Five Scarpetta Novels (2 page)

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?”

I had heard this before and was patient when I replied, “People who work in funeral homes drive hearses. I don't work in a funeral home. I am a medical examiner.”

“I'm going to need some other form of identification.”

I gave him my driver's license, and had no doubt that this sort of interference wasn't going to improve once he allowed me to drive through. He stepped back from my car, lifting a portable radio to his lips.

“Unit eleven to unit two.” He turned away from me as if about to tell secrets.

“Two,” floated back the reply.

“I got a Dr. Scaylatta here.” He mispronounced my name worse than most people did.

“Ten-four. We're standing by.”

“Ma'am,” the security guard said to me, “just drive through and you'll find a parking lot on your right.” He pointed. “You need to leave your car there and walk to Pier Two, where you'll find Captain Green. That's who you need to see.”

“And where will I find Detective Roche?” I asked.

“Captain Green's who you need to see,” he repeated.

I rolled my window up as he opened a gate posted with signs warning that I was about to enter an industrial area where spray painting was an imminent hazard, safety equipment was required and parking was at my own risk. In the distance, dull gray cargo and tank landing ships, and mine sweepers, frigates and hydrofoils intimidated the cold horizon. On the second pier, emergency vehicles, police cars and a small group of men had gathered.

Leaving my car as instructed, I briskly walked toward them as they stared. I had left my medical bag and dive gear in the car, so I was an empty-handed, middle-aged woman in hiking boots, wool slacks and pale army-green Schoffel coat. The instant I set foot on the pier, a distinguished, graying man in uniform intercepted me as if I were trespassing. Unsmiling, he stepped in my path.

“May I help you?” he asked in a tone that said halt, as the wind lifted his hair and colored his cheeks.

I again explained who I was.

“Oh, good.” He certainly did not sound as if he meant it. “I'm Captain Green with Navy Investigative Service. We really do need to get on with this. Listen,” he turned away from me and spoke to someone else. “We gotta get those CPs off . . .”

“Excuse me. You're with NIS?” I cut in, for I was going to get this cleared up now. “It was my belief that this shipyard is not Navy property. If it is Navy property, I shouldn't be here. The case should be the Navy's and autopsied by Navy pathologists.”

“Ma'am,” he said as if I tried his patience, “this shipyard is a civilian contractor-operated facility, and therefore not naval property. But we have an obvious interest because it appears someone was diving unauthorized around our vessels.”

“Do you have a theory as to why someone might have done that?” I looked around.

“Some treasure hunters think they're going to find cannonballs, old ship bells and whatnot in waters around here.”

We were standing between the cargo ship
El Paso
and the submarine
Exploiter,
both of them lusterless and rigid in the river. The water looked like cappuccino, and I realized that visibility was going to be even worse than I had feared. Near the submarine, there was a dive platform. But I saw no sign of the victim or the rescuers and police supposedly working his death. I asked Green about this as wind blowing off the water numbed my face, and his reply was to give me his back again.

“Look, I can't be here all day waiting for Stu,” he said to a man in coveralls and a filthy ski jacket.

“We could haul Bo's butt in here, Cap'n,” was the reply.

“No way José,” Green said, and he seemed quite familiar with these shipyard men. “No point in calling that boy.”

“Hell,” said another man with a long tangled beard. “We all know he ain't gonna be sober this late in the morning.”

“Well, now if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black,” Green said, and all of them laughed.

The bearded man had a complexion like raw hamburger. He slyly eyed me as he lit a cigarette, shielding it from the wind in rough bare hands.

“I hadn't had a drink since yesterday. Not even water,” he swore as his mates laughed some more. “Damn, it's cold as a witch's titty.” He hugged himself. “I should'a wore a better coat.”

“I tell you what's cold is that one over yonder.” Another
worker spoke, dentures clicking as he talked about what I realized was the dead diver. “Now that boy's cold.”

“He don't feel it now.”

I controlled my mounting irritation as I said to Green, “I know you're eager to get started, and so am I. But I don't see any rescuers or police. I haven't seen the johnboat or the area of the river where the body is located.”

I felt half a dozen pairs of eyes on me, and I scanned the eroded faces of what easily could have been a small band of pirates dressed for modern times. I was not invited into their secret club and was reminded of those early years when rudeness and isolation could still make me cry.

