Cruel & Unusual Page 4

  “Was it, perhaps, reported to you that he may have been on a hunger strike?”

  “No such thing was reported to me.”

  I glanced up at the clock and light stabbed my eyes. I was out of aspirin and had left my decongestant at home.

  I heard pages flip.

  “It says here that you found abrasions on his arms, the inner aspects of both upper arms,” Grueman said.

  “That's correct.”

  “And just what, exactly, is an inner aspect?”

  “The inside of the arm above the antecubital fossa.”

  A pause. “The antecubital fossa,” he said in amazement.

  “Well, let me see. I've got my own arm turned palm up and am looking at the inside of my elbow. Or where the arm folds, actually. That would be accurate, wouldn't it? To say that the inner aspect is the side where the arm folds, and the antecubual fossa, therefore, is where the arm folds?”

  “That would be accurate.”

  “Well, well, very good. And to what do you attribute these injuries to the inner aspects of Mr. Wadden's “Possibly to restraints,” I said testily.

  “Restraints?”

  “Yes, as in the leather restraints associated with the electric chair.”

  “You said possibly. Possibly restraints?”

  “That's what I said.”

  “Meaning, you can't say with certainty, Dr. Scarpetta?”

  “There's very little in this life that one can say with certainty, Mr. Grueman.”

  “Meaning that it would be reasonable to entertain the possibility that the restraints that caused the abrasions could have been of a different variety? Such as the human variety? Such as marks left by human hands?”

  “The abrasions I found are inconsistent with injuries inflicted by human hands,” I said.

  “And are they consistent with the injuries inflicted by the electric chair, with the restraints associated with it?”

  “It is my opinion that they would be.”

  “Your opinion, Dr. Scarpetta'?”

  “I haven't actually examined the electric chair' I said sharply.

  This was followed by a long pause, for which Nicholas Grueman had been famous in the classroom when he wanted a student's obvious inadequacy to hang in the air. I envisioned him hovering over me, hands clasped behind his back, his face expressionless as the clock ticked loudly on the wall. Once I had endured his silent scrutiny for more than two minutes as my eyes raced blindly over pages of the casebook opened before me. And as I sat at my solid walnut desk some twenty years later, a middle-aged chief medical examiner with enough degrees and certificates to paper a wall, I felt my face begin to burn. I felt the old humiliation and rage.

  Susan walked into my office as Grueman abruptly ended the encounter with “Good day” and hung up..

  “Eddie Heath's body is here.”

  Her surgical gown was untied in back and clean, the expression on her face distracted. “Can he wait until the morning?”

  “No,” I said. “He can't.”

  The boy looked smaller on the cold steel table than he had seemed in the bright sheets of his hospital bed. There were no rainbows in this room, no walls or windows decorated with dinosaurs or color to cheer the heart of a child. Eddie Heath had come in naked with IV needles, catheter, and dressings still in place. They seemed sad remnants of what had held him to this world and then disconnected him from it, like string tailing a balloon blowing forlornly through empty air. For the better part of an hour I documented injuries and marks of therapy while Susan took photographs and answered the phone.

  We had locked the doors leading into the autopsy suite, and beyond I could hear people getting off the elevator and heading home in the rapidly descending dark. Twice the buzzer sounded in the bay as funeral home attendants arrived to bring a body or take one away. The wounds to Eddies shoulder and thigh were dry and a dark shiny red.

  “God,” Susan said, staring. “God, who would do something like that? Look at all the little cuts to the edges, too. It's like somebody cut crisscrosses and then removed the whole area of skin.”

  “That's precisely what I think was done.”

  “You think someone carved some sort of pattern?”

  “I think someone attempted to eradicate something. And when that didn't work, he removed the skin.”

  “Eradicate what?”

  “Nothing that was already there,” I said. “He had no tattoos, birthmarks, or scars in those areas. If something wasn't already there, then perhaps something was added and had to be removed because of the potential evidentiary value.”

  “Something like bite marks.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The body was not yet fully rigorous and was still slightly warm as I began swabbing any area that a washcloth might have missed. I checked axillas, gluteal folds, behind ears and inside them, and inside the navel. I clipped fingernails into clean white envelopes and looked for fibers and other debris in hair.

  Susan continued to glance at me, and I sensed her tension. Finally she asked, “Anything special you're liking for?”

  “Dried seminal fluid, for one thing,” I said.

  “1n his axilla?”

  “There, in any crease in skin, any orifice, anywhere.”

  “You don't usually look in all those places.”

  “I don't usually look for zebras.”

  “For what?”

