Unnatural Exposure Read online

  “I’m not sure what to think except that he clearly had some need to contact me.” I closed the file and got up. “And he has.”

  At not quite half past eight, Wingo rolled the body onto the floor scale, and we began what I knew would be a very long and painstaking examination. The torso weighed forty-six pounds and was twenty-one inches in length. Livormortis was faint posteriorly, meaning when her circulation had quit, blood had settled according to gravity, placing her on her back for hours or days after death. I could not look at her without seeing the savaged image on my computer screen, and believed it and the torso before me were the same.

  “How big do you think she was?” Wingo glanced at me as he parallel parked the gurney next to the first autopsy table.

  “We’ll use heights of lumbar vertebrae to estimate height, since we obviously don’t have tibias, femurs,” I said, tying a plastic apron over my gown. “But she looks small. Frail, actually.”

  Moments later, X rays had finished processing and he was attaching them to light boxes. What I saw told a story that did not seem to make sense. The faces of the pubic symphysis, or the surfaces where one pubis joins the other, were no longer rugged and ridged, as in youth. Instead, bone was badly eroded with irregular, lipped margins. More X rays revealed sternal rib ends with irregular bony growths, the bone very thin-walled with sharp edges, and there were degenerative changes to the lumbosacral vertebrae, as well.

  Wingo was no anthropologist, but he saw the obvious, too.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think we got her films mixed up with somebody else’s,” he said.

  “This lady’s old,” I said.

  “How old, would you guess?”

  “I don’t like to guess.” I was studying her X rays. “But I’d say seventy, at least. Or to play it really safe, between sixty-five and eighty. Come on. Let’s go through trash for a while.”

  The next two hours were spent sifting through a large garbage bag of trash from the landfill that had been directly under and around the body. The garbage bag I believed she had been in was black, thirty-gallon size, and had been sealed with a yellow plastic-toothed tie. Wearing masks and gloves, Wingo and I picked through shredded tire and the fluff from upholstery stuffing that was used as a cover in the landfill. We examined countless tatters of slimy plastic and paper, picking out maggots and dead flies and dropping them into a carton.

  Our treasures were few, a blue button that was probably unrelated, and, oddly, a child’s tooth, which I imagined was tossed, a coin left under a pillow. We found a mangled comb, a flattened battery, several shards of broken china, a tangled wire coat hanger, and the cap of a Bic pen. Mostly, it was rubber, fluff, torn black plastic and soggy paper that we threw into a garbage can. Then we circled bright lights around the table and centered her on a clean white sheet.

  Using a lens, I began going over her an inch at a time, her flesh a microscopic landfill of debris. With forceps, I collected pale fibers from the dark bloody stump that once had been her neck, and I found hairs, three of them, grayish-white, about fourteen inches long, adhering to dried blood, posteriorly.

  “I need another envelope,” I said to Wingo as I came across something else I did not expect.

  Embedded in the ends of each humerus, or the bone of the upper arm, and also in margins of muscle around it were more fibers and tiny fragments of fabric that looked pale blue, meaning the saw had to have gone through it.

  “She was dismembered through her clothes or something else she was wrapped in,” I said, startled.

  Wingo stopped what he was doing and looked at me. “The others weren’t.”

  Those victims appeared to have been nude when they were sawn apart. He made more notes as I moved on, peering through the lens.

  “Fibers and bits of fabric are also embedded in either femur.” I looked more closely.

  “So she was covered from the waist down, too?” he said.

  “That’s the way it’s looking.”

  “So someone waited until after she was dismembered, and then took all her clothes off?” He looked at me, emotion in his eyes as he started to envision it.

  “He wouldn’t want us to get the clothes. There might be too much information there,” I said.

  “Then why didn’t he undress her, unwrap her or whatever to begin with?”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to look at her while he was dismembering her,” I said.

  “Oh, so now he’s getting sensitive on us,” Wingo said, as if he hated whoever it was.

