Five Scarpetta Novels (102 page)

“She says hi,” Lucy said to her partner, Jo, who was Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA.

They worked together on a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, squad that had been relentlessly working a series of very vicious home invasions. Jo and Lucy's relationship was a partnership in another way, too, but they were very discreet. I wasn't sure ATF or DEA even knew.

“Later,” Lucy said to me, and the line went dead.

R
ichmond police captain Pete Marino and I had known each other for so long it sometimes seemed we were inside each other's head. So it really came as no great surprise when he called me before I had a chance to track him down.

“You sound really stopped up,” he said to me. “You got a cold?”

“No,” I said. “I'm glad you called because I was getting ready to call you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

I could tell he was smoking in either his truck or police car. Both had two-way radios and scanners that this moment were making a lot of noise.

“Where are you?” I asked him.

“Cruising around, listening to the scanner,” he said, as if he had the top down and was having a wonderful day. “Counting the hours till retirement. Ain't life grand? Nothing missin' but the bluebird of happiness.”

His sarcasm could have shred paper.

“What in the world's wrong with you?” I said.

“I'm assuming you know about the ripe one they just found at the Port of Richmond,” he replied. “People puking
all over the place, is what I hear. Just glad it ain't my fucking problem.”

My mind wouldn't work. I didn't know what he was talking about. Call-waiting was clicking. I switched the cordless phone to the other ear as I walked into my study and pulled out a chair at the desk.

“What ripe one?” I asked him. “Marino, hold on,” I said as call-waiting tried again. “Let me see who this is. Don't go away.” I tapped the hang-up button.

“Scarpetta,” I said.

“It's Jack,” my deputy chief, Jack Fielding, said. “They've found a body inside a cargo container at the Port of Richmond. Badly decomposed.”

“That's what Marino was just telling me,” I said.

“You sound like you've got the flu. I think I'm getting it, too. And Chuck's coming in late because he's not feeling so great. Or so he says.”

“Did this container just come off a ship?” I interrupted him.

“The
Sirius,
as in the star. Definitely a weird situation. How do you want me to handle it?”

I began scribbling notes on a call sheet, my handwriting more illegible than usual, my central nervous system as crashed as a bad hard drive.

“I'll go,” I said without pause even as Benton's words pulsed in my mind.

I was off and running again. Maybe even faster this time.

“You don't need to do that, Dr. Scarpetta,” Fielding said as if he were suddenly in charge. “I'll go down there. You're supposed to be taking the day off.”

“Who do I contact when I get there?” I asked. I didn't want him to start in again.

Fielding had been begging me for months to take a break, to go somewhere for a week or two or even consider a sabbatical. I was tired of people watching me with
worried eyes. I was angered by the intimation that Benton's death was affecting my performance at work, that I had begun isolating myself from my staff and others and looked exhausted and distracted.

“Detective Anderson notified us. She's at the scene,” Fielding was saying.

“Who?”

“Must be new. Really, Dr. Scarpetta, I'll handle it. Why don't you take a break? Stay home.”

I realized I still had Marino on hold. I switched back to tell him I'd call as soon as I got off the line with my office. He'd already hung up.

“Tell me how to get there,” I said to my deputy chief.

“I guess you're not going to accept my pro bono advice.”

“If I'm coming from my house, Downtown Expressway, and then what?” I said.

He gave me directions. I got off the phone and hurried to my bedroom, Benton's letter in hand. I couldn't think of a place to keep it. I couldn't just leave it in a drawer or file cabinet. God forbid I should lose it or the housekeeper should discover it, and I didn't want it in a place where I might run across it unawares and be undone again. Thoughts spun wildly, my heart racing, adrenaline screaming through my blood as I stared at the stiff, creamy envelope, at “Kay” written in Benton's modest, careful hand.

I finally focused on the small fireproof safe bolted to the floor in my closet. I frantically tried to remember where I had written down the combination.

“I'm losing my goddamn mind,” I exclaimed out loud.

The combination was where I always kept it, between pages 670 and 671 of the seventh edition of
Hunter's Tropical Medicine.
I locked the letter in the safe and walked into the bathroom and repeatedly splashed cold water on my face. I called Rose, my secretary, and instructed her to arrange for a removal service to meet me at the Port of Richmond in about an hour and a half.

“Let them know the body's in very sorry shape,” I emphasized.

