Unnatural Exposure

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Then that’s what this is.” I had suspected as much.

  “I can’t say with certainty until I get it under the scope. But both ends look like they’ve been cut with a Stryker saw.”

  He gathered the bags of bones, and I followed him out into the hall as my misgivings got worse. I did not know what we would do if he could not tell the saw marks apart. A mistake like this was enough to ruin a case in court.

  “Now, I know you’re probably not going to tell much about the vertebral bone,” I said, for it was trabecular, less dense than other bone and therefore not a good surface for tool marks.

  “Never hurts to bring it anyway. We might get lucky,” he said as we entered his lab.

  There was not an inch of empty space. Thirty-five-gallon drums of degreaser and polyurethane varnish were parked wherever they would fit. Shelves from floor to ceiling were crammed with packaged bones, and in boxes and on carts were every type of saw known to man. Dismemberments were rare, and I knew of only three obvious motivations for taking a victim apart. Transporting the body was easier. Identification was slowed, if not made impossible. Or simply, the killer was malicious.

  Canter pulled a stool close to an operating microscope equipped with a camera. He moved aside a tray of fractured ribs and thyroid cartilage that he must have been working on before I arrived.

  “This guy was kicked in the throat, among other things,” he absently said as he pulled on surgical gloves.

  “Such a nice world we live in,” I commented.

  Canter opened the Ziploc bag containing the segment of right femur. Because he could not fit it on the microscope’s stage without cutting a section that was thin enough to mount, he had me hold the two-inch length of bone against the table’s edge. Then he bent a twenty-five-power fiber optics light close to one of the sawn surfaces.

  “Definitely a Stryker saw,” he said as he peered into the lenses. “You got to have a fast-moving, reciprocating motion to create a polish like this. It almost looks like polished stone. See?”

  He moved aside and I looked. The bone was slightly beveled, like water frozen in gentle ripples, and it shone. Unlike other power saws, the Stryker had an oscillating blade that did not move very far. It did not cut skin, only the hard surface it was pressed against, like bone or a cast an orthopedist cut from a mending limb.

  “Obviously,” I said, “the transverse cuts across the midshaft are mine. From removing marrow for DNA.”

  “But the knife marks aren’t.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Well, we’re probably not going to have much luck with them.”

  Knives basically covered their own tracks, unless the victim’s bone or cartilage was stabbed or hacked.

  “But the good news is, we got a few false starts, a wider kerf and TPI,” he said, adjusting the microscope’s focus as I continued holding the bone.

  I had known nothing about saws until I began spending so much time with Canter. Bone is an excellent surface for tool marks, and when saw teeth cut into it, a groove or kerf is formed. By microscopically examining the walls and floor of a kerf, one can determine exit chipping on the side where the saw exited bone. Determining the characteristics of the individual teeth, the number of teeth per inch (TPI), the spacing of them and the striae, can reveal the shape of the blade.

  Canter angled the optic light to sharpen the striations and defects.

  “You can see the curve of the blade.” He pointed to several false starts on the shaft, where someone had pushed the saw blade into the bone, and then tried again in another spot.

  “Not mine,” I said. “Or at least I hope I’m more adept than that.”

  “Since this also is the end where most of the knife cuts are, I’m going to agree that it wasn’t you. Whoever did this had to cut first with something else, since an oscillating blade won’t cut flesh.”

  “What about the saw blade?” I asked, for I knew what I used in the morgue.

  “Teeth are large, seventeen per inch. So this is going to be a round autopsy blade. Let’s turn it over.”

  I did, and he directed the light at the other end, where there were no false starts. The surface was polished and beveled like the other one, but not identical to Canter’s discerning eye.

  “Power autopsy saw with a large, sectioning blade,” he said. “Multidirectional cut since the radius of the blade’s too small to cut through the whole bone in one stroke. So, whoever did this just changed directions, going at it from different angles, with a great deal of skill. We have slight bending of the kerfs. Minimal exit chipping. Again, denoting great skill with a saw. I’m going to bump up the power some and see if we can accentuate the harmonics.”

