Five Scarpetta Novels (117 page)

He impatiently tapped keys, rolling another shade of gray down a freeze-frame from a convenience store videotape. The figure in dark glasses and hairnet cap was not made much clearer, but the store clerk was certainly vivid as blood sprayed in a fine mist from his head.

“I tweak it and it's almost there, and then it's not,” Lapointe wearily complained with a sigh. “I see this damn thing in my sleep.”

“Unbelievable,” I said, staring. “Look how relaxed he is. It's like all of it is an afterthought, no big deal. A what-the-hell, may-as-well.”

“Yeah, that much I've got.” Lapointe stretched his back. “Just wasted the guy for no reason. That's what I don't get.”

“I give you a few more years and you'll get it,” I said.

“I don't want to become cynical, if that's what you're saying.”

“It's not getting cynical. It's about finally figuring out there don't have to be reasons,” I told him.

He stared at the computer screen, lost in the last picture that had ever captured Pyle Gant alive. I had performed his autopsy.

“Let's see what we've got here,” Lapointe said, removing the towel from the surgical pan.

Gant was twenty-three with a two-month-old baby and working overtime to pay for his wife's birthday necklace on layaway.

“This must be from The Container Man. You're thinking a tattoo?”

Gant lost control of his bladder before he was shot.

“Dr. Scarpetta?”

I knew this because the back of his jeans and the seat of the chair behind the counter were soaked with urine. When I looked out the window, two cops were restraining his hysterical wife in the parking lot.

“Dr. Scarpetta?”

She was screaming and slapping. She still had braces on her teeth.

“Thirty-one dollars and twelve cents,” I muttered.

Lapointe saved the file and closed it.

“What was?” he asked me.

“That's what was in the cash register,” I replied.

Lapointe rolled his chair around, opening drawers and getting out different-colored filters and rummaging for gloves. The phone rang and he answered it.

“Hold on.” He held the receiver out to me. “It's for you.”

It was Rose.

“I got hold of someone in the foreign currency department of Crestar,” she said. “The money you asked me about is Moroccan. To date, there are nine-point-three dirham to the dollar. So two thousand dirham would be about two hundred and fifteen dollars.”

“Thank you, Rose . . .”

“And there's one other thing you might find interesting,” she went on. “It's forbidden for Moroccan money to be brought in or taken out of the country.”

“I have a feeling this guy was into a lot of things that are forbidden,” I said. “Can you try Agent Francisco again?”

“Certainly.”

My understanding of ATF protocols was fast turning into the fear that Lucy had rejected me. I desperately wanted to see her. I wanted to do whatever I had to do to make that happen. I hung up and lifted the cork cutting board out of the pan, and Lapointe looked at it under a strong light.

“I'm not feeling real optimistic about this,” he let me know.

“Well, don't start seeing this one in your sleep, too,” I told him. “I'm not hopeful, either. All we can do is try.”

What was left of the epidermis was as greenish-black as a quarry or a swamp, and the flesh underneath was getting darker and dryer like curing meat. We centered the corkboard under a high-resolution camera that was connected to the video screen.

“Nope,” Lapointe said. “Too much reflection.”

He tried oblique light and then switched to black and white. He fitted various filters over the camera lens. Blue was no good, nor was yellow, but when he tried red, the iridescent specks peeked out at us again. Lapointe enlarged them. They were perfectly round. I thought of full moons, of a werewolf with evil yellow eyes.

“I'm not going to be able to get this any better live. I'll just grab it,” Lapointe said, disappointed.

He captured the image onto his hard drive and began to process it, the software making it possible for us to see some two hundred shades of gray that we couldn't detect with the unaided eye.

Lapointe worked the keyboard and mouse, going in and out of windows, and using contrast, brightness, and
enlarging, shrinking and adjusting. He eliminated background noise, or
trash,
as he called it, and we began to see hair pores, and then the stippling made by a tattoo needle. Out of the murk emerged black wavy lines that became fur or feathers. A black line sprouting daisy petals became a claw.

“What do you think?” I asked Lapointe.

“I think this is the best we're going to get,” he impatiently said.

“We know anybody who's an expert in tattoos?”

“Why don't you start with your histologist,” he said.

I
found George Gara in his lab, retrieving his bagged lunch from a refrigerator posted with a sign that read
No Food.
Inside were stains such as silver nitrate and muci-carmine, in addition to Schiff reagents, none of which was compatible with anything edible.

“That's not such a great idea,” I said.

“I'm sorry,” he stuttered, setting the bag on the counter and shutting the refrigerator door.

“We have a fridge in the break room, George,” I said. “You're more than welcome to use it.”

He didn't respond, and I realized that he was so painfully shy he probably didn't go into the break room for a reason. My heart ached for him. I couldn't imagine the shame he must have felt when he was growing up and couldn't talk without stuttering. Maybe that explained the tattoos slowly taking over his body like kudzu. Maybe they made him feel special and manly. I pulled out a chair and sat down.

