"Going up to forty-five hundred feet," our pilot's voice sounded in our headsets.
"Everybody all right back there?"
"I don't guess you can smoke in here," Marino said. At ten past nine, the inky sky was pricked with stars, the Blue Ridge a black ocean swelling without motion or sound. We followed deep shadows of woods, smoothly turning with the pitch of blades toward a brick building that I suspected was a school. Around a corner, we found a football field with police lights flashing and flares burning copper in an unnecessary illumination of our landing zone. And the Nightsun's thirty million peak candlepower blazed down from our belly as we made our descent. At the fifty-yard line, Whit settled us softly like a bird.
" 'Home of the War Horses,' " Wesley read from bunting draped along the fence.
"Hope they're having a better season than we are." Marino gazed out his window as the blades slowed down.
"I haven't seen a high school football game since I was in one."
"I didn't know you played football," I remarked.
"Yo. Number twelve."
"What position?"
"Tight end."
"That figures," I said.
"This is actually Swannanoa," Whit announced.
"Black Mountain's just east." We were met by two uniformed officers from the Black Mountain Police. They looked too young to drive or carry guns, their faces pale and peculiar as they tried not to stare. It was as if we had arrived by spacecraft in a blaze of gyrating lights and unearthly quiet. They did not know what to make of us or what was happening in their town, and it was with very little conversation that they drove us away. Moments later, we parked along a narrow street throbbing with engines and emergency lights. I counted three cruisers in addition to ours, one ambulance, two fire trucks, two unmarked cars, and a Cadillac.
"Great," Marino muttered as he shut the car door.
"Everybody and his cousin Abner's here." Crime-scene tape ran from the front porch posts to shrubbery, fanning out on either side of the beige two-story aluminum-sided house. A Ford Bronco was parked in the gravel drive ahead of an unmarked Skylark with police antennas and lights.
"The cars are Ferguson's?" Wesley asked as we mounted concrete steps.
"The ones in the drive, yes, sir," the officer replied.
"That window up in the comer's where he's at."
I was dismayed when Lieutenant Hershel Mote suddenly appeared in the front doorway. Obviously, he had not followed my advice.
"How are you feeling?" I asked him.
"I'm holding on." He looked so relieved to see us I almost expected a hug. But his face was gray. Sweat ringed the collar of his denim shirt and shone on his brow and neck. He reeked of stale cigarettes. We hesitated in the foyer, our backs to stairs that led to the second floor.
"What's been done?" Wesley asked.
"Doc Jenrette took pictures, lots of'em, but he didn't touch nothing, just like you said. He's outside talking to the squad if you need him."
"There's a lot of cars out there," Marino said.
"Where is everybody?"
"A couple of the boys are in the kitchen. And one or two's poking around the yard and in the woods out back."
"But they haven't been upstairs?" Mote let out a deep breath.
"Well, now, I'm not going to stand here and lie to you. They did go on up and look. But nobody's messed with anything, I can promise you that. The Doc's the only one who got close." He started up the stairs.
"Max is… he's… Well, goddam." He stopped and looked back at us, his eyes bright with tears.
"I'm not clear on how you discovered him," Marino said. We resumed climbing steps as Mote struggled for composure. The floor was covered in the same dark red carpet I had seen downstairs, the heavily varnished pine paneling the color of honey. He cleared his throat.
"About six this evening I stopped by to see if Max wanted to go out for some supper. When he didn't come to the door, I figured he was in the shower or something and came on in.
"Were you aware of anything that might have indicated he had a history of this type of activity?" Wesley delicately asked.
"No, sir," Mote said with feeling.
"I can't imagine it. I sure don't understand… Well, I've heard tell of people rigging up weird things. I can't say I know what it's for."
"The point of using a noose while masturbating is to place pressure on the carotids," I explained.
"This constricts the flow of oxygen and blood to the brain, which supposedly enhances orgasm."
