"You went to all the scenes?" Berger asks me.
"I did."
She looks at another photograph.
"No way I'd ever eat blue cheese again, not after spending quality time with ol' Thomas." Hostility bristles closer to the surface of Marino's skin.
"You know, I was going to put on coffee," I say to him. "Would you mind?"
"Mind what?" Stubbornness holds him in his chair.
"Mind putting on a pot." I look at him in a way that strongly suggests he leave me alone with Berger for a few minutes.
"I'm not sure I know how to work your machine here." He makes a stupid excuse.
"I have complete faith you'll figure it out," I reply.
"I can see you two have a nice rhythm going," I ironically observe when Marino is down the hall and can't hear us.
"We had plenty of opportunity to get acquainted this morning, very early this morning, I might add." Berger glances up at me. "At the hospital, before Chandonne was sent along his merry way."
"Might I suggest, Ms. Berger, that if you're going to spend some time around here, you might want to start by telling him to keep his mind on the mission. He seems to have some battle going with you that overshadows everything else, and it simply isn't helpful."
She continues studying photographs with no expression on her face. "God, it's like an animal tore into them. Just like Susan Pless, my case. These could just as easily be photos of her body. I'm halfway ready to believe in werewolves. Of course, there's the theory in folklore that the notion of werewolves might have been based on real people who suffered from hy-pertrichosis." I am not sure if she is trying to show me how much research she has done, or if she is deflecting what I just said about Marino. She meets my eyes. "I appreciate your words of advice about him. I know you've worked with him forever, so he can't be all bad."
"He's not. You won't find a better detective."
"And let me guess. He was obnoxious when you first met him."
"He's still obnoxious," I reply.
Berger smiles. "Marino and I have a few issues that we still haven't worked out. Clearly, he isn't used to prosecutors who tell him how a case is going to work. It's a little different in New York," she reminds me. "For example, cops can't arrest a defendant in a homicide case without the D.A.'s approval. We run the cases up there, and frankly"_she picks up lab reports_"it works a whole lot better, as a result. Marino feels it excruciatingly necessary to be in charge, and he's overly protective of you. And jealous of anyone who comes into your life," she sums it up, skimming the reports. "No alcohol on board, except Diane Bray. Point-zero-three. Isn't the thought that she'd had a beer or two and pizza before the killer showed up at her door?" She pushes photographs around on the table. "I don't think I've ever seen anybody beaten this badly. Rage, unbelievable rage. And lust. If you can call something like this lust. I don't think there's a word for whatever he was feeling."
"The word is 'evil.' "
"I guess we won't know about other drugs for a while."
"We'll test for the usual suspects. But it will be weeks," I tell her.
She spreads out more photographs, sorting them as if she is playing solitaire. "How does it make you feel, knowing this might have been you?"
"I don't think about that," I answer.
"What do you think about?"
"What the injuries are saying to me."
"Which is?"
I pick up a photograph of Kim Luong_a bright, wonderful young woman by all reports, who was working to put herself through nursing school. "The blood pattern," I describe. "Almost every inch of her exposed skin is smeared with bloody swirls, part of his ritual. He fingerpainted."
"After they were dead."
"Presumably. In this photo"_I show her_"you can plainly see the gunshot wound to the front of her neck. It hit her carotid and her spinal cord. She would have been paralyzed from the neck down when he dragged her into the storeroom."
"And hemorrhaging. Because of the severed carotid."
"Absolutely. You can see the arterial spatter pattern on the shelves he dragged her past." I lean closer to her and show her in several photographs. "Big sweeps of blood that start getting lower and weaker the farther he dragged her through the store."
"Conscious?" Berger is fascinated and grim.
"The injury to her spinal cord wasn't immediately fatal."
"How long could she have survived, bleeding like that?"
