Point of Origin ks-9

by Patricia Cornwell

  'In the first place,' I answered, 'nothing is going to be helpful postmortem because the brain is cooked. But even if that were not the case, looking for a morphological correlate to a particular psychiatric syndrome is, in most cases, still theoretical. A widening of the sulci, for example, and reduced gray matter due to atrophy might be a signpost if we knew what the weight of the brain originally was when she was healthy. Then maybe I could say, Okay, her brain weighs a hundred grams less now than it did, so she might have been suffering from some sort of mental disease. Unless she has a lesion or old head injury that might suggest a problem, the answer to your question is no, I can't tell.'

  McGovern was silent, and it was not lost on her that I was clinical and not the least bit friendly. Even though I was aware of my rather brittle demeanor around her, I could not seem to soften it. I looked around for Ruffin. He was at the first dissecting sink, suturing a Y incision in long strokes of needle and twine. I motioned to him and walked over. He was too young to worry about turning thirty anytime soon, and had gotten his training in an O.R. and a funeral home.

  'Chuck, if you can finish up here and put her back in the fridge,' I said to him.

  'Yes, ma'am.'

  He returned to his station to finish his present task while I peeled off gloves and dropped them and my mask into one of many red biological hazard containers scattered around the autopsy room.

  'Let's go to my office and have a cup of coffee,' I suggested to McGovern in an attempt to be a little more civil. 'And we can finish this discussion.'

  In the locker room, we washed with antibacterial soap and I got dressed. I had questions for McGovern, but in truth, I was curious about her, too.

  'Getting back to the possibility of drug-induced mental illness,' McGovern said as we followed the corridor. 'Many of these people self-destruct, right?'

  'In one way or another.'

  'They die in accidents, commit suicide, and that gets us back to the big question,' she said. 'Is that what happened here? Possible she was whacked out and committed suicide?'

  'All I know is, she has injury that was inflicted before death,' I pointed out again.

  'But that could be self-inflicted if she were not in her right mind,' McGovern said. 'God knows the kinds of self-mutilation we've seen when people are psychotic.'

  This was true. I had worked cases in which people had cut their own throats, or stabbed themselves in the chest, or amputated their limbs; or shot themselves in their sexual organs, or walked into a river to drown. Not to mention leaps from high places and self-immolations. The list of horrendous things people did to themselves was much too long, and whenever I thought I'd seen it all, something new and awful was rolled into our bay.

  The phone was ringing as I unlocked my office, and I grabbed it just in time.

  'Scarpetta,' I said.

  'I've got some results for you,' said Tim Cooper, the toxicologist. 'Ethanol, methanol, isopropanol, and acetone are zero. Carbon monoxide is less than seven percent. I'll keep working on the other screens.'

  'Thanks. What would I do without you?' I said.

  I looked at McGovern as I hung up, and I told her what Cooper had just said.

  'She was dead before the fire,' I explained, 'her cause of death exsanguination and asphyxia due to aspiration of blood due to acute neck injury. As for manner, I'm pending that until further investigation, but I think we should work this as a homicide. In the meantime, we need to get her identified, and I'll do what I can to get started on that.'

  'I guess I'm supposed to imagine that this woman torched the place and maybe cut her own throat before the fire got her first?' she said as anger flickered.

  I did not answer as I measured coffee for the coffeemaker on a nearby countertop.

  'Don't you think that's rather far-fetched?' she went on.

  I poured in bottled water and pressed a button.

  'Kay, no one's going to want to hear homicide,' she said. 'Because of Kenneth Sparkes and what all of this may imply. I hope you realize what you're up against.'

  'And what ATF is up against,' I said, sitting across my hopelessly piled desk from her.

  'Look, I don't care who he is,' she replied. 'I do every job like I fully intend to make an arrest. I'm not the one who has to deal with the politics around here.'

  But my mind wasn't on the media or Sparkes right now. I was thinking that this case disturbed me at a deeper level and in ways I could not fathom.

  'How much longer will your guys be at the scene?' I asked her.

