The Bone Bed ks-20

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Jesus.”

  “Exactly.” She unlocks the door to the lower level.

  thirty-one

  TOBY IS IN THE CORRIDOR, CARRYING BRIGHT RED BAGS of biohazard trash destined for the autoclave, and I tell Lucy I’ll meet her in ID. He offers right away that he just left the evidence bay, and I know a guilty conscience when I see one.

  “I guess you’re aware of what just happened in court,” I say to him, and no one is around to hear us, Ron the security guard behind glass some distance away.

  “In court?” Toby is in scrubs and nitrile gloves, and his tattoos and shaved head might make him sinister, were it not for what’s in his eyes.

  “Yes, an acquittal that is cause for concern about breaches of security here,” I say, and his reply is to play dumb. “I’m sure you realize that communications on the CFC server aren’t private, and if deleted still exist.”

  “Like what?” He looks around, looks everywhere but in my eyes. “What communications?”

  “In other words, CFC e-mails neither vanish nor are considered purely personal. Therefore they aren’t an employee’s private business, not if these e-mails could be evidence in a disciplinary investigation that involves the misuse of government resources or the violation of confidentiality and CFC policy.” I look directly at him, and he won’t look at me. “In such instances, personal communications are subject to disclosure under the Public Records Law.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he does, and his face is red.

  “Why?” I ask him, and he knows what I’m really asking.

  “Why that rich guy got off?” He frowns and is frightened and pretends he doesn’t understand.

  “I would have given you a good recommendation, Toby. I’m not the sort to hold someone back. All you needed to do was tell me if you weren’t happy here or felt you weren’t appreciated or wanted to pursue what you viewed as a better opportunity.”

  It’s not lost on him that I’m speaking of his job in the past tense. He shifts the red bags to a different hand, his eyes darting.

  “But at least Ms. Donoghue knows exactly what she’s getting,” I add. “Although I’ll point out the rather obvious fact that if you’ll do this to me, you’ll do it to her. Or at least the thought will cross her mind, and my guess is it already has.”

  “It’s not like I’ve been sleeping on the job because I can’t drive home.” He takes a shot at Marino, and it’s the last shot he’ll take.

  “No, you’ve been sleeping with the enemy, and that’s worse,” I reply. “I wish you well in your next venture, whatever it is. It’s best you pack up your things immediately.”

  “Sure.” He’s not going to argue.

  He might even be relieved.

  “I need your key card.” I hold out my hand, and he removes the lanyard around his neck.

  “While this matter is being investigated, obviously you can’t be here.” I make sure he’s clear on that.

  “I was going to quit, anyway.”

  I walk him to the receiving area and ask Ron for his assistance.

  “Yes, ma’am, Chief.” He gets up from his desk and steps out into the corridor, and I can tell from the look on his face he knows what’s happened, and maybe he’s been aware of the same behavior that Lucy has discovered.

  “Toby’s no longer with the CFC,” I let Ron know. “If you could make sure he turns in any equipment and meets with Bryce for an exit interview. He’ll take care of the usual details. You know the routine.”

  I give him the key card and ask him to accompany Toby into the waste disposal room so he can leave biohazard bags at the autoclave, and I walk away, texting Bryce, letting him know what just occurred, as I wonder the same thing I always do when someone behaves this way: What might I have done to inspire such massive disloyalty, such disrespect?

  Toby was a physician’s assistant with no training in medicolegal death investigation, which was his dream, as he described it to me when I interviewed him for the job several years ago. I took a chance on him. I sent him to basic and advanced forensic training academies in New York and Baltimore, and I personally instructed him at death scenes and spent time explaining autopsies and teaching him to assist.

  “Money and myopia,” Lucy says, when I walk into the anteroom, where she’s swathed in white and senses my mood. “People are assholes.”

  “It always seems like it’s more than just being assholes.” I collect clothing from shelves. “It feels like it’s something I didn’t do right.”

