Four Scarpetta Novels

  “He did talk to her. In her apartment. Mind you, this is what he told me. And she told him he was bad for Drew, an unhealthy influence, and she would continue to advise her to stay away from him. He got increasingly distraught and angry as he told me all this, and now I see I should have known better. I should have come over here immediately, sat down with him. Done something.”

  “What else happened with Dr. Self?” Scarpetta asks. “Drew went to New York, then left for Rome the next day. Barely twenty-four hours later, she disappeared and ended up murdered, quite possibly by the same person who murdered Lydia. And I’ve got to head to the airport. You’re welcome to come. If we have any luck, we’re going to need you anyway.”

  “The airport?” He gets up from the bench. “Now?”

  “I don’t want us to wait another day. Her body’s in worse shape every hour.”

  They start walking.

  “Now? And I’m supposed to go with you in the middle of the night, and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hollings puzzles.

  “Heat signatures,” she says. “Infrared. Any thermal variation is going to show up better in the dark, and maggots can raise the temperature of a decomposing body as much as twenty degrees centigrade. It’s been more than two days, because when he left her house, I’m quite sure she wasn’t alive. Not based on what we found. What else happened with Dr. Self? Did Lupano tell you anything else?”

  They’re almost to her car.

  “He said he was extraordinarily insulted,” Hollings says. “She said very degrading things to him and wouldn’t tell him how to find Drew. After he left, he called Dr. Self again. This was supposed to be the greatest moment in his career, and she’d just wrecked it, and then the final blow. She told him Drew was staying with her, had been inside the apartment the entire time he was begging Dr. Self to undo what she’d done. I won’t be going with you. You don’t need me, and I, well, I want to check on Rose.”

  Scarpetta unlocks her car as she thinks about the timing. Drew spent the night in Dr. Self’s penthouse, and the next day flew to Rome. The day after that, the seventeenth, she disappeared. The eighteenth, her body was found. The twenty-seventh, Scarpetta and Benton were in Rome investigating Drew’s murder. That same day, Dr. Self was admitted to McLean, and Dr. Maroni fabricated a file that was supposed to be notes he took when he saw the Sandman as a patient—something Benton feels sure is a lie.

  Scarpetta slides behind the wheel. Hollings is a gentleman and isn’t going to leave until she starts the engine and locks her door.

  She says to him, “When Lupano was inside Dr. Self’s apartment, was anybody else there?”

  “Drew was.”

  “I mean, anybody else Lupano knew about?”

  He thinks for a moment, says, “There might have been.” He hesitates. “He said he ate at her apartment. I think it was lunch. And it seems he made a comment about Dr. Self’s chef.”

  Chapter 21

  The Forensic Science Laboratories.

  The main building is red brick and concrete with expansive windows that are UV-protected and mirror-finished, so the world outside sees a reflection of itself, and what’s inside is protected from prying eyes and damaging rays from the sun. A smaller building isn’t finished, and the landscaping is mud. Scarpetta sits in her car and watches a big bay door roll up and wishes hers wasn’t so noisy. It adds to the unfortunate ambience of a morgue when the bay door screeches and scrapes like a drawbridge.

  Inside, everything is new and pristine, brightly lighted and painted in shades of white and gray. Some labs she passes are empty rooms, while others are fully equipped. But countertops are uncluttered, work spaces clean, and she looks forward to the day when it feels like someone’s home. Of course, it’s after hours, but even during them, at most twenty people show up for work, and about half of those followed Lucy from her former labs in Florida. Eventually, she will have the finest private forensic facility in the country, and Scarpetta realizes why that makes her more unsettled than glad. Professionally, Lucy is as successful as anyone can be, but her life is sadly flawed, and so is Scarpetta’s. Neither of them adeptly manages to have or sustain personal relationships, and until now, Scarpetta has refused to see that they have this in common.

