” Lucy said. “Probably why you have such a dust problem in your apartment. This so-called watch was designed to sync with a laptop, is interfaceable with just about any kind of computer device because of the micro USB port. Probably because all kinds of people are wearing these so-called watches, collecting data just like Toni Darien was. Let’s convert binary to ASCII.”

She typed the string of ones and zeros into a field on the other MacBook and hit the return key. Instantly, the code was translated into text that gave Scarpetta pause-in fact, gave her the creeps.

It spelled Caligula.

“Wasn’t he the Roman emperor who burned down Rome?” Marino said.

“That was Nero,” Scarpetta said. “Caligula was probably worse. Probably the most demented, depraved, sadistic emperor in the history of the Roman Empire.”

“What I’m waiting for right now,” Lucy said, “is to bypass the username and password. To put it very simply, I’ve hijacked this site and what’s in the BioGraph so the programs on my server can help us out.”

“I think I saw a movie about him,” Marino said. “He had sex with his sisters and lived in the palace with his horse or something. Maybe he had sex with the horse, too. An ugly bastard. I think he was deformed.”

Scarpetta said, “A rather chilling name for a website.”

“Come on.” Lucy was impatient with the computer, with the programs working invisibly to grant her access to what she wanted.

“I told you about walking back and forth from there by yourself,” Marino said to Scarpetta, and he was thinking about the bomb, about what he’d just experienced at Rodman’s Neck. “When you’re on live TV, you should have security. Maybe you won’t argue about it anymore.”

He was assuming if he’d escorted her last night, he would have recognized that the FedEx package was suspicious and never would have let her touch it. Marino felt responsible for her safety, had a habit of going overboard about it, when the irony was, the most unsafe she’d ever been was with him not all that long ago.

“Caligula is probably the name of a proprietary project.” Lucy was busy on the other MacBook. “That’s my guess.”

“Thing is, what next?” Marino said to Scarpetta. “I feel like somebody’s warming up to something. That singing card Benton got yesterday at Bellevue. Then not even twelve hours later, the FedEx bomb with a voodoo doll. Jesus, it stunk. Can’t wait to hear what Geffner says.”

Geffner was a trace evidence examiner at the NYPD crime labs in Queens.

“I called him on my way over here and said he better start looking through the microscope the minute the bomb debris hits the door.” Marino glanced at his blue-paper sleeve, shoved it up with a latex-sheathed hand to check his watch. “He should be looking at it now. Hell, we should call him. Jesus. It’s almost noon. Like hot asphalt, rotten eggs, and dog shit, like a really filthy fire scene, like someone used an accelerant to burn up a friggin’ latrine. I almost gagged, and it takes a lot to make me puke. Plus dog fur. Benton ’s patient? The whack job who called you on CNN? Hard for me to wrap my mind around her making something like that. Lobo and Ann said it was really nicely done.”

As if making a bomb that might blow off a person’s hands or worse was to be commended.

Lucy said, “And we’re in.”

The black screen with the binary banner turned midnight-blue, and CALIGULA appeared across the center in what looked like three-dimensional silvery cast-metal letters. A typeface that was familiar. Scarpetta almost felt queasy.

“ Gotham,” Lucy said. “That’s interesting. The font is Gotham.”

Marino’s paper gown rustled as he moved closer to see what she meant, his eyes bloodshot behind his safety glasses as he said, “ Gotham? I don’t see Batman anywhere.”

The screen was prompting Lucy to press any key to continue. But she didn’t. She was intrigued by the Gotham font and what it might mean.

“Authoritative, practical, what’s known as the workman-like typeface of public places,” she said. “The sans-serif style you see in names and numbers on signs, walls, buildings, and the Freedom Tower cornerstone at the World Trade Center site. But the reason the Gotham font has gotten so much attention of late is Obama.”

“First I’ve heard of a font called Gotham,” Marino replied. “But then again, I don’t get the font newsletter or monthly magazine or go to fucking font conventions.”

“Gotham’s the typeface the Obama people used during his campaign,” Lucy said. “And you should pay attention to fonts, like I’ve told you how many times? Fonts are part of twenty-first-century documents examination, and you ignore them at your own peril. What they are and why someone might pick them for a specific communication can be telling and significant.”

“Why Gotham for this website?” Scarpetta envisioned the FedEx airbill and the immaculate, almost perfect handwriting on it.

“I don’t know, except the typeface is supposed to suggest credibility,” Lucy said. “Inspire trust. Subliminally, we’re supposed to take this website seriously.”

“The name Caligula inspires anything but trust,” said Scarpetta.

“Gotham is popular,” Lucy said. “It’s cool. It’s supposed to suggest all the right things if you want to influence someone into taking you or your product or a political candidate or maybe some type of research project seriously.”

“Or take a dangerous package seriously,” Scarpetta said, suddenly angry. “This typeface looks very similar if not identical to the style of printing on the package I got last night. I don’t guess you were able to see the box before it was shot with the PAN disrupter,” she asked Marino.

“Like I told you, the batteries they targeted were right behind the address. You said it referenced you as the chief medical examiner of Gotham City. So there’s this Gotham reference again. It bother anybody besides me that Hap Judd was in a Batman movie and fucks dead bodies?”

“Why would Hap Judd send Aunt Kay what you’re calling a stink bomb?” Lucy said, busy on the other MacBook.