Sister Teresa watched me closely after that. I dared never let my eyes stray from what I was doing at my desk. Several days passed. I was emptying the trash baskets, just the two of us alone in the classroom, and she told me I must pray constantly that God would keep me free of sin. I must thank our Heavenly Father for the great gifts I have and look to Him to keep me honest, because I was so smart I could get away with a lot of things. God knows everything, Sister Teresa said. I can’t fool God. I protested that I was honest and not trying to fool God and she could ask God herself. I began to cry. “I am not a cheater,” I sobbed. “I want my daddy.”
When I was at Johns Hopkins in my first year of medical school, I wrote Sister Teresa a letter and recounted that wrenching, unfair incident. I reiterated my innocence, still bothered, still furious that I had been falsely accused and the nuns didn’t defend me and never seemed quite as sure of me afterward.
As I stand in Rose’s office now, more than twenty years later, I think about what Jaime Berger said the first time we met. She promised that the hurt had only begun. Of course, she was right. “Before everybody leaves today,” I say to my secretary, “I’d like to talk to them. If you’d pass that along, Rose. We’ll see how the day goes and find a time. I’m going to check on Benny White. Please make sure his mother is all right, and I’ll be in shortly to talk to her.”
I head down the hallway past the break room and find Washington George in the medical library. “I just have a minute,” I tell him in a distracted way.
He is scanning books on a shelf, notepad down by his side like a gun he might use. “I heard a rumor,” he says. “If you know it’s true, maybe you can verify it. If you don’t know, well, maybe you should. Buford Righter’s not going to be the prosecutor in your special grand jury hearing.”
“I know nothing about it,” I reply, masking the indignation I always feel when the press knows details before I do. “But we’ve worked a lot of cases together,” I add. “I wouldn’t expect him to want to deal with this himself.”
“I guess so, and what I understand is a special prosecutor has been appointed. That’s the part I’m getting to. You aware of this?” He tries to read my face.
“No.” I am trying to read his face, too, hoping to catch a foreshadowing that might prevent me from being broadsided.
“No one’s indicated to you that Jaime Berger’s been appointed to get you indicted, Dr. Scarpetta?” He stares me in the eye. “From what I understand, that’s one of the reasons she came to town. You’ve been going through the Luong and Bray cases with her and all that, but I have it from a very good source it’s a setup. She’s been undercover, I guess you would say. Righter set it up before Chandonne allegedly showed up at your house. I understand Berger’s been in the picture for weeks.”
All I can think to say is, “Allegedly?” I am shocked.
“Well,” Washington George says, “I assume by your reaction that you haven’t heard any of this.”
“I don’t guess you can tell me who your reliable source is,” I respond.
“Naw.” He smiles a little, somewhat sheepishly. “So you can’t confirm?”
“Of course I can’t,” I say as I gather my wits about me.
“Look, I’m going to keep digging, but I want you to know I like you and you’ve always been nice enough to me.” He goes on. I am barely hearing a word of it. All I can think of is Berger spending hours with me in the dark, in her car, in my house, in Bray’s house, and all along she was making mental notes to use against me in the special grand jury hearing. God, no wonder she seems to know so much about my life. She has probably been through my phone records, bank statements, credit reports and interviewed everyone who knows me. “Washington,” I say, “I’ve got the mother of some poor person who just died, and I can’t stand here and talk to you any longer.” I walk off. I don’t care if he thinks I am rude.
I cut through the ladies’ room and in the changing area I put on a lab coat and slip paper covers over my shoes. The autopsy suite is full of sounds, every table occupied with the unfortunate. Jack Fielding is splashed with blood. He has already opened up Mrs. White’s son and is inserting a syringe with a fourteen-gauge needle into the aorta to draw blood. Jack gives me a rather frantic, wild-eyed look when I walk over to his table. The morning news is all over his face.
“Later.” I raise my hand before he can ask a question. “His mother’s in my office.” I indicate the body.
