Lucy probably was the most technically gifted person Scarpetta had ever known, curious about the way everything worked from the day she was born, putting this and that together and taking them apart, always confident she could improve the functioning of whatever it was. Such a proclivity plus a massive insecurity plus an overriding need for power and control and the result was a Lucy, a wizard who could easily destroy just as much as she fixed, depending on her motive and mostly on her mood. Swapping out phones without permission had not been an appropriate act, and Scarpetta still didn’t understand why her niece suddenly had done it. In the past she would have asked. She wouldn’t have become the self-appointed system administrator for everyone without permission, without so much as a warning, and she was going to be incensed when she learned the truth about Scarpetta’s folly, her foolishness. Lucy would say it was like not looking before you cross the street, like walking into the tail rotor.
Scarpetta dreaded the lecture she was certain to get when she confessed to disabling the password on her BlackBerry two days after receiving it, her frustration had been that great. You shouldn’t have, you absolutely shouldn’t have-the thought was caught in a loop in her mind. But every time she’d pulled the device out of its holster she’d had to unlock it. If she didn’t use it for ten minutes, it was locked again. Then the last straw, scaring the hell out of herself when her typos had resulted in her entering the password incorrectly six times in a row. Eight failed attempts-it was clearly written in Lucy’s instructions-and the BlackBerry rather much self-destructed, everything in it eradicated like those tape recordings in Mission: Impossible.
When Scarpetta had e-mailed Lucy that the BlackBerry had been “misplaced,” she’d neglected to mention the detail about the password. If someone had her smartphone, it would be a very bad thing, and Scarpetta was deeply afraid of that, and she was afraid of Lucy, and most of all she was afraid of herself. When did you start becoming so careless? You carried a bomb into your apartment and you disabled the password on your smartphone. What the hell’s the matter with you? Do something. Fix something. Take care of things. Don’t just fret.
She needed to eat, that was part of the problem, her stomach sour from having nothing in it. If she ate something, she’d feel better. She needed to do something with her hands, engage them in an act that was healing, an act besides sex. Preparing food was restorative and soothing. Making one of her favorite dishes, paying attention to details, helped return order and normalcy. It was either cook or clean, and she’d done enough cleaning, could still catch the scent of Murphy Oil Soap as she walked through the living room and into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator, scanning for inspiration. A frittata, an omelet, she wasn’t hungry for eggs or bread or pasta. Something light and healthy, and with olive oil and fresh herbs, like an Insalata Caprese. That would be good. It was a summer dish, to be served only when tomatoes were in season, preferably handpicked from Scarpetta’s own garden. But in cities like Boston and New York, wherever there was a Whole Foods or gourmet markets, she could find heirloom tomatoes all year round, rich Black Krims, lush Brandywines, succulent Caspian Pinks, mellow Golden Eggs, sweetly acidic Green Zebras.
She selected a few from a basket on the counter and placed them on a cutting board, quartering them into wedges. She warmed fresh buffalo mozzarella to room temperature by enclosing it in a zip-lock bag and submerging it in hot water for several minutes. Arranging the tomato and the cheese in a circular pattern on a plate, she added leaves of fresh basil and a generous dribble of cold-pressed unfiltered olive oil, finishing with a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. She carried her snack to the adjoining dining room, with its view due west of lighted apartment high-rises and the Hudson, and the distant air traffic in New Jersey.
She took a bite of salad as she opened the browser on her MacBook. Time to deal with Lucy. She’d probably answered her by now. May as well face the music and deal with the missing BlackBerry. It wasn’t a trivial worry, nothing trifling about it, and had been on Scarpetta’s mind since she’d first noticed it gone, and now it was an obsession. For hours she’d been trying to recall what was on it, trying to imagine what someone might have access to, while a part of her wished she could return to a past when her biggest concern was snooping, someone flipping through a Rolodex or riffling through the call sheets, autopsy protocols, and photographs that routinely were on her desk. In the old days, her answer to most potential indiscretions and leaks was locks. Highly sensitive records went into locked file cabinets, and if there was something on her desk that she didn’t want others to see, she locked her office door while she was out. Plain and simple. Just good common sense. All manageable. Just hide the key.
When she was the chief medical examiner of Virginia and her office got its first computer, that, too, was manageable and she’d felt no great fear of the unknown, felt she could handle the bad with the good. Of course, there were glitches in security, but all was fixable and preventable. Cell phones hadn’t been a significant problem back then, not at first, when her distrust of them had more to do with the potential use of scanners for eavesdropping and, more mundanely, people developing the uncivilized and reckless habit of having conversations that could be overheard. Those dangers didn’t begin to compare to ones that existed today. There was no adequate description for what she found herself fretting about regularly. Modern technology no longer seemed like her best friend. It bit her often. This time it may have bitten her badly.
Scarpetta’s BlackBerry was a microcosm of her personal and professional life, containing phone numbers and e-mail addresses of contacts who would be incensed or compromised if an ill-intended individual got hold of their private information. She was most protective of the families, of those left behind in the wake of a tragic death. In a way, these survivors became her patients, too, depending on her for information, calling her about a detail they suddenly remembered, a question, a theory, simply needing to talk, often at anniversaries or at this time of year, the holidays. The confidences Scarpetta shared with the families and loved ones of decedents were sacred, the most sacred aspect of her work.
How unspeakably awful if the wrong person, a person who worked for a cable news network, for example, came across some of these names, many of them associated with highly publicized cases, a name like Grace Darien. She was the last person Scarpetta had talked to, at about seven-fifteen p.m., after getting off the conference call with Berger, hurrying to get ready for CNN. Mrs. Darien had called Scarpetta’s BlackBerry, near hysteria because the press release that identified Toni Darien by name also had stated she’d been sexually assaulted and beaten to death. Mrs. Darien had been confused and panicked, had assumed a blow to the head was different from being beaten to death, and nothing Scarpetta could tell her had been reassuring. Scarpetta hadn’t been dishonest. She hadn’t been misleading. It wasn’t her press release, wasn’t her wording, and as difficult as it was, Mrs. Darien needed to understand why Scarpetta couldn’t go into any more detail than she already had. She was so sorry, but she simply couldn’t discuss the case further.