The rain was still heavy as I drove home, and traffic was terrible because an accident had closed lanes in both directions on I-64. There were fire trucks and ambulances, rescuers prying open doors and hurrying with stretchers and boards. Broken glass glistened on wet pavement, drivers slowing to stare at injured people. One car had flipped multiple times before catching fire. I saw blood on the shattered windshield of another and that the steering wheel was bent. I knew what that meant, and said a prayer for whoever the people were. I hoped I would not see them in my morgue.
In Carytown, I pulled off at P. T. Hasting's. Festooned with fish nets and floats, it sold the best seafood in the city. When I walked in, the air was spicy and pungent with fish and Old Bay, and filets looked thick and fresh on ice inside displays. Lobsters with bound claws crawled in their tank of water, and were in no danger from me. I was incapable of boiling anything alive and wouldn't touch meat if the cattle and pigs were first brought to my table. I couldn't even catch fish without throwing them back.
I was trying to decide what I wanted when Bev emerged from the back.
'What's good today?' I asked her.
'Well, look who's here,' she exclaimed warmly, wiping her hands on her apron.
'You're about the only person to brave the rain. So you sure got plenty to choose from.'
'I don't have much time, and need something easy and light,' I said.
A shadow passed over her face as she opened a jar of horseradish. 'I'm afraid I can imagine what you've been doing,' she said. 'Been hearing it on the news.' She shook her head. 'You must be plumb worn out. I don't know how you sleep. Let me tell you what to do for yourself tonight.'
She walked over to a case of chilled blue crabs. Without asking, she selected a pound of meat in a carton.
'Fresh from Tangier Island. Hand-picked it myself, and you tell me if you find even a trace of cartilage or shell. You're not eating alone, are you?' she said.
'No.'
'That's good to hear.'
She winked at me. I had brought Wesley in here before.
She picked out six jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined, and wrapped them. Then she set a jar of her homemade cocktail sauce on the counter by the cash register.
'I got a little carried away with the horseradish,' she said, 'so it will make your eyes water, but it's good.' She began ringing up my purchases. 'You saute the shrimp so quick their butts barely hit the pan, got it? Chill 'em, and have that as an appetizer. By the way, those and the sauce are on the house.'
'You don't need to…'
She waved me off. 'As for the crab, honey, listen up. One egg slightly beaten, one-half teaspoon dry mustard, a dash or two of Worcestershire sauce, four unsalted soda crackers, crushed. Chop up an onion, a Vidalia if you're still hoarding any from summer. One green pepper, chop that. A teaspoon or two of parsley, salt and pepper
to taste.'
'Sounds fabulous,' I gratefully said. 'Bev, what would I do without you?'
'Now you gently mix all that together and shape it into patties.' She made the motion with her hands. 'Saute in oil over medium heat until lightly browned. Maybe fix him a salad or get some of my slaw,' she said. 'And that's as much as I would fuss over any man.'
It was as much as I did. I got started as soon as I got home, and shrimp were chilling by the time I turned on music and climbed into a bath. I poured in aromatherapy salts that were supposed to reduce stress, and shut my eyes as steam carried soothing scents into my sinuses and pores. I thought about Wingo, and my heart ached and seemed to lose its rhythm like a bird in distress. For a while, I cried. He had started out with me in this city, then left to go back to school. Now he was back and dying. I could not bear it.
At seven P.M., I was in the kitchen again, and Wesley, always punctual, eased his silver BMW into my drive. He was still in the suit he had been wearing earlier, and he had a bottle of Cakebread chardonnay in one hand, and a fifth of Black Bush Irish whiskey in the other. The rain, at last, had stopped, clouds marching on to other fronts.
'Hi,' he said when I opened the door.
'You profiled the weather right.' I kissed him.
'They don't pay me this much money for nothing.'
'The money comes from your family.' I smiled as he followed me in. 'I know what the
Bureau pays you.'
'If I was as smart with money as you are, I wouldn't need it from my family.'
In my great room was a bar, and I went behind it because I knew what he wanted.
'Black Bush?' I made sure.
'If you're serving it. Fine pusher that you are, you've managed to get me hooked.'
'As long as you bootleg it from D.C., I'll serve it any time you like,' I said.
I fixed our drinks on the rocks with a splash of seltzer water. Then we went into the kitchen and sat at a cozy table by an expansive window overlooking my wooded yard and the river. I wished I could tell him about Wingo and how it felt for me. But I could not break a confidence.
'Can I bring up a little business first?' Wesley took off his suit jacket and hung it on the back of a chair.
'I have some, too.'
'You first.' He sipped his drink, his eyes on mine.
I told him what had been leaked to the press, adding, 'Ring's a problem that's only getting worse.'
'If he's the one, and I'm not saying he is or isn't. The difficulty's getting proof.'
'There's no doubt in my mind.'
'Kay, that's not good enough. We can't just throw someone out of an investigation based on our intuition.'
'Marino's heard rumors that Ring's having an affair with a well-known local broadcaster,' I then said. 'She's with the same station that had the misinformation about the case, about the victim being Asian.'
He was silent. I knew he was thinking about proof again, and he was right. This all sounded circumstantial even as I said it.
Then he said, 'This guy's very smart. Are you aware of his background?'
