Cruel & Unusual Read online

  "Tags come back to Jason Story. I guess that's her husband.” Lucero said to Marino. "She's got identification on her in her purse. The name on the driver's license is Susan Dawson Story, a twenty-eight-year-old white female.”

  "What about money?”

  '"Eleven dollars in her billfold and a couple of credit cards. Nothing so far to suggest robbery. You recognize her?”

  Marino leaned forward to get a better look His jaw muscles bunched. "Yeah. I recognize her. This how the car was found?”

  "We opened the driver's door. That's it," Lucero said, stuffing the portable radio in a pocket.

  "The engine was off, doors unlocked?”

  They were. Like I told you on the phone, Fritz spotted the car while on routine patrol. Uh, around fifteen hundred hours, and he noticed the M.E.’s tag in the window.”

  He glanced at me. "If you go around to the passenger's side and look in, you can see blood in the area of her right ear. Someone did a real neat job.”

  Marino backed away and scanned the messy snow. Don't look like we'll have much luck with footprints.”

  "You got that right. It's melting like ice cream. Was when we got here.”

  "And cartridge cases?”

  “Zip.”

  "Her family know?”

  "Not yet: I thought you might want to handle this one," Lucero said.

  "Just make damn sure who she is and where she worked don't leak out to the media before the family knows. Jesus.”

  Marino turned his attention to me: "What do you want to do here?”

  "I don't want to touch anything inside the car," I muttered, surveying the surroundings as I got out my camera. I was alert and thinking clearly but my hands would not stop shaking. "Give me a minute to look, then let's get her on a stretcher.”

  "You guys ready for the doc?”

  Marino asked Lucero. "We're ready.”

  Susan was dressed in faded blue jeans and scuffed lace-up boots, her black wool coat buttoned to her chin. My heart constricted as I noticed the red silk scarf peeking out of her collar. She wore sunglasses and leaned back in the driver's seat as if she had gotten comfortable and dozed off: On the light gray upholstery behind her neck was a reddish stain. I moved around to the other side of the car and saw the blood Lucero had mentioned. As I began taking photographs, I paused then leaned closer to her face, detecting the faint fragrance of a distinctive masculine cologne. Her seat belt, I noted, was unfastened.

  I did not touch her head until the squad had arrived and Susan's body was on a stretcher inside the back of an ambulance. I climbed in and spent several minutes looking for bullet wounds. I found one in the right temple, another in the hollow at the back of the neck, just below the hairline. I ran my gloved fingers through her chestnut hair, looking for more blood and not finding it.

  Marino climbed into the back of the ambulance. "How many times was she shot?”

  he asked me.

  "I've found two entrances. No exits; though I can feel one bullet beneath the skin over her left temporal bone.”

  He glanced tensely at his watch. "The Dawsons don't live too far from here. In Glenburnie.”

  "The Dawsons?”

  I peeled off my gloves.

  "Her parents. I've got to talk to them. Now. Before some toad leaks something and they end up hearing about this on the damn radio or TV. I'll get a marked unit to take you home.”

  “No,” I said.”

  I'll go with you. I think I should.”

  Streetlights were coming on as we drove away. Marino stared hard at the road, his face dangerously red.

  “Damn!” he blurted, pounding his fit on the steering wheel. “Goddam! Shooting her in the head. Shooting a pregnant woman.”

  I stared out the side window, my shattered thoughts filled with fragmented images and distortion.

  I cleared my throat. “Has her husband been located?”

  “No answer at their crib. Maybe he's with her parents. God, I hate this job. Christ, I don't want to do this. Merry friggin' Christmas. I knock on your door and you're screwed because I'm going to tell you something that will ruin your life.”

  “You have not ruined anybody's life”

  “Yeah, well, get ready, 'cause I'm about to.”

  He turned onto Albemarle. Supercans had been rolled to the edge of the street and were surrounded by leaf bags bulging with Christmas trash. Windows glowed warmly, multi-colored tree lights filling some of them. A young father was pulling his small son along the sidewalk on a fishtailing sled. They smiled and waved at us as we passed. Glenburnie was the neighborhood of middle-class families, of young professionals, single, married, and gay. In the warm months, people sat on their porches and cooked out in their yards. They had parries and hailed each other from the sheet.

  The Dawsons' modest house was Tudor style, comfortably weathered with neatly pruned evergreens in front. Windows upstairs and down were lit up, an old station wagon parked by the curb.

  The bell was answered by a woman's voice on the other side of the door. “Who is it?”

  “Mrs. Dawson?”

  “Yes?”

  “Detective Marino, Richmond RD. I need to talk with you,” he said loudly, holding his badge up to the peephole.

