Red Mist (28 page)

Are lemmings other inmates, and if so, who has led them?
I
envision Lola Daggette giving Tara Grimm the finger a few minutes ago, and it very well may have been Lola who instigated
the kicking of the cell doors.
Full of bravado and hostility and with no impulse control and a low IQ, she was someone Kathleen
feared.
But Lola Daggette isn’t the reason Kathleen is dead on her bed.
Lola’s not the reason inmates in the general population
of medium security started shunning Kathleen in the chow hall, either.
How would inmates in other pods have a clue what Lola
Daggette thinks or says, or whether she has a problem with someone?
She is as isolated and confined in her upstairs cell as
Kathleen was in this one.

I suspect Kathleen was referring to someone else, and I’m reminded of Tara Grimm’s explanation that Kathleen had to be moved
into protective custody because word got out that she was a convicted child molester.
What word?
What got out?
Information
the warden could blame on others, something that was on TV, caught by another inmate, by someone, she wasn’t sure who, and
I didn’t believe her when she offered this explanation in her office yesterday, and I don’t believe her now.

I suspect I know who has been doing the influencing.
Provoke inmates into being angered over something as petty as credit
in a magazine, and nothing got published in
Inklings
that Tara Grimm didn’t approve.
She had the final say about recipes with no names attached, and inmates felt slighted and
it’s true that small slights can be huge, and Kathleen got moved.
Maybe in her paranoid and agitated state she came up with
the reason: Lola Daggette was behind an unprecedented loss of freedom that must have felt like punishment.
Or perhaps a suggestion
was made to Kathleen.
Guards like Officer Macon may have informed her, taunted her, teased her into
believing that Lola was making threats, and maybe she was.
It doesn’t matter.
Lola didn’t kill her.

I don’t let on to Marino that anything is unusual when he rustles past me in white and places a digital thermometer on the
foot of the bed to record the ambient temperature.
He hands a second thermometer to Colin for the temperature of the body.
Despite witness accounts that place the time of death at approximately twelve-fifteen p.m., we will calculate it ourselves
based on postmortem changes.
People make mistakes.
They are shocked and traumatized, and get the details wrong.
Some people
lie.
Maybe everybody at the GPFW does.

I look around some more, entertaining the possibility that a notepad for June will turn up in here somewhere as I scan gray
walls taped with the handwritten poems and passages of prose Kathleen mentioned to me in e-mails.
The poem titled
Fate
that she sent me is directly over the small steel ledge of a desk anchored to the wall.
Near a steel stool bolted to the
floor is another transparent plastic basket, this one large and stacked with undergarments, a uniform neatly folded, and packs
of ramen noodles and two honey buns Kathleen must have gotten from the commissary.
She told me she had no money because she
no longer had her library job, yet she seems to have made purchases.
Maybe they aren’t recent.
I’m reminded she’s been in
the segregation of Bravo Pod only two weeks.
I poke the honey buns with my gloved finger.
They don’t feel stale.

At the bottom of the plastic basket are copies of
Inklings,
several dozen of them, including the one for June that Kathleen referred to in the journal entry I just read.
On the magazine’s
front cover are artistic renderings of the contributors, Andy Warhol–like portraits
of each woman who is famous for a month because something she wrote will be read by inmates at the GPFW and whoever else has
access to the magazine.
On the back cover are credits for the staff: the art director, the design team, and of course the
editor, Kathleen Lawler, with special thanks to Warden Tara Grimm for her support of the arts, “for her humanity and enlightenment.”

“She’s still quite warm.”
Colin is squatting next to the steel bed and holding up the thermometer.
“Ninety-four-point-six.”

“It’s seventy-three in here,” Marino says, as his thick gloved fingers hold up the thermometer that was on the foot of the
bed.
He looks at his watch.
“At two-nineteen.”

“Allegedly dead two hours and she’s cooled around four degrees,” I observe.
“A little rapid but within normal limits.”
That’s
the best I can say.

“Well, she’s clothed and it’s relatively warm in here,” Colin agrees.
“All we’re going to get is a ballpark.”

He’s implying that if Kathleen has been dead thirty minutes longer or even an hour longer than we’ve been led to believe by
those giving us information, we aren’t going to know by postmortem indicators such as her temperature or rigor mortis.

“Rigor’s barely starting in her fingers.”
Colin manipulates the fingers of Kathleen’s left hand.
“Livor’s not apparent yet.”

