“Of course. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
“Possibly there are new versions of them and new companies making them all the time, especially since we’ve got a war going on. Cops, the military, carry them in clip cases on their belts, have dozens in their vehicles. Great for rapid application to multiple prisoners. Like most things these days, easy to get on the Internet.”
“But extremely difficult to remove,” Scarpetta said. “That’s the point I’m about to make. You couldn’t cut through flex-cuffs with kitchen scissors. Requires special cutters with compound leverage, like a Scarab.”
“Why didn’t Morales say anything?”
“Maybe he’s never tried to cut through flex-cuffs with scissors,” Scarpetta said. “Good chance a lot of cops haven’t. First time I got in a body bound in flex-cuffs, it took a damn rib cutter to get them off. Now I keep a Scarab in the morgue. Homicides, deaths in custody, suicides with flex-cuffs around wrists, ankles, necks. Once you pull the strap through the locking block, there’s no going back. So either the kitchen scissors were staged to make it appear they were used to cut off the flex-cuff, when in fact something else was used, or this colorless strap on the bathroom floor isn’t a flex-cuff. Did the police find any other straps like this one in her house?”
Benton’s hazel eyes watched her closely.
“You know as much or as little as I do,” he said. “Whatever’s in the report and evidence inventory. But clearly, any other straps would have been collected and documented unless Morales is the worst cop on the planet. So I think the answer’s no. Which brings us back to premeditation. The killer brought flex-cuffs to the apartment. Maybe he used the same thing around her neck, maybe not.”
“We can say he all we want,” Scarpetta said. “But Terri Bridges was very small. It’s possible a woman could have subdued her easily. For that matter, a kid could have, male or female.”
“An unusual crime, if a female did it. But it could explain why Terri felt safe opening her door. Unless, once again, Oscar staged the scene to look like a sexual homicide, when in fact it’s something else.”
“The missing ligature,” Scarpetta said. “That doesn’t feel staged. It feels as if the killer took it for a reason.”
“Maybe a souvenir,” Benton said. “The ligature, an item of lingerie such as her panties. A mechanism for the actualization of violent fantasy after the fact. He winds back the tape, replays what he did, because it gives him sexual gratification. A type of behavior rarely associated with domestic homicides. Souvenirs usually indicate a sexual predator who objectifies his victim, a stranger or distant acquaintance. Not a boyfriend, a lover. Unless we’re talking about staging.” He made that point again. “Oscar’s extremely bright. He’s calculating and quick.”
Calculating and quick enough to return to his car and toss in his coat, making sure his story about being attacked as he was entering her house, and his torn T-shirt and injuries, was plausible to the police. But when did Oscar do that, assuming it was true? Scarpetta guessed it was after he raked his nails over his own flesh and struck himself with the flashlight, then realized it wasn’t possible to explain the injuries if they were inflicted while he was wearing a coat.
“Souvenirs,” Scarpetta said. “Maybe a killer who takes souvenirs and leaves one. If we consider the possibility that the ankle bracelet was put on the body by the killer, possibly after the murder. Like the silver rings in that case you had in California years ago. Four coeds, and in each homicide, the killer put a silver ring on the victim’s wedding finger. But the symbolism of a silver ring strikes me as completely different from an ankle bracelet.”
“One is possession—as in, with this ring, I make you mine,” Benton said. “The other is control—as in, I’m putting a shackle around your ankle. I own you.”
More photos: a table set for two. Candles, wineglasses, linen napkins in blue napkin rings, and dinner and bread plates and salad bowls. In the center of the table, a flower arrangement. Great attention to details, everything perfectly appointed, perfectly matched, and centered and straight but lacking in imagination and warmth.
“She was obsessive,” Scarpetta observed. “A perfectionist. But she went to trouble for him. I think Oscar mattered to her. Was there music playing when the police arrived?”
“Nothing in the report.”
“The television on? There’s one in the living room, but it’s off in the photograph. Any hint as to what she might have been doing when someone arrived at her door? Other than cooking at some point during the afternoon?”
