“That seems a little unusual.”
“Carley hard of hearing or something?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I don’t think so.”
They reached the other end of the hall, near the elevator, where he pushed open a door that had a lighted exit sign over it.
“So if you wanted to leave the hotel without going through the lobby, you could take the stairs. But if you came back in you’d have to use the elevator,” he said, holding the door open, looking down flights of concrete steps. “No way you can enter the stairs from the street, for the obvious security reasons.”
“You’re thinking Carley came here late last night and left by taking the stairs because she didn’t want anyone to see her?” Scarpetta wanted to know why.
Carley, with her spike heels and fitted skirts, didn’t seem the type to take the stairs or exert herself if she could help it.
“It’s not as if she was secretive about staying here,” Scarpetta pointed out. “Which I also find curious. If you knew she was here or simply wondered if she might be, like I did, all you’d have to do is call and ask to be connected to her room. Most well-known people are unregistered so they can prevent that sort of privacy violation from occurring. This hotel in particular is quite accustomed to having celebrity guests. It goes back to the twenties, is rather much a landmark for the rich and famous.”
“Like, who’s it famous for?” He set his field case on the carpet.
She didn’t know off the top of her head, she said, except that Tennessee Williams had died in the Hotel Elysée in 1983, had choked to death on a bottle cap.
“Figures you’d know who died here,” Marino said. “Carley’s not all that famous, so I wouldn’t add her to the Guess Who Slept or Died Here list. She’s not exactly Diane Sawyer or Anna Nicole Smith, and I doubt most people recognize her when she walks down the street. I got to figure out the best way to do this.”
He was thinking, leaning against the wall, still in the same clothes he’d been wearing when Scarpetta had seen him last, about six hours ago. A peppery stubble shadowed his face.
“Berger said she can have a warrant here in less than two.” He glanced at his watch. “That was almost an hour ago when I talked to her. So maybe another hour and Lucy shows up with the warrant in hand. But I’m not waiting that long. We’re going in. We’ll find your BlackBerry and get it, and who knows what else is in there.” He looked down the length of the quiet hallway. “I listed the necessary facts in the affidavit, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink. Digital storage, digital media, any hard drives, thumb drives, documents, e-mails, phone numbers, with the thought in mind Carley could have downloaded what’s on your BlackBerry and printed it or copied it onto a computer. Nothing I like better than snooping on a snoop. And I’m glad Berger thought of Lucy. I don’t find something, she sure as hell will.”
It hadn’t been Berger who had thought of Lucy. It was Scarpetta, and she was less interested in her niece’s help at the moment than she was in seeing her. They needed to talk. It really couldn’t wait. After Scarpetta had sent the e-mail to Berger suggesting that the paragraph be added to the addendum insuring it was legal for a civilian to assist in searching Carley’s room, Scarpetta had talked to Benton. She’d sat down next to him and touched his arm, waking him up. She was going to a scene with Marino, would probably be with him much of the morning, and she had a serious personal matter to take care of, she’d explained. It was best Benton didn’t come with them, she’d told him before he could suggest it, and then his cell phone had rung. The FBI calling.
The elevator door opened and the Hotel Elysée’s night manager, Curtis, emerged, a middle-aged man with a mustache, dapper in a dark tweed suit. He accompanied them back down the hallway and tried the door of room 412, knocking and ringing the bell, noting the Do Not Disturb light. He commented that it was on most of the time, and he opened the door and ducked his head inside, calling out hello, hello, before stepping back into the hallway, where Marino asked him to wait. Marino and Scarpetta walked into the room and shut the door, no sign or sound of anyone home. A wall-mounted TV was on, the channel tuned to CNN, the volume low.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Marino said to her. “But because these BlackBerrys are so common, I need you to ID it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”
They stood just inside the door, looking around a deluxe junior suite that was lived in by someone slovenly, someone possibly antisocial and depressed who had been staying here alone, Scarpetta deduced. The queen-size bed was unmade and strewn with newspapers and men’s clothing, and on the side table was a clutter of empty water bottles and coffee cups. To the left of the bed were a bowfront chest of drawers and a large window with the curtains drawn. To the right of that was the sitting area: two blue upholstered French armchairs with books and papers piled on them, a flame mahogany coffee table with a laptop and a small printer, and in plain view on top of a stack of paperwork, a touch-screen device, a BlackBerry in a smoke-gray protective rubberized case called a skin. Next to it was a plastic key card.
“That it?” Marino pointed.
“Looks like it,” Scarpetta said. “Mine has a gray cover.”
He opened his field case and pulled on surgical gloves, handing her a pair. “Not that we’re going to do anything we shouldn’t, but this is what I call exigent circumstances.”
It probably wasn’t. Scarpetta didn’t see anything that might suggest someone was trying to escape or get rid of evidence. The evidence appeared to be right in front of her, and no one was here but the two of them.
“I don’t suppose I should remind you about fruit of the poisonous tree.” She referred to the inadmissibility of evidence gathered during an unreasonable search and seizure. She didn’t put on the gloves.
“Naw, I have Berger to remind me. Hopefully she’s gotten her favorite judge out of bed by now, Judge Fable, what a name. A legend in his own mind. I went over the whole thing, the fact portion, on speakerphone, with her and a second detective she grabbed as a witness who will swear out the warrant with her in the presence of the judge. What’s known as double hearsay, a little complicated but hopefully no problem. Point is, Berger doesn’t take chances with affidavits and avoids like the plague being the affiant herself. I don’t care whose warrant it is or for what. Hopefully Lucy will roll up soon.”
He walked over to the BlackBerry and picked it up by its rubberized edges.
“The only surface good for prints is going to be the display, which I don’t want to touch without dusting it first,” he decided. “Then I’ll swab it for DNA.”
He squatted over the field case, retrieving black powder and a carbon-fiber brush, and Scarpetta turned her attention to the men’s clothing on the bed, getting close enough to detect a rancid smell, the stench of unclean flesh. She noted that the newspapers were from the past several days, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and was puzzled by a black Motorola flip phone on a pillow. Scattered on the rumpled linens were a pair of dirty khaki pants, a blue-and-white oxford-cloth shirt, several pairs of socks, pale-blue pajamas, and men’s undershorts that were stained yellow in the crotch. The clothing looked as if it hadn’t been washed in quite a while, someone wearing the same thing day after day and never sending it out to be laundered. That someone wasn’t Carley Crispin. These couldn’t be her clothes, and Scarpetta saw no sign of Carley anywhere she looked in this room. Were it not for Scarpetta’s BlackBerry being here, Carley wouldn’t come to mind for any reason at all.