  'Another day. Two at the most,' she said. 'Sparkes has supplied us and the insurance company with what was inside his house, and just the antique furniture and old wood flooring and paneling alone were a massive fuel load.'

  'What about the master bath?' I asked. 'Saying this was the point of origin.'

  She hesitated. 'Obviously, that's the problem.'

  'Right. If an accelerant wasn't used, or at least not a petroleum distillate, then how?'

  'The guys are beating their brains out,' she said, and she was frustrated. 'And so am I. If I try to predict how much energy would be needed in that room for a flashover condition, the fuel load isn't there. According to Sparkes, there was nothing but a throw rug and towels. Cabinets and fixtures were customized brushed steel. The shower had a glass door, the window had sheer curtains.'

  She paused as the coffeemaker gurgled.

  'So what are we talking about?' she went on. 'Five, six hundred kilowatts total for a ten-by-fifteen foot room? Clearly, there are other variables. Such as how much air was flowing through the doorway…'

  'What about the rest of the house? You just said there was a big fuel load there, right?'

  'We're only concerned with one room, Kay. And that's the room of origin. Without an origin, the rest of the fuel load doesn't matter.'

  'I see.'

  'I know a flame was impinged on the ceiling in that bathroom, and I know how high that flame had to be and how many kilowatts of energy were needed for flashover. And a throw rug and maybe some towels and curtains couldn't even come close to causing something like that.'

  I knew her engineering equations were pristinely mathematical, and I did not doubt anything she was saying. But it did not matter. I was still left with the same problem. I had reason to believe that we were dealing with a homicide and that when the fire started, the victim's body was inside the master bath, with its noncombustible marble floors, large mirrors, and steel. Indeed, she may have been in the tub.

  'What about the open skylight?' I asked McGovern. 'Does that fit with your theory?'

  'It could. Because once again, the flames had to be high enough to break the glass, and then heat would have vented through the opening like a chimney. Every fire has its own personality, but certain behaviors are always the same because they conform to the laws of physics.'

  'I understand.'

  'There are four stages,' she went on, as if I knew nothing. 'First is the fire plume, or column of hot gases, flames, and smoke rising from the fire. That would have been the case, let's say, if the throw rug in the bathroom had ignited. The higher above the flame the gases rise, the cooler and denser they become. They mix with combustion by-products, and the hot gases now begin to fall, and the cycle repeats itself creating turbulent smoke that spreads horizontally. What should have happened next was this hot smoky layer would have continued to descend until it found an opening for ventilation - in this case, we'll assume the bathroom doorway. Next, the smoky layer flows out of the opening while fresh air flows in. If there's enough oxygen, the temperature at the ceiling's going to go up to more than six hundred degrees Celsius, and boom, we have flashover, or a fully developed fire.'

  'A fully developed fire in the master bath,' I said.

  'And then on into other oxygen-enriched rooms where the fuel loads were enough to burn the place to the ground,' she replied. 'So it's not the spread of the fire that bothers me. It's how it got started. Like I said, a throw rug, curtains, wer
en't enough, unless something else was there.'

  'Maybe something was,' I said, getting up to pour coffee. 'How do you take yours?' I asked.

  'Cream and sugar.'

  Her eyes followed me.

  'None of that artificial stuff, please.'

  I drank mine black, and set mugs on the desk as McGovern's gaze wandered around my new office. Certainly, it was brighter and more modern than what I had occupied in the old building on Fourteenth and Franklin, but I really had no more room to evolve. Worst of all, I had been honored with a CEO corner space with windows, and anybody who understood physicians knew that what we needed were walls for bookcases, and not bulletproof glass overlooking a parking lot and the Petersburg Turnpike. My hundreds of medical, legal, and forensic science reviews, journals and formidable volumes were crammed together and, in some cases, double-shelved. It was not uncommon for Rose, my secretary, to hear me swearing when I could not find a reference book I needed right that minute.

  'Teun,' I said, sipping my coffee, 'I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking care of Lucy.'

  'Lucy takes care of herself,' she said.

  'That has not always been true.'

  I smiled in an effort to be more gracious, to hide the hurt and jealousy that were a splinter in my heart.

