Berger made notes and said, “Might give us an idea of where she was and when. Her habits. Which might possibly lead to who she was with. If, for example, she spent most of the time in her apartment working, except on the Saturday nights she saw Oscar. Or did she go to other places to do her writing? Perhaps even another person’s residence. Did she have some other person in her life we don’t know about?”
“I can get you a timeline right up to the last keystroke she ever made,” Lucy said. “But not where she worked. E-mail can be traced to an IP address, saying, for example, she did e-mail off-site, such as in an Internet café. But there’s nothing to trace when we’re talking about her word-processing files. We can’t say for a fact that she always worked on her thesis at home. Maybe she used a library somewhere. Or Oscar might know if she always worked in her apartment. Assuming anything he says is true. For all we know, he’s the one writing this thesis. I’ll continue to remind you of that.”
“The cops didn’t find research materials in Terri’s apartment,” Berger said.
“A lot of people have electronic files these days. They don’t have paper. Some people never print anything out unless it’s absolutely necessary. I’m one of them. I’m not a fan of paper trails.”
“Kay will certainly know how much of what Terri or someone was collecting and writing is accurate,” Berger said. “Can we completely re-create every draft?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that. Better to say I can recover what’s here. Now the computer’s sorting by bibliography. Every time Terri made a new entry or revised or altered anything, a new version of the same file was created. That’s why you see so many copies of what appears to be the same document. Well, you’re not seeing it. I assumed you’re not looking. How are you feeling?”
Lucy looked over at her, looked right at her.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Berger said. “I probably should leave. We have to figure out what we’re going to do about this.”
“Instead of trying so hard to figure out everything, why don’t you wait and see what we’re dealing with. Because it’s too early to know. But you shouldn’t leave. Don’t.”
Their chairs were side by side, and Lucy moved her fingers on the keyboard and Berger made notes, and Jet Ranger’s big head appeared between their chairs. Berger began to pet him.
“More sorting,” Lucy said. “But now by different forensic science disciplines. Fingerprints, DNA, trace evidence. Copied and routed into a folder called Forensic Science.”
“Files that were replaced,” Berger said. “One file copied over another. I’ve always been told that when you copy one file on top of another, the old copy’s gone for good.”
The office phone rang.
Berger said, “It’s for me.”
She placed her hand on top of Lucy’s wrist to stop her from answering it.
Chapter 18
Inside Dr. Lester’s office, everywhere she could fit them, were framed degrees, certificates, commendations, and photographs of herself wearing a hard hat and a white protective suit, excavating The Hole, as those who worked there referred to what was left of the World Trade Center.
She was proud to have been part of Nine-Eleven, and seemed to be personally unfazed by it. Scarpetta hadn’t fared quite as well after spending almost six months at the Water Street recovery site, hand-scanning thousands of buckets of dirt like an archaeologist, screening for personal effects, body parts, teeth, and bone. She had no framed photographs. She had no PowerPoint presentations. She didn’t like to talk about it, having felt physically poisoned by it in a way that was unlike anything she had ever felt before. It was as if the terror those victims had experienced at their moment of certain death had been suspended and fixed in a miasma that enveloped wherever they had been, and later, where remnants of them were recovered and bagged and numbered. She couldn’t quite explain it, but it was nothing to flaunt or brag about.
Dr. Lester retrieved a thick envelope from her desk and gave it to Benton.
“Autopsy photos, my preliminary report, the DNA analysis,” she said. “I don’t know how much of it Mike gave to you. Sometimes he gets distracted.”
She mentioned Mike Morales as if they were close friends.
“The police are calling it a homicide,” Benton said.
He didn’t open the envelope but gave it to Scarpetta, making a point.
“They aren’t the ones who make the determination,” Dr. Lester answered him. “I’m sure Mike isn’t calling it that. Or even if he is, he knows where I stand.”
“And what does Berger say?” Benton asked.
“She doesn’t make the determination, either. People have such a hard time waiting their turn in line. I always say the doomed ones who end up down here aren’t in a hurry, so why should the rest of us be? I’m pending the manner of death for now, especially in light of the DNA. If I was unsure of this case before, well, now I’m completely in limbo.”
“So you don’t foresee determining a manner of death in the near future,” Benton said.
“There’s nothing more I can do. I’m waiting on everybody else,” she said.
It was exactly what Scarpetta didn’t want to hear. Not only was there no evidence that warranted Oscar’s arrest, legally there was no crime. She might be bound to secrecy with him for a very long time.
They left her office, and Dr. Lester said, “For example, she had some sort of lubricant in her vagina. That’s unusual for a homicide.”
“This is the first anyone’s mentioned a lubricant,” Scarpetta said. “It’s not in any of the preliminary reports I’ve seen.”
Dr. Lester replied, “You realize, of course, these DNA profiles in CODIS are nothing but numbers. And I’ve always said, all you need is an error in the numbers, which would result in a totally different chromosomal position. One thing off in a marker or maybe more than one marker, and you’ve got a serious problem. I think it’s possible that what we have here is a very rare false positive due to computer error.”
“You don’t get false positives, not even very rarely,” Scarpetta said. “Not even if there is a mixture of DNA, such as in cases where more than one person sexually assaulted a victim or there’s cross-contamination from multiple people having contact with an item or a substance, such as a lubricant. A mixture of DNA profiles from different people won’t magically be identical to the profile of a woman in Palm Beach, for example.”
“Yes, the lubricant. Which raises another possible explanation,” Dr. Lester said. “Cross-contamination, such as you yourself just suggested. A prostitute who didn’t leave semen, meaning the prostitute could be male or female. What do we know about anybody’s private life until they end up here? That’s why I’m not so quick to call something a homicide, suicide, accident. Not until all the facts are in. I don’t like surprises after I’ve committed myself. I’m sure you saw in the lab report that the presence of seminal fluid was negative.”
“Not unheard of,” Scarpetta said. “Not even unusual. Nor is it unheard of for a lubricant to be used in a sexual assault, by the way. K-Y jelly, Vaseline, sunblock, even butter. I could make you a long list of what I’ve seen.”
They were following Dr. Lester through another corridor that dated back to earlier decades, when forensic pathologists were crudely called meat cutters. It wasn’t all that long ago that science and the dead had little in common beyond ABO blood-typing, fingerprints, and x-rays.