Depraved Heart

by Patricia Cornwell

  Yes technically. Because in the main I decide what are my business and my responsibility. It’s rare I get an argument. Overall my working relationship with law enforcement is collaborative and most times they’re more than happy for me to take care of whatever I want. They almost never question me. Or at least they didn’t used to second-guess hardly anything I decided. That might be different now. I might be getting a taste of how things have changed in two short months.

  “In this blood spatter class I went to they said you should string everything because you’re going to get asked in court,” the cop with thinning gray hair is saying. “If you testify that you didn’t bother with it? It looks bad to the jury. What they call the list of NO questions. The defense attorney goes through all these questions he’s sure you’ll answer no to, and it makes you look like you didn’t do your job. It makes you look incompetent.”

  “Especially if the jurors watch CSI.”

  “No shit.”

  “What’s wrong with CSI? You don’t got a magic box in that field case of yours?”

  This continues and I barely listen. I let them know that stringing would be a waste of time.

  “I figured as much. Marino doesn’t see the point,” one of the cops replies.

  I’m so glad Marino says it. That must make it true.

  “We could bring in the total station if you want. Just reminding you we have that capability,” the trooper says to me, and then he goes on to explain about TSTs, about electronic theodolites with electronic distance meters although he doesn’t use words like that.

  I know your capabilities better than you do and have handled more death scenes than you’ll ever dream of.

  “Thanks but it’s not necessary,” I answer without so much as a glance at the hieroglyphics of dark bloodstains under and around the body.

  I’ve already translated what I’m seeing, and using segments of string or sophisticated surveying instruments to map and connect blood streaks, swipes, sprays, splashes and droplets would offer nothing new. The area of impact is the floor under and around the body plain and simple. Chanel Gilbert wasn’t upright when she received her fatal head injuries plain and simple. She died where she is now plain and simple.

  This doesn’t mean there was no foul play, far from it. I haven’t examined her for sexual assault. I haven’t done a 3-D CT scan of her body or autopsied it yet, and I go through my differential about what I’m seeing as I ask what was in her bathroom, on her bedside table.

  “I’m interested in any prescription bottles for drugs. Any drugs including medications such as lenalidomide, in other words long-term nonsteroidal therapy that is immunomodulatory,” I explain. “A recent course of antibiotics also could have contributed to bacteria growth, and if it turns out she’s positive for clostridium, for example, that could help explain a rapid onset of decomposition.”

  I inform them I’ve had several cases of that due to a gas-producing bacteria like clostridium where literally I saw postmortem artifacts similar to these at only twelve hours. All the while I’m going into this with the police I keep my eyes on the display of my phone.

  “You talking about C. diff?” The trooper raises his voice and almost strangles on his next fit of coughing.

  “It’s on my list.”

  “She wouldn’t have been in the hospital for that?”

  “Not necessarily if she had a mild form. Did you see antibiotics, anything back in her bedroom or bathroom that might indicate she was having a problem with diarrhea, with an infection?” I ask them.

  “Gee I’m not sure I saw any prescription bottles but I did see weed.”

  “What worries me is if she had something contagious,” the gray-haired Cambridge cop offers reluctantly. “I sure as hell don’t want C. diff.”

  “Can you catch it from a dead body?”

  “I don’t recommend contact with her feces,” I reply.

  “It’s a good thing you told me.” Sarcastically.

  “Keep protective clothing on. I’ll check for any meds myself and would rather see them in situ anyway. And when you get back from Dunkin’ Donuts?” I add without looking up. “Remember we don’t eat or drink in here.”

  “No worries about that.”

  “There’s a table in the backyard,” Hyde says. “I thought we could set up a break area out there as long as we do it before the rain comes. We got a couple of hours before the big storm they’re predicting rolls in.”

  “And we know nothing happened in the backyard?” I ask him pointedly. “We know that’s not part of the scene and therefore it’s okay for us to eat and drink back there?”

