Berger placed her hand on Lucy’s bare knee and leaned against her to pick up the cordless phone. She called Scarpetta for the second time in the past hour.
“Us again,” Berger said. “Maybe you and Benton should just come over here.”
“I can. He can’t,” Scarpetta said.
Berger put her on speakerphone and set the handset upright on the coffee table inside her handsome sitting area of leather and glass, and Agam polymorphic paintings and serigraphs that seemed to change and shimmer as Berger moved.
Greg’s room.
Where he used to plant himself in front of the TV while Berger was alone in bed, in the adjoining room, sleeping or working. It took her a while to figure out that one of the reasons he started keeping such strange hours, as if he were on UK time, was because he was on UK time. He’d sit in this room, and at some point after midnight New York time, he’d call his friend the barrister, who would just be waking up in London.
“Benton’s with Marino and Bacardi,” Scarpetta said. “They went out. He was rather cryptic about it. I’ve not heard anything from Dr. Lester. Still. I’m assuming you haven’t.”
Morales had dropped off Dr. Lester at the ME’s office earlier, because he didn’t know then what Lucy was about to find out. Now he was aware people were looking for him, because Berger had contacted him. All she’d had to say was, “I think you need to explain some things.”
She’d gotten as far as mentioning silver nitrate and Dr. Stuart, when he hung up on her.
“I suppose someone will tell me if I need to go down there,” Scarpetta said. “Although I seriously doubt it’s an issue, she really should x-ray Eva Peebles carefully. I’m repeating myself, because you don’t want her body leaving the morgue until every inch of it has been x-rayed. Same thing with Terri’s body. X-rayed again, every inch of it.”
“That’s what I’m getting around to,” Berger said. “This idea of the microchip implant. When you talked to Oscar, did you get any idea that might lead you to believe he’d ever, for any reason, allow something like that? Lucy and I are watching this God-awful video again, and that’s what the killer is implying. Morales, I mean. We know it’s him.”
“Oscar would never allow that,” Scarpetta said. “What’s far more likely is he complained about painful treatments, specifically, laser hair removal. And he has had hair removed from his back, possibly from his buttocks. He has no hair at all except on his face, his head. And he has pubic hair. He mentioned Demerol to me. If someone came in with scrubs and a mask on, and Oscar was on his belly, he would never have seen the tech or necessarily recognize him later. At Terri’s apartment, for example, when Morales encountered Oscar at the crime scene? Oscar wouldn’t necessarily connect him with some backroom tech at Dr. Stuart’s office.”
“In the video, we think Terri calls him Juan. We’re not sure. You need to listen,” Berger said.
Scarpetta said, “They’re doing R-and-D with wireless GPS glass-encapsulated chips that have miniature antennas and a power supply that can last up to three months. About the size of a grain of rice, maybe smaller. One of them could have been implanted into his buttocks and he’d never know, especially if it’s migrated, buried itself in deeper, which happens. We could find it with an x-ray, if we can find him. And by the way, he’s not the only one paranoid about this sort of thing. The U.S. government has a number of pilot programs, and a lot of people fear that mandatory chipping is on the horizon.”
“Not me,” Berger said. “I’ll move.”
“You’ll have plenty of company. That’s why some call it Mark of the Beast Six-Six-Six technology.”
“But you didn’t see anything like that in Terri’s x-rays?”
“I’ve been looking,” Scarpetta said. “I have the electronic files of that and everything else, and I’ve been doing nothing but work on all of this since we last spoke. The answer’s no. It’s very important that Dr. Lester get more films, and I want to see them. Especially focusing on the back, the buttocks, the arms. People who have been implanted with microchips usually get them in their arms. Morales would know a lot about microchip technology for the simple reason it’s used to tag animals. He would have seen microchips implanted in pets at the vet’s office. He may have done the implanting himself, a simple procedure that requires nothing more than the chip and an implant gun fitted with a fifteen-gauge needle. I can be there in maybe half an hour.”
“That would be fine.”
Berger reached across Lucy again and ended the call. She returned the handset to its charger. She scribbled more notes and underlined words and phrases. She looked at Lucy for a long moment, and Lucy looked back, and Berger wanted to kiss her again, to resume what had begun when Lucy first appeared at her door and Berger had pulled her by the hand straight up here. Lucy didn’t even have time to take off her coat. Berger didn’t know how she could think about something like that right now, with that hideous image frozen on the big flat screen. Or maybe that was why she was thinking about it. Berger didn’t want to be alone.
“That’s what makes the most sense,” Lucy finally said. “Morales implanting the GPS chip in Oscar while he’s in the dermatologist’s office. Probably thought he was getting a shot of Demerol in his butt. Terri probably had said something to Morales about Oscar, about not knowing if she could trust him, probably when she and Oscar first started dating. And Morales did his thing and acted like her best friend, her confidant.”
“Big question. Who did Terri think Morales was? Juan Amate or Mike Morales?”
“I’m betting Juan Amate. Way too risky if she knew he was an NYPD cop. I think she did call him Juan. I do think that’s what I heard.”
“I think you’re right.”
“If she was screwing around with him, does that compute?” Lucy said. “Morales wouldn’t care if she was seeing someone else?”
“No. As I just said, he acts like your best friend. Women confide in him. Even I have, to an extent.”
“To what extent?”
They had never returned to the subject of the whiskeys in her bar.
“I shouldn’t have to say it,” Berger said. “But Morales and I didn’t have that, and I don’t think you believed we did or you wouldn’t be sitting here. You wouldn’t have come back. The Tavern on the Green rumors. That’s all they are—rumors. And yes, no doubt he started them. He and Greg liked each other.”
“No way.”
“No, no. Not that way,” Berger said. “One thing Greg doesn’t have any ambivalence about is what he likes to fuck, and it definitely isn’t men.”
Chapter 32
Scarpetta refilled coffees and carried them out on a tray with a few things to eat. She believed that sleep deprivation was healed by good food.
She set down a platter of fresh buffalo mozzarella, sliced plum tomatoes, and basil dribbled with cold-pressed unfiltered olive oil. In a sweetgrass basket lined with a linen napkin was crusty homemade Italian bread that she urged everyone to pass around, to break it with their hands, to tear off pieces. She told Marino he could start, and he took the basket, and she placed small plates and blue-checked napkins in front of him, then one in front of Bacardi.
Scarpetta set her own place on the coffee table next to Benton’s, and she sat next to him on the couch, leaning forward, because she could stay only a minute.