  “Make a note of the measurements,” I told him. “Cervical spine is transected at the level of C-5. Residual femur on the right measures two inches below the lesser trochanter, and two and a half inches on the left, with saw marks visible. Right and left segments of humerus are one inch, saw marks visible. On the upper right hip is a three-quarters-of-an-inch old, healed vaccination scar.”

  “What about that?” He referred to the numerous raised, fluid-filled vesicles scattered over buttocks, shoulders and upper thighs.

  “I don’t know,” I said, reaching for a syringe. “I’m guessing herpes zoster virus.”

  “Whoa!” Wingo jumped back from the table. “I wish you’d told me that earlier.” He was scared.

  “Shingles.” I began labeling a test tube. “Maybe. I must confess, it’s a little weird.”

  “What do you mean?” He was getting more unnerved.

  “With shingles,” I replied, “the virus attacks sensory nerves. When the vesicles erupt, they do so in a swath along nerve distributions. Under a rib, for example. And the vesicles will be of varying ages. But this is a crop, and they all look the same age.”

  “What else could it be?” he asked. “Chicken pox?”

  “Same virus. Children get chicken pox. Adults get shingles.”

  “What if I get it?” Wingo said.

  “Did you have chicken pox as a kid?”

  “Got no idea.”

  “What about the VZV vaccine?” I asked. “Have you had that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you have no antibody to VZV, you should be vaccinated.” I glanced up at him. “Are you immunosuppressed?”

  He did not say anything as he went to a cart, snatching off his latex gloves and slamming them into the red can for biologically hazardous trash. Upset, he snatched a new pair made of heavier blue Nitrile. I stopped what I was doing, watching him until he returned to the table.

  “I just think you could have warned me before now,” he said, and he sounded on the verge of tears. “I mean, it’s not like you can take any precautions in this place, like vaccinations, except for hepatitis B. So I depend on you to let me know what’s coming in.”

  “Calm down.”

  I was gentle with him. Wingo was too sensitive for his own good, and that was really the only problem I ever had with him.

  “You can’t possibly get chicken pox or shingles from this lady unless you have an exchange of body fluids,” I said. “So as long as you’re wearing gloves and going about business in the usual way, and don’t cut yourself or get a needle stick, you will not be exposed to the virus.”

  For an instant, his eyes were bright, and he quickly looked away.

  “I’ll start taking pictures,” he said.

  Four

  Marino and Benton Wesley appeared midafternoon, when the autopsy was well under way. There was nothing further I could do with the external examination, and Wingo had taken a late lunch, so I was alone. Wesley’s eyes were on me as he walked through the door, and I could tell by his coat that it was still raining.

  “Just so you know,” Marino said right off, “there’s a flood warning.”

  Since there were no windows in the morgue, I never knew the weather.

  “How serious a warning?” I asked, and Wesley had come close to the torso, and was looking at it.

  “Serious enough that if this keeps up, somebody’d better start piling up sandbags,” Marino replied as he parked his umbrella in a co
rner.

  My building was blocks from the James. Years ago, the lower level had flooded, bodies donated to science rising in overflowing vats, water poisoned pink with formalin seeping into the morgue and the parking lot in back.

  “How worried should I be?” I asked with concern.

  “It’s going to stop,” Wesley said, as if he could profile the weather, too.

  He took off his raincoat, and the suit beneath it was a dark blue that was almost black. He wore a starched white shirt and conservative silk tie, his silver hair a little longer than usual, but neat. His sharp features made him seem even keener and more intimidating than he was, but today his face was grim, and not just because of me. He and Marino went to a cart to put on gloves and masks.

  “I’m sorry we’re late,” Wesley said to me as I continued working. “Every time I tried to get away from the house, the phone rang. This thing’s a real problem.”

  “Certainly for her it is,” I said.

  “Shit.” Marino stared at what was left of a human being. “How the hell does anybody do something like that?”

  “I’ll tell you how,” I said, cutting sections of spleen. “First you pick an old woman and make sure she isn’t properly watered or fed, and when she gets sick, forget medical care. Then you shoot or beat her in the head.” I glanced up at them. “My bet is that she has a basilar skull fracture, maybe some other type of trauma.”

