“If you’ll open the second file Lucy sent with the name Recording Two,” Berger said, “you’re going to see a number of stills from earlier recordings, ones made days earlier, same coat, same figure, only we get a clear visual of Toni’s face.”
Marino closed the first file and opened the second one. He clicked on the slide show and began looking at video stills of Toni in front of her building, going in and coming out. In all of them she had on a bright red scarf and the same green parka with a fur-trimmed hood, only in these images it wasn’t raining and the hood was down, her dark-brown hair long and loose around her shoulders. In several of the video stills she had on running pants and in others she had on slacks or jeans, and in one she was wearing olive-green and tan mittens, and in none was she wearing black gloves or carrying a big black shoulder bag. Each time she was on foot, except once when it was raining and the camera recorded her getting into a cab.
“It corroborates the statement her neighbor gave me,” Bonnell said, brushing against Marino’s arm, the third time she had done it, barely making contact but noticeable as hell. “That’s the coat he described,” she went on. “He told me she had on a green coat with a hood and was carrying her mail, which she must have gotten right after she entered her building at five-forty-seven p.m. I assume she unlocked her mailbox, got whatever was in it, then went up the stairs, which was when her neighbor saw her. She entered her apartment and placed the mail on the kitchen counter, where I found it this morning when I was there with CSU. The mail was unopened.”
“She had her hood up when she was inside the building?” Scarpetta asked.
“The neighbor wasn’t specific. Just said she had on a green coat with a hood.”
“Graham Tourette,” Marino said. “We need to check him out, check out the super, too, Joe Barstow. Neither of them have a record except traffic violations, failure to yield, invalid registration, a broken taillight, going way back, none resulting in an arrest. I had RTCC pull up everything on everyone in the building.”
“Graham Tourette made a point of telling me he and his male partner were at the theater last night, someone had given them tickets to Wicked,” Bonnell said. “So I’ll just go ahead and ask Dr. Wesley…”
“Improbable,” Benton said. “Highly improbable that a gay man committed this crime.”
“I didn’t see any mittens inside her apartment,” Marino said. “And they weren’t at the scene. She’s not wearing black gloves or carrying a black bag in the earlier stills, either.”
“It’s my opinion this is a sexually motivated homicide,” Benton added, as if Marino wasn’t on the phone.
“Signs of sexual assault on autopsy?” Berger asked.
“She has injuries to her genitalia,” Scarpetta answered. “Bruising, reddening, evidence of some type of penetration, of trauma.”
“Seminal fluid?”
“Not that I saw. We’ll see what the labs find.”
“I believe the possibility the Doc’s raising is maybe the crime scene and maybe the crime itself was in fact staged,” Marino said, still feeling bad about saying “far-fetched” a little while ago, hoping Scarpetta didn’t think he’d meant anything by it. “If so, it could be a gay guy, right, Benton?”
“Based on what I know, Jaime,” Benton answered Berger instead of Marino, “I suspect staging is for the purpose of disguising the true nature and motive of crime and when it was committed and what the connection might be between the victim and the assailant. Staging in this case is for the purpose of evasion. Whoever did it fears being caught. And I reiterate, the murder is sexually motivated.”
“Doesn’t sound like you think it was a stranger who did it,” Marino said, and Benton didn’t answer.
“If what the witness says is true, sounds to me like that’s exactly what we’re dealing with,” Bonnell said to Marino, touching him again. “I don’t think we’re talking about a boyfriend, maybe not even anybody she’d ever met before last night.”
“We’ll need to bring in Tourette for an interview. And the super,” Berger said. “I want to talk to both of them, especially the super, Joe Barstow.”
“Why especially Joe Barstow?” Benton wanted to know, and he sounded a little pissed.
Maybe Benton and the Doc weren’t getting along. Marino had no idea what was going on with either of them, hadn’t seen them in weeks, but he was tired of going out of his way to be nice to Benton. It was getting old being dissed all the time.
“I have the same information from RTCC that Marino does. You happen to notice Barstow ’s employment history?” Berger was asking Marino. “A couple of livery companies, a taxi driver, in addition to a lot of other jobs. Bartender, waiter. He worked for a taxi company as recently as 2007. Looks like he’s been doing a lot of things while going to school part-time, to Manhattan Community College, on and off for the past three years, based on what I’m seeing.”
Bonnell had gotten up and flipped open a notepad, was standing next to Marino.
She said, “Trying to get his associate’s degree in video arts and technology. Plays bass guitar, used to play in a band, would like to get involved in producing rock concerts, and still hoping for his big break in the music business.”
Reading her notes, her thigh touching Marino.
“Of late, he’s been working part-time at a digital production company,” she went on, “doing odd jobs, mostly working the desk, being a runner, what he called a production assistant and I’d call a gopher. He’s twenty-eight. I talked to him about fifteen minutes. He said he only knew Toni because of any contact he might have with her in the building, that he-and I quote-had never dated her but had thought about asking her out.”
“Did you ask him directly if he’d ever dated her or thought about it?” Berger said. “Or did he volunteer it?”
“Volunteered it. Also volunteered that he hadn’t seen her for several days. He says he was in his apartment all last night, had a pizza sent in and watched TV because the weather was so bad and he was tired.”
“Offering a lot of alibis,” Berger said.
“It would be fair to conclude that, but also not unusual in cases like this. Everybody figures they’re a suspect. Or they have something going on in their lives they don’t want us to know about, if nothing else,” Bonnell replied, flipping pages. “Described her as friendly, someone who didn’t complain a lot, and he wasn’t aware of her being the party type or bringing people into the building, such as-and again I quote-a lot of guys. I noted he was extremely upset and scared. It doesn’t appear he’s a taxi driver now,” she added, as if the detail was important.
“We don’t know that as fact,” Berger said. “We don’t know that he doesn’t have access to taxicabs, what he might do off the books so he doesn’t pay taxes, for example, like a lot of the freelance drivers in the city, especially these days.”
“The red scarf looks similar to the one I removed from Toni’s neck,” Scarpetta said, and Marino imagined her sitting somewhere with Benton, looking at a computer screen, probably their apartment on Central Park West, not far from CNN. “Solid red, a bright red made of a high-tech fabric that’s thin but very warm.”
“That’s what it looks like she has on,” Berger said. “What these video clips and the text message on her mother’s phone seem to establish is she was alive yesterday when she left her building at one minute past seven and was still alive an hour later at around eight. Kay, you started to tell us you might have a different opinion about her time of death, different from what’s implied by these video clips, for example.”