"Not in my opinion," I reply, knowing that it is in my best interest to answer such. But it doesn't matter. I would tell the truth even if it were not in my best interest. "For one thing, the police should as a matter of routine make sure the hammer is dry when it is placed in an evidence bag," I add.
"And the scientists who received the chipping hammer for examination say it was rusty, is this not right? I mean, I am reading this lab report correctly, aren't I?" She smiles slightly. She is dressed in a black suit with pale blue pinstripes, and paces in little steps as she works through the case.
"I don't know what the labs have said," I answer. "I haven't seen those reports."
"Of course not. You've not been in the office for ten days or so. And, ummm, this report was just turned in day before yesterday." She glances at the date typed on it. "But it does say the chipping hammer that has Bray's blood on it was rusty. It looked old, and I believe the clerk at Pleasants Hardware Store claims the hammer you bought on the night of December seventeen_almost twenty-four hours after Bray's murder_certainly didn't look old. It was brand new. Correct?"
Again, I can't say what the hardware store clerk claimed, I remind Berger from the stand as jurors take in every word, every gesture. I have been excluded from all witness testimony. Berger is simply asking me questions I can't answer so she can tell the jurors what she wants them to know. What is treacherous and wonderful about any grand jury proceeding is that defense counsel is not present and there is no judge_no one to object to Berger's questions. She can ask me anything, and she does, because in one of the rare instances on this planet, a prosecutor is trying to show the defendant is innocent.
Berger asks what time I got home from Paris and went grocery shopping. She mentions my going to the hospital to visit
Jo that night, and the phone conversation with Lucy afterward. The window narrows. It gets tighter and tighter. When did I have time to rush over to Bray's house, beat her to death, plant evidence and stage the crime? And why would I bother buying a chipping hammer almost twenty-four hours after the fact unless it was for the very purpose I have stated all along: to conduct tests? She lets these questions hover while Buford Righter sits at the prosecution table and studies notes on a legal pad. He avoids looking at me as much as he can.
I answer Berger point by point. It gets harder and harder for me to talk. The inside of my mouth was abraded from the gag, and then the wounds became ulcerated. I haven't had mouth sores since I was a child and had forgotten how painful they are. When my ulcerated tongue hits my teeth as I speak, it sounds as if I have a speech impediment. I feel weak and strung out. My left arm throbs, in a cast again because it was re-injured when Jay wrenched my arms above my head and bound them to the bed's headboard.
"I notice you're having some trouble talking." Berger pauses to point this out. "Dr. Scarpetta, I know this is off the subject." Nothing is off the subject for Jaime Berger. She has a reason for every breath she takes, every step she makes, every expression on her face_everything, absolutely everything. "But can we digress for a moment?" She stops pacing and raises her palms in a shrug. "I think it would be instructive if you would tell the jury what happened to you last week. I know the jury must be wondering why you're bruised and having difficulty speaking."
She digs her hands in the pockets of her trousers and patiently encourages me to tell my story. I apologize for not being the sharpest knife in the drawer at the moment, I say, and the jurors smile. I tell them about Benny and their faces are pained. One man's eyes fill with tears as I describe the boy's drawings that led me up into the deer stand where I believe Benny spent much of his time watching the world and recording it in images on his sketchpad. I express my fears that young Benny may have met up with foul play. His gastric contents, I explain, could not be explained by what we knew about the last few hours of his life.
"And sometimes pedophiles_child molesters_lure children with candy, food, something that will entice them. You've had cases like this, Dr. Scarpetta?" Berger questions me.
"Yes," I reply. "Unfortunately."
"Can you give us an example of a case in which a child was lured by food or candy?"
"Some years ago we got in the body of an eight-year-old boy," I offer a case from personal experience. "On autopsy I determined he had asphyxiated when the perpetrator forced the boy, this eight-year-old child, to perform oral sex. I recovered gum from the child's stomach, a rather large wad of chewing gum. It turned out an adult male neighbor had given the boy four sticks of gum, Dentyne gum, and this man did, in fact, confess to the killing."
"So you had good reason, based upon your years of experience, to be concerned when you found popcorn and hotdogs in Benny White's stomach," Berger states.
"That is correct. I was very concerned," I answer.
"Please continue, Dr. Scarpetta," Berger says. "What happened when you left the deer stand and followed the footpath through the woods?"
THERE is A WOMAN JUROR. SHE is ON THE FRONT row of the jury box, second from the left, and she reminds me of my mother. She is very overweight and must be close to seventy, at least, and wears a frumpy black dress with big red flowers on it. She doesn't take her eyes off me, and I smile at her. She seems like a kind woman with a lot of sense, and I am so glad my mother isn't here, that she is in Miami. I don't think she has any idea what is happening in my life. I haven't told her. My mother's health is poor and she doesn't need to worry about me. I keep going back to the juror in the flower-printed dress as I describe what happened at The Fort James Motel.
Berger prompts me to give background information on Jay Talley, how we met and became intimate in Paris. Woven into Berger's prompting and conclusions are the seemingly inexplicable events that transpired after Chandonne attacked me: the disappearance of the chipping hammer I had bought for research purposes; the key to my house found in Mitch Bar- bosa's pocket_an undercover FBI agent who was tortured and murdered and whom I had never even met. Berger asks if Jay was ever inside my house, and of course, he was. So he would have had access to a key and the burglar alarm code. He would have had access to evidence. Yes, I confirm.
And it would have been in Jay Talley's best interest to frame me and confuse the issue of his brother's guilt, right? Berger stops pacing again, fixing those eyes on me. I am not sure I can answer the question. She moves on. When he attacked me in the motel room and gagged me, I scratched his arms, didn't I?
"I know I struggled with him," I reply. "And after it was over, I had blood under my fingernails. And skin."
"Not your skin? Did you perhaps scratch yourself during the struggle?"
"No."
She goes back to her table and shuffles through paperwork for another lab analysis report. Buford Righter is turned to slate, sitting rigidly, tensely. DNA done on my fingernail scrapings doesn't match my DNA. It does match the DNA of the person who ejaculated inside Susan Pless's vagina. "And that would have been Jay Talley," Berger says, nodding, pacing again. "So we have a federal law enforcement officer who had sex with a woman right before she was brutally murdered. This man's DNA also so closely resembles Jean-Baptiste Chandonne's DNA that we can conclude almost with certainty that Jay Talley is a close relative, most likely a sibling of Jean-Baptiste Chandonne." She walks a few steps, a finger on her lips. "We do know Jay Talley's real name isn't Jay Talley. He is a living lie. He beat you, Dr. Scarpetta?"
"Yes. He struck my face."
"He tied you to the bed and apparently intended to torture you with a heat gun?"
"That was my impression."
"He ordered you to undress, he bound and gagged you, and clearly was going to kill you?"
"Yes. He made it clear he was going to kill me."
"Why didn't he, Dr. Scarpetta?" Berger says this as if she doesn't believe me. But it is an act. She believes me. I know she does.