From Potter's Field Read online

  'Most curious,' Horowitz said, like a mathematician pondering a problem.

  'These are gold foil restorations.' Graham began "pointing out kidney bean-shaped gold fillings near the gum line of each front tooth. 'She has them here and here and here.' He pointed again and again. 'Six in all. This is just very rare. In fact, I've never seen it. Not in a morgue.'

  'What the hell is gold foil?' Marino asked.

  'It's a pain in the ass, is what it is,' said Graham. 'A very difficult, unattractive restoration.'

  'I believe in the old days, they were required to pass your dental license exam,' I said.

  'That's right.' Graham continued to work. 'The students hated them.'

  He went on to explain that gold foil restorations required the dentist to pound gold pellets into a tooth, and the slightest bit of moisture would cause the filling to fall out. Although the restorations were very good, they were labor intensive, painful and expensive.

  'And not many patients,' he added, 'want gold showing, especially on the facial surface of their front teeth.'

  He continued charting various repairs, extractions, shapes and misshapes that made this woman who she was. She had a slightly open bite and a semicircular wear pattern to her front teeth possibly consistent with her biting down on a pipe, since it was reported to him that she had been seen with a pipe.

  'If she was a chronic pipe smoker, wouldn't you expect her teeth to be stained from tobacco?' I said, for I saw no evidence of it.

  'Possibly. But look at how eroded her tooth surfaces are - these scooped-out areas at the gum line that required the gold foil.' He showed us. 'The major damage to her teeth is consistent with obsessive overbrushing.'

  'So if she brushed the hell out of her teeth ten times a day, she's not going to have tobacco stains,' Marino said.

  'Brushing the hell out of her teeth doesn't fit with her poor hygiene,' I commented. 'In fact, her mouth seems inconsistent with everything else about her.'

  'Can you tell when she had this work done?' Rader asked.

  'Not really,' Graham said as he continued probing. 'But it is consistently good. I'd say it was probably the same dentist who did all of it, and about the only area in the country where you find gold foil restorations still being done is the West Coast.'

  'I'm wondering how you can know that,' Detective O'Donnell said to him.

  'You can only get these restorations done where there are dentists who still do them. I don't do them. I personally don't know anybody who does them. But there is an organization called the American Academy of Gold Foil Operators that has several hundred members - dentists who pride themselves on still doing this particular restoration. And the largest concentration of them is in Washington State.'

  'Why would someone want a restoration like this?' O'Donnell then asked.

  'Gold lasts a long time.' Graham glanced up at him. 'There are people who are nervous about what is put into their mouths. The chemicals in composite white fillings supposedly can cause nerve damage. They stain and wear out more quickly. Some people believe silver causes everything from cystic fibrosis to hair loss.'

  Then Marino spoke. 'Yo, well, some squirrels just like the way gold looks.'

  'Some do,' Graham agreed. 'She might be one of those.'

  But I did not think so. This woman did not strike me as one who cared about her appearance.

  I suspected she had not shaved her head to make a statement or because she thought it looked trendy. As we began to explore her internally, I understood more, even as the mystery of her deepened.

  She had undergone a hysterectomy that had removed her uterus vaginally and left her ovaries, and her feet were flat. She also had an old intracerebral hematoma in the frontal lobe of her brain from a coup injury that had fractured her skull beneath the scars we had found.

  'She was the victim of an assault, possibly many years ago,' I said. 'And it's the sort of head injury you associate with personality change.' I thought of her wandering the world and of no one missing her. 'She probably was estranged from her family and had a seizure disorder.'

  Horowitz turned to Rader. 'See if we can put a rush on tox. Let's check her for diphenylhydantoin.'

  5

  Little could be done the rest of the day. The city's mind was on Christmas, and laboratories and most offices were closed. Marino and I walked several blocks toward Central Park before stopping at a Greek coffee shop, where I drank coffee because I could not eat. Then we found a cab.

  Wesley was not in his room. I returned to mine and for a long time stood before the window looking out at dark, tangled trees and black rocks amid snowy expanses of the park. The sky was gray and heavy. I could not see the ice-skating rink, nor the fountain where the murdered woman was found. Though I had not been on the scene when her body was, I had studied the photographs. What Gault had done was horrible, and I wondered where he was right now.

  I could not count the violent deaths I had worked since my career began, yet I understood many of them better than I let on from the witness stand. It is not difficult to comprehend people being so enraged, drugged, frightened or crazy that they kill.

  Even psychopaths have their own twisted logic. But Temple Brooks Gault seemed beyond description or deciphering.

  His first encounter with the criminal justice system had been less than five years ago when he was drinking White Russians in a bar in Abingdon, Virginia. An intoxicated truck driver, who did not like effeminate males, began to harass Gault, who had a black belt in karate. Without a word, Gault smiled his strange smile. He got up, spun around and kicked the man in the head. Half a dozen off-duty state troopers happened to be at a nearby table, which was perhaps the only reason Gault was caught and charged with manslaughter.