  'But you're right,' I said. 'I think she does a pretty admirable job of it now. I'm sure Philadelphia will be good for her.'

  McGovern was reading every signal I was sending, and I could tell she was aware of more than I wanted her to be.

  'Kay, hers will not be an easy road,' she then stated. 'No matter what I do.'

  She swirled the coffee in her mug, as if about to taste the first sip of fine wine.

  'I'm her supervisor, not her mother,' McGovern said.

  This irked me considerably, and it showed when I abruptly picked up the phone and instructed Rose to hold all calls. I got up and shut my door.

  'I would hope she's not transferring to your field office because she needs a mother,' I replied coolly as I returned to my desk, which served as a barrier between us. 'Above all else, Lucy is a consummate professional.'

  McGovern held up her hand to stop me.

  'Whoa,' she protested. 'Of course she is. I'm just not promising anything. She's a big girl, but she's also got a lot of big obstacles. Her FBI background will be held against her by some, who will assume right off the bat that she has an attitude and has never really worked cases.'

  'That stereotype shouldn't last long,' I said, and I was finding it very difficult to objectively discuss my niece with her.

  'Oh, about as long as it takes for them to see her land a helicopter or program a robot to remove a bomb from a scene,' she quipped. 'Or zip through Q-dot calculations in her head while the rest of us can't even figure them out on a calculator.'

  Q-dot was slang for the mathematical equations, or scientific evaluations, used to estimate the physics and chemistry of a fire as it related to what the investigator observed at the scene or was told by witnesses. I wasn't sure Lucy would make many friends by being able to work such esoteric formulas in her head.

  'Teun,' I said, softening my tone. 'Lucy's different, and that isn't always good. In fact, in many ways it is just as much a handicap to be a genius as it is to be retarded.'

  'Absolutely. I am more aware of this than you might imagine.'

  'As long as you understand,' I said as if I were reluctantly handing her the baton in the relay race of Lucy's difficult development.

  'And as long as you understand that she has and will continue to be treated like everybody else. Which includes the other agents' reactions to her baggage, which includes rumors about why she left the FBI and about her alleged personal life,' she stated frankly.

  I looked at her long and hard, wondering just how much she really knew about Lucy. Unless McGovern had been briefed by someone at the Bureau, there was no reason I could think of why she should know about my niece's affair with Carrie Grethen and the implications of what that might mean when the case went to court, assuming Carrie was caught. Just the reminder cast a shadow over what had already been a dark day, and my uncomfortable silence invited McGovern to fill it.

  'I have a son,' she said quietly, staring into her coffee. 'I know what it's like to have children grow up and suddenly vanish. Go their own way, too busy to visit or get on the phone.'

  'Lucy grew up a long time ago,' I said quickly, for I did not want her to commiserate with me. 'She also never lived with me, not permanently, I mean. In a way, she's always been gone.'

  But McGovern just smiled as she got out of her chair.

  'I've got troops to check on,' she said. 'I guess I'd better be on my way.'

  6

  AT FOUR O'CLOCK that afternoon, my staff was still busy in the autopsy room, and I walked in looking for Chuck. He and two of my residents were working on the burned woman's body, defleshing her as best they could with plastic spatulas, because anything harder might scratch the bones.

  Chuck was sweating beneath his surgical cap and mask as he scraped tissue from the skull, his brown eyes rather glazed behind his face shield. He was tall and wiry with short, sandy blond hair that tended to stick out in every direction no matter how much gel he used. He was attractive in an adolescent way and, after a year on the job, still terrified of me.

  'Chuck?' I said again, inspecting one of the more ghoulish tasks in forensic medicine.

  'Yes, ma'am.'

  He stopped scraping and looked up furtively at me. The stench was getting worse by the minute as unrefrigerated flesh continued to decompose, and I was not looking forward to what I needed to do next.

  'Let me just check this one more time,' I said to Ruffin, who was so tall he tended to stoop, his neck jutting out like a turtle when he looked at whoever he was talking to. 'Our old battered pots and pans didn't make it in the move.'

