“Sounds like someone who has a secret life,” Lucy said.
“Maybe.”
“People in love don’t see each other only one night a week,” Lucy said. “Especially since neither of them had physical work-places outside the home. That we know of. Something’s not right. If you’re in love, in lust, you don’t sleep. You can hardly eat. You can’t concentrate on your work, and you sure as hell can’t stay away from each other.”
“As we get closer to her murder, it gets worse,” Berger said. “He’s sounding paranoid. Really upset with how little time they spend together. Seems to be suspicious of her. Why will she see him only once a week? And only on Saturday nights, and why does she basically kick him out of bed before dawn? Why does she suddenly want to see his apartment when she’s never been interested in the past? What is it she thinks she’ll find in there? It’s not a good idea, he says. He would have told her yes in the beginning. But not now. He loves her so much. She’s the love of his life. He wishes she hadn’t asked to see his apartment because he can’t tell her why the answer’s no. One day in person he’ll tell her. God. This is weird. After three months of dating each other, sleeping with each other, she’s never set foot inside his apartment? And now suddenly she wants to go in there? Why? And why won’t he let her? Why won’t he explain it unless he does so in person?”
“Maybe the same reason he never tells her where he’s been or what he’s doing,” Lucy said. “He doesn’t tell her his plans—if he’s going to run errands on a given day, for example. He says he walked x number of miles but doesn’t give specifics as to where or when he plans to do it next. He writes the way one would if he’s worried that someone else might be reading his e-mails or watching him.”
“Jump back earlier to last fall, last summer or spring,” Berger said. “And let’s see if the pattern’s similar.”
They skimmed for a while. Those e-mails between Terri and Oscar weren’t at all like the recent ones. Not only were they less personal, but the tone and content of his were much more relaxed. He mentioned libraries and bookstores that were his favorites. He described where he liked to walk in Central Park, and a gym he’d tried a few times, but a lot of the machines weren’t the right fit. He included a number of details that revealed information he wouldn’t have been open about were he worried that someone else was reading his e-mails or, in other words, spying on him.
“He wasn’t scared back then,” Berger said. “What Benton’s concluded seems right. He says Oscar is afraid of something now—right now. A perceived threat—right now.”
Lucy typed Berger’s name into a search field and said, “I’m curious to see if there’s any mention anywhere of his phone call to your office last month. His fears of being under electronic surveillance, followed, his identity stolen, and so on.”
She got a hit on Jaime Berger’s name, but the e-mail in question had nothing to do with Oscar’s recent phone call to the DA’s office:
Date: Mon, 2 July 2007 10:47:31
From: “Terri Bridges”
To: “Jaime Berger”
CC: “Dr. Oscar Bane”
Subject: “Interview with Dr. Kay Scarpetta”
Dear Ms. Berger,
I’m a graduate student writing a master’s thesis on the evolution of forensic science and medicine from earlier centuries to modern times. It’s tentatively titled “Forensic Follies.”
In brief: We’ve come full circle, gone from the ridiculous to the sublime, from the quackery of phrenology, physiognomy, and the image of the murderer captured by the retina of the victim’s eye to the “magic tricks” of modern movies and TV dramas. I’ll happily explain further if you might be so gracious as to answer me. E-mail is preferable. But I’m including my phone number.
I’d love your thoughts, of course, but my real reason for writing is I’m trying to contact Dr. Kay Scarpetta—who better for the topic, I’m sure you agree! Perhaps, if nothing else, you’ll give her my e-mail address? I’ve tried to contact her several times at her office in Charleston, but with no success. I know you’ve had professional connections in the past, and assume you’re still in touch with each other and friends.
Sincerely,
Terri Bridges
212-555-2907
“Obviously, you never got this,” Lucy said.
“Sent to New York City Government-dot-org from someone who called herself Lunasee?” Berger replied. “I wouldn’t get that in a million years. A more important question to me is why Kay didn’t know Terri was trying to get hold of her. Charleston isn’t exactly New York City.”
“It may as well have been,” Lucy said.
Berger got out of her chair and collected her coat, her briefcase.
“I have to go,” she said. “We’ll probably have a meeting tomorrow. I’ll call you when I know the time.”
“Late last spring, early summer,” Lucy said. “I can see why my aunt never got Terri’s message, if that’s what happened. And likely, it is.”
She got up, too, and they walked through the loft.
“Rose was dying,” Lucy said. “Mid-June to early July, she lived in my aunt’s carriage house. Neither of them went to the office anymore. And Marino wasn’t there. Aunt Kay’s new practice was small. She was only about two years into it. There really was no other staff.”
“No one to take a message, and no one to answer the phone,” Berger said as she put on her coat. “Before I forget, if you’d forward that e-mail to me so I have a copy. Since you don’t seem to print things around here. And if you find anything else I should know about?”
“Marino had been gone since early May,” Lucy said. “Rose never knew what happened to him, which was really unfair. He vanished into thin air, and then she died. No matter what, she cared about him.”
“And you? Where were you while the phones rang and no one picked up or noticed?”
“It all seems like a different life, as if I wasn’t there,” Lucy said. “I almost can’t remember where I was or what I did toward the end, but it was awful. My aunt put Rose in the guest room and stayed with her around the clock. She spiraled down really quickly after Marino disappeared, and I stayed away from the office and the labs. I’d known Rose all my life. She was like the cool grandmother everyone wants, just so cool in her proper suits with her hair pinned up, but a piece of work and not afraid of anything whether it was dead bodies or guns or Marino’s motorcycles.”
“What about dying? Was she afraid?”
“No.”
“But you were,” Berger said.
“All of us were. Me most of all. So I did a really brilliant thing and suddenly got busy. For some reason it seemed urgent that I do a refresher in advanced executive protection training, attack recognition and analysis, tactical firearms, the usual. I got rid of one helicopter and found another, then went to the Bell Helicopter school in Texas for several weeks when I really didn’t need to do that, either. Next thing I knew, everybody had moved up north. And Rose was in a cemetery vault in Richmond, overlooking the James, because she loved the water so much, and my aunt made sure she’d have a water view forever.”
“So somehow what we’re dealing with now, in a way, started back then,” Berger said. “When nobody was paying attention.”