“Not this. Nothing’s encrypted the way I’m used to seeing when it’s classified by the government as top secret. Not the usual standard three-block ciphers with the bits and block sizes I associate with algorithms used in symmetric key cryptography. You know, these really long keys, longer than forty bits, that are supposed to be exportable but make it really hard for hackers to break the code. That’s not what we’ve got here. This isn’t military or any intelligence-gathering agency. It’s private-sector.”
“I guess we shouldn’t ask why you’d know how the government encrypts its top secret information,” Marino commented.
“The purpose of this thing is to gather data for some type of research, not spying, not war, not even terrorists for once,” Lucy said as data rolled by. “Not intended for the end user but for researchers. Geeks out there crunching data, but for whom? Sleep schedule variability, sleep quantity, daytime activity patterns, correlated to light exposure. Come on, start aggregating it into some sort of order that’s easy to look at.” Talking to her programs again. “Give me charts. Give me maps. It’s sorting by types of data. A lot of data. A ton of it. Recording data every fifteen seconds. Five thousand seven hundred and sixty times a day this thing was capturing God knows how many different types of data. GPS and pedometer readings. Location data, speed, distance, altitude, and the user’s vital signs. Heart rate and SPO-two.”
“SPO-two? You must be mistaken,” Scarpetta said.
“I’m looking at SPO-two,” Lucy said. “Hundreds of thousands of them. SPO-two captured every fifteen seconds.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Scarpetta said. “Where’s the sensor? You can’t measure pulse oximetry, the oxygen saturation of blood, without a sensor of some type. Usually on a fingertip, sometimes a toe, sometimes an earlobe. Has to be a thin part of the person’s anatomy so a light can pass through the tissue. A light comprised of both red and infrared wavelengths that determines the oxygenation, the percentage of oxygen saturation, in your blood.”
“The BioGraph is Bluetooth-enabled,” Lucy said. “So maybe the pulse-oximetry device is Bluetooth-enabled.”
“Wireless or otherwise, there had to be one to take these measurements we’re seeing,” Scarpetta replied. “A sensor she wore virtually all of the time.”
A red laser dot moved over names and locations and the branches that connected them on the treelike graph filling the flat screen.
“Imagine Monsieur Chandonne, the father, no longer in power.” Benton held a laser pointer, illustrating what he meant as he talked. “And what family associations he has left are scattered. He and a number of his captains are in prison. The Chandonne heir apparent, the brother of Jean-Baptiste, is dead. And law enforcement for the most part has turned its attention to other international troubles. Al Qaida, Iran, North Korea, the global economic disaster. Jean-Baptiste, the surviving child, seizes the opportunity to take over, to start his life again and do it better this time.”
“I don’t see how,” O’Dell said. “He’s a lunatic.”
“He’s not a lunatic,” Benton said. “He is extremely intelligent, extremely intuitive, and for a while his intellect can overwhelm his compulsions, his obsessions. The question is how long can that last.”
“I totally disagree,” O’Dell said to Benton. “This guy a Mob boss? It’s not like he can wander around in public without putting a bag over his head. He’s an international fugitive, an Interpol Red Notice, and he’s deformed, a freak.”
“You can disagree all you want. You don’t know him,” Benton said.
“That genetic condition he has,” O’Dell went on. “I can’t remember what it’s called.”
“Congenital hypertrichosis universalis.” It was Marty Lanier talking. “Individuals suffering from this very rare condition have an overgrowth of lanugo hair, baby-fine hair, all over their bodies, including areas that usually aren’t hairy or excessively hairy. The forehead, the tops of the hands, the elbows. And there may be other deformities, gingival hyperplasia, small teeth widely spaced.”
“Like I said, a freak, he looks like a damn werewolf,” O’Dell said to everyone at the table. “People who had this condition, it’s probably where the legend came from.”
“He’s not a werewolf, and the condition isn’t something from a horror story. It isn’t a legend. It’s very real,” Benton said.
“We don’t know how many cases,” Lanier added. “Something like fifty, a hundred. Very few reported worldwide.”
