Unnatural Exposure

by Patricia Cornwell

  “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 farfetched 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 no 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.

  Six

  My house was built of stone on the edge of Windsor Farms, an old Richmond neighborhood with English street names, and stately Georgian and Tudor homes that some would call mansions. Lights were on in windows I passed, and beyond glass I could see fine furniture and chandeliers, and people moving or watching TV. No one seemed to close their curtains in this city, except me. Leaves had begun to fall. It was cool and overcast, and when I pulled into my driveway, smoke was drifting from the chimney, my niece’s ancient green Suburban parked in front.

  “Lucy?” I called out as I shut the door and turned off the alarm.

  “I’m in here,” she replied from the end of the house where she always stayed.

  As I headed for my office to deposit my briefcase and the pile I had brought home to work on tonight, she emerged from her bedroom, pulling a bright orange UVA sweatshirt over her head.

  “Hi.” Smiling, she gave me a hug, and there was very little that was soft about her.

  Holding her at arm’s length, I took a good look at her, just like I always did.

  “Uh oh,” she playfully said. “Inspection time.” She held out her arms and turned around, as if about to be searched.

  “Smarty,” I said.

  In truth, I would have preferred it had she weighed a little more, but she was keenly pretty and heal
thy, with auburn hair that was short but softly styled. After all this time, I still could not look at her without envisioning a precocious, obnoxious ten-year-old who had no one, really, but me.

  “You pass,” I said.

  “Sorry I’m so late.”

  “Tell me again what it was you were doing?” I asked, for she had called earlier in the day to say she could not get here until dinner.

  “An assistant attorney general decided to drop in with an entourage. As usual, they wanted HRT to put on a show.”

  We headed to the kitchen.

  “I trotted out Toto and Tin Man,” she added.

  They were robots.

  “Used fiber optics, virtual reality. The usual things, except it’s pretty cool. We parachuted them out of a Huey, and I maneuvered them to burn through a metal door with lasers.”

  “No stunts with the helicopters, I hope,” I said.

  “The guys did that. I did my shit from the ground.” She wasn’t happy about it.

  The problem was, Lucy wanted to do stunts with helicopters. There were fifty agents on the HRT. She was the only woman and had a tendency to overreact when they wouldn’t let her do dangerous things that, in my opinion, she had no business doing anyway. Of course, I wasn’t the most objective judge.

  “It suits me fine if you stick with robots,” I said, and we were in the kitchen now. “Something smells good. What did you fix your tired, old aunt to eat?”

  “Fresh spinach sautéed in a little garlic and olive oil, and fillets that I’m going to throw on the grill. This is my one day a week to eat beef, so tough luck if it’s not yours. I even sprung for a bottle of really nice wine, something Janet and I discovered.”

  “Since when can FBI agents afford nice wine?”

  “Hey,” she said, “I don’t do too bad. Besides, I’m too damn busy to spend money.”

  Certainly, she didn’t spend it on clothes. Whenever I saw her, she was either in khaki fatigues or sweats. Now and then she wore jeans and a funky jacket or blazer, and made fun of my offers of hand-me-downs. She would not wear my lawyerly suits and blouses with high collars, and frankly, my figure was fuller than her firm, athletic one. Probably nothing in my closet would fit.

  The moon was huge and low in a cloudy, dark sky. We put on jackets and sat out on the deck drinking wine while Lucy cooked. She had started baked potatoes first, and they were taking a while, so we talked. Over recent years, our relationship had become less mother-daughter as we evolved into colleagues and friends. The transition was not an easy one, for often she taught me and even worked on some of my cases. I felt oddly lost, no longer certain of my role and power in her life.

  “Wesley wants me to track this AOL thing,” she was saying. “Sussex definitely wants CASKU’s help.”

  “Do you know Percy Ring?” I asked as I thought of what he had said in my office, infuriated again.

  “He was in one of my classes and was obnoxious, wouldn’t shut up.” She reached for the bottle of wine. “What a peacock.”

  She began filling our glasses. Raising the hood of the grill, she poked potatoes with a fork.

  “I believe we’re ready,” she said, pleased.

  Moments later, she was emerging from the house, carrying the fillets. They sizzled as she placed them on the grill. “Somehow he figured out you’re my aunt.” She was talking about Ring again. “Not that it’s a secret, and he asked me about it after class once. You know, if you tutored me, helped me out with my cases, like I couldn’t possibly do what I’m doing on my own, that sort of thing. I just think he picks on me because I’m a new agent and a woman.”

  “That may be the biggest miscalculation he’s ever made in his life,” I said.

  “And he wanted to know if I was married.” Her eyes were shadowed as porch lights shone on one side of her face.

  “I worry about what his interest really is,” I commented.

  She glanced at me as she cooked. “The usual.” She shrugged it off, for she was surrounded by men and paid no attention to their comments or their stares.

  “Lucy, he made a reference to you in my office today,” I said. “A veiled reference.”

  “To what?”

  “Your status. Your roommate.”