  His career in Virginia's state penitentiary was brief and bizarre. He became the pet of a corrupt warden, who falsified Gault's identity, facilitating his escape. Gault had been out but a very short time before he happened upon a boy named Eddie Heath and killed him in much the same style he had butchered the woman in Central Park. He went on to murder my morgue supervisor, the prison warden and the prison guard named Helen. At the time, Gault was thirty-one years old.

  Flakes of -snow had begun to drift past my window and in the distance were caught like fog in trees. Hoofs rang against pavement as a horse-drawn carriage went by with two passengers bundled in plaid blankets. The white mare was old and not surefooted, and when she slipped the driver beat her savagely. Other horses looked on in sad relief against the weather, heads down, coats unkempt, and I felt rage rise in my throat like bile. My heart beat furiously. I suddenly swung around as someone knocked on my door.

  'Who is it?' I demanded.

  Wesley said, after a pause, 'Kay?'

  I let him in. A baseball cap and the shoulders of his overcoat were wet from snow. He pulled off leather gloves and stuffed them in pockets, and removed his coat without taking his eyes off me.

  'What is it?' he asked.

  'I'll tell you exactly what it is.' My voice shook. 'Come right over here and look.' I grabbed his hand and pulled him to the window. 'Just look! Do you think those poor, pathetic horses ever get a day off? Do you think they are properly cared for? Do you think they're ever groomed or adequately shod? You know what happens when they stumble - when it's icy and they're old as hell and almost fall?'

  'Kay . . .'

  'They're just beaten harder.'

  'Kay . . .'

  'So why don't you do something about it?' I railed on.

  'What would you like me to do?'

  'Just do something. The world is full of people who don't do anything and I'm goddam tired of it.'

  'Would you like me to file a complaint with the SPCA?' he asked.

  'Yes, I would,' I said. 'And I will, too.'

  'Would it be okay if we did that tomorrow since I don't think anything's open today?'

  I continued looking out the window as the driver beat his horse again. 'That's it,' I snapped.

  '
Where are you going?' He followed me out of the room.

  He hurried after me as I headed to the elevator. I strode across the lobby and out the hotel's front door without a coat. By now, snow was falling hard, and the icy street was smooth with it. The object of my wrath was an old man in a hat hunched over in the driver's seat. He sat up straighter when he saw this middle-aged lady coming with a tall man in her wake.

  'You like nice carriage ride?' he asked in a heavy accent.

  The mare strained her neck toward me and cocked her ears as if she knew what was coming. She was scarred skin and bones with overgrown hoofs, her eyes dull and rimmed in pink.

  'What is your horse's name?' I inquired.

  'Snow White.' He looked as miserable as his pitiful mare as he started to cite his fares.

  'I'm not interested in your fares,' I said as he looked wearily down at me.

  He shrugged. 'So how long you want ride?'

  'I don't know,' I said curtly. 'How long do I need to ride before you start beating Snow White again? And do you beat the shit out of her more or less when it's Christmas?'

  'I am good to my horse,' he said stupidly.

  'You are cruel to this horse and probably to everything alive and breathing,' I said.

  'I have job to do,' he said as his eyes narrowed.

  'I am a doctor and I am reporting you,' I said as my voice got tighter.

  'What?' he chortled. 'You horse doctor?'

  I stepped closer to the driver's box until I was inches from his blanket-covered legs. 'You whip this mare one more time, and I will see it,' I said with the iron calm I reserved for people I hated. 'And this man behind me will see it. From that window right up there-' I pointed. 'And one day you will wake up and find I have bought your company and fired you.'

  'You do not buy company.' He glanced up curiously at the New York Athletic Club.

  'You do not understand reality,' I said.

  He tucked his chin into his collar and ignored me.

  I was silent as I returned to my room, and Wesley did not speak, either. I took a deep breath and my hands would not stop shaking. He went to the minibar and poured us each a whiskey, then sat me on the bed, propped several pillows behind me, and took off his coat and spread it over my legs.

  He turned lights off and sat next to me. For a while he rubbed my neck while I stared out the window. The snow-sky looked gray and wet, but not dreary as when it rained. I wondered about the difference, why snow seemed soft while rain felt hard and somehow colder.

  It had been bitterly cold and raining in Richmond the Christmas when police discovered Eddie Heath's frail, naked body. He was propped against a Dumpster behind an abandoned building with windows boarded up, and though he would never regain consciousness, he was not yet dead. Gault had abducted him from a convenience store where Eddie had been sent by his mother to pick up a can of soup.