“I wonder if she could have gotten overheated outside in the cage,” Marino says, looking around at the writings taped to the
walls, taking in every inch of the cell.
“Maybe she got heat exhaustion.
That can happen, right?
You come back inside, but
you’ve already got a problem.”

“If she’d died of hyperthermia,” Colin says, as he stands up, “her core temperature would be higher than this.
It would be
higher than normal even after several hours, and her rigor likely would have sped up and be disproportional to her livor.
Also, her symptoms as described by the inmate in the cell across from this one are inconsistent with a prolonged exposure
to excessive heat.
Cardiac arrest?
Now, that’s quite possible.
And that certainly can happen following strenuous activities
on a hot day.”

“All she did was walk in the cage.
And she rested every lap or two,” Marino repeats what’s been said.

“The definition of strenuous is different for different people,” Colin replies.
“Someone who is sedentary inside a cell most
of the time?
She goes outdoors and it’s very hot and humid, and she loses too much fluid.
Blood volume decreases, and that
causes stress to the heart.”

“She was drinking water while she was outside,” Marino says.

“But was she drinking enough water?
Was she drinking enough water
inside her cell?
I doubt it.
On an average day the average person loses about ten cups of water.
On an extremely hot, humid
day, you can lose three gallons or more if you sweat enough,” Colin says.

He walks out of the cell, and I ask Chang if he has any objections to my continuing to examine what’s on the shelves and on
the desk, and he indicates he doesn’t.
I retrieve a transparent plastic basket of mail as I’m again reminded of the letters
Jack Fielding supposedly wrote, describing how difficult I am, how awful I am to work for.
I look for any letters from him
or from Dawn Kincaid and don’t find them.
I find nothing from anyone that might be important, except
for a letter that appears to be from me.
I stare in disbelief at the return address, at the CFC logo printed on a ten-by-thirteen-inch
white envelope that Bryce orders in quantities of five thousand for the CFC:

Kay Scarpetta, MD, JD

COL USAF

Chief Medical Examiner and Director

Cambridge Forensic Center

The self-sealing flap has been slit open, probably by prison personnel who scan all incoming mail, and inside is a folded
sheet with my office letterhead.
The note is typed and supposedly signed by me in black ink:

I
sense Marino’s presence, and then he’s next to me, looking at the letter I hold in my purple nitrile gloved hands, reading
what it says.
I meet his eyes and barely shake my head.

“What the hell?”
he asks under his breath.

I answer by pointing out the typed words
it’s impact.
The usage is improper.
It’s
should be possessive, should be
its
and not a contraction.
But Marino doesn’t understand, and right now I’m not going to explain the inconsistencies or that
the wording doesn’t sound like me and that I wouldn’t sign such a letter “Regards, Kay,” as if Kathleen Lawler and I really
were friends.

It’s impossible to imagine my writing or saying to her that I would “never have intentionally hurt” Jack Fielding, as if to
imply I might have hurt him unintentionally, and I think of what Jaime said last
night.
Kathleen’s daughter, Dawn Kincaid, has been trumping up a case that I’m an unstable, violent person.
But Dawn Kincaid
could not have created this forged letter.
It’s not possible she could have done such a thing from Butler State Hospital,
where she would have been confined when this letter was mailed.

I hold up the sheet of stationery to the light, directing Marino’s attention to the absence of the CFC watermark, making sure
he understands that the document is fake.
Then I place the sheet of stationery on the desk and begin to do something he isn’t
likely to see very often.
I take off my gloves and stuff them in a pocket of my white jumpsuit.
I start taking photographs
with my phone.

“You want the Nikon?”
he asks, his face baffled.
“A scale—”

“No,” I interrupt him.

I don’t want the thirty-five-millimeter camera or a close-up lens or a tripod or special lighting.
I don’t want a labeled
six-inch ruler for a scale.
I have a different reason for taking these pictures.
I don’t tell him anything else, but I do
feel compelled to say something to Chang, who is watching all this intently from his station in the open doorway.

“I assume you have a questioned-documents lab?”
I step closer to him.

“We do.”
He watches me type a text message to my chief of staff, Bryce.

“Samples of my office paper that are going to be sent to your labs by FedEx priority overnight?
Who will sign for them?”

“Me, I guess.”

