She couldn’t visit the Bulletin Bored, or Sneak Peeks, or the Photo Swap Shop, or even the Dark Room, where one could see Sick Pics or Celebrity Overexposures or the wildly popular Gotham Gotcha A.D., where Shrew posted photographs taken after death, including the most recent one of Marilyn.
How could hundreds of thousands of fans be opening that photo and Shrew’s accompanying story when the website was locked up and haywire? A conspiracy, she thought. The Mafia, it occurred to her with horror as she thought about the mysterious Italian agent who had hired her over the phone. The government! Shrew had spilled the beans and the CIA or FBI or Homeland Security had sabotaged the site so the world wouldn’t know the truth. Or maybe it really was all about terrorists.
Shrew frantically clicked on every icon, and nothing happened, and the banner continued its infernal loop as Gotham Gotcha rearranged itself nonstop:
. . . GOTHAM GOTCHA! OH C THA MAGGOT!
GOTHAM GOTCHA!
Benton was waiting outside the infirmary, and in the space of the closing door, Oscar’s mismatched eyes stared at Scarpetta before disappearing behind beige steel. She heard the clanks and clicks of restraints being removed.
“Come on,” Benton said, touching her arm. “We’ll talk in my office.”
Tall and slender, he seemed to dominate any space he was in, but he looked tired, as if he was coming down with something. His handsome face was tense, his silver hair a mess, and he was dressed like an institutional employee in a bland gray suit, white shirt, and nondescript blue tie. He wore a cheap rubber sports watch and his simple platinum wedding band. Any sign of affluence was unwise on a prison ward, where the average stay was less than three weeks. It wasn’t uncommon for Benton to evaluate a patient at Bellevue and a month later see the same person on the street, rooting through garbage for something to eat.
He took the crime scene case from her, and she held on to envelopes of evidence and said she needed to receipt them to the police.
“I’ll get someone to stop by my office before we leave,” Benton said.
“It should go straight to the labs. They should analyze Oscar’s DNA and get it into the database as soon as possible.”
“I’ll call Berger.”
They walked away from the infirmary. Two linen carts rolling by sounded like a train, and a barrier door slammed shut as they passed cells that would have been spacious by prison standards were they not crammed with as many as six beds. Most of the men were in ill-fitting pajamas, sitting up and engaged in loud conversations. Some gazed through mesh-covered windows at the dark void of the East River, while others watched the ward through bars. One patient thought it a fine time to use the steel toilet, smiling at Scarpetta as he peed and telling her what a great story he’d be. His cell mates began bickering about who would look better on TV.
Benton and Scarpetta stopped at the first barrier door, which never opened fast enough, the guard in the control room on the other side busy with the rhythm of gatekeeping. Benton loudly announced that they were coming through, and they waited. He called out again as a man mopped a corridor that led to the recreation room, where there were tables and chairs, a few board games, and an old home gym with no detachable parts.
Beyond that were interview rooms, and areas for group therapy, and the law library with its two typewriters, which like the televisions and the wall clocks were covered with plastic to prevent patients from disassembling anything with components that could be fashioned into a weapon. Scarpetta had gotten the tour the first time she was summoned up here. She was confident nothing had changed.
The white-painted steel door finally slid open and slammed shut behind them, and a second opened to let them through. The guard inside the control room returned Scarpetta’s driver’s license, and she surrendered her visitor’s pass, the exchange made mutely through thick bars as officers escorted in the newest patient, who wore the blaze-orange jumpsuit of Rikers Island. Prisoners like him were temporary transfers, brought here only if they needed medical attention. Scarpetta never ceased to be dismayed by what malingerers would do to themselves to earn a brief stay at Bellevue.
“One of our frequent flyers,” Benton said as steel slammed. “A swallower. Last visit it was batteries. Triple A, double A. Can’t remember. About eight of them. Rocks and screws before that. Once it was toothpaste, still in the tube.”
Scarpetta felt as if her spirit were unzipped from her body like the lining of a coat. She couldn’t be who she was, couldn’t show emotion, couldn’t share her thoughts about Oscar or a single detail he had told her about himself or Terri. She was chilled by Benton’s professional distance, which was always the most extreme on the ward. It was here where he entertained fears he wouldn’t confess, and didn’t need to, because she knew him. Ever since Marino had gotten so drunk and out of control, Benton had been in a quiet, chronic panic he refused to admit. To him, every male was a potential beast who wanted to carry her off to his lair, and nothing she did or said reassured him.
“I’m going to quit CNN,” she said as they headed to his office.
“I understand the position Oscar’s just put you in,” Benton said. “None of this is your fault.”
“You mean, the position you’ve just put me in.”
“It’s Berger who wanted you here.”
“But you’re the one who asked.”
“If I had my way about it, you’d still be in Massachusetts,” he said. “But he wouldn’t talk unless you came here.”
“I just hope I’m not the reason he’s here.”
“Whatever the reason, you can’t hold yourself responsible.”
“I don’t like the way that sounds,” she said.
They passed shut office doors, no one around. It was just the two of them, and they didn’t disguise their tense tones.
“I hope you’re not hinting it’s possible some obsessed fan pulled a horrific stunt so he could have an audience with me,” she added. “I hope that’s not what you’re implying.”
“A woman’s dead. That’s no stunt,” Benton said.
She couldn’t talk to him about Oscar’s conviction that he was being spied on and that whoever was behind it was Terri Bridges’s killer. Maybe Benton already knew, but she couldn’t ask. She couldn’t reveal that Oscar’s injuries were self-inflicted, that he’d lied to the police and everyone else about how he’d gotten them. The most she could do was speak in generalities.
“I have no information that might justify my discussing him with you,” she said, implying Oscar had confessed to nothing, nor indicated he was a threat to himself or others.
Benton unlocked his office door.
“You spent a long time with him,” he said. “Remember what I always tell you, Kay. Your first cue is your gut. Listen to what your gut tells you about this guy. And I’m sorry if I seem strung out. I’ve had no sleep. Actually, things are rather much a fucking mess.”
The work space the hospital had allotted Benton was small, with books, journals, clutter piled everywhere as neatly as he could manage. They sat, and the desk between them seemed a solid manifestation of an emotional barrier she could not get past. He did not want sex, at least not with her. She didn’t believe he was having it with anybody else, but the benefits of marriage seemed to include shorter and more impersonal conversations, and less time in bed. She believed Benton had been happier before they’d gotten married, and that sad fact she wasn’t going to blame on Marino.