  He referred to the distance between saw teeth.

  “Tooth distance is point-oh-six. Sixteen teeth per inch,” he counted. “Direction is push-pull, tooth-type chisel. I’m voting this is yours.”

  “You caught me,” I said with relief. “Guilty as charged.”

  “I would think so.” He was still looking. “I wouldn’t think you use a round blade for anything.”

  The large, round autopsy blades were heavy and continuous rolling, and destroyed more bone. Generally, this was a utility blade used in labs or in doctors’ offices to saw off casts.

  “The rare occasion I might use a round blade is on animals,” I said.

  “Of the two- or four-legged variety?”

  “I’ve taken bullets out of dogs, birds, cats and, on one fine occasion, a python shot in a drug raid,” I replied.

  Canter was looking at another bone. “And I thought I was the one who had all the fun.”

  “Do you find it unusual that someone would use a meat saw in four dismemberments, and then suddenly switch to an electric autopsy saw?” I asked.

  “If your theory’s correct about the cases in Ireland, then you’re talking nine cases with a meat saw,” he said. “How about holding this right here so I can get a picture.”

  I held the section of left femur in the tips of my fingers, and he pressed a button on the camera.

  “To answer your question,” he said, “I would find it extremely unusual. You’re talking two different profiles. The meat saw is manual, physical, usually ten teeth per inch. It will go through tissue and takes a lot of bone with each stroke, the saw marks rougher-looking, more indicative of someone skilled and powerful. And it’s also important to remember that in each of those earlier cases the perpetrator cut through joints, versus the shafts, which is also very rare.”

  “It’s not the same person.” I again voiced my growing belief.

  Canter took the bone from my hand and looked at me. “That’s my vote.”

  When I returned to the lobby of the M.E.’s office, Marino was still on the phone down the hall. I waited a little while, then stepped outside because I needed air. I needed sunshine and sights that weren’t savage. Some twenty minutes passed before he finally walked out and joined me by the car.

  “I didn’t know you was here,” he said. “If someone had told me, I would’ve got off the phone.”

  “It’s all right. What a gorgeous day.”

  He unlocked the car.

  “How’d it go?” he asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.

  I briefly summarized as we sat in the parking lot, not going anywhere.

  “You want to go back to the Peabody?” he asked, tapping the steering wheel with his thumb.

  I knew exactly what he wanted to do.

  “No,” I said. “Graceland might be just what the doctor ordered.”

  He shoved the car in gear and could not suppress a big grin.

  “We want the Fowler Expressway,” I said, for I had studied a map.

  “I wish you could get me his autopsy report,” he started on that again. “I want to see for myself what happened to him. Then I’ll know and it won’t eat at me anymore.”

  “What do you want to know?” I looked at him.

  “If it was like they said. Did he die on t
he toilet? That’s always bothered the hell out of me. You know how many cases like that I’ve seen?” He glanced at me. “Don’t matter if you’re some drone or the president of the United States. You end up dead with a ring around your butt. Hope to hell that don’t happen to me.”

  “Elvis was found on the floor of his bathroom. He was nude, and yes, it is believed that he slid off his black porcelain toilet.”

  “Who found him?” Marino was entranced in an uneasy way.

  “A girlfriend who was staying in the adjoining room. Or that’s the story,” I said.

  “You mean he walks in there, feels fine, sits down and boom? No warning signs or nothing?”

  “All I know is he’d been playing racquetball in the early morning, and seemed fine,” I said.

  “You’re kidding.” Marino’s curiosity was insatiable. “Now, I never heard that part. I didn’t know he played racquetball.”

  We drove through an industrialized area, with trains and trucks, then past campers for sale. Graceland stood in the midst of cheap motels and stores, and it did not seem so grand given its surroundings. The light gray, stone mansion with its columns was completely out of place, like a joke or a set for a bad movie.

