“Accuse us of what?”
“Of having a conflict of interest. Because of my aunt. Because of anything.”
“I care what people think far less than you imagine,” Berger said. “Because I learned it’s better to make them think what I want them to think than to care about it. I’m pretty good at that. I’ve had to be. I’ve got to be certain Kay isn’t even remotely aware of what’s going on. I need to talk to her.”
“She would have told Benton,” Lucy said. “She would have told you. She never would have agreed to examine Oscar Bane if she was somehow acquainted with him or with Terri Bridges.”
“When I requested that she examine him, she was given virtually no information about the case. Including the name of the victim. So maybe she was acquainted with Terri but didn’t realize it until she got in that room with Oscar.”
“I’m telling you, by now she would have said something.”
“I don’t know about you,” Berger said, “but I find it unusual that a student didn’t make at least some effort to contact sources for a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation. Terri Bridges was writing about Kay and never contacted her or tried? Are we sure? Maybe she did, and Kay just doesn’t remember because she wasn’t interested.”
“She would remember and at the very least would have politely declined. Aunt Kay didn’t know this lady.”
“Do you really think you can be objective? That you can handle this? Or that you want to?”
“I can. And I want to,” Lucy said, her attention suddenly distracted by what was on a video screen.
SCARPETTAby Terri Bridgesstreamed by, the same words repeatedly, in different fonts and different sizes.
“It’s begun sorting by title page,” Lucy said. “Was she fucking crazy?”
Chapter 19
The morgue was located at the lowest level, where it was convenient for vans and rescue vehicles to park in the bay as they brought in the dead and took them away.
The smell of industrial deodorizer was heavy on the air in a silent passageway of abandoned gurneys. Behind locked doors they passed were stored skeletal remains and specimens of brains, and then the grim conveyance of a dull steel elevator that lifted bodies upstairs, where they could be looked at from behind glass. Scarpetta had a special sympathy for those whose last image of someone they loved was that. In every morgue she’d ever managed, glass was unbreakable, and viewing rooms were civilized, with hints of life such as prints of landscapes and real plants, and the bereft were never unchaperoned.
Dr. Lester led them to the decomp room, usually restricted to remains that were badly decomposed, radioactive, or infectious, and a faint, lingering stench reached out to Scarpetta as if a special brand of misery was inviting her inside. Most doctors weren’t eager to work in there.
“Is there a reason you’ve got this body in isolation?” she said. “If so, now would be a good time to let us know.”
Dr. Lester flipped a switch. Overhead lights flickered on, illuminating one stationary stainless-steel autopsy table, several surgical carts, and a gurney bearing a body covered by a disposable blue sheet. A large flat-screen monitor on a countertop was split into six quadrants that were filled with rotating video images of the building and the bay.
Scarpetta told Benton to wait in the corridor while she stepped into the adjoining locker room and retrieved face masks, shoe and hair covers, and gowns. She pulled purple nitrile gloves from a box as Dr. Lester explained she was keeping the body in the decomp room because its walk-in refrigerator happened to be empty at the moment. Scarpetta barely listened. There was no excuse for why she hadn’t bothered to roll the gurney a brief distance away into the autopsy suite, which was much less of a biohazard and had no odor.
The sheet rustled when Scarpetta pulled it back, exposing a pale body with the long torso, large head, and stunted limbs that were characteristic of achondroplasia. What she noticed immediately was the absence of body hair, including pubic hair. She suspected laser removal, which would have required a series of painful treatments, and this was consistent with what Oscar Bane had said about Terri’s phobias. She thought about the dermatologist he had mentioned.
“I’m assuming she came in like this,” Scarpetta said, repositioning one of the legs to get a better look. “That you didn’t shave her.”
She, of course, couldn’t repeat information Oscar had given to her, and her frustration was acute.
“I certainly didn’t,” Dr. Lester said. “I didn’t shave any part of her. There was no reason.”
“The police say anything about it? They find anything at the scene, find out anything from Oscar, maybe from witnesses, about her hair removal or any other procedures she might have been getting?”
“Only that they noticed it,” Dr. Lester said.
Scarpetta said, “So there was no mention of someone she may have gone to, an office where she got this done. A dermatologist, for example.”
“Mike did say something about that. I have the name written down. A woman doctor here in the city. He said he was going to call her.”
“He found out about this doctor how?” Benton asked.
“Bills inside the apartment. As I understand it, he carried out a lot of bills, mail, things like that, and started going through them. The usual things. And it goes without saying, that leads to another speculation, that the boyfriend’s a pedophile. Most men who want a woman to remove all her pubic hair are pedophiles. Practicing or not.”
“Do we know for a fact the hair removal was the boyfriend’s idea?” Benton said. “How do you know it wasn’t her idea, her preference?”
“It makes her look prepubescent,” Dr. Lester said.
“Nothing else about her looks prepubescent,” Benton said. “And pubic hair removal could also be about oral sex.”
Scarpetta moved a surgical lamp closer to the gurney. The Y incision ran from clavicle to clavicle, intersecting at the sternum, and ending at the pelvis, and had been sutured with heavy twine in a pattern that always reminded her of baseballs. She repositioned the head to get a better look at the face, and felt the sawed skull cap move beneath the scalp. Terri Bridges’s complexion was a dark dusky red, the petechiae florid, and when Scarpetta opened the eyelids, the sclera were solid red from hemorrhage.
She had not died mercifully or fast.
Ligature strangulation affects the arteries and veins that carry oxygenated blood to the brain and deoxygenated blood away. As the ligature had been tightened around Terri’s neck, occluding the veins that drain blood away, blood continued to flow into her head but had nowhere to go. Increasing pressure ruptured blood vessels, resulting in congestion and masses of tiny hemorrhages. The brain was starved of oxygen, and she died of cerebral hypoxia.
But not right away.
Scarpetta retrieved a hand lens and a ruler from a cart and studied abrasions on the neck. They were U-shaped, high under the jaw, and angled up behind her head, sharply up on either side of it, and she noted a subtle pattern of linear marks overlapping one another. Whatever was used to strangle her was smooth, with no distinct edges, and its width ranged from three-eighths to five-eighths of an inch. She had seen this before when the ligature was an article of clothing or some other elastic material that became narrower as it was pulled hard, and wider as it was released. She indicated for Benton to come closer.