“I do, too,” Lucy said. “Obviously, the critical question is whether whoever’s been posing as my aunt in these e-mails to Terri has anything to do with her murder.”

“What about the IP?” Marino asked.

“When can you guys get the info from the ISP—the Internet service provider—to identify the customer? Because the address I get is a twenty-something block of the Upper East Side that includes the Guggenheim, the Met, and the Jewish Museum. That’s not real helpful.”

Lucy knew the exact location but wasn’t going to be forthcoming about it. Berger didn’t like her to break the rules, and Lucy had her friends in the world of ISPs, some of them going back to her federal law-enforcement years, and others further back than that, who knew people who knew people. What she’d done was no different from cops getting a warrant after they’d already opened the trunk of a car and discovered a hundred kilos of cocaine inside.

She said, “Also right around in that area, which is basically Museum Mile, is Dr. Elizabeth Stuart’s dermatology practice.”

Berger’s face was close to hers in the dark backseat, her fragrance a spell.

Berger said, “Right around in that area? How right around are we talking about?”

“The dermatologist to the stars has an apartment that’s the entire thirtieth floor in the building where her office is,” Lucy said. “She’s away for the holidays. Her office doesn’t reopen until Monday the seventh.”

27

Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

27

Scarpetta waited to go inside the library until she could find an excuse to be alone, and Lucy’s call provided it.

Leaving Morales and Benton in the bedroom, she walked back toward the living room and entered the library as Lucy told her over the phone about a posting on the John Jay website and asked if she was aware of it. Scanning shelves of old psychiatric volumes, Scarpetta told her that she wasn’t.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Scarpetta added. “Everything I’m hearing makes me feel sorry, really sorry. I wish I’d known she was trying to get hold of me.”

She didn’t see the book Oscar had told her about, The Experiences of an Asylum Doctor, where he claimed to have hidden the CD. Her doubts about him proliferated. What kind of game was he playing with her?

“And the photograph on the Internet this morning,” Lucy said. “Taken in the morgue here in New York. You were talking to Dr. Lester. Does that sound familiar?”

“I have no recollection of anybody taking my picture when I’ve been there or I would have thought of it when I first saw the photo today.”

“When you look at the photo again, fill in the background with a countertop and a security camera video display. Maybe you can figure out where the person might have been standing. Maybe that will tell you something.”