"Minutes." I find an autopsy photograph that shows the spinal cord after it has been removed from the body and centered on a green towel, along with a white plastic ruler for a scale. The smooth creamy cord is contused a violent purple-blue and partly severed in an area correlating with the gunshot wound that penetrated Luong's neck between the fifth and sixth cervical disks. "She would have been instantly paralyzed," I explain, "but the contusion means she had a blood pressure, her heart was still pumping, and we know that anyway from the arterial blood spatter at the scene. So yes. She was probably conscious as he dragged her by her feet along the aisle, back to the storeroom. What I can't say is how long she was conscious."
"She would have been able to see what he was doing and watch her own blood spurting out of her neck as she bled to death?" Berger's face is keen, her energy at a higher wattage that burns brightly in her eyes.
"Again, it depends on how long she was conscious," I tell her.
"But it's in the realm of possibility she might have been conscious the entire time he was dragging her down the aisle, back to the storeroom?"
"Absolutely."
"Could she talk or scream?"
"She might not have been able to do anything."
"But saying no one heard her scream, that wouldn't mean she was unconscious?"
"No, it wouldn't mean that necessarily," I reply. "If you've been shot in the neck and are hemorrhaging and being dragged…"
"Especially dragged by someone who looks like him."
"Yes. You might be too terrified to scream. He might have told her to shut up, for that matter."
"Good." Berger seems pleased. "How do you know he dragged her by the feet?"
"Bloody drag pattern made by her long hair, and trails of blood from her fingers above her head," I describe. "If you're paralyzed and being dragged by your ankles, for example, your arms are going to spread. Like making angels in the snow."
"Wouldn't the human impulse be to grab your neck and try to stop the bleeding?" Berger asks. "And she can't. She's paralyzed and awake, watching herself die and anticipating what the hell he's going to do to her next." She pauses for impact. Berger has the jury in mind, and I can tell already that she didn't earn her incredible reputation accidentally. "These women really suffered," she quietly adds.
"They most certainly did." My blouse is damp and I am cold again.
"Did you anticipate the same treatment?" She looks at me, a challenge in her eyes, as if daring me to explore everything that went through my mind when Chandonne forced his way through my front door and tried to throw his coat over my head. "Can you remember anything you thought?" she prods. "What did you feel? Or did it all happen so fast…"
"Fast," I cut in. "Yes, it happened fast," I go back. "Fast. And forever. Our internal clocks quit working when we are panicking, fighting for our lives. That's not a medical fact, just a personal observation," I add, groping, feeling my way through memories that aren't complete.
"Then minutes might have seemed like hours to Kim Lu-ong," Berger decides. "Chandonne was with you probably only minutes as he chased you through your great room. How long did it seem?" She is completely focused on this, riveted to me.
"It seemed…" I struggle to describe it. There is no basis for comparison. "Like a flutter…" My voice trails off as I stare at nothing, unblinking, sweating and chilled.
"Like a flutter?" Berger sounds faintly incredulous. "Can you explain what you mean by that, by flutter?"
"Like reality distorts, ripples, like wind ruffling water, the way a puddle looks whe
n wind blows across it, all of your senses suddenly so acute as the animal's survival instinct overrides the brain. You hear air move. You see air move. Everything seems in slow motion, collapsing in on itself, and endless. You see everything, every detail of what is happening, and notice…"
"Notice?" Berger prods.
"Yes, notice" I talk on. "Notice the hair on his hands catching light like monofilament, like fishing line, almost translucent. Notice that he looks almost happy."
"Happy? What do you mean?" Berger quietly asks me. "Was he smiling?"
"I would describe it differently. Not a smile so much as the primitive joy, lust, raging hunger you see in the eyes of an animal about to be fed fresh raw meat." I take a deep breath, focusing on the wall inside my conference room, on a calendar with a Christmas snow scene. Berger sits rigidly, her hands motionless on top of the table. "The problem is not what you observe, it's what you remember," I go on more lucidly. "I think the shock of it all causes a disk error and you can't remember with the same degree of intense attention to detail. Maybe that's survival, too. Maybe we need to forget some things so we don't keep reliving them. Forgetting is part of healing. Like the Central Park jogger dragged off by a gang, raped, beaten, left for dead. Why would she want to remem- her? And I know you are well acquainted with that case," I add with irony. It was Berger's case, of course.
