“Then fucking don’t,” Marino snapped.
Chapter 4
Oscar Bane’s hairless, shackled legs dangled over the edge of the examination table inside one of the several infirmaries in the psychiatric prison ward. His eyes, one blue, the other green, gave Scarpetta the unsettling sensation that two people were staring at her.
A Department of Corrections officer had the solid, silent presence of the Rockies as he stood near the wall, allowing her space to work, but close enough to intervene should Oscar become violent, which seemed unlikely. He was frightened. He’d been crying. She sensed nothing aggressive about him as he sat on the table, self-conscious in a thin cotton gown that was long on him but periodically sneaked open below the tie at his waist. Chains quietly clanked whenever he shifted his shackled legs or cuffed hands to cover himself.
Oscar was a little person, a dwarf. While his extremities and fingers were disproportionately short, his flimsy gown revealed that he was well endowed elsewhere. One might go so far as to say that God had overcompensated him for what Scarpetta suspected was achondroplasia, caused by a spontaneous mutation of the gene responsible for the formation of bone, primarily targeting the long bones of the arms and legs. His torso and head were disproportionately large for his extremities, and his short, thick fingers diverged between the middle and ring fingers, giving his hands a somewhat trident appearance. Beyond that, he appeared normal anatomically except for what he had done to himself at considerable misery and expense.
His startling white teeth had been bonded or bleached, possibly crowned, and his short hair was dyed bright yellow-gold. His nails were buffed and perfectly squared, and although Scarpetta couldn’t swear to it, she credited his tranquil brow to injections of Botox. Most remarkable was his body, which looked as if it were sculpted of beige Carrara marble with bluish-gray veining. Perfectly balanced in its musculature, it was almost completely devoid of hair. The overall effect of his appearance, with his intensely different eyes and Apollo-like radiance, was rather surreal and bizarre, and she found Benton’s comment about Oscar’s phobias quite strange. He could not look the way he did without worshipping at the feet of pain and the practitioners who inflicted it.
She felt the probe of his blue-green gaze as she opened the crime scene case Benton kept in his office for her. Unlike those whose professions didn’t demand forceps, evidence envelopes and bags and containers, or camera equipment, forensic light sources, sharp blades, and all the rest, Scarpetta was forced to live a life of redundancy. If bottled water couldn’t make it through airport security, a crime scene case certainly wouldn’t, and flaunting her medical examiner’s shield only drew more unwanted attention.
She’d tried it once at Logan and had ended up in a room where she was interrogated, searched, and subjected to other invasions to make sure she wasn’t a terrorist who, the TSA officers had to admit, just happened to be the spitting image of that lady medical examiner on CNN. In the end, she wasn’t allowed to carry the crime scene case on the plane anyway, and refusing to check it in baggage, she ended up driving. Now she kept duplicates of all security threats in Manhattan.
She asked Oscar, “Do you understand the purpose of these samples and why you’re under no obligation to give them?”
He watched her arrange envelopes, forceps, a tape measure, and various other forensic items on the white paper-covered examination table. He turned away from her and stared at the wall.
The corrections officer said, “Look at the doctor when she talks to you, Oscar.”
Oscar continued to stare at the wall.
In a tense, tenor voice, he said, “Dr. Scarpetta, could you repeat what you said, please?”
“You signed a release, agreeing it was all right for me to take certain biological samples,” she replied. “I’m confirming you understand the scientific information these samples can provide, and that no one has asked for them.”
Oscar still hadn’t been charged with a crime. She wondered if Benton, Berger, and the police interpreted his malingering to mean he was going to confess any minute to a murder Scarpetta knew nothing about. This forced her into an untenable and unprecedented position. Since he wasn’t under arrest, she couldn’t divulge anything he revealed to her unless he waived the doctor-patient privilege, and the only waiver he had signed so far was one that allowed her to take biological samples.
Oscar looked at her and said, “I know what they’re for. DNA. I know why you need my hair.”
“The samples will be analyzed and the labs will have your DNA profile. Hair can tell us if you’re a chronic substance abuser. There are other things the police, the scientists look for. Trace evidence . . .”
“I know what it is.”
“I’m making sure you understand.”
“I don’t do drugs, and I’m certainly not a chronic substance abuser of any description,” he said in a shaky voice, facing the wall again. “And my DNA and fingerprints are all over her apartment. My blood’s in there. I cut my thumb.”
He showed her his right thumb, a Band-Aid around the second knuckle.
“I let them fingerprint me when they brought me in,” he said. “I’m not in any database. They’ll see I’ve never committed a crime. I don’t get parking tickets. I stay out of trouble.”
He stared at the forceps she picked up, and fear shadowed his mismatched eyes.
“I don’t need those,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Have you showered since you got here?” she asked, putting down the forceps.
“No. I said I wouldn’t until you looked at me.”
“Have you washed your hands?”
“No. I’ve touched as little as possible, mainly the pencil your husband had me use during certain psychological tests. Projective figure drawings. I’ve refused to eat. I didn’t want to do anything to my body until you looked. I’m afraid of doctors. I don’t like pain.”
She tore open paper packets of swabs and applicators while he watched, as if at any moment he expected her to do something that might hurt.
“I’d like to scrape under your nails,” she said. “Only if it’s all right. We can recover trace evidence, DNA, from under fingernails, toenails.”
“I know what it’s for. You won’t find anything that shows I did anything to her. Finding her DNA means nothing. My DNA’s all over her apartment,” he repeated himself.
He sat very still while she used a plastic scraper to scrape under his nails, and she could feel his stare. She sensed his blue-green eyes like warm light as they touched her head and other parts of her, as if he was examining her while she was examining him. When she was done with the scraping and looked up at him, he was looking at the wall. He asked her not to watch while he plucked his own head hair, which she helped him place inside an envelope, and then his pubic hair, which went into another envelope. For someone so averse to pain, he didn’t flinch, but his face was tense and his forehead was beaded with sweat.
She peeled open a buccal brush, and he swabbed the inside of his cheek, and his hands trembled.
“Now please make him leave.” He meant the corrections officer. “You don’t need him here. I’m not talking with him here.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” the officer said. “It’s not your choice.”
Oscar was silent. He stared at the wall. The officer looked at Scarpetta, waiting to see what she was going to do.