Unnatural Exposure

by Patricia Cornwell

  “The more information that gets out, the worse it is,” Ring went on as we approached another door, leading into a conference room where I spent at least several days a month. “It’s one thing to give details that might help the public help us . . .”

  He talked on, but I wasn’t listening. Inside, Wesley was already sitting at the head of a polished table, his reading glasses on. He was going through large photographs stamped on the back with the name of the Sussex County Sheriff’s Department. Detective Grigg was several chairs away, a lot of paperwork in front of him as he studied a sketch of some sort. Across from him was Frankel from the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or VICAP, and at the other end of the table, my niece. She was tapping on a laptop computer, and glanced up at me but did not say hello.

  I took my usual chair to the right of Wesley, opened my briefcase and began arranging files. Ring sat on the other side of me and continued our conversation.

  “We got to accept as a fact that this guy is following everything in the news,” he said. “That’s part of the fun for him.”

  He had everyone’s attention, all eyes on him, the room silent except for his own sound. He was reasonable and quiet, as if his only mission was to convey the truth without drawing undue attention to himself. Ring was a superb con man, and what he said next in front of my colleagues incensed me beyond belief.

  “For example, and I have to be honest about this,” he said to me, “I just don’t think it was a good idea to give out the race, age and all about the victim. Now maybe I’m wrong.” He looked around the room. “But it seems like the less said, the better right now.”

  “I had no choice,” I said, and I could not keep the edge out of my voice. “Since someone had already leaked misinformation.”

  “But that’s always going to happen, and I don’t think it should force us to give out details before we’re ready,” he said in his same earnest tone.

  “It is not going to help us if the public is focused on a missing prepubescent Asian female.” I stared at him, eye to eye, while everyone else looked on.

  “I agree.” Frankel, from VICAP, spoke. “We’d be getting missing person files from all over the country. An error like that has to be straightened out.”

  “An error like that never should have happened to begin with,” Wesley said, peering around the room over the top of his glasses, the way he did when he was in a humorless mood. “With us this morning is Detective Grigg of Sussex, and Special Agent Farinelli.” He looked at Lucy. “She’s the technical analyst for HRT, manages the Criminal Artificial Intelligence Network all of us know as CAIN, and is here to help us with a computer situation.”

  My niece did not look up as she hit more keys, her face intense. Ring had her in his sights, staring as if he wanted to eat her flesh.

  “What computer situation?” he asked, as his eyes continued to devour her.

  “We’ll get to that,” Wesley said, and briskly moved on. “Let me summarize, then we’ll move on to specifics. The victimology in this most recent landfill case is so different from the previous four—or nine, if we include Ireland—as for me to conclude that we are dealing with a different killer. Dr. Scarpetta is going to review her medical findings which I think will make it abundantly clear that this M.O. is profoundly atypical.”

  He went on, and we spent until midday going over my reports, diagrams and photographs. I was asked many questions, mostly by Grigg, who wanted very much to understand every facet and nuance of the serial dismemberments so he could better discern that the one in his jurisdiction was unlike the rest.

  “What’s the difference between someone cutting through joints and cutting through the bones?” he asked me.

  “Cutting through joints is more difficult,” I said. “It requires knowledge of anatomy, perhaps some previous experience.”

  “Like if someone was a butcher or maybe worked in a meat-packing plant.”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Well, I guess that sure would fit with a meat saw,” he added.

  “Yes. Which is very different from an autopsy saw.”

  “Exactly how?” It was Ring who spoke.

  “A meat saw is a hand saw designed to cut meat, gristle, bone,” I went on, looking around at everyone. “Usually about fourteen inches long with a very thin blade, ten chisel-type teeth per inch. It’s push action, requiring some degree of strength on the part of the user. The autopsy saw, in contrast, won’t cut through tissue, which must first be reflected back with something like a knife.”

  “Which was what was used in this case,” Wesley said to me.

  “There are cuts to bone that fit the class characteristics of a knife. An autopsy saw,” I went on to explain, “was designed to work only on hard surfaces by using a reciprocating action that is basically push-pull, going in only a little bit at a time. I know everyone here is familiar with it, but I’ve got photos.”

  Opening an envelope, I pulled out eight-by-tens of the saw marks the killer had left on the bone ends I had carried to Memphis. I slid one to each person.

  “As you can see,” I went on, “the saw pattern here is multidirectional with a high polish.”

  “Now let me get this straight,” said Grigg. “This is the exact same saw you use in the morgue.”

  “No. Not exactly the same,” I said. “I generally use a larger sectioning blade than was used here.”

  “But this is from a medical sort of saw.” He held up the photograph.

  “Correct.”

  “Where would your average person get something like that?”

  “Doctor’s office, hospital, morgue, medical supply company,” I replied. “Any number of places. The sale of them is not restricted.”

  “So he could have ordered it without being in the medical profession.”

  “Easily,” I said.

  Ring said, “Or he could have stolen it. He could have decided to do something different this time to throw us off.”

  Lucy was looking at him, and I had seen the expression in her eyes before. She thought Ring was a fool.

  “If we’re dealing with the same killer,” she said, “then why is he suddenly sending files through the Internet when he’s never done that before, either?”

  “Good point.” Frankel nodded.

  “What files?” Ring said to her.

  “We’re getting to that.” Wesley restored order. “We’ve got an M.O. that’s different. We’ve got a tool that’s different.”

  “We suspect she has a head injury,” I said, sliding autopsy diagrams and the e-mail photos around the table, “because of blood in her airway. This may or may not be different from the other cases, since we don’t know their causes of death. However, radiologic and anthropologic findings indicate that this victim is profoundly older than the others. We also recovered fibers indicating she was covered in something consistent with a drop cloth when she was dismembered, again, inconsistent with the other cases.”

