Then he’d given her a tour of the mansion while the other guests partied several floors away, and in a guest room, he took her to bed, knowing full well that what had excited her wasn’t him. It was sex and violence, power and money, and the conversation about them, the entity of Benton and Scarpetta and Lucy and anyone else who fell under their spell. Afterward, Carley wanted nothing else and Agee wanted more, wanted to be with her, wanted to make love to her for the rest of his days, and when she’d finally told him that he must stop writing her e-mails and leaving her messages, it was too late. The damage was done. He couldn’t always be sure who overheard his conversations or how loud he was, and all it had taken was one lapse, one voicemail he was leaving on Carley’s phone while his wife happened to be outside his closed office door, about to come in with a sandwich and a cup of tea.
The marriage ended quickly, and he and Carley maintained infrequent long-distance contact; mostly he kept up with her in the news as she moved into a variety of media venues. Then almost a year ago he read a story about plans for a show, The Crispin Report, pegged as hard-biting journalism and cop shop talk with an emphasis on current cases and call-ins from viewers, and Agee decided to contact her with a proposal, maybe more than one. He was lonely. He hadn’t gotten over her. Frankly, he needed money. His legitimate consulting services were very rarely used anymore, his ties with the FBI having been severed not long after Benton’s were, in part inspired by the situation with him, which was viewed as sticky by some and as sabotage by others. For the past five years, Agee’s ventures had taken him elsewhere, a scavenger mostly paid pit tances in cash for services he rendered to industries and individuals and organizations that profited handsomely from their ability to manipulate customers, clients, patients, the police, he didn’t care who. Agee had done nothing but bend the knee to others who were inferior to him, traveling constantly, quite a lot in France, sinking deeper into invisibility and debt and despair, and then he met with Carley, whose prospects were equally perilous, neither of them young anymore.
What someone in her position needed most of all was access and information, he’d pitched to her, and the problem she was going to encounter was that the experts essential to her success wouldn’t be willing to appear on camera. The good people don’t talk. They can’t. Or, like Scarpetta, they have contracts and you don’t dare ask. But you could tell, Agee had said. That was the secret he taught Carley. Come onto the set already armed with what you need to know, and don’t ask—tell. He could hunt and gather behind the scenes, and supply her with transcripts so her breaking news could be backed up, validated, or at least not disproved.
Of course he would be happy to appear on the air with her whenever she wanted. It would be unprecedented, he’d pointed out. He’d never been on camera before or in photographs and rarely gave interviews. He didn’t say it was because he’d never been asked, and she didn’t volunteer that she knew that was the reason. Carley wasn’t a decent person, and neither was he, but she’d been kind enough to him, as kind as she was capable of being. They tolerated each other and fell into a rhythm, a harmony of professional conspiracy, but it had yet to become anything more, and by now he’d accepted that their night of Bordeaux in the Starr mansion was not to be repeated.
It wasn’t a coincidence, because he didn’t believe in them, that what brought Agee and Carley together originally would be part of a bigger destiny. She didn’t believe in ESP or poltergeists and was neither a sender nor a receiver of telepathy—any information that might come her way too masked by sensory noise. But she trusted what was in the Starrs—specifically, Hannah, Rupe’s daughter—and when she disappeared, they instantly seized it as an opportunity, the case they had been waiting for. They had a right to it, had claims to it, because of a prior connection that wasn’t random in Agee’s mind but an information transfer from Hannah, whom he’d gotten to know at the mansion and had introduced to his paranormal preoccupations and then introduced her to people here and abroad, one of them the man she married. It wasn’t inconceivable to him that Hannah might begin to send telepathic signals after she vanished. It wasn’t inconceivable that Harvey Fahley would send something next. Not a thought or an image but a message.