'I know nothing about him,' I replied.
'Graduated with honors from William and Mary, double major in psychology and public administration. His uncle is the secretary of public safety.' He piled worse news upon bad. 'Harlow Dershin, who's an honorable guy, by the way. But it goes without saying this is not a good situation for making accusations unless you're one hundred percent damn sure of yourself.'
The secretary of public safety for Virginia was the immediate boss of the superintendent of the state police. Ring's uncle couldn't have been more powerful unless he had been the governor.
'So what you're saying is that Ring's untouchable,' I said.
'What I'm saying is, his educational background makes it clear he has high aspirations. Guys like him are looking to be a chief, a commissioner, a politician. They're not interested in being a cop.'
'Guys like him are interested only in themselves,' I impatiently said. 'Ring doesn't give a damn about the victims or the people left behind who have no idea what has happened to their loved one. He doesn't care if someone else gets killed.'
'Proof,' he reminded me. 'To be fair, there are a lot of people - including those working at the landfill - who could have leaked information to the press.'
I had no good argument, but nothing would shake me loose from my suspicions.
'What's important is breaking these cases,' he went on to say, 'and the best way to do that is for all of us to go about our business and ignore him, just like Marino and Grigg are doing. Follow every lead we can, steering around the impediments.' His eyes were almost amber in the overhead light, and soft when they met mine.
I pushed back my chair. 'We need to set the table.'
He got out dishes and opened wine as I arranged chilled shrimp on plates and spooned Bev's Kicked By A Horse Cocktail Sauce into a bowl. I halved lemons and wrapped them in gauze diapers, and fashioned crab cakes. Wesley and I ate shrimp cocktail as night drew closer and cast its shadow over the east.
'I've missed this,' he said. 'Maybe you don't want to hear it, but it's true.'
I did not say anything because I did not want to get into another big discussion that went on for hours, leaving both of us drained.
'Anyway.' He set his fork on his plate the way polite people do when they are finished.
'Thank you. I have missed you, Dr Scarpetta.' He smiled.
'I'm glad you're here, Special Agent Wesley.'
I smiled back at him as I got up. Turning on the stove, I heated oil in a pan while he cleared dishes.
'I want to tell you what I thought of the photograph that was sent to you,'' he said.
'First, we need to establish that it is, in fact, of the victim you worked on today.'
'I'm going to establish that on Monday.'
'Assuming it is,' he went on, 'this is a very dramatic shift in the killer's M.O.'
'That and everything else.' Crab cakes went into the pan and began to sizzle.
'Right,' he said, serving coleslaw. 'It's very blatant this time, as if he's really trying to rub our noses in it. And, of course, the victimology's all wrong, too. That looks great,' he added, watching what I was cooking.
When we were seated again, I said with confidence, 'Benton, this is not the same guy.' He hesitated before replying, 'I don't think it is, either, if you want to know the truth. But I'm not prepared to rule him out. We don't know what games he might be into now.'
I was feeling the frustration again. Nothing could be proven, but my intuition, my instincts, were screaming at me.
'Well, I don't think this murdered old woman has anything to do with the earlier cases from here or Ireland. Someone just wants us to assume she does. I think what we're dealing with is a copycat.'
'We'll get into it with everybody. Thursday. I think that's the date we set.' He tasted a crab cake. 'This is really incredibly good. Wow.' His eyes watered. 'Now that's cocktail sauce.'
'Staging. Disguising a crime that was committed for some other reason,' I said. 'And don't give me too much credit. This was Bev's recipe.'
'The photograph bothers me,' he said.
'You and me both.'
'I've talked to Lucy about it,' he said. Now he really had my interest.
'You tell me when you want her here.' He reached for his wine.
'The sooner the better.' I paused, adding, 'How is she doing? I know what she tells me, but I'd like to hear it from you.'
I remembered we needed water, and got up for it. When I returned, he was quietly staring at me. Sometimes it was hard for me to look at his face, and my emotions began clashing like instruments out of tune. I loved his chiseled nose with its clean straight bridge, his eyes, which could draw me into depths I had never known and his mouth with its sensuous lower lip. I looked out the window, and could not see the river anymore.
'Lucy,' I reminded him. 'How about a performance evaluation for her aunt?'
'No one's sorry we hired her,' he dryly said of someone we all knew was a genius. 'Or maybe that's the understatement of the century. She's simply terrific. Most of the agents have come to respect her. They want her around. I'm not saying there aren't problems. Not everybody appreciates having a woman on HRT.'
'I continue to worry that she'll try to push it too far,' I said.
'Well, she's fit as hell. That's for sure. No way I'd take her on.'
'That's what I mean. She wants to keep up with them, when it really isn't possible.
You know how she is.' I gave him my eyes again. 'She's always got to prove herself. If the guys are fast-roping and running through the mountains wearing sixty-pound packs, she thinks she's got to keep up, when she should just be content with her technical abilities, her robots and all the rest of it.'
'You're missing her biggest motivation, her biggest demon,' he said.
'What?'
'You. She feels she has to prove herself to you, Kay.'
'She has no reason to feel that way.' What he said was piercing. 'I don't want to feel I'm the reason she takes her life into her hands with all of these dangerous things she feels she must do.'