  No matter how often or delicately we talked about this, she always got frustrated and impatient.

  “Whether it’s true or not,” she said, and the sizzling of the grill seemed to match her tone, “there would still be rumors because I’m an agent. It’s ridiculous. I know women married with kids, and the guys think all of them are gay, too, just because they’re cops, agents, troopers, Secret Service. Some people even think it about you. For the same reason. Because of your position, your power.”

  “This is not about accusations,” I reminded her, gently. “This is about whether someone could hurt you. Ring is very smooth. He comes across as credible. I expect he resents that you’re FBI, HRT and he’s not.”

  “I think he’s already demonstrated that.” Her voice was hard.

  “I just hope the jerk doesn’t keep asking you out.”

  “Oh, he already is. At least half a dozen times.” She sat down. “He’s even asked Janet out, if you can believe that.” She laughed. “Talk about not getting it.”

  “The problem is I think he does get it,” I said, ominously. “It’s like he’s building a case against you, gathering evidence.”

  “Well, gather away.” She abruptly ended our discussion. “So tell me what else went on today.”

  I told her what I had learned at the labs, and we talked about fibers embedded in bone and Koss’s analysis of them as we carried steaks and wine inside. We sat at the kitchen table with a candle lit, digesting information few people would serve with food.

  “A cheap motel curtain could have a backing like that,” Lucy said.

  “That or something like a drop cloth, because of the paint-like substance,” I replied. “The spinach is wonderful. Where did you get it?”

  “Ukrop’s. I’d give anything to have a store like that in my neighborhood. So this person wrapped the victim in a drop cloth and then dismembered her through it?” she asked as she cut her meat.

  “That’s certainly the way it’s looking.”

  “What does Wesley say?” She met my eyes.

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet.” This wasn’t quite true. I had not even called.

  For a moment, Lucy was silent. She got up and brought a bottle of Evian to the table. “So how long do you plan to run from him?”

  I pretended not to hear her, in hopes she would not start in.

  “You know that’s what you’re doing. You’re scared.”

  “This is not something we should discuss,” I said. “Especially when we’re having such a pleasant evening.”

  She reached for her wine.

  “It’s very good, by the way,” I said. “I like pinot noir because it’s light. Not heavy like a merlot. I’m not in the mood for anything heavy right now. So you made a good choice.”

  She stabbed another bite of steak, getting my point.

  “Tell me how things are going with Janet,” I went on. “Mostly doing white-collar crime in D.C.? Or is she getting to spend more time at ERF these days?”

  Lucy stared out the window at the moon as she slowly swirled wine in her glass. “I should get started on your computer.”

  While I cleaned up, she disappeared into my office. I did not disturb her for a very long time, if for no other reason than I knew she was put out with me. She wanted complete openness, and I had never been good at that, not with anyone. I felt bad, as if I had let down everyone I loved. For a while, I sat at the kitchen desk, talking to Marino on the phone, and I called to catch up with my mother. I put on a pot of decaffeinated coffee and carried two mugs down the hall.

  Lucy was busy at my keyboard, glasses on, a slight frown furrowing her young, smooth brow as she concentrated. I set her coffee down and looked over her head at what she was typing. It made n
o sense to me. It never did.

  “How’s it going?” I asked.

  I could see my face reflected in the monitor as she struck the enter key again, executing another UNIX command.

  “Good and not good,” she replied with an impatient sigh. “The problem with applications like AOL is you can’t track files unless you get into the original programming language. That’s where I am now. And it’s like following bread crumbs through a universe with more layers than an onion.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat next to her. “Lucy,” I said, “how did someone send these photographs to me? Can you tell me, step by step?”

  She stopped what she was doing, slipping off her glasses and setting them on the desk. She rubbed her face in her hands and massaged her temples as if she had a headache.

  “You got any Tylenol?” she asked.

  “No acetaminophen with alcohol.” I opened a drawer and got out a bottle of Motrin instead.

  “For starters,” she said, taking two, “this wouldn’t have been easy if your screen name wasn’t the same as your real one: KSCARPETTA.”

  “I made it easy deliberately, for my colleagues to send me mail,” I explained one more time.

  “You made it easy for anyone to send you mail.” She looked accusingly at me. “Have you gotten crank mail before?”

  “I think this goes beyond crank mail.”

  “Please answer my question.”

  “A few things. Nothing to worry about.” I paused, then went on, “Generally after a lot of publicity because of some big case, a sensational trial, whatever.”

  “You should change your user name.”

  “No,” I said. “Deadoc might want to send me something else. I can’t change it now.”

  “Oh great.” She put her glasses back on. “So now you want him to be a pen pal.”

  “Lucy, please,” I quietly said, and I was getting a headache, too. “We both have a job to do.”

  She was quiet for a moment. Then she apologized. “I guess I’m just as overly protective of you as you’ve always been of me.”

  “I still am.” I patted her knee. “Okay, so he got my screen name from the AOL directory of subscribers, right?”