  'I think somehow they got tossed out,' he said.

  'And probably should have,' I told him. 'Which means you and I have an errand to run.'

  'Now?'

  'Now.'

  He wasted no time heading into the men's locker room to get out of his dirty, stinking scrubs and shower just long enough to get the shampoo out of his hair. He was still perspiring, his face pink from scrubbing, when we met in the corridor and I handed him a set of keys. The dark red office Tahoe was parked inside the bay, and I climbed up into the passenger's seat, letting Ruffin drive.

  'We're going to Cole's Restaurant Supply,' I told him as the big engine came to life. 'About two blocks west of Parham, on Broad. Just get us on 64 and take the West Broad exit. I'll show you from there.'

  He pushed a remote control on the visor and the bay door rolled up heavily, letting in sunlight that I had not noticed all day. Rush hour traffic had just begun and would be awful in another half hour. Ruffin drove like an old woman, dark glasses on and hunched forward as he kept his speed about five miles an hour less than the limit.

  'You can go a little faster,' I told him calmly. 'It closes at five, so we sort of need to hurry along.'

  He stepped on the gas, lurching us forward, and fumbled in the ashtray for toll tokens.

  'You mind if I ask you something, Dr Scarpetta?' he said.

  'Please. Go right ahead.'

  'It's kind of bizarre.'

  He glanced in the rearview mirror again.

  'That's all right.'

  'You know, I've seen a lot of things, at the hospital and the funeral home and all,' he began nervously. 'And nothing got to me, you know?'

  He slowed at the toll plaza and tossed a token into the basket. The red striped arm went up and we rolled on as people in a hurry darted past us. Ruffin rolled his window back up.

  'It's normal for what you're seeing now to get to you,' I finished his thought for him, or thought I did.

  But this was not what he wanted to tell me.

  'You see, most of the time I get to the morgue before you in the morning,' he said instead, his eyes riveted forw
ard as he drove. 'So I'm the one who answers the phones and gets things ready for you, right? You know, because I'm there alone.'

  I nodded, having not a clue as to what he was about to say.

  'Well, starting about two months ago, when we were still in the old building, the phone started ringing at around six-thirty in the morning, just after I got in. And when I would pick it up, nobody was there.'

  'How often has this happened?' I asked.

  'Maybe three times a week. Sometimes every day. And it's still happening.'

  He was getting my attention now.

  'It's happening since we moved.' I wanted to make sure.

  'Of course, we have the same number,' he reminded me. 'But yes, ma'am. In fact it happened again this morning, and I've started getting a little spooked. I'm just wondering if we should try to get the calls traced to see what's going on.'

  'Tell me exactly what happens when you pick up the phone,' I said as we drove exactly at the speed limit along the interstate.

  'I say Morgue, ' he said. 'And whoever it is doesn't say a word. There's silence, almost like the line is dead. So I say Hello? a few times and finally hang up. I can tell there's someone there. It's just something I sense.'

  'Why haven't you told me this before?'

  'I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me overreacting. Or maybe being too imaginative, because I got to tell you it's kind of creepy in there first thing in the morning when the sun's not up yet and no one else is around.'

  'And you say this started about two months ago?'

  'More or less,' he answered. 'I didn't really count the first few, you know.'

  I was irritated that he had waited until now to pass this along to me, but there was no point in belaboring that.

  'I'll pass this along to Captain Marino,' I said. 'In the meantime, Chuck, you need to tell me if this happens again, okay?'

  He nodded, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

  'Just beyond the next light, we're looking for a big beige building. It will be on our left, in the nine thousand block, just past JoPa's.'

  Cole's was fifteen minutes from closing, and there were but two other cars in the lot when we parked. Ruffin and I got out, and air conditioning was frigid as we entered a wide open space with aisles of metal shelves all the way up to the ceiling. Crowded on them was everything from restaurant-sized ladles and spoons, to food warmers for cafeteria lines, to giant coffeemakers and mixers. But it was potware that I was interested in, and after a quick scan I found the section I needed, halfway to the back, near electric skillets and measuring cups.