Cause of Death

Chapter
1

ON THE LAST MORNING OF VIRGINIA'S BLOODIEST YEAR since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea. I was in my robe in lamplight, reviewing my office's annual statistics for car crashes, hangings, beatings, shootings, stabbings, when the telephone rudely rang at five-fifteen.

"Damn," I muttered, for I was beginning to feel less charitable about answering Dr. Philip Mant's phone. "All right, all right."

His weathered cottage was tucked behind a dune in a stark coastal Virginia subdivision called Sandbridge, between the U. S. Naval Amphibious Base and Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Mant was my deputy chief medical examiner for the Tidewater District, and sadly, his mother had died last week on Christmas Eve. Under ordinary circumstances, his returning to London to get family affairs in order would not have constituted an emergency for the Virginia medical examiner system. But his assistant forensic pathologist was already out on maternity leave, and recently, the morgue supervisor had quit.

"Mant residence," I answered as wind tore the dark shapes of pines beyond windowpanes.

"This is Officer Young with the Chesapeake police," said someone who sounded like a white male born and bred in the South. "I'm trying to reach Dr. Mant."

"He is out of the country," I answered. "How may I help you?"

"Are you Mrs. Mant?"

"I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner. I'm covering for Dr. Mant."

The voice hesitated, and went on, "We got a tip about a death. An anonymous call."

"Do you know where this death supposedly took place?" I was making notes.

"Supposedly the Inactive Naval Ship Yard."

"Excuse me?" I looked up.

He repeated what he had said.

"What are we talking about, a Navy SEAL?" I was baffled, for it was my understanding that SEALs on maneuvers were the only divers permitted around old ships moored at the Inactive Yard.

"We don't know who it is but he might have been looking for Civil War relics."

"After dark?"

"Ma'am, the area's off-limits unless you have clearance.

But that hasn't stopped people from being curious before.

They sneak their boats in and always it's after dark."

"This scenario is what the anonymous caller suggested?"

"Pretty much."

"That's rather interesting."

"I thought so."

"And the body hasn't been located yet," I said as I continued to wonder why this officer had taken it upon himself to call a medical examiner at such an early hour when it was not known for a fact that there was a body or even someone missing.

"We're out looking now, and the Navy's sending in a few divers, so we'll get the situation handled if it pans out.

But I just wanted you to have a heads up. And be sure you give Dr. Mant my condolences."

"Your condolences?" I puzzled, for if he had known about Mant's circumstances, why did he call here asking for him?

"I heard his mother passed on."

I rested the tip of the pen on the sheet of paper. "Would you tell me your full name and how you can be reached, please?"

"S. T. Young." He gave me a telephone number and we hung up.

I stared into the low fire, feeling uneasy and lonely as I got up to add more wood. I wished I were in Richmond in my own home with its candies in the windows and Fraser fir decorated with Christmases from my past. I wanted Mozart and Handel instead of wind shrilly rushing around the roof, and I wished I had not taken Mant up on his kind offer that I could stay in his home instead of a hotel. I resumed reading the statistical report, but my mind would not stop drifting. I imagined the sluggish water of the Elizabeth River, which this time of year would be less than sixty degrees, visibility, at best, maybe eighteen inches.

In the winter, it was one thing to dive for oysters in the Chesapeake Bay or go thirty miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean to explore a sunken aircraft carrier or German submarine and other wonders worth a wet suit. But in the Elizabeth River, where the Navy parked its decommissioned ships, I could think of nothing enticing, no matter the weather. I could not imagine who would dive there alone in winter after dark to look for artifacts or anything, and believed the tip would prove to be a crank.

Leaving the recliner chair, I walked into the master bedroom where my belongings had metastasized throughout most of the small, chilly space. I undressed quickly and took a hurried shower, having discovered my first day here that the hot-water heater had its limitations. In fact, I did not like Dr. Mant's drafty house with its knotty pine paneling the color of amber and dark brown painted floors that showed every particle of dust. My British deputy chief seemed to live in the dark clutches of gusting wind, and every moment in his minimally furnished home was cold and unsettled by shifting sounds that sometimes caused me to sit up in my sleep and reach for my gun.

Swathed in a robe with a towel wrapped around my hair, I checked the guest bedroom and bath to make certain all was in order for the midday arrival of Lucy, my niece. Then I surveyed the kitchen, which was pitiful compared to the one I had at home. I did not seem to have forgotten anything yesterday when I had driven to Virginia Beach to shop, although I would have to do without garlic press, pasta maker, food processor and microwave oven. I was seriously beginning to wonder if Mant ever ate in or even stayed here. At least I had thought to bring my own cutlery and cook-ware, and as long as I had good knives and pots there wasn't much I couldn't manage.

I read some more and fell asleep in the glow of a gooseneck lamp. The telephone startled me again and I grabbed the receiver as my eyes adjusted to sunlight in my face.

"This is Detective C. T. Roche with Chesapeake," said another male voice I did not know. "I understand you're covering for Dr. Mant, and we need an answer from you real quick. Looks like we got a diving fatality in the Inactive Naval Ship Yard, and we need to go ahead and recover the body."

"I'm assuming this is the case one of your officers called me about earlier?"

His long pause was followed by the rather defensive remark, "As far as I know, I'm the first one notifying you."

"An officer named Young called me at quarter past five this morning. Let me see." I checked the call sheet. "Initials S as in Sam, T as in Tom."

