Unnatural Exposure

by Patricia Cornwell

  No one was there, so I went in alone and leaned back against my pillows, staring at the blank screen with its row of icons across the top. Literally, there was no one to chat with, and I thought of how ridiculous this must seem to deadoc, were he somehow watching. Wasn’t it obvious if I were alone in a room? Wouldn’t it seem that I was waiting? I had no sooner entertained this thought when a sentence was written across my screen, and I began to answer.

  QUINCY: Hi. What are we talking about today?

  SCARPETTA: The budget impasse. How is it affecting you?

  QUINCY: I work out of the D.C. office. A nightmare.

  SCARPETTA: Are you a medical examiner?

  QUINCY: Right. We’ve met at meetings. We know some of the same people. Not much of a crowd today, but it could always get better if one is patient.

  That’s when I knew Quincy was one of the undercover agents from Squad 19. We continued our session until lunch arrived, then resumed it afterwards for the better part of an hour. Quincy and I chatted about our problems, asking questions about solutions, anything we could think of that might seem like normal conversation between medical examiners or people they might confer with. But deadoc did not bite.

  I took a nap and woke up a little past four. For a moment, I lay very still, forgetting where I was, then it came back to me with depressing alacrity. I sat up, cramped beneath my tray, the computer still open on top of it. I logged onto AOL again and went back into the chat room. This time I was joined by someone who called himself MEDEX, and we talked about the type of computer database I used in Virginia for capturing case information and doing statistical retrievals.

  At exactly five minutes past five, a bell sounded off-key inside my computer, and the Instant Message window suddenly dominated my screen. I stared in disbelief as a communication from deadoc appeared, words that I knew no one else in the chat room could see.

  DEADOC: you think you re so smart

  SCARPETTA: Who are you?

  DEADOC: you know who I am I am what you do

  SCARPETTA: What do I do?

  DEADOC: death doctor death you are me

  SCARPETTA: I am not you.

  DEADOC: you think you re so smart

  He abruptly got quiet, and when I clicked on the Available button, it showed that he had logged off. My heart was racing as I sent another message to MEDEX, saying I had been tied up with a visitor. I got no response, finding myself alone in the chat room again.

  “Damn,” I exclaimed, under my breath.

  I tried again as late as ten P.M., but no one appeared except Quincy again, to tell me we should try another meeting in the morning. All of the other docs, he said, had gone home. The same nurse checked on me, and she was sweet. I felt sorry for her long hours, and her inconvenience of having to wear a blue suit every time she came into my room.

  “Where is the new shift?” I asked, as she took my temperature.

  “I’m it. We’re all just doing the best we can.”

  I nodded as she alluded to the furlough yet one more time this day.

  “There’s hardly a lab worker here,” she went on. “You could wake up tomorrow, the only person in the building.”

  “Now I’m sure to have nightmares,” I said as she wrapped the BP cuff around my arm.

  “Well, you’re feeling okay, and that’s the important thing. Ever since I started coming down here, I started imagining I was getting one thing or another. The slightest ache or pain or sniffle, and it’s, oh my God. So what kind of doctor are you?”

  I told her.

  “I was going to be a pediatrician. Then I got married.”

  “We’d be in a lot of trouble were it not for good nurses like you,” I smiled and said.

  “Most doctors never bother to notice that. They have these attitudes.”

  “Some of them certainly do,” I agreed.

  I tried to go to sleep, and was restless throughout the night. Street lights from the parking lot beyond my window seeped through the blinds, and no matter which way I turned, I could not relax. It was hard to breathe and my heart would not slow down. At five A.M., I finally sat up and turned on my light. Within minutes, the nurse was back inside my room.

  “You all right?” She looked exhausted.

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “Want something?”

  I turned on the computer as I shook my head. I logged onto AOL and went back to the chat room, which was empty. Clicking on the Available button, I checked to see if deadoc was on line, and if so, where he might be. There was no sign of him, and I began scrolling through the various chat rooms available to subscribers and their families.

  There was truly something for everyone, places for flirts, singles, gays, lesbians, Native Americans, African Americans, and for evil. People who preferred bondage, sadomasochism, group sex, bestiality, incest, were welcome to find each other and exchange pornographic art. The FBI could do nothing about it. All of it was legal.

  Dejected, I sat up, propped against my pillows and, without intending to, dozed off. When I opened my eyes again an hour later, I was in a chat room called ART-LOVE. A message was quietly waiting for me on my screen. Deadoc had found me.

  DEADOC: a picture s worth a thousand words

  I hastily checked to see if he was still logged on, and found him quietly coiled in cyberspace, waiting for me. I typed my response.

  SCARPETTA: What are you trading?

  He didn’t respond right away. I sat staring at the screen for three or four minutes. Then he was back.

  DEADOC: I don t trade with traitors I give freely what do you think happens to people like that

  SCARPETTA: Why don’t you tell me?

  Silence, and I watched as he left the room, and a minute later was back. He was breaking the trace. He knew exactly what we were doing.

