“No mention of names,” Bacardi said, and she didn’t sound as friendly. “Just that she was supposedly assaulted by a colleague while she was chief down there. An investigator she worked with for a long time. These shock jocks were talking about it, saying the expected bullshit, mostly making fun of her and getting off on imagining whatever was done to her. I was pretty disgusted.”
“Maybe if you and me are ever sitting down face-to-face, I’ll tell you the story,” he surprised himself by saying.
He’d never told anybody the story, except Nancy. He’d told her as much as he could remember, and she’d listened with that sincere look on her face that started to annoy the living shit out of him after a while.
“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Bacardi said. “I don’t know you, Pete. What I do know is people say all kinds of things, and you don’t know what’s true until you decide to make it your mission. It’s not my mission to know what’s true about your life, okay? Just what’s true about what happened to my lady, the kid in Greenwich, and now your lady in New York. I’ll send you my files electronically, what I’ve got, anyway. You ever want to dig through all of it, you’ll need a week locked up in a room with a case of Advil.”
“I’m told there’s no DNA in your case and the kid,” Marino said. “No sign of sexual assault.”
“That’s what’s called the nightmare of multiple choice.”
“Maybe we’ll have some crab cakes in Baltimore, and I’ll tell you,” he said. “Don’t draw conclusions from gossip. Or when you come here. You like steak houses?”
She didn’t answer.
It was as if someone had tethered his emotions to a cinder block, he felt so depressed. He was ruined. That Gotham Gotcha asshole had ruined him. He meets a nice woman named after his favorite rum, and now she’s acting as if he’s got smallpox and spits when he talks.
“These VICAP forms, shit like that?” Bacardi said. “Check the boxes, multiple choice like school when there’s more than one answer? Literally, no sign of sexual assault, except in both cases there was evidence of a lube job. Some Vaseline-type stuff that was negative for sperm. Vaginally in my lady. Anally in the Greenwich boy. A mixture of DNA, contaminated as hell. No hits in CODIS. We figure since they were found nude and dumped outdoors, all kinds of contaminants stuck to the petroleum jelly or whatever it was. Imagine how many people’s DNA would be in a Dumpster? Plus dog hairs, cat fur.”
“Kind of interesting,” Marino said. “Because the DNA’s messed up in this case, too. We got a hit on an old lady in a wheelchair who ran over some kid in Palm Beach.”
“She ran him over in her wheelchair? She was speeding, busted a red light in her wheelchair? I’m sorry. Did somebody put in a different movie and not tell me?”
“What’s also interesting,” Marino said, walking toward the bathroom with the cordless phone, “the DNA from your cases are in CODIS. And the DNA from our case was just run in CODIS. So guess what that means?”
He covered the mouthpiece with his hand while he peed.
“I’m still hung up on the wheelchair,” Bacardi said.
“What it means,” he said, when it was safe to talk again, “is there’s a different mixture of DNA profiles. In other words, you didn’t get a hit on the old lady from Palm Beach, because her DNA wasn’t on your victims. For whatever reason. I think you should come up here and sit down with everyone. As soon as possible, like tomorrow morning,” Marino said. “You got a car?”
“Whenever you guys need. I can be there in a few hours.”
“It’s my belief,” Marino said, “when things are this different, they got something in common.”
Chapter 15
“Nobody’s accusing anybody of anything,” Benton said on the phone, talking to Scarpetta’s administrative assistant, Bryce. “I was just wondering when you looked at it first thing, what might have entered your mind . . . Really . . . That’s a very good point . . . Well, that’s interesting. I’ll tell her.”
He hung up.
Scarpetta was only halfway paying attention to whatever he and Bryce had been discussing. She was far more interested in several photographs of Terri Bridges’s master bathroom, and had placed them in a row on a space she’d cleared on Benton’s desk. They showed a spotless white ceramic-tile floor and a white marble countertop. Next to a sink with ornate gold fixtures was a built-in vanity arranged with perfumes, a brush, and a comb. Attached to the rose-painted wall was a gold-framed oval mirror, and it was askew, but so slightly it was barely perceptible. As far as she could tell, it was the only thing in the bathroom that looked even remotely disturbed.
“Your hair,” Benton said to her as his printer woke up.
“What about it?”
“I’ll show you.”
Another close-up of the body, this one taken from a different angle after the towel had been removed. Terri’s achondroplastic features were more typical than Oscar’s. She had a somewhat flattened nose and pronounced forehead, and her arms and legs were thick and about half the length they ought to be, her fingers thick and stubby.
Benton swiveled around and removed a sheet of paper from the printer, and handed it to her.
“Do I have to look at that again?” she said.
It was the photograph from this morning’s Gotham Gotcha column.
“Bryce said for you to take a good look at your hair,” Benton said.
“It’s covered,” she said. “All I can see is a little fringe of it.”
“His point. It used to be shorter. He showed the photo to Fielding, who shares his opinion.”
She ran her fingers through her hair, realizing what Bryce and Fielding meant. Over the past year, she’d let her hair grow out another inch.
“You’re right,” she said. “Bryce—Mr. Hygiene—is always nagging me about it. It’s that in-between length where I can’t completely cover it, and yet it’s not long enough to tuck in. So there’s always a little fringe of it exposed.”
“He and Fielding both say the same thing,” Benton said. “This photograph was taken recently. As recently as the past six months, because both of them believe this was taken since they started working for you. They’re basing this on the length of your hair, the watch you’re wearing, and the face shield is the same type you use.”
“It’s just a face shield. Not like our fancy safety glasses with different neon-colored frames to cheer up the place.”
“Anyway, I’m inclined to agree with them,” Benton said.
“That says something. Because, obviously, if it was taken in Watertown, they’re on the list of suspects. And they don’t recall noticing anybody else taking it?”
“That’s the difficulty,” Benton said. “Everybody and their brother who’s through your place, as I pointed out earlier, could have done it. You can tell from your demeanor, the expression on your face, that you had no idea it was being taken. A quick picture taken with a cell phone. That’s my guess.”
“It wasn’t Marino, then,” she said. “He’s certainly not been within camera range.”
“I suspect he hates having that column on the Internet even more than you do, Kay. It wouldn’t make any sense to think Marino’s behind this.”
She looked through more photographs of Terri Bridges’s body on the bathroom floor, perplexed by the thin gold chain around her left ankle. She handed a close-up to Benton.