He leans in to see for himself, and then moves out of her way, and she peers into the lenses.
"In fact, I'm thinking this particle here is burned. Did you notice how fine it is? I'm seeing a little blackish margin. It looks carbonized, burned. Bet if I put my finger on this particle it would probably stick to the oil on my skin, and regular flaked bone won't," she says, intrigued. "I think some of what we're looking at is from cremains." She peers at the bluish white ragged particle with its carbonized margin in the bright circle of light. "It looks chalky and fractured but not necessarily heat fractured. I don't know. I've never had a reason to pay attention to bone dust, certainly not burned bone dust. An elemental analysis will tell you. With burned bone you should get different levels of calcium, higher levels of phosphorus," she explains without moving her eyes from the binocular lenses. "And by the way, I might expect dust from cremains in the rubble and dirt at the old building since there was a crematorium oven. God knows how many bodies were cremated in that place over the decades. But I'm a little perplexed that the debris from this soil I brought in would have bone dust in it. I scraped that soil from the pavement near the back door. They haven't started knocking down the back of the building and digging up the back parking lot yet. The Anatomical Division should still be completely intact. Remember the back door of the old building?"
"Sure I do."
"That's where it was. Why would dust from cremains be in the parking lot, right there on top of the parking lot? Unless it was tracked outside the building?"
"You mean someone stepped in it down there in the Anatomical Division and then tracked it out into the parking lot?"
"I don't know, possibly, but it appears Mr. Whitby's bloody face must have been against the pavement, the muddy dirty pavement, and this trace evidence adhered to his wound and the blood on his face."
"Take me back to the part about bone dust getting fractured," Eise says, mystified. "So you got burned bone and then how does it get fractured if not by heat?"
"As I said, I don't know for a fact, but dust from cremains mixed in with dirt on pavement and perhaps run over by a tractor and cars and even people stepping on it. Could bone dust exposed to that sort of traffic look traumatized? I just don't know the answer."
"But why the hell would there be cremated bone dust in Sick Girl's case?" Eise asks.
"That's right." She tries to clear her head and organize her thoughts. "That's right. This isn't from the Whitbycase. This burned-looking fractured dust isn't from his case. I'm looking at her trace."
"Dust from cremains inside Sick Girl's mouth? Holy Mother of God! I can't explain that. Sure as heck can't. Can you?"
"I don't have a clue why bone dust has turned up in her case to begin with," Scarpetta replies. "What else have you found? I understand they brought in a number of things from Gilly Paulsson's house."
"Just stuff from her bed. Kit and I were back there in the Scraping Room for ten hours, and then I spend half my life picking out cotton fibers because Dr. Marcus has a thing about cotton swabs. Must have stock in Q-tips," Eise complains. "Course, DNA had a crack at the linens too."
"I know about it," Scarpetta says. "They were looking for respiratory epithelium and found it."
"We also found hairs, dyed black hairs, on the sheets. I know Kit's been aggravated over those."
"Human, I presume. DNA?"
"Yes, human. They've been sent to Bode for mito."
"What about pet hairs? What about canine hair?"
"No," he says.
"Not from her bed linens or pajamas, not from anything they carried in from her house?"
"No. How about dust from an autopsy saw?" he says, obsessing over the bone dust. "That could be at your old building too."
"Nothing I'm seeing looks like that." She sits back in the chair and looks at him. "Dust from a saw would be fine granules mixed with chunks, and you might also find particles of metal from the blade."
"Okay. Can we talk about something I do know before I rupture something in my head?"
"Please," she says.
"Thank you, Lord. Now you're the bone expert, I'll grant you that." He returns several slides to Gilly Paulsson's folder. "But I do know about paint. In both the Sick Girl and the Tractor Man cases, there's not a sign of topcoat, not a trace of primer, so we know it isn't automotive. And the bits of metal underneath aren't attracted to a magnet, so they're not ferrous. I tried that out day one, and to cut to the chase, we're talking aluminum."