  “Holy shit,” Marino said, as he pulled into the parking lot. “Will you look at that. Holy smoke.”

  He went on as if it were Buckingham Palace as he parked beside a bus.

  “You know, I wish I could’ve known him,” he wistfully said.

  “Maybe you would have, had he taken better care of himself.” I opened my door as he lit a cigarette.

  For the next two hours, we wandered through gilt and mirrors, shag carpeting and stained-glass peacocks as the voice of Elvis followed us through his world. Hundreds of fans had arrived on buses, and their passion for this man was on their faces as they walked around listening to the tour on cassette. Many of them placed flowers, cards and letters on his grave. Some wept as if they had known him well.

  We wandered around his purple and pink Cadillacs, Stutz Blackhawk and museum of other cars. There were his planes and shooting range, and the Hall of Gold, with Grammy showcases of gold and platinum records, and trophies and other awards that amazed even me. The hall was at least eighty feet long. I could not take my eyes off splendid costumes of gold and sequins, and photographs of what was truly an extraordinarily and sensuously beautiful human being. Marino was blatantly gawking, an almost pained expression on his face that reminded me of puppy love as we inched our way through rooms.

  “You know, they didn’t want him to move here when he bought this place,” he announced, and we were outside now, the fall afternoon cool and bright. “Some of the snobs in this city never did accept him. I think that hurt him, in a way, might be what got him in the end. You know, why he took painkillers.”

  “He took more than that,” I made the point again as we walked.

  “If you had been the medical examiner, could you have done his autopsy?” He got out cigarettes.

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you wouldn’t have covered his face?” He looked indignant as he fired up his lighter.

  “Of course not.”

  “Not me.” He shook his head, sucking in smoke. “No friggin’ way I’d even want to be in the room.”

  “I wish he had been my case,” I said. “I wouldn’t have signed him out as a natural death. The world should know the truth, so maybe somebody else would think twice about popping Percodan.”

  We were in front of one of the gift shops now, and people were gathered around televisions inside, watching Elvis videos. Through outdoor speakers, he was singing “Kentucky Rain,” his voice powerful and playful, unlike any other I had ever heard in my life. I started walking again and told the truth.

  “I am a fan and have a rather extensive collection of his CDs, if you really must know,” I said to Marino.

  He couldn’t believe it. He was thrilled.

  “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread that around.”

  “All these years I’ve known you, and you never told me?” he exclaimed. “You’re not kidding me, right? I never would’ve thought that. Not in a million years. Hey, so maybe now you know I got taste.”

  This went on as we waited for a shuttle to return us to the parking lot, and then it continued in the car.

  “I remember watching him on TV once when I was a kid in New Jersey,” Marino was saying. “My old man came in drunk, as usual, started yelling at me to switch the channel. I’ll never forget it.”

  He slowed and turned into the Peabody Hotel.

  “Elvis was singing ‘Hound Dog,’ July 1956. I remember it was my birthday. My father comes in, cussing, turns the TV off, and I get up and turn it back on. He smacks the side of my head, turns the TV off again. I turn it back on and walk toward him. First time in my life I ever laid a hand on him. I slam him against the wall, get in his face, tell the son of a bitch he ever touches me or my mother again, I’m going to kill him.”

  “And did he?” I asked as the valet opened my door.

  “Shit no.”

  “Then Elvis should be thanked,” I said.

  Seven

  Two days later, on Thursday, November 6, I started out early on the ninety-minute drive from Richmond to the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. Marino and I took separate cars, since we never knew when something might happen to send us off somewhere. For me, it could be a plane crash or derailed train, while he had to deal with city government and layers of brass. I wasn’t surprised when my car phone rang as we neared Fredericksburg. The sun was in and out of clouds, and it felt cold enough to snow.

  “Scarpetta,” I said, on speakerphone.