  “It’s not personal, Aunt Kay.”

  “Then why does it feel like it?”

  “To you, everything that happens with everyone here feels personal.” Lucy isn’t gifted at cushioning her convictions. “But what you feel is never reciprocated, never has been.”

  “Well, that’s damn depressing if what you’re suggesting is everybody who works for me now or in the past doesn’t care about anything other than their own ambitions, their own selves.”

  “It’s never as personal to them as it is to you, because most people are out for what they want and don’t give a shit about anybody else.”

  “I don’t believe everybody is like that.”

  “I didn’t say everybody. I’m not.”

  “You’re certainly not. I don’t even pay you.” I find gloves, a mask.

  “You couldn’t afford me.”

  “No one could.”

  “There’s a limit to what Toby can earn in the public sector compared to what he might get as an investigator for the Jill Donoghues of the world,” Lucy says, and of course she’s right. “He’s about to get married, wants kids, and has overextended himself buying his truck. I think that’s what started his troubles. He’s been complaining about it a lot, apparently owes more than it’s worth. Not to mention what he’s spent on tattoos.”

  “How depressing. Betray the world for tattoos and a pickup truck.”

  “The American dream. Buy everything on credit and drive off into the sunset with body art and piercings you’ll live to regret.”

  “There’s no excuse for what he did.” I unlock the door to the evidence room. “And shame on Jill Donoghue.”

  “It’s really rather brilliant.” Lucy follows me in.

  “Luke should have e-mailed photos, and I’m expecting ones from Machado. Can you check?” I don’t want to hear how brilliant Donoghue is.

  “All is fair. A shrewd defense attorney using whatever resources happen to be available.” Lucy’s blue gloved hands type on a biosafe keyboard as she goes into my e-mail. “Her client happens to have his own pilots and a helicopter that can do aerial filming.”

  “I’m just sorry Judge Conry doesn’t know what she’s done.”

  “Why would he care?”

  It’s a good question. Literally, the judge allowed television news footage to be played in court. He didn’t allow footage from the defendant’s helicopter, which the judge would have deemed inadmissible. But the source of the news footage wasn’t known or questioned at the time, and it’s too late now.

  “Nothing illegal about it,” Lucy says. “Not even improper from a legal standpoint.”

  “You sound as if you’re applauding it.”

  “Maybe I would have done the same thing.”

  “I have no doubt you would have,” I comment, and I don’t want to get into what she does or might do.

  Howard Roth’s clothing looks dirty and shapeless and seems forlorn on waterproof white paper, a large black T-shirt, a pair of woven cotton boxer shorts in a red plaid pattern, and white tube socks speckled with blood that is dark, almost black. On another table against the far wall are the dog crate and soggy bags of clumping litter, the yellow rope and old fishing gear, and the yellow boat fender that I realize is slightly scuffed, a detail I didn’t notice when it was wet.

  “Nothing wrong with her letting Toby know that whatever he overhears at work might be helpful.” Lucy is playing out what she thinks happened. “And certainly
he’d want justice to be done, and by the way, how does he like working for the CFC, and does he ever think about his future?”

  She continues describing what she imagines Donoghue’s line to Toby must have been, and I look for a measuring tape.

  “So she’s with her client right before court’s in session yesterday morning, or maybe already sitting at the defense table with him, and gets an electronic communication from Toby. A woman’s body has just been discovered in the bay. Maybe she even gets the details that the body has fingernail polish, has long white or blond hair. A fucking gift.”

  “Are you guessing that’s what happened, or do you know it?” I open a drawer and find what I’m looking for, a pocket rod, the type of tape measure we carry in our scene cases.

  “I know what the Sikorsky pilots said to ATC,” Lucy answers. “I’d just taken off from Hanscom and was monitoring Logan on comm-two when the S-Seventy-six that I later found out was Channing Lott’s helicopter contacted Approach, radioing that they were out of Beverly and had a request. They wanted to do some filming in the outer harbor.”