“Shit,” Fielding says. “Shit is all I gotta say about this entire fucking world.”
“She wants to see him.” I take a rag from a bag on a gurney and wipe the boy’s delicately pretty face. His hair is the color of hay and, except for his suffused face, his skin is like rose milk. He has fuzz on his upper lip and the first hint of pubic hair, his hormones just beginning to stir, preparing for an adult life he was not destined to have. A narrow, dark furrow around the neck angles up to the right ear where the rope was knotted. Otherwise, his strong, young body bears no evidence of violence, no hint that he should have had any reason in the world not to live. Suicides can be very challenging. Contrary to popular belief, people rarely leave notes. People don’t always talk about their feelings in life and sometimes their dead bodies don’t have much to say, either.
“Goddamn,” Jack mutters.
“What do we know about this?” I ask him.
“Just that he started acting weird at school right about Christmas.” Jack picks up the hose and rinses out the chest cavity until it gleams like the inside of a tulip. “Dad died of lung cancer a few years ago.” Water slaps. “That damn Stanfield, Jesus Christ. What we got out there? Some kind of special? Three fucking cases from him in four fucking weeks.” Jack rinses off the bloc of organs. They shimmer in deep hues on the cutting board, waiting for their ultimate violation. “He keeps turning up like a fucking bad penny.” Jack grabs a large surgical knife from the cart. “So this kid goes to church yesterday, comes home and hangs himself in the woods.”
The more times Jack Fielding uses the word “fuck,” the more upset he is. He is extremely upset. “What about Stanfield?” I ask darkly. “I thought he was quitting.”
“I wish he would. The guy’s an idiot. He calls about this case and guess what else? Apparently, he goes to the scene. The kid’s hanging from a tree and Stanfield cuts him down.”
I have a feeling I know what’s coming.
“He cuts through the knot.”
I was right. “He took photographs first, let’s hope.”
“Over there.” He nods at the counter on the other side of the room.
I go to look at the photographs. They are painful. It appears Benny didn’t even stop to change clothes when he came home from church, but went straight into the woods, threw a nylon rope over a tree branch, looped one end and threaded the other end through it. Then he made another loop with a simple slip knot and put it over his head. In the photographs, he is dressed in a navy blue suit and a white shirt. A red-and-blue-striped clip-on tie is on the ground, either dislodged by the rope or maybe he took it off first. He is kneeling, arms dangling by his sides, his head bent, a typical position for suicidal hangings. I don’t have many cases where people are fully suspended, their feet off the ground. The point is to put enough compression on the blood vessels of the neck so that insufficient oxygenated blood reaches the brain. It takes only 4.4 pounds of pressure to compress the jugular veins, and a little more than twice that to occlude the carotids. The weight of the head against the noose is enough. Unconsciousness is quick. Death takes minutes.
“Let’s do this.” I get back to Jack. “Cover him up. We’ll put some plasticized sheets over him so blood won’t soak through. And let’s give his mother a viewing before you do anything else to him.”
He takes a deep breath and tosses his scalpel back on the cart.
“I’ll go talk to her and see what else we can find out.” I walk off. “Buzz Rose when you’re ready. Thanks, Jack.” I pause to meet his eyes. “We’
ll talk later? We’ve never had that cup of coffee. We never even wished each other Merry Christmas.”
I find Mrs. White in my conference room. She has stopped crying and is in a deep, depressed space, staring without blinking, lifeless. She barely focuses on me when I walk in and shut the door. I tell her I just looked at Benny and am going to give her a chance to see him in a few minutes. Her eyes fill with tears again and she wants to know if he suffered. I tell her he would have slipped into unconsciousness rapidly. She wants to know if he died because he couldn’t breathe. I reply that we don’t know all the answers right now, but it is unlikely that his airway was obstructed.