  “We used to have a saying in medical school. If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses. But in a case like this I know we're looking for zebras,” I said. I began going over every inch of the body with a lens.

  When I got to his wrists, I slowly turned his hands the way and that, studying them for such a long time that Susan stopped what she was doing. I referred to the diagrams on my clipboard, correlating each mark of therapy with the ones I had drawn “Where are his charts?” I glanced around.

  “Over here.”

  Susan fetched paperwork from a countertop. I began flipping through charts, concentrating particularly on emergency room records and the report filled in by the rescue squad. Nowhere did it indicate that Eddie Heath's hands had been bound. I tried to remember what Detective Trent had said to me when describing the scene where the boy's body had been found. Hadn't Trent said that Eddie's hands were by his sides? “You find something?”

  Susan finally asked.

  “You have to look through the lens to see. There. The undersides of his wrists and here on the left one, to the left of the wrist bone. You see the gummy residue? The traces of adhesive? It looks like smudges of grayish dirt.”

  “Just barely. And maybe some fibers sticking to it,” Susan marveled, her shoulder pressed against mine as slue stared through the lens.

  “And the skin's smooth,” I continued to point out. “Less hair in this area than here and here.”

  “Because when the tape was removed, hairs would have been pulled out.”

  “Exactly. We'll take wrist hairs for exemplars. The adhesive and fibers can be matched back to the tape, if the tape is ever recovered. And if the tape that bound him is recovered, it can be matched back to the roll.”

  “I don't understand.”

  She straightened up and looked at me. “His IV lines were held in place with adhesive tape. You sure that's not the explanation?”

  “There are no needle marks on these areas of his wrists that would indicate marks of therapy,” I said to her. “And you saw what was taped to him when he came in. Nothing to account for the adhesive here.”

  “True.”

  “Let's take photographs and then I'm going to collect this adhesive residue and let Trace see what they find.”

  “His body was outside next to a Dumpster. Seems like that would be a Trace nightmare.”

  “It depends on whether this residue on his wrists was in contact with the pavement.”

  I began gently scraping the residue off with a scalpel.

  “I don't guess they did a vacuuming out there.”

&nbs
p; “No, I'm sure they wouldn't have. But I think we can still get sweepings if we ask nicely. It can't hurt to try.”

  I continued examining Eddie Heath's thin forearms and wrists, looking for contusions or abrasions I might have missed. But I did not find any.

  “His ankles look okay,” Susan said from the far end of the table. “I don't see any adhesive or areas where the hair is gone. No injuries. It doesn't look like he was taped around his ankles. just his wrists.”

  I could recall only a few cases in which a victim's tight bindings had left no mark on skin. Clearly, the strapping tape, had been in direct contact with Eddies skin. He should have moved his hands, wriggled as his discomfort had grown and his circulation had been restricted. But he had not resisted. He had not tugged or squirmed or tried to get away.

  I thought of the blood drips on the shoulder of his jacket and the soot and stippling on the collar. I again checked around his mouth, looked at his tongue, and glanced over his charts. If he had been gagged, there was no evidence of it now, no abrasions or bruises, no traces of adhesive. I imagined him propped against the Dumpster, naked and in the bitter cold, his clothing piled by his side, not neatly, not sloppily, but casually from the way it had been described to me. When I tried to sense the emotion of the crime, I did not detect anger, panic, or fear.

  “He shot him first, didn't he?”

  Susan's eyes were alert like those of a wary stranger you pass on a desolate, dark street. “Whoever did this taped his wrist, together after he shot him.”

  “I'm thinking that.”

  “But that's so weird,” she said. “You don't need to bind someone you've just shot in the head.”

  “We don't know what this individual fantasizes about.”

  The sinus headache had arrived and I had fallen like a city under siege. My eyes were watering; my skull was two sizes too small.

  Susan pulled the thick electrical cord down from its reel and plugged in the Stryker saw. She snapped new blades in scalpels and checked the knives on the surgical cart. She disappeared into the X-ray room and returned with Eddies films, which she fixed to light boxes. She scurried about frenetically and then did something she had never done before. She bumped hard against the surgical cart she had been arranging and sent two quart jars of formalin crashing to the floor.

  I ran to her as she jumped back, gasping, waving fumes from her face and sending broken glass skittering across the floor as her feet almost went out from under her.

  “Did it get your face?”

  I grabbed her arm and hurried her toward the locker room.

  “I don't think so. No. Oh, God. It's on my feet and legs. I think on my arm, too.”

  “You're sure it's not in your eyes or mouth?”

  I helped her strip off her greens.

  “I'm sure.”