'This is not about blame,' he said, getting up from the table. 'This is about human nature. Lucy worships you. You're the only decent mother figure she's ever had. She wants to be like you, and she feels people compare her to you, and that's a pretty big act to follow. She wants you to admire her, too, Kay.'
'I do admire her, for God's sake.' I got up, too, and we began clearing dishes. 'Now you really have me worried.' He began rinsing, and I loaded the dishwasher.
'You probably should worry.' He glanced at me. 'I will tell you this, she's one of these perfectionists who won't listen to anyone. Other than you, she's the most stubborn human being I've ever come across.'
'Thanks a lot.'
He smiled and put his arms around me, not caring that his hands were wet. 'Can we sit and talk for a while?' he said, his face, his body close to mine. 'Then I've got to hit the road.'
'And after that?'
'I'm going to talk to Marino in the morning, and in the afternoon I've got another case coming in. From Arizona. I know it's Sunday, but it can't wait.'
He continued talking as we carried our wine into the great room.
'A twelve-year-old girl abducted on her way home from school, body dumped in the
Sonora desert,' he said. 'We think this guy's already killed three other kids.'
'It's hard to feel very optimistic, isn't it,' I said bitterly as we sat on the couch. 'It never stops.'
'No,' he replied. 'And I'm afraid it never will. As long as there are people on the planet. What are you going to do with what's left of the weekend?'
'Paperwork.'
One side of my great room was sliding glass doors, and beyond, my neighborhood was black with a full moon that looked like gold, clouds gauzy and drifting.
'Why are you so angry with me?' His voice was gentle, but he let me know his hurt.
'I don't know.' I would not look at him.
'You do know.' He took my hand and began to rub it with his thumb. 'I love your hands. They look like a pianist's, only stronger. As if what you do is an art.'
'It is,' I simply said, and he often talked about my hands. 'I think you have a fetish. As a profiler, that should concern you.'
He laughed, kissing knuckles, fingers, the way he often did. 'Believe me, I have a fetish for more than your hands.'
'Benton.' I looked at him. 'I am angry with you because you are ruining my life.' He got very still, shocked.
I got up from the couch and began to pace. 'I had my life set up just the way I wanted it,' I said as emotions rose to a crescendo. 'I am building a new office. Yes, I've been smart with my money, made enough smart investments to afford this.' I swept my hand over my room. 'My own house that I designed. For me, everything was in its proper place until you…'
'Was it?' He was watching me intensely, wounded anger in his voice. 'You liked it better when I was married and we were always feeling rotten about it? When we were having an affair and lying to everyone?'
'Of course I didn't like that better!' I exclaimed. 'I just liked my life being mine.'
'Your problem is you're afraid of commitment. That's what this is about. How many times do I have to point that out? I think you should see someone. Really. Maybe Dr Zenner. You're friends. I know you trust her.'
'I'm not the one who needs a psychiatrist.' I regretted the words the instant I said them. He angrily got up, as if ready to leave. It was not even nine o'clock.
'God. I'm too old and tired for this,' I muttered. 'Benton, I'm sorry. That wasn't fair. Please sit back down.'
He didn't at first, but stood in front of sliding glass doors, his back to me.
'I'm not trying to hurt you, Kay,' he said. 'I don't come around to see how badly I can fuck up your life, you know. I admire the hell out of everything you do. I just wish you'd let me in a little bit more.'
'I know. I'm sorry. Please don't leave.'
Blinking back tears, I sat down and stared up at the ceiling with its exposed beams and trowel marks visible on plaster. Wherever I looked there were details that had come from me. For a moment, I shut my eyes as tears rolled down my face. I did not
wipe them away and Wesley knew when not to touch me. He knew when not to speak. He quietly sat beside me.
'I'm a middle-aged woman set in her ways,' I said as my voice shook. 'I can't help it. All I have is what I've built. No children. I can't stand my only sister and she can't stand me. My father was in bed dying my entire childhood, then gone when I was twelve. Mother's impossible, and now she's dying of emphysema. I can't be what you want, the good wife. I don't even know what the hell that is. I only know how to be Kay. And going to a psychiatrist isn't going to change a goddamn thing.'
He said to me, 'And I'm in love with you and want to marry you. And I can't seem to help that, either.'
I did not reply.
He added, 'And I thought you were in love with me.' Still, I could not speak.
'At least you used to be,' he went on as pain overwhelmed his voice. 'I'm leaving.' He started to get up again, and I put my hand on his arm.
'Not like this.' I looked at him. 'Don't do this to me.'
'To you?' He was incredulous.
I dimmed the lights until they were almost out, and the moon was a polished coin against a clear black sky scattered with stars. I got more wine and started the fire, while he watched everything I did.
'Sit closer to me,' I said.
He did, and I took his hands this time.
'Benton, patience. Don't rush me,' I said. 'Please. I'm not like Connie. Like other people.'
'I'm not asking you to be,' he said. 'I don't want you to be. I'm not like other people, either. We know what we see. Other people couldn't possibly understand. I could never talk to Connie about how I spend my days. But I can talk to you.'
He kissed me sweetly, and we went deeper, touching faces, tongues and nimbly undressing, doing what we once did best. He gathered me in his mouth and hands, and we stayed on the couch until early morning, as light from the moon turned chilled and thin. After he drove home, I carried wine throughout my house, pacing, wandering with music on and flowing out speakers in every room. I landed in my office, where I was a master at distraction.
