He made no move to get up from his chair, a faded denim leg bouncing, sweat stains in the armpits of a baggy white shirt. Berger could see his chest move as he breathed, an unusual silver cross on a leather necklace moving beneath white cotton with each shallow breath. His hands were clenched on the armrests, a chunky silver skull ring shining, his muscles flexed tensely, veins standing out in his neck. He did have to sit here, could no more extricate himself right now than he could avert his gaze from a train wreck about to happen.
“Remember Jeffrey Dahmer?” Lucy said, not looking up as she typed. “Remember what happened to that sick fuck? What the inmates did? Beat him to death with a broom handle, maybe did other things to him with the broom handle. He was into the same sick shit you are.”
“Jeffrey Dahmer? You serious?” Judd laughed too loudly. It wasn’t really a laugh. He was scared. “She’s fucking crazy,” he said to Berger. “I’ve never hurt anybody in my life. I don’t hurt people.”
“You mean not yet,” Lucy said, a city grid on her screen, as if she was MapQuesting.
“I’m not talking to her,” he said to Berger. “I don’t like her. Fucking make her leave or I’m going to.”
“How ’bout I give you a list of people you’ve hurt?” Lucy said. “Starting with the family and friends of Farrah Lacy.”
“I don’t know who that is, and you can go fuck yourself,” he snapped.
“You know what a class-E felony is?” Berger asked him.
“I haven’t done anything. I haven’t hurt anyone.”
“Up to ten years in prison. That’s what it is.”
“In isolation for your own protection,” Lucy continued, ignoring Berger’s signals to back off, another screenshot of a map in front of her.
Berger could make out green shapes that represented parks, blue shapes that were water, in an area congested with streets. An alert tone sounded on Berger’s BlackBerry. Someone had just sent her an e-mail at almost three o’clock in the morning.
“Solitary confinement. Probably Fallsburg,” Lucy said. “They’re used to high-profile prisoners. The Son of Sam. Attica ’s not so good. He had his throat cut there.”
The e-mail was from Marino:
Mental patient possb connected to docs incident dodie hodge I found something at rtcc dont forget to ask your witness if he knows her I’m tied up will explain later
Berger looked up from her BlackBerry as Lucy continued to terrorize Hap Judd with what happened in prison to people like him.
“Tell me about Dodie Hodge,” said Berger. “Your relationship with her.”
Judd looked baffled, then angry. He blurted out, “She’s a gypsy, a fucking witch. I’m the one who should be here as a victim the way that crazy bitch bothers me. Why the hell are you asking me? What’s she got to do with anything? Maybe she’s the one accusing me of something. Is she the one behind all this?”
“Maybe I’ll answer your questions when you answer mine,” Berger said. “Tell me the history of how you know her.”
“A psychic, a spiritual adviser. Whatever you want to call her. A lot of people-Hollywood people, really successful people, even politicians-know her, go to her for advice about money, their careers, their relationships. So I was stupid. I talked to her, and she wouldn’t stop bothering me. Calls my office in L.A. all the time.”
“Then she’s stalking you.”
“That’s what I call it. Yeah, exactly.”
“And this started when?” Berger asked.
“I don’t know. Last year. Maybe a year ago this past fall. I got referred.”
“By whom?”
“Someone in the business who thought I might get something out of it. Career guidance.”
“I’m asking for a name,” Berger said.
“I got to respect confidentiality. A lot of people go to her. You’d be amazed.”
“Go to her, or does she come to you?” Berger said. “Where do the meetings take place?”
“She came to my apartment in TriBeCa. High-profile people aren’t going to come to wherever she lives and risk being followed and maybe caught on camera. Or she does readings on the phone.”
“And how does she get paid?”
“Cash. Or if it’s a phoner, you mail a cashier’s check to a P.O. box in New Jersey. Maybe a few times I talked to her on the phone, and then cut her off because she’s so damn crazy. Yeah, I’m being stalked. We should talk about me being stalked.”
“Does she show up places where you are? Such as your apartment in TriBeCa, where you’re filming, places you frequent, such as the bar on Christopher Street here in New York?” Berger asked.
“She leaves messages all the time at my agent’s office.”
“She calls L.A.? Fine. I’ll give you a good contact at the FBI field office in L.A.,” Berger said. “The FBI handles stalking. One of their specialties.”
Judd didn’t reply. He had no interest in talking to the FBI in L.A. He was a cagey bastard, and Berger wondered if the person whose confidentiality he was protecting might be Hannah Starr. Based on what he’d just said, he first met Dodie around the same time his financial transactions with Hannah began. A year ago this past fall.
“The bar on Christopher Street,” Berger redirected, not satisfied that Dodie Hodge was related to anything that mattered and annoyed that Marino had interrupted her interrogation of someone she’d begun to strongly dislike.
“You can’t prove anything.” The defiance was back.
“If you really believe we can’t prove anything, why did you bother to show up?”
“Especially since you almost didn’t,” Lucy interrupted, busy on her MacBook. Typing e-mails and looking at maps.
“To cooperate,” Judd said to Berger. “I’m here to cooperate.”
“I see. You couldn’t fit cooperation into your busy schedule three weeks ago when you first came to my attention and I tried repeatedly to get hold of you.”
“I was in L.A. ”
“I forgot. They don’t have phones in L.A. ”
“I was tied up, and the messages I got weren’t clear. I didn’t understand.”
“Good, so now you understand and have decided to cooperate,” Berger said. “So, let’s talk about your little incident this past Monday-specifically, what happened after you left the Stonewall Inn at fifty-three Christopher Street late Monday night. You left with that kid you met, Eric. Remember Eric? The kid you smoked weed with? The kid you talked so openly with?”
“We were high,” Judd said.
“Yes, people say things when they’re high. You got high and told him wild-ass tales, his words, about what happened at Park General Hospital in Harlem,” Berger said.
They were naked beneath a down-filled duvet, unable to sleep, tucked into each other and looking out at the view. The Manhattan skyline wasn’t the ocean or the Rockies or the ruins of Rome, but it was a sight they loved, and it was their habit to open the shades at night after turning off the lights.
Benton stroked Scarpetta’s bare skin, his chin on top of her head. He kissed her neck, her ears, and her flesh was cool where his lips had been. His chest was pressed against her back, and she could feel the slow beat of his heart.
“I never ask you about your patients,” she said.
“Clearly I’m not much of a distraction if you’re thinking about my patients,” Benton said in her ear.
She pulled his arms around her and kissed his hands. “Maybe you can distract me again in a few minutes. I’d like to raise a hypothetical question.”
“You’re entitled. I’m surprised you have only one.”
“How would someone like your former patient know where we live? I’m not suggesting she left the package.” Scarpetta didn’t want to say Dodie Hodge’s name in bed.
“One might speculate that if someone is sufficiently manipulative, that person might successfully extract information from others,” Benton said. “For example, there are staff members at McLean who know where our apartment is, since mail and packages are occasionally sent to me here.”