“How are you going to get there?” Rose asked. “I'd tell you to stop here first and get the Suburban, but Chuck's taken it in for an oil change.”

“I thought he was sick.”

“He showed up fifteen minutes ago and left with the Suburban.”

“Okay, I'll have to use my own car. Rose, I'm going to need the Luma-Lite and a hundred-foot extension cord. Have someone meet me in the parking lot with them. I'll call when I'm close.”

“You need to know that Jean's in a bit of an uproar.”

“What's the problem?” I asked, surprised.

Jean Adams was the office administrator and she rarely showed emotion, much less got upset.

“Apparently all the coffee money disappeared. You know this isn't the first time . . .”

“Damn!” I said. “Where was it kept?”

“Locked up in Jean's desk drawer, like always. Doesn't look like the lock was pried open or anything, but she went into the drawer this morning, no money. A hundred and eleven dollars and thirty-five cents.”

“This has got to stop,” I said.

“I don't know if you're aware of the latest,” Rose went on. “Lunches have started disappearing from the break room. Last week Cleta accidentally left her portable phone on her desk overnight and the next morning it was gone. Same thing happened to Dr. Riley. He left a nice pen in the pocket of his lab coat. Next morning, no pen.”

“The crew that cleans up after hours?”

“Maybe,” Rose said. “But I will tell you, Dr. Scarpetta—and I'm not trying to accuse anyone—I'm afraid it might be an inside job.”

“You're right. We shouldn't accuse anyone. Is there any good news today?”

“Not so far,” Rose matter-of-factly replied.

Rose had worked for me since I had been appointed chief medical examiner, which meant she had been running my life for most of my career. She had the remarkable ability to know virtually everything going on around her without getting caught up in it herself. My secretary remained untainted, and although the staff was somewhat afraid of her, she was the first one they ran to when there was a problem.

“Now you take care of yourself, Dr. Scarpetta,” she went on. “You sound awful. Why don't you let Jack go to the scene and you stay in for once?”

“I'll just take my car,” I said as a wave of grief rolled over me and sounded in my voice.

Rose caught it and rode it out in silence. I could hear her shuffling through papers on her desk. I knew she wanted to somehow comfort me, but I had never allowed that.

“Well, make sure you change before you get back in it,” she finally said.

“Change what?”

“Your clothes. Before you get back into your car,” she said as if I'd never dealt with a decomposed body before.

“Thank you, Rose,” I said.

I
set the burglar alarm and locked the house, turning on the light in the garage, where I opened a spacious locker built of cedar, with vents along the top and bottom. Inside were hiking boots, waders, heavy leather gloves and a Barbour coat with its special waterproofing that reminded me of wax.

Out here I kept socks, long underwear, jumpsuits and other gear that would never see the inside of my house. Their end of tour landed them in the industrial-size stainless steel sink and washer and dryer not meant for my normal clothes.

I tossed a jumpsuit, a pair of black leather Reeboks and an Office of Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, baseball cap inside the trunk. I checked my large Halliburton aluminum scene case to make sure I had plenty of latex gloves, heavy-duty trash bags, disposable sheets, camera and film. I set out with a heavy heart as Benton's words drifted through my mind again. I tried to block out his voice, his eyes and smile and the feel of his skin. I wanted to forget him and more than anything, I didn't.

I turned on the radio as I followed the Downtown Expressway to I-95, the Richmond skyline sparkling in the
sun. I was slowing at the Lombardy Toll Plaza when my car phone rang. It was Marino.

“Thought I'd let you know I'm going to drop by,” he said.

A horn blared when I changed lanes and almost clipped a silver Toyota in my blind spot. The driver swooped around me, yelling obscenities I couldn't hear.

“Go to hell,” I angrily said in his wake.

“What?” Marino said loudly in my ear.

“Some goddamn idiot driver.”

“Oh, good. You ever heard of road rage, Doc?”

“Yes, and I've come down with it.”

I took the Ninth Street exit, heading to my office, and let Rose know I was two minutes away. When I pulled into the parking lot, Fielding was waiting with the hard case and extension cord.

“I don't guess the Suburban's back yet,” I said.

“Nope,” he replied, loading the equipment in my trunk. “Gonna be something when you show up in this thing. I can just see all those dockworkers staring at this good-looking blond woman in a black Mercedes. Maybe you should borrow my car.”

My bodybuilding deputy chief had just finalized a divorce and celebrated by trading in his Mustang for a red Corvette.