  “Come on, Doc. Don’t you think it’s pretty obvious she fell off a ladder here in the foyer and that’s what killed her?”

  “I don’t arrive at a scene supposing anything is obvious.” I barely glance up at the three of them.

  “Well I think what happened here is obvious to be honest. Of course what killed her is your department and not ours, ma’am.” The trooper chimes in like a defense attorney. Ma’am this and Mrs. that. So the jurors forget I’m a doctor, a lawyer, a chief.

  “No eating, drinking, smoking or borrowing the bathrooms.” I direct this at Hyde, and I’m giving him an order. “No dropping cigarette butts or gum wrappers or tossing fast-food bags, coffee cups, anything at all into the trash. Don’t assume this isn’t a crime scene.”

  “But you don’t really think it is.”

  “I’m working it like one and so should you,” I answer. “Because I won’t know what really happened here until I have more information. There was a lot of tissue response, a lot of bleeding, several liters I estimate. Her scalp is boggy. There may be more than one fracture. She has postmortem changes that I wouldn’t expect. I will tell you that much but I won’t know for a fact what we’ve got here until I get her to my office. And the air-conditioning turned off during a heat wave in August? I definitely don’t like that. Let’s not be so quick to blame her death on marijuana. You know what they say.”

  “About what?” The trooper looks perplexed and worried, and he and the others have backed up several more steps.

  “Better to be around potheads than drunks. Booze gives you dangerous impulses like climbing ladders or driving a car or getting into fights. Weed isn’t quite so motivating. It isn’t generally known for causing aggression or risk taking. Usually it’s quite the opposite.”

  “It depends on the person and what they’re smoking, right? And maybe what other meds they’re on?”

  “In general that’s true.”

  “So let me ask you this. Would you expect someone who fell off a ladder to bleed this much?”

  “It depends on what the injuries are,” I reply.

  “So if they’re worse than you think and she’s negative for drugs and alcohol, that might be a big problem is what you’re saying.”

  “Whatever happened is already a big problem you ask me.” It’s the trooper again between coughs.

  “Certainly it was for her. When’s the last time you had a tetanus shot?” I ask him.

  “Why?”

  “Because a DTaP vaccination protects against tetanus but also pertussis. And I’m concerned you might have whooping cough.”

  “I thought only kids got that.”

  “Not true. How did your symptoms start?”

  “Just a cold. Runny nose, sneezing about two weeks ago. Then this cough. I get fits and can hardly breathe. I don’t remember the last time I had a tetanus shot to be honest.”

  “You need to see your doctor. I’d hate for you to get pneumonia or collapse a lung,” I say to the trooper.

  Then he and the other officers finally leave me alone.

  CHAPTER 4

  EIGHT MINUTES INTO THE VIDEO AND ALL I SEE is Lucy’s empty dorm room. I again try to save the file or pause it. I can’t. It just keeps playing like life passing by with nothing to show for it.

  Now nine minutes into the clip and the dorm room is exactly the same, empty and qu
iet, but in the background the firing ranges are busy. Gunshots pop and I can see glaring light seeping around the edges of the white blinds closed the wrong way. The sun is directly in the windows and I remember Lucy’s room faced west. It’s late afternoon.

  Pop-Pop. Pop-Pop.

  I detect the rumbling noise of traffic driving by four floors below on J. Edgar Hoover Road, the main drag that runs through the middle of the FBI Academy. Rush hour. Classes ending for the day. Cops, agents coming in from the ranges. For an instant I imagine I smell the sharp banana odor of isoamyl acetate, of Hoppe’s gun-cleaning solvent. I smell burnt gunpowder as if it’s all around me. I feel the sultry Virginia heat and hear the static of insects where cartridge cases shine silver and gold in the sun-warmed grass. It all comes back to me powerfully, and then at last something happens.

