When the buzzing stopped, I held my breath and turned around. Bauer’s rubber apron was shiny and red. Bright freckles sprayed her safety goggles. In her bloody gloved fingers she held a bullet. The brass so bright it looked cleaned. She tossed the cartridge into a metal bedpan. It landed with a ping.
John stepped forward, picked up the pan. He held it under the pendant light. “Looks like thirty-eight,” he told me, before turning to Bauer. “Her body was wrapped in plastic."
"What kind of plastic?"
"Lawn bags, garbage bags. The big black things. Duct-taped around her like a mummy."
"Not like a mummy," she corrected him. "Mummies are embalmed first. But the plastic changes what I said about her time in the landfill. I was assuming accelerated decay because her skin would have been in contact with acidic municipal waste. And the heat of summer. But the bags would alter the rate of decomposition.
Bauer’s small hands hovered two inches above the mottled brown and green skin, moving like augers. Wisps of her pale blond hair peeked out from under her surgical cap. Somehow, despite bloody gloves and an apron smeared with blood, the medical examiner looked clean, sparkling clean. Something about her reminded me of a diamond. Earth's hardest substance, glittering with weightless light.
Her hand stopped. "There."
"Where there?" John said.
She pointed at the right leg. "Do you see those?"
"Worms?” he said. “Yeah. I've been looking at them all day."
“She means the pupae sacs."
For the first time, Bauer looked at me directly. "Yes, that is correct."
John said, "Raleigh here used to work in the Bureau's lab, in DC."
"Entymology?" she asked.
"Mineralogy."
She raised an eyebrow. “Can you explain to Agent Breit the significance of these 'worm' holes in her skin?"
“When maggots turn into flies they leave behind empty pupae cases. If you see the sacs, that means there’s been at least one fly cycle since time of death. You can get a timeline because each fly cycle requires a minimum of fourteen days."
"And the soil," she said. “I presume you collected some.”
"Yeah," John said, "Raleigh took a bunch of it. What gives?"
Her eyes were twinkling. She enjoyed talking over his head, playing with his ego.
"I took soil samples because as the human body decomposes, it releases five fatty acids. The chemical composition of those acids varies with time. Like the pupae sacks, the acids can help pinpoint time of death."
John looked at Bauer. "Okay, so what do we need you for?"
She threw him a withering glance. "My concern would be that the landfill seepage can interfere with the fatty acid detection. Too many broths in the soup, so to speak." She carefully pulled off the gloves and threw them in the lined garbage can marked Medical Waste. "I have another matter pending at the moment, rather urgent. So my assistants will finish this later today. Do we have an ID?"
Before I left her apartment, Mrs. Saunders had answered another despairing question. “The mother says dental records are at MCV," I said. “The family went to the student dentists, for free.”
"I have the number, I’ll put in a call."
"You have my number, too,” John said.
Bauer threw him another look, then walked out of the room.
I was still not sure what had just happened. Something passed between John and Bauer, something that nudged at my conscience. John had acted so different, so strange – leering during an autopsy. And Bauer was even crisper than usual, cutting the exam short.
As we walked down South Jackson Street to our cars, I finally said, “What happened in there?”
“What d’you mean?” He stopped and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
"You smoke?"
"Yeah, after being in that place. Gets rid of that dead smell, you know."
I did know, and was reaching into my purse for a breath mint when I saw the nail polish in the clear evidence bag. John had already told me he didn't think it was worth adding to the investigation--one more expense for testing, which he would have to justify to Phaup.
I lifted the plastic bag. "I should take this back to the mother."
John pulled on the smoke, sucking so hard he burned the ember down an inch. "You really want them to check it?" he asked.
I hesitated. It was his case now. But, boy, did it feel good to be asked. I nodded. “The minerals in the polish can give us an absolute match.”
"Tell them to take a sample from her nail, fast,” he said. “Phaup's back in two days."
"You don’t mind, really?"
"No. In fact take it directly to Bauer. Tell her I want the test done."
In the ME building, the receptionist said Bauer was unavailable right now. On a hunch, I asked her to tell Bauer it was John Breit calling.
Moments later the ME came striding out of her office. She was wearing fresh scrubs.
"Oh, it’s you. Forget something?" Her tone said we were good friends now. Science girls who spoke the same language.
“The pedicure, on the broken foot?” I held up the bottle of nail polish. "John wants to know if the polish matches this sample."
Her eyes were golden, almost citrine. She took the bottle from my hand, turning it slowly. "What mineral does this color remind you of, Agent Harmon?"
"Corundum."
"Corundum, yes. But that wouldn't sell any nail polish. ‘Ruby red’ might."
Ruby was the red form of corundum. My face turned almost as red as the polish. Caught showing off. Maybe that was her game plan.
She smiled. “Is he outside?"
"John?”
“Yes. Smoking a cigarette, am I right?”
I nodded.
Her smile was feline and suddenly I knew. John craved that smoke for reasons that had nothing to do with the stench of death.
And everything to do with the way certain people can pierce the human heart.
Chapter 43
Later that day, I parked the Benz on Church Hill and watched the activity at a three-story Georgian on East Franklin Street.
