Unnatural Exposure Read online

“No problem. What time?”

  “Whenever he wants. I’ll be down there all day.”

  I went back to the office in my house to check e-mail before I went to bed. Lucy rarely called when she could use the computer to tell me how and where she was. My niece was an FBI agent, the technical specialist for their Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT. She could be sent anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.

  Like a fretful mother, I found myself frequently checking for messages from her, dreading the day her pager went off, sending her to Andrews Air Force Base with the boys, to board yet another C-141 cargo plane. Stepping around stacks of journals waiting to be read and thick medical tomes that I recently had bought but had not yet shelved, I sat at my desk. My office was the most lived-in room in my house, and I had designed it with a fireplace and large windows overlooking a rocky bend in the James River.

  Logging on to America Online, or AOL, I was greeted by a mechanical male voice announcing that I had mail. I had e-mail about various cases, trials, professional meetings and journal articles, and one message from someone I did not recognize. His user name was deadoc. Immediately, I was uneasy. There was no description of what this person had sent, and when I opened what he had written to me, it simply said, ten.

  A graphic file had been attached, and I downloaded and decompressed it. An image began to materialize on my screen, rolling down in color, one band of pixels at a time. I realized I was looking at a photograph of a wall the color of putty, and the edge of a table with some sort of pale blue cover on it that was smeared and pooled with something dark red. Then a ragged, gaping red wound was painted on the screen, followed by flesh tones that became bloody stumps and nipples.

  I stared in disbelief as the horror was complete, and I grabbed the phone.

  “Marino, I think you’d better get over here,” I said in a scared tone.

  “What’s wrong?” he said, alarmed.

  “There’s something here you need to see.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sit tight, Doc.” He took charge. “I’m coming.”

  I printed the file and saved it on my A drive, fearful it would somehow vanish before my eyes. While I waited for Marino, I dimmed the lights in my office to make details and colors brighter. My mind ran in a terrible loop as I stared at the butchery, the blood forming a vile portrait that for me, ordinarily, wasn’t rare. Other physicians, scientists, lawyers and law enforcement officers frequently sent me photographs like this over the Internet. Routinely, I was asked, via e-mail, to examine crime scenes, organs, wounds, diagrams, even animated reconstructions of cases about to go to court.

  This photograph could easily have been one sent by a detective, a colleague. It could have come from a Commonwealth’s Attorney or CASKU. But there was one thing obviously wrong. So far we had no crime scene in this case, only a landfill where the victim had been dumped, and the trash and tattered bag that had been around her. Only the killer or someone else involved in the crime could have sent this file to me.

  Fifteen minutes later, at almost midnight, my doorbell rang, and I jumped out of my chair. I ran down the hall to let Marino in.

  “What the hell is it now?” he said right off.

  He was sweating in a gray Richmond police T-shirt that was tight over his big body and gut, and baggy shorts and athletic shoes with tube socks pulled up to his calves. I smelled stale sweat and cigarettes.

  “Come on,” I said.

  He followed me down the hall into my office, and when he saw what was on the computer screen, he sat in my chair, scowling as he stared.

  “Is this what the shit I think it is?” he said.

  “Appears the photograph was taken where the body was dismembered.” I was not used to having anyone in the private place where I worked, and I could feel my anxiety level rise.

  “This is what you found today.”

  “What you’re looking at was taken shortly after death,” I said. “But yes, this is the torso from the landfill.”

  “How do you know?” Marino said.

  His eyes were fastened to the screen, and he adjusted my chair. Then his big feet shoved books on the floor as he made himself more comfortable. When he picked up files and moved them to another corner of my desk, I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “I have things where I want them,” I pointedly said as I returned the files to their original messy space.

  “Hey, chill out, Doc,” he said as if it didn’t matter. “How do we know that this thing ain’t a hoax?”

  Again, he moved the files out of his way, and now I was really irritated.

  “Marino, you’re going to have to get up,” I said. “I don’t let anybody sit at my desk. You’re making me crazy.”

  He shot me an angry look and got up out of my chair. “Hey, do me a favor. Next time call somebody else when you got a problem.”

  “Try to be sensitive . . .”

  He cut me off, losing his temper. “No. You be sensitive and quit being such a friggin’ fussbudget. No wonder you and Wesley got problems.”

  “Marino,” I warned, “you just crossed a line and better stop right there.”

  He was silent, looking around, sweating.

  “Let’s get back to this.” I sat in my chair, readjusting it. “I don’t think this is a hoax, and I believe it’s the torso from the landfill.”

  “Why?” He would not look at me, hands in his pockets.

  “Arms and legs are severed through the long bones, not the joints.” I touched the screen. “There are other similarities. It’s her, unless another victim with a similar body type has been killed and dismembered in the same manner, and we’ve not found her yet. And I don’t know how someone could have perpetrated a hoax like this without knowing how the victim was dismembered. Not to mention, this case hasn’t hit the news yet.”

  “Shit.” His face was deep red. “So, is there something like a return address?”

  “Yes. Someone on AOL with the name D-E-A-D-O-C.”