  DEADOC: I think you know

  SCARPETTA: I don’t.

  DEADOC: you will

  SCARPETTA: I saw the photos you sent. They weren’t very clear. What was your point?

  But he did not answer and I felt slow and dull-witted. I had him and could not engage him. I could not keep him on. I was feeling frustrated and discouraged when another instant message appeared on my screen, this one from the squad again.

  QUINCY: A.K.A., Scarpetta. Still need to go over that case with you. The self-immolation.

  That’s when I realized that Quincy was Lucy. A.K.A. was Aunt Kay Always, her code for me. She was watching over me, as I had watched over her all these years, and she was telling me not to go up in flames. I typed a message back.

  SCARPETTA: I agree. Your case is very troublesome. How are you handling it?

  QUINCY: Just watch me in court. More later.

  I smiled as I signed off and leaned back in the pillows. I did not feel quite so alone or crazed.

  “Good morning.” The first nurse was back.

  “Same to you.” My spirits dipped lower.

  “Let’s check those vitals. How are we feeling today?”

  “We’re fine.”

  “You’ve got a choice of eggs or cereal.”

  “Fruit,” I said.

  “That wasn’t a choice. But we can probably scrape up a banana.”

  The thermometer went into my mouth, the cuff around my arm. All the while she kept talking.

  “It’s so cold out it could snow,” she was saying. “Thirty-three degrees. You believe that? I had frost on my windshield. The acorns are big this year. That always means a severe winter. You’re still not even up to ninety-eight degrees yet. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Why wasn’t the phone left in here?” I asked.

  “I’ll ask about it.” She took the cuff off. “Blood pressure’s low, too.”

  “Please ask Colonel Fujitsubo to stop by this morning.”

  She stood back and scrutinized me. “You going to complain about me?”

  “Good heavens, no,” I said. “I just need to leave.”

  “Well, I hate to tell you, but that’s not up
to me. Some people stay in here as long as two weeks.”

  I would lose my mind, I thought.

  The colonel did not appear before lunch, which was a broiled chicken breast, carrots and rice. I hardly ate as my tension mounted, and the TV flashed silently in the background because I had turned off the sound. The nurse came back at two P.M. and announced I had another visitor. So I put on the HEPA filter mask again and followed her back down the hall into the clinic.

  This time I was in Booth A, and Wesley was waiting for me on the other side. He smiled when our eyes met, and both of us picked up our phones. I was so relieved and surprised to see him that I stammered at first.

  “I hope you’ve come to rescue me,” I said.

  “I don’t take on doctors. You taught me that.”

  “I thought you were in Georgia.”

  “I was. Took a look at the liquor store where the two people were stabbed, scouted around the area, in general. Now I’m here.”

  “And?”

  “And?” He raised an eyebrow. “Organized crime.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Georgia.”

  “Tell me what you are thinking. I seem to be losing the art of mind reading. And you look particularly lovely today, let me add,” he said to my mask.

  “I’m going to go crazy if I don’t get out of here soon,” I said. “I’ve got to get to CDC.”

  “Lucy tells me you’ve been communicating with deadoc.” The playful light vanished from his eyes.

  “To no great extent and with not much luck,” I angrily said.

  To communicate with this killer was infuriating for it was exactly what he wanted. I had made it my mission in life not to reward people like him.

  “Don’t give up,” Wesley said.

  “He makes allusions to medical matters, such as diseases and germs,” I said. “Doesn’t this concern you in light of what is going on?”

  “He no doubt follows the news.” He made the same point Janet had.

  “But what if it’s more than that?” I asked. “The woman he dismembered seems to have the same disease that the victim from Tangier does.”

  “And you can’t verify that yet.”

  “You know, I didn’t get where I am by making assumptions and leaping to conclusions.” I was getting very out of sorts. “I will verify this disease as soon as I can, but I think we should be guided by common sense in the meantime.”

  “I’m not certain I understand what you’re saying.” His eyes never left mine.

  “I’m saying that we might be dealing with biological warfare. A Unabomber who uses a disease.”

  “I hope to God we’re not.”

  “But the thought has crossed your mind, too. Don’t tell me you think that a fatal disease somehow linked with a dismemberment is coincidental.”

  I studied his face, and I knew he had a headache. The same vein on his forehead always stood out like a bluish rope.

  “And you’re sure you’re feeling all right,” he said.

  “Yes. I’m more worried about you.”

  “What about this disease? What about the risk to you?” He was getting irritated with me, the way he always did when he thought I was in danger.

  “I’ve been revaccinated.”

  “You’ve been vaccinated for smallpox,” he said. “What if that’s not what it is?”

  “Then we’re in a world of trouble. Janet came by.”

  “I know,” he said into his phone. “I’m sorry. The last thing you needed right now . . .”

  “No, Benton,” I interrupted him. “I had to be told. There’s never a good time for news like that. What do you think will happen?”

  But he did not want to say.

  “Then you think it will ruin her, too,” I said in despair.

