The Scarpetta Factor Page 3

  Scarpetta moved a box of tissues closer to her and said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions, to go over a few things before we see her. Would that be all right?” After the viewing, Grace Darien would be in no condition to talk. “When’s the last time you had contact with your daughter?”

  “Tuesday morning. I can’t tell you the exact time but probably around ten. I called her and we chatted.”

  “Two mornings ago, December sixteenth.”

  “Yes.” She wiped her eyes.

  “Nothing since then? No other phone calls, voicemails, e mails?”

  “We didn’t talk or e-mail every day, but she sent a text message. I can show it to you.” She reached for her pocketbook. “I should have told the detective that, I guess. What did you say his name is?”

  “Marino.”

  “He wanted to know about her e-mail, because he said they’re going to need to look at it. I told him the address, but of course I don’t know her password.” She rummaged for her phone, her glasses. “I called Toni Tuesday morning, asking if she wanted turkey or ham. For Christmas. She didn’t want either. She said she might bring fish, and I said I’d get whatever she wanted. It was just a normal conversation, mostly about things like that, since her two brothers are coming home. All of us together on Long Island.” She had her phone out and her glasses on, was scrolling through something with shaky hands. “That’s where I live. In Islip. I’m a nurse at Mercy Hospital.” She gave Scarpetta the phone. “That’s what she sent last night.” She pulled more tissues from the box.

  Scarpetta read the text message:

  From: Toni

  Still trying to get days off but Xmas so crazy. I have to get coverage and no one wants to especially because of the hours. XXOO

  CB# 917-555-1487

  Received: Wed Dec. 17. 8:07 p.m.

  Scarpetta said, “And this nine-one-seven number is your daughter’s?”

  “Her cell.”

  “Can you tell me what she’s referring to in this message?” She would make sure Marino knew about it.

  “She works nights and weekends and has been trying to get someone to cover for her so she can take some time off during the holiday,” Mrs. Darien said. “Her brothers are coming.”

  “Your former husband said she worked as a waitress in Hell’s Kitchen.”

  “He would say that, as if she slings hash or flips burgers. She works in the lounge at High Roller Lanes, a very nice place, very high-class, not your typical bowling alley. She wants to have her own restaurant in some big hotel someday in Las Vegas or Paris or Monte Carlo.”

  “Was she working last night?”

  “Not usually on Wednesdays. Mondays through Wednesdays she’s usually off, and then she works very long hours Thursdays through Sundays.”

  “Do her brothers know what’s happened?” Scarpetta asked. “I wouldn’t want them hearing about it on the news.”

  “Larry’s probably told them. I would have waited. It might not be true.”

  “We’ll want to be mindful of anybody who perhaps shouldn’t find out from the news.” Scarpetta was as gentle as she could be. “What about a boyfriend? A significant other?”

  “Well, I’ve wondered. I visited Toni at her apartment in September and there were all these stuffed animals on her bed, and a lot of perfumes and such, and she was evasive about where they’d come from. And at Thanksgiving she was text-messaging all the time, happy one minute, in a bad mood the next. You know how people act when they’re infatuated. I do know she meets a lot of people at work, a lot of very attractive and exciting men.”

  “Possible she might have confided in your former husband? Told him about a boyfriend, for example?”

  “They weren’t close. What you don’t understand is why he’s doing this, what Larry is really up to. It’s all to get back at me and make everybody think he’s the dutiful father instead of a drunk, a compulsive gambler who abandoned his family. Toni would never want to be cremated, and if the worst has happened, I’ll use the funeral home that took care of my mother, Levine and Sons.”

  “I’m afraid until you and Mr. Darien settle your dispute about the disposition of Toni’s remains, the OCME can’t release her,” Scarpetta said.

  “You can’t listen to him. He left Toni when she was a baby. Why should anybody listen to him?”

  “The law requires that disputes such as yours must be resolved, if need be by the courts, before we can release the body,” Scarpetta said. “I’m sorry. I know the last thing you need right now is frustration and more upset.”