"Also known as going while you're coming," Marino remarked with his typical subtlety. Mote did not accompany us as we moved forward to a lighted doorway at the end of the hall.
SBI Agent Max Ferguson had a manly, modest bedroom with pine chests of drawers and a rack filled with shotguns and rifles over a rolltop desk. His pistol, wallet, credentials, and a box of Rough Rider condoms were on the table by the quilt-covered bed, the suit I'd seen him wearing in Quantico this morning neatly draped over a chair, shoes and socks nearby.
A wooden bar stool stood between the bathroom and closet, inches from where his body was covered with a colorful crocheted afghan. Overhead, a severed nylon cord dangled from an eye hook screwed into the wooden ceiling. I got gloves and a thermometer out of my medical bag. Marino swore under his breath as I pulled the afghan back from what must have been Ferguson's worst nightmare.
I doubted he would have feared a bullet half as much. He was on his back, the size-D cups of a long- line black brassiere stuffed with socks that smelled faintly of musk. The pair of black nylon panties he had put on before he died had been pulled down around his hairy knees, and a condom still clung limply to his penis. Magazines nearby revealed his predilection for women in bondage with spectacularly augmented breasts and nipples the size of saucers.
I examined the nylon noose tightly angled around the towel padding his neck. The cord, old and fuzzy, had been severed just above the eighth turn of a perfect hangman's knot. His eyes were almost shut, his tongue protruding.
"Is this consistent with him sitting on the stool?" Marino looked up at the segment of rope attached to the ceiling.
"Yes," I said.
"So he was beating off and slipped?"
"Or he may have lost consciousness and then slipped," I answered. Marino moved to the window and leaned over a tumbler of amber liquid on the sill.
"Bourbon," he announced.
"Straight or close to it." The rectal temperature was 91 degrees, consistent with what I would have expected had Ferguson been dead approximately five hours in this room, his body covered. Rigor mortis had started in the small muscles. The condom was a studded affair with a large reservoir that was dry, and I went over to the bed to take a look at the box. One condom was missing, and when I stepped into the master bathroom I found the purple foil wrapper in the wicker trash basket.
"That's interesting," I said as Marino opened dresser drawers.
"What is?"
"I guess I assumed he would have put on the condom while he was rigged up."
"Makes sense to me."
"Then wouldn't you expect the wrapper to be near his body?" I picked it out of the trash, touching as little of it as possible, and placed it inside a plastic bag.
When Marino didn't respond, I added, "Well, I guess it all depends on when he pulled down his panties. Maybe he did that before he put the noose around his neck."
I walked back into the bedroom. Marino was squatting by a chest of drawers, staring at the body, a mixture of incredulity and disgust on his face.
"And I always thought the worst thing that could happen is you croak on the John," he said.
I looked up at the eye bolt in the ceiling. There was no way to tell how long it had been there. I started to ask Marino if he had found any other pornography when we were startled by a heavy thud in the hallway.
"What the hell…?" Marino exclaimed. He was out the door, and I was right behind him. Lieutenant Mote had collapsed near the stairs. H
e was facedown and motionless on the carpet. When I knelt beside him and turned him over, he was already blue.
"He's in cardiac arrest! Get the squad!" I pulled Mote's jaw forward to make sure his airway was unobstructed. Marino's feet thundered down the stairs as I placed my fingers on Mote's carotid and felt no pulse. I thumped his chest but his heart would not answer. I began CPR, compressing his chest once, twice, three times, four, then tilted his head back and blew once into his mouth. His chest rose, and one-two three-four I blew again.
I maintained a rhythm of sixty compressions per minute as sweat rolled down my temples and my own pulse roared. My arms ached and were becoming as unwilling as stone when I began the third minute and the noise of paramedics and police swelled up from the stairs. Someone gripped my elbow and guided me out of the way as many pairs of gloved hands slapped on leads, hung a bottle of IV fluid, and started a line. Voices barked orders and announced every activity in the loud dispassion of rescue efforts and emergency rooms. As I leaned against the wall and tried to catch my breath, I noticed a short, fair young man incongruously dressed for golf watching the activity from the landing. After several glances in my direction, he approached me shyly.