“Actually, that's a good idea,” I dryly said. “If you don't mind. As long as it's a V-eight.”

“Yeah, yeah. I hear ya. Call me if you need me. You know the way, right?”

“I do.”

His directions led me south, and I was almost to Petersburg when I turned off and drove past the back of the Philip Morris manufacturing plant and over railroad tracks. The narrow road led me through a vacant land of weeds and woods that ended abruptly at a security checkpoint. I felt as if I were crossing the border into an unfriendly country.
Beyond was a train yard and hundreds of boxcar-size orange containers stacked three and four high. A guard who took his job very seriously stepped outside his booth. I rolled down my window.

“May I help you, ma'am?” he asked in a flat military tone.

“I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta,” I replied.

“And who are you here to see?”

“I'm here because there's been a death,” I explained. “I'm the medical examiner.”

I showed him my credentials. He took them from me and studied them carefully. I had a feeling he didn't know what a medical examiner was and wasn't about to ask.

“So you're the chief,” he said, handing the worn black wallet back to me. “The chief of what?”

“I'm the chief medical examiner of Virginia,” I replied. “The police are waiting for me.”

He stepped back inside his booth and got on the phone as my impatience grew. It seemed every time I needed to enter a secured area, I went through this. I used to assume my being a woman was the reason, and in earlier days this was probably true—at least some of the time. Now I believed the threats of terrorism, crime and lawsuits were the explanation. The guard wrote down a description of my car and the plate number. He handed me a clipboard so I could sign in and gave me a visitor's pass, which I didn't clip on.

“See that pine tree down there?” he said, pointing.

“I see quite a few pine trees.”

“The little bent one. Take a left at it and just head on towards the water, ma'am,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

I moved on, passing huge tires parked here and there and several red brick buildings with signs out front to identify the U.S. Customs Service and Federal Marine Terminal. The port itself was rows of huge warehouses with orange containers lined up at loading docks like animals feeding
from troughs. Moored off the wharf in the James River were two container ships, the
Euroclip
and the
Sirius,
each almost twice as long as a football field. Cranes hundreds of feet high were poised above open hatches the size of swimming pools.

Yellow crime-scene tape anchored by traffic cones circled a container that was mounted on a chassis. No one was nearby. In fact, I saw no sign of police except for an unmarked blue Caprice at the edge of the dock apron, the driver, apparently, behind the wheel talking through the window to a man in a white shirt and a tie. Work had stopped. Stevedores in hard hats and reflective vests looked bored as they drank sodas or bottled water or smoked.

I dialed my office and got Fielding on the phone.

“When were we notified about this body?” I asked him.

“Hold on. Let me check the sheet.” Paper rustled. “At exactly ten fifty-three.”

“And when was it found?”

“Uh, Anderson didn't seem to know that.”

“How the hell could she not know something like that?”

“Like I said, I think she's new.”

“Fielding, there's not a cop in sight except for her, or at least I guess that's her. What exactly did she say to you when she called in the case?”

“DOA, decomposed, asked for you to come to the scene.”

“She specifically requested me?” I asked.

“Well, hell. You're always everybody's first choice. That's nothing new. But she said Marino told her to get you to the scene.”

“Marino?” I asked, surprised. “He told
her
to tell
me
to respond?”

“Yeah, I thought it was a little ballsy of him.”

I remembered Marino's telling me he would
drop by
the scene, and I got angrier. He gets some rookie to basically give me an order, and then if Marino can fit it in, he might swing by and see how we're doing?

“Fielding, when's the last time you talked to him?” I asked.

“Weeks. Pissy mood, too.”

“Not half as pissy as mine's going to be if and when he finally decides to show up,” I promised.

Dockworkers watched me climb out of my car and pop open the trunk. I retrieved my scene case, jumpsuit and shoes, and felt eyes crawl all over me as I walked toward the unmarked car and got more annoyed with each labored step, the heavy case bumping against my leg.

The man in the shirt and tie looked hot and unhappy as he shielded his eyes to gaze up at two television news helicopters slowly circling the port at about four hundred feet.

“Darn reporters,” he muttered, turning his eyes to me.

“I'm looking for whoever's in charge of this crime scene,” I said.

“That would be me,” came a female voice from inside the Caprice.