Green finally answered, “The police are inside using the phones. In the main building there, the one with the big anchor in front. The divers are probably in there too staying warm. The rescue squad is at a landing on the other side of the river where they've been waiting for you to get here. And you might be interested in knowing that this same landing is where the police just found a truck and trailer they believe belonged to the deceased. If you follow me.” He began walking. “I'll show you the location you're interested in. I understand you plan on going in with the other divers.”

“That's right.” I walked with him along the pier.

“I sure as hell don't know what you expect to see.”

“I learned long ago to have no expectations, Captain Green.”

As we passed old, tired ships, I noticed many fine metal lines leading from them into the water. “What are those?” I asked.

“CPs—cathodic protectors,” he answered. “They're electrically charged to reduce corrosion.”

“I certainly hope someone has turned them off.”

“An electrician's on the way. He'll turn off the whole pier.”

“So the diver could have run into CPs. I doubt it would have been easy to see them.”

“It wouldn't matter. The charge is very mild,” he said as if anyone should know that. “It's like getting zapped with a nine-volt battery. CPs didn't kill him. You can already mark that one off your list.”

We had stopped at the end of the pier where the rear of the partially submerged submarine was in plain view. Anchored no more than twenty feet from it was the dark green aluminum johnboat with its long black hose leading from the compressor, which was nestled in an inner tube on the passenger's side. The floor of the boat was scattered with tools, scuba equipment and other objects that I suspected had been rather carelessly gone through by someone. My chest tightened, for I was angrier than I would show.

“He probably just drowned,” Green was saying. “Almost every diving death I've seen was a drowning. You die in water as shallow as this, that's what it's going to be.”

“I certainly find his equipment unusual.” I ignored his medical pontifications.

He stared at the johnboat barely stirred by the current. “A hookah. Yeah, it's unusual for around here.”

“Was it running when the boat was found?”

“Out of gas.”

“What can you tell me about it? Homemade?”

“Commercial,” he said. “A five-horsepower gasoline-driven compressor that draws in surface air through a low-pressure hose connected to a second-stage regulator. He could have stayed down four, five hours. As long as his fuel lasted.” He continued to stare off.

“Four or five hours? For what?” I looked at him. “I can
understand that if you're collecting lobsters or abalone.”

He was silent.

“What is down there?” I said. “And don't tell me Civil War artifacts because we both know you're not going to find those here.”

“In truth, not a damn thing's down there.”

“Well,” I said, “he thought something was.”

“Unfortunately for him, he thought wrong. Look at those clouds moving in. We're definitely going to get it.” He flipped his coat collar up around his ears. “I assume you're a certified diver.”

“For many years.”

“I'm going to need to see your dive card.”

I looked out at the johnboat and the submarine nearby as I wondered just how uncooperative these people intended to be.

“You've got to have that with you if you're going in,” he said. “I thought you would have known that.”

“And I thought the military did not run this shipyard.”

“I know the rules here. It doesn't matter who runs it.” He stared at me.

“I see.” I stared back. “And I suppose I'm going to need a permit if I want to park my car on this pier so I don't have to carry my gear half a mile.”

“You do need a permit to park on the pier.”

“Well, I don't have one of those. I don't have my PADI advanced and rescue dive cards or my dive log. I don't have my licenses to practice medicine in Virginia, Maryland or Florida.”

I spoke very smoothly and quietly, and because he could not rattle me, he became more determined. He blinked several times, and I could feel his hate.

“This is the last time I'm going to ask you to allow me to do my job,” I went on. “We have an unnatural death
here that is in my jurisdiction. If you would rather not cooperate, I will be happy to call the state police, the U.S. Marshal, FBI. Your choice. I can probably get somebody here in twenty minutes. I've got my portable phone right here in my pocket.” I patted it.

“You want to dive”—he shrugged—“then go right ahead. But you'll have to sign a waiver relieving the shipyard of any responsibility, should something unfortunate happen. And I seriously doubt there are any forms like that here.”

“I see. Now I need to sign something you don't have.”

“That's correct.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then I'll just draft a waiver for you.”

“A lawyer would have to do that, and it's a holiday.”

“I am a lawyer and I work on holidays.”