I began going through journals, tearing out articles that needed to be filed. I began working on an article I was due to write. But I was not in the mood for any of it, and decided to check my e-mail to see if Lucy had left word about when she might make
it to Richmond. AOL announced I had mail waiting, and when I checked my box I felt as if someone had struck me. The address deadoc awaited me like an evil stranger.
His message was in lowercase, with no punctuation except spaces. It said, you think you re so smart. I opened the attached file and once again watched color images paint down my screen, severed feet and hands lined up on a table covered with what appeared to be the same bluish cloth. For a while I stared, wondering why this person was doing this to me. I hoped he had just made a very big mistake as I grabbed the phone.
'Marino!' I exclaimed when I got him on the line.
'Huh? What happened?' he blurted as he came to. I told him.
'Shit. It's three friggin' o'clock in the morning. Don't you ever sleep?'
He seemed pleased, and I suspected he figured I wouldn't have called him if Wesley had still been here.
'Are you okay?' he then asked.
'Listen. The hands are palm up,' I said. 'The photograph was taken at close range. I
can see a lot of detail.'
'Like what kind of detail? Is there a tattoo or something?'
' Ridge detail,' I said.
Neils Vander was the section chief of fingerprint examination, an older man with wispy hair and voluminous lab coats perpetually stained purple and black with
ninhydrin and dusting powder. Forever in a hurry and prepossessed, he was from genteel Virginia stock. Vander had never called me by my first name or referred to anything personal about me in all the years I had known him. But he had his way of showing he cared. Sometimes it was a doughnut on my desk in the morning or, in the summer, Hanover tomatoes from his garden.
Known for an eagle eye that could match loops and whorls at a glance, he was also the resident expert in image enhancement and, in fact, had been trained by NASA.
Over the years, he and I had materialized a multitude of faces from photographic blurs. We had conjured up writing that wasn't there, read impressions and restored eradications, the concept really very simple even if the execution of it was not.
A high-resolution image processing system could see two hundred and fifty-six shades of gray, while the human eye could differentiate, at the most, thirty-two. Therefore, it was possible to scan something into the computer and let it see what we could not. Deadoc may have sent me more than he bargained for. The first task this morning was to compare a morgue photograph of the torso with the one sent to me through AOL.
'Let me get a little more gray over here.' Vander said as he worked computer keys.
'And I'm going to tilt this some.'
'That's better,' I agreed.
We were sitting side by side, both of us leaning into the nineteen-inch monitor. Nearby, both photographs were on the scanner, a video camera feeding their images to us live.
'A little more of that.' Another shade of gray washed over the screen. 'Let me bump this a tad more.'
He reached over to the scanner and repositioned one of the photographs. He put another filter over the camera lens.
'I don't know,' I said as I stared. 'I think it was easier to see before. Maybe you need to move it a little more to the right,' I added, as if we were hanging pictures.
'Better. But there's still a lot of background interference I' d like to get rid of.'
'I wish we had the original. What's the radiometric resolution of this thing?' I asked, referring to the system's capability of differentiating shades of gray.
'A whole lot better than it used to be. Since the early days, I guess we've doubled the number of pixels that can be digitalized.'
Pixels, like the dots in dot matrix, were the smallest elements of an image being viewed, the molecules, the impressionistic points of color forming a painting.
'We got some grants, you know. One of these days, I want to move us into ultraviolet imaging. I can't even tell you what I could do with cyanoacrylate,' he went on about Super Glue, which reacted to components in human perspiration and was excellent for developing fingerprints difficult to see with the unaided eye.
'Well, good luck,' I said, because money was always tight no matter who was in office. Repositioning the photograph again, he placed a blue filter over the camera lens, and dilated the lighter pixel elements, brightening the image. He enhanced horizontal details, removing vertical ones. Two torsos were now side by side. Shadows appeared, gruesome details sharper and in contrast.
'You can see the bony ends.' I pointed. 'Left leg severed just proximal to the lesser trochanter. Right leg' - I moved my finger on the screen - 'about an inch lower, right through the shaft.'
'I wish I could correct the camera angle, the perspective distortion,' he muttered, talking to himself, which he often did. 'But I don't know the measurements of anything. Too bad whoever took this didn't include a nice little ruler as a scale.'
'Then I would really worry about who we were dealing with,' I commented.
'That's all we need. A killer who's like us.' He defined the edges, and readjusted the positions of the photographs one more time. 'Let's see what happens if I superimpose them.'
He did, and the overlay was amazing, bone ends and even the ragged flesh around the severed neck, identical.
'That does it for me,' I announced.
'No question about it in my mind,' he agreed. 'Let's print this out.'
He clicked the mouse and the laser printer hummed on. Removing the photographs from the scanner, he replaced them with the one of the feet and hands, moving it around until it was perfectly centered. As he began to enlarge images, the sight became even more grotesque, blood staining the sheet bright red, as if it had just been spilled. The killer had neatly lined up feet like a pair of shoes, hands side by side like gloves.