I bent over and peered through the window at the young woman sitting behind the wheel. She was darkly tanned, her brown hair cut short and slicked back, her nose and jaw strong. Her eyes were hard, and she was dressed in relaxed-leg faded jeans, lace-up black leather boots and white T-shirt. She wore her gun on her hip, her badge on a ball chain tucked into her collar. Air-conditioning was blasting, light rock on the radio surfing over the cop talk on the scanner.

“Detective Anderson, I presume,” I said.

“Rene Anderson. The one and only. And you must be the doc I've heard so much about,” she said with the arrogance I associated with most people who didn't know what the hell they were doing.

“I'm Joe Shaw, the port director,” the man introduced himself to me. “You must be who the security guys just called me about.”

He was about my age, with blond hair, bright blue eyes
and skin lined from years of too much sun. I could tell by the look on his face that he detested Anderson and everything about this day.

“Might you have anything helpful to pass along to me before I get started?” I said to Anderson over loud blowing air and rotating helicopter blades. “For example, why there are no police securing the scene?”

“Don't need 'em,” Anderson said, pushing open her door with her knee. “It's not like just anybody can drive right on back here, as you found out when you tried.”

I set the aluminum case on the ground. Anderson came around to my side of the car. I was surprised by how small she was.

“Not much I can tell you,” she said to me. “What you see is what we got. A container with a real stinker inside.”

“No, there's a lot more you can tell me, Detective Anderson,” I said. “How was the body discovered and at what time? Have you seen it? Has anybody gotten near it? Has the scene been contaminated in any way? And the answer to the last one had better be
no,
or I'm holding you responsible.”

She laughed. I began pulling the jumpsuit over my clothes.

“Nobody's even gotten close,” she told me. “No volunteers for that one.”

“You don't have to go inside the thing to know what's there,” Shaw added.

I changed into the black Reeboks and put on the baseball cap. Anderson was staring at my Mercedes.

“Maybe I should go work for the state,” she said.

I looked her up and down.

“I suggest you cover up if you're going in there,” I said to her.

“I gotta make a couple calls,” she said, walking off.

“I don't mean to tell people how to do their jobs,” Shaw said to me. “But what the hell's going on here? We got a
dead body right over there and the cops send in a little shit like that?”

His jaw muscles were clenching, his face bright red and dripping sweat.

“You know, you don't make a dime in this business unless things are moving,” he went on. “And not a darn thing's moved for more than two and a half hours.”

He was working so hard not to swear around me.

“Not that I'm not sorry about someone being dead,” he went on. “But I sure would like you folks to do your business and leave.” He scowled up at the sky again. “And that includes the media.”

“Mr. Shaw, what was being shipped inside the container?” I asked him.

“German camera equipment. You should know the seal on the container's latch wasn't broken. So it appears the cargo wasn't tampered with.”

“Did the foreign shipper affix the seal?”

“That's right.”

“Meaning the body, alive or dead, most likely was inside the container before it was sealed?” I said.

“That's what it looks like. The number matches the one on the entry filed by the Customs broker, nothing the least out of the ordinary. In fact, this cargo's already been released by Customs. Was five days ago,” Shaw told me. “Which is why it was loaded straight on a chassis. Then we got a whiff and no way that container was going anywhere.”

I looked around, taking in the entire scene at once. A light breeze clinked heavy chains against cranes that had been offloading steel beams from the
Euroclip,
three hatches at a time, when all activity stopped. Forklifts and flatbed trucks had been abandoned. Dockworkers and crew had nothing to do and kept their eyes on us from the tarmac.

Some looked on from the bows of their ships and through the windows of deckhouses. Heat rose from oil-stained asphalt scattered with wooden frames, spacers and
skids, and a CSX train clanked and scraped through a crossing beyond the warehouses. The smell of creosote was strong but could not mask the stench of rotting human flesh that drifted like smoke on the air.

“Where did the ship set sail from?” I asked Shaw as I noticed a marked car parking next to my Mercedes.

“Antwerp, Belgium, two weeks ago,” he replied as he looked at the
Sirius
and the
Euroclip.
“Foreign flag vessels like all the rest we get. The only American flags we see anymore are if someone raises one as a courtesy,” he added with a trace of disappointment.

A man on the
Euroclip
was standing by the starboard side, looking back at us with binoculars. I thought it strange he was dressed in long sleeves and long pants, as warm as it was.

Shaw squinted. “Darn, this sun is bright.”

“What about stowaways?” I asked. “Although I can't imagine anyone choosing to hide inside a locked container for two weeks on high seas.”