Postmortem Page 7

“The last thing I want is a perception of prejudice. Especially now, when there’s much more public awareness about dwarfism and the misconceptions and stereotypes historically associated with it. This morning’s Post, for example. The headline about this big.” She held her hands about two inches apart. “Midget Murder. Horrible. Exactly what we don’t want, and I expect a backlash, especially if other news sources pick it up and it’s all the hell over the place.” Her eyes were on his, and she paused. “Unfortunately, I can’t control the press any more than you can.”

  She said it as if she meant something else.

  It was the something else that Benton was anticipating. He knew damn well the Terri Bridges case wasn’t Berger’s only agenda. He’d made a tactical error. He should have brought up the Gotham Gotcha column while he’d had the chance.

  “The joys of contemporary journalism,” she said. “We’re never sure what’s true.”

  She would accuse Benton of lying to her by omission. But technically he hadn’t, because technically Pete Marino had committed no crime. What Dr. Thomas had said was correct. Benton wasn’t in Scarpetta’s house when it happened and would never know the nuances of what Marino had done to her that warm, humid Charleston night last May. Marino’s drunken, grossly inappropriate behavior had gone unreported and largely undiscussed. For Benton to have made even the slightest allusion to it would have been a betrayal of Scarpetta—and of Marino, for that matter—and in fact would constitute hearsay that Berger would never tolerate under other circumstances.

  “Unfortunately,” Benton said, “the same sort of thing is being passed around on the ward. The other patients are calling Oscar names.”

  “Vaudeville, carnivals, the Wizard of Oz,” Berger said.

  She reached for her coffee, and every time she moved her hands, Benton noticed the absence of her large-carat diamond ring and matching wedding band. He had almost asked her about it last summer, after not seeing her for a number of years, but refrained when it became apparent that she never mentioned her multimillionaire husband or her stepchildren. She never made any reference to any aspect of her private life. Not even the cops were talking.

  Maybe there was nothing to talk about. Maybe her marriage was intact. Maybe she’d developed an allergy to metals or worried about being robbed. But if it were the latter, she should think twice about the Blancpain she had on. Benton estimated it was a numbered timepiece that cost in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars.

  “Negative portrayals in the media, in the entertainment industry,” Berger went on. “Fools, dimwits. The movie Don’t Look Now. Folktale dwarfs, imperial court dwarfs. And rather apropos, the omnipresent dwarf who witnesses everything, from the triumph of Julius Caesar to the discovery of Moses in the bulrushes. Oscar Bane was witness to something, and at the same time accuses others of being witness to everything. His claims of being stalked, spied on, subjected to some sort of electronic harassment, and that the CIA might be involved and is torturing him with electronic and antipersonnel weapons as some sort of experiment or persecution.”

  “He didn’t go into that kind of detail with me,” Benton replied.

  “It’s what he reported when he called my office a month ago, and I’ll get back to that momentarily. What’s your assessment of his mental state?”

  “His evaluation is perplexing in its contradictions. MMPI-TWO indicates traits of social introversion. During the Rorschach, he had perceptions of buildings, flowers, lakes, mountains, but no people. Similar pattern with the TAT. A forest with eyes and faces in the leaves, indicative of someone disconnected from people, someone profoundly anxious, paranoid. Aloneness, frustration, fear. Projective figure drawings were mature, but no human figures, just faces with empty eyes. Again, paranoia. A feeling of being watched. Yet nothing indicative that his paranoia is long-standing. That’s the contradiction. That’s what’s disconcerting. He’s paranoid, but I don’t believe his paranoia is long-standing,” he repeated.

  “He’s afraid of something right now that to him is real.”

  “In my opinion, yes. He’s afraid and depressed.”

  “His paranoia,” Berger said. “Based on your experience and the time you spent with him, you don’t believe it’s his inherent disposition? It doesn’t go back to his childhood? As in, he’s always been paranoid because he’s a little person? Perhaps was made fun of, mistreated, discriminated against?”