  Locks clicked free as my pulse raced. During my various medical rotations, I had experienced patients screaming in pain as they begged me not to let them die. I had reassured them falsely, “You're going to be just fine,” as they died gripping my hand. I had said “I'm sorry” to loved ones desperate in small, airless rooms where even chaplains felt lost. But I had never delivered death to someone's door on Christmas Day.

  The only resemblance I could see between Mrs. Dawson and her daughter was the strong curve of their jaws. Mrs. Dawson was sharp-featured, with short, frosted hair. She could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds and reminded me of a frightened bird. When Marino introduced me, panic filled her eyes.

  “What's happened?” she barely said.

  “I'm afraid I have very bad news for you, Mrs. Dawson,” Marino said. “It's your daughter, Susan. I'm afraid she's been killed.”

  Small feet sounded in a nearby room, and a little girl appeared in a doorway to the right of us. She stopped and regarded us with wide blue eyes.

  “Hailey, where's Grandpa?” Mrs. Dawson's voice quavered, her face ashen now.

  “Upstairs.”

  Hailey was a tiny tomboy in blue jeans and leather sneakers that looked brand-new. Her blond hair shone like gold and she wore glasses to straighten a lazy left eye. I guessed she was, at the most, eight.

  “You go tell him to come downstairs,” Mrs. Dawson said. “And you and Charlie stay up there until I come get you.”

  The child hesitated in the doorway, inserting two fingers into her mouth. She stared wary at Marino and me.

  “Hailey, go on now!”

  Hailey left with an abrupt burst of energy.

  We sat in the kitchen with Susan's mother. Her back did not touch the chair. She did not weep until her husband walked in minutes later.

  “Oh, Mack,” she said in a weak voice. “Oh, Mack.” She began to sob.

  He put his arm around her, pulling her close. His face blanched and he pressed his lips together as Marino explained what had happened.

  “Yes, I know where Strawberry Street is,” Susan's father said. “I don't know why she would have gone there. To my knowledge, it's not an area where she normally went. Nothing would have been open today. I don't know.”

  “Do you know where her husband, Jason Story, is?” Marino asked.

  “He's here.”

  “Here?”

  Marino glanced around.

  “Upstairs, asleep Jason's not feeling well.”

  “The children are whose?”

  “Tom and Marie's. Tom's our son. They're visiting for the holidays and left early this afternoon. For Tidewater. To visit friends. They should be home anytime.”

  He reached for his wife's hand. “Millie, the
se people have a lot of questions to ask. You'd better get Jason.”

  “I tell you what,” Marino said. “I'd rather talk to him alone for a minute. Maybe you could take me to him?”

  Mrs. Dawson nodded, hiding her face in her hands.

  “I think you best check on Charlie and Hailey,” her husband said to her. “See if you can get your sister on the phone. Maybe she can come.”

  His pale blue eyes followed his wife and Marino out of the kitchen. Susan's father was tall, with fine bones, his dark brown hair thick, with very little gray. His gestures were economical, his emotions well contained. Susan had gotten her looks from him and perhaps her disposition.

  “Her car is old. She has nothing of value to steal, and I know she would not have been involved. Not in drugs or anything.” He searched my face.

  “We don't know why this happened, Reverend Dawson.”

  “She was pregnant” he said, the words catching in his throat. “How could anyone?”

  “I don't know”' I said. “I don't know how.”

  He coughed. “She did not own a gun.”

  For a moment, I did not know what he meant. Then I realized, and reassured him, “No. The police did not find a gun. There's no evidence she did this to herself.”

  “The police? You aren't the police?”

  “No. I'm the chief medical examiner. Kay Scarpetta.”

  He stared numbly at me.

  “Your daughter worked for me.”

  “Oh. Of course. I'm sorry.”

  “I don't know how to comfort you,” I said with difficulty.

  “I haven't begun to deal with this myself. But I'm going to do everything possible to find out what happened. I want you to know that.”

  “Susan spoke of you. She always wanted to be a doctor.”

  He averted his gaze, blinking back tears.

  “I saw her last night. Briefly, at her home.”

  I hesitated, reluctant to probe the soft places of their lives. “Susan seemed troubled. And she has not been herself at work of late.”

  He swallowed, fingers laced tightly on top of the table. His knuckles were white.

  “We need to pray. Would you pray with me, Dr. Scarpetta?”

  He held out his hand. “Please.”

