Marino changed gloves again and started on the second hotel key card as Scarpetta debated whether she should access her new voicemails remotely, borrowing his phone. She was especially interested in those left by Mrs. Darien, whose distress would be unimaginable after hearing about the yellow taxi and the bogus information about Hannah Starr’s hair being found in one. Mrs. Darien probably thought what a lot of people would, that her daughter had been killed by some predator who also had killed Hannah, and if the police had released information sooner, maybe Toni never would have gotten into a cab. Don’t be stupid again, Scarpetta thought. Don’t open any files until Lucy gets here. She scrolled through instant messages and e-mails. Nothing new had been read.
She wasn’t seeing any evidence that anyone had looked at what was on her BlackBerry, but she couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t possible for her to tell if someone had looked at PowerPoint presentations or scene photographs or any files she’d already perused. But she had no reason to believe Warner Agee had gotten around to looking at what was on her BlackBerry, and that was perplexing. Certainly he would have been curious about phone messages left by the mother of the murdered jogger. What rich information for Carley to leak on her show. Why hadn’t he? If Carley had gotten here around eleven-forty-five, he wasn’t dead by then, assuming he was the man on the GW Bridge some two and a half hours later. Depression and not caring anymore, she thought. Maybe that was it.
Marino was finished with the key cards, and she got another pair of gloves from him, their used ones a tidy pile on the floor, like magnolia petals. She took the key that had been on the bathroom vanity and tried it on the room door. The light flashed yellow.
“Nope,” she said, and she tried the other key that had been on the coffee table near her BlackBerry, and the light flashed green and the lock made a promising click. “The new one,” she said. “Carley left my BlackBerry and a new key for him and must have kept a key for herself.”
“The only thing I can think of is he wasn’t here,” Marino said, using a Sharpie to label an evidence bag he neatly arranged with others inside his field case.
Scarpetta was reminded of the old days when he used to deposit evidence, a victim’s personal effects, police equipment, in whatever was handy, usually walking out of a crime scene with multiple brown-paper grocery bags or recycled boxes that he would slam shut in the Bermuda Triangle of a trunk that might also have fishing gear, a bowling ball, and a case of beer in it. Somehow he’d managed to never lose or contaminate anything that mattered, and she could recall but a few instances when his lack of discipline posed so much as a minor setback in a case. Mostly he’d always been a threat to himself and anyone who depended on him.
“She shows up and stops by the desk because she doesn’t have much choice. She needs to make sure she has a key that works, and she wants to change the reservation, then upstairs she lets herself in and finds him gone.” Marino was trying to figure out what Carley had done when she’d gotten here last night. “Unless she decided to use the john while she was here, no reason for her to notice what was in there. All his hair, his hearing aids. Me, personally? I don’t think she saw all that or him. I think she left your phone and a new key and then snuck out, taking the stairs, wanting to draw as little attention to herself as possible because she was up to no good.”
“So maybe he was out for a while, wandering around.” Scarpetta’s mind was on Agee. “Thinking about it. Thinking about what he intended to do. Assuming he did something tragic.”
Marino snapped shut his field case as his phone rang. Looking at the display, he handed it to Scarpetta. It was the office.
“Nothing in his pockets, which were inside out,” Dennis said. “From the police already going through them, looking for something that might ID him, contraband, a weapon, whatever. They put a few things in a bag, some loose change and what looks like a really small remote control. Maybe something that goes to a boom box or satellite radio?”
“Does it have a manufacturer’s name on it?” Scarpetta asked.
“Siemens,” and Dennis spelled it.
Someone started knocking on the door, and Marino answered it as Scarpetta said to Dennis, “Can you tell if the remote’s turned on?”
“Well, there’s a little window, you know, a display.”
Lucy walked in, handing Marino a manila envelope and taking off her black leather bomber jacket. She was dressed for flying, in cargo pants, a tactical shirt, and lightweight boots with rubber soles. Slung over her shoulder was the dark earth-colored PUSH pack, Practical Utility Shoulder Hold-all, that she carried everywhere, an off-duty bag with multiple mesh and stash pockets and pouches, and probably in one of them a gun. She slipped the pack off her shoulder, unzipped the main compartment, and slid out a MacBook.
“There should be a power button,” Scarpetta said, watching Lucy open her computer as Marino directed her attention to Scarpetta’s BlackBerry, the two of them talking in low voices that Scarpetta blocked out. “Press it until you think you’ve turned off the remote,” she instructed Dennis. “Did you send a photo?”
“You should have it. I think this thing’s off now.”
“Then it must have been on while in his pocket,” Scarpetta said.
“I’m thinking it was.”
“If it had been, the police wouldn’t have seen anything in the display that would identify him. You don’t see messages like that until you power up whatever it is. Which is what you need to do now. Hold the button down again to power it up and see if you get any sort of system message. Similar to when you power up your phone and your number appears on the display. I think the remote you have belongs to a hearing aid. Actually, two hearing aids.”
“There’s no hearing aids with the body,” Dennis told her. “Of course, they probably would come off when you jump from a bridge.”
“Lucy?” Scarpetta said. “Can you log on to my office e-mail and open a file just sent? A photograph. You know my password. It’s the same one you enabled for my BlackBerry.”
Lucy placed her computer on the console under the wall-mounted TV. She started typing. An image appeared on the computer screen, and she dug into her pack and pulled out a VGA adapter and a display cable. She plugged the adapter into one of the computer’s ports.
“I got something in the display. If lost, please contact Dr. Warner Agee.” And Dennis recited a phone number. “Now, that’s something.” His excited voice in Scarpetta’s ear. “That makes my night. What’s two-oh-two? Isn’t that the area code for Washington, D.C.?”
“Call the number and let’s see what happens.” Scarpetta had a pretty good idea.
Lucy was plugging the cable into the side of the wall-mounted TV when the cell phone rang on the bed inside the hotel room. The ringtone was loud, Bach’s Fugue in D Minor, and a gory image of a dead body on a gurney filled the flat screen on the wall.
“That’s the guy on the bridge,” Marino said, walking closer to the TV. “I recognize the clothes he had on.”