Another pause, then he said in the same tone, "Well, I got no idea who you're talking about since we don't have anybody by that name."

Adrenaline was pumping as I took notes. The time was thirteen minutes past nine o'clock. I was baffled by what he had just said. If the first caller really wasn't police, then who was he, why had he called, and how did he know Mant?

"When was the body found?" I asked Roche.

"Around six a security guard for the shipyard noticed a johnboat anchored behind one of the ships. There was a long hose in the water, like maybe there was someone diving at the other end. And when it hadn't budged an hour later, we were called. One diver was sent down and like I said, there is a body."

"Do we have an identification?"

"We recovered a wallet from the boat. The driver's license is that of a white male named Theodore Andrew Eddings."

"The reporter?" I said in disbelief. "That Ted Eddings?"

"Thirty-two years old, brown hair, blue eyes, based on his picture. He has a Richmond address of West Grace Street."

The Ted Eddings I knew was an award-winning investigative reporter for the Associated Press. Scarcely a week went by when he didn't call me about something. For a moment, I almost couldn't think.

"We also recovered a nine-millimeter pistol from the boat," he said.

When I spoke again, it was very firmly. "His identification absolutely is not to be released to the press or anyone else until it has been confirmed."

"I already told everybody that. Not to worry."

"Good. And no one has any idea why this individual might have been diving in the Inactive Ship Yard?" I asked.

"He might have been looking for Civil War stuff."

"You speculate that based on what?"

"A lot of people like to look in the rivers around here for cannonballs and things," he said. "Okay. So we'll go on and pull him in so he's not down there any longer than necessary."

"I do not want him touched, and leaving him in the water a little longer isn't going to change anything."

"What is it you're gonna do?" He sounded defensive again.

"I won't know until I get there."

"Well, I don't think it's necessary for you to come here . . ."

"Detective Roche," I interrupted him. "The necessity of my coming to the scene and what I do when I'm there is not for you to decide."

"Well, there's all these people I've got on hold, and this afternoon it's suppose to snow. Nobody wants to be standing around out there on the piers."

"According to the Code of Virginia, the body is my jurisdiction, not yours or any other police, fire, rescue or funeral person's. Nobody touches the body until I say so."

I spoke with just enough edge to let him know I could be sharp.

"Like I said, I'm going to have to tell all the rescue and shipyard people to just hang out, and they aren't going to be happy. The Navy's already leaning on me pretty hard to clear the area before the media shows up."

"This is not a Navy case."

"You tell them that. It's their ships."

"I'll be happy to tell them that. In the meantime, you just tell everyone that I'm on my way," I said to him before I hung up.

Realizing it could be many hours before I returned to the cottage, I left a note taped to the front door that cryptically instructed Lucy how to let herself in should I not be here.

I hid a key only she could find, then loaded medical bag and dive equipment into the trunk of my black Mercedes.

At quarter of ten the temperature had risen to thirty-eight degrees, and my attempts to reach Captain Pete Marino in Richmond were frustrating.

"Thank God," I muttered when my car phone finally rang.

I snatched it up. "Scarpetta."

"Yo."

"You've got your pager on. I'm shocked," I said to him.

"If you're so shocked, then why the hell'd you call it?"

He sounded pleased to hear from me. "What's up?"

"You know that reporter you dislike so much?" I was careful not to divulge details because we were on the air and could be monitored by scanners.

"As in which one?"

"As in the one who works for AP and is always dropping by my office."

He thought a moment, then said, "So what's the deal?

You have a run-in with him?"

"Unfortunately, I may be about to. I'm on my way to the Elizabeth River. Chesapeake just called."

"Wait a minute. Not that kind of run-in." His tone was ominous.

"I'm afraid so."

"Holy shit."

"We've got only a driver's license. So we can't be certain, yet. I'm going to go in and take a look before we move him."

"Now wait a damn minute," he said. "Why the hell do you need to do something like that? Can't other people take care of it?"

"I need to see him before he's moved," I repeated.

Marino was very displeased because he was overly protective. He didn't have to say another word for me to know that.

"I just thought you might want to check out his residence in Richmond," I told him.

"Yeah. I sure as hell will."

"I don't know what we're going to find."

"Well, I just wish you'd let them find it first."

In Chesapeake, I took the Elizabeth River exit, then turned left on High Street, passing brick churches, used-car lots and mobile homes. Beyond the city jail and police headquarters, naval barracks dissolved into the expansive, depressing landscape of a salvage yard surrounded by a rusty fence topped with barbed wire. In the midst of acres littered with metal and overrun by weeds was a power plant that appeared to burn trash and coal to supply the shipyard with energy to run its dismal, inert business. Smokestacks and train tracks were quiet today, all dry-dock cranes out of work. It was, after all, New Year's Eve.

I drove on toward a headquarters built of boring tan cinderblock, beyond which were long paved piers. At the guard gate, a young man in civilian clothes and hard hat stepped out of his booth. I rolled my window down as clouds churned in the windswept sky.

"This is a restricted area." His face was completely devoid of expression.

"I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner," I said as I displayed the brass shield that symbolized my jurisdiction over every sudden, unattended, unexplained or violent death in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Leaning closer, he studied my credentials. Several times he glanced up at my face and stared at my car.

"You're the chief medical examiner?" he asked. "So how come you're not driving a hearse?"