The house belonged to Mayor Louis Mendant. In the hour that I sat there, several people came and went. None of them looking like they were on official city business, especially on a Sunday. When a short school bus stopped at the curb, the pneumatic doors sighed open, and a young girl jumped out. She was carrying a violin case, and her skinny legs kicked out from under a pleated school uniform. As the bus passed by, I read the named on its side. St. Catherine's School. My old alma mater. The most expensive private school in Richmond. And the youth orchestra must have had a Sunday performance at some church.
The girl skipped across the street, the plaid skirt parachuting around her legs. Bounding up the brick stoop, she threw open the front door and leaped inside. The door was painted yellow, as yellow as the school bus. The brick house was painted blue. Sapphire blue.
Climbing out of the car, I walked down the herringbone brick sidewalk. From this side of Church Hill, the view showed the James River lazing across the land like melted glass. It was the city’s most spectacular vista, and it had drawn settlers to this hill more than three hundred years ago. Tobacco merchants, cotton traders. Colonial bankers and sea captains. Prosperous men, they lined Church Hill with proud homes that testified to their fortunes -- fortunes often built with the economic advantages of slavery.
And fortunes that evaporated with the War of Northern Aggression.
But the houses went into real descent during the 1950s, with public school integration and Richmond’s white exodus. Squatters, scavengers, and salvage yards hollowed out the historic cores, and crime took care of the exteriors.
But a resurgence began during the 1990s, and the grand homes were restored down to their handmade shutters and gas lanterns. History didn’t just repeat itself; it pivoted on paradoxes. The new home owners were mostly black, many the descendants of slaves. And now they were the inadvertent
inheritors of antebellum fortunes.
The street’s exception was Mayor Mendant's house. While his neighbors retained the historic architecture, the mayor had added crimson awnings hunched over the sash windows, clashing with both the blue brick and yellow front door. As I walked up the brick stoop, I saw dog droppings in the small front yard. The grass was pale as straw, and the presumed grass-killer barked when I knocked on the front door. Barked and barked. A sharp sound. Meaning an ankle biter.
The mayor cracked the door four inches, peering out at me. The dog was trying to get past his legs.
"You people don't know how to call?" he asked.
"I was in the neighborhood."
"And my dog doesn't bite unless I tell him to."
With that, he opened the door.
The dog was a terrier, and as I stepped into the foyer its nails scrabbled across the polished marble floor. Sniffing my pant leg, he shoved his snout into my ankle like it was a buried bone.
"If you’re here to ask about witnesses," he said, "I asked around. Nobody saw anything."
"I figured that."
"You could’ve listened to me in the beginning, but you people just don't get it." The mayor grabbed the brass doorknob, believing we were done. "And y'all better come to some conclusions. People don’t like waiting this long."
"The FBI is still working on the case, Mr. Mayor." John had not closed it. Now he wasn’t interested in closing it. "But I’m here on a different matter. The landfill over on P Street?"
His hand was still on the knob, but he hesitated one split-second. His agate-like eyes clouded. "The landfill.”
“Yes.”
“Why’re you asking about the landfill?"
"Funny, Harrison Fielding said the same thing. But this morning the FBI found a dead body in there."
He let go of the doorknob. The dog’s wet nose was against my sock.
"J.R.! Knock it off."
I gritted my teeth, feeling the snuffling breath cold and moist on my skin.
"J.R.!"
The dog ignored the mayor.
He stomped over to a staircase that rose wide and grand from the foyer. The second-story landing was empty.
"Marlene!" He called up the stairs. "Come get your dog!"
The girl from the bus appeared at the top of the stairs. She had changed out of her uniform into cutoffs and sauntered down. I shifted her age to thirteen, packing coiled teenage attitude. She scooped up the small dog and climbed back up the stairs. The dog gazed at us over her shoulder, his lip curling contemptuously.
The mayor gestured toward the parlor across the foyer.
Like the rest of the house, the room had its own sense of style. Teak desk. Victorian fainting couch covered with leopard print. He turned his back to close the tall pocket doors that slid on old casters. As soon as they closed, the atmosphere shifted. The room suddenly had the plush silence of a luxury car. I decided it was because of the walls. Slightly padded, the walls were covered with amber suede.
I took a seat on the serengeti fainting couch while the mayor lifted the rolling cover of a walnut secretary, revealing a small humidor. The rows of cigars lined up like bullets in a magazine. For several moments, he shuffled the selection, turning his back to block my view. He finally chose a cigar that resembled a Scud missile, and I tried to forget any Freudian theories I might have learned.
"You wanted to know about the landfill."
In the room’s echoless atmosphere his voice sounded almost muffled. I swallowed, trying to pop my ears, and waited a moment for him to light the cigar. But the room had no aroma of tobacco. He was just holding it. Like a weapon.
"A garbage dump doesn’t improve a neighborhood,” I said. “I'm curious why you would put so much support into it."
"You haven't noticed? The city needs money. Why should we turn down that kind of revenue."
"I can think of two reasons. One, it’s a blight. And two, Harrison Fielding owns that land."