"Something aluminum painted with red, white, and blue enamel paint," Scarpetta thinks out loud. "Mixed with bone dust."
"I give up," Eise says.
"For the moment, so do I," she replies.
"Human bone dust?"
"Unless it's fresh, we're not going to know."
"How fresh is fresh?"
"Several years at most as opposed to decades," she replies. "We can swab fingerprints and get STR and mito, so it doesn't take much, assuming the sample isn't too old or in bad shape. With DNA it's quality versus quantity, but if I had to bet, I think we're out of luck. In the first place, with cremains you can forget DNA entirely. As for the unburned bone dust I'm seeing, I don't know why exactly, but it strikes me as old. It just looks eroded and old. Now, you can send some of this unburned dust off to Bode Laboratories for mito or even let them try STR, but with a sample this small it's going to be consumed. Do we want it consumed knowing we may not get anything anyway?"
"DNA ain't my department. If it was, my budget would be a hell of a lot bigger."
"Well, it's not my decision anyway," she says, getting up from the chair. "I suppose if it were, I would vote for preserving the integrity of the evidence in case we need it later. What matters is that bone dust has shown up in two cases that should not be even remotely related."
"That definitely matters."
"I'll let you pass on the happy news to Dr. Marcus," she says.
"He loves my e-mails. I'll send him another one," Eise replies. "Wish I had happy news for you, Dr. Scarpetta. But the fact is, all these bags of dirt are going to take me a while. Days. I'll spread all of it out on watch glasses, dry it good, then sieve it to separate the particles, and that's a pain in the neck because you have to bang the damn sieves on the counter every other minute to get them to drain into the receiver pan, and I've given up begging for particle separators that have automatic shakers because they can cost up to six grand, so forgete/.-vous that. The drying and the sieving will take a few days, then it's just me, myself, and I and the microscope, and then SEM and whatever else we try. By the way, did I ever give you one of my handmade tools? Around here, they're affectionately known as 'Eise Picks.'"
He finds several on his desk and decides on one, turning it slowly this way and that to make sure the tungsten isn't bent and doesn't need sharpening. Holding it up proudly, he presents it to her with a flourish as if he is giving her a long-stem rose.
"That's very nice of you, Junius," she says. "Thank you very much. And no. You never did give me one."
40
Unable to look at the problem from any angle that introduces clarity, Scarpetta stops thinking about the painted aluminum and bone dust. She decides she will soon drive herself into complete exhaustion if she continues to obsess about red, white, and blue chips of paint and particles of probable human bone that are smaller than cat dander.
The early afternoon is gray and the air is so heavy it threatens to collapse like a rain-soaked ceiling. She and Marino get out of the SUV and the doors sound muffled when they close them. She begins to lose faith when she sees no lights on in the brick house with the mossy slate roof that is on the other side of the Paulssons' backyard fence.
"You sure he'll be here?" Scarpetta asks.
"He said he would. I know where the key is. He told me, so obviously he doesn't care if we know."
"We're not going to break in, if that's what you're suggesting," she says, looking down the cracked walkway to the aluminum storm door and the wooden
door behind it and the dark windows on either side. The house is small and old and has the sad face of neglect. It is overwhelmed by bold magnolias, prickly shrubs that haven't been pruned in years, and pines that are so tall and full of themselves they have littered their needles and cones in layers that clog gutters and smother what is left of the lawn.
"Wasn't suggesting nothing," Marino replies, looking up and down the quiet street. "Just letting you know he told me where the key is and said there's no alarm system. You tell me why he told me that."
"It doesn't matter," she says, but she knows it does. Already she can see what is in store for them.
The real-estate agent can't be bothered to show up or doesn't want to be involved, so he has made it possible for them to wander in and around the house unattended. She digs her hands in the pockets of her coat, her scene kit over her shoulder and noticeably lighter without the bags of soil that are now being dried at the trace evidence lab.
"I'm at least looking in the windows." He starts off down the walkway, moving slowly, legs spread a little wide, watching where he steps. "You coming or hanging out by the car?" he asks without turning around.