  “As in Dead-Doc?” He was intrigued enough to forget his mood.

  “I can only assume. The message was one word: ten.”

  “That’s it?”

  “In lowercase letters.”

  He looked at me, thinking. “You count the ones in Ireland, this is number ten. You got a copy of this thing?”

  “Yes. And the Dublin cases and their possible connection to the first four here have been in the news.” I handed him a printout. “Anybody could know about it.”

  “Don’t matter. Assuming this is the same killer and he’s just struck again, he knows damn well how many he’s killed,” he said. “But what I’m not getting is how he knew where to send this file to you?”

  “My address in AOL wouldn’t be hard to guess. It’s my name.”

  “Jesus, I can’t believe you would do that,” he erupted again. “That’s like using your date of birth for your burglar alarm code.”

  “I use e-mail almost exclusively to communicate with medical examiners, people in the Health Department, the police. They need something easy to remember. Besides,” I added as his stare continued to pass judgment on me, “it’s never been a problem.”

  “Well, now it sure as hell is,” he said, looking at the printout. “Good news is, maybe we’ll find something in here that will help. Maybe he left a trail in the computer.”

  “On the Web,” I said.

  “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “Maybe you should call Lucy.”

  “Benton should do that,” I reminded him. “I can’t ask her help on a case just because I’m her aunt.”

  “So I guess I got to call him about that, too.” He picked his way around my clutter, walking to the doorway. “I hope you’ve got some beer in this joint.” He stopped and turned toward me. “You know, Doc, it ain’t none of my business, but you got to talk to him eventually.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It’s none of your business.”

  Three


  The next morning, I woke up to the muffled drumming of heavy rain on the roof and the persistent beeping of my alarm. The hour was early for a day that I was supposed to be taking off from work, and it struck me that during the night the month had turned into November. Winter was not far away, another year gone. Opening shades, I looked out at the day. Petals from my roses were beaten to the ground, the river swollen and flowing around rocks that looked black.

  I felt bad about Marino. I had been impatient with him when I had sent him home without a beer last night. But I did not want to talk with him about matters he would not understand. For him, it was simple. I was divorced. Benton Wesley’s wife had left him for another man. We’d been having an affair, so we might as well get married. For a while I had gone along with the plan. Last fall and winter, Wesley and I went skiing, diving, we shopped, cooked in and out and even worked in my yard. We did not get along worth a damn.

  In fact, I didn’t want him in my house any more than I wanted Marino sitting in my chair. When Wesley moved a piece of furniture or even returned dishes and silverware to the wrong cabinets and drawers, I felt a secret anger that surprised and dismayed me. I had never believed that our relationship was right when he was still married, but back then we had enjoyed each other more, especially in bed. I feared that my failure to feel what I thought I should revealed a trait that I could not bear to see.

  I drove to my office with the windshield wipers working hard as the relentless downpour thrummed the roof. Traffic was thin because it was barely seven, and Richmond’s downtown skyline came into view slowly and by degrees in the watery fog. I thought of the photograph again. I envisioned it slowly painting down my screen, and the hairs on my arms stood up as a chill crept over me. I was disturbed in a way I could not define as it occurred to me for the first time that the person who had sent it might be someone I knew.

  Turning on the Seventh Street exit, I wound around Shockoe Slip, with its wet cobblestones and trendy restaurants that were dark at this hour. I passed parking lots barely beginning to fill, and turned into the one behind my four-story stucco building. I couldn’t believe it when I found a television news van waiting in my parking place, which was clearly designated by a sign that read CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER. The crew knew that if they waited there long enough, they would be rewarded with me.

  I pulled up close and motioned for them to move as the van’s doors slid open. A cameraman in a rain suit jumped out, coming my way, a reporter in tow with a microphone. I rolled my window down several inches.

  “Move,” I said, and I wasn’t nice about it. “You’re in my parking place.”

  They did not care as someone else got out with lights. For a moment I sat staring, anger turning me hard like amber. The reporter was blocking my door, her microphone shoved through the opening in the window.

  “Dr. Scarpetta, can you verify that the Butcher has struck again?” she asked, loudly, as the camera rolled and lights burned.

  “Move your van,” I said with iron calm as I stared right at her and the camera.

  “Is it in fact a torso that was found?” Rain was running off her hood as she pushed the microphone in farther.

  “I’m going to ask you one last time to move your van out of my parking place,” I said like a judge about to cite contempt of court. “You are trespassing.”

  The cameraman found a new angle, zooming in, harsh lights in my eyes.

  “Was it dismembered like the others . . . ?”

  She jerked the microphone away just in time as my window went up. I shoved the car in gear and began backing, the crew scrambling out of the way as I made a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn. Tires spun and skidded as I parked right behind the van, pinning it between my Mercedes and the building.

  “Wait a minute!”

  “Hey! You can’t do that!”

  Their faces were disbelieving as I got out. Not bothering with an umbrella, I ran for the door and unlocked it.

  “Hey!” the protests continued. “We can’t get out!”