“Reported is the key word,” Jaime Berger said, and she was subdued. “You can’t count cases if they’re not reported, and you can understand why hypertrichosis would have very negative associations and stigmas, implications the sufferer was a monster, was evil.”
“And then you treat him accordingly and maybe turn him into that,” Lanier added.
“Families hid family members who had this affliction, and Jean-Baptiste was no exception,” Benton continued. “He grew up in a basement, in what was essentially a subterranean windowless dungeon of the Chandonne family’s seventeenth-century home on Île Saint-Louis in Paris. It’s possible the gene Jean-Baptiste inherited traces back to a man in the mid-fifteen hundreds who was born covered with hair and as an infant was presented to King Henri the Second in Paris and raised in the royal palace as a curiosity, an amusement, a pet of sorts. This man married a French woman, and several of their children inherited the disorder. In the late eighteen hundreds, one of their descendants is believed to have married a Chandonne, and a hundred years later the recessive gene became dominant in the form of Jean-Baptiste.”
“What I’m trying to get across here,” O’Dell said, “is people run screaming from someone who looks like that. How could Jean-Baptiste take over and operate out of the family home in Paris?”
“We don’t know where Jean-Baptiste has been living,” Benton replied. “We don’t know what he’s been doing for the past five years. We don’t know what he looks like. Laser hair removal, prosthetic dentistry, plastic surgery, the medical technology available these days. We have no idea what he’s had done to himself since he escaped from death row. What we do know is you recovered his DNA from the backseat of a stolen Mercedes in Miami, and that unequivocally connects him to the bank robberies being committed by Jerome Wild and Dodie Hodge. Both of them are connected to Detroit, which makes it likely that Jean-Baptiste has connections to Detroit. And Miami. And here.”
“The gaming industry,” Lanier said. “And maybe the film industry.”
“The Chandonne family has had its hands in everything that might be lucrative,” Benton said. “The entertainment business, gambling, prostitution, drugs, illegal weapons, counterfeit designer labels, contraband of every sort. Whatever you historically associate with organized crime, Jean-Baptiste will be familiar with it, well versed. It’s in his family. It’s in his blood. He’s had five years to avail himself of a powerful network because of his family connections. He’s had access to money. He’s been working on whatever has been his plan, and any organized plan requires a recruitment. He needed troops. If he was going to attempt to reestablish the Chandonne crime family or build an empire for himself, to reinvent himself, re-create himself, he needed to enlist a lot of help, and he was going to pick badly. An individual with his history of abuse, his history of psychopathology and extraordinarily violent crimes, isn’t going to have what it takes to be a shrewd and successful leader, at least not for long. And he’s fueled by his sexually violent compulsions. And he’s fueled by vengeance.”
The root of the tree graph on the wall was Jean-Baptiste. His name was in the middle of the screen, and all other names branched out from it directly or indirectly.
“So we’ve got Dodie Hodge and Jerome Wild linked to him.” Benton pointed the laser, and the dot moved on names as he mentioned them.
“We should add Hap Judd,” Berger said, and she was different, extremely somber. “He’s linked to Dodie even though he claims to have nothing to do with her anymore.”
r /> Berger wasn’t herself, and Benton didn’t know what had happened. When everyone had gotten coffee, she’d borrowed the desk of an agent who wasn’t in and had made a phone call on a landline. From that point on she’d gotten quiet. She’d stopped offering insights and arguments and had quit pushing back whenever Lanier opened her mouth. Benton had a feeling it didn’t have to do with jurisdiction, with a turf battle, with a squabble over who would prosecute what. Jaime Berger seemed defeated. She seemed used up.
“For a period Hap supposedly sought her spiritual advice,” Berger said in a flat tone, a monotone. “He stated this when I interviewed him early this morning. He says she’s a nuisance, calls his L.A. office frequently, and he avoids her.”
“How did he meet Dodie?” Lanier wanted to know.
“Apparently, she was giving spiritual advice, psychic readings, to Hannah Starr,” Berger answered. “This isn’t unusual. A rather remarkable number of celebrities and very wealthy prominent people, including politicians, seek the counsel of self-proclaimed psy chics, gypsies, witches, warlocks, prophets, most of them frauds.”
