“I wonder if it would have changed anything had you taken it,” Lucy said.
“On the surface it wasn’t any different from all the other nutty calls we get every day,” Berger said.
“It’s still too bad. Maybe you could have made a difference.”
Lucy’s hands were strong but graceful on the keyboard. She closed a programming window she had opened on the screen, and once again the deep space was restored and fragmented text streamed through it, moving, finding its missing parts. Berger tried not to look.
“If I played the recording for you, you’d completely understand,” she explained. “He sounds like a nutcase. Almost hysterical, and he goes on and on about somebody or a group of people taking over his mind electronically, and thus far he’s resisted being controlled by them, but they know every breath he takes. At the moment, I feel somebody’s doing the same thing to me. I apologize in advance. On rare occasions I get these headaches. I’m trying like hell not to get this one.”
“You ever gotten cybersick?” Lucy asked.
“I’m not sure what that is,” Berger said.
“What about motion sickness?”
“I do know what that is, and yes. I can’t look at anything in a moving car, and as a kid I always threw up in amusement parks. And I don’t want to think about it right now.”
“Guess you won’t be flying with me.”
“Police helicopters don’t bother me. As long as they don’t take the doors off.”
“Disoriented, nauseated, vertigo, even seizures and migraines,” Lucy said. “Usually associated with virtual reality, but any computer display of motion can do it. Such as watching all this shit. I happen to be one of the lucky ones. Doesn’t affect me. You can throw me into full-scale crash simulation all day long, and it doesn’t bother me a bit. I could be a test dummy at Langley. It’s probably what I should have done in life.”
She leaned back in her chair and tucked the tips of her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans, her physical openness an invitation, somehow, and Berger’s eyes were drawn to her the same way they were to a provocative painting or a sculpture.
“So here’s what you’re going to try,” Lucy said. “You’re going to look at the monitors only when I think you should see something. If you continue to feel bad, I’ll spool off the data I want you to see, and you can look at it in static word-processing format. I’ll even break my rule and print stuff. Anyway, don’t look at the monitor. Let’s go back to what I was saying about what software protections are loaded on the laptops. I was suggesting we should see if we find the same software loaded on Oscar’s home computer. See if we find evidence he’s the one who purchased it. Can we get into his apartment?”
Lucy continued to say we, and Berger didn’t see how there could be a we .
It was completely reckless for there to be a we, Berger kept telling herself, kept trying to talk herself out of it, only to talk herself right back into it.
She shut her eyes and rubbed her temples and said, “It’s easy to assume it was Terri who was researching Kay. But how do we know Oscar wasn’t? Maybe these are his computers and he had them at Terri’s apartment for some reason. And no, right now we can’t get into his computer or computers. Whatever computers he has in his apartment. We don’t have his consent, and we don’t have probable cause.”
“His fingerprints on these laptops?”
They were on a nearby desk, both of them connected to a server.
“Don’t know yet,” Berger replied. “But that wouldn’t necessarily prove anything, since he was in and out of her apartment. Theoretically, we don’t know whose work this is. But what’s certain is Kay is a focus. You’ve made that point.”
“She’s more than a focus. Don’t look, but what’s happening right now? It’s sorting by footnotes. Ibid. this and that, and dates. Footnotes that seem to correlate with quotations from my aunt.”
“You’re saying Terri interviewed her?”
“Someone did, supposedly. Keep your eyes shut. The computer doesn’t need your help or approval. It’s sorting by references, thousands of them in parentheses, from multiple drafts of the same thesis. And hundreds of these parenthetical references pertain to interviews conducted at different times. Alleged interviews with my aunt.”
Berger opened her eyes and saw fragmented words and sentences streaming by and reattaching.
“Maybe they’re transcripts of interviews on CNN or newspaper interviews,” she suggested. “And you’re right. Next time I’ll ask. That just made me dizzy. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I should leave.”
“Can’t be transcripts,” Lucy replied. “Not all of them or even most. Chronologically, that can’t be right. Scarpetta, November tenth, and Scarpetta, November eleventh, then the twelfth and thirteenth. No way. She didn’t talk to her. Nobody talked to her. This is bullshit.”
It was indescribably strange, looking at her looking at the monitors and bickering with her computer creation as if it were her best friend.
Berger realized Jet Ranger was under the desk, snoring.
“References to four different interviews that took place back-to-back, four days in a row,” Lucy said. “And again here. Three days in a row. See, that’s exactly what I mean. She doesn’t come to the city and go on TV every day of the week, and she rarely does newspaper interviews. And this one right here? No fucking way.”
Berger considered getting out of her chair and saying good-night. But the thought of riding in the back of a taxi right now was unbearable. She would be sick.
“Thanksgiving Day? Impossible.” Lucy seemed to be arguing with the data. “We were together in Massachusetts Thanksgiving Day. She wasn’t on CNN, and she sure as hell wasn’t giving an interview to a newspaper or some graduate student.”
Chapter 17
The cold wind was biting, and the half-moon was high and small, illuminating nothing as Scarpetta and Benton walked to the morgue.
The sidewalk was almost deserted, the few people they passed seeming aimless with very little in life. A young man was rolling a joint. Another young man leaned against a wall, trying to stay warm. Scarpetta felt eyes on their backs, and she felt vaguely unsettled. She felt exposed and uneasy for reasons that were too layered for her to readily identify. Yellow taxis sped by, most of their lighted rooftop signs advertising banks and finance and loan companies, typical after Christmas, when people face the consequences of their holiday cheer. A bus boasted a banner ad for Gotham Gotcha, and anger touched Scarpetta like the tip of a spear.
Then she felt fear, and Benton seemed to sense it and he found her hand, and he held it as they walked.
“It’s what I get,” she said, thinking about the gossip column. “I did a pretty good job avoiding the limelight for twenty-something years. Now CNN and now this.”
“It’s not what you get,” he said. “It’s just the way things are. And it’s not fair. But nothing is. That’s why we’re headed where we are. We’re the experts in unfair. ”
“I won’t complain even one more time,” she said. “You’re absolutely right. It’s one thing to walk into the morgue. It’s another thing to be carried in.”