Patricia Cornwell: The Bone Bed

“So no one can respond to the e-mail because the temporary account is deleted after thirty minutes and is gone.”

“That’s the point.”

“And no one can track the IP and trace where the e-mail was actually sent from.” I follow her logic.

“Exactly what the sender is banking on.”

“We’re supposed to assume the e-mail was sent by someone in Italy.”

“Specifically, Rome,” she tells me.

“But that’s a ruse.”

“Absolutely,” she says. “Whoever sent it definitely wasn’t in Rome at six-thirty last night our time.”

“What about the font?” I return to the e-mail and look at the subject line.

ATTENTION CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER KAY SCARPETTA

“Is there any significance?” I ask.

“Very retro. Reminiscent of the fifties and sixties, big squarish shapes with rounded corners supposedly evocative of TV sets from that era. Your era,” she teases.

“Please don’t hurt me this early in the morning.”

“Eurostile was created by Italian type designer Aldo Novarese,” she explains, “the font originally made for a foundry in Turin, Nebiolo Printech.”

“And you think this means what?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “They basically manufacture paper and high-end technologically advanced printing machines.”

“A possible Italian connection?”

“I doubt it. I think whoever sent the e-mail to you assumed you couldn’t trace the actual IP,” she says, and I know what’s next.

I know what she’s done.

“In other words,” she continues, “we wouldn’t figure out the actual location it was sent from—”

“Lucy,” I interrupt her. “I don’t want you taking extreme measures.”

She’s already taken them.

“There are a ton of these anonymous freebies available,” she continues, as if she’s not done what I know she has.

“I don’t want you helping yourself to some proxy server in Italy or anywhere else,” I tell her flatly.

“The e-mail was sent to you by someone who had access to Logan’s wireless,” she says, to my astonishment.

“It was sent from the airport?”

“The video clip was e-mailed to you from Logan Airport’s wireless network not even seven fucking miles from here,” she confirms, and it’s no wonder she’s entertaining the possibility it might be someone in our own backyard.

I think about my chief of staff, Bryce Clark, of Pete Marino, and several forensic scientists in my building. Members of the CFC staff were in Tampa, Florida, last week for the International Association for Identification’s annual meeting, and all of them flew back into Boston yesterday around the same time this e-mail was anonymously sent to the CFC.

“At some point prior to six o’clock last night,” Lucy explains, “this person logged on to Logan’s free wireless Internet. The same thing passengers do thousands of times a day. But it doesn’t mean the person who sent the e-mail was physically in a terminal or on a plane.”

Whoever it is could have been in a parking garage, she says, or on a sidewalk, possibly in a water taxi or on a ferry in the harbor, anywhere the wireless signal reaches. Once this person was connected, he created a temporary e-mail account called BLiDedwood @Stealthmail , possibly using word-processing software to write the subject line in Eurostile, and cutting and pasting it into the e-mail.

“He waited twenty-nine minutes before sending it,” Lucy says. “Just a shame he has the satisfaction of knowing it was opened.”

“How would this person know I opened the e-mail?”

“Because he didn’t get a bounce-back nondelivery notification message,” she replies. “Which he would have gotten just seconds before the account self-destructed. He has no reason not to assume the e-mail was received and opened.”

Her tone is different. What she’s saying sounds like a reprimand.

“The bounce-back is instant and automatic for harassing or virus-infected communications sent to the CFC’s main address,” she reminds me. “The purpose is to give the sender the impression that the e-mail couldn’t be delivered . But in fact with rare and unfortunate exception, suspicious e-mails go directly into what I call quarantine so I can see whatever it is and assess the threat level,” she emphasizes, and I realize what she’s getting at. “I didn’t see this particular e-mail because it wasn’t quarantined.”

The rare and unfortunate exception she’s talking about is myself.

“The firewalls I’ve set up recognized the e-mail as legit because of the subject heading Attention Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta ,” she says, as if it’s my fault, and it is. “Something directed to your personal attention doesn’t get spammed or temporarily outboxed in quarantine because that’s been your directive to me. Against my wishes, remember?”

She holds my gaze, and she’s right, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

“You see the consequences of my allowing you to cheat what I’ve secured?” she asks.

“I understand your frustration, Lucy. But it’s the only way a lot of people, particularly police and families, can reach me when they don’t know my direct CFC contact information,” I say what I’ve said before. “They send something to my attention and I certainly don’t want it spammed.”

“It’s just too bad that you’re the one who opened it first,” Lucy says. “Of course, typically Bryce probably would have before you had the chance.”

“I’m glad he didn’t.” My chief of staff is very sensitive and more than a little squeamish.

“Right. He didn’t because he was on his way back from a trip. He and several others had been out of pocket for a week,” Lucy says, as if the timing wasn’t an accident.

“Are you worried that whoever sent the e-mail knows what’s going on at the CFC?” I ask.

“It worries me, yes.”

She rolls a chair close, refills our shot glasses, and I smell the fresh grapefruit scent of her cologne, and I always know when my niece has been on the elevator or has passed through a room. I can close my eyes and recognize her distinctive fragrance anywhere.

“It would be foolish not to consider someone might be paying attention to all of us and what we’re doing,” she is saying. “Someone into games who thinks he’s smarter than God. Someone who gets off on traumatizing people and jerking them around.”

I have no doubt about why she’s been snooping around my office this morning. She stopped by to check on something because she’s overly protective of me, vigilant to a fault. Since Lucy was old enough to walk she’s demanded my attention and watched me like a hawk.

“Are you worried Marino’s involved? That he’s spying on me or trying to hurt me somehow?” I log in to my e-mail.

“He sure as hell does stupid things,” she says, as if she has specific ones in mind. “But he’s not that savvy, and what motive could he have? The answer’s none.”

four

I SCROLL THROUGH MY INBOX, LOOKING FOR AN E-MAIL from Bryce or Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Steward, as I continue to hope my appearance in court won’t be needed.

“What about image clarification? Maybe we can figure out who’s on the jetboat?” I’m talking about the video clip while I’m fretting about Mildred Lott.

“Forget it,” Lucy says.

“It’s so ridiculous,” I mutter, when I find no message that might grant me a reprieve.

It used to be that my autopsy report was enough for the defense, my appearing in court not necessary or even desirable, but since the Melendez-Diaz decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, life has changed for every forensic expert in America. Channing Lott wants to confront his accuser. The billionaire industrialist faces a murder charge for allegedly placing a contract on his now presumed dead wife, and he’s demanded the pleasure of my company this afternoon at two.