What to do about him. Agee was extremely anxious and getting irritated, having replied to Harvey’s e-mail about an hour ago and hearing nothing further. There wasn’t the luxury of time to wait any longer if Carley was to break the news tonight, and do it with the forensic pathologist who had autopsied Toni sitting right there. What could be better timing? It should be Agee sitting right there. That would be better timing, but he hadn’t been invited. He wouldn’t be asked when Scarpetta was on the show, couldn’t be on the set or in the same building. She refused to appear with him, didn’t consider him credible, according to Carley. Maybe Agee would give Scarpetta a lesson in credibility and do a favor for Carley. He needed a transcript.
How to get Harvey on the phone. How to engage him in a conversation. How to hijack his information. Agee contemplated e-mailing him a second time and including his own phone number, asking Harvey to call him, but it wouldn’t help if he did. The only way it would suit Agee’s purposes would be if Harvey dialed the 1-800 number for the hearing-impaired Web-based telephone service, but then Harvey would know that he was being monitored by a third party, a captioner who was transcribing every word he said in real time. If he was as cautious and traumatized as he seemed to be, he wasn’t going to allow any such thing.
If Agee initiated the call, however, then Harvey would have no idea that what he said was being transcribed, was proof, almost as good as a recording but perfectly legal. It was what Agee did all the time when he interviewed sources on Carley’s behalf, and on the infrequent occasion when the person complained or claimed he or she had said no such thing, Carley produced the transcript, which did not include Agee’s side of the conversation, only what the source said, which was even better. If there was no record of Agee’s questions and comments, then what the subject of the interview said could be interpreted rather much any way Carley pleased. Most people just wanted to be important. They didn’t care if they were misquoted, as long as she got their name right or, when appropriate, kept them anonymous.
Agee impatiently tapped the space bar of his laptop, waking it up, checking for any new e-mails in his CNN mailbox. Nothing of interest. He had been checking every five minutes, and Harvey wasn’t writing him back. Another prick of irritation and anxiety, more intense this time. He reread the e-mail Harvey had sent to him earlier:
Dear Dr. Agee,
I’ve watched you on The Crispin Report and am not writing to go on it. I don’t want attention.
My name is Harvey Fahley. I’m a witness in the case of the murdered jogger who I just saw on the news has been identified as Toni Darien. I was driving past Central Park on 110th Street early this morning and am positive I saw her being pulled out of a yellow cab. I now suspect it was her dead body being pulled out. This was just minutes before it was found.
Hannah Starr also was last seen in a yellow cab.
I’ve given my statement to the police, an investigator named L.A. Bonnell, who told me I can’t talk to anyone about what I saw. Since you’re a forensic psychiatrist, I believe I can trust that you’ll handle my information intelligently and in the strictest of confidence.
My obvious concern is whether the public should be warned, but I don’t feel it’s for me to do it, and anyway, I can’t or I’ll get in trouble with the police. But if someone else is hurt or killed, I’ll never be able to live with myself. I already feel guilty about not stopping my car instead of driving past. I should have stopped to check on her. It was probably too late, but what if it hadn’t been? I’m really upset about this. I don’t know if you see private patients, but I might need to talk to someone eventually.
I’m asking you to please handle my information as you think proper and appropriate, but do not reveal it came from me.
Sincerely, Harvey Fahley
&n
bsp; Agee clicked on his sent folder and found the e-mail he’d written in response forty-six minutes ago, reviewing it again, wondering if there was something he said in it that might have discouraged Harvey from answering him:
Harvey:
Please give me a phone number where I can reach you, and we will handle this judiciously. In the meantime, I strongly advise that you not discuss this with anyone else.
Regards, Dr. Warner Agee
Harvey hadn’t answered because he didn’t want Agee to call him. That was likely it. The police had told Harvey not to talk, and he was afraid to divulge more than he already had, possibly regretted he’d contacted Agee to begin with, or maybe Harvey hadn’t checked his e-mail in the past hour. Agee couldn’t find a telephone listing for Harvey Fahley, had come across one on the Internet, but it was nonworking. He could have said thank you or at the very least acknowledged receiving Agee’s e-mail. Harvey was ignoring him. He might contact someone else. Poor impulse control, and next, Harvey divulges valuable information to another source and Agee is cheated again.
