The Scarpetta Factor

“What did you say about Toni Darien?” Scarpetta asked, looking at more GPS screen shots, thinking she was misinterpreting, but she wasn’t.

Toni Darien’s run had taken her to the Starrs’ address. That was why she was jogging in gloomy weather. She was meeting someone.

“More wolf fur,” Geffner said. “Fragments of guard hairs.”

Pulse oximetry ninety-nine percent. Heart rate eighty-three and dropping. GPS screen shot after screen shot as minutes passed and Toni’s heart rate dropped, returning to its resting rate. The sound of shoe covers on tile. Marino and Lucy were walking toward Scarpetta.

“You see where she is?” Lucy’s eyes were intense behind the safety glasses. She was making sure Scarpetta understood the significance of the GPS data.

“I’m nowhere near done with analyzing what you submitted in the Darien case.” Geffner’s voice inside the training lab. “But mixed in with the samples you submitted yesterday are fragments of wolf hair, guard hair, microscopic fragments that are similar to what I just saw when I looked at the fur from the voodoo doll. White, black, coarse. I might not have been able to identify it as wolf fur because it’s not intact enough, but it crossed my mind. That or canine. But after seeing what came in with your bomb? That’s what I’m thinking it is. In fact, willing to bet.”

Marino frowned, and he was very agitated when he said, “You’re saying it’s not dog fur. It’s wolf fur, and it’s in both cases? In Toni Darien’s case and the bomb case?”

“Marino?” Geffner sounded confused. “That you?”

“I’m here. In the lab with the Doc. What the hell are you talking about? You sure you didn’t get something mixed up?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. The DNA lab I was telling you about, Dr. Scarpetta?”

“I agree,” she replied. “We should get the species of wolf identified, make sure they’re the same, that the hairs in both cases are from Great Plains wolves.”

She listened to him, and she looked at data. Temperature thirty-eight degrees, relative humidity ninety-nine percent, heart rate seventy-seven. Two minutes and fifteen seconds later, at three-seventeen p.m., the temperature was sixty-nine degrees and the humidity was thirty percent: Toni Darien had walked inside Ha

Detective Bo

“I don’t get it.” Bo

“Not Bobby anymore,” Berger said. “At least not that we know of. I assume he’ll have to sell it, and nobody’s going to buy it unless it’s some sheikh from Dubai.”

“Or if Ha

“She and the family fortune are long gone. One way or the other,” Berger said.

“Jesus.” Bo

Berger unfastened her seat belt and tried Marino on her BlackBerry again. He wasn’t answering, and neither was Lucy. If they were still inside the DNA Building, they either weren’t getting a signal or weren’t allowed to have their cell phones with them, depending on which lab or work space they were in. The OCME’s forensic biological sciences facility was probably the largest, most sophisticated one in the world. Marino and Lucy could be anywhere in there, and Berger didn’t feel like calling the damn switchboard and tracking them down.

“I’m about to go into the interview on Park Ave,” she left Marino another message. “So I might not be able to answer when you call back. Wondering what you found in the lab.”

Her voice sounded cool, her tone flat and unfriendly. She was angry with Marino, and she didn’t know what she felt about Lucy, grief or fury, love or hate, and something else that was a little bit like dying. What Berger knew about dying, at any rate. She imagined it must be like sliding off the side of a cliff, hanging on until you lose your grip, and on your way down wondering who to blame. Berger blamed Lucy, and she blamed herself. Denial, looking the other way, maybe the same thing Bobby was doing when he continued e-mailing Ha

For three weeks Berger had known about the photographs taken in 1996 at the very mansion she and Bo

“I’m just going to say this before we go inside,” Berger said. “I’m not a weak person, and I’m not a coward. Seeing a few photographs taken twelve years ago is one thing. What you told me is another. I had reason to believe Lucy knew Rupe Starr when she was in college, but no reason to believe she was financially involved with Ha

“I didn’t mean to do anything out of line.” Bo

“You don’t have to keep explaining yourself.”

“It’s not that I wanted to snoop or that I was curious and abused my privileges or position as a police officer. I wouldn’t have asked RTCC if I wasn’t legitimately concerned about Lucy’s credibility. I was going to have to depend on her, and I’ve heard some things. She was paramilitary once, wasn’t she? And got fired from the FBI or ATF. Her helping you out with Ha

“I understand.” And Berger did.

“I want to make sure you do,” Bo

“She’s not my friend.”

“She’ll end up on the stand if Toni’s case goes to court. Or if Ha

“She’s not just a friend. You and I both know what she is,” Berger said, and emotions shook inside her. “I’m sure I was on that damn data wall in RTCC for all the world to see. She’s more than a friend. I know you’re not naïve.”