  “For the most part, it doesn’t appear he had those early experiences. Except with the police. He repeatedly told me he hates the police. And he hates you.”

  “Yet he’s cooperated with the police. Excessively. Let me guess. His excessive cooperation won’t prove helpful.” As if she hadn’t heard the part about Oscar hating her.

  “I hope you’ll get your chance with him,” Benton said.

  The saying was, if a broken window were the victim, Berger could get a confession from the rock.

  “I’m fascinated by his cooperation with a group of people he certainly doesn’t trust,” she said. “Yet he’s rather much given us free rein. Biological samples and his statement, as long as Kay’s the one he gives them to. His clothing, his car, apartment, as long as Kay is right there. Why?”

  “Based on his fears?” Benton said. “I would venture to say that he wants to prove there’s no evidence linking him to Terri Bridges’s murder. Most of all, prove this to Kay.”

  “He should be more worried about proving it to me.”

  “He doesn’t trust you. He does trust Kay. Trusts her irrationally, and that worries me a lot. But back to his mind-set. He wants to prove to her he’s a good guy. He didn’t do anything wrong. As long as she believes in him, he’s safe. Physically, and in how he views himself. At this point, he needs her validation. Without her, he almost doesn’t know who he is anymore.”

  “Guess what. We do know who he is and what he probably did.”

  Benton said, “You need to understand this fear of mind control is very real to thousands of people who believe they are victims of mind weapons. That the government is spying on them, reprogramming them, controlling their thoughts, their entire lives, through movies, computer games, chemicals, microwaves, implants. And the fears have gotten exponentially worse in the past eight years. I was walking through Central Park not so long ago, and here’s this guy talking to the squirrels. I watched him for a while, and he turns around and tells me he’s a victim of the very thing we’re discussing. One of the ways he copes is to visit the squirrels, and if he can get them to eat peanuts out of his hands, then he knows he’s still grounded. He’s not letting the bastards get him.”

  “That’s New York, all right. And the pigeons wear homing devices.”

  “And Tesla gravity radar waves are being used to brainwash the woodpeckers,” Benton said.

  Berger frowned. “Do we have woodpeckers here?”

  “Ask Lucy about advances in technology, about experiments that sound like a schizophrenic’s bad dreams,” he said. “Only this stuff is real. I don’t doubt Oscar thinks it’s real.”

  “I don’t think anybody doubts that. They just think he’s crazy. And they worry his craziness led him to murder his girlfriend. I alluded to his rather unusual protection devices. A plastic shield glued to the back of his cell phone. Another plastic shield in the back pocket of his jeans. A magnet-mounted external antenna on his SUV that seems to have no purpose. Investigator Morales—you haven’t met him yet—says this is anti-radiation stuff. That—and let me see if I can remember this right. A TriField meter?”

  “To detect frequency-weighted electric fields in the ELF and VLF range. A detector, in other words. An electromagnetic measurement tool,” Benton said. “You hold it up in the middle of a room to see if you get readings that might indicate you’re being electronically monitored.”

  “Does it work?”

  “It’s popular in ghost hunting,” Benton said.

  6

  For the third time, Investigator P. R. Marino refused tea, coffee, sod
a, or a glass of water. She tried harder.

  “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” she parroted her husband’s old quip. “How about a little spot of bourbon?”

  “I’m all set,” Investigator Marino said.

  “You sure? It’s no trouble. I might have a taste of it myself.”

  She returned to the living room.

  “No, thanks.”

  She sat back down and there was no might about it. She’d poured herself a generous one. Ice rattled as she set down the glass on a coaster.

  “I’m not usually like this,” she said from the corduroy couch. “I’m not a drunk.”

  “I don’t go around judging people,” Investigator Marino said, his eyes lingering on her drink as if it were a pretty woman.

  “Sometimes a person needs something for the nerves,” she said. “I’d be dishonest if I pretended you didn’t scare me a little.”

