He fell silent, watching her clean his hands, one finger at a time.
“I’m trying to figure out why you’d be familiar with Dr. Wesley’s research study at McLean,” she said. “Since he hasn’t published anything yet. But I know the recruitment for subjects has been going on for a while and has been heavily advertised and publicized. I suppose that’s the answer?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Oscar said, staring down at his hands. “Nothing changes. People know why they’re hateful, and it changes nothing. You won’t change feelings. All the science in the world won’t change feelings.”
“I don’t agree,” she said. “We tend to hate what we fear. And we hate less when we’re less afraid.”
She squeezed the odorless compound over his fingertips, the extruder gun clicking each time she pressed the trigger.
“Hopefully, the more enlightened we are, the less we fear and the less we hate. I’m covering each finger to the first knuckle, and when the compound is dry, it will roll off like one of those rubber fingertips people wear when counting money. This material is excellent for microscopic evaluation.”
She used a wooden spatula to spread and smooth, and by the time she’d finished covering his multiple scratches and nail marks, the compound on his fingertips had begun to cure. It was interesting that he didn’t ask her why she’d want to get impressions of his fingertips, especially his fingernails, and also of the scratches and nail marks allegedly made by a stranger he said had attacked him. Oscar didn’t ask because he probably knew, and she didn’t really need these impressions for microscopic study as much as she needed him to see her taking them.
“There. If you can just hold your hands up,” she said.
She met his blue-green stare.
“It’s cool in here,” she said. “I’m guessing sixty-eight degrees. It should set in about four minutes. I’m going to pull your gown back up for now so you’ll be more comfortable.”
She smelled the pungent sweat of fear and confinement. She smelled unbrushed teeth and a trace of cologne. She wondered if a man would bother with cologne if his intention was to murder his lover.
Chapter 11
Lucy hung her leather jacket on the coatrack and, without invitation, moved a chair next to Berger and opened a MacBook Air.
“Excuse me,” Berger said, “I’m accustomed to people sitting on the other side of my desk.”
“I need to show you something,” Lucy said. “You’re looking well. The same.”
She openly appraised Berger.
“No, I’m wrong,” Lucy decided. “You look better, maybe even better than the first time we met eight years ago when you had two more skyscrapers several blocks from here. When I’m flying the helicopter and the skyline first comes in view, it still looks like the city’s had its two front teeth knocked out. Then along the Hudson at maybe eight hundred feet and I pass Ground Zero, and it’s still a hole.”
“It’s not something to make light of,” Berger said.
“I’m definitely not making light of it. I just wish it would change. You know. So I don’t keep feeling like the bad guys won?”
Berger couldn’t recall ever seeing Lucy in anything but tactical wear, and the tight threadbare jeans and black T-shirt she had on wouldn’t hide any type of weapon. The way she was dressed didn’t hide much at all, least of all that she had money. Her wide belt was crocodile with a Winston sabertoothed tiger buckle handcrafted of precious metals and stones, and the thick chain around her neck and its turquoise skull pendant was a Winston as well, and considered fine art and as expensive as such. She was remarkably fit and strong, and her mahogany hair with its shades of rose gold had been cut quite short. She could easily pass for a pretty boy model were it not for her breasts.
Berger said, “Terri Bridges’s laptops.”
She pointed to a table near the closed door, to the package wrapped in brown paper and neatly sealed with red evidence tape.
Lucy glanced at the package as if its presence couldn’t have been more obvious.
“I assume you’ve got a search warrant,” she said. “Anybody looked to see what’s on the hard drives yet?”
“No. They’re all yours.”
“When I find out what e-mail accounts she has, we’re going to need legal access to those as well. Quickly. And likely others, depending on who she was involved with—besides the boyfriend at Bellevue.”
“Of course.”
“Once I locate her e-mail hosting provider, check out her history, I’ll need passwords.”
“I know the drill, believe it or not.”
“Unless you want me to hack.” Lucy started typing.
“Let’s refrain from using that word, please. In fact, I never heard you use it.”
Lucy smiled a little as her agile fingers moved over the keyboard. She began a PowerPoint presentation.
Connextions—The Neural Networking Solution
“My God, you’re really not going to do this,” Berger said. “You have any idea how many of these things I see?”
“You’ve never seen this.” Lucy tapped a key. “You familiar with computational neuroscience? Technology based on neural networking? Connections that process information very much the way the brain does.”
Lucy’s index finger tap-tapped, a bulky silver ring on it. She had on a watch that Berger didn’t recognize, but it looked military, with its black face and luminous dial and rubber strap.
Lucy caught Berger looking at it and said, “Maybe you’re familiar with illumination technology? Gaseous tritium, a radioactive isotope that decays and causes the numbers and other markings on the watch to glow so they’re easy to read in the dark? I bought it myself. You buy your Blancpain yourself? Or was it a gift?”
“It was a gift to myself from myself. A reminder that time is precious.”
“And mine’s a reminder that we should utilize what other people fear, because you don’t fear something unless it’s powerful.”
“I don’t feel compelled to prove a point by wearing a radioactive watch,” Berger said.
“A total, at most, of twenty-five millicuries, or an exposure of maybe point-one micro sievert over the period of a year. Same thing one gets from normal radiation. Harmless, in other words. A good example of people shunning something because they’re ignorant.”
“People call me a lot of things, but not ignorant,” Berger said. “We need to get started on the laptops.”
“The artificial system I’ve developed—am developing, actually,” Lucy said, “because the possibilities are infinite, and when considering infinity, one has to ask if by its very nature it transforms what’s artificial into something real. Because to me, artificial is finite. So to me, it follows that infinite will no longer be artificial.”
“We need to get into this dead lady’s laptops,” Berger said.
“You need to understand what we’re doing,” Lucy said.
Her green eyes looked at Berger.
“Because it will be you explaining everything in court, not me,” Lucy said.
She started moving through the PowerPoint. Berger didn’t interrupt her this time.
“Wet mind, another bit of jargon you don’t know,” Lucy said. “The way our brain recognizes voices, faces, objects, and orients them into a context that’s meaningful, revealing, instructive, predictive, and I can tell you’re not looking at any of this or even listening.”