  Marino looked baffled. “She doesn’t have a head. How can you say that?”

  “I can say it because there’s blood in her airway.”

  They got closer to see what I was talking about.

  “One way that could have happened,” I went on, “is if she had a basilar skull fracture and blood dripped down the back of her throat, and she aspirated it into her airway.”

  Wesley looked carefully at the body with the demeanor of one who has seen mutilation and death a million times. He stared at the space where the head should be, as if he could imagine it.

  “She has hemorrhage in muscle tissue.” I paused to let this sink in. “She was still alive when the dismemberment began.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Marino exclaimed in disgust as he lit a cigarette. “Don’t tell me that.”

  “I’m not saying she was conscious,” I added. “Most likely this was at or about the time of death. But she still had a blood pressure, feeble as it might have been. This was true around the neck, anyway. But not the arms and legs.”

  “Then he severed her head first,” Wesley said to me.

  “Yes.”

  He was scanning X rays on the walls.

  “This doesn’t fit with his victimology,” he said. “Not at all.”

  “Everything about this case doesn’t fit,” I replied. “Except that once again, a saw was used. I’ve also found some cuts on bone that are consistent with a knife.”

  “What else can you tell us about her?” Wesley said, and I could feel his eyes on me as I dropped another section of organ into the stock jar of formalin.

  “She has some sort of eruptions that might be shingles, and two scars of the right kidney that would indicate pyelonephritis, or kidney infection. Cervix is elongated and stellate, which could suggest she’s had children. Her myocardium, or heart muscle, is soft.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Toxins do that. Toxins produced by microorganisms.” I looked up at him. “As I’ve mentioned, she was sick.”

  Marino was walking around, looking at the torso from different angles. “Do you have any idea with what?”

  “Based on secretions in her lungs, I know she had bronchitis. At the moment, I don’t know what else, except her liver’s in pretty grim shape.”

  “From drinking,” Wesley said.

  “Yellowish, nodular. Yes,” I said. “And I would say that at one time she smoked.”

  “She’s skin and bones,” Marino said.

  “She wasn’t eating,” I said. “Her stomach is tubular, empty and clean.” I showed them.

  Wesley moved to a nearby desk and pulled out a chair. He stared off in thought as I yanked a cord down from an overhead reel and plugged in the Stryker saw. Marino, who liked this part of the procedure the least, stepped back from the table. No one spoke as I sawed off the ends of arms and legs, a bony dust drifting on the air, the electric whir louder than a dentist’s drill. I placed each section into a labeled carton, and said what I thought.

  “I don’t think we’re dealing with the same killer this time.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Marino said. “But we got two big things in common. A torso, and it was dumped in central Virginia.”

  “He’s had a varied victimology all along,” said Wesley, wearing his surgical mask loose around his neck. “One black, two whites, all female, and one black male. The five in Dublin were mixed, as well. But again, all were young.”

  “So would you now expect him to choose an old woman?” I asked him.

  “Frankly, I wouldn’t. But these people aren’t an exact science, Kay. This is somebody who does whatever the hell he feels like whenever he feels like it.”

  “The dismemberment isn’t the same, it’s not through the joints,” I reminded them. “And I think she was clothed or wrapped in something.”

  “This one may have bothered him more,” Wesley said, taking the mask off altogether and dropping it on top of the desk. “His urge to kill again may have been overwhelming, and she may have been easy.” He looked at the torso. “So he strikes, but his M.O. shifts because the victimology has suddenly shifted, and he doesn’t really like it. He leaves her at least partially dressed or covered because raping and killing an old woman aren’t what turn him on. And he cuts off her head first so he doesn’t have to look at her.”

  “You see any sign of rape?” Marino asked me.

  “You rarely do,” I said. “I’m about to finish up here. She’ll go in the freezer like the other ones in the hope we eventually get an identification. I’ve got muscle tissue and marrow for DNA, hoping that we’ll eventually have a missing person to compare it with.”