“George, can I ask you about your tattoos?” I asked.

He blushed.

“I'm fascinated by them and need some help with a problem.”

“Sure,” he said with uncertainty.

“Do you have someone you go to? A real expert? Someone very experienced in tattooing?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he replied. “I wouldn't go to just anyone.”

“You get your tattoos locally? Because I need to find a place where I can ask some questions and not run into bad characters, if you know what I mean.”

“Pit,” he immediately said. “As in pit bull, but Pit's his real name. John Pit. He's a really good guy. You want me to call him for you?” he asked, stuttering badly.

“I would be grateful if you would,” I said.

Gara pulled a small address book out of his back pocket and looked up a number. When he got Pit on the line, he explained who I was, and apparently Pit was very agreeable.

“Here.” Gara handed me the phone. “I'll let you explain the rest of it.”

That took several efforts. Pit was home and just waking up.

“So you think you might have some luck?” I asked.

“I've seen pretty much all the flash out there,” he replied.

“I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.”

“Flash's the stencils, I guess you could call them. You know, the design people pick out. Every inch of wall space I got is covered with flash. That's why I'm thinking you might want to come here instead of me coming to your office. We might see something that gives us a clue. But I will tell you I'm not open Wednesdays or Thursdays. And payday weekend just about killed me. I'm still recovering. But I'll open up for you, since this must be important. You bringing in whoever's got this tattoo?”

He still didn't quite get it.

“No, I'm bringing the tattoo,” I said. “But not the person who goes with it.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Okay, okay, now I'm hearing you. So you cut it off the dead guy.”

“Can you handle that?”

“Oh, hell, yeah. I can handle anything.”

“What time?”

“How 'bout as soon as you can get here?”

I hung up and was startled to see Ruffin in the doorway watching me. I had a feeling he'd been there for a while, listening to my conversation, since my back was to him as I'd taken notes. His face was tired, his eyes red, as if he'd been up half the night drinking.

“You don't look well, Chuck,” I said without much sympathy.

“I was wondering if I could go home,” he said. “I think I'm coming down with something.”

“I'm so sorry to hear that. There's a new, very contagious strain going around, thought to be carried by the Internet. It's called the
six-thirty bug,”
I said. “People dash home from work and log onto their home computers. If they have a home computer.”

Ruffin's face turned white.

“That's pretty funny,” Gara said. “But I don't get the six-thirty part of it.”

“The time half the world signs onto AOL,” I replied. “Of course, Chuck, you can go home. Get some rest. I'll walk you out. We need to stop in the decomposed room first and get the tattoo.”

I had removed it from the corkboard and placed it inside a jar of formalin.

“They say it is going to be a really weird winter,” Ruffin began to prattle. “I was listening to the radio this morning while I was driving in to work, and it's like it's going to get real cold closer to Christmas and then be like spring again in February.”

I opened the automatic doors to the decomposed room and walked in as trace evidence examiner Larry Posner and an Institute student worked on the dead man's clothes.

“I'm always happy to see you guys,” I greeted them.

“Well, I've got to admit, you've given us another one of your challenges,” said Posner as he used a scalpel to scrape dirt off a shoe onto a sheet of white paper. “You know Carlisle?”

“Is he teaching you anything?” I asked the young man.

“Sometimes,” he replied.

“How ya doing, Chuck?” Posner said. “You don't look so good.”

“Hanging in there.” Chuck kept up his sick routine.

“Sorry about the Richmond P.D.,” he said with a sympathetic smile.

Ruffin was visibly shaken.

“Excuse me?” he said.

Posner looked uncomfortable as he replied, “I heard the academy didn't work out. You know, I just wanted to tell you not to be discouraged.”

Ruffin's eyes cut to the phone.

“Most people don't know this,” Posner went on as he started work on another shoe. “I flunked the first two tests in chemistry one-oh-one at VCU.”

“No kidding,” Ruffin muttered.

“Now
you tell me.” Carlisle feigned horror and disgust. “And here I was told I'd get the best instructors in the world if I came here. I want my money back.”

“Got something to show you, Dr. Scarpetta,” Posner said, pushing back his face shield.

He set down the scalpel and folded the sheet of paper with a jeweler's fold and moved over to the pair of black jeans Carlisle was working on. They were carefully laid out on the sheet-covered gurney. The waistband had been turned inside out to the hips, and Carlisle was gently collecting hairs with needle-nosed forceps.

“This is the damnedest thing,” Posner said, pointing a gloved finger without touching while his trainee carefully folded the jeans down another inch, revealing more hairs.

“We've already collected dozens,” Posner was telling
me. “You know, we began folding down the jeans and found the expected pubic hair in the crotch, but then there's this blond stuff. And each inch we go, there's more of it. It doesn't make sense.”

“It doesn't seem to,” I agreed.

“Maybe some sort of animal like a Persian cat?” Carlisle suggested.