'He should have turned them palm down,' Vander said. 'I wonder why he didn't?' Using spatial filtering to retain important details, he began eliminating interference, such as the blood and the texture of the blue table cover.
'Can you get any ridge detail?' I asked leaning so close, I could smell his spicy aftershave.
'I think I can,' he said.
His voice was suddenly cheerful, for there was nothing he liked better than reading the hieroglyphics of fingers and feet. Beneath his gentle, distracted demeanor was a man who had sent thousands of people to the penitentiary, and dozens to the electric chair. He enlarged the photograph and assigned arbitrary colors to various intensities of gray, so we could see them better. Thumbs were small and pale like old parchment.
There were ridges.
'The other fingers aren't going to work,' he said, staring, as if in a trance. 'They're too curled for me to see. But thumbs look pretty darn good. Let's capture this.' Clicking into a menu, he saved the image on the computer's hard disk. 'I'm going to want to work on this for a while.'
That was his cue for me to leave, and I pushed back my chair.
'If I get something, I'll run it through AFIS right away,' he said of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, capable of comparing unknown latent prints against a databank of millions.
'That would be great,' I said. 'And I'll start with HALT.'
He gave me a curious look, because the Homicide Assessment and Lead Tracking System was a Virginia database maintained by the state police in conjunction with the FBI. It was the place to start if we suspected the case was local.
'Even though we have reason to suspect the other cases are not from here,' I explained to him, 'I think we should search everything we can. Including Virginia databases.' Vander was still making adjustments, staring at the screen.
'As long as I don't have to fill out the forms,' he replied.
In the hallway were more boxes and white cartons marked EVIDENCE lining either side and stacked to the ceiling. Scientists walked past, preoccupied and in a hurry, paperwork and samples in hand that might send someone to court for murder. We greeted each other without slowing down as I headed to the fibers and trace evidence lab, which was big and quiet. More scientists in white coats were bent over microscopes and working at their desks, black counters haphazardly arranged with mysterious bundles wrapped in brown paper.
Aaron Koss was standing in front of an ultraviolet lamp that was glowing purple-red as he examined a slide through a magnifying lens to see what the reflective long wavelengths might tell him.
'Good morning,' I said.
'Same to you.' Koss grinned.
Dark and attractive, he seemed too young to be an expert in microscopic fibers, residues, paints and explosives. This morning, he was in faded jeans and running shoes.
'No court for you,' I said, for one could usually tell by the way people were dressed.
'Nope. Lucky me,' he said. 'Bet you're curious about your fibers.'
'I was in the neighborhood,' I said. 'Thought I'd drop by.'
I was notorious for making evidence rounds, and in the main, the scientists endured my intensity patiently, and in the end were grateful. I knew I pressured them when caseloads were already overwhelming. But when people were being murdered and dismembered, evidence needed to be examined now.
'Well, you've granted me a reprieve from working on our pipe-bomber,' he said with another smile.
'No luck with that,' I assumed.
'They had another one last night. I-195 North near Laburnum, right under the nose of Special Operations. You know, where Third Precinct used to be, if you can believe that?'
'Let's hope the person sticks with just blowing up traffic signs,' I said.
'Let's hope.' He stepped back from the UV lamp and got very serious. 'Here's what I've got so far from what you've turned in to me. Fibers from fabric remnants embedded in bone. Hair. And trace that was adhering to blood.'
'Her hair?' I asked, perplexed, for I had not receipted the long, grayish hairs to Koss. That was not his specialty.
'What I saw under the scope don't look human to me,' he replied. 'Maybe two different types of animal. I've sent them on to Roanoke.'
The state had only one hair expert, and he worked out of the western district forensic labs.
'What about the trace?' I asked.
'My guess is it's going to be debris from the landfill. But I want to look under the electron microscope. What I've got under UV now is fibers,' he went on. 'I should say they're fragments, really, that I gave an ultrasonic bath in distilled water to remove blood. You want to take a look?'
He gave me room to peer through the lens, and I smelled Obsession cologne. I could not help but smile, for I remembered being his age and still having the energy to preen. There were three mounted fragments fluorescing like neon lights. The fabric was
white or off-white, one of them spangled with what looked like iridescent flecks of gold.
'What in the world is it?' I glanced up at him.
'Under the stereoscope, it looks synthetic,' he replied. 'The diameters regular, consistent like they would be if they, were extruded through spinnerettes, versus being natural and irregular. Like cotton, let's say.'
'And the fluorescing flecks?' I was still looking.
'That's the interesting part,' he said. 'Though I've got to do further tests, at a glance it looks like paint.'
I paused for a moment to imagine this. 'What kind?' I asked.
'It's not flat and fine like automotive. This is gritty, more granular. Seems to be a pale, eggshell color. I'm thinking it's structural.'
'Are these the only fragments and fibers you've looked at?
'I'm just getting started.' He moved to another countertop and pulled out a stool. 'I've looked at all of them under UV, and I'd say that about fifty percent of them have this paint-type substance soaked into the material. And although I can't definitively say what the fabric is, I do know that all of the samples you submitted are the same type, and probably from the same source.'
He placed a slide in the stage of a polarizing microscope, which, like Ray-Ban sunglasses, reduced glare, splitting light in different waves with different refractive index values to give us yet another clue as to the identity of the material.
