the most unsafe she’d ever been was with him not all that long ago.
“Caligula is probably the name of a proprietary project.” Lucy was busy on the other MacBook. “That’s my guess.”
“Thing is, what next?” Marino said to Scarpetta. “I feel like somebody’s warming up to something. That singing card Benton got yesterday at Bellevue. Then not even twelve hours later, the FedEx bomb with a voodoo doll. Jesus, it stunk. Can’t wait to hear what Geffner says.”
Geffner was a trace evidence examiner at the NYPD crime labs in Queens.
“I called him on my way over here and said he better start looking through the microscope the minute the bomb debris hits the door.” Marino glanced at his blue-paper sleeve, shoved it up with a latex-sheathed hand to check his watch. “He should be looking at it now. Hell, we should call him. Jesus. It’s almost noon. Like hot asphalt, rotten eggs, and dog shit, like a really filthy fire scene, like someone used an accelerant to burn up a friggin’ latrine. I almost gagged, and it takes a lot to make me puke. Plus dog fur. Benton’s patient? The whack job who called you on CNN? Hard for me to wrap my mind around her making something like that. Lobo and Ann said it was really nicely done.”
As if making a bomb that might blow off a person’s hands or worse was to be commended.
Lucy said, “And we’re in.”
The black screen with the binary banner turned midnight-blue, and CALIGULA appeared across the center in what looked like three-dimensional silvery cast-metal letters. A typeface that was familiar. Scarpetta almost felt queasy.
“Gotham,” Lucy said. “That’s interesting. The font is Gotham.”
Marino’s paper gown rustled as he moved closer to see what she meant, his eyes bloodshot behind his safety glasses as he said, “Gotham? I don’t see Batman anywhere.”
The screen was prompting Lucy to press any key to continue. But she didn’t. She was intrigued by the Gotham font and what it might mean.
“Authoritative, practical, what’s known as the workman-like typeface of public places,” she said. “The sans-serif style you see in names and numbers on signs, walls, buildings, and the Freedom Tower cornerstone at the World Trade Center site. But the reason the Gotham font has gotten so much attention of late is Obama.”
“First I’ve heard of a font called Gotham,” Marino replied. “But then again, I don’t get the font newsletter or monthly magazine or go to fucking font conventions.”
“Gotham’s the typeface the Obama people used during his campaign,” Lucy said. “And you should pay attention to fonts, like I’ve told you how many times? Fonts are part of twenty-first-century documents examination, and you ignore them at your own peril. What they are and why someone might pick them for a specific communication can be telling and significant.”
“Why Gotham for this website?” Scarpetta envisioned the FedEx airbill and the immaculate, almost perfect handwriting on it.
“I don’t know, except the typeface is supposed to suggest credibility,” Lucy said. “Inspire trust. Subliminally, we’re supposed to take this website seriously.”
“The name Caligula inspires anything but trust,” said Scarpetta.
“Gotham is popular,” Lucy said. “It’s cool. It’s supposed to suggest all the right things if you want to influence someone into taking you or your product or a political candidate or maybe some type of research project seriously.”
“Or take a dangerous package seriously,” Scarpetta said, suddenly angry. “This typeface looks very similar if not identical to the style of printing on the package I got last night. I don’t guess you were able to see the box before it was shot with the PAN disrupter,” she asked Marino.
“Like I told you, the batteries they targeted were right behind the address. You said it referenced you as the chief medical examiner of Gotham City. So there’s this Gotham reference again. It bother anybody besides me that Hap Judd was in a Batman movie and fucks dead bodies?”
“Why would Hap Judd send Aunt Kay what you’re calling a stink bomb?” Lucy said, busy on the other MacBook.
“If the sick prick killed Hannah, maybe? Or maybe he’s got to do with Toni Darien, since he’s been in High Roller Lanes and probably met her, at the very least. The Doc did Toni’s autopsy and might end up being the ME on Hannah’s case, too.”
“So Aunt Kay gets a bomb delivered? And that’s going to prevent Hap Judd from being caught if Hannah’s body turns up or for who knows what?” Lucy said, as if Scarpetta wasn’t inside the