What little they know began with the city directory, which was enough for Marino to track down the real-estate agent, who apparently hasn't shown the house in more than a year and doesn't give a damn about it. The owner is a woman named Bernice Towle. She lives in South Carolina and refuses to spend a penny to fix up the place or lower the price enough to make its sale remotely possible. According to the real-estate agent, the only time the house is used is when Mrs. Towle lets guests stay in it, and no one knows how often that is-or if they ever do. The Richmond police did not check out the house or its history because for all practical purposes it is not lived in and therefore not relevant to the Gilly Paulsson case. The FBI have no interest in the dilapidated Towle residence for the same reason. Marino and Scarpetta are intetested in the house because in a violent death everything should be of interest.
Scarpetta walks toward the house. The concrete beneath her feet is slick with a film of green slime from the rain, and were it her walkway she would scrub it with bleach, she thinks as she gets closer to Marino. He is on the small, sloping porch, hands cupped around his eyes, peering through a window.
"If we're going to be prowlers we may as well commit the next crime," she says. "Where's the key?"
"That flowerpot under the bush there." He looks at a huge, unkempt boxwood and a muddy flowerpot barclv visible beneath it. "The key's under it."
She steps off the porch and works her hands between branches, and sees that the pot is filled with several inches of green rainwater that smells like swamp water. She moves the pot and finds a flat square of aluminum foil covered with dirt and cobwebs. Folded inside it is a copper key as tarnished as an old penny. No one has touched this key in some time, months at least, maybe longer, she thinks, and on the porch she gives it to Marino because she doesn't want to be the one to unlock the house. The door creaks open to a musty odor. It is cold inside, and then she thinks she smells cigars. Marino feels for a light switch, but when he finds one and flips it up and down, nothing happens.
"Here." Scarpetta hands him a pair of cotton gloves. "I just happened to have your size."
"Huh." He works his huge hands into the gloves while she puts on a pair too.
On a table against a wall is a lamp, and she tries that with success. "At least the electricity is on," she says. "I wonder if the phone is." She picks up the receiver of an old black Princess phone and holds it up to her ear and hears nothing. "No phone," she says. "I keep thinking I smell old cigar smoke."
"Well, you gotta keep power or your pipes will freeze," Marino says, sniffing and looking around, and the living room seems small with him in it. "I don't smell cigars, just dust and mildew. But you've always been able to smell shit I can't smell."
Scarpetta stands in the glow of the lamp, staring across the small, dimroom at the floral upholstered couch beneath the windows and a blue Queen Anne chair in a corner. Piled on the dark wooden coffee table are stacks of magazines, and she heads that way and begins to pick them up to see what they are. "Now this I wouldn't have expected," she says, looking at a copy of Variety.
"What?" Marino steps closer and stares at the black-and-white weekly.
"A trade publication for the entertainment industry," Scarpetta says. "Strange. A year ago last November," she reads the date on it. "But still very strange. I wonder if Mrs. Towle, whoever she is, has ties with the movie business."
"Maybe she's just starstruck like half the rest of the world." Marino isn't very interested.
"Half the rest of the world reads People, Entertainment Weekly, that sort of thing. Not Variety. This is hard-core," she says, picking up more magazines. "Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, going back some two years. The last six months aren't here. Maybe the subscription expired. Mailing label is Mrs. Edith Arnette, this address. That name mean anything to you?"
"Nope."
"Did the real-estate agent say who used to live here? Was it Mrs. Towle?"
"He didn't say. I got the impression it was Mrs. Towle."
"Maybe we should do better than an impression. How about calling him." She unzips her black scene kit and pulls out a heavy plastic trash bag, and she loudly shakes it open and drops in the copies of Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.
"You taking those?" Marino stands in a doorway, his back to her. "Why?"
"Can't hurt to check them for prints."
"Stealing," he says, opening a piece of paper and reading the number on it.
"Trespassing, breaking and entering. May as well steal," she says.