  I would never forget the desolation of that filthy spot where the boy had been found or Gault's gratuitous cruelty of placing near the body the small bag containing the can of soup and candy bar Eddie had purchased before his death. The details made him so real that even the Henrico County officer wept. I envisioned Eddie's wounds and remembered the warm pressure of his hand when I examined him in pediatric intensive care before he was disconnected from life support.

  'Oh God,' I muttered in this dim room. 'Oh God, I'm so tired of all this.'

  Wesley did not reply. He had gotten up and was standing before the window, drink in hand.

  'I'm so tired of cruelty. I'm so tired of people beating horses and killing little boys and head-injured women.'

  Wesley did not turn around. He said, 'It's Christmas. You should call your family.'

  'You're right. That's just what I need to cheer me up.' I blew my nose and reached for the phone.

  At my sister's house in Miami, no one answered. I dug an address book out of my purse and called the hospital where my mother had been for weeks. A nurse in the intensive care unit said Dorothy was with my mother and she would get her.

  'Hello?'

  'Merry Christmas,' I said to my only sibling.

  'I guess that's an irony when you consider where I am. There's certainly nothing merry about this place, not that you would know since you aren't here.'

  'I'm quite familiar with intensive care,' I said. 'Where is Lucy and how is she?'

  'She's out running errands with her friend. They dropped me off and will be back in an hour or so. Then we're going to Mass. Well, I don't know if the friend will since she's not Catholic.'

  'Lucy's friend has a name. Her name is Janet, and she is very nice.'

  'I'm not going to get into that.'

  'How is Mother?'

  'The same.'

  'The same as what, Dorothy,' I said, and she was beginning to get to me.

  'They've had to suction her a lot today. I don't know what the problem is, but you can't imagine what it's like to watch her try to cough and not make a sound because of that awful tube in her throat. She only made it five minutes off the ventilator today.'

  'Does she know what day it is?'

  'Oh yes,' Dorothy said ominously. 'Oh yes indeed. I put a little tree on her table. She's been crying a lot.'

  A dull ache welled in my chest.

  'When are you getting here?' she went on.

  'I don't know. We can't leave New York right now.'

  'Does it ever strike you, Katie, that you've spent most of your life worrying about dead people?' Her voice was getting sharp. 'I think all your relationships are with dead-'

  'Dorothy, you tell Mother I love her and that I called. Please tell Lucy and Janet that I'll try again later tonight or tomorrow.'

  I hung up.

  Wesley was still standing before the window with his back to me. He was quite familiar with my family difficulties.

  'I'm sorry,' he said kindly.

  'She would be like that even if I were there.'

  'I know. But the point is, you should be there and I should be home.'

  When he talked about home I got uncomfortable, because his home and mine were different. I thought again about this case, and when I closed my eyes I saw the woman who looked like a manikin without clothing or wig. I envisioned her awful wounds.

  I said, 'Benton, who is he really killing when he kills these people?'

  'Himself,' he said. 'Gault is killing himself.'

  'That can't be all of it.'

  'No, but it is part of it.'

  'It's a sport to him,' I said.

  'That, too, is true.'

  'What about his family? Do we know anything more?'

  'No.' He did not turn around. 'Mother and father are healthy and in Beaufort, South Carolina.'

  'They moved from Albany?'

  'Remember the flood.'

  'Oh yes. The storm.'

  'South Georgia was almost washed away. Apparently the Gaults left and are in Beaufort now. I think they're also looking for privacy.'

  'I can only imagine.'

  'Right. Tour buses were rolling past their house in Georgia. Reporters were knocking on their door. They will not cooperate with the authorities. As you know, I have repeatedly requested interviews and have been denied.'

  'I wish we knew more about his childhood,' I said.

  'He grew up on the family plantation, which was basically a big white frame house set on hundreds of acres of pecan trees. Nearby was the factory that made nut logs and other candies you see in truck stops and restaurants, mostly in the South. As for what went on inside that house while Gault lived there, we don't know.'

  'And his sister?'

  'Still on the West Coast somewhere, I guess. We can't find her to talk to her. She probably wouldn't anyway.'

  'What is the likelihood that Gault would contact her?'

  'Hard to say. But we've not learned anything that would indicate the two of them have ever been close. It doesn't appear that Gault has been close - in the normal sense - to anyone his entire life.'

  '
Where have you been today?' My voice was gentler and I felt more relaxed.

  'I talked to several detectives and did a lot of walking.'

  'Walking for exercise or work?'

  'Mostly the latter, but both. By the way, Snow White is gone. The driver just left with an empty carriage. And he didn't hit her.'

  I opened my eyes. 'Please tell me more about your walk.'

  'I walked through the area where Gault was seen in the subway station with the victim at Central Park West and Eighty-first. Depending on the weather and what route you take, that particular subway entrance is maybe a five-, ten-minute walk from the Ramble.'