The Body Farm ks-5

by Patricia Cornwell

  "I'd like to look at a tissue section of her lungs," I said.

  "Come on to my office."

  I was considering that the girl might have been drowned, but as I sat over Jenrette's microscope moments later moving around a slide of lung tissue, questions remained unanswered.

  "If she drowned," I explained to him as I worked, "the alveoli should be dilated. There should be edema fluid in the alveolar spaces with disproportionate autolytic change of the respiratory epithelium." I adjusted the focus again.

  "In other words, if her lungs had been contaminated by fresh water, they should have begun decomposing more rapidly than other tissues. But they didn't."

  "What about smothering or strangulation?" he asked.

  "The hyoid was intact. There were no petechial hemorrhages."

  "That's right."

  "And more importantly," I pointed out, "if someone tries to smother or strangle you, you're going to fight like hell. Yet there are no nose or lip injuries, no defense injuries whatsoever."

  He handed me a thick case file.

  "This is everything," he said. While he dictated Max Ferguson's case, I reviewed every report, laboratory request, and call sheet pertaining to Emily Steiner's murder. Her mother, Denesa, had called Dr. Jenrette's office anywhere from one to five times daily since Emily's body had been found. I found this rather remarkable.

  "The decedent was received inside a black plastic pouch sealed by the Black Mountain Police. The seal number is 445337 and the seal is intact" - "Dr. Jenrette?" I interrupted. He removed his foot from the pedal of the dictating machine.

  "You can call me Jim," he said again.

  "It seems her mother has called you with unusual frequency."

  "Some of it is us playing telephone tag. But yes." He slipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  "She's called a lot."

  "Why?"

  "Mostly she's just terribly distraught. Dr. Scarpetta. She wants to make sure her daughter didn't suffer."

  "And what did you tell her?"

  "I told her with a gunshot wound like that, it's probable she didn't.

  I mean, she would have been unconscious. uh, probably was when the other things were done. " He paused for a moment. Both of us knew that Emily Steiner had suffered. She had felt raw terror. At some point she must have known she was going to die.

  "And that's it?" I asked.

  "She's called this many times to find out if her daughter suffered?"

  "Well, no. She's had questions and information. Nothing of particular relevance. " He smiled sadly.

  "I think she just needs someone to talk to. She's a sweet lady who's lost everyone in her life. I can't tell you how badly I feel for her and how much I pray they catch the horrible monster who did this. That Gault monster I've read about. The world will never be safe as long as he's in it."

  "The world will never be safe. Dr. Jenrette. But I can't tell you how much we want to catch him, too. Catch Gault. Catch anybody who does something like this," I said as I opened a thick envelope of glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Only one was unfamiliar, and I studied it intensely for a long time as Dr. Jenrette's unemphatic voice went on. I did not know what I was seeing because I had never seen anything quite like this, and my emotional response was a combination of excitement and fear. The photograph showed Emily Steiner's left buttock, where there was an irregular brownish blotch on the skin no bigger than a bottle cap.

  "The visceral pleura shows scattered petechiae along the interlobar fissures"

  "What is this?" I interrupted Dr. Jenrette's dictation again. He put down the microphone as I came around to his side of the desk and placed the photograph in front of him. I pointed out the mark on Emily's skin as I smelled Old Spice and thought of my ex-husband. Tony, who had always worn too much of it.

  "This mark on her buttock is not covered in your report," I added.

  "I don't know what that is," he said without a trace of defensiveness. He simply sounded tired. "} just assumed it was some sort of postmortem artifact."

  "I don't know of any artifact that looks like that. Did you resect it?"

  "No."

  "Her body was on something that left that mark." I returned to my chair, sat down, and leaned against the edge of his desk.

  "It could be important."

  "Yes, if that's the case, I could see how it might be important," he replied, looking increasingly dejected.

  "She's not been in the ground long." I spoke quietly but with feeling. He stared uneasily at me.