"You must not live in the city,” he said.
"You singled Fielding out during the protest march,” I persisted. “You made him sound like Enemy Number One for his factory but--"
"Factory? You’re making it sound like a legitimate business. That’s empty space. And it takes up a whole city block, while the man refuses to pay the taxes. Again, this is why we approved the landfill. Tax revenues.”
"So once the landfill went through, you were free to demonize him. Was that something you two worked out, or did you spring it on him?"
He rolled the brown cigar between his fingers. "My help on the landfill was based on principle."
"What about the protest?"
"Principle too."
"What principle are we talking about?" I asked.
"Reparations.”
"Reparations. For?"
"Slavery, what else. The black slave built that big Fielding fortune. The black slave made all those people on the river rich. Time to pay up for all that hard we did for free."
“‘We?‘”
“My people.”
But my knowledge of Fielding history was better than most. "It’s an odd family to choose, if that was the principle behind the protest.”
“What?”
“The Fieldings sided with the North. They freed their slaves voluntarily."
"They still had slaves."
I opened my mouth, about to say something, when I stopped. I almost admired him. The politician's acumen. How easily he had steered me off course. "Back to the landfill. This morning, as I said, the FBI discovered a body. A young woman."
The mayor didn't blink. He didn’t even feign surprise. Twisting the cigar, he waited for me to continue.
"That doesn't surprise you?" I said.
"It did."
“How’s that?”
"My constituents make sure I know what happens here on The Hill. Somebody already called me this morning. Said a man and a woman were snooping around the landfill."
"But I suppose nobody knows who killed that poor girl."
The smoky agate eyes darkened. His mouth tensed and he stood. Walking to the humidor he replaced the cigar in the box. "Agent Harmon – isn’t that right?”
I nodded. He turned around.
“Your name is Agent Harmon, am I correct?”
I nodded again, suddenly wary. Suddenly wondering if he knew I’d been suspended.
“Well, Agent Harmon, I called for a civil rights investigation. Y'all were supposed to look into that white cop murdering an innocent black man in broad daylight. But instead you can’t find anything to go on so you come to my house, on a Sunday, trying to divert my attention with another matter. I refuse to play your game."
And I refused to play his game. “Harrison Fielding,” I said.
“What about him?”
"He couldn’t have gotten that landfill through without your enthusiastic support. He needed you, because he needed every black vote on city council. What did he offer you?"
He tapped the humidor, closing the lid. He pulled the cover over the secretary then turned smiling, mocking my question.
"Take that fancy black car you parked outside my house and drive around Church Hill. Ask these folks what they need, they'll tell you. Money. They need money for schools. They need it to feed their families, raise their kids. And that’s my job, to bring money into this district." He pushed open the pocket doors." And you’ve got some nerve, coming in my house like this."
Sound seemed to wash into the room. I could hear a clicking sound. Like the dog’s claws ticking across the floor above us. And a hip-hop beat. Monotonous, reverberating. And then there was a soft whoosh as the air conditioning system kicked on. I could feel the cool air blowing from tiny vents in the padded ceiling.
The mayor had already opened the front door.
And when I walked out, he slammed it behind me.
Chapter 44
Hands shaking, I rolled down the windows on the Benz and drove up East Franklin, circled Chimbarazo Park
, and tried to get my mind to settle down. At the corner of 25th and East Broad, I finally pulled over and took several deep breaths.
Unlike Harrison Fielding, the mayor wasn't susceptible to bluffing. I couldn’t decide if the FBI would tell him about my suspension. On one hand, it would make the Bureau look bad; on the other Phaup could claim she was “redirecting” the Civil Rights investigation. Either way, I had the sense that Lulu Mendant knew my current status. And he knew I was stepping over a line. So he pushed back.
But for my own sake, I needed to see Mendant's face when the words were said. Landfill. Harrison Fielding. The dead girl who decomposed in their civic project.
I saw his face, all right. It told me his bluff was better than mine.
And for my willfulness, what did I have? Almost nothing. Except Mendant’s chance to sue for impersonating a federal agent. Something to make OPR really happy.
I was pulling a U-turn, heading back to downtown Richmond, when the bells started ringing. Sunday afternoon and St. John’s church bells were chiming with the hour. The iron notes echoed across the brick, rolling down the road. I whipped the steering wheel around once more.
I knew two cures for a frantic pulse -- running and prayer.
Parking the Benz on East Broad, I walked past the church’s the parish cemetery. Buried here were Edgar Allen Poe's mother and some dozen Harmons who built the white clapboard church in what was then the New World. Though a historic landmark, St. John's still held services amid a steady stream of tourists. People wanted to see where Patrick Henry delivered his famous ultimatum about liberty versus death. It was in the sanctuary. A re-enactor gave the speech daily.
And when I snuck into the box pew which once belonged to my family, another tour was underway. The re-enactor guide was wearing a Colonial-era white shirt with plumy sleeves and brown knickers. He spoke with an arcane English accent, painting a picture of Richmond on the eve of revolution in 1775. I gently closed the short door to the pew, but the hinges creaked loud enough to make everyone turn and look.
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