“I’m tired of her treating me like a dumb shit who was born in a barn.”
“Sometimes you act like a dumb shit who was born in a barn. And you haven’t tried very hard to earn her respect.”
“She’s a spoiled Miami brat.”
“When she was ten, she was a Miami brat,” I said. “But she’s never been spoiled. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I want you two to get along. I want that for my Christmas present.”
“Who said I was giving you a Christmas present?”
“Of course you are. You’re going to give me what I’ve just requested. And I know exactly how to make it happen.”
“How?” he asked suspiciously.
“Lucy wants to learn to shoot and you just told her you could shoot the twelve off a dock. You could give her a lesson or two.”
“Forget it” he said.
6
The next three days were typical for the holiday season. No one was in or returning telephone calls. Parking lots had spaces to spare, lunch hours were long, and office errands involved clandestine stops at stores, the bank, and the post office. For all practical purposes, the Commonwealth had shutdown before the official holiday began. But Neils Vander was not typical by any standard. He was oblivious to time and place when he called me Christmas Eve morning.
“I’m getting started on an image enhancement over here that I think you might be interested in,” he said. “The Jennifer Deighton case.”
“I’m on my way,” I said.
Heading down the hallway, I almost ran into Ben Stevens as he emerged from the men’s room.
“I have a meeting with Vander” I said.”
I shouldn’t be long, and I’ve got my paper.”
“I was just coming to see you,” he said.
Reluctantly, I paused to hear what he had on his mind. I wondered if he detected that it was a struggle for me to act relaxed around him. Lucy continued to monitor our computer from my terminal at home to see if anyone attempted to access my directory again. So far, no one had.
“I had a talk with Susan this morning,” Stevens said.
“How is she?”
“She’s not coming back to work, Dr. Scarpetta.”
I was not surprised, but I was stung that she could not tell me this herself. By now I had tried at least half a dozen times to get hold of her, and either no one answered or, her husband did and offered some excuse for why Susan couldn’t come to the phone.
“That’s it?” I asked him. “She’s simply not coming back? Did she give a reason?”
“I think she’s having a tougher time with the pregnancy than she thought. I guess the job’s just too much right now.”
“She’ll need to send a letter of resignation,” I said, unable to keep the anger from my voice. “And I’ll leave it to you to work out the details with Personnel. We’ll need to begin looking for a replacement immediately.”
“There’s a hiring freeze,” he reminded me as I walked off.
Outside, snow plowed along roadsides had frozen into mounds of filthy ice impossible to park on or walk across, and the sun burned wanly through portentous clouds. A streetcar carried a small brass band past, andI climbed granite steps gritty with salt as “Joy to the World” moved on. A Forensics police officer let me inside the Seaboard Building, and upstairs I found Vander inside a room bright with color monitors and ultraviolet lights. Seated at the image enhancer’s workstation, he was staring intensely at something on the screen as he manipulated a mouse.
“It’s not blank,” he announced without so much as a “how are you.”
“Someone wrote something on a piece of paper that was on top of this one, or close to on top of this one. If you look hard, you can barely make out impressions.”
Then I began to understand. Centered on the light table to his left was a clean sheet of white paper, and I leaned closer to take a look. The impressions were so faint that I wasn’t sure if I was imagining them.
“The sheet of paper found under the crystal on Jennifer Deighton’s bed?”