  Despite Benton’s kindness, all his talk with her really did was remind her why she needed it. What he said is depressingly true. She’s run so fast for fifty years, she has little to show for it beyond an unusual ability to handle pain and stress that results in the very problem she faces. It’s much easier to just do her job and live out her days with long, busy hours and long, empty spaces. In fact, if she’s honest in examining herself, when Benton gave her the ring it didn’t make her feel happy or safe. It symbolizes what scares the hell out of her, and that is whatever he gives, he might take back or realize he didn’t mean it.

  No wonder Marino finally snapped. Yes, he was drunk and hyped up on hormones, and probably Shandy and Dr. Self helped drive him to it. But if Scarpetta had taken a good look at him all these years, she probably could have saved him from himself and prevented a violation that was hers, too. She violated him, too, because she wasn’t a truthful or trustworthy friend. She didn’t tell him no until he finally went too far, and she should have told him no some twenty years ago.

  I’m not in love with you, and I never will be, Marino. You’re not my type, Marino. It doesn’t mean I’m better than you, Marino. It just means I can’t.

  She scripts what she should have said and demands an answer to why she didn’t. He might leave her. She might lose his constant presence, as annoying as it sometimes is. She might inflict on him that very thing she has done such a fine job evading: personal rejection and loss, and now she has both and so does he.

  The elevator doors open on the second floor, and she follows an empty corridor to a series of labs that are individually sealed off by metal doors and airlocks. In an outer room, she puts on a white disposable gown, a hairnet and cap, shoe covers, gloves, and a face shield. She passes through another sealed area that decontaminates with ultraviolet light, and from there she enters a fully automated lab, where DNA is extracted and replicated—and where Lucy, also in white from head to toe, said to meet her for reasons unknown. She’s sitting near a fume hood, talking to a scientist who is covered up, too, and therefore unrecognizable at a glance.

  “Aunt Kay?” Lucy says. “I’m sure you remember Aaron. Our interim director.”

  The face behind the plastic shield smiles and suddenly is familiar, and the three of them sit.

  “I know you’re a forensic specialist,” Scarpetta says. “But I didn’t know you had a new position.” She asks what happened to the previous lab director.

  “Quit. Because of what Dr. Self put on the Internet,” Lucy says, anger in her eyes.

  “Quit?” Scarpetta asks, baffled. “Just like that?”

  “Thinks I’m going to die and scuttled off to take another job. Anyway, he was a jerk, and I’d been wanting to get rid of him. Kind of ironic. The bitch did me a favor. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’ve got lab results.”

  “Blood, saliva, epithelial cells,” Aaron says. “Start with Lydia Webster’s toothbrush and blood from the bathroom floor. We have a good idea about her DNA, mainly important so we can exclude her. Or identify her eventually.” As if there’s no doubt she’s dead. “Then there’s a different profile from the skin cells, the sand and glue recovered from the broken window in her laundry room. And the burglar-alarm keypad. The dirty T-shirt from the laundry basket. All three have her DNA, unsurprisingly. But also a profile from someone else.”

  “What about Madelisa Dooley’s shorts?” Scarpetta asks. “The blood on them.”

  Aaron says, “Same donor as the three I just mentioned.”

  “The killer, we think,” Lucy says. “Or whoever broke into her house.”

  “I think we should be careful saying that,” Scarpetta says. “There have been other people in her house, including her hu
sband.”

  “The DNA’s not his, and we’ll tell you why in a minute,” Lucy says.

  Aaron says, “What we did was your idea—going beyond the usual profile matching in CODIS and opening up the search by using the DNAPrint technology platform you and Lucy have discussed—an analysis that uses paternity and sibship indices to arrive at a probability of relatedness.”

  “First question,” Lucy says. “Why would her ex-husband leave blood on Madelisa Dooley’s shorts?”

  “Okay,” Scarpetta agrees. “That’s a good point. And if the blood is the Sandman’s—and to be clear, I’m going to call him that—then he must have injured himself somehow.”

  “We might know how,” Lucy says. “And we’re beginning to have an idea of who.”

  Aaron picks up a file folder. He takes out a report and hands it to Scarpetta.

  “The unidentified little boy and the Sandman,” Aaron says. “Knowing that each parent donates approximately half of his or her genetic material to their child, we can have an expectation that samples from a parent and a child are going to indicate their relationship. And in the case of the Sandman and the unidentified little boy, a very close family relationship is implicated.”