  Marino’s voice erupted inside my car. “City council’s freaking,” he said. “You got McKuen whose little kid’s been hit by a car, now more crap about our case, on TV, in the papers, hear it on the radio.”

  More leaks had occurred over the past two days. Police had a suspect in serial murders that included five cases in Dublin. An arrest was imminent.

  “You believe this shit?” Marino exclaimed. “We’re talking about, what? Someone in his mid-twenties, and somehow he was in Dublin over the past few years? Bottom line is council’s suddenly decided to have some public forum about this situation, probably because they think it’s about to be resolved. Got to get that credit, right, make the citizens think maybe they did something for once.” He was careful what he said, but seething. “So I gotta turn my ass right back around and be at city hall by ten. Plus, the chief wants to see me.”

  I watched his taillights up ahead as he approached an exit. I-95 was busy this morning with trucks, and people who commuted every day to D.C. No matter how early I started, whenever I headed north, it seemed traffic was terrible.

  “Actually, it’s a good thing you’re going to be there. Cover my back, too,” I said to him. “I’ll get up with you later, let you know what went on.”

  “Yo. When you see Ring, do that to his neck,” he said.

  I arrived at the Academy, and the guard in his booth waved me through because by now he knew my car and its license plate. The parking lot was so full, I ended up almost in the woods. Firearms training was already in progress on ranges across the road, and Drug Enforcement Agents were out in camouflage, gripping assault rifles, their faces mean. The grass was heavy with dew and soaked my shoes as I took a shortcut to the main entrance of the tan brick building called Jefferson.

  Inside the lobby, luggage was parked near couches and the walls, for there were always National Academy, or N.A., police going somewhere, it seemed. The video display over the front desk reminded everyone to have a nice day and properly display his badge. Mine was still in my purse, and I got it out, looping the long chain around my neck. Inserting a magnetized card into a slot, I unlocked a glass door etched with the Department of Justice seal and followed a long glass-enclosed corridor.

  I was deep in thought and scarcely cognizant of new agents in dark blue and khaki, and N.A. student
s in green. They nodded and smiled as they passed, and I was friendly, too, but I did not focus. I was thinking of the torso, of her infirmities and age, of her pitiful pouch in the freezer, where she would stay for several years or until we knew her name. I thought of Keith Pleasants, of deadoc, of saws and sharp blades.

  I smelled Hoppes solvent as I turned into the gun-cleaning room with its rows of black counters and compressors blasting air through the innards of guns. I could never smell these smells or hear these sounds without thinking of Wesley, and of Mark. My heart was squeezed by feelings too strong for me when a familiar voice called out my name.

  “Looks like we’re heading the same way,” said Investigator Ring.

  Impeccably dressed in navy blue, he was waiting for the elevator that would take us sixty feet below ground, where Hoover had built his bomb shelter. I switched my heavy briefcase to my other hand, and tucked the box of slides more snugly under an arm.

  “Good morning,” I blandly said.

  “Here, let me help with some of that.”

  He held out a hand as elevator doors parted, and I noticed his nails were buffed.

  “I’m fine,” I said, because I didn’t need his help.

  We boarded, both of us staring straight ahead as we began the ride down to a windowless level of the building directly beneath the indoor firing range. Ring had sat in on consultations before, and he took copious notes, none of which had ended up in the news thus far. He was too clever for that. Certainly, if information divulged during an FBI consultation was leaked, it would be easy enough to trace. There were only a few of us who could be the source.

  “I was rather dismayed by the information the press somehow got access to,” I said as we got out.

  “I know what you mean,” Ring said with a sincere face.

  He held open the door leading into a labyrinth of hallways that comprised what once had begun as Behavioral Science, then changed to Investigative Support, and now was CASKU. Names changed, but the cases did not. Men and women often came to work in the dark and left after it was dark again, spending days and years studying the minutiae of monsters, their every tooth mark and track in mud, the way they think and smell and hate.