“What you see in the photos, what’s in the reports, is pretty much all we know.” He paused. “Because you’re the only one Oscar would really talk to.”
She scanned the report out loud. “Oven set at two hundred, a whole chicken inside, suggesting it was cooked. She was just keeping it warm. Fresh spinach in a pot, hadn’t been cooked yet. Stove off.”
Another photo: a black plastic flashlight on the carpet near the front door.
Another photo: clothing neatly laid out on a bed. A low-cut sweater, red. Looked like cashmere. Red pants. Looked like silk. Shoes? No sign of them. No sign of her panties.
Another photo: no sign of makeup on Terri’s suffused face.
Scarpetta reconstructed: Terri was going to dress festively and provocatively in bright red that was soft to the touch. She had on a sexy bra, a not-so-sexy robe and slippers, perhaps waiting until shortly before Oscar arrived to put on makeup and finish getting dressed, alluringly, in red. Where were her shoes? Maybe she didn’t always wear them indoors, especially in her own apartment. Where were her panties? Some women don’t wear panties. Maybe she was one of them. But if so, Scarpetta found that inconsistent with what Oscar had told her about Terri’s obsession with cleanliness, with “germs.”
“Do we know if she had a habit of not wearing panties?” she asked Benton.
“Got no idea.”
“And shoes. Where are they? She’d gone to so much trouble to pick out what she was going to wear, but no shoes? Three possibilities. She hadn’t picked them out yet. The killer took them. Or she didn’t wear shoes in the house. And that’s curious and a little hard for me to accept. Someone obsessive-compulsive about neatness, cleanliness, isn’t likely to walk around barefoot. And when she was in her robe, she had on slippers. Wasn’t barefoot then. Someone obsessive-compulsive about dirt and bacteria is likely to wear panties.”
“I wasn’t aware she was obsessive-compulsive,” Benton said.
Scarpetta realized she’d revealed something she shouldn’t have.
“Oscar didn’t talk about her when I evaluated him, as you know.” Benton wasn’t going to let go of her indiscretion. “I didn’t pick up on anything that might indicate Terri was obsessive-compulsive, or overly vigilant about cleanliness, neatness. Beyond what you see in the photos. And yes, you can tell she’s very organized and tidy. That’s been suggested, but not to the degree of a compulsion. So if she wasn’t likely to walk around barefoot and without panties, we’re back to the possibility of a killer who took souvenirs. That points away from Oscar. For him to remove those from the scene, then hurry back to be there when the police arrived, strikes me as far-fetched.”
“I’m inclined to agree.”
“You don’t think Oscar did it, do you?” Benton said.
“I think the police had better not make the assumption that the killer is a, quote, deranged little person safely locked up here on the prison ward. That’s what I think,” she said.
“Oscar isn’t crazy—not a nice word, but I’m using it. He doesn’t have a personality disorder. Isn’t sociopathic, narcissistic, borderline. His SCID revealed an inclination toward anger and avoidance, and it appears something triggered paranoia and reinforced his feeling that he needs to disaffiliate himself from others. In summary, he’s afraid of something. He doesn’t know who to trust.”
Scarpetta thought of the CD Oscar claimed to have hidden in his library.
In Murray Hill,
Marino walked along a dark, tree-lined street, looking through the eyes of a predator.
Terri Bridges’s brownstone was tucked between a playground and a doctor’s office, both closed last night. Across the street, on either side of her peculiar neighbor’s two-story building, were a French bistro and a bakery, also closed last night. He had checked, had carefully researched the area, and had come to the same conclusion that Morales had: When Terri opened her door to her killer, there was no one watching.
Even if someone happened to walk past, the person probably had no idea what he was looking at when a lone figure climbed the steps and buzzed the front door, or opened it with a key. Marino suspected the truth of the matter was the perpetrator had stayed out of sight until he was sure no one was in the area, and that returned Marino’s thoughts to Oscar Bane.