"Dr. Scarpetta?" His earnest face was sunburned below his brow, which obviously had been spared by a cap. It occurred to me that he probably belonged to the Cadillac parked out front.
"Yes?"
"James Jenrette," he said, confirming my suspicions.
"Are you all right?" He withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief and offered it to me.
"I'm doing okay, and I'm very glad you're here," I said sincerely, for I could not turn over my latest patient to someone who was not an M. D.
"Can I entrust Lieutenant Mote to your care?" My arms trembled as I wiped my face and neck.
"Absolutely. I'll go with him to the hospital." Jenrette next handed me his card.
"If you have any other questions tonight, just page me."
"You'll be posting Ferguson in the morning?" I asked.
"Yes. You're welcome to assist. Then we'll talk about all this." He looked down the hall.
"I'll be there. Thank you." I managed a smile. Jenrette followed the stretcher out, and I returned to the bedroom at the end of the hall. From the window, I watched lights pulse blood red on the street below as Mote was placed inside the ambulance. I wondered if he would live.
I sensed the presence of Ferguson in his flaccid condom and stiff brassiere, and none of it seemed real. The tailgate slammed. Sirens whelped as if in protest before they began to scream. I was not aware that Marino had walked into the room until he touched my arm.
"Katz is downstairs," he informed me. I slowly turned around.
"We'll need another squad," I said.
4
It had long been a theoretical possibility that latent fingerprints could be left on human skin. But the likelihood of recovering them had been so remote as to discourage most of us from trying. Skin is a difficult surface, for it is plastic and porous, and its moisture, hairs, and oils interfere. On the uncommon occasion that a print is successfully transferred from assailant to victim, the ridge detail is far too fragile to survive much time or exposure to the elements. Dr. Thomas Katz was a master forensic scientist who had maniacally pursued this elusive evidence for most of his career. He also was an expert in time of death, which he researched just as diligently with ways and means that were not commonly known to the hoi polloi. His laboratory was called The Body Farm, and I had been there many times. He was a small man with prepossessed blue eyes, a great shock of white hair, and a face amazingly benevolent for the atrocities he had seen. When I met him at the top of the stairs, he was carrying a box window fan, a tool chest, and what looked like a section of vacuum cleaner hose with several odd attachments. Marino was behind him with the rest of what Katz called his "Cyanoacrylate Blowing Contraption," a double-decker aluminum box fitted with a hot plate and a computer fan. He had spent hundreds of hours in his East Tennessee garage perfecting this rather simple mechanical implement.
"Where are we heading?" Katz asked me.
"The room at the end of the hall." I relieved him of the window fan.
"How was your trip?"
"More traffic than I bargained for. Tell me what all's been done to the body."
"He was cut down and covered with a wool afghan. I have not examined him."
"I promise not to delay you too much. It's a lot easier now that I'm not bothering with a tent."
"What do you mean, a tent?" Marino frowned as we entered the bedroom.
"I used to put a plastic tent over the body and do the fuming inside it. But too much vapor and the skin gets too frosted. Dr. Scarpetta, you can set the fan in that window." Katz looked around.
"I might have to use a part of water. It's a bit dry in here."
I gave him as much history as we had at this point.
"Do you have any reason to think this is something other than an accidental auto erotic asphyxiation?" he asked.
"Other than the circumstances," I replied, "no."
"He was working that little Steiner girl's case."
"That's what we mean by circumstances," Marino said.
"Lord, if that hasn't been in the news all over."
"We were in Quantico this morning meeting about that case," I added.
"And he comes straight home and then this." Katz looked thoughtfully at the body.
"You know, we found a prostitute in a Dumpster the other week and got a good outline of a hand on her ankle. She'd been dead four or five days."
"Kay?" Wesley stepped into the doorway.
