“Or wanted us to find it and make that assumption, draw some sort of conclusion from it,” Scarpetta said. “Remember, we don’t know how much of this is intended to deliberately lead us or, better put, mislead us.”
“That’s my hunch.” Berger’s voice. “This is deliberate. Whoever’s behind it is smart enough to know we’d see these e-mails eventually. The person wants us to see what we’re seeing.”
“To jerk us around,” Marino said. “And it’s working. I’m feeling jerked around as hell.”
“Two things are indisputable,” Benton said. “Terri had been dead for hours by the time that e-mail was written and saved as a draft. And Oscar was already at Bellevue, so he definitely wasn’t sending e-mails to anyone. So he couldn’t have written the one you’re talking about. Lucy? Can you read it, please?”
She read out loud what was on her screen:
Date: Mon, 31 December 2007 20:18:31
From: “Scarpetta”
To: “Terri”
Terri,
After three glasses of champagne and some of that whiskey that costs more than your books, I can be candid. In fact, I’m going to go ahead and be brutally candid with you. It’s my New Year’s resolution—to be brutal.
While I think you’re bright enough to have an excellent grasp of forensic psychology, I don’t think you could ever do anything but teach, if you insist on staying in the field. The sad fact? Suspects, inmates, victims would never accept a dwarf, and I don’t know how jurors would respond, either.
Would you ever consider being a morgue assistant where your appearance is immaterial? Who knows? Maybe one day you could work for me!
—Scarpetta
Lucy said, “The IP’s not John Jay. Not an address we’ve seen so far.”
“I’m glad she never got that.” Scarpetta sounded solemn. “That’s terrible. If she wasn’t sending them to herself, after all, she probably really did think they were from me. And Oscar probably thought so, too. I’m glad neither she nor Oscar ever read that, glad it was never sent. How incredibly cruel.”
“That’s what I’m getting at,” Marino said. “The person’s a piece of shit. Is playing games, having fun with us. This is for our benefit, to fuck with us, rub our noses in it. Who else was going to see this unsent e-mail except those of us investigating Terri’s murder? Mainly it’s for the Doc’s benefit. You ask me, somebody’s really got it in for the Doc.”
“Any idea where that IP traces? What the address is, if not John Jay?” Benton asked Lucy.
She said, “All I’ve got is a range of numbers from the Internet service provider. They aren’t going to tell me anything unless I hack into the mainframe.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Berger said to her. “You didn’t just say that.”
Chapter 25
For the first time since Marino had attacked her last spring, Scarpetta found herself alone with him.
She set down her crime scene case outside the bathroom doorway in the master bedroom, and she and Marino both looked at the stripped mattress beneath a window that had draperies drawn across it. They examined photographs of what the bed had looked like when the police had arrived last night, and the soft, sexy clothing that had been laid out on top of it. There was an uneasiness between the two of them now that they were inches from each other, with no one else around and no one to overhear them.
His big index finger began tapping an eight-by-ten of the clothing on the perfectly made bed.
He said, “You think it’s possible the killer did this, like maybe he was going through some fantasy shit after the fact? Like maybe he was playing out a fantasy of her dressing up for him in red or something?”
“I doubt it,” Scarpetta said. “If that was his intention, why didn’t he do it? He could have forced her to dress any way he’d wanted.”
She pointed at the clothing on the bed in the photograph, and her index finger was smaller than his pinkie.
“The clothes are laid out the way they would be if someone extremely organized was planning what to wear last night,” she explained. “Just as she had set up everything else for the evening, with methodical deliberation. I think that’s how she went about her normal routines. She’d timed her dinner preparation, perhaps had taken the wine out a few hours earlier so it would be the temperature she wanted. She’d set the table and had arranged flowers that she’d bought at a market earlier in the day. She was in her robe, perhaps had just showered.”
“Did it look to you like she’d just shaved her legs?” he asked.
“There wasn’t anything to shave,” Scarpetta said. “That’s not how she removed her hair. She went to the dermatologist for that.”
Photographs made sliding sounds as he shuffled them around, looking for ones that showed the interior of Terri’s closets and drawers, which the police had not left in their original ordered state. He and Scarpetta started looking through socks and hose, under garments and gym clothes, everything jumbled up and in disarray from multiple pairs of gloved hands digging through them and sliding hangers around. The police had rooted through quite a variety of high-heel platform pumps and sandals with stiletto heels, rhinestones, chains, and ankle straps, in different sizes, ranging from three to five.
“Finding ones that fit is one of the biggest challenges,” Scarpetta commented, looking at the pile of shoes. “An ordeal, and I’m going to venture a guess she did a lot of her shopping over the Internet. Possibly all of it.”
She returned a pair of studded flip-flops to the carpet beneath a hanging rod, which, unlike everything else she’d noticed in the apartment, had been installed lower than usual, so Terri could reach it without a tool or a step stool.
She said, “I’ll also stick with my theory that she was influenced by consumer reviews. Possibly even for her provocative tastes.”
“I’d give this maybe three stars,” Marino said, holding up a thong he’d just pulled out of a drawer. “But you ask me, the thing about rating underwear? It all depends on who’s wearing it.”
“Victoria’s Secret. Frederick’s of Hollywood,” Scarpetta observed. “Open mesh and fishnet. Lace teddies, crotchless panties. A corset. She was wearing a red lace shelf bra under her robe, and it’s very difficult for me to imagine she wasn’t wearing panties to match.”
“I don’t think I know what a shelf bra is.”
“It rather much does what the name implies,” she said. “The object of the game, to enhance and accentuate.”
“Oh. The one he cut off her. Doesn’t look like it would cover anything important.”
“It wouldn’t, and wasn’t supposed to,” she said. “That’s why she would have been wearing it to begin with, assuming it wasn’t the killer’s idea.”
Scarpetta returned the lingerie to its drawer and for a moment couldn’t look at Marino as she remembered the sounds and smells of him, and his shocking strength. It wasn’t until later that she’d felt him, when pain mapped out where he’d been in damaged flesh that burned and throbbed all the way to the bone.
“That and all the condoms,” Marino said.
He had his back to her, opening drawers in a nightstand. The condoms had been collected by the police.
“You see from the pictures, she must have had a hundred condoms in this top drawer,” he said. “Maybe this is a Benton question, but if she was a neat freak—”