  She was still shaky after a good ten minutes of back and forth about whether he really was the police. Holding up a badge to the peephole was a trick she’d seen numerous times in violent movies, and had the 911 operator not stayed on the line, assuring her that the man at her door was legitimate, and continued to stay on the line while she let him in, he wouldn’t be sitting in her living room right now.

  Investigator Marino was a big man, with weathered skin and a red hue to his complexion that caused her concern about his blood pressure. Mostly bald with unfortunate wisps of gray hair in a crescent moon around his pate, he had the look and demeanor of one who did everything the hard way, listened to no one, and certainly wasn’t to be trifled with. She was quite sure he could pick up two thugs by the scruff of the neck, one in each hand, and simultaneously toss them across the room as if they were made of hay. She suspected he’d cut quite a figure when he was young. She also suspected he was single at this time, or would be better off if he were, because if he had a sweetheart and she let him out the door looking the way he did, either she didn’t care about him or she was of questionable breeding.

  Oh, how Shrew would love to give him a tip or two about the way he dressed. If a man was large-boned, then the rule was that cheap, skimpily cut suits, especially black ones, and white cotton shirts without a tie, and rubber-bottomed black leather lace-up shoes tended to make him look a bit like Herman Munster. But she wasn’t about to offer him advice, for fear he would react the same way her husband had, and she was careful not to study the investigator too closely.

  Instead, she continued to make nervous comments and to reach for her drink, and to ask him if he wanted something as she sipped and set her drink back down. The more she talked and reached for her drink, the less he said as he occupied her husband’s favorite leather recliner.

  Investigator Marino had yet to tell her the purpose of his visit.

  Finally she said, “Well, enough about me. I’m sure you’re very busy. What kind of investigator did you say you are? Burglary, I imagine. This is the time of year for it, and if I had my way about it, I’d certainly live in a full-service building with a doorman. What happened across the street. I suppose that’s why you’re here.”

  “I’d appreciate whatever you can tell me about it,” Investigator Marino said, and his huge presence in the recliner seemed to shrink the image she had of her husband sitting there. “You find out from the Post, or did a neighbor say something?”

  “Neither one.”

  “I’m curious because nothing much about it’s made the news yet. We’re not releasing details, for good reason. The less known at this time, the better. You can see the logic in that, right? So you and me having this private little conversation’s between the two of us. Nothing said to the neighbors or anyone. I’m a special investigator for the DA’s office. That translates into court. I know you wouldn’t want to do anything that might mess up a case in court. You ever heard of Jaime Berger?”

  “Yes, I certainly have,” Shrew replied, regretting she’d implied she knew something, and worrying what trouble she’d just caused herself. “I appreciate her advocacy of animal rights.”

  He looked silently at her. She looked silently at him until she couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Did I say something wrong?” she asked, reaching for her drink.

  His glasses glinted as his attention poked around her apartment like a flashlight searching for something hidden or lost. He seemed especially interested in her extensive collection of porcelain and crystal dogs, and photographs of her with her husband and the various dogs they had owned throughout their lives together. She loved dogs. She loved them far more than her children.

  Then the investigator stared down at the tan-and-blue braided rug under the old cherry coffee table.

  “You got a dog?” he asked.

  Obviously he’d noticed the tiny white-and-black dog hairs embedded in the rug, which weren’t really her fault. She’d had no success vacuuming them up, and didn’t feel like getting on her hands and knees, plucking them out, one at a time, as she continued to mourn the untimely death of Ivy.

  “I’m not a bad housekeeper,” she said. “Dog hairs tend to work their way into things, and it’s difficult getting them out. Sort of like they do to your heart. Work their way in. I don’t know what it is about dogs, but God had a hand in it, and anybody who says they’re just animals has no soul. Dogs are fallen angels, while cats don’t live in this world. They just visit. Dog hairs can actually stick into your skin like splinters if you walk around barefoot. I’ve always had dogs. Just right now I don’t. Are you involved in Ms. Berger’s crusade against cruelty to animals? I’m feeling the bourbon, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you mean by animals?” he asked, and maybe he was trying to ease the tension, but she couldn’t be sure. “You talking four-legged or two-legged?”