"May I see you for a minute?"
"And you used this thing on her?" Marino's voice followed us into the hall.
"I did. She had painted fingernails, and as it turns out, they're real good, too."
"For what?"
"Prints."
"Where does this go?"
"Doesn't matter much. I'm going to fume the entire room. I'm afraid it's going to mess up the place."
"I don't think he's gonna complain." Downstairs in the kitchen, I noticed a chair by the phone where I supposed Mote had sat for hours waiting for us to arrive. Nearby on the floor was a glass of water and an ashtray crammed with cigarette butts.
"Take a look," said Wesley, who was accustomed to searching for odd evidence in odd places. He had filled the double sink with foods he had gotten out of the freezer. I moved closer to him as he opened the folds of a small, flat package wrapped in white freezer paper. Inside were shrunken pieces of frozen flesh, dry at the edges and reminiscent of yellowed waxy parchment.
"Any chance I'm thinking the wrong thing?" Wesle/s tone was grim.
"Good God, Benton," I said, stunned.
"They were in the freezer on top of these other things. Ground beef, pork chops, pizza." He nudged packages with a gloved finger.
"I was hoping you'd tell me it's chicken skin. Maybe something he uses for fish bait or who knows what."
"There are no feather holes, and the hair is fine like human hair."
He was silent.
"We need to pack this in dry ice and fly it back with us," I said.
"That won't be tonight."
"The sooner we can get immunological testing done, the sooner we can confirm it's human. DNA will confirm identity." He returned the package to the freezer.
"We need to check for prints."
"I'll put the tissue in plastic and we'll submit the freezer paper to the labs," I said.
"Good." We climbed the stairs. My pulse would not slow down. At the end of the hallway, Marino and Katz stood outside the shut door. They had threaded a hose through the hole where the doorknob had been, the contraption humming as it pumped Super Glue vapors into Ferguson's bedroom.
Wesley had yet to mention the obvious, so finally I did.
"Benton, I didn't see any bite marks or anything else someone may have tried to eradicate."
"I know," he said.
"We're
almost done," Katz told us when we got to them.
"A room this size and you can get by with less than a hundred drops of Super Glue."
"Pete," Wesley said, "we've got an unexpected problem."
"I thought we'd already reached our quota for the day," he said, staring blandly at the hose pumping poison beyond the door.
"That should do it," said Katz, who was typically impervious to the moods of those around him.
"All I got to do now is clear out the fumes with the fan. That will take a minute or two." He opened the door and we backed away. The overpowering smell didn't seem to bother him in the least.
"He probably gets high off the stuff," Marino muttered as Katz walked into the room.
"Ferguson's got what appears to be human skin in his freezer." Wesley went straight to the point.
"You want to run that one by me again?" Marino said, startled.
"I don't know what we're dealing with here," Wesley added as the window fan inside the room began to whir.
"But we got one detective dead with incriminating evidence found with his frozen hamburgers and pizza. We got another detective with a heart attack. We've got a murdered eleven-year- old girl."
"Goddam," Marino said, his face turning red.
"I hope you brought enough clothes to stay for a while," Wesley added to both of us.
"Goddam," Marino said again.
"That son of a bitch." He looked straight at me and I knew exactly what he was thinking. A part of me hoped he was wrong. But if Gault wasn't playing his usual malignant games, I wasn't certain the alternative was better.
"Does this house have a basement?" I asked.
"Yes," Wesley answered.
"What about a big refrigerator?" I asked.
"I haven't seen one. But I haven't been in the basement." Inside the bedroom, Katz turned off the window fan. He motioned to us that it was all right to come in.
"Man, try getting this shit off," Marino said as he looked around. Super Glue dries white and is as stubborn as cement. Every surface in the room was lightly frosted with it, including Ferguson's body. With flashlight angled, Katz side lighted smudges on walls, furniture, windowsills, and the guns over the desk. But it was just one he found that brought him to his knees.
The Body Farm ks-5 Page 5