His jaw muscles knotted, and I knew he wasn't going to bother with any forms now that it was possible to have one. We started walking back, and my stomach tightened with dread. I did not want to make this dive and I did not like the people I had encountered this day. Certainly, I had gotten entangled in bureaucratic barbed wire before when cases involved government or big business. But this was different.

“Tell me something,” Green spoke again in his scornful tone, “do chief medical examiners always personally go in after bodies?”

“Rarely.”

“Explain why you think it is necessary this time.”

“The scene of death will be gone the moment the body is moved. I think the circumstances are unusual enough to merit my taking a look while I can. And I'm temporarily covering my Tidewater District, so I happened to be here when the call came in.”

He paused, then unnerved me by saying, “I certainly was
sorry to hear about Dr. Mant's mother. When will he be back to work?”

I tried to remember this morning's phone call and the man called Young with his exaggerated Southern accent. Green did not sound native to the South, but then neither did I, and that didn't mean either of us couldn't imitate a drawl.

“I'm not certain when he'll return,” I warily replied. “But I'm wondering how you know him.”

“Sometimes cases overlap, whether they should or not.”

I was not sure what he was implying.

“Dr. Mant understands the importance of not interfering,” Green went on. “People like that are good to work with.”

“The importance of not interfering with what, Captain Green?”

“If a case is the Navy's, for example, or this jurisdiction or that. There are many different ways that people can interfere. All are a problem and can be harmful. That diver, for example. He went where he didn't belong and look what happened.”

I had stopped walking and was staring at him in disbelief. “It must be my imagination,” I said, “but I think you're threatening me.”

“Go get your gear. You can park closer in, by the fence over there,” he said, walking off.

L
ONG AFTER HE
had disappeared inside the building with the anchor in front, I was sitting on the pier, struggling to pull a thick wet suit over my dive skin. Not far from me, several rescuers prepared a flat-bottomed boat they had moored to a piling. Shipyard workers wandered about curiously, and on the dive platform, two men in royal blue neoprene tested buddy phones and seemed very thorough in their inspection of scuba gear, which included mine.

I watched the divers talk to each other, but I could not make out a word they said as they unscrewed hoses and fitted belts with weights. Occasionally, they glanced my way, and I was surprised when one of them decided to climb the ladder that led up to my pier. He walked over to where I was and sat beside me on my little patch of cold pavement.

“This seat taken?” He was a handsome young man, black and built like an Olympic athlete.

“There are a lot of people who want it, but I don't know where they are.” I fought with the wet suit some more. “Damn. I hate these things.”

“Just think of it as putting on an inner tube.”

“Yes, that's an enormous help.”

“I need to talk to you about underwater comm equipment. You ever used it before?” he said.

I glanced up at his serious face and asked, “Are you with a squad?”

“Nope. I'm just plain ole Navy. And I don't know about you, but this sure isn't the way I planned to spend my New Year's Eve. Don't know why anybody'd want to dive in this river unless they got some sort of fantasy about being a blind tadpole in a mud puddle. Or maybe if you got iron-poor blood and think all the rust in there will help.”

“All the rust in there will do is give you tetanus.” I looked around. “Who else here is Navy versus squad?”

“The two with the rescue boat are squad. Ki Soo down there on the dive platform is the only other Navy except our intrepid investigator with NIS. Ki's good. He's my buddy.”

He gave an okay sign to Ki Soo, who gave it back, and I found all of this rather interesting and very different from what I had experienced so far.

“Now listen up.” My new acquaintance spoke as if he had worked with me for years. “Comm equipment's tricky if you've never used it. It can be real dangerous.” His face was earnest.

“I'm familiar with it,” I assured him with more ease than I felt.

“Well, you gotta be more than familiar. You gotta be buddies with it, because like your dive buddy, it can save your life.” He paused. “It can also kill you.”

I had used underwater communication equipment on only one other dive, and was still nervous about having my regulator replaced by a tightly sealed mask fitted with a mouthpiece and no purge valve. I worried about the mask
flooding, about having to tear it off as I frantically groped for my alternate air source, or octopus. But I was not going to mention this, not here.

“I'll be fine,” I assured him again.

“Great. I heard you were a pro,” he said. “By the way, my name's Jerod, and I already know who you are.” Sitting Indian-style, he was tossing gravel into the water and seemed fascinated by the slowly spreading ripples. “I've heard a lot of nice things about you. In fact, when my wife finds out I met you, she's going to be jealous.”