If his intention was to kill Terri last night, it didn’t matter if he was spotted. He was her boyfriend. He was supposed to have dinner with her, or people would assume he was, and parking his Jeep Cherokee right out front was smart because that would be the normal thing to do if he had no violent intentions. After talking to Bacardi, there was no doubt about what type of crime Marino was dealing with. This was exactly what it appeared to be—a sexually motivated premeditated act committed by someone whose murder kit included bindings, a lubricant, and a ten-karat-gold ankle bracelet.
Either Oscar was innocent or he was going to be hard as hell to catch, because he had every reason to show up at Terri’s house late yesterday afternoon. By all appearances, Terri was expecting him for dinner. By all appearances, she was expecting a romantic evening with him. The crime scene so far seemed virtually useless, because remnants of Oscar would be everywhere, including on Terri’s dead body. The perfect crime? Maybe, were it not for one oddball thing: Oscar’s insistence, which predated Terri’s death by a month, that he was being spied on, brainwashed, that his identity had been stolen.
Marino thought about Oscar’s ranting and raving over the phone. Unless he was psychotic, why would he draw attention to himself like that if he were a serial killer who had already murdered at least two people?
Marino felt guilty and worried. What if he had listened to Oscar more carefully, maybe encouraged him to come to the DA’s office and sit down with Berger? What if Marino had even halfway given him the benefit of the doubt? Would he still be walking down this dark sidewalk on this cold, windy night?
His ears were getting numb, his eyes watering, and he was furious with himself for drinking so many Sharp’s. As Terri’s building came into view, he noticed her apartment lights were on, the drapes drawn, and a marked car was parked in front. Marino imagined the cop sitting inside the apartment, securing the scene until Berger decided to release it. He imagined the poor guy bored out of his mind. What Marino wouldn’t give to borrow the bathroom, but you don’t borrow anything at a crime scene.
At the moment, the only public bathroom was the great outdoors. Marino kept his scan going, looking for a good spot as he walked closer to Terri’s building. He noticed that the lanterns at either side of the entryway were on, and recalled from Morales’s report that they had been off last night when the police had arrived shortly after six.
Marino thought of Oscar Bane again. It made no difference if anyone had seen him well enough to identify him later. He was Terri’s boyfriend, had keys to her building, and he was expected. If the outside lights weren’t on when he arrived, then why not? By five p.m., when he allegedly arrived, it would have been completely dark out.
Marino supposed it was possible that the lights had been on when he’d arrived, and for some reason, he’d turned them off as he’d entered the building.
Marino stopped half a block away from the brownstone, staring at the entrance on East 29th. He imagined himself the killer, imagined what it would have been like to approach Terri’s apartment building. What would he have seen? What would he have felt? Yesterday had been cold and damp, and extremely windy with gusts up to twenty-five miles an hour, making it very unpleasant for people to be out walking, about as unpleasant as it was right now.
By three-thirty in the afternoon, the sun was below the buildings and trees, and the entryway would have been cast in shadows. It was unlikely the lanterns would have been on that early, whether they were on a timer or not. By mid-afternoon, anybody inside the apartment building probably would have had his lights on, making it obvious to a predator which tenant might be home.
Marino hurried to the playground. He was relieving himself against the dark front gate when he spotted a dark, bulky shape on the brownstone’s flat roof. The shape was near the faint silhouette of the satellite dish, and then the shape moved. Zipping up his pants, he reached into his coat pocket for his gun and crept around to the west side of Terri’s apartment. The fire escape was a narrow ladder, straight up, and much too small for Marino’s hands and feet.
He was sure it would pull away from the building and send him plummeting backward to the earth. His heart pounded, and he was sweating profusely beneath his Harley jacket, his Glock forty-caliber pistol in hand as he climbed, one rung at a time, his knees shaking.
He never used to have a fear of heights but had developed one after leaving Charleston. Benton had said it was the result of depression and accompanying anxiety, and had recommended a new treatment that involved an antibiotic called D-cycloserine, just because it had worked on rats in a neuroscience research project. Marino’s therapist, Nancy, said his problem was “an unconscious conflict,” and he’d never determine the exact nature of that conflict unless he stayed sober.