“Okay.
Sammy Chang, GBI Investigative Division.”
I type as
I talk.
“I’m going to wager a bet that an examination will show significant differences between the CFC’s authentic paper
and this.”
I indicate what’s on the desk.
“The lack of a watermark, for example.
I’m making sure my chief of staff sends the
same letterhead, the same envelope, right away, and you can compare them yourself so you’ll have irrefutable proof of what
I’m describing.”

“A watermark?”

“There’s not one.
Possibly a different paper that can be determined under magnification or by analyzing chemical additives.
Maybe a slightly different font.
I don’t know.
Well, big surprise.
No signal in here.
I’ll resend it later.”

The message and attached photographs to Bryce are saved as a draft, and I look past Chang and notice that the glass window
in the cell across from us is empty.
Ellenora isn’t looking out anymore.
She is silent.

“The prison obviously checks mail when it’s delivered,” I say to Chang.
“In other words, someone checked this envelope when
it was delivered.
Scanned it or opened it in front of Kathleen, whatever the usual protocol is.
Possible you can find out
what else might have been inside the envelope?
The postage of a dollar and seventy-six cents is more than needed for a single
sheet of stationery and a large Tyvek envelope unless something else was in it.
Of course, it’s possible whoever sent it overpaid.”

“So you didn’t …” he starts to say, as he glances behind him.

“I absolutely didn’t.”
I shake my head no.
I did not write this letter.
I did not mail it or whatever else might have been
in the envelope.
“Where is everybody?”

“They took her to a quiet place where Dr.
Dengate can question her about what she observed.
Of course, her story gets more
elaborate each time.”
He’s referring to Ellenora.
“But Officer Macon’s right here.”
He says it loudly enough for Officer Macon
to hear him just fine.

“Maybe you can ask him about any mail Kathleen Lawler’s gotten in the past few days.”
I refrain from adding that Chang shouldn’t
count on being told the truth about a letter or about anything at all that goes on in this place.

I put on fresh gloves and pick up the letter written on what looks like my own office stationery, holding it up to the light
again, relieved there is no watermark and at the same time suspecting that whoever forged a letter from me doesn’t seem to
know that the CFC uses an inexpensive recycled twenty-five percent rag paper with a custom watermark to protect our correspondence
and documents from this very threat.
While it would be possible to create a reasonably good facsimile of my letterhead or
any document I might generate, it is impossible to counterfeit such a thing and get away with it unless one has access to
authentic CFC paper.
It occurs to me that whoever sent this letter may not care whether the police, scientists, or even I
am fooled.
Possibly the only purpose of this faked letter was to fool Kathleen Lawler into believing it came from me.

I fold the letter in half, the way I found it, and return it to its large envelope, puzzled by the size, again wondering if
something may have been included.
If so, what else did I supposedly send to Kathleen Lawler?
What else did she receive that
she believed was from me?
Who is impersonating me, and what is the ultimate goal?
I recall Tara Grimm’s oblique references
yesterday to my being
accessible, and then Kathleen mentioned my generosity.
I found their comments perplexing, and I try to conjure up exactly
what Kathleen said.
Something about people like me giving a thought to people like her, about my supposedly paying attention
to her, and at the time I assumed she was alluding to my coming to see her.

But what she really was saying was she appreciated my writing to her and perhaps sending her something.
She would have received
the forged letter before I saw her yesterday.
It was postmarked in Savannah on June 26 at four-fifty-five p.m., mailed from
a location, possibly a post office, with a 31401 zip code.
Five days ago, a Sunday, I was home, and Lucy took Benton and me
to a tequila bar that’s become a favorite hangout of hers, Lolita Cocina.
The waitstaff certainly could testify to the fact
that I was there that night.
I could not have been a thousand miles south in Savannah at four-fifty-five p.m.
and in Boston’s
Back Bay by seven p.m., having dinner.

“Gonna grab a few things and find the little boys’ room.”
Marino squeezes past me.

“I’ll have to take you,” I hear Officer Macon’s voice as it occurs to me that someone could claim Marino mailed the letter
for me.
He was down here by June 26, or at least nearby in South Carolina.

My attention returns to Chang.
He is standing in the open doorway, his dark eyes watching me.

“If you’re fine with my checking a few more things, then I’ll be done in here and can show you what I’d like collected,” I
say to him.

He looks at his watch.
He looks behind him as Officer Macon escorts Marino to a men’s room.

“Has the van gotten here?”
I ask.

“Ready when you are.”

“What about Colin?”

