The Scarpetta Factor

“Sounds like he’s making excuses about why he didn’t stop,” Marino said. “He wouldn’t want to think what he actually saw was a taxi driver dumping an injured or dead woman on the roadside. Easier to think it was a couple out drinking all night.”

“The area he described in the nine-one-one recording,” Scarpetta said. “How far would that be from where the body was found?”

“About thirty feet,” Bo

Scarpetta told them about the bright-yellow paint chip she’d recovered from Toni’s hair. She encouraged them not to place too much stock in the detail, because none of the trace evidence had been examined yet and she’d also found red and black microscopic chips on Toni’s body. The paint could have been transferred from the weapon that fractured Toni’s skull. The paint could be from something else.

“So if she was in a yellow cab, how could she have been dead thirty-six hours?” Marino voiced the obvious question.

“It would have to be a cabdriver who killed her,” Bo

Scarpetta had been waiting for that assumption next.

“Ha

“I’m not at all prepared to co

“Thing is, if we don’t say something and it happens again,” Bo

“I have no intention of making any such co

“It’s not necessarily what I think, not about Ha

“We also don’t know that somebody else didn’t see the same thing Harvey Fahley did,” Benton said, looking at Scarpetta, saying it for her benefit. “Wouldn’t be good if some other witness did the typical thing these days and instead of going to the police went to a news network. I wouldn’t want to be within five miles of CNN or any other media outlet if this detail about the yellow cab has been leaked.”

“I understand,” Scarpetta said. “But whether it has or hasn’t, I’d be concerned that my being a no-show tonight would make matters only worse. Would only escalate the sensational value. CNN knows I’m not going to discuss Toni Darien or Ha

“I’d stay clear.” Benton looked intensely at her.

“It’s in my contract. I’ve never had a problem,” she said to him.

“I agree with Kay. I’d conduct business as usual,” said Berger. “If you cancel at the final hour, all it will do is give Carley Crispin something to talk about.”

7

Dr. Warner Agee sat on the unmade bed inside his small suite of English antiques, the curtains closed to afford him privacy.

His hotel room was surrounded by buildings, eye-to-eye with other windows, and he couldn’t help but think about his former wife and what it was like when he was forced to find his own place to live. He’d been appalled when he noticed how many downtown Washington apartments had telescopes, some decorative but functional, others for serious viewing. For example, an Orion binocular mount and tripod set in front of a reclining chair that didn’t face a river or a park but another high-rise. The Realtor was crowing about the view as Agee peered directly into the condo across the way at someone buck naked, walking around, the drapes not drawn.

What purpose was there for telescopes and binoculars in congested areas of major cities like Washington, D.C., or here in New York unless it was spying, unless it was voyeurism? Obtuse neighbors undressing, having sex, arguing and fighting, bathing, sitting on the toilet. If people thought they had privacy in their own homes or hotel rooms, think again. Sexual predators, robbers, terrorists, the government-don’t let them see you. Don’t let them hear you. Make sure they aren’t watching. Make sure they aren’t listening. If they don’t see or hear you, they can’t get you. Security cameras on every corner, vehicle tracking, spy cams, sound amplifiers, eavesdropping, observing strangers in their most vulnerable and humiliating moments. All it takes is one piece of information in the wrong hands and your entire life can change. If you’re going to play that game, do it to others before they can do it to you. Agee didn’t leave blinds or curtains open, not even during the day.

“You know what the best security system is? Window shades.” Advice he’d been giving his entire career.

Truer words never spoken, exactly what he’d said to Carley Crispin the first time they met at one of Rupe Starr’s di

It was natural that Carley with her journalistic passions would be less interested in the paranormal and more drawn to the bookcase of photo albums, all bound in Florentine leather, the rogues gallery of Rupe’s so-called friends, as Agee referred to the most popular section in the rare-book room. For a long stretch of solitary hours on the third floor of that massive house, Agee and Carley cynically perused decades of pictures, the two of them sitting side by side, pointing out the people they recognized.

“Amazing the friends money will buy, and he thinks they mean it. That’s what I’d find sad if I could bring myself to feel sorry for a multi-fucking-billionaire,” Agee said to someone who trusted no one because she was as amoral and just as much a user as anyone Rupe Starr might ever meet.

Only Rupe never made Carley any money. She was simply an attraction for the other guests, the same thing Agee was. You couldn’t even get an interview at Rupe’s special club without a minimum of a million dollars, but you could be a guest if he liked you and thought you were an amusement of one sort or another. He’d invite you to di

“Like throwing peanuts to the elephants,” Agee had told Carley on an evening he’d never forget. “We’re the peanuts, they’re the elephants. Heavyweights we’ll never be, even if we live to be as old as elephants, and the unfair irony is some of these elephants aren’t old enough to join the circus. Look at this one.” Tapping his finger on the picture of a ferociously pretty girl staring boldy into the camera, her arm around Rupe. The year written on the page was 1996.