Ruffin opened a cupboard and took out the plastic bottle of formalin that contained the tattoo.

“If it was sleeping on top of the jeans while they were inside out, for example?” Carlisle went on. “You know, a lot of times when my jeans are a pain to get off, they end up inside out and tossed on a chair. And my dog loves to sleep on top of my clothes.”

“I don't guess hanging things up or putting them in drawers ever occurs to you,” Posner remarked.

“Is that part of my homework?”

“I'll go find a bag to put this in,” Ruffin said, holding up the jar. “In case it leaks or something.”

“Good idea,” I said. Then I asked Posner, “How quickly can you take a look at all this?”

“For you, I'll ask the lethal question,” he said. “How quickly do you need it?”

I sighed.

“Okay, okay.”

“We've got Interpol trying to track down who this guy is. I feel under as much pressure as everybody else, Larry,” I said.

“You don't need to explain. I know when you say
jump,
there's always a good reason. I guess I put my foot in my mouth,” he added. “What's with that kid? He acted like he didn't know he wasn't accepted at the police academy. Hell, it's all over the building.”

“First of all, I didn't know he didn't get in,” I said. “And second, I don't know why it's all over the building.”

Even as I said it, Marino came to mind. He said he was
going to fix Ruffin, and maybe he just did by somehow finding out the news and gleefully spreading it.

“Supposedly Bray's the one who gave him the boot,” Posner went on.

Moments later, Ruffin returned with a plastic bag in hand. We left the decomposed room and washed up in our respective locker rooms. I took my time. I made him wait in the hall, knowing his anxiety was heating up with every second that went by. When I finally emerged, we walked together in silence, and he stopped twice to take a nervous drink of water.

“I hope I'm not getting a fever,” he said.

I stopped and looked at him, and he involuntarily jerked away when I placed the back of my hand on his cheek.

“I think you're fine,” I said.

I accompanied him through the lobby and into the parking lot, and by now he was clearly frightened.

“Is something wrong?” he finally asked, clearing his throat and putting on sunglasses.

“Why would you ask me that?” I innocently said.

“You walking me out here and everything.”

“I'm heading to my car.”

“I'm sorry I said to you what I did about problems here and the Internet stuff and everything,” he said. “I knew it was better to keep it to myself, that you would get mad at me.”

“Why would you think I'm mad at you?” I asked as I unlocked my car.

He seemed at a loss for words. I opened the trunk and set the plastic bag inside it.

“You got a nick on the paint there. Probably from a kicked-up rock, but it's starting to rust . . .”

“Chuck, I want you to hear what I'm saying,” I calmly told him.
“I know.”

“What? I don't understand what you mean.” He tripped over words.

“You understand completely.”

I got into the front seat and turned on the engine.

“Get in, Chuck,” I said. “You don't need to stand out in the cold. Especially since you're not feeling well.”

He hesitated and exuded fear like an odor as he walked around to the passenger's side.

“Sorry you weren't able to make it to Buckhead's. We had an interesting conversation with Deputy Chief Bray,” I said as he shut his door.

His mouth fell open.

“It's a relief to me to have so many questions answered at last,” I went on. “E-mail, the Internet, rumors about my career, leaks.”

I waited to see what he would say to this and was startled when he blurted out, “That's why I suddenly didn't make it into the academy, isn't it? You see her last night and this morning I get the news. You bad-mouthed me, told her not to hire me, then spread it everywhere to embarrass me.”

“Your name never came up once. And I most certainly haven't spread anything about you anywhere.”

“Bullshit.” His angry voice trembled as if he might cry. “I've wanted to be a cop all my life, and now you ruined it!”

“No, Chuck, you ruined it.”

“Call the chief and say something. You can, you can,” he begged like a distraught child. “Please.”

“Why were you meeting Bray last night?”

“Because she told me to. I don't know what she wanted. She just sent me a page and told me to be in the parking lot at Buckhead's at five-thirty.”

“And of course, in her mind you never showed up. I expect that may have something to do with why you got bad news this morning. What do you think?”

“I guess,” he mumbled.

“How are you feeling? Still sick? If not, I've got to head out to Petersburg, and I think you should ride with me so we can finish this conversation.”

“Well, I . . .”

“Well what, Chuck?”

“I want to finish the conversation, too,” he said.

“Start with how you know Deputy Chief Bray. I find it rather extraordinary that you should have what seems to be a personal relationship with the most powerful person in the police department.”

“Imagine how I felt when it all started,” he innocently said. “See, Detective Anderson called me a couple months ago, said she was new and wanted to ask me questions about the M.E.'s office, about our procedures, and could I meet her at the River City Diner for lunch. That was when I got on the road to hell, and I know I should've said something to you about her call. I should've told you what I was doing. But you were teaching classes most of the day and I didn't want to bother you, and Dr. Fielding was in court. So I told Anderson I'd be glad to help her out.”