Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“You saw Lucy’s picture from 1996,” Benton said, and he could only imagine how Berger felt. “Did Marino see it, too?”

“I recognized her in the photograph. Marino wasn’t in the library with me when I found it. He didn’t see it.”

“Did you ask Bobby about it?” Benton wasn’t going to ask her why she’d withheld the information from Marino.

He suspected he knew. Berger was hoping Lucy would tell her the truth, that Berger wouldn’t have to confront her. Obviously, Lucy hadn’t.

“I didn’t show the picture to Bobby or mention it,” Berger said. “He wouldn’t have known Lucy back then. Hannah and Bobby have been together less than two years.”

“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t know about Lucy,” Benton said. “Hannah could have mentioned Lucy to him. I’d be surprised if she didn’t. When you were in the library, Jaime, did you pick that particular album off a shelf? Rupe Starr must have dozens of them.”

“Scores of them,” she said. “Bobby put a stack of them on the table for me.”

“Any possibility he wanted you to find the photograph of Lucy?” Benton had one of his feelings again. Something in his gut that was sending him a message.

“He put them on the table and walked out of the library,” Berger replied.

A game. And a cruel one, if Bobby had done it deliberately, Benton thought. If he knew about Berger’s private life, he would know it would upset her to discover her partner, her forensic computer expert, had been in the Starr mansion, had been mixed up with those people and had said nothing about it.

“You don’t mind my asking,” Lanier said to Berger, “why would you allow Lucy to handle the forensic computer part of this investigation if she had ties with the alleged victim? In fact, with the entire Starr family?”

Berger didn’t answer at first. Then she said, “I was waiting for her to explain it.”

“What is the explanation?” Lanier asked.

“I’m still waiting for it.”

“Okay. Well, it could be a problem down the road,” Stockman said. “If this goes to court.”

“I consider it a problem now.” Berger’s face was grim. “A much bigger problem than I care to describe.”

“Where’s Bobby now?” Lanier asked her in a milder tone than she’d used so far.

“It appears back here in the city,” Berger said. “He e-mails Hannah. E-mails her daily.”

“That’s fucked up,” O’Dell said.

“Whether it is or it isn’t, he’s been doing it. We know because obviously we’re accessing her e-mail. He e-mailed her late last night and said he’d heard about some development in the case and was returning to New York early this morning. I would expect he’s here by now.”

“Unless the guy’s an imbecile, he must suspect somebody’s looking at her e-mails. Makes me suspicious he’s doing it for our benefit,” O’Dell said.

“My first thought, too,” Lanier said.

Games, Benton thought, and the uneasy feeling was stronger.

“I don’t know what he suspects. Ostensibly, he’s hoping Hannah is alive somewhere and is reading his e-mails to her,” Berger said. “I’m assuming he’s aware of what was on The Crispin Report last night, about Hannah’s head hair supposedly being found in a cab. And that’s why he’s suddenly returning to the city.”

“Same thing as hearing she’s dead. Damn reporters,” Stockman said. “Anything for ratings and don’t give a flying flip about what it does to people whose lives they wreck.” He said to Benton, “She really say that about us? You know, about the FBI, about profiling being antiquated?”

Stockman meant Scarpetta and what was on the CNN marquee and all over the Internet last night.

“I believe she was misquoted,” Benton said blandly. “I think she meant the good ole days were gone and were never all that good.”

The guard hairs were long and coarse, with four bands of white and black along a shaft that tapered to a point.

“You can do DNA if you want to confirm the species,” Geffner was saying over speakerphone. “I know a lab in Pennsylvania, Mito typing Technologies, that specializes in species determination of animals. But I can tell you already from what I’m looking at. Classic wolf. Great Plains wolf, a subspecies of gray wolf.”

“It’s not dog, all right, if you say so. I admit it looks like German shepherd fur to me,” Scarpetta said from a work station where she could view images Geffner was uploading to her.

Across the lab, Lucy and Marino were monitoring what was going on with the MacBooks, and from where Scarpetta sat, she could see data rapidly aggregating into charts and maps.

“You won’t find these banded guard hairs on a German shepherd.” Geffner’s voice.

“And the finer grayish hairs I’m seeing?” Scarpetta asked.

“Mixed in with the guard hairs. That’s just some inner fur. The voodoo-like doll that was glued to the front of the card? It was stuffed with fur, both inner and guard, and some debris mixed in, maybe a little poop and dead leaves and such. An indication the fur hasn’t been processed, likely is from their natural habitat, maybe their lair. I’ve not looked at all of the fur submitted, obviously. But my guess is it’s all wolf fur. Guard hairs and hairs from the inner coat.”

“Where would someone get it?”

“I did some searching and came up with a few possible sources,” Geffner said. “Wildlife preserves, wolf sanctuaries, zoos. Wolf fur is also sold in a well-known witchery in Salem, Massachusetts, called the Hex.”

“On Essex Street, in the historic area,” Scarpetta said. “I’ve been in there. A lot of nice oils and candles. Nothing black magic or evil.”

“Doesn’t have to be evil to be used for evil, I guess,” Geffner said. “The Hex sells amulets, potions, and you can buy wolf fur in little gold silk bags. It’s supposed to be protective and have healing powers. I doubt anything sold like that would have been processed, so maybe the wolf fur in the doll came from a magic shop.”

Lucy was looking at Scarpetta from across the room, as if she was finding something significant that Scarpetta was going to want to see.

As Geffner explained, “Wolves have two layers of fur. The inner, which is the softer sort of wool-like fur that insulates, what I call filler hair. And then this outer coat, the guard layer, coarse hairs that shed water and have the pigmentation you’re seeing on the image I sent. The difference in the species is the color. The Great Plains wolf isn’t native to this area. Mostly the Midwest. And you usually don’t get wolf fur in criminal cases. Not here in New York.”

“I don’t believe I ever have,” Scarpetta said. “Here or anywhere.”

Lucy and Marino in their protective garb were standing and talking tensely. Scarpetta couldn’t hear what they were saying. Something was happening.

“I’ve seen it for one reason or another.” Geffner’s easygoing tenor voice. Not much excited him. He’d been tracking criminals with a microscope for quite a number of years. “The crap in people’s house. You ever looked at dust bunnies under the scope? More interesting than astronomy, a whole universe of information about who and what goes in and out of a person’s residence. All kinds of hair and fur.”

Marino and Lucy were looking at charts rolling by on the MacBook screens.

“Shit,” Marino said loudly, and his safety glasses looked at Scarpetta. “Doc? You better see this.”

And Geffner’s voice continued. “Some people raise wolves or mostly hybrids, a mixture of wolf and canine. But pure unprocessed wolf fur in a voodoo doll or puppet? More likely this is connected with the ritualistic motif of the bomb. Everything I’m researching indicates this is a black-magic type of thing, although the symbolism is conflicted and sort of contradictory. Wolves aren’t bad. It’s just everything else is, including the explosives, the firecrackers, which would have hurt you or someone, done some real damage.”