Scarpetta certainly didn’t know if the paint was automotive. It could be architectural, aerosol, from a tool, a bicycle, a street sign, from almost anything.
“What he told me is consistent with what he said on the nine-one-one recording,” Bonnell said. “He’d spent the night with his girlfriend and was driving home, was headed to Fifth Avenue, planning to cut over on Fifty-ninth to the Queensboro Bridge so he could get ready for work.”
It made sense why Berger was resistant to what Scarpetta believed was Toni’s time of death. If a cabdriver was the killer, it seemed more plausible that he was cruising and spotted Toni while she was out, possibly walking or jogging late last night. It seemed implausible that a cabdriver would have picked her up at some point on Tuesday, perhaps in the afternoon, and then kept her body until almost five o’clock this morning.
As Bonnell continued to explain, “There was nothing suspicious about anything he said to me, nothing about his background. Most important, the description about the way the woman was dressed, his description of her as she was being helped out of the taxi? How could he possibly know those details? They haven’t been made public.”
The body doesn’t lie. Scarpetta reminded herself of what she’d learned during her earliest days of training: Don’t try to force the evidence to fit the crime. Toni Darien wasn’t murdered last night. She wasn’t murdered yesterday. No matter what Berger wanted to believe or any witness said.
“Did Harvey Fahley offer a more detailed description of the man who was allegedly helping the drunk-looking woman out of the taxi?” Benton asked, looking up at the ceiling, hands together, impatiently tapping his fingertips together.
“A man in dark clothing, a baseball cap, maybe glasses. He got the impression the man was slender, maybe an average-size person,” Bonnell said. “But he didn’t get a good look, because he didn’t slow down and also because of the weather conditions. He said the taxi itself was blocking his view because the man and the woman were between it and the sidewalk, which would be true if you were driving east on One hundred and tenth, heading to Fifth Avenue.”
“What about the taxi driver?” Benton asked.
“He didn’t get a look but assumed there was one,” Bonnell answered.
“Why would he assume that?” Benton asked.
“The only door open was the back door on the right side, as if the driver was still up front and the man and woman had been in the back. Harvey said if it had been the driver helping her out at a location like that, he probably would have stopped. He would have assumed the lady was in trouble. You don’t just leave a drunk passed-out person on the roadside.”
“Sounds like he’s making excuses about why he didn’t stop,” Marino said. “He wouldn’t want to think what he actually saw was a taxi driver dumping an injured or dead woman on the roadside. Easier to think it was a couple out drinking all night.”
“The area he described in the nine-one-one recording,” Scarpetta said. “How far would that be from where the body was found?”
“About thirty feet,” Bonnell said.
Scarpetta told them about the bright-yellow paint chip she’d recovered from Toni’s hair. She encouraged them not to place too much stock in the detail, because none of the trace evidence had been examined yet and she’d also found red and black microscopic chips on Toni’s body. The paint could have been transferred from the weapon that fractured Toni’s skull. The paint could be from something else.
“So if she was in a yellow cab, how could she have been dead thirty-six hours?” Marino voiced the obvious question.
“It would have to be a cabdriver who killed her,” Bonnell replied with more confidence than any of them had a right to feel at the moment. “Either way you look at it, if what Harvey said is true, it had to be a cabdriver who picked her up last night, killed her, and dumped her body in the park early this morning. Or he had her for a while and then dumped her, if Dr. Scarpetta’s right about time of death. And the yellow cab could connect Toni Darien to Hannah Starr.”
Scarpetta had been waiting for that assumption next.
“Hannah Starr was last seen getting into a yellow cab,” Bonnell added.
“I’m not at all prepared to connect Toni’s case to Hannah Starr,” Berger said.
“Thing is, if we don’t say something and it happens again,” Bonnell said, “then we’re talking three.”
“I have no intention of making any such connection at this time.” Berger said it as a warning: Nobody else had better think of making that connection publicly, either.
“It’s not necessarily what I think, not about Hannah Starr,” Berger continued. “There are other factors about her disappearance. A lot of things I’ve been looking into point at her possibly being a very different type of case. And we don’t know that she’s dead.”
“We also don’t know that somebody else didn’t see the same thing Harvey Fahley did,” Benton said, looking at Scarpetta, saying it for her benefit. “Wouldn’t be good if some other witness did the typical thing these days and instead of going to the police went to a news network. I wouldn’t want to be within five miles of CNN or any other media outlet if this detail about the yellow cab has been leaked.”
“I understand,” Scarpetta said. “But whether it has or hasn’t, I’d be concerned that my being a no-show tonight would make matters only worse. Would only escalate the sensational value. CNN knows I’m not going to discuss Toni Darien or Hannah Starr. I don’t discuss active cases.”
“I’d stay clear.” Benton looked intensely at her.
“It’s in my contract. I’ve never had a problem,” she said to him.
“I agree with Kay. I’d conduct business as usual,” said Berger. “If you cancel at the final hour, all it will do is give Carley Crispin something to talk about.”
7
Dr. Warner Agee sat on the unmade bed inside his small suite of English antiques, the curtains closed to afford him privacy.
His hotel room was surrounded by buildings, eye-to-eye with other windows, and he couldn’t help but think about his former wife and what it was like when he was forced to find his own place to live. He’d been appalled when he noticed how many downtown Washington apartments had telescopes, some decorative but functional, others for serious viewing. For example, an Orion binocular mount and tripod set in front of a reclining chair that didn’t face a river or a park but another high-rise. The Realtor was crowing about the view as Agee peered directly into the condo across the way at someone buck naked, walking around, the drapes not drawn.
What purpose was there for telescopes and binoculars in congested areas of major cities like Washington, D.C., or here in New York unless it was spying, unless it was voyeurism? Obtuse neighbors undressing, having sex, arguing and fighting, bathing, sitting on the toilet. If people thought they had privacy in their own homes or hotel rooms, think again. Sexual predators, robbers, terrorists, the government-don’t let them see you. Don’t let them hear you. Make sure they aren’t watching. Make sure they aren’t listening. If they don’t see or hear you, they can’t get you. Security cameras on every corner, vehicle tracking, spy cams, sound amplifiers, eavesdropping, observing strangers in their most vulnerable and humiliating moments. All it takes is one piece of information in the wrong hands and your entire life can change. If you’re going to play that game, do it to others before they can do it to you. Agee didn’t leave blinds or curtains open, not even during the day.
“You know what the best security system is? Window shades.” Advice he’d been giving his entire career.
Truer words never spoken, exactly what he’d said to Carley Crispin the first time they met at one of Rupe Starr’s dinner parties when she was a White House press secretary and Agee was a consultant who traveled in many orbits, not just the FBI’s. The year was 2000, and what a bombshell she’d been, outrageously attractive, with flaming red hair, edgy, smart, and a catbird when she wasn’t talking to reporters and could say what she really thought. Somehow the two of them ended up in Rupe Starr’s rare-book library, perusing old tomes on a few favorite subjects of Agee’s, the flying heretic Simon Magus and the flying saint Joseph of Cuper tino, who indisputably had the ability to levitate. Agee had introduced her to Franz Anton Mesmer and explained the healing powers of animal magnetism, and then Braid and Bernheim and their theories on hypnosis and nervous sleep.