  "She's never going to be in better shape than she is now," I went on.

  "I really think we ought to take another look at her." He did not blink as he wet his lips.

  "Dr. Jenrette," I said, "let's get her up now." Dr. Jenrette flipped through cards in his Rolodex and reached for the phone.

  I watched him dial.

  "Hello, Dr. James Jenrette here," he said to whoever answered.

  "I wonder if Judge Begley might be in? " The Honorable Hal Begley said he would see us in his chambers in half an hour. I drove while Jenrette gave directions, and I parked on College Street with plenty of time to spare. The Buncombe County Courthouse was an old dark brick building that I suspected had been the tallest edifice downtown until not too many years before. Its thirteen stories were topped by the jail, and as I looked up at barred windows against a bright blue sky, I thought of Richmond's overcrowded jail, spread out over acres, with coils of razor wire the only view. I believed it would not be long before cities like Asheville would need more cells as violence continued to become so alarmingly common.

  "Judge Begley's not known for his patience," Dr. Jenrette warned me as we climbed marble steps inside the old courthouse. "I can promise he's not going to like your plan."

  I knew that Dr. Jenrette did not like my plan, either, for no forensic pathologist wants a peer digging up his work. Dr. Jenrette and I both knew that implicit in all of this was that he had not done a good job.

  "Listen," I said as he headed down a corridor on the third floor, "I don't like the plan, either. I don't like exhumations. I wish there were another way."

  "I guess I just wish I had more experience in the kinds of cases you see every day," he added.

  "I don't see cases like this every day," I said, touched by his humility.

  "Thank God, I don't."

  "Well, I'd be lying to you. Dr. Scarpetta, if I said that it wasn't real hard on me when I got called to that little girl's scene. Maybe I should have spent a little more time."

  "I think Buncombe County is extremely lucky to have you," I said sincerely as we opened the judge's outer office door.

  "I wish I had more doctors like you in Virginia. I'd hire you." He knew I meant it and smiled as a secretary as old as any woman I'd ever met who was still employed peered up at us through thick glasses. She used an electric typewriter instead of a computer, and I surmised from the numerous gray steel cabinets lining walls that filing was her forte. Sunlight seeped wanly through barely opened Venetian blinds, a galaxy of dust suspended in the air. I smelled Rose Milk as she rubbed a dollop of moisturizing cream into her bony hands.

  "Judge Begley's expecting you," she said before we introduced ourselves.

  "You can just go on in. That door there." She pointed to a shut door across from the one we had just come through.

  "Now just so you know, court's adjourned for lunch and he's due back at exactly one."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "We'll try not to keep him long."

  "Won't make any difference if you try." Dr. Jenrette's shy knock on the judge's thick oak door was answered by a distracted "Come in!" from the other side. We found His Honor behind a partner's desk, suit jacket off as he sat erectly in an old red leather chair. He was a gaunt, bearded man nearing sixty, and as he glanced over notes in a legal pad, I made a number of telling assessments about him. The orderliness of his desk told me that he was busy and quite capable, and his unfashionable tie and soft-soled shoes be
spoke someone who did not give a damn how people like me assessed him.

  "Why do you want to violate the sepulchre?" he asked in slow Southern cadences that belied a quick mind as he turned a page in a legal pad.

  "After going over Dr. Jenrette's reports," I replied! "we agree some questions were not answered by the first examination of Emily Steiner's body."

  "I know of Dr. Jenrette but don't believe I know you," Judge Begley said to me as he placed the legal pad on the desk.

  "I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia."

  "I was told you had something to do with the FBI."

  "Yes, sir. I am the consulting forensic pathologist for the Investigative Support Unit."

  "Is that like the Behavioral Science Unit?"

  "One and the same. The Bureau changed the name several years ago."

  "You're talking about the folks who do the profiling of these serial killers and other aberrant criminals who until recently we didn't have to worry about in these parts." He watched me closely, lacing his fingers in his lap.