"If it turns out to he something, we don't have a warrant." He is playing with her a little.
"Do you want me to put them back?" she asks.
Marino stands in the doorway and shrugs. "We find something, I know where the key is. I'll sneak 'em back inside and get a warrant after the fact. I've done it before."
"I wouldn't admit that in public," she comments, leaving the bag of magazines on the dusty hardwood floor and moving to a small table to the left of the couch and thinking she smells cigars again.
'A lot oi things 1 don't admit in public,' lie replies, entering a number in his cell phone.
"Besides, this isn't your jurisdiction. You can't get a warrant."
"Don't worry. Me and Browning are tight." He stares off as he waits and she can tell by his tone that he's gotten voice mail when he says, "Hey, Jim. Marino here. Was wondering who lived in this house last? What about an Edith Arnette? Please call me ASAP." He leaves his number. "Huh," he says to Scarpetta. "OF Jimbo had no intention of meeting us here. Do you blame him? What a dump."
"It's a dump all right," Scarpetta says as she opens a drawer in a small table to the left of the couch. It is full of coins. "But I'm not sure that's why he didn't come. So you and Detective Browning are tight. The other day you were afraid he might arrest you."
"That was the other day." Marino steps inside the dark hallway. "He's an okay guy. Don't worry. I need a warrant, I'll get a warrant. Enjoy reading about Hollywood. Where the hell are the lights around here?"
"Must be fifty dollars in quarters." Coins lightly clink as Scarpetta pushes her fingers through them inside the drawer. "Just quarters. No pennies, nickels, or dimes. What do you pay for in quarters around here? Newspapers?"
"Fifty cents for the Garbage-Patch," he snidely refers to the local Times-Dispatch. "Got one just yesterday out of the machine in front of the hotel and it cost me two quarters. Twice what The Washington Post is."
"It's unusual to leave money in a place where no one lives," Scarpetta says, shutting the drawer.
The hallway light is out, but she follows Marino into the kitchen. Right away it strikes her as odd that the sink is full of dirty dishes and the water is disgusting with congealed fat and mold. She opens the refrigerator and is increasingly convinced that someone has been staying in the house, a
nd not long ago at all. On the shelves are cartons of orange juice and soy milk that have expiration dates for the end of this month, and dates on meat in the freezer show it was purchased some three weeks ago. The more food she discovers in cabinets and the pantry, the more anxious she becomes as her intuition reacts before her brain does. When she moves to the end of the hallway and begins to explore the bedroom at the back of the house, and smells cigars, she's sure of it, and her adrenaline is rushing.
The double bed is covered with a cheap, dark blue spread, and when she pulls it back she sees that the linens beneath it are wrinkled and soiled and scattered with short hairs, some of them red hairs, probably head hairs, and others darker and curlier and probably pubic hairs, and she sees the stains that have dried stiff and she suspects she knows what those stains are. The bed faces a window, and from it she can see over the wooden fence, she can see the Paulsson house, she can see the dark window that was Gilly's. On a table by the bed is a black and yellow ceramic Cohiba ashtray that is quite clean. There is more dust on the furniture than there is in the ashtray.
Scarpetta does what she needs to do and has little awareness of time passing or shadows changing or the sound of rain hitting the roof as she goes through the closet and every dresser drawer in that room and finds a withered red rose still in its plastic wrapper; men's coats, jackets, and suits, all out of style and grim and buttoned up and primly arranged on wire hangers; stacks of neatly folded men's pants and shirts in somber colors; men's underwear and socks, old and cheap; and dozens of dingy white handkerchiefs, all folded into perfect squares.
Then she is sitting on the floor, pulling cardboard boxes out from under the bed and opening them and going through stacks of old trade publications for mortuary science and funeral home directors, a variety of monthly magazines with photographs of caskets and burial clothes and cremation urns and embalming equipment. The magazines are at least eight years old. On every one she has looked at so far, the mailing label has been peeled off and all that is left are only a few letters and part of a zip code here and there but nothing more, not enough to tell her what she wants to know.
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