  I wipe down the rigid metal tape with a spray-on disinfectant, making sure it’s clean.

  “Wow, he’s got quite a gash on the back of his head,” Lucy says. “It’s really apparent after his hair’s been shaved.”

  “What time did you hear the pilots on the radio?” I take a look at autopsy photos on her computer screen.

  “Approximately two hours after you got the call about the body in the bay,” she says.

  “Definitely blunt force, not sharp force,” I observe. “You can see where the tissue’s torn, and in the depths of the wound is bridging.” I point out nerves, blood vessels, and other soft tissue extending like threads across the gaping gash. “His head impacted with a surface that has no discrete edge.”

  “So it wasn’t caused by the edge of a concrete step catching him at the base of his skull.”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  “I don’t see how that part of your head could hit the floor?” Lucy feels the back of her head, where her skull connects with the hollow of her neck.

  “It’s troubling,” I agree.

  I lean over her, clicking through other autopsy photographs.

  “An open slightly depressed comminuted fracture,” I note. “Intracranial and intracerebral bleeding.”

  I look through more, resting my hand on Lucy’s shoulder, and I’m always startled by how strong she is.

  “A subdural hematoma overlying contusions, hemorrhages. A significant blow to the back of the head but with very little swelling. He didn’t live long.” I return to the boat fender and begin to measure it. “Does Marino know what Toby’s done?”

  “It’s probably best their paths don’t cross for the next hundred years.”

  The fender is heavy-duty vinyl, fifty-eight inches by eighteen, and I ask Lucy if the size is significant, and keys click as she checks the Internet.

  “In the marine world, that’s extra-large,” she says. “Fenders associated with yachts.”

  “And it’s not inflatable,” I point out. “So if extra-large fenders were being stored on a boat as opposed to off-site, it had to be a really big one. At first I just assumed whoever did this bought it new. Like the dog crate, the bags of litter. I assumed this person shopped for new items that couldn’t be traced.”

  I clean the measuring tape and return it to a drawer, and I change my gloves.

  “But you can see this fender’s rubbed up against something, suggesting it’s not new,” I explain. “It’s used. Possibly it was removed from a large boat.”

  “Someone with money,” Lucy says. “Channing Lott has a hundred-and-fifty-footer he docks in Boston. Some of the time it’s in Gloucester, a very well-known yacht.”

  “Why the airport in Beverly?” I ask if there’s a special reason to keep a helicopter there.

  “He has a hangar in Beverly, has hangars in a lot of places,” Lucy says. “Beverly’s convenient to Gloucester, where his oceanfront mansion is, where his wife disappeared from.”

  I open a large black plastic case and get out a handheld crime light and goggles, and Lucy dims the lights in the room. I start with the wavelength for blue, painting it over the black shirt, and a galaxy of fibers and debris fluoresce in different colors and intensities. What look like orange-hot coils and multicolored ones are probably synthetics, and those that are coarse I associate with carpet. The clothing front and back is dirty with construction dust and debris, bits of paint and glass, and animal and human hair, much of it from contact with flooring, I suspect.

  I feel the thick stiffness of dried blood I can barely see on the black fabric, dark voids where blood likely dripped from Howard Roth’s lacerated head, and I ask Lucy to turn the lights back on. Most of the blood is concentrated on the back of the collar and shoulders, as if he bled from the back of his head while he was lying faceup and blood seeped under him. I can imagine why Luke assumed the injury was caused when the body came to rest on the basement floor at the foot of the stairs, but I don’t believe it.

  “I’m sure it’s crossed your mind that what happened to his wife is similar to the other ones.” Lucy continues talking about Channing Lott.

  “I need scene pictures of Roth’s body as it was found. Check to see if Machado has sent them yet.”

  “His missing wife is in the same general age group, distinguished for one reason or another, a formidable woman.” Lucy returns to the computer. “She certainly wouldn’t appear to be in a high-risk category, and in fact quite the opposite. Scene pics have landed. Opening them now.”