I was not certain why a diver in the Navy would have heard anything about me beyond what was in the news, which wasn't always nice. But his words were a welcome salve to my raw mood, and I was about to let him know this when he glanced at his watch, then stared down at the platform and met Ki Soo's eyes.

“Dr. Scarpetta,” Jerod said as he got up. “I think we're ready to rock and roll. How about you?”

“I'm as ready as I'm going to be.” I got up, too. “What's going to be the best approach?”

“The best way—in fact, the only way—is to follow his hose down.”

We stepped closer to the edge of the pier and he pointed to the johnboat.

“I've already been down once, and if you don't follow the hose you'll never find him. You ever had to wade through a sewer with no lights on?”

“That one hasn't happened to me yet.”

“Well, you can't see shit. And that's the same thing here.”

“To your knowledge, no one has disturbed the body,” I said.

“No one's been near it but me.”

He watched as I picked up my buoyancy control vest, or BC, and tucked a flashlight in a pocket.

“I wouldn't even bother. In these conditions, all a flashlight's going to do is get in your way.”

But I was going to bring it because I wanted any advantage I could possibly have. Jerod and I climbed down the ladder to the dive platform so we could finish preparations, and I ignored overt stares from shipyard men as I massaged cream rinse into my hair and pulled on the neoprene hood. I strapped a knife to my inner right calf, and then grabbed each end of a fifteen-pound weight belt and quickly hoisted it around my waist. I checked safety releases, and pulled on gloves.

“I'm ready,” I said to Ki Soo.

He carried over communication equipment and my regulator.

“I will attach your air hose to the face mask.” He spoke with no accent. “I understand you've used comm equipment like this before.”

“That's correct,” I said.

He squatted beside me and lowered his voice as if we were about to conspire. “You, Jerod and I will be in constant contact with each other over the buddy phones.”

They looked like bright red gas masks with a five-strap harness in back. Jerod moved behind me and helped me into my BC and air tank while his buddy talked on.

“As you know,” Ki Soo was saying, “you breathe normally and use the push-to-talk button on the mouthpiece when you want to communicate.” He demonstrated. “Now we need to get this nice and secure over your hood and tuck it in. There, you get the rest of your hair tucked in and let me make sure this is nice and tight in back.”

I hated buddy phones the most when I wasn't in the water because it was difficult to breathe. I sucked in air as
best I could as I peered out through plastic at these two divers I had just entrusted with my life.

“There will be two rescuers in a boat and they will be monitoring us with a transducer that will be lowered into the water. Whatever we say will be heard by whoever is listening on the surface. Do you understand?” Ki Soo looked at me and I knew I had just been given a warning.

I nodded, my breathing loud and labored in my ears.

“You want your fins on now?”

I shook my head and pointed at the water.

“Then you go first and I will toss them to you.”

Weighing at least eighty pounds more than when I had arrived, I cautiously made my way to the edge of the dive platform and checked again to make certain my mask was tucked into my hood. Cathodic protectors were like catfish whiskers trailing from the huge dormant ships, the water ruffled by wind. I steeled myself for the most unnerving giant stride I had ever made.

The cold at first was a shock, and my body took its time warming the water leaking into my rubber sheath as I pulled on my fins. Worse, I could not see my computer console or its compass. I could not see my hand in front of my face, and I now understood why it was useless to bring a flashlight. The suspended sediment absorbed light like a blotter, forcing me to surface at frequent intervals to get my bearings as I swam toward the spot where the hose led from the johnboat and disappeared beneath the surface of the river.

“Everybody ten-four?” Ki Soo's voice sounded in the receiver pressed against the bone of my skull.

“Ten-four,” I spoke into the mouthpiece and tried to relax as I slowly kicked barely below the surface.

“You're on the hose?” It was Jerod who spoke this time.

“I've got my hands on it now.” It seemed oddly taut,
and I was careful to disturb it as little as possible.

“Keep following it down. Maybe thirty feet. He should be floating right above the bottom.”

I began my descent, pausing at intervals to equalize the pressure in my ears as I tried not to panic. I could not see. My heart was pounding as I tried to will myself to relax and take deep breaths. For a moment I stopped and floated as I shut my eyes and slowly breathed. I resumed following the hose down and panic seized me again when a thick rusting cable suddenly materialized in front of me.