'Now,' he said, adjusting the focus as he stared into the lens without blinking. 'This is the biggest fragment recovered, about the size of a dime. There are two sides to it.' He moved out of the way and I looked at fibers reminiscent of blond hairs with speckles of pink and green along the shaft.
'Very consistent with polyester,' Koss explained. 'Speckles are delusterants used in manufacturing so the material isn't shiny. I also think there's some rayon mixed in, and based on all this would have decided what you've got here is a very common fabric that could be used in almost anything. Anything from blouses to bedspreads. But there's one big problem.'
He opened a bottle of liquid solvent used for temporary mountings, and with tweezers, removed the cover slide and carefully turned the fragment over. Dripping xylene, he covered the slide again and motioned for me to bend close.
'What do you see?' he asked, and he was proud of himself.
'Something grayish and solid. Not the same material as the other side.' I looked at him in surprise. 'This fabric has a backing on it?'
'Some kind of thermoplastic. Probably polyethylene terephthalate.'
'Which is used in what?' I wanted to know.
'Primarily soft drink bottles, film. Blister packs used in packing.'
I stared at him, baffled, for I did not see how those products could have anything to do with this case.
'What else?' I asked.
He thought. 'Strapping materials. And some of it, like bottles, can be recycled and used for carpet fibers, fiberfill, plastic lumber. Just about anything.'
'But not fabric for clothing.'
He shook his head, and said with certainty, 'No way. The fabric in question is a rather common, crude polyester blend lined with a plastic-type material. Definitely not like any clothing I've ever heard of. Plus, it appears to be saturated with paint.'
'Thank you, Aaron,' I said. 'This changes everything.'
When I got back to my office, I was surprised and annoyed to find Percy Ring sitting in a chair across from my desk, flipping through a notebook.
'I had to be in Richmond for an interview at Channel Twelve,' he innocently said, 'so I thought I might as well come by to see you. They want to talk to you, too.' He smiled. I did not answer him, but my silence was loud as I sat in my chair.
'I didn't think you would do the interview. And that's what I told them,' he went on in his easy, affable way.
'And so tell me, what exactly did you say this time?' My tone was not nice.
'Excuse me?' His smile faded and his eyes got hard. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'You're the investigator. Figure it out.' My eyes were just as hard as his.
He shrugged. 'I gave the usual. Just the basic information about the case and its similarities to the other ones.'
'Investigator Ring, let me make this very clear yet one more time,' I said with no attempt to hide my disdain for him. 'This case is not necessarily like the other ones, and we should not be discussing it with the media.'
'Well, now, it appears you and I have a different perspective, Dr Scarpetta.' Handsome in a dark suit and paisley suspenders and tie, he looked remarkably credible. I could not help but recall what Wesley had said about Ring's ambitions and connections, and the idea that this egotistical idiot would one day run the state police or be elected to Congress was one I could not stand.
'I think the public has a right to know if there's a psycho in their midst,' he was saying.
'And that's what you said on TV.' My irritation flared hotter. 'That there's a psycho in our midst.'
'I don't remember my exact words. The real reason I stopped by is I'm wondering when I'm going to get a copy of the autopsy report.'
'Still pending.'
'I need it as soon as I can get it.' He looked me in the eye. 'The Commonwealth's
Attorney wants to know what's going on.
I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. He would not be talking to a C.A. unless there was a suspect.
'What are you saying?' I asked.
'I'm looking hard at Keith Pleasants.' I was incredulous.
'There are a lot of circumstantial things,' he went on, 'not the least of which is how he just so happened to be the one operating the Cat when the torso was found. You know, he usually doesn't operate earth-moving equipment, and then just happens to be in the driver's seat at that exact moment?'
'I should think that makes him more a victim than a suspect. If he's the killer,' I continued, 'one might expect that he wouldn't have wanted to be within a hundred miles of the landfill when the body was found.'
'Psychopaths like to be right there,' he said as if he knew. 'They fantasize about what it would be like to be there when the victim is discovered. They get off on it, like that ambulance driver who murdered women, then dumped them in the area he covered. When it was time to go on duty, he'd call 911 so he was the one who ended up responding.'
In addition to his degree in psychology, he no doubt had attended a lecture on profiling, too. He knew it all.
'Keith lives with his mother, who I think he really resents,' he went on, smoothing his tie. 'She had him late in life, is in her sixties. He takes care of her.'
'Then his mother is still alive and accounted for,' I said.
'Right. But that doesn't mean he didn't take out his aggressions on some other poor old woman. Plus - and you won't believe this - in high school, he worked at the meat counter of a grocery store. He was a butcher's assistant.'
I did not tell him that I did not think a meat saw had been used in this case, but let him talk.
'He's never been very social, which again fits the profile.' He continued spinning his fantastic web. 'And it's rumored among the other guys who work at the landfill that he's homosexual.'
'Based on what?'
'On the fact he doesn't date women or even seem interested in them when the other guys make remarks, jokes. You know how it is with a bunch of rough guys.'
'Describe the house he lives in.' I thought of the photographs sent to me through e- mail.
'Two-story frame, three bedrooms, kitchen, living room. Middle class on its way to being poor. Like maybe in an earlier day when his old man was around, they had it pretty nice.'
'What happened to the father?'