  “Is he on his back, his side, facedown?” I open a cabinet, looking for three-percent hydrogen peroxide.

  “On his back and left hip, kind of twisted in a heap,” she replies.

  I go to the computer and take a look. Howard Roth’s body is turned to one side on the basement floor at the bottom on the steps. He stares straight up, his knees drawn, his arms bent by his sides, and blood is coagulated and drying under the back of his neck, spreading to a stain that disappears under his shoulders. Once he landed in this position, I’m fairly sure he didn’t move.

  “It bothers me that it seems the sole reason Channing Lott became a suspect is an e-mail exchange between him and whoever he allegedly was attempting to hire,” Lucy says. “You’re aware of it, I assume?”

  “Not specifically.” I return to the cabinet and find jars of sodium acetate and 5-sulfosalicylic acid.

  “I’ll pull it up from online news,” she says, as she does it. “So this past March fourth, a Sunday? An e-mail was sent to Channing Lott’s personal account from a user he later claimed he didn’t recognize but assumed it was someone from one of his shipping offices. He said in direct testimony that he can’t possibly know the names of everyone who works for him around the world.”

  Lucy reads what’s quoted in the story.

  I realize it’s inappropriate for me to contact you directly through e-mail, but I must have verification of the partnership and the subsequent exchange before I proceed with the solution.

  “And what did Channing Lott reply?” I dissolve the sulfosalicylic acid into hydrogen peroxide.

  “He wrote, ‘Are we still committed to an award of one hundred thousand dollars?’”

  “Certainly sounds incriminating.” I check the reagent Leuco Crystal Violet, LCV, making sure it hasn’t turned yellow, that it’s white and fresh.

  “He claims he assumed the e-mail exchange was about a monetary prize his shipping company offers,” she reports. “That he often partners with other marine transport companies in rewarding scientists for coming up with viable solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

  I pour in the LCV, a cationic triarylmethane dye, and mix with a magnetic stirrer.

  “The amount of the award was in fact one hundred thousand dollars,” Lucy says.

  “Sounds like an argument Jill Donoghue would come up with.” I transfer some of the solution
into a spray bottle.

  “Except the Mildred Vivian Cipriano Award has existed for more than a decade,” Lucy says. “So it wasn’t just trumped up for his defense to explain away the e-mails. And since whoever initiated them has never been arrested or even identified, I conclude the e-mail sent to Lott wasn’t traceable. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”

  “If you could go into that cabinet and get the D-Seventy.” I tell her which lens I want. “We’re going to try infrared to see if there are any bloody impressions we can enhance that aren’t going to show up any other way on black cotton.”

  We begin taking photographs using different filters and shutter speeds and distances. First we try without chemical enhancement, and on the front and back of the T-shirt and on the plaid boxer shorts are indistinct areas where a bloody residue was transferred to the fabric by something coming in contact with it. Then I spray the LCV and it reacts to the hemoglobin in blood, and I get discernible shapes, startling ones.

  Footwear images, the outsole, a heel, a toe, glow a vivid violet, the bloody shapes overlaying one another as someone repeatedly stomped and kicked Howard Roth’s chest, his sides, his abdomen, his groin, while he was on his back, probably while he was already down on the basement floor. He bled from a gash on his head, and he bled from his nose and mouth, frothy blood from shattered ribs puncturing lungs, and I try to imagine it.

  A man drunk and barely dressed, and I don’t believe he was in bed when his killer showed up. Most people don’t wear socks to bed, especially in warm weather, and I go through the scene and autopsy photographs again, and I’m not satisfied.

  I call Sil Machado.

  “Free as a bird” are the first words out of his mouth. “And Donoghue’s giving you all the credit.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “She says you reminded the jury, and rightly so, that it can’t be proven that Mildred Lott is dead, much less that her husband did it.”