Assistant District Attorney Berger shifts in her chair. "But you do remember," she quietly points out. "And you had seen what Chandonne does to his victims. 'Severe lacerations to the face.' " She begins skimming Luong's autopsy report out loud. " 'Massive comminuted fractures of right parietal bone… fracture of right frontal bone… extending down the midline… bilateral subdural hematoma… disruption of cerebral tissue beneath with accompanying subarachnoid hemorrhaging… depressed fractures that drove the inner table of the skull into the underlying brain… eggshell-like fractures… clotting…"
"Clotting suggests a survival time of at least six minutes from the time the injury was inflicted." I return to my role of interpreter for the dead.
"A hell of a long time," Berger observes, and I can imagine her making a jury sit in silence for six minutes to show them just how long.
"The crushed facial bones, and here"_I touch areas of a photograph_"the splits and tears to skin made by some sort of tool that left a pattern of round and linear wounds."
"Pistol whipping."
"In this case, the Luong case, yes. In Bray's case, he used an unusual type of hammer."
"A chipping hammer."
"I can see you've done your homework."
"A funny habit of mine," she says.
"Premeditation," I go on. "He brought his weapons to the scenes versus using something he found when he got there. And this photo here"_I pick out another horror_"shows knuckle bruises from punching. So he also used his fists to beat her, and from this angle we can see her sweater and bra over there on the floor. It appears he tore them off with his bare hands."
"Based on what?"
"Under the scope you can see that the fibers are torn instead of cut," I reply.
Berger is staring at a body diagram. "Don't think I've ever seen so many bite marks inflicted by a human. Frenzied. Any reason to suspect he might have been under the influence of drugs when he committed these murders?"
"I wouldn't have a way to know."
"What about when you encountered him?" she asks. "When he attacked you on Saturday, shortly after midnight. And by the way, he had the same odd type of hammer, as I understand? A chipping hammer?"
" 'Frenzied' is a good word for it. But I would have no reason to know whether he was on drugs." I pause. "Yes, he had a chipping hammer with him when he tried to attack me."
"Tried? Let's state the facts." She gives me her eyes. "He attacked you. Not tried. He attacked you and you escaped. You got a good look at the hammer?"
"Good point, if we're stating facts. It was a tool of some sort. I know what a chipping hammer looks like."
"What do you remember? The flutter," she refers back to rny strange rendition. "Those endless minutes, the hair on his hands catching light like monofilament."
I envision a black coil handle. "I saw the coil," I tell her as best I can. "I remember that. It's so unusual. A chipping hammer has a handle that looks like a thick, black spring."
"You sure? That's what you saw when he came after you?" She pushes me.
"I am vaguely sure."
"It would be helpful if you are more than vaguely sure," she responds.
"I saw the tip of it. Like a big black beak. When he raised it to hit me. Yes, I'm sure. He had a chipping hammer." I become defiant. "That's exactly what he had."
"They took Chandonne's blood in the E.R.," Berger informs me. "Negative for drugs and alcohol."
She is testing me. She already knew Chandonne was negative for drags and alcohol, yet she withheld that detail long
enough to hear my impressions. She wants to see if I can be objective when talking about my own case. She wants to see if I can stick to the facts. I hear Marino down the hall. He walks in with three steaming foam cups and sets them on the table, sliding a black coffee my way. "I don't know what you take, but you got cream," he rudely tells Berger. "And yours truly takes it fully loaded with cream and sugar because I sure as hell wouldn't want to do anything that might deprive me of my nourishment."
"How seriously messed up would someone be if he got formalin in his eyes?" Berger says to me.
"Depends on how quickly the person rinsed," I objectively answer, as if her inquiry is theoretical and not an allusion to my maiming another human being.
"Must hurt like living hell. An acid, right? I've seen what it does to tissue_turns it into rubber," she comments.
