The Scarpetta Factor

“You can disagree all you want. You don’t know him,” Benton said.

“That genetic condition he has,” O’Dell went on. “I can’t remember what it’s called.”

“Congenital hypertrichosis universalis.” It was Marty Lanier talking. “Individuals suffering from this very rare condition have an overgrowth of lanugo hair, baby-fine hair, all over their bodies, including areas that usually aren’t hairy or excessively hairy. The forehead, the tops of the hands, the elbows. And there may be other deformities, gingival hyperplasia, small teeth widely spaced.”

“Like I said, a freak, he looks like a damn werewolf,” O’Dell said to everyone at the table. “People who had this condition, it’s probably where the legend came from.”

“He’s not a werewolf, and the condition isn’t something from a horror story. It isn’t a legend. It’s very real,” Benton said.

“We don’t know how many cases,” Lanier added. “Something like fifty, a hundred. Very few reported worldwide.”

“Reported is the key word,” Jaime Berger said, and she was subdued. “You can’t count cases if they’re not reported, and you can understand why hypertrichosis would have very negative associations and stigmas, implications the sufferer was a monster, was evil.”

“And then you treat him accordingly and maybe turn him into that,” Lanier added.

“Families hid family members who had this affliction, and Jean-Baptiste was no exception,” Benton continued. “He grew up in a basement, in what was essentially a subterranean windowless dungeon of the Chando

“What I’m trying to get across here,” O’Dell said, “is people run screaming from someone who looks like that. How could Jean-Baptiste take over and operate out of the family home in Paris?”

“We don’t know where Jean-Baptiste has been living,” Benton replied. “We don’t know what he’s been doing for the past five years. We don’t know what he looks like. Laser hair removal, prosthetic dentistry, plastic surgery, the medical technology available these days. We have no idea what he’s had done to himself since he escaped from death row. What we do know is you recovered his DNA from the backseat of a stolen Mercedes in Miami, and that unequivocally co

“The gaming industry,” Lanier said. “And maybe the film industry.”

“The Chando

The root of the tree graph on the wall was Jean-Baptiste. His name was in the middle of the screen, and all other names branched out from it directly or indirectly.

“So we’ve got Dodie Hodge and Jerome Wild linked to him.” Benton pointed the laser, and the dot moved on names as he mentioned them.

“We should add Hap Judd,” Berger said, and she was different, extremely somber. “He’s linked to Dodie even though he claims to have nothing to do with her anymore.”

Berger wasn’t herself, and Benton didn’t know what had happened. When everyone had gotten coffee, she’d borrowed the desk of an agent who wasn’t in and had made a phone call on a landline. From that point on she’d gotten quiet. She’d stopped offering insights and arguments and had quit pushing back whenever Lanier opened her mouth. Benton had a feeling it didn’t have to do with jurisdiction, with a turf battle, with a squabble over who would prosecute what. Jaime Berger seemed defeated. She seemed used up.

“For a period Hap supposedly sought her spiritual advice,” Berger said in a flat tone, a monotone. “He stated this when I interviewed him early this morning. He says she’s a nuisance, calls his L.A. office frequently, and he avoids her.”

“How did he meet Dodie?” Lanier wanted to know.

“Apparently, she was giving spiritual advice, psychic readings, to Ha

“I assume most of them don’t turn out to be bank robbers,” Stockman said.

“You’d be surprised what a lot of them turn out to be,” Berger said. “Stealing, extortion, financial scams come quite naturally to the profession.”

“Dodie Hodge ever been to the Starrs’ mansion on Park Avenue?” Lanier asked Berger.

“Hap says yes.”

“You consider Hap a suspect in the Ha

“I consider him the most important suspect at this point,” she said, and she sounded worn down, almost detached or maybe broken.

It wasn’t about her being tired. It was about something else.

“Hap Judd should be on the wall because of Dodie and because of Ha

More branches on the flat screen: Ha

“These major players like Rupe,” O’Dell explained, “they won’t even talk to you unless you got a hell of a lot more than that to hand over.”

“This was about a year before Rupe Starr died,” Berger said. “By which point Ha

“Maybe one of those situations where the family starts crowding out the boss, starts ru