Benny may have died from hypoxic brain damage, but I am more inclined to suspect that the compression of blood vessels caused a vaso-vagal response. In other words, his heart slowed down and he died. When I mention he was kneeling, she suggests that maybe he was praying for the Lord to take him home. Maybe, I reply. He very well could have been praying. I comfort Mrs. White as best I can. She informs me that a hunter was looking for a deer he shot earlier and found her son’s body, and Benny couldn’t have been dead very long because he disappeared right after church, about twelve-thirty, and the police came by her house around five. They told her the hunter found Benny at around two. So at least he wasn’t out there all by himself for very long, she keeps saying. And it was a good thing he had his New Testament in his suit pocket because it had his name and address in it. That was how the police figured out who he was and located his family.
“Mrs. White,” I say, “was something going on with Benny of late? What about at church yesterday morning? Anything happen that you know about?”
“Well, he’s been moody.” She is steadier now. She is talking about Benny as if he is sitting out in the reception area waiting for her. “He’ll be twelve next month, and you know how that goes.”
“What do you mean by ‘moody’?”
“He would go in his room a lot and shut the door. Stay in there listening to music with the headphones on. He gets a smart mouth now and again, and he didn’t used to be that way. I’ve been concerned.” Her voice catches. She blinks, suddenly remembering where she is and why. “I just don’t know why he had to do something like that!” Tears seem to spurt out of her eyes. “I know there’re some boys at church he’s been having a hard time with. They tease him a lot, calling him pretty boy.”
“Did anyone tease him yesterday?” I ask.
“That very well could be. They’re all in Sunday School together. And there’s been a lot of talk, you know, about those killings in the area.” She pauses again. She doesn’t want to continue down a path that leads to a subject both foreign and aberrant to her.
“The two men killed right before Christmas?”
“Uh huh. The ones they say were cursed, because that’s not how America started, you know. With people doing things like that.”
“Cursed? Who says they were cursed?”
“It’s the talk. A lot of talk,” she goes on, taking a deep breath. “With Jamestown being just down the road. There’s always been stories about people seeing ghosts of John Smith and Pocahontas and all the rest of it. Then these men are murdered right near there, near Jamestown Island, and all this talk about them being, well, you know. Being unnatural, which is why someone killed them, I guess. Or at least that’s what I hear.”
“Did you and Benny talk about all this?” My heart is getting heavier by the moment.
“Some. I mean, everybody’s been talking about those men killed and burned and tortured. People’ve been locking their doors more than usual. It’s been spooky, I must admit. So Benny and I’ve discussed it, yes we have. To tell you the truth, he’s been a lot moodier since all that happened. So maybe that’s what had him upset.” Silence. She stares at the tabletop. She can’t decide which tense to use when she talks about her dead son. “That and the other boys calling him pretty. Benny hated that, and I don’t blame him. I’m always telling him, Just wait until you grow up and are handsomer than all the rest. And the girls are just lining up. That’ll teach ’em.” She smiles a little and starts crying again. “He’s real touchy about it. And you know how children can tease.”
“Possibly he got teased a lot yesterday at church?” I guide her along. “Do you think maybe the boys made comments about so-called hate crimes, about gays and maybe implied . . . ?”
“Well,” she blurts out. “Well, yes. About curses against people who are unnatural and wicked. The Bible makes itself very clear. ‘God gave them up to their own lust,’” she quotes.
“Any possibility Benny’s been worried about his sexuality, Mrs. White?” I am very gentle but firm. “That’s pretty normal for kids entering adolescence. A lot of sexual identity confusion, that sort of thing. Especially these days. The world’s a complicated place, much more complicated than it used to be.” The phone rings. “Excuse me a minute.”
Jack is on the line. Benny is ready to be viewed. “And Marino’s in here looking for you. Says he’s got important information.”
“Tell him where I am.” I hang up.
“Benny did ask me if those men had those awful things done to them because they’re . . . He used the word queer,” Mrs. White is saying. “I said that very well may have been God’s punishment.”