I tried to get under it, but I could not see where it was coming from or going to, and I was really more buoyant than I wanted to be and could have used more weight in my belt or the pockets of my BC. The cable got me from the rear, clipping my K-valve hard. I felt my regulator tug as if someone were grabbing it from behind, and the loosened tank began to slide down my back, pulling me with it. Ripping open the Velcro straps of my BC, I quickly worked my way out of it as I tried to block out everything except the procedure I had been trained to do.

“Everything ten-four?” Ki Soo's voice sounded in my mask.

“Technical problem,” I said.

I maneuvered the tank between my legs so I could float on it as if I were riding a rocket in cold, murky space. I readjusted straps and fought off fear.

“Need help?”

“Negative. Watch for cables,” I said.

“You gotta watch for anything,” his voice came back.

It entered my mind that there were many ways to die down here as I slipped my arms inside the BC. Rolling over on my back, I snugly strapped myself in.

“Everything ten-four?” Ki Soo's voice sounded again.

“Ten-four. You're breaking up.”

“Too much interference. All these big tubs. We're coming down behind you. Do you want us closer?”

“Not yet,” I said.

They were maintaining a prudent distance because they knew I wanted to see the body without distraction or interference. We did not need to get in each other's way. Slowly, I dropped deeper, and closer to the bottom, I realized the hose must be snagged, explaining why it was so taut. I was not sure which way to move, and tried going several feet to my left, where something brushed against me. I turned and met the dead man face to face, his body bumping and nudging as I involuntarily jerked away. Languidly, he twisted and drifted on the end of his tether, rubber-sheathed arms out like a sleepwalker's as my motion pulled him after me.

I let him drift close, and he nudged and bumped some more, but now I was not afraid because I was no longer surprised. It was as if he were trying to get my attention or wanted to dance with me through the hellish darkness of the river that had claimed him. I maintained neutral buoyancy, barely moving my fins for I did not want to stir up the bottom or cut myself on rusting shipyard debris.

“I've got him. Or maybe I should say he got me.” I depressed the push-to-talk button. “Can you copy?”

“Barely. We're maybe ten feet above you. Holding.”

“Hold a few minutes more. Then we'll get him out.”

I tried my flashlight one last time, just in case, but it still proved useless, and I realized I would have to see this scene with my hands. Tucking the light back in my BC, I held my computer console almost against my mask. I could barely make out that my depth was almost thirty feet and I had more than half a tank of air. I began to hover in the dead man's face, and through the murkiness could make
out only the vague shape of features and hair that had floated free of his hood.

Gripping his shoulders, I carefully felt around his chest, tracing the hose. It was threaded through his weight belt and I began following it toward whatever it was caught on. In less than ten feet, a huge rusty screw blossomed before my eyes. I touched the barnacle-covered metal of a ship's side, steadying myself so I did not float any closer. I did not want to drift under a vessel the size of a playing field and have to blindly feel my way out before I ran out of air.

The hose was tangled and I felt along it to see if it might be folded or compressed in a way that might have cut off the flow of air, but I could find no evidence of that. In fact, when I tried to free it from the screw, I found this was not hard to do. I saw no reason why the diver could not have freed himself, and I was suspicious his hose had gotten snagged after death.

“His air hose was caught.” I got on the radio again. “On one of the ships. I don't know which.”

“Need some help?” It was Jerod who spoke.

“No. I've got him. You can start pulling.”

I felt the hose move.

“Okay. I'm going to guide him up,” I said. “You keep pulling. Very slowly.”

I locked my arms under the body's from behind and began kicking with my ankles and knees instead of my hips because movement was restricted.

“Easy,” I warned into the microphone, for my ascent could be no more than one foot a second. “Slowly. Slowly.”

Periodically, I looked up but could not see where I was until we broke the surface. Then suddenly the sky was painted with slate-gray clouds, and the rescue boat was rock ing nearby. Inflating the dead man's BC and mine, I
turned him on his belly and released his weight belt, almost dropping it because it seemed so heavy. But I managed to hand it up to rescuers who were wearing wet suits and seemed to know what they were doing in their old flat-bottomed boat.