He pointed the remote at the TV and pressed the power button, and CNN blinked on. Another commercial announcing Kay Scarpetta’s appearance tonight. Agee looked at his watch. In less than an hour. A montage of images: Scarpetta climbing out of a medical examiner’s white SUV, her crime scene bag slung over her shoulder; Scarpetta in a white Tyvek disposable jumpsuit on the mobile platform unit, a colossal tractor-trailer with sifting stations set up for mass disasters, such as passenger plane crashes; Scarpetta on the set of CNN.
“What we need is the Scarpetta Factor and here for that is our own Dr. Kay Scarpetta. The best forensic advice on television, right here on CNN.” The anchors’ standard line these days before segueing into an interview with her. Agee kept hearing it in his memory as if he was hearing it in his bedroom, watching the silent commercial on the silent TV. Scarpetta and her special factor saving the day. Agee watched images of her, images of Carley, a thirty-second spot advertising tonight’s show, a show Agee should be on. Carley was frantic about her ratings, was sure she wasn’t going to make it another season if something didn’t change dramatically, and if she got canceled, what would Agee do? He was a kept man, kept by lesser mortals, kept by Carley, who didn’t feel about him the way he felt about her. If the show didn’t go on, neither did he.
Agee got off the bed to retrieve his full-shell hearing aids from the bathroom counter, and he looked in the mirror at his bearded face, his receding gray hair, the person staring back at him both familiar and strange. He knew himself and he didn’t. Who are you anymore? Opening a drawer, he noticed scissors and a razor, and he placed them on a small towel that was beginning to smell sour, and he turned on his hearing aids and the telephone was ringing. Someone complaining about the TV again. He lowered the volume, and CNN went from what had been barely discernible white noise to moderately loud noise that for people with normal hearing would be quite loud and jarring. He returned to the bed to begin his preparations, retrieving two cell phones, one a Motorola with a Washington, D.C., number that was registered to him, the other a disposable Tracfone he’d paid fifteen dollars for at a touristy electronics store in Times Square.
He paired his hearing aid’s Bluetooth remote with his Motorola cell phone and on his laptop logged on to the Web-based caption-telephone service. He clicked on Incoming Calls at the top of the screen and typed in his D.C. cell phone number. Using the disposable phone, he dialed the 1-800 number for the service, and after the tone was prompted to enter the ten-digit number he wanted to call—his D.C. cell phone number, followed by the pound sign.
The disposable phone in his right hand called the Motorola cell phone in his left, and it rang, and he answered it, holding it against his left ear.
“Hello?” In his normal deep voice, a voice both pleasant and reassuring.
“It’s Harvey.” In a nervous tenor voice, the voice of someone young, someone very upset. “Are you alone?”
“Yes, I’m alone. How are you? You sound distressed,” Agee said.
“I wish I hadn’t seen it.” The tenor voice faltering, about to cry. “Do you understand? I didn’t want to see something like that, to be involved. I should have stopped my car. I should have tried to help. What if she was still alive when I saw her being dragged out of the yellow cab?”
“Tell me exactly what you saw.”
Agee talking reasonably, rationally, comfortably settled into his role of psychiatrist, rotating the phones back and forth to his left ear as his conversation with himself was transcribed in real time by a captioner he’d never met or spoken to, someone identified only as operator 5622. Bold black text appeared in the Web browser window on Agee’s computer screen as he talked in two different voices on two different phones, interjecting mutterings and noises that sounded like a bad connection while the captioner transcribed only the impersonated Harvey Fahley’s dialogue:
“. . . When the investigator was talking to me she said something about the police knowing Hannah Starr is dead because of hair recovered, head hair that’s decomposed. (unclear) From where? Uh, she didn’t, the investigator didn’t say. Maybe they already know about a cabdriver because Hannah was seen getting into one? Maybe they know a lot they’ve not released because of the implication, how bad it would be for the city. Yes, exactly. Money. (unclear) But if Hannah’s decomposing head hair was found in a cab and nobody released that information, (unclear) bad, really bad. (unclear) Look, I’m losing you. (unclear) And I shouldn’t be talking anyway. I’m really scared. I need to get off the phone.”