  Scarpetta looks at the test results. “I’ll say the same thing I did when we got the fingerprint match,” she says. “Are we sure there’s no mistake? No contamination, for example?”

  “We don’t make mistakes. Not like that,” Lucy says. “You get only one and you’re done.”

  “The boy is the Sandman’s son?” Scarpetta wants to make sure.

  “I’d like references and investigation, but I certainly suspect it,” Aaron replies. “At the very least, as I said, they’re closely related.”

  “You mentioned his being injured,” Lucy says. “The Sandman’s blood on the shorts? It’s also on the broken crown you found in Lydia Webster’s bathtub.”

  “Maybe she bit him,” Scarpetta says.

  “A very good chance,” Lucy says.

  “Let’s get back to the little boy,” Scarpetta says. “If we’re implying the Sandman killed his own son, I’m not sure what I think. The abuse went on for a while. The child was being looked after by someone when the Sandman was in Iraq, in Italy, if the information we have is correct.”

  “Well, I can tell you about the kid’s mother,” Lucy says. “We do have that reference, unless the DNA on Shandy Snook’s underwear came from somebody else. Maybe makes more sense why she was so hot to tour the morgue and look at his body and find out whatever you might know about the case. Find out what Marino might know.”

  “Have you told the police?” Scarpetta says. “And should I ask how you got her underwear?”

  Aaron smiles. Scarpetta realizes why the question could be construed as funny.

  “Marino,” Lucy says. “And it’s sure as hell not his DNA. We have his profile for exclusionary purposes just like we have yours, mine. The police will need more to go on than underwear found on Marino’s floor, but even if she didn’t beat her son to death, she has to know who did.”

  “I have to wonder if Marino did,” Scarpetta says.

  “You saw the recording of him in the morgue with her,” Lucy says. “Sure didn’t appear to me he had any idea. Besides, he may be a lot of things, but he would never protect someone who did something like that to a kid.”

  There are other matches. All pointing to the Sandman and revealing another stunning fact: The two sources of DNA recovered from Drew Martin’s fingernail scrapings are from the Sandman and someone else who is a close relative.

  “Male,” Aaron explains. “According to the Italian analysis, ninety-nine percent European. Maybe another son? Maybe the Sandman’s brother? Maybe his father?”

  “Three sources of DNA from one family?” Scarpetta is amazed.

  “And another crime,” Lucy says.

  Aaron hands Scarpetta another report and says, “A match with a biological sample left in an unsolved crime no one has connected to Drew or to Lydia or to any other case.”

  “From a rape in 2004,” Lucy says. “Apparently, the guy who broke into Lydia Webster’s house and probably also murdered Drew Martin raped a tourist in Venice three years ago. The DNA profile from that evidence is in the Italian database, which we decided to search. Of course, there’s no suspect to match, because to date they can’t enter the profiles of known individuals. In other words, we don’t have a name. Just semen.”

  “By all means, protect the privacy of rapists and murderers,” Aaron says.

  “News accounts are sketchy,” Lucy says. “Twenty-year-old student in Venice, a summer program to study art. Out at a bar late at night, walked back to her hotel near the Bridge of Sighs and was attacked. So far, that’s all we know about the case. But since it was worked by the Carabinieri, your friend the captain should have access to the information.”

  “Possibly the Sandman’s first violent crime,” Scarpetta says. “At least as a civilian. Assuming it’s true this guy served in Iraq. Frequently, a first-time offender leaves evidence and then gets smart. This guy’s smart, and his MO has evolved considerably. He’s careful about evidence, is ritualistic and much more violent, and after he finishes, his victims aren’t alive to tell. Thankfully, it didn’t occur to him he might leave his DNA in surgical glue. Does Benton know about this?” she asks.

  “Yes. And he knows we’ve got a problem with your gold coin,” Lucy says, just getting to that. “DNA on it and the chain are the Sandman’s, too, and that places him behind your house the night you and Bull found the gun in the alley. I might ask what that implies about Bull. The necklace could have been his. I’ve asked that question before. We don’t have Bull’s DNA to tell us.”