“I assume most of them don’t turn out to be bank robbers,” Stockman said.
“You’d be surprised what a lot of them turn out to be,” Berger said. “Stealing, extortion, financial scams come quite naturally to the profession.”
“Dodie Hodge ever been to the Starrs’ mansion on Park Avenue?” Lanier asked Berger.
“Hap says yes.”
“You consider Hap a suspect in the Hannah Starr case?” O’Dell asked. “He knows where she is or has something to do with it?”
“I consider him the most important suspect at this point,” she said, and she sounded worn down, almost detached or maybe broken.
It wasn’t about her being tired. It was about something else.
“Hap Judd should be on the wall because of Dodie and because of Hannah.” Berger was looking around the table but not really connecting to anyone, almost as if she was addressing a grand jury. “And also Toni Darien. His ties to High Roller Lanes and possibly Freddie Maestro, and we should add Park General Hospital in Harlem, which isn’t very far from where Toni’s body was found off One hundred and tenth Street.”
More branches on the flat screen: Hannah Starr connected to Hap Judd connected to Dodie, and indirectly to Jerome Wild. All the connections now linked to Toni Darien, High Roller Lanes, and Park General Hospital, and linked back to the root, to Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. Berger explained Hap’s past at the Harlem hospital, and a young woman who died there named Farrah Lacy, and then Berger got back to Hap’s link to the Starrs, his visits to the Park Avenue mansion for at least one dinner and on other occasions for sex. O’Dell interrupted her to point out that Rupe Starr wouldn’t have courted a minor actor who had no more to invest than half a million dollars.
“These major players like Rupe,” O’Dell explained, “they won’t even talk to you unless you got a hell of a lot more than that to hand over.”
“This was about a year before Rupe Starr died,” Berger said. “By which point Hannah was married to Bobby Fuller.”
“Maybe one of those situations where the family starts crowding out the boss, starts running things the way they want,” Stockman suggested.
“I know you’ve looked into Hannah’s financials,” Berger said, and she meant that the FBI had. “Because of information I passed on that we discovered, that Lucy and I did.”
As if everyone would know who Lucy was and, significantly, who she was to Berger.
“A lot of activity in a lot of banks here and abroad,” Stockman said. “Starting about two years ago. Then after Rupe Starr died last May, most of the money’s been lost.”
“Hap claims he was in New York the night before Thanksgiving, when Hannah disappeared. The next day he flew to L.A. We’re going to want warrants to search his place in TriBeCa. We should do that without delay. He claims that Hannah and Bobby never had sex,” Berger went on, with none of the usual strength in her voice and not a glint of her wry humor. “In his words, not once.”
“Yeah, right,” O’Dell said sarcastically. “The oldest line in the book. No fire on the hearth so you go elsewhere to get warm.”
“Hannah Starr was a socialite, ran with a fast crowd, hobnobbed with the rich and the famous here and abroad but never at the mansion,” Berger went on. “She was much more public, would rather be on Page Six of the Post than in the family dining room, her style the antithesis of her father’s. Her priorities clearly very different. She’s the one who first connected to Hap, according to him. They met at the Monkey Bar. Soon after, he was a guest at one of Rupe’s dinners and became a client. Hannah personally handled his money. Hap claims Hannah was afraid of Bobby.”
“It wasn’t Bobby who was in town the night Hannah vanished and then on a plane the very next day,” Lanier pointedly said.
“Exactly right,” Berger said, looking at Benton. “I’m very concerned about Hap’s involvements with everyone. And his proclivities. Kay says Toni Darien was dead for a day and a half before her body was left in the park. She was kept in a cool environment, indoors somewhere. Maybe now that’s making sense.”
More names were being added to the graph on the wall.
“And Warner Agee and Carley Crispin,” Benton said to Stockman. “They should be up there.”
“We’ve got no reason to think Agee or Carley had any association with anybody we’ve got up here on the wall,” O’Dell said.
“We know Carley’s connected to Kay,” Benton said. “And I’m connected to Agee.”