'Ran off before Keith was born.'
'Brothers, sisters?' I asked.
'Grown, have been for a long time. I guess he was a surprise. I suspect Mr Pleasants isn't the father, explaining why he was already gone before Keith was even around.'
'And what is this suspicion based on?' I asked with an edge.
'My gut.'
'I see.'
'Where they live is remote, about ten miles from the landfill, in farmland,' he said.
'Got a pretty good-size yard, a garage that's detached from the house.' He crossed his legs, pausing, as if what he had to add next was important. 'There are a lot of tools, and a big workbench. Keith says he's a handyman and uses the garage when things need fixing around the house. I did see a hacksaw hanging up on a pegboard, and a machete he says he uses for cutting back kudzu and weeds.'
Slipping out of his jacket, he carefully draped it over his lap as he continued the tour of Keith Pleasants' life.
'You certainly had access to a lot of places without a warrant,' I cut him off.
'He was cooperative,' he replied, nonplussed. 'Let's talk about what's in this guy's head.' He tapped his own. 'First, he's smart, real smart, books, magazines, newspapers all over the place. Get this. He's been videotaping news accounts of this case, clipping articles.'
'Probably most of the people working at the landfill are,' I reminded him. But Ring was not interested in one word I said.
'He reads all kinds of crime stuff. Thrillers. Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon. Tom
Clancy, Ann Rule…'
I interrupted again because I could not listen to him a moment longer. 'You've just described a typical American reading list. I can't tell you how to conduct your investigation, but let me try to persuade you to follow the evidence…'
'I am,' he interrupted right back. 'That's exactly what I'm doing.'
'That's exactly what you're not doing. You don't even know what the evidence is. You haven't received a single report from my office or the labs. You haven't received a profile from the FBI. Have you even talked to Marino or Grigg?'
'We keep missing each other.' He got up and put his jacket back on. 'I need those reports.' It sounded like an order. 'The C.A. will be calling you. By the way, how's Lucy?'
I did not want him to even know my niece's name, and it was evident by the surprised, angry look in my eyes.
'I wasn't aware the two of you were acquainted,' I coolly replied.
'I sat in on one of her classes, I don't know, a couple months back. She was talking about CAIN.'
I grabbed a stack of death certificates from the in-basket, and began initialing them.
'Afterwards she took us over to HRT for a robotics demo,' he said from the doorway.
'She seeing anyone?'
I had nothing to say.
'I mean, I know she lives with another agent. A woman. But they're just roommates, right?'
His meaning was plain, and I froze, looking up as he walked off, whistling. Furious, I collected an armload of paperwork and was getting up from my desk when Rose walked in.
'He can park his shoes under my bed anytime he wants,' she said in Ring's wake.
'Please!' I couldn't stand it. 'I thought you were an intelligent woman, Rose.'
'I think you need some hot tea,' she said.
'Maybe so.' I sighed.
'But we have another matter first,' she said in her businesslike way. 'Do you know someone named Keith Pleasants?'
'What about him?' For an instant, my mind locked.
'He's in the lobby,' she said. 'Very upset, refuses to leave until he sees you. I started to call security, but thought I should check…' The look on my face stopped her cold.
'Oh my God,' I exclaimed in dismay. 'Did he and Ring see each other?'
'I have no idea,' she said, and now she was very perplexed. 'Is something wrong?'
'Everything.' I sighed, dropping the paperwork back on my desk.
'Then you do or don't want me to call security?'
'Don't.' I walked briskly past her.
My heels were sharp and directed as I followed the hallway to the front, and around a corner into a lobby that had never been homey no matter how hard I had tried. No amount of tasteful furniture or prints on walls could disguise the terrible truths that brought people to these doors. Like Keith Pleasants, they sat woodenly on a blue upholstered couch that was supposed to be unprovocative and soothing. In shock, they stared at nothing or wept.
I pushed open the door as he sprung to his feet, eyes bloodshot. I could not quite tell if he were in a rage or a panic as he almost lunged at me. For an instant, I thought he
was going to grab me or start swinging. But he awkwardly dropped his hands by his sides and glared at me, his face darkening as his outrage boiled over.
'You got no right to be saying things like that about me!' he exclaimed with clenched fists. 'You don't know me! Don't know anything about me!'
'Easy, Keith,' I said, calmly, but with authority.
Motioning for him to sit back down, I pulled up a chair so I could face him. He was breathing hard, trembling, eyes wounded and filled with furious tears.
'You met me one time.' He shot a finger at me. 'One lousy time and then say things.' His voice was quavering. 'I'm about to lose my job.' He covered his mouth with a fist, averting his eyes as he fought for control.
'In the first place,' I said, 'I have not said a word about you. Not to anyone.' He glanced at me.
'I have no idea what you're talking about.' My eyes were steady on him, and I spoke with quiet confidence that made him waver. 'I wish you d explain it to me.'
He was studying me with uncertainty, lies he had been led to believe about me wavering in his eyes.
'You didn't talk to Investigator Ring about me?' he said. I checked my fury. 'No.'
'He came to my house this morning while my mama was still in bed.' His voice shook.
'Started interrogating me like I was a murderer or something. Said you had findings pointing right to me, so I better confess.'
'Findings? What findings?' I said as my disgust grew.