  “That he’s the Sandman?” Scarpetta doesn’t believe it for a minute.

  “I’m just saying we don’t have his DNA,” Lucy says.

  “And the gun? The cartridges?” Scarpetta asks.

  “Not the Sandman’s DNA on any of those swabs,” Lucy says. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. His DNA on a necklace is one thing. Leaving it on a gun is another, because he might have gotten the gun from someone else. He might have been careful leaving his DNA or his fingerprints on it because of the story he gave—that the asshole who threatened you is the one who dropped it, when we can’t swear that guy ever came near your house. It’s Bull’s word, because it was unwitnessed.”

  “You’re suggesting that Bull—assuming he’s the Sandman, which I don’t believe—might have deliberately, quote, lost the gun. But didn’t mean to lose his necklace,” Scarpetta says. “That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for two reasons. Why did his necklace break? And secondly, if he didn’t know it broke and fell off until he found it, why would he draw my attention to it? Why not just tuck it into his pocket? I could add the third rather strange thought of him having a gold coin necklace to begin with that is reminiscent of the silver-dollar necklace Shandy gave Marino.”

  “It sure would be nice to get Bull’s prints,” Aaron says. “It sure would be nice to swab him. It sure bothers me he seems to have disappeared.”

  “That’s it for now,” Lucy says. “We’re working on cloning him. Going to create a copy of him in a petri dish so we know who it is,” she says drolly.

  “I remember not so long ago waiting weeks, months for DNA.” Scarpetta rues those days, painfully reminded of how many people were brutalized and murdered because a violent offender couldn’t be identified quickly.

  “Ceiling’s at three thousand feet, vis three miles,” Lucy says to Scarpetta. “We’re VFR. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  Inside Marino’s office, his bowling trophies are silhouetted against the old plaster wall, and there is an emptiness in the air.

  Benton shuts the door and doesn’t turn on the light. He sits in the dark at Marino’s desk and for the first time realizes that no matter what he’s said, he’s never taken Marino seriously or been particularly inclusive. If he’s truthful about it, he’s alway
s thought of him as Scarpetta’s sidekick—an ignorant, bigoted, crass cop who doesn’t belong in the modern world, and as a result of that and any number of other factors, is unpleasant to be around and not entirely helpful. Benton has endured him. He’s underestimated him in some departments and understood him perfectly fine in others, but failed to recognize the obvious. As he sits at Marino’s little-used desk and stares out the window at the lights of Charleston, he wishes he had paid more attention to him, to everything. What he’s needed to know is in his reach and has been.

  The time in Venice is almost four o’clock in the morning. It’s no wonder Paulo Maroni left McLean, and now has left Rome.

  “Pronto,” he answers his phone.

  “Were you asleep?” Benton asks.

  “If you cared, you wouldn’t be calling. What’s going on that you need to call me at this unseemly hour? Some development in the case, I hope?”

  “Not a good one, necessarily.”

  “Then what?” Dr. Maroni’s voice has an undercurrent of reluctance, or maybe it’s resignation that Benton hears.

  “The patient you had.”

  “I’ve told you about him.”

  “You’ve told me what you wanted to tell me, Paulo.”

  “What more could I help you with?” Dr. Maroni says. “In addition to what I’ve said, you’ve read my notes. I’ve been a friend and not asked you how that happened. I haven’t blamed Lucy, for example.”

  “You might want to blame yourself. Do you think I haven’t figured out that you wanted us to access your patient’s file? You left it on the hospital network. You left file-sharing on, meaning anybody who could figure out where it was could get into it. For Lucy, yes, it would be no effort. For you, it was no mistake. You’re too smart for that.”

  “And so you admit Lucy violated my confidential electronic files.”

  “You knew we’d want to see your patient notes. So you arranged it before you left for Rome. Which was earlier than you planned, by the way. Conveniently, right after you learned that Dr. Self was about to be a patient at McLean. You allowed it. She couldn’t have been admitted at the Pavilion if you hadn’t allowed it.”