"Not literally."
"Of course not literally," she agrees with a trace of a smile that suggests I ought to lighten up a little, as if that is possible.
"If you suspend tissue in formalin for a long period of time, or inject it_in embalming, for example," I explain, "then yes, it fixes tissue, preserves it indefinitely."
But Berger has little interest in the science of formalin. I am not even sure how interested she is in the extent of any permanent damage the chemical may have caused Chan-donne. I have the sensation she is more focused on how I feel about causing him pain and possible disability. She does not ask me. She just looks at me. I am beginning to feel the weight of those looks. Her eyes are like experienced palpating hands feeling for any anomaly or tenderness.
"We got any idea who he's going to get for a lawyer?" Marino reminds us he is present.
Berger sips her coffee. "The six-million-dollar question."
"So you don't got a clue," Marino says with suspicion.
"Oh, I have a clue. It will be someone you definitely won't like."
"Huh," he retorts. "That's easy to predict. I've never met a
defense attorney I liked."
"At least it will be my problem," she says. "Not yours." She puts him in his place again.
I bristle at this, too. "Look," I tell her, "trying him in New York isn't something that makes me happy."
"I understand how you feel."
"I seriously doubt it."
"Well, I've talked to your friend Mr. Righter_enough to tell you exactly how it would go if you put Monsieur Chan-donne on trial here in Virginia." She is cool now, the expert, just a little sardonic. "The court would nol-pros the imperson-ating-an-officer charge and reduce attempted murder to entering a dwelling with intent to commit murder." She pauses, looking for my reaction. "He never actually touched you. That's the problem."
"Actually, it would have been more of a problem if he had," I answer, refusing to show that she is really beginning to piss me off.
"He may have raised that hammer to strike you, but he never did." Her eyes are steady on mine. "For which we're all grateful."
"You know what they say, your rights are honored only in the breach." I lift my coffee.
"Righter wo
uld have filed a motion to have all of the charges combined into one trial, Dr. Scarpetta. And then what would have been your role? Expert witness? Fact witness? Or victim? The conflict is glaringly apparent. Either you testify as the medical examiner and the attack on you is completely left out, or you're simply a victim who survived and someone else testifies to your record. Or worse"_she pauses for effect_"Righter stipulates your reports. He seems to have a habit of that, from what I understand."
"The guy's got the guts of an empty sock," Marino says. "But the Doc's right. Chandonne ought to pay for what he tried to do to her. And he sure as hell should pay for what he did to the other two women. And he ought to get the death penalty. At least down here, we'd fry him."
"Not If Dr. Scarpetta were somehow discredited as a witness, Captain. A good defense attorney would be quick to paint her as conflicted and squirt a lot of ink into the water."
"Don't matter. It's all moot, right?" Marino says. "He ain't being tried here and I wasn't born yesterday. He won't ever be tried here. You guys will lock him up and us small-timers down here will never get our day in court."
"What was he doing in New York two years ago?" I ask. "Do you have any ideas about that?"
"Huh," Marino says as if he knows details that have not been shared with me yet. "That's a story."
"Could it be his family has cartel connections in my fair city?" Berger lightly suggests.
"Hell, they probably have a damn penthouse apartment," Marino retorts.
"And Richmond?" Berger goes on. "Isn't Richmond a stopping-off point between New York and Miami along the I-95 drug corridor?"
"Oh yeah," Marino answers. "Before Project Exile got going and slapped these drones with time in federal prison if they were caught with guns, drugs. Yeah, Richmond used to be a real popular place to do your business. So if the Chan-donne cartel's in Miami_and we already know that, based on the undercover stuff Lucy was doing down there_and if there's a big New York connection, then no big surprise that cartel guns and drugs were ending up in Richmond, too."
"Were?" she queries. "Maybe still are."
"I guess all this will keep ATF busy for a while," I say.
"Huh," Marino snorts again.
The Last Precinct ks-11 Page 16