'Fibers that according to you looked like they came from what I had on the day we met. You said my size fit what you think the size is of the person who cut up that body. He said you could tell by the pressure applied with the saw that whoever did it was about my strength. He said you were demanding all kinds of things from me so you could do all these tests. DNA. That you thought I was weird when I drove you up to the site…'
I interrupted him, 'My God, Keith. I have never heard so much bullshit in my life. If I
said even one of those things, I would be fired for incompetence.'
'That's the other thing,' Pleasants jumped in again, fire in his eyes. 'He's been talking with everyone I work with! They're all wondering if I'm some kind of axe murderer. I can tell by the way they look at me.'
He dissolved in tears as doors opened and several state troopers walked in. They paid us no mind as they were buzzed inside, on their way down to the morgue, where Fielding was working on a pedestrian death. Pleasants was too upset for me to discuss this with him any further, and I was so incensed with Ring that I did not know what else to say.
'Do you have a lawyer?' I asked him. He shook his head.
'I think you'd better get one.'
'I don't know any.'
'I can give you some names,' I said as Wingo opened the door and was startled by the sight of Pleasants crying on the couch.
'Uh, Dr Scarpetta?' Wingo said. 'Dr Fielding wants to know if he can go ahead and receipt the personal effects to the funeral home.'
I stepped closer to Wingo, because I did not want Pleasants further upset by the business of this place.
'The troopers are on their way down,' I said in a low voice. 'If they don't want the personal effects, then yes. Receipt them to the funeral home.'
He was staring hard at Pleasants, as if he knew him from somewhere.
'Listen,' I said to Wingo. 'Get him the names and numbers of Jameson and Higgins.' They were two very fine lawyers in town whom I considered friends.
'Then please see Mr Pleasants out.'
Wingo was still staring, as if transfixed by him.
'Wingo?' I gave him a questioning look, because he did not seem to have heard me.
'Yes, ma'am.' He glanced at me.
I went past him, heading downstairs. I needed to talk to Wesley, but maybe I should get hold of Marino first. As I rode the elevator down, I debated if I should call the C.A. in Sussex and warn her about Ring. At the same time all of this was going through my mind, I felt dreadfully sorry for Pleasants. I was scared for him. As far- fetched as it might seem, I knew he could end up charged with murder.
In the morgue, Fielding and the troopers were looking at the pedestrian on table one, and there wasn't the usual banter because the victim was the nine-year-old daughter of a city councilman. She had been walking to the bus stop early this morning when someone had swerved off the road at a high rate of speed. Based on the absence of skid marks, the driver had hit the girl from the rear and not even slowed.
'How are we doing?' I asked when I got to them.
'We got us a real tough one here,' said one of the troopers, his expression grave.
'The father's going ape shit,' Fielding told me as he went over the clothed body with a lens, collecting trace evidence.
'Any paint?' I asked, for a chip of it could identify the make and model of the car.
'Not so far.' My deputy chief was in a foul mood. He hated working on children.
I scanned torn, bloody jeans and a partial grille mark imprinted in fabric at the level of the buttocks. The front bumper had struck the back of the knees, and the head had hit the windshield. She had been wearing a small red knapsack. The bagged lunch, and books, papers and pens that had been taken out of it pricked my heart. I felt heavy inside.
'The grille mark seems pretty high,' I remarked.
'That's what I'm thinking, too,' another trooper spoke. 'Like you associate with pickup trucks and recreational vehicles. About the time it happened, a black Jeep Cherokee was observed in the area traveling at a high rate of speed.'
'Her father's been calling every half hour.' Fielding glanced up at me. 'Thinks this was more than an accident.'
'Implying what, exactly?' I asked.
'That it's political.' He resumed work, collecting fibers and bits of debris. 'A
homicide.'
'Lord, let's hope not,' I said, walking away. 'What it is now is bad enough.'
On a steel counter in a remote corner of the morgue was a portable electric heater where we defleshed and degreased bones. The process was decidedly unpleasant requiring the boiling of body parts in a ten-percent solution of bleach. The big, rattling steel pot, the smell, were dreadful, and I usually restricted this activity to nights and weekends when we were unlikely to have visitors.
Yesterday, I had left the bone ends from the torso to boil overnight. They had not required much time, and I turned off the heater. Pouring steaming, stinking water into a sink, I waited until the bones were cool enough to pick up. They were clean and white, about two inches long, cuts and saw marks clearly visible. As I examined each segment carefully, a sense of scary disbelief swept over me. I could not tell which saw marks had been made by the killer and which had been made by me.
'Jack,' I called out to Fielding. 'Could you come over here for a minute?' He stopped what he was doing and walked to my corner of the room.
'What's up?' he asked.
I handed him one of the bones. 'Can you tell which end was cut with the Stryker saw?' He turned it over and over, looking back and forth, at one end and then the other, frowning. 'Did you mark it?'
'For right and left I did,' I said. 'Beyond that, no. I should have. But usually it's so obvious which end is which, it's not necessary.'
'I'm not expert, but if I didn't know better, I'd say all these cuts were made with the same saw.' He handed the bone back to me and I began sealing it in an evidence bag.
'You got to take them to Canter anyway, right.'
'He's not going to be happy with me.' I said.