  The video has a title sequence. It begins to roll by very slowly:

  DEPRAVED HEART—SCENE 1

  BY CARRIE GRETHEN

  QUANTICO, VIRGINIA—JULY 11, 1997

  The name is jolting. It’s infuriating to see it in bold red type going by ever so slowly, languidly, dripping down the screen pixel-by-pixel like a slow-motion bleed. Music has been added. Karen Carpenter is singing “We’ve Only Just Begun.” It’s obnoxious to score the video to that angelic voice, to those gentle Paul Williams lyrics.

  Such a sweet loving song permuted into a threat, a mockery, a promise of more injury to come, of misery, harassment and possibly death. Carrie Grethen is flaunting and taunting. She’s giving me the finger. I haven’t listened to the Carpenters in years but in the old days I wore out their cassettes and CDs. I wonder if Carrie knew that. She probably did. So this is the next installment of what she must have put into the works a long time ago.

  I feel the challenge and my response bubbling up like molten lava, and I’m keenly aware of my rage, of my lust to destroy the most reprehensible and treacherous female offender I’ve ever come across. For the past thirteen years I hadn’t given her a thought, not since I witnessed her die in a helicopter crash. Or I believed I did. But I was wrong. She was never in that flying machine, and when I found that out it was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to accept. It’s like being told your fatal disease is no longer in remission. Or that some horrific tragedy wasn’t just a bad dream.

  So now Carrie continues what she’s started. Of course she would, and I remember my husband Benton’s recent warnings about bonding with her, about talking to her in my mind and settling into the easy belief that she doesn’t plan to finish what she started. She doesn’t want to kill me because she’s planned something worse. She doesn’t want to rid the earth of me or she would have this past June. Benton is a criminal intelligence analyst for the FBI, what people still call a profiler. He thinks I’ve identified with the aggressor. He suggests I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome. He’s been suggesting it a lot of late. Every time he does we get into an argument.

  “Doc? How we doing in here?” The approaching male voice is carried by the papery sounds of plasticized booties. “I’m ready to do the walk-through if you are.”

  “Not yet,” I reply as Karen Carpenter continues to sing in my earpiece.

  Workin’ together day to day, together, together …

  He lumbers into the foyer. Peter Rocco Marino. Or Marino as most people refer to him, including me. Or Pete although I’ve never called him that and I’m not sure why except we didn’t start out as friends. Then there’s bastardo when he’s a jerk, and asshole when he’s one of those. About six-foot-three, at least 250 pounds with tree trunk thighs and hands as big as hubcaps, he has a massive presence that confuses my metaphors.

  His face is broad and weathered with strong white teeth, an action hero jaw, a bullish neck and a chest as wide as a door. He has on a gray Harley-Davidson polo shirt, Herman Munster–size sneakers, tube socks, and khaki shorts that are baggy with bulging cargo pockets. Clipped to his belt are his badge and pistol but he doesn’t need credentials to do whatever he wants and get the respect he demands.

  Marino is a cop without borders. His jurisdiction may be Cambridge but he finds ways to extend his legal reach far beyond the privileged boundaries of MIT and Harvard, beyond the luminaries who live here and the tourists who don’t. He shows up anywhere he’s invited and more often where he’s not. He has a problem with boundaries. He’s always had a problem with mine.

  “Thought you’d want to know the marijuana is medical. I got no idea where she got it.” His bloodshot eyes move over the body, the bloody marble floor, and then land on my chest, his favorite place to park his attention.

  It doesn’t matter if I have on scrubs, Tyvek, a surgical gown, a lab coat or am bundled up for a blizzard. Marino is going to help himself and openly stare.

  “Bud, tinctures, what looks like foil-wrapped candies.” He hunches a big shoulder to wipe sweat dripping off his chin.

  “So I heard.” I watch what’s playing out in my phone’s display, and I’m beginning to wonder if this is all there is, just Lucy’s empty dorm room with the light caught in the slats of the blinds and Mister Pickle looking misunderstood and isolated on the bed.