“I think he’s depending on you to wind it up.
There’s nothing else he wants to do until we get her in.”

“Fine.
I’ll bag her hands, photograph her, if that’s all right.”

“I’ve got plenty of photos.”

“I’m sure you do.
But as you can tell, I like to overdo things,” I say to him.

“How about a real camera?
And while you’re overdoing things, there’s also a locker box.”

“A locker box?”
I look around the cell to see what he might be talking about.

“Attached to the foot of the bed.”
He points.
“Hidden by the covers.”

“I’d like to take a look.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“I’ll be quick so you can get in and collect a few things that need to go to the labs.
I’m sure you’re ready to get out of
here.”

“Not me.
I love prisons.
Reminds me of my first marriage.”

I resume examining what is on top of Kathleen’s desk, a thin stack of cheap white paper and plain envelopes, a see-through
Bic pen, a book of self-adhesive postage stamps, and a small tablet with the cover flipped back that seems to be an address
book.
I don’t recognize any names, but I riffle through the pages, looking for Dawn Kincaid and Jack Fielding.
I don’t find
them.
In fact, most of the names have Georgia addresses, and when I come across one for Triple Q Ranch outside of Atlanta,
I realize how old the address book is.
Triple Q was where Kathleen was a therapist when she got involved with Jack in the
mid- to late seventies.
More than thirty years old, at least, I think,
as I continue turning pages.
Whoever she’s been writing recently most likely isn’t in here, I decide.
If she had a current
address book, it appears to be missing.

“This should go in, too,” I tell Investigator Chang.

“Yeah, I noticed it.”

“Old.”

“Exactly.”
He knows what I’m implying.
“Course, she might not have any friends, anyone to write or call anymore.”

“I was told she liked to write letters.”
I open the book of stamps, noting that six out of twenty are missing.
“She worked
in the library to fund her commissary account.
And maybe got a few contributions now and then from family.”
I mean from Dawn
Kincaid.

“Not from family in the past five months or after she was moved in here, not in maximum security.”

“No,” I agree Kathleen wasn’t in a position to fund her account since she was moved to Bravo Pod, and certainly Dawn couldn’t
have been doing it from Butler, and before that, from the Cambridge jail.
“It might be interesting to see how much money is
left in that account and what she might have bought of late,” I suggest.

“Good idea.”

There is a pocket dictionary and a thesaurus, and two library books of poetry, Wordsworth and Keats, and next I go to the
bed.
I crouch at the foot of it, moving the blanket and sheet out of the way, and I’m mindful of Kathleen Lawler’s legs draped
over the side.
My left shoulder brushes against her hip, and it is warm against me but not warm as in life.
Minute by minute,
she continues to cool.

I open the locker box, a single metal drawer filled with a hodgepodge of personal effects.
Drawings and poetry, family photographs,
including several of an exquisite little blond girl who got more gorgeous as she got older, and then suddenly was a temptress,
overly made up, with a voluptuous body and dead eyes.
I find the photograph of Jack Fielding that I gave to Kathleen yesterday,
included with the others, as if he was her family.
There are a few of him when he was young, perhaps ones he mailed to her
in the early years, and the photographs are worn and torn at the edges, as if they have been handled frequently.

I don’t find any other diaries, but there is a booklet of fifteen-cent stamps and also stationery with a festive border of
party hats and balloons, which seems a strange choice for an inmate, possibly left over from someone who used it for invitations
to a birthday celebration or some other fun event.
The stationery isn’t something that would be sold in a prison commissary,
and I suppose it’s also possible Kathleen has had it from a time that predates her being locked up for DUI manslaughter.
Maybe
that’s the explanation for fifteen-cent stamps that feature a white sandy beach with a bright yellow-and-red umbrella beneath
a vivid blue sky, a seagull flying overhead.

The last time I paid fifteen cents for a stamp was at least twenty years ago, so either she was saving them for a special
reason or someone sent them to her, and I recall Kathleen mentioning to me the hardship of affording postage.
The book originally
contained twenty stamps, and the top pane of ten is missing.
I pick up the thin stack of white copying paper from the desk
and hold up a sheet of it to the light, finding no indentations that might have been made by writing on a sheet of paper that
was on top.
I try the party stationery next, holding up a sheet, tilting it in different directions as I make
out indentations that are fairly deep and visible: the date,
June 27,
and the salutation,
Dear Daughter.