  Inside the bay, water was beaded on the oversized maroon station wagon and dripping to the concrete floor. I opened another door and walked into the corridor, looking around to see who else was here. White tile was spotless, the air heavy with industrial strength deodorizer, and as I walked to the morgue office, the massive stainless steel refrigerator door sucked open.

  “Good morning!” Wingo said with a surprised grin. “You’re early.”

  “Thanks for bringing the wagon in out of the rain,” I said.

  “No more cases coming in that I know of, so I didn’t think it would hurt to stick it in the bay.”

  “Did you see anybody out there when you drove it?” I asked.

  He looked puzzled. “No. But that was about an hour ago.”

  Wingo was the only member of my staff who routinely got to the office earlier than I did. He was lithe and attractive, with pretty features and shaggy dark hair. An obsessive-compulsive, he ironed his scrubs, washed the wagon and anatomical vans several times a week, and was forever polishing stainless steel until it shone like mirrors. His job was to run the morgue, and he did so with the precision and pride of a military leader. Carelessness and callousness were not allowed down here by either one of us, and no one dared dispose of hazardous waste or make sophomoric jokes about the dead.

  “The landfill case is still in the fridge,” Wingo said to me. “Do you want me to bring it out?”

  “Let’s wait until after staff meeting,” I said. “The longer she’s refrigerated, the better, and I don’t want anybody wandering in here to look.”

  “That won’t happen,” he said as if I had just implied he might be delinquent in his duties.

  “I don’t even want anybody on the staff wandering in out of curiosity.”

  “Oh.” Anger flashed in his eyes. “I just don’t understand people.”

  He never would, because he was not like them.

  “I’ll let you alert security,” I said. “The media’s already in the parking lot.”

  “You got to be kidding. This early?”

  “Channel Eight was waiting for me when I pulled in.” I handed him the key to my car. “Give them a few minutes, and then let them go.”

  “What do you mean, let them go?” He frowned, staring at the remote control key in his hand.

  “They’re in my parking place.” I headed toward the elevator.

  “They’re what?”

  “You’ll see.” I boarded. “If they so much as touch my car, I’ll charge them with trespassing and malicious property damage. Then I’m going to have the A.G.’s office call their station’s general manager. I might sue.” I smiled at him through shutting doors.

  My office was on the second floor of the Consolidated Lab Building, which had been constructed in the seventies and was soon to be abandoned by us and the scientists upstairs. At last, we were to get spacious quarters in the city’s new Biotech Park just off Broad Street, not far from the Marriott and the Coliseum.

  Construction was already under way, and I spent far too much time arguing over details, blueprints and budgets. What had been home to me for years was now in disarray, stacks of boxes lining hallways, and clerks not wanting to file, since everything would have to be packed anyway. Averting my gaze from more boxes, I followed the hallway to my office, where my desk was in its usual state of avalanche.

  I checked my e-mail again, almost expecting another anonymous file like the last, but only the same messages were there, and I scanned through them, sending brief replies. The address deadoc quietly waited in my mailbox, and I could not resist opening it and the file with the photograph. I was concentrating so hard, I did not hear Rose walk in.

  “I think Noah had better build another ark,” she said.

  Startled, I looked up to see her in the doorway adjoining my office and hers. She was taking off her raincoat, and looked worried.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

  Hesitating, she step
ped inside, scrutinizing me.

  “I knew you’d be here, despite all advice,” she said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “What are you doing here so early?” I asked.

  “I had a feeling you’d have your hands full.” She took off her coat. “You saw the paper this morning?”

  “Not yet.”

  She opened her pocketbook and got out her glasses. “All this Butcher business. You can imagine the uproar. While I was driving, I heard on the news that since these cases started, more handguns are being sold than you can shake a stick at. I sometimes wonder if the gun shops aren’t behind things like this. Frighten us out of our wits so we all make a mad dash for the nearest .38 or semiautomatic pistol.”

  Rose had hair the color of steel that she always wore up, her face patrician and keen. There was nothing she had not seen, and she was not afraid of anyone. I lived in the uneasy shadow of her retirement, for I knew her age. She did not have to work for me. She stayed only because she cared and had no one left at home.

  “Take a look,” I said, pushing back my chair.

  She came around to my side of the desk and stood so close I could smell White Musk, the fragrance of everything she had concocted at the Body Shop, where they were against testing with animals. Rose had recently adopted her fifth retired greyhound. She bred Siamese cats, kept several aquariums and was one step short of being dangerous to anyone who wore fur. She stared into my computer screen, and did not seem to know what she was looking at. Then her demeanor stiffened.

  “My God,” she muttered, looking at me over the top of her bifocals. “Is this what’s downstairs?”

  “I think an earlier version of it,” I said. “Sent to me on AOL.”

  She did not speak.

  “Needless to say,” I went on, “I will trust you to keep an eagle eye on this place while I’m downstairs. If anybody comes into the lobby we don’t know or aren’t expecting, I want security to intercept them. Don’t you even think about going out to see what they want.” I looked pointedly at her, knowing what she was like.

  “You think he would come here?” she matter-of-factly stated.