Lucy said, “Aunt Kay? You left CNN on the night of December twenty-eighth and were within two blocks of John Jay. And you walked back to the apartment, just like you always do?”
The apartment was on Central Park West, and very close to CNN and John Jay.
“Yes,” Scarpetta said.
Another e-mail, this one dated yesterday. Again, the IP traced to John Jay.
Date: Mon, 31 December 2007 03:14:31
From: “Scarpetta”
To: “Terri”
Terri,
I’m sure you realize my time in NY is unpredictable and I have so little control over the OCME because I’m certainly not the chief, just a low-level consultant there.
I was thinking, why not meet in Watertown where I make the rules? I’ll give you a tour of my office, and no problem about seeing an autopsy or anything else you need. Happy New Year and look forward to seeing you soon.—Scarpetta
Lucy forwarded it to all of them as she read it out loud.
“I wasn’t in New York yesterday afternoon,” Scarpetta said. “I couldn’t have e-mailed this from John Jay. Not that I would have. And I don’t give tours of the morgue.”
“The emphasis about your not being the chief here in New York,” Berger said. “Someone is belittling you with your own lips, so to speak. Of course, I’m wondering about Terri being Scarpetta six-twelve and sending the e-mails to herself as if they’re from Scarpetta. Think what a coup that would be for her thesis. My question, Lucy, is do you see any reason we should completely dismiss the possibility that the imposter was Terri?”
As Lucy listened to Berger’s voice, she thought she heard a special warmth in it.
It had happened so swiftly, and Berger had been surprisingly sure of what she wanted. She had been surprisingly bold. Then the bitter wind had rushed in as Berger had opened the door and left.
Lucy said over the phone to her aunt, “These e-mails to Terri, allegedly from you, would explain why she quoted you in her thesis and seemed to think she knew you.”
“Kay? Did you get any indication of this from Oscar?” Berger asked.
“I can’t tell you what he said to me. But I won’t deny that I got such an indication.”
“So you did.” Berger’s reply. “So he definitely knew about this correspondence. Whether he saw it or not is another matter.”
“If Terri’s not the imposter,” Marino said, “who deleted all of the e-mails? And what for?”
“Exactly,” Berger said. “Right before she was murdered. Right before Oscar was supposed to come over for dinner. Or did someone else make the deletions and put the laptops in the closet?”
Lucy said, “If Terri made the deletions because she was worried about someone seeing them, she should have emptied the damn trash. Even an idiot knows you can recover deleted files from the trash, especially if the deletions are recent.”
“This much I think we can be sure of,” Scarpetta said. “No matter why she or someone else deleted the e-mails, Terri Bridges wasn’t expecting to be murdered last night.”
Lucy said, “No. She couldn’t have been expecting her own death. Unless she planned to commit suicide.”
“And then removed the ligature from her neck after the fact? I don’t think so,” said Marino, as if he’d taken Lucy literally.
“There was no ligature to remove,” Scarpetta said. “She was garroted. Nothing was tied or locked around her neck.”
Lucy said, “I have to find out who Scarpetta six-twelve is, and which photograph this person supposedly sent. There are no photographs, no JPEG images in the trash. It’s possible she deleted it before she deleted all these other e-mails, and flushed her cache.”
“Then what?” Berger’s voice.
“Then we’ll have to try recovering it from this laptop the same way we’re recovering her text files from the other one,” Lucy said. “Do the same thing you were watching earlier when you were here with me.”
“Any other possible explanation about the photograph?” It was Scarpetta who asked.
Lucy said, “If she, assuming we’re talking about Terri, accessed an attached e-mailed photograph from a different device—such as a BlackBerry or another computer somewhere—then it won’t be on the laptop she used for the Internet.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Scarpetta said. “There’s a power cord in her office that doesn’t go to either of the laptops you have. There must be another one somewhere.”
“We should go from here to Oscar’s apartment.” Marino’s voice, to the others. “Morales had the key. He’s still got it?”
“Yes,” Berger said. “He has it. Oscar could be there. We don’t know where he is.”
“I don’t believe for a minute he’s there.” Benton’s voice now.
“You were just talking to Morales? What did he want?” Berger asked him.
“He suspects Oscar figured he was about to get arrested—said one of the guards told him that Oscar didn’t do well after Kay left. Morales said, and remember to consider the source, that Oscar feels betrayed by Kay. Feels lied to and disrespected, and he’s glad Terri didn’t witness how abusive Kay was to Oscar during the examination. She supposedly put chemicals on Oscar and caused him a lot of pain.”
“Abuse?” Scarpetta asked.
They were having this conversation as if they’d forgotten Lucy was on the phone. She continued to search through deleted e-mails.
“That was the word Morales used,” Benton’s voice.
“I certainly wasn’t abusive, and whoever this Morales is, he knows damn well I can’t say what went on in there.” Scarpetta talking to Benton. “He knows Oscar’s not under arrest. So I really can’t defend myself if he starts tossing around words like that.”
“I don’t believe Oscar made those comments,” Benton said. “He knows you can’t repeat anything. So if he really didn’t trust you, he would assume that you would defend yourself if he did start misrepresenting you. He would assume you would breach confidentiality because you have no integrity. And I’ll talk to the guard, myself.”
“I agree,” Berger said. “Morales is probably the source of the comments.”
“He’s a shit stirrer,” Marino said.
“He has a message for you,” Benton said.
“Yeah, I bet he does,” Marino said.
“The witness you interviewed earlier today, the woman across the street?” Benton said, and it seemed they had forgotten that Lucy was listening.
“I hadn’t talked to him about it,” Marino said.
“Well, he knows about it,” Benton said to him.
“I had to get the dispatcher to talk the lady into letting me in. She thought I was an ax murderer and called nine-one-one. Maybe he heard about it that way.”
“Apparently, she called nine-one-one again,” Benton told him. “Just a little while ago.”
“She’s scared shitless,” Marino said. “Because of what happened to Terri.”
“To report animal abuse,” Benton said.
“Don’t tell me. Because of her dead puppy?”
“What?”