The click of keys. Scarpetta’s and Benton’s names appeared on the flat screen. It was awful seeing them there. Connected to everyone. Connected to the root, Jean-Baptiste Chandonne.
Benton went on. “And based on what Lucy and Kay found inside Agee’s hotel room, I suspect he was involved in the casino business.”
Casinos was added to the wall.
“He was using his paranormal interests and influence to research something, manipulate something.”
Paranormal was another branch on the tree.
“Maybe doing so under the patronage of a wealthy Frenchman supposedly named Lecoq,” Benton continued, and that name appeared next. “Someone—possibly this Monsieur Lecoq—was paying Agee in cash. And possibly Freddie Maestro was, too. So Lecoq and Maestro might be connected, and that would link Detroit to France.”
“We don’t know who Lecoq is or if he really exists,” Lanier said to Benton.
“He exists. But we don’t know who he is.”
“You thinking this Lecoq guy’s the Wolfman?” O’Dell asked Benton.
“Let’s don’t call him that. Jean-Baptiste Chandonne is no stereotype. He’s not a myth. He’s a man who could at this point in time be fully capable of looking normal. He could have a number of aliases. In fact, he would have to.”
“He speak with a French accent?” Stockman was on his laptop, adding offshoots that appeared on the tree on the wall.
“He can speak with a number of accents or no accent,” Benton said. “In addition to French, he’s fluent in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and English. Maybe other languages by now. I don’t know.”
“Why Carley Crispin?” Stockman asked as he worked on the graph. “And why was she paying for Agee’s room? Or was someone else funneling money through her?”
“Probably a type of petty money laundering.” Lanier was making notes. “Sounds like a lot of that going on here, even if in relatively small ways. People paying in cash. People paying other people to pay for other people. No credit cards or wire transfers or checks that leave a paper trail. At least not for business that might not be considered legitimate.”
“Carley was going to kick him out of his room this weekend.” Berger met Benton’s eyes, and hers were as impenetrable as stone. “Why?”
“I can offer a theory,” Benton said. “Agee e-mailed Carley information allegedly from a witness, and we know it was bogus. He impersonated
Harvey Fahley by using a Web captioning service. Lucy found that transcript and a number of other ones on Agee’s computer. The producers of The Crispin Report are in a hell of a lot of hot water because of what she released on the air last night about Hannah Starr’s hair being recovered from a yellow cab. A detail Agee fabricated in a phony phone interview, and Carley fell for it. Or it suited her to fall for it. Either way, she didn’t bank on getting into more trouble with the network than she was already in.”
“So she fired him,” Lanier said to him.
“Why wouldn’t she? She also knew she was about to get fired. She wasn’t going to need Agee anymore, no matter who was paying for his room. There may be a personal element,” Benton said. “We don’t know what Carley told Agee when she called him from CNN at close to eleven p.m. last night. The last phone call he got, it seems.”
“We got to talk to Carley Crispin,” Stockman said. “Too bad Agee’s dead. It’s sounding to me like he might be the key to everything.”
“What he did was stupid as hell,” said O’Dell. “He was a forensic psychiatrist. He should have known better. This Harvey Fahley guy was going to deny talking to him.”
Berger said, “He has. I spoke to Detective Bonnell while we were getting coffee. She got hold of him after the show last night. He admits e-mailing Agee but claims he never talked to him and never said anything about Hannah’s hair being found.”
“Harvey Fahley’s phone records should show if he talked to him. . . .” O’Dell began.
“A Tracfone made the call, and it’s missing,” Benton interrupted. “Agee had a drawer full of empty Tracfone boxes. I believe the interview with Fahley was bogus, and so does Lucy. But I doubt it was Agee’s conscious intention to get fired.”
“An unconscious intention,” Lanier offered.
“That’s my opinion.” Benton believed Warner Agee was ready to self-destruct. “I seriously doubt last night was the first time suicide ever entered his mind. His condo in D.C. is about to be foreclosed on. His credit cards are expired. He relies on others for infusions of cash, is a parasite with nothing but his infirmities and demons to look forward to, and it appears he got tangled up with something that was over his head. He probably knew he was going to get caught.”