Scarpetta continued to hold the body still as she got a closer look at the gelatinous material clumped in gray pubic hair and in the folds of the labia. She didn’t want to close the window—not before the police processed it with whatever forensic methods they deemed best.

“Some sort of lubricant,” she said. “Can you ask Lucy if her plane has already left La Guardia?”

They were three rooms away from each other, and Berger called her.

“Bad luck is good luck in this case. Tell them to hold off,” Berger said to Lucy. “We’ve got something else that needs to go down there … Great. Thanks.”

She ended the call and said to Scarpetta, “A wind shear warning in effect. They’re still on the ground.”

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Kay Scarpetta 16 - Scarpetta

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The shoe impressions recovered from the toilet seat in Eva Peebles’s bathroom were an exact match to the tread pattern of the shoes that Oscar Bane had been wearing last night when he’d allegedly discovered Terri’s body.

More incriminating were fingerprints lifted from the glass light fixture that the killer had removed from the ceiling and placed in the tub. The prints were Oscar’s. At shortly past midnight, a warrant was issued for his arrest, and an all points bulletin went out over the air and over the Internet.

The “Midget Murderer” was now being called the “Midget Monster,” and police nationwide were looking for him. Morales had also alerted Interpol, in the event Oscar somehow managed to evade airport and border security and escaped the country. There had been plenty of reported sightings. In fact, the latest news break as of the three a.m. broadcast was that some little people, especially young men, were staying home for fear of harassment or worse.

It was now almost five o’clock Wednesday morning, and Scarpetta, Benton, Morales, Lucy, Marino, and a Baltimore investigator who insisted on being called her surname, Bacardi, were in Berger’s penthouse apartment living room, and had been, for about four hours. The coffee table was covered with photographs and case files, and cluttered with coffee cups and bags from a nearby all-night deli. Power supply cords ran from wall outlets to the laptops they were plugged into, everybody tapping keys and looking at files as they talked.

Lucy was sitting cross-legged in a corner of the wraparound couch, her MacBook in her lap, and every now and then she glanced up at Morales, wondering how she could be right about what she was thinking. Berger had a bottle of Knappogue Castle single-malt Irish whiskey and a bottle of Brora single-malt Scotch. They were clearly visible behind glass in the bar directly across from her. She’d noticed the bottles immediately when everyone had first gotten here, and when Morales had noticed her noticing, he’d walked over to look.

“A girl with my taste,” he’d said.