  I ducked inside the shower and turned on the water as she practically tore off the rest of her clothes.

  I made her stand beneath a blast of tepid water for a very long time as I donned mask, safety glasses, and thick rubber gloves. I soaked up the hazardous chemical with formalin pillows, supplied by the state for biochemical emergencies like this. I swept up glass and tied everything inside double plastic bags. Then I hosed down the floor, washed myself, and changed into fresh greens. Susan eventually emerged from the shower, bright pink and scared.

  “Dr. Scarpetta, I'm so sorry,” she said.

  “My only concern is you. Are you all right?”

  “I feel weak and a little dizzy. I can still smell the fumes.”

  “I'll finish up here,” I said. “Why don't you go home.”

  “I think I'll just rest for a while first. Maybe I'd better go upstairs.”

  My lab coat was draped over the back of a chair, and I reached inside a pocket and got out my keys. “Here,” I said, handing them to her. “You can lie down on the couch in my office. Get on the intercom immediately if the dizziness doesn't go away or you start feeling worse.”

  She reappeared about an hour later, her winter coat on and buttoned up to her chin.

  “How do you feel?” I asked as I sutured the Y incision.

  “A little shaky but okay.”

  She watched me in silence for a moment, then added, “I thought of something while I was upstairs. I don't think you should list me as a witness in this case.”

  I glanced up at her in surprise. It was routine for anyone present during an autopsy to be listed as a witness on the official report. Susan's request wasn't of great importance, but it was peculiar.

  “I didn't participate in the autopsy,” she went on. “I mean, I helped with the external exam but wasn't present when you did the post. And I know this is going to be a big case - if they ever catch anyone. If it ever goes to court. And I just think it's better if I'm not listed, since, like I said, I really wasn't present.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I have no problem with that.”

  She placed my keys on a counter and left.

  Marino was home when I tried him from my car phone as I slowed at a tollbooth about an hour later.

  “Do you know the warden at Spring Street?” I asked him.

  “Frank Donahue. Where are you?”

  “In my car.”

  “I thought so. Probably half the truckers in Virginia are listening to us on their CBs.”

  “They won't hear much.”

  “I heard about the kid,” he said. “You finished with him?”

  “Yes. I'll call you from home. There's something you can do for me in the meantime. I need to look over a few things at the pen right away.”

  “The problem with looking over the pen is it looks back.”

  “That's why you're going with me,” I said.

  If nothing else, after two miserable semesters of my former professor's tutelage I had learned to be prepared. So it was on Saturday afternoon that Marino and I were en route to the state penitentiary. Skies were leaden, wind thrashing trees along the roadsides, the universe in a state of cold agitation, as if reflecting my mood.

  “You want my private opinion,” Marino said to me as we drove, “I think you're letting Grueman jerk you around.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then why is it every time there's an execution and he's involved, you act jerked around?”

  “And how would you handle the situation?”

  He pushed in the cigarette lighter. “Same way you are. I'd take a damn look at death row and the chair, document everything, and then tell him he's fall of shit. Or better yet, tell the press he's full of shit.”

  In this morning's paper Grueman was quoted as saying that Waddell had not been receiving proper nourishment and his body bore bruises I could not adequately explain.

  “What's the deal, anyway?” Marino went on. “Was he defending these squirrels when you was in law school?”

  “No. Several years ago he was asked to run Georgetown's Criminal Justice Clinic. That's when he began taking on death penalty cases pro bono.”

  “The guy must have a screw loose.”

  “He's very opposed to capital punishment and has managed to turn whoever he represents into a cause celebre. Waddell in particular.”

  “Yo. Saint Nick, the patron saint of dirtbags. Ain't that sweet,” Marino said. “Why don't you send him color photos of Eddie Heath and ask if he wants to talk to the boy's family? See how he feels about the pig who committed that crime.”

  “Nothing will change Grueman's opinions.”

  “He got kids? A wife? Anybody he cares about?”

  “It doesn't make any difference, Marino. I don't guess you've got anything new on Eddie.”

  “No, and neither does Henrico. We've got his clothes and a twenty-two bullet. Maybe the labs will get lucky with the stuff you turned in.”

  “What about VICAP?” I asked, referring to the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, in which Marino and FBI profiler Benton Wesley were regional team partners.

  “Trent's working on the forms and will sen
d them off in a couple days,” Marino said. “And I alerted Benton about the case last night.”

  “Was Eddie the type to get into a stranger's car?”

  “According to his parents, he wasn't. We're either dealing with a blitz attack or someone who earned the kid's confidence long enough to grab him.”