  “What right does he have suddenly showing up after twenty-something years, making demands, wanting her personal things. Fighting with me about that in the lobby and telling that girl he wanted Toni’s belongings, whatever she had on when she came in, and it might not even be her. Saying such horrid, heartless things! He was drunk and looked at a picture. And you trust that? Oh, God. What am I going to see? Just tell me so I know what to expect.”

  “Your daughter’s cause of death is blunt-force trauma that fractured her skull and injured her brain,” Scarpetta said.

  “Someone hit her on the head.” Her voice shook and she broke down and cried.

  “She suffered a severe blow to the head. Yes.”

  “How many? Just one?”

  “Mrs. Darien, I need to caution you from the start that anything I tell you is in confidence and it’s my duty to exercise caution and good judgment in what you and I discuss right now,” Scarpetta said. “It’s critical nothing is released that might actually aid your daughter’s assailant in getting away with this very terrible crime. I hope you understand. Once the police investigation is complete, you can make an appointment with me and we’ll have as detailed a discussion as you’d like.”

  “Toni was out jogging last night in the rain on the north side of Central Park? In the first place, what was she doing over there? Has anybody bothered asking that question?”

  “All of us are asking a lot of questions, and unfortunately have very few answers so far,” Scarpetta replied. “But as I understand it, your daughter has an apartment on the Upper East Side, on Second Avenue. That’s about twenty blocks from where she was found, which isn’t very far for an avid runner.”

  “But it was in Central Park after dark. It was near Harlem after dark. She would never go running in an area like that after dark. And she hated the rain. She hated being cold. Did someone come up behind her? Did she struggle with him? Oh, dear God.”

  “I’ll remind you what I said about details, about the caution we need to exercise right now,” Scarpetta replied. “I can tell you that I found no obvious signs of a struggle. It appears Toni was struck on the head, causing a large contusion, a lot of hemorrhage into her brain, which indicates a survival time that was long enough for significant tissue response.”

  “But she wouldn’t have been conscious.”

  “Her findings indicate some survival time, but no, she wouldn’t have been conscious. She may have had no awareness at all of what happened, of the attack. We won’t know until certain test results come back.” Scarpetta opened the file and removed the health history form, placing it in front of Mrs. Darien. “Your former husband filled this out. I’d appreciate it if you’d look.”

  The paperwork shook in Mrs. Darien’s hands as she scanned it.

  “Name, address, place of birth, parents’ names. Please let me know if we need to correct anything,” Scarpetta said. “Did she have high blood pressure, diabetes, hypoglycemia, mental health issues—was she pregnant, for example.”

  “He checked no to everything. What the hell does he know?”

  “No depression, moodiness, a change of behavior that might have struck you as unusual.” Scarpetta was thinking about the BioGraph watch. “Did she have problems sleeping? Anything at all going on with her that was different from the past? You said she might have been out of sorts of late.”

  “Maybe a boyfriend problem or something at work, the economy being what
it is. Some of the girls she works with have been laid off,” Mrs. Darien said. “She gets in moods like everybody else. Especially this time of year. She doesn’t like winter weather.”

  “Any medications you might be aware of?”

  “Just over-the-counter, as far as I know. Vitamins. She takes very good care of herself.”

  “I’m interested in who her internist might be, her doctor or doctors. Mr. Darien didn’t fill in that part.”

  “He wouldn’t know. He’s never gotten the bills. Toni’s been living on her own since college, and I can’t be sure who her doctor is. She never gets sick, has more energy than anyone I know. Always on the go.”

  “Are you aware of any jewelry she might have routinely worn? Perhaps rings, a bracelet, a necklace she rarely took off?” Scarpetta said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about a watch?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What looks like a black plastic sports watch, digital? A large black watch? Does that sound familiar?”

  Mrs. Darien shook her head.