  “As his fingers wrapped firmly around mine, I could not help but think of Susan's obvious disregard for her father and distrust for what he represented. Fundamentalists frightened me, too. I felt anxious shutting my eyes holding hands with the Reverend Mack Dawson as he thanked God for a mercy I saw no evidence of and claimed promises too late for God to keep. Opening my eyes, I withdrew my hand. For an uneasy moment I feared that Susan's father sensed my skepticism and wou1d question my beliefs. But the fate of my soul was foremost on his mind.

  A loud voice sounded from upstairs, a muffled protest could not make out A chair scraped across the floor. The telephone rang and rang, and the voice rose again in a primal outcry of rage and pain. Dawson closed his eyes. He muttered something under his breath that rather strange. I thought he said, “Stay in your room.”

  “Jason has been here the whole time.” he said. I could see his pulse pounding in his temples. “I realize he can speak for himself. But I just want you to know this from me.”

  “You mentioned he's not feeling well.”

  “He woke up with a cold, the beginning of one. Susan took his temperature after lunch and encouraged him to go to bed. He would never hurt... Well.” He coughed “I know the police have to ask, have to consider domestic situations. But that's not the case here.”

  “Reverend Dawson, what time did Susan leave the house today, and where did she say she was going?”

  "She left after dinner; after Jason went to bed. I think that would have been around one-thirty or two: She said she was going. over to a friend's house.”

  "Which friend?” He stared past me. "A friend she went to high school with. Dianne Lee.”

  “Where does Dianne live?”

  “Northside, near the seminary.”

  "Dianne’s car was found off Strawberry Street, not in Northside.”

  "I suppose if somebody . . . She could have ended up anywhere.”

  "It would be helpful to know if she ever made it to Dianne's house, and whose idea the visit was," I said.

  He got up and started opening kitchen drawers. It took him three tries to find the telephone directory. His hands trembled as he turned pages and dialed a number. Clearing his throat several times, he asked to speak to Dianne. "I see. What was that?” He listened for a moment. "No, no.” His voice shook. "Things are not all right.”

  I sat quietly as he explained, and I imagined him many years earlier praying and talking on the phone as he dealt with the death of his other daughter, Judy. When he returned to the table, he confirmed what I feared. Susan had not visited her friend that afternoon, nor had there been any plan for her to do so. Her friend was not in town.

  "She's with her husband's family in North Carolina," Susan's father said. "She's been there several days. Why would Susan lie? She didn't have to. I've always told her no matter what, she didn't have to lie.”

  "It would seem she did not want anyone to know where she was going or who she was going to see. I know that raises unhappy speculations, but we need to face them," I said gently.

  He stared down at his hands.

  "Were she and Jason getting along all right?”

  "I don't know.”

  He fought to regain his composure.

  "Dear Lord, not again.”

  Again he whispered curiously.

  "Go to your room. Please go.”

  Then he looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. "She had a twin sister. Judy died when they were in high school. "

  "In a car accident, yes. Susan told me. I'm so sorry.”

  "She's never gotten over it. She blamed God. She blamed me.”

  "I did not get that impression," I said.’

  "If she blamed anyone, it seemed to be a girl named Doreen.”

  Dawson slipped out a handkerchief and quietly blew his nose. "Who?” he asked.

  "The girl in high school who allegedly was a witch" He shook his head.

  "She supposedly put a curse on Judy?”

  But it was pointless to explain further. I could tell that Dawson did not know what I was talking about. We both turned as Hailey walked into the kitchen. She was cradling a baseball glove, her eyes frightened.

  "What have you got there, darling?”

  I asked, trying to smile.

  She came close to me. I could smell the new leather. The glove was tied with string; a softball in the sweet spot like a large pearl inside an oyster.

  "Aunt Susan gave it to me," she said in a small voice. "You got to break it in. I have to put it under my mattress. Aunt Susan says I have to for a week.”

  Her grandfather reached for her arid lifted her onto his lap. He buried his nose in her hair, holding her tight. "I need for you to go to your room for a little while, sugar. Will you do that for me so I can take care of things? Just for a while?”

  She nodded, her eyes not leaving me.

  "What are Grandma and Charlie doing?”

  "Don't know.”

  She slid off his lap and reluctantly left us.

  "You said that before," I said to him.

  He looked lost.

  "You told her to go to her room," I said. "I heard you say that earlier, mutter something about going to your room. Who were you talking to?’

  He dropped his eyes. "The child is self. Self feels intensely, cries, cannot control emotions. Sometimes it is best to send self to his room as I just did Hailey. To hold together. A trick I learned. When I was a boy I learned I had to; my father did not react well if I cried.”

  "It is all right to cry, Reverend Dawson.”

  His eyes filled with tears. I heard Marino's footsteps on the stairs. Then he strode into the kitchen and Dawson said the phrase again, in anguish, under his breath.