Marino had no doubt about the source of his conflict. At this very moment, it was a goddamn narrow ladder bolted to a brownstone. He pulled himself onto the roof, and his heart lurched and he grunted in surprise as he found himself eye to eye with the barrel of a gun held by a dark figure lying on his belly in a sniper’s position. For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then Mike Morales holstered his pistol as he sat up and whispered furiously, “You stupid fuck! What the hell are you doing?”
“What the hell are you doing?” Marino whispered back. “I thought you were a fucking serial killer.”
He scooted on his butt until he was a safe distance from the roof’s edge.
“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot your fucking head off,” Marino added.
He tucked the Glock back into his coat pocket.
“We just had this conversation,” Morales said. “You don’t get to run around and not tell me what the hell you’re doing. I’m going to get your ass fired. Berger’s probably going to do it anyway.”
His face was almost indistinguishable in the dark, and he wore dark, loose clothing. He looked like a homeless person or a drug dealer.
“I don’t know how I’m going to get back down from here,” Marino said. “You know how old that ladder is? Probably a hundred years old, that’s how old. Back then when people were half the size they are now.”
“What’s the matter with you? You trying to prove something? Because the only thing you’re proving is you ought to go work security in a fucking mall or something.”
The rooftop was concrete, with a boxy HVAC and the satellite dish. In the building across the street where Marino had been earlier today, the only lighted windows were those of the second-floor neighbor’s apartment, and the drapes were drawn across them. Across the street from the back of Terri’s building, there were more people home, and two of them seemed to assume that nobody could see them. An older man was typing on a computer, clueless that he was being watched. One floor below him, a woman in green pajamas was sitting on her living room couch, gesturing as she talked on a cordless phone.
Morales was chewing out Marino for screwing up everything.
“The only thing I’m screwing up is you being a Peeping Tom,” Marino retorted.
“I don’t have to peep to see whatever I want, whenever I want,” Morales replied. “Not saying I wouldn’t look if there’s something to look at.”
/> He pointed at the dish antenna, angled up about sixty degrees and facing south of Texas where somewhere high in the night sky was a satellite that Marino couldn’t envision.
“On the mounting foot’s a wireless camera I just installed,” Morales said. “In case Oscar shows up. Maybe tries to get back inside her apartment. You know, the old returning-to-the-scene-of-the-crime shit. Or if anybody decides to drop by, for that matter. I’m keeping an open mind. Maybe it’s not Oscar. But my money’s on him. My money’s on him killing the other two.”
Marino wasn’t in the mood to relay his conversation with Bacardi. Even if he weren’t on top of a roof and extremely unhappy about it, he wouldn’t be in the mood.
“The officer securing her apartment know you’re up here?” he asked.
“Shit, no. And you tell him, you’ll find out what a long way down it is, because I’ll throw your ass off the roof. Quickest way to fuck up a surveillance is to tell other cops about it. Including you.”
“Occur to you his marked unit’s right in front like a billboard ad for the NYPD? Maybe you should have him move it, if you’re hoping the killer will come sneaking back here.”
“He’s gonna move it. It was fucking stupid to park there to begin with.”
“Usually the bigger worry is regular people and the media thinking they can poke around. But no marked car? Okay. There goes your deterrent. Have it your way. You got any idea why the entrance lights weren’t on last night?” Marino said.
“I only know that they weren’t. It’s in my report.”
“They’re on now.”
Gusts of wind hit them like invisible waves of a stormy surf, and Marino felt as if he was about to be washed off the roof. His hands were stiff, and he pulled his sleeves over them.
“Then my guess would be the killer turned them off last night,” Morales said.
“Kind of a strange thing to do once he’s already inside the building.”
“Maybe he turned them off when he was leaving. So nobody would see him, in case someone was walking by, driving by.”