  "That's what we do," I said.

  "Your Honor," Dr. Jenrette said.

  "The Black Mountain Police has requested the assistance of the FBI. There's some fear that the man who murdered the Steiner girl is the same man who killed a number of people in Virginia."

  "I'm aware of that. Dr. Jenrette, since you were so kind as to explain some of this when you called earlier. However, the only item on the agenda right now is your wish for me to grant you the right to dig up this little girl.

  "Before I let you do something as upsetting and disrespectful as that, you're going to have to give me a powerfully good reason. And I do wish the two of you would sit down and make yourselves comfortable. That's why I have chairs on that side of my desk."

  "She has a mark on her skin," I said as I seated myself.

  "What sort of mark?" He eyed me with interest as Dr. Jenrette slipped a photograph out of an envelope and set it on the judge's blotter.

  "You can see it in the photograph," Jenrette said. The judge's eyes dropped to the photograph, his face unreadable.

  "We don't know what the mark is," I explained.

  "But it may tell us where the body lay. It may be some type of injury." He picked up the photograph, squinting as he examined it more closely.

  "Aren't there studies of photographs you can do? Seems to me there's all sorts of scientific things they do these days."

  "There are," I answered.

  "But the problem is, by the time we finish conducting any studies, the body will be in such poor condition that we'll no longer be able to tell anything from it if we still need to exhume it. The longer the interval gets, the harder it is to distinguish between an injury or other significant mark on the body and artifacts due to decomposition."

  "There are a lot of details about this case that make it very odd. Your Honor," Dr. Jenrette said.

  "We just need all the help we can get."

  "I understand the SBI agent working the case was found hanged yesterday. I saw that in the morning paper."

  "Yes, sir," Dr. Jenrette said.

  "Are there odd details about his death, too?"

  "There are," I replied.

  "I hope you're not going to come back here a week from now and want to dig him up."

  "I can't imagine that," I said.

  "This little girl has a mama. And just how do you think she's going to feel about what you've got in mind?" Neither Dr. Jenrette nor I replied. Leather creaked as the judge shifted in his chair. He glanced past us at a clock on the wall.

  "See, that's my biggest problem with what you're asking," he went on.

  "I'm thinking about this poor woman, about what all she's been through. I have no interest whatsoever in putting her through anything else."

  "We wouldn't ask if we didn't think it was important to the investigation of her daughter's death," I said.

  "And I know Mrs. Steiner must want justice. Your Honor. "

  "You go get her mama and bring her to me," Judge Begley said as he got up from his chair.

  "Excuse me?" Dr. Jenrette looked bewildered.

  "I want her mama brought to me," the judge repeated.

  "I should be freed up by two-thirty. I'll expect to see you back here."

  "What if she won't come?" Dr. Jenrette asked, and both of us got up.

  "Can't say I'd blame her a bit."

  "You don't need her permission," I said with calm I did not feel.

  "No, ma'am, I don't," said the judge as he opened the door.

  7

  Dr. Jenrette was kind enough to let me use his office while he disappeared into the hospital labs, and for the next several hours I was on the phone. The most important task, ironically, turned out to be the easiest. Marino had no trouble convincing Denesa Steiner to accompany him to the judge's chambers that afternoon. More difficult was figuring out how to get them there, since Marino still did not have a car.

  "What's the holdup?" I asked.

  "The friggin' scanner they put in don't work," he said irritably.

  "Can't you do without that?"

  "They don't seem to think so."

  I glanced at my watch.

  "Maybe I'd better come get you."

  "Yeah, well, I'd rather get there myself. She's got a pretty decent ride. In fact, there are some who say an Infinin's better than a Benz."

  "That's moot, since I'm driving a Chevrolet at the moment."

  "She said her father-in-law used to have a Benz a lot like yours and you ought to think of switching to an Infiniti or Legend."

  I was silent.

  "Just food for thought."

  "Just get here," I said shortly.