  I was discouraged, and it showed. Wesley collected his coat from the back of a door, leaving a small puddle on the floor.

  “I’d like to see the photograph sent to you over AOL,” he said to me.

  “That doesn’t fit the M.O., either, by the way,” I said as I began suturing the Y-incision. “I wasn’t sent anything in the earlier cases.”

  Marino was in a hurry, as if he had somewhere else to go. “I’m heading out to Sussex,” he said, walking to the door. “Gotta meet Lone Ranger Ring so he can give me lessons in how to investigate homicides.”

  He abruptly left, and I knew the real reason why. Despite his preaching to me about marriage, my relationship with Wesley secretly bothered Marino. A part of him would always be jealous.

  “Rose can show you the photograph,” I said to Wesley as I washed the body with hose and sponge. “She knows how to get into my e-mail.”

  Disappointment glinted in his eyes before he could mask it. I carried the cartons of bone ends to a distant counter where they would be boiled in a weak solution of bleach, to completely deflesh and degrease them. He stayed where he was, waiting and watching until I got back. I did not want him to go, but I did not know what to do with him anymore.

  “Can’t we talk, Kay?” he finally said. “I’ve hardly seen you. Not in months. I know we’re both busy, and this isn’t a good time. But . . .”

  “Benton,” I interrupted with feeling. “Not here.”

  “Of course not. I’m not suggesting we talk here.”

  “It will just be more of the same.”

  “I promise it won’t.” He checked the clock on the wall. “Look, it’s already late. Why don’t I just stay in town. We’ll have dinner.”

  I hesitated, ambivalence bouncing from one end of my brain to the other. I was afraid to see him and afraid not to see him.

  “All right,” I said. “My house at seven. I’ll throw together something. Don�
��t expect much.”

  “I can take you out. I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”

  “The last place I want to be right now is out in public,” I said.

  His eyes lingered on me a little longer as I labeled tags and tubes and various types of containers. The strike of his heels was sharp on tile as he left, and I heard him speak to someone as elevator doors opened in the hall. Seconds later, Wingo walked in.

  “I would have got here sooner.” He went to a cart and began putting on new shoe covers, mask and gloves. “But it’s a zoo upstairs.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, untying my gown in back as he slipped into a fresh one.

  “Reporters.” He put on a face shield and looked at me through clear plastic. “In the lobby. Casing the building in their television vans.” He looked tensely at me. “Hate to tell you, but now Channel Eight’s got you blocked in. Their van’s right behind your car so you can’t get out, and nobody’s in it.”

  Anger rose like heat. “Call the police and get them towed,” I said from the locker room. “You finish up here. I’m going upstairs to take care of this.”

  Slamming my balled-up gown into the laundry bin, I pulled off gloves, shoe covers and cap. I vigorously scrubbed with antibacterial soap and yanked open my locker, my hands suddenly clumsy. I was very upset, this case, the press, Wesley, everything was getting to me.

  “Dr. Scarpetta?”

  Wingo was suddenly in the doorway as I fumbled with buttons on my blouse, and his walking in on me while I was dressing was nothing new. It never bothered either of us, for I was as comfortable with him as I would be with a woman.

  “I was wondering if you had time . . .” He hesitated. “Well, I know you’re busy today.”

  I tossed bloody Reeboks into my locker and slipped on the shoes I had worn to work. Then I put on my lab coat.

  “Actually, Wingo”—I checked my anger so I did not take it out on him—“I’d like to talk to you, too. When you finish down here, come see me in my office.”

  He did not have to tell me. I had a feeling I knew. I rode the elevator upstairs, my mood darkened like a storm about to strike. Wesley was still in my office, studying what was on my computer screen, and I walked past in the hallway without slowing my stride. It was Rose I wanted to find. When I got to the front office, clerks were frantically answering phones that would not stop, while my secretary and administrator were before a window overlooking the front parking lot.