“How did he react to that?” I ask her.
“I don’t remember him saying anything.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe three weeks ago. Right after they found that second body and all the news came out about them being hate crimes.”
I wonder if Stanfield has any idea how much damage he has caused by leaking investigative details to his goddamn brother-in-law. Mrs. White is chattering nervously as dread builds with her every step down the hallway. I escort her to the front of the office and through a door that takes us into the small viewing room. Inside are a couch and table. There is a painting of a peaceful English countryside on the wall. Opposite the sitting area is a wall of glass. It is covered with a curtain. On the other side is the walk-in refrigerator.
“Why don’t you just sit and make yourself comfortable,” I tell Mrs. White and touch her shoulder.
She is tense, frightened, her eyes riveted to the drawn blue curtain. She perches on the edge of the couch, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. I open the curtain and Benny is swathed in blue, a blue sheet tucked under his chin to hide the ligature mark. His wet hair is combed back, eyes shut. His mother is frozen on the edge of the couch. She doesn’t seem to breathe. She stares blankly, without comprehension. She frowns. “How come his face is all red like that?” she asks almost accusingly.
“The rope prevented the blood from flowing back to his heart,” I explain. “So his face is congested.”
She gets up and moves closer to the window. “Oh my baby,” she whispers. “My sweet child. You’re in heaven now. In Jesus’ arms in paradise. Look, his hair’s all wet like he’s just been baptized. You must have given him a bath. I just need to know he didn’t suffer.”
I can’t tell her that. I imagine when he first tightened the noose around his neck, the roaring pressure in his head was very frightening. He had begun the process of terminating his own life, and he was awake and alert long enough to feel it coming. Yes, he suffered. “Not long,” is what I say. “He didn’t suffer long, Mrs. White.”
She covers her face with her hands and weeps. I draw the curtain and lead her out.
“What will you do to him now?” she asks as she woodenly follows me out.
“We’ll finish looking at him and do some tests, just to see if there’s anything else we need to know.”
She nods.
“Would you like to sit for a while? Can we get you anything?”
“No, no. I’ll just go on.”
“I’m very sorry about your son, Mrs. White. I can’t tell you how sorry. If you have any questions, just call. If I’m not available, someone here will help you. It’s going to be hard, and you’ll go through a lot of things.
So please call if we can help.”
She stops in the hallway and grabs my hand. She looks intensely into my eyes. “You’re sure someone didn’t do this to him? How do we know for a fact he did it to himself?”
“Right now, there’s nothing to make us think someone else did this,” I assure her. “But we’ll investigate every possibility. We’re not finished yet. Some of these tests take weeks.”
“You won’t keep him here for weeks!”
“No, he’ll be ready to go in a few hours. The funeral home can come for him.”
We are in the front office and I escort her through a glass door, back into the lobby. She hesitates, as if not quite sure what to do next. “Thank you,” she says. “You’ve been very kind.”
It isn’t often I am thanked. My thoughts are so heavy as I return to my office that I almost run into Marino before I notice him. He is waiting for me just inside my doorway and has paperwork in hand, his face radiating excitement. “You aren’t going to fucking believe this,” he says.
“I’m to the point of believing just about anything,” I grimly reply as I almost fall into the big leather chair behind my piled-up desk. I sigh. I expect Marino has come to tell me that Jaime Berger is the special prosecutor. “If it’s about Berger, I already know,” I say. “An AP reporter told me she’s been appointed to get me indicted. I haven’t decided if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Hell, I can’t decide if I even care.”
Marino has a puzzled expression on his face. “No kidding? She is? How’s she gonna do that? She pass the bar in Virginia?”
“Doesn’t have to,” I reply. “She can appear pro hac vice.” The phrase means for this one particular occasion, and I go on to explain that at a special jury’s request, the court can grant an out-of-state lawyer special permission to participate in a case even if that person is not licensed to practice law in Virginia.
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