  "Yeah, I will."

  "Fine." We hung up without good-byes, and as I sat at Dr. Jenrette's cluttered desk I felt exhausted and betrayed. I had been through Marino's bad times with Doris. I had supported him as he had begun venturing forth into the fast, frightening world of dating. In return, he had always telegraphed judgments about my personal life without benefit of having been asked. He had been negative about my ex-husband, and very critical of my former lover. Mark. He rarely had anything nice to say about Lucy or the way I dealt with her, and he did not like my friends. Most of all, I felt his cold stare on my relationship with Wesley. I felt Marino's jealous rage. He was not at Begley's office when Dr. Jenrette and I returned at half past two. As minutes crept by inside the judge's chambers, my anger grew.

  "Tell me where you were born. Dr. Scarpetta," the judge said to me from the other side of his immaculate desk.

  "Miami," I replied.

  "You certainly don't talk like a Southerner. I would have placed you up north somewhere."

  "I was educated in the North."

  "It might surprise you to know that I was, too," he said.

  "Why did you settle here?" Dr. Jenrette asked him.

  "I'm sure for some of the very same reasons that you did."

  "But you're from here," I said.

  "Going back three generations. My great-grandfather was born in a log cabin around here. He was a teacher. That was on my mother's side. On my father's side we had mostly moonshiners until about halfway into this century. Then we had preachers. I believe that might be them now." Marino opened the door, and his face peeked in before his feet did. Denesa Steiner was behind him, and though I would never accuse Marino of chivalry, he was unusually attentive and gentle with this rather peculiarly put together woman whose dead daughter was our reason for gathering. The judge rose, and out of habit so did I, as Mrs. Steiner regarded each of us with curious sadness.

  "I'm Dr. Scarpetta." I offered my hand and found hers cool and soft.

  "I'm terribly sorry about this, Mrs. Steiner."

  "I'm Dr. Jenrette. We've talked on the phone."

  "Won't you be seated," the judge said to her very kindly. Marino moved two chairs close together, directing her to one while he took the other. Mrs. Steiner was in her mid- to late thirt
ies and dressed entirely in black. Her skirt was full and below her knees, a sweater buttoned to her chin. She wore no makeup, her only jewelry a plain gold wedding ring. She looked the part of a spinster missionary, yet the longer I studied her, the more I saw what her puritanical grooming could not hide. She was beautiful, with smooth pale skin and a generous mouth, and curly hair the color of honey. Her nose was patrician, her cheekbones high, and beneath the folds of her horrible clothes hid a voluptuously well formed body. Nor had her attributes successfully eluded anything male and breathing in the room. Marino, in particular, could not take his eyes off her.

  "Mrs. Steiner," the judge began, "the reason I wanted you to come here this afternoon is these doctors have made a request I wanted you to hear. And let me say right off how much I appreciate your coming. From all accounts, you've shown nothing but courage and decency during these unspeakably trying hours, and I have no intention whatsoever of adding to your burdens unnecessarily."

  "Thank you, sir," she said quietly, her tapered, pale hands clasped tightly in her lap.

  "Now, these doctors have found a few things in the photographs taken after little Emily died. The things they've found are mysterious and they want to take another look at her."

  "How can they do that?" she asked innocently in a voice steady and sweet, and not indigenous to North Carolina.

  "Well, they want to exhume her," the judge replied. Mrs. Steiner did not look upset but baffled, and my heart ached for her as she fought back tears.

  "Before I say yes or no to their request," Begley went on, "I want to see how you might feel about this."

  "You want to dig her up?" She looked at Dr. Jenrette, then me.

  "Yes," I answered her.

  "We would like to examine her again immediately."

  "I don't understand what you might find this time that you didn't find before." Her voice trembled.

  "Maybe nothing that will matter," I said.

  "But there are a few details I noticed in photographs that I'd like to get a closer look at, Mrs. Steiner. These mysterious things might help us catch whoever did this to Emily. "