  “I doubt she’ll be terminated. What usually happens is you stop getting promoted, get lousy assignments, field offices out in the middle of nowhere. She and Janet will end up three thousand miles apart. One or both will quit.”

  “How’s that better than being fired?” I said in pained outrage.

  “We’ll take it as it comes, Kay.” He looked at me. “I’m dismissing Ring from CASKU.”

  “Be careful what you do because of me.”

  “It’s done,” he said.

  Fujitsubo did not stop by my room again until early the next morning, and then he was smiling and opening blinds to let in sunlight so dazzling it hurt my eyes.

  “Good morning, and so far, so good,” he said. “I’m very pleased that you do not seem to be getting sick on us, Kay.”

  “Then I can go,” I said, ready to leap out of bed right then.

  “Not so fast.” He was reviewing my chart. “I know how hard this is for you, but I’m not comfortable letting you go quite so soon. Stick it out a little longer, and you can leave the day after tomorrow, if all goes well.”

  I felt like crying when he left because I did not see how I could endure one more hour of quarantine. Miserable, I sat up under the covers and looked out at the day. The sky was bright blue with wisps of clouds beneath the pale shadow of a morning moon. Trees beyond my window were bare and rocking in a gentle wind. I thought of my home in Richmond, of plants to be potted and work piling up on my desk. I wanted to take a walk in the cold, to cook broccoli and homemade barley soup. I wanted spaghetti with ricotta or stuffed frittata, and music and wine.

  For half the day, I simply felt sorry for myself and did not do a thing except stare at television and doze. Then the nurse for the next shift came in with the phone and said there was a call for me. I waited until it was transferred and snatched up the receiver as if this were the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my life.

  “It’s me,” Lucy said.

  “Thank God.” I was thrilled to hear her voice.

  “Grans says hi. Rumor has it that you win the bad patient award.”

  “The rumor is accurate. All the work in my office. If only I had it here.”

  “You need to rest,” she said. “To keep your defenses up.”

  This made me worry about Wingo again.

  “How come you haven’t been on the laptop?” She then got to the point.

  I was quiet.

  “Aunt Kay, he’s not going to talk to us. He’s only going to talk to you.”

  “Then one of you sign on as me,” I replied.

  “No way. If he senses that’s what’s going on, we lose him for good. This guy is scary, he’s so clever.”

  My silence was my comment, and Lucy rushed to fill it.

  “What?” she said with feeling. “I’m supposed to pretend I’m a forensic pathologist with a law degree who’s already worked at least one of this guy’s cases? I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t want to connect with him, Lucy,” I said. “People like him get off on that, they want it, want the attention. The more I play his game, the more it might encourage him. Have you thought about that?”

  “Yes. But think about this. Whether he’s dismembered one person or twenty, he’s going to do something else bad. People like him don’t just stop. And we have no idea, not one clue, as to where the hell he is.”

  “It’s not that I’m scared for myself,” I started to say.

  “It’s all right if you are.”

  “I just don’t want to do anything to make it worse,” I repeated.

  That, of course, was always the risk when one was creative or aggressive in an investigation. The perpetrator was never completely predictable. Maybe it was simply something I sensed, an intuitive vibration I was picking up deep inside. But I felt that this killer was different and motivated by something beyond our ken. I feared he knew exactly what we were doing and was enjoying himself.

  “Now, tell me about you,” I said. “Janet was here.”

  “I don’t want to get into it.” Cold fury crept into her tone. “I have better ways to spend my time.”

  “I’m with you, Lucy, whatever you want to do.”

  “That much I’ve alwa
ys been sure of. And this much everybody else can be sure of. No matter what it takes, Carrie’s going to rot in jail and hell after that.”

  The nurse had returned to my room to whisk the telephone away again.

  “I don’t understand this,” I complained as I hung up. “I have a calling card, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  She smiled. “Colonel’s orders. He wants you to rest and knows you won’t if you can be on the phone all day.”

  “I am resting,” I said, but she was gone.

  I wondered why he allowed me to keep the laptop and was suspicious Lucy or someone had spoken to him. As I logged onto AOL, I felt conspired against. I had barely entered the M.E. chat room when deadoc appeared, this time not as an invisible instant message, but as a member who could be heard and seen by anybody else who decided to walk in.

  DEADOC: where have you been

  SCARPETTA: Who are you?

  DEADOC: I ve already told you that

  SCARPETTA: You are not me.

  DEADOC: he gave them power over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease pathophysiological manifestations viruses like h i v our darwinian struggle against them they are evil or are we

  SCARPETTA: Explain what you mean.

  DEADOC: there are twelve

  But he had no intention of explaining, at least not now. The system alerted me that he had left the room. I waited inside it a while longer to see if he might return, as I wondered what he meant by twelve. Pushing a button on my headboard, I summoned the nurse, who was beginning to cause me guilt. I didn’t know where she waited outside the room, or if she climbed in and out of her blue suit every time she appeared and left. But none of this could have been pleasant, including my disposition.