  “I’ve seen similar watches when people are involved in studies. In your profession, I’m sure you have, too. Watches that are cardiac monitors or worn by people who have sleep disorders, for example,” Scarpetta said.

  A look of hope in Mrs. Darien’s eyes.

  “What about when you saw Toni at Thanksgiving,” Scarpetta said. “Might she have been wearing a watch like the one I just described?”

  “No.” Mrs. Darien shook her head. “That’s what I mean. It might not be her. I’ve never seen her wearing anything like that.”

  Scarpetta asked her if she would like to see the body now, and they got up from the table and walked into an adjoining room, small and bare, just a few photographs of New York City skylines on pale-green walls. The viewing window was approximately waist-high, about the height of a casket on a bier, and on the other side was a steel screen—actually, the doors of the lift that had carried Toni’s body up from the morgue.

  “Before I open the screen, I want to explain what you’re going to see,” Scarpetta said. “Would you like to sit on the sofa?”

  “No. No, thank you. I’ll stand. I’m ready.” Her eyes were wide and panicked, and she was breathing fast.

  “I’m going to push a button.” Scarpetta indicated a panel of three buttons on the wall, two black, one red, old elevator buttons. “And when the screen opens, the body will be right here.”

  “Yes. I understand. I’m ready.” She could barely talk, she was so frightened, shaking as if freezing cold, breathing hard as if she’d just exerted herself.

  “The body is on a gurney inside the elevator, on the other side of the window. Her head will be here, to the left. The rest of her is covered.”

  Scarpetta pushed the top black button, and the steel doors parted with a loud clank. Through scratched Plexiglas Toni Darien was shrouded in blue, her face wan, her eyes shut, her lips colorless and dry, her long, dark hair still damp from rinsing. Her mother pressed her hands against the window. Bracing herself, she began to scream.

  Pete Marino was unsettled as he looked around the studio apartment, trying to read its personality and mood, trying to intuit what it had to tell him.

  Scenes were like dead people. They had a lot to say if you understood their silent language, and what bothered him right away was that Toni Darien’s laptop and cell phone were gone, their chargers still plugged into the wall. What continued to nag at him was that there was nothing else that seemed to be missing or disturbed, the police by now of the opinion that her apartment had nothing to do with her murder. Yet he sensed someone had been in here. He didn’t know why he sensed it, one of those feelings he got at the back of his neck, as if something was watching him or trying to get his attention and he couldn’t see what it was.

  Marino stepped back out into the hallway, where a uniformed NYPD cop was babysitting the apartment, no one allowed to go in unless Jaime Berger said so. She wanted the apartment sealed until she was satisfied she needed nothing more from it, had been adamant on the phone with Marino but also talking out of both sides of her mouth. Don’t get too hung up on her apartment, and treat it like the crime scene. Well, which was it? Marino had been around the block too many times to pay much attention to anyone, including his boss. He did his own thing. As far as he was concerned, Toni Darien’s apartment was a scene, and he was going to turn it inside out.

  “Tell you what,” Marino said to the cop outside the door, his last name Mellnik. “Maybe give Bonnell a call. I need to talk to her about the missing laptop, the cell phone, make sure she didn’t take them.”

  Bonnell was the NYPD case investigator who’d already been through the apartment earlier today with the Crime Scene Unit.

  “What, you don’t got a phone?” Mellnik was leaning against the wall in the dimly lit hallway, a folding chair nearby at the top of the stairs.

  When Marino left, Mellnik would move the chair back inside the apartment and sit until he needed a bathroom break or his replacement showed up for midnight shift. A fucking lousy job. Somebody had to do it.

  “You’re so busy?” Marino said to him.

  “Just because I’m hanging around with my thumb up my ass doesn’t mean I’m not busy. I’m busy thinking.” Tapping his gelled black hair, a short guy built like a bullet. “I’ll track her down, but like I was telling you? When I got here, the guy I relieved talked my ear off about it, about what the crime scene guys were saying. Like where’s her phone? Where’s her laptop? But they don’t think someone came in here and took them. No evidence of that. I think it’s pretty fucking obvious what happened to her. Why do people still jog in the park at night, especially females? Go figure.”