  “It’s in a really old wooden box I found hidden under a bunch of shit in her bedroom closet,” Marino says.

  “I’ll get there but not now. And why would she hide medical marijuana?”

  “Because maybe she didn’t get it legally. Maybe so the housekeeper wouldn’t steal it. I don’t know. But it will be interesting to see what her tox is, how high her THC is. That could explain why she decided to climb up a ladder and monkey with lightbulbs in the middle of the night.”

  “You’ve been talking to Hyde too much.”

  “Maybe she fell and that’s really all that happened. It’s a logical thing to consider,” Marino says.

  “Not in my opinion. And we don’t know if it was the middle of the night. I frankly doubt it. If she died at midnight or later that would put her death at eight hours or less by the time she was found. And I’m certain she’s been dead longer than that.”

  “With it so hot in here it isn’t possible to know how long she’s been dead.”

  “Almost true but not quite,” I reply. “I’ll figure it out as we get deeper into the investigation.”

  “But we can’t this minute say exactly how long. And that’s a big problem because her mother’s going to demand answers. She’s not someone you guess with.”

  “I don’t guess. I estimate. In this case I’m estimating more than twelve hours and less than forty-eight,” I reply. “That’s as good as it’s going to get right now.”

  “A powerhouse like her? A huge producer like Amanda Gilbert’s not going to be happy with an answer like that.”

  “I’m not worried about the mother.” I’m getting annoyed with Hollywood this, Hollywood that. “But I am worried about what really happened here because what I’m seeing doesn’t add up. The time of death is a free-for-all. The details are arguing with each other. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite so confusing, and maybe that’s the point.”

  “Whose point?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The high yesterday was ninety-three. The low last night was eighty-two.” I feel Marino’s eyes on me as he adds, “The housekeeper swears she last saw Chanel Gilbert yesterday around four P.M.”

  “She swore that to Hyde before we got here. Then she left,” I remind him of that.

  It’s not our habit to take another person’s word for anything if we can help it. Marino should have talked to the housekeeper himself. I’m sure he will before the day is out.

  “She said she saw Chanel pass her on the driveway, heading to the house in the red Range Rover that’s out there now,” Marino repeats what he’s been told. “So assuming she died at some point after four o’clock yesterday afternoon and was already in bad shape this morning by quarter of eight? That works with what you estimate? Twelve hours or maybe longer.”

  “IT DOESN’T WORK,” I say to hi
m as I watch my phone. “And why do you continue to refer to her dying in the middle of the night?”

  “The way she’s dressed,” Marino says. “Naked with nothing but a silk robe on. Like she was ready for bed.”

  “With no gown or pajamas on?”

  “A lot of women sleep naked.”

  “They do?”

  “Well maybe she did, and what the hell are you looking at on your phone?” He confronts me in his usual blunt way that more often than not is plain rude. “Since when are you glued to your phone at a scene? Is everything all right?”

  “There may be a problem with Lucy.”

  “What’s new?”

  “I hope it’s nothing.”

  “It usually is.”

  “I need to check on her.”

  “That’s nothing new either.”

  “Please don’t trivialize this.” I look at my phone and not him.

  “Thing is I don’t know what this is. What the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know yet. But something’s wrong.”

  “Whatever you think.” He says it as if he doesn’t care about Lucy but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

  Marino was the closest thing she had to a father. He taught her how to drive, how to shoot, not to mention how to deal with bigoted rednecks because that’s what Marino was when we first met in Virginia long ago. He was a chauvinistic homophobe who would try to steal Lucy’s girlfriends until he finally saw the error in his ways. Now despite his disparagements and insults, despite how he might pretend otherwise, he is Lucy’s biggest defender. In his own way he loves her.

  “Do me a favor and tell Bryce I need Rusty and Harold here right away. Let’s get the body to my office now.” I tilt my phone so Marino can’t see the video playing on it, so he can’t see the empty FBI Academy dorm room with its small green stuffed bear that he’s sure to recognize.