  She decided it was best to take him seriously and said, “I’m sure you deal with your share of two-legged animals, but in my book, that’s a terrible misnomer. Animals don’t have cold hearts and cruel imaginations. They just want to be loved, unless they’re rabid or have something else wrong with them or it’s about the food chain. Even then, they don’t rob and murder innocent people. They don’t break into apartments while people are gone for the holidays. I can only imagine what it was like to come home to find something as awful as that. Most of these apartment buildings around here are easy pickings, if you ask me. No doormen, no security, very few burglar-alarm systems. I don’t have one, I’m sure that hasn’t escaped your attention. Being attentive is your training, your job, and by the looks of you, you’ve been at it for a while. I meant the four-legged kind.”

  “What four-legged kind?” Investigator Marino seemed on the verge of smiling, as if he found her entertaining.

  It was probably her imagination. And the bourbon.

  “Pardon my non sequitur,” she said. “I’ve read articles about Jaime Berger. What a fine woman. Anybody who’s a champion of animals is a decent person in my book. She’s cleaned up a number of these dreadful pet stores that sell sick and genetically compromised creatures, and maybe you’ve helped. If so, I thank you very much. I had a puppy from one.”

  He listened with no discernible reaction. The more he listened, the more she talked and tentatively reached for her bourbon, usually three times before picking up the glass and taking a sip. She’d gone from thinking he found her interesting to believing he suspected her of something. All in a minute or two.

  “A Boston terrier named Ivy,” she said as she clutched a tissue in her lap.

  “I asked about a dog,” he said, “because I was wondering if you went out much. As in walking a dog. I’m wondering if maybe you’re observant about what goes on in your neighborhood. People who walk dogs notice what goes on around them. Even more than people with babies in strollers. That’s a little-known fact.” His glasses on her. “You ever observe how many people cross the street, pushing the stroller in front of them? What gets hit first? Dog owners are more careful.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, elated tha
t she wasn’t the only one who had noticed the same imbecilic thing about people letting strollers lead the way when they crossed busy New York streets. “But no. I don’t have one at the moment.”

  Another long silence, and this time he broke it.

  “What happened to Ivy?” he asked.

  “Well, it wasn’t me who bought her in that pet shop around the corner. Puppingham Palace. ‘Where pets get the royal treatment. ’ What it ought to say is ‘Where vets get the royal treatment, ’ because vets around here must get most of their business from that unspeakable place. The woman across the street got Ivy as a gift, and couldn’t keep her and gave her to me in a panic. Not a week later, Ivy died of parvovirus. This wasn’t that long ago. Around Thanksgiving.”

  “What lady across the street?”

  It occurred to Shrew with a jolt of disbelief. “Please don’t tell me Terri’s the one who was burglarized. I wouldn’t have thought it since she’s the only one home over there, and her lights are on, so it wouldn’t dawn on me that someone would break into an apartment where the resident was home.”

  She reached for her glass and held on to it.

  “I suppose she might have been out last night like most people on New Year’s Eve,” she said.

  She drank more than a sip.

  “I wouldn’t know.” She kept talking. “I always stay in and retreat to my bedroom. I don’t wait to see the ball drop. I really have no interest. One day is the same as another.”

  “What time did you turn in last night?” Investigator Marino asked.

  She was certain he asked it as if he thought she was implying she hadn’t seen a thing, and he didn’t believe it for one minute.

  “Of course, I understand what you’re leading up to,” she said. “It’s not exactly a matter of when I went to sleep. What I’m telling you is I wasn’t sitting at my computer.”

  It was directly in front of the window that afforded a perfect view of Terri’s first-floor apartment. He looked right at it.

  “Not that I’m staring out my window, down at the street, every other minute, either,” she said. “I ate in the kitchen at my usual time of six o’clock. Leftover tuna casserole. After that, I read for a while back in my bedroom, where the drapes are always drawn.”