  “And the door was locked when Bonnell and the crime scene guys got here?”

  “I told you, the super unlocked it, a guy named Joe, lives on the first floor, other end.” Pointing. “You can see for yourself. There’s no sign somebody jimmied the lock, broke in. The door was locked, the shades down in the windows, everything undisturbed, normal. That’s what I was told by the guy here before me, and he witnessed what Crime Scene did, the whole thing.”

  Marino was studying the doorknob, the deadbolt, touching them with his gloved hands. He got a flashlight out of his pocket, looking carefully, not seeing any obvious signs of forced entry. Mellnik was right. Nothing appeared damaged or recently scratched.

  Marino said, “Find Bonnell for me, get the dispatcher too so I can get it from her direct. Because I’m going to be asked about it fifty times when the boss is back in town, if not sooner. Most people who take their laptops off-site also take the charger. That’s bothering me.”

  “Crime Scene would have taken the charger if they took the computer. They didn’t take nothing,” Mellnik said. “Maybe the victim had an extra charger, that occur to you? If she took her laptop somewhere and had a charger at that location or, you know, just an extra one. That’s what I think happened.”

  “I’m sure Berger will send you a handwritten thank-you for your hearsay opinion.”

  “What’s it like working for her?”

  “The sex is pretty good,” said Marino. “If she’d just give me a little more time to recover. Five, ten times a day, and even I get tuckered out.”

  “Yeah, and I’m Spider-Man. From what I hear, men aren’t what wind her clock. I look at her and go, no way. Must be a vicious rumor because she’s powerful, right? Any woman who’s got her kind of power and prominence? You know what they say, doesn’t mean it’s true. Don’t get my girlfriend on the subject. She’s a firefighter. So right off, she’s either a lesbo or wearing a swimsuit in a calendar, that’s the assumption.”

  “No shit. She in the Female Firefighters calendar? This year’s? I’ll order me a copy.”

  “I said it was an assumption. So, my question. Is it an assumption about Jaime Berger? I got to admit, I’d love to know. It’s all over the Internet about her and Dr. Scarpetta’s—what is
it, her daughter, her niece? The girl who used to be FBI and now does all Berger’s computer investigative stuff. I mean, does Jaime Berger hate men and that’s what motivates her to lock them up? Almost always it’s men she locks up, that is true. Not that females commit most sex crimes, but still. If anybody would know the real story, I guess it would be you.”

  “Don’t wait for the movie. Read the book.”

  “What book?” Mellnik sat down in his folding chair, slipped his phone out of the holder on his duty belt. “What book you talking about?”

  “Maybe you should write it, you’re so curious.” Marino looked down the length of the hallway, brown carpet, dingy tan-painted walls, a total of eight units up here on the second floor.

  “Like I was saying, I’ve been thinking I don’t want to do shit work like this all my life, maybe I should go into investigations, you know.” Mellnik kept on talking as if Marino was interested and they’d been friends for years. “Get assigned to Jaime Berger’s office like you, as long as she’s not a man-hater, that goes without saying. Or maybe to the FBI’s Joint Bank Robbery Task Force or Terrorism or something, where you go to a real office every day, get a take-home car, get treated with respect.”

  “There’s no doorman,” Marino said. “The way you get into this building is a key, or you have to buzz somebody to let you in, like you did for me when I showed up. Once in the common area where the mailboxes are, you got a choice. You turn left, walk past four apartments, including the super’s, and take the stairs. Or you turn right and walk past the laundry room, the maintenance and the mechanical-systems closets, and a storage area, and take those stairs. Up two flights and conveniently here you are, not even six feet from Toni’s door. If someone got in her apartment, maybe had keys for some reason, he could have come in and left and not necessarily been seen by the neighbors. You been sitting here how long?”