Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“If the sick prick killed Hannah, maybe? Or maybe he’s got to do with Toni Darien, since he’s been in High Roller Lanes and probably met her, at the very least. The Doc did Toni’s autopsy and might end up being the ME on Hannah’s case, too.”

“So Aunt Kay gets a bomb delivered? And that’s going to prevent Hap Judd from being caught if Hannah’s body turns up or for who knows what?” Lucy said, as if Scarpetta wasn’t inside the lab with them anymore. “I’m not saying the asshole didn’t do something to Hannah or doesn’t know where she is.”

“Yeah, him and dead bodies,” Marino said. “Kind of interesting now that we know Toni may have been dead a few days before she was dumped. Wonder where she was and what fun someone was having with her. He probably did do that dead girl in the hospital fridge. Why else would he be in there fifteen minutes and come out with only one glove on?”

“But I don’t think he left a bomb for Aunt Kay thinking that would scare her off the case or two cases or any cases. That’s retarded,” Lucy said. “And the Gotham font has nothing to do with Batman.”

“Maybe it does if the person’s into some sort of sicko game,” Marino argued.

The odor of fire and brimstone, and Scarpetta kept thinking about the bomb. A stink bomb, a different sort of dirty bomb, an emotionally destructive bomb. Someone who knew Scarpetta. Someone who knew Benton. Someone who knew their history almost as intimately as they did. Games, she thought. Sick games.

Lucy hit the return key and CALIGULA went away and was replaced by:

Welcome, Toni.

Then:

Do you want to sync data? Yes No

Lucy answered yes and the next message she got was:

Toni, your scales are three days overdue. Would you like to complete them now? Yes No

Lucy clicked on Yes, and the screen faded and was replaced by another one:

Please rate how well these adjectives describe how you felt today.

This was followed by choices such as elated, confused, content, happy, irritable, angry, enthusiastic, inspired, each list of questions followed by a five-point scale, ranging from 1 for very little or not at all to 5 for extreme.

“If Toni was doing this every day,” Marino said, “would it be on her laptop? And maybe that’s why it’s missing?”

“It wouldn’t have been on her laptop. What you’re seeing resides on this website’s server,” Lucy said.

“But she hooked up her watch to her laptop,” Marino said.

“Yes. To upload information and to charge it,” Lucy said. “The data collected by this watchlike device weren’t for her use and wouldn’t have lived on her laptop. She not only wouldn’t have any use for the data but she wouldn’t have the software needed to aggregate it, to sort it, to make it meaningful.”

Lucy was being prompted by more questions and was answering them on the screen because she wanted to see what would happen next. She rated her moods as very little or not at all. Were Scarpetta answering the questions, she might just rate her own moods as extreme right now.

“I don’t know,” Marino said. “I can’t stop thinking this Caligula project might explain why maybe someone went inside her apartment and took her laptop and her phone and who knows what else.” His safety glasses looked at Scarpetta and he said, “We don’t know it was Toni on the security recording, you’re right about that. Just because the person had on what looked like her coat. How hard would that be if you were close to her same size and maybe had on similar running shoes? She wasn’t a small person, thin but tall. About five-ten, right? I don’t see how it could have been her going into her building Wednesday night at around quarter to six and leaving at seven. You think she’s been dead since Tuesday. And now this Caligula thing’s saying maybe the same thing. She hasn’t done her questionnaire for three days.”

“If it’s true that someone impersonated her on the security recordings,” Lucy said, “then he had her coat or one very similar and the keys to her apartment.”

“She was dead at least thirty-six hours,” Scarpetta said. “If her apartment keys were in her pocket and her killer knew where she lived, it wouldn’t have been hard to take the keys, let himself in, remove what he wanted from the scene, then return her keys to her pocket when he dumped her body in the park. Maybe this person had her coat, too. Maybe she was wearing it when she went out last. It might explain why she didn’t seem to be dressed warmly when her body was found. Maybe some of her clothing was missing.”

“That’s a lot of trouble and a lot of risk,” Lucy said. “Somebody didn’t plan very well. Seems all the calculating is after the fact, not prior to the crime. Maybe more of an impulse crime and the killer was someone she knew.”

“If she’d been communicating with him, that might be the reason for her missing laptop and her phone.” Marino was stuck on that. “Text messages stored on her phone. Maybe when you finally get into her e-mail. Maybe she was e-mailing these Caligula people or there are documents on her computer that are incriminating.”

“Then why leave the BioGraph device on her body?” Lucy said. “Why take the chance someone might do what we’re doing right now?”

Scarpetta said, “It may be that her killer wanted her computer, her phone. But that doesn’t mean there was a single rational reason. Maybe the absence of a reason is why the BioGraph wasn’t removed from her body.”

“There’s always a reason,” Marino said.

“Not the kind of reason you’re talking about, because this may not be the type of crime you’re talking about,” Scarpetta said, and she thought about her BlackBerry.

She reconsidered the motive for the theft, had a feeling she might be wrong about why Carley Crispin wanted the BlackBerry, that it wasn’t simply about what Carley had said when they were walking past Columbus Circle after leaving CNN: “I bet you could talk anybody into it you wanted, with the connections you have.” As if to imply that Scarpetta wouldn’t have a problem enticing guests to appear on a TV show, assuming she had her own show, and from that Scarpetta had assigned a motive to her missing smartphone. Carley wanted information, wanted Scarpetta’s contacts, and maybe she did in fact help herself to scene photographs while she’d had the chance. But possibly the BlackBerry ultimately wasn’t intended for Carley or even Agee but for someone else. Someone cunning and evil. The last person to have the BlackBerry was Agee, and maybe he would have passed it on to a third party had he not killed himself.

“People commit murder and return to the scene of the crime, not always for the sole reason that they’re paranoid and trying to cover their tracks,” Scarpetta explained. “Sometimes it’s to relive a violent act that was gratifying. Maybe in Toni’s case it’s more than one motivation. Her phone, her laptop are souvenirs, and they also were a means of impersonating her before her body was found, to throw us off track about her time of death by pretending to be her and using her cell phone to send a text message to her mother at around eight p.m. Wednesday night. Manipulations, games, and fantasy, emotionally driven, sexually driven, sadistically driven. A blend of motivations that created a malignant discord. Like so much in life. It isn’t just one thing.”

Lucy finished answering the mood rating questions and a Submit box appeared on the screen. She clicked on it and got the confirmation that her completed scales had been successfully sent to the site for review. For review by whom? Scarpetta wondered. A study sponsor who was a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a neuroscientist, a research assistant, a graduate student. Who the hell knew, but there would be more than one of them. Probably a large faculty of them. These invisible sponsors could be anyone and could exist anywhere and were engaged in a project that obviously was intended to make predictions about human behavior that would prove useful to someone.