“What about Dr. Scarpetta?” Investigator Marino looked at Shrew as if she had insulted him unforgivably.
“I worry about her,” Shrew said as calmly as she could, her hands shaking so hard she had to lace them tightly in her lap. “I worry about all the publicity she gets and the nature of what she . . . well, the subject matter. It appeals to the ones who do the things she talks about.”
She took a deep breath. She’d said just the right thing. What she mustn’t do is make any allusion to having read anything about Dr. Scarpetta on the Internet, specifically in the very columns Shrew had posted today.
“I have a feeling you’re thinking about something in particular,” he said. “So get it out on the table.”
“I think she might be in danger,” Shrew said. “It’s just a feeling.”
“Based on what?” He looked stonily at her.
“Terrorists,” she said.
“Terrorists?” He looked less stony. “What terrorists?” He didn’t look as offended.
“It’s what all of us are afraid of these days.” Shrew tried that tactic.
“I tell you what.” Pete Marino got up and was a giant towering over her. “I’m leaving my card for you, and I want you to do a lot of thinking. Anything that comes to mind, even if it seems trivial, you call me right away. I don’t care what time it is.”
“I can’t imagine who would do something like that.” She got up and followed him to the door.
“It’s always the ones you don’t imagine,” he said. “Either because they knew the victim or they didn’t.”
Chapter 8
Cyberspace, the perfect place to hide from ridicule.
Gotham was an online college, where students saw Dr. Oscar Bane’s talents and intelligence and not the dwarfed vessel that contained them.
“It couldn’t be a student or group of students,” he said to Scarpetta. “They don’t know me. My address and phone number aren’t listed. There’s no physical college where people go. The faculty meets several times a year in Arizona. And that’s as much as most of us see each other.”
“What about your e-mail address?”
“It’s on the college website. It has to be. That’s probably how it started. The Internet. Easiest way to steal your identity. I told the DA’s office. I said that’s probably how they got access to me. My speculations didn’t matter. They didn’t believe me, and I realized they might be part of the mind stealing. That’s what’s happening. They’re trying to steal my mind.”
Scarpetta got up from her chair. She tucked her notepad and the pen into her lab coat pocket.
She said, “I’m moving around to the other side of the table so I can look at your back. You must go out at least some.”
“The grocery store, ATM, gas stations, doctors’ offices, the dentist, the theater, restaurants. When it began, I started changing my patterns. Different places, different times, different days.”
“What about the gym?”
She untied his gown and gently pulled it down to his hips.
“I work out in my apartment. I still power-walk outside. Four to five miles, six days a week.”
There was a distinctive pattern to his injuries that didn’t make her feel any better about him.
“Not the same walk or at the same time of day. I mix things up,” he added.
“Groups, clubs, organizations you belong to or are involved with?”
“Little People of America. What’s happening has nothing to do with the LPA, no way. Like I said, the electronic harassment just started maybe three months ago. As far as I know.”
“Anything unusual happen three months ago? Anything change in your life?”
“Terri. I started dating Terri. And they started following me. I’ve got proof. On a CD hidden in my apartment. If they break in, they won’t find it. I need you to get it when you’re in there.”
She measured abrasions on his lower back.
“When you’re inside my apartment,” he said. “I gave my written consent to that detective. I don’t like him. But he asked me, and I gave him my consent, my key, the information for the burglar alarm, because I’ve got nothing to hide, and I want you to go in. I told him I want you to go in with him. Do it right away before they go in there. Maybe they already have.”
“The police?”
“No. The others.”
His body relaxed as her gloved fingers touched him.
“I wouldn’t put anything past them and their capabilities,” he said. “But even if they’ve already gone in, they didn’t find it. They won’t find it. It’s not possible. The CD’s hidden in a book. The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor by Littleton Winslow. Published in 1874 in London. Fourth shelf of the second bookcase, left of the door in the guest bedroom. You’re the only person who knows.”
“Did you tell Terri you were being followed, spied on? Did she know about the CD?”
“Not for a long time. I didn’t want her to worry. She has problems with anxiety. Then I had no choice. I had to tell her several weeks ago when she started mentioning she wanted to see my apartment, and I wouldn’t let her. She started accusing me of hiding something from her, so I had to tell her. I had to make sure she understood it wasn’t safe for me to bring her to my apartment because I was being electronically harassed.”
“The CD?”
“I didn’t tell her where it is. Just what’s on it.”
“Did she worry that knowing you might place her at risk, too? No matter where you saw her?”
“It’s obvious they never followed me to her apartment.”
“How is that obvious?”
“They tell me where they follow me. You’ll see. I explained to Terri I was sure they didn’t know about her and she was safe.”
“Did she believe you?”
“She was upset, but she wasn’t frightened.”
“Seems a little unusual for someone who has a lot of anxiety,” Scarpetta said. “I’m surprised she wasn’t frightened.”
“The communications from them stopped. It’s been weeks, and they’ve stopped. I began to hope they weren’t interested in me anymore. Of course, they were just setting me up for the cruelest thing of all.”
“What are these communications?”
“E-mails.”
“If they stopped after you told Terri about them, might that suggest the possibility they were from her? That she was sending you whatever these e-mails are that make you feel you’re being harassed, spied on? And when you said something about it, she stopped sending them?”
“Absolutely not. She would never do something so heinous. Especially not to me. It’s impossible.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“She couldn’t possibly do it. How would she know I took a detour when I was walking and ended up at Columbus Circle, for example, if I’d never told her? How could she know I went to the store for coffee creamer if I never mentioned it?”
“Is there any reason she might have to hire someone to follow you?”
“She wouldn’t do that. And after what’s happened, it makes no sense at all to think she had anything to do with it. She’s dead! They killed her!”
The steel door moved slightly, and the guard’s eyes appeared in the crack. “We okay in here?”
“We’re fine,” Scarpetta said.