Warner Agee ended the call and highlighted the text, copying it onto a clipboard and pasting it into a Word document. He attached the file to an e-mail that would land on Carley’s iPhone in a matter of seconds:
Carley:
Appended is a transcript of what a witness just told me in a phone interview. As Usual: Not for publication or release, as we must protect my source’s identity. But I hereby offer the transcript as proof in the event the network is questioned.—Warner
He clicked on send.
The set of The Crispin Report brought to mind a black hole. Black acoustical tile, a black table and black chairs on a black floor beneath a train yard of black-painted light rigs. Scarpetta supposed the implication was hard news sobriety and credible drama, which was CNN’s style and exactly what Carley Crispin didn’t offer.
“DNA isn’t a silver bullet,” Scarpetta said, live on the air. “Sometimes it isn’t even relevant.”
“I’m shocked.” Carley, in hot pink that clashed with her coppery hair, was unusually animated tonight. “The most trusted name in forensics doesn’t believe DNA is relevant?”
“That’s not what I said, Carley. The point I’m making is the same one I’ve been making for two decades: DNA isn’t the only evidence and doesn’t take the place of a thorough investigation.”
“Folks, you heard it right here!” Carley’s face, filler-plumped and paralyzed by Botox, stared into the camera. “DNA’s not relevant.”
“Again, that’s not what I said.”
“Dr. Scarpetta. Now, let’s be honest. DNA is relevant. In fact, DNA could end up being the most relevant evidence in the Hannah Starr case.”
“Carley . . . ?”
“I’m not going to ask you about it,” Carley interrupted with a raised hand, trying a new ploy. “I’m citing Hannah Starr as an example. DNA could prove she’s dead.”
In studio monitors: the same photograph of Hannah Starr that had been all over the news for weeks. Barefoot and beautiful, a low-cut white sundress, on a sidewalk by the beach, smiling wistfully before a backdrop of palm trees and a variegated blue sea.
“And that’s what a lot of people in the criminal-justice community have decided,” Crispin continued. “Even if you’re not going to admit it in public. And by not admitting the truth”—she was beginning to sound accusatory—“you’re allowing dangerous conclusions to be made. If she’s dead, shouldn’t we know it? S
houldn’t Bobby Fuller, her poor husband, know it? Shouldn’t a formal homicide investigation be opened and warrants gotten?”
In the monitors, another photo that had been in circulation for weeks: Bobby Fuller and his tooth-whitened grin, in tennis clothes, in the cockpit of his four-hundred-thousand-dollar red Porsche Carrera GT.
“Isn’t it true, Dr. Scarpetta?” Carley said. “In theory, couldn’t DNA prove somebody’s dead? If you had DNA from hair recovered from some location, such as a vehicle, for example?”
“It’s not possible for DNA to prove a person is dead,” Scarpetta said. “DNA is about identity.”
“DNA could certainly tell us that the source of the hair found in a vehicle, for example, is Hannah.”
“I’m not going to comment.”
“And furthermore, if her hair showed evidence of decomposition.”
“I can’t discuss the facts of this case.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Carley said. “What is it you don’t want us to know? Maybe the inconvenient truth that experts like you might just be wrong about what really happened to Hannah Starr?”
Another recycled image on the monitors: Hannah in a Dolce & Gabbana suit, her long blond hair pulled back, glasses on, sitting at a Biedermeier desk in a corner office overlooking the Hudson.
“That her tragic disappearance might just be something entirely different from what everyone, including you, has assumed.” Carley’s questions, stated as facts, were taking on the tone of an F. Lee Bailey cross-examination.