  I explained in more detail about the fibers and paint, all the while vividly aware of Ring watching my niece and taking notes.

  “So she was probably cut up in someone’s workshop or garage,” Grigg said.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “And as you’ve seen from the photos sent to me through e-mail, we can only know that she’s in a room with putty-colored walls, and a table.”

  “Let me again point out that Keith Pleasants has an area behind his house that he uses for a workshop,” Ring reminded us. “It has a big workbench in it and the walls are unpainted wood.” He looked at me. “Which could pass for putty-colored.”

  “Seems like it would be awfully hard to get rid of all the blood,” Grigg dubiously mused.

  “A drop cloth with a rubber backing might explain the absence of blood,” Ring said. “That’s the whole point. So nothing leaks through.”

  Everyone looked at me to see what I would say.

  “It would have been very unusual not to get things bloody in a case like this,” I rep
lied. “Especially since she still had a blood pressure when she was decapitated. If nothing else, I would expect blood in wood grain, in cracks of the table.”

  “We could try some chemical testing for that.” Ring was a forensic scientist now. “Like luminol. Any blood at all, it’s going to react to it and glow in the dark.”

  “The problem with luminol is it’s destructive,” I replied. “And we’re going to want to do DNA, to see if we can get a match. So we certainly don’t want to ruin what little blood we might find.”

  “It’s not like we got probable cause to go in Pleasants’ workshop and start any kind of testing anyway.” Grigg’s stare across the table at Ring was confrontational.

  “I think we do.” He stared back at him.

  “Not unless they changed the rules on me.” Grigg spoke slowly.

  Wesley was watching all this, evaluating everyone and every word the way he always did. He had his opinion, and more than likely it was right. But he remained silent as the arguing went on.

  “I thought . . .” Lucy tried to speak.

  “A very viable possibility is that this is a copycat,” Ring said.

  “Oh, I think it is,” said Grigg. “I just don’t buy your theory about Pleasants.”

  “Let me finish.” Lucy’s penetrating gaze scanned the faces of the men. “I thought I would give you a briefing on how the two files were sent via America Online to Dr. Scarpetta’s e-mail address.”

  It always sounded odd when she called me by my professional name.

  “I know I’m curious.” Ring had his chin propped on a hand now, studying her.

  “First, you would need a scanner,” she went on. “That’s not hard. Something with color capabilities and decent resolution, as low as seventy-two dots per inch. But this looks like higher resolution to me, maybe three hundred dpi. We could be talking about something as simple as a hand-held scanner for three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, to a thirty-five-millimeter slide scanner that can run into the thousands . . .”

  “And what kind of computer would you hook this up to,” Ring said.

  “I was getting to that.” Lucy was tired of being interrupted by him. “System requirements: Minimum of eight megs RAM, a color monitor, software like FotoTouch or ScanMan, a modem. Could be a Macintosh, a Performa 6116CD or even something older. The point is, scanning files into your computer and sending them through the Internet is very accessible to your average person, which is why telecommunications crimes are keeping us so busy these days.”

  “Like that big child pornography, pedophile case you all just cracked,” Grigg said.

  “Yes, photos sent as files through the World Wide Web, where children can talk to strangers again,” she said. “What’s interesting in the situation at hand, is scanning black and white is no big deal. But when you move into color, that’s getting sophisticated. Also the edges and borders in the photos sent to Dr. Scarpetta are relatively sharp, not much background noise.”

  “Sounds to me this is someone who knew what he was doing,” Grigg said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “But not necessarily a computer analyst or graphic artist. Not at all.”

  “These days, if you’ve got access to the equipment and a few instruction books, anyone can do it,” said Frankel, who also worked in computers.

  “All right, the photos were scanned into the system,” I said to Lucy. “Then what? What is the path that led them to me?”

  “First you upload the file, which in this case is a graphic or GIF file,” she replied. “Generally, to send this successfully, you have to determine the number of data bits, stop bits, the parity setting, whatever the appropriate configuration is. That’s where it’s not user-friendly. But AOL does all that for you. So in this case, sending the files was simple. You upload and off they go.” She looked at me.

  “And this was done over the telephone, basically,” Wesley said.

  “Right.”

  “What about tracing that?”

  “Squad Nineteen’s already on it.” Lucy referred to the FBI unit that investigated illegal uses of the Internet.

  “I’m not sure what the crime would be in this case,” Wesley pointed out. “Obscenity, if the photos are fakes, and unfortunately, that isn’t illegal.”

  “The photographs aren’t fake,” I said.

  “Hard to prove.” He held my gaze.

  “What if they’re not fake?” Ring asked.

  “Then they’re evidence,” Wesley said, adding after a pause, “A violation of Title Eighteen, Section Eight-seventy-six. Mailing threatening communications.”

  “Threats toward who?” Ring asked.

  Wesley’s eyes were still on me. “Clearly, toward the recipient.”

  “There’s been no blatant threat,” I reminded him.

  “All we want is enough for a warrant.”

  “We got to find the person first,” Ring said, stretching and yawning in his chair like a cat.

  “We’re watching for him to log on again,” Lucy replied. “It’s being monitored around the clock.” She continued hitting keys on her laptop, checking the constant flow of messages. “But if you imagine a global telephone system with some forty million users, and no directory, no operators, no directory assistance, that’s what you’ve got with the Internet. There’s no list of membership, nor does AOL have one, unless you voluntarily choose to fill out a profile. In this case, all we have is the bogus name deadoc.”

  “How did he know where to send Dr. Scarpetta’s mail?” Grigg looked at me.

  I explained, and then asked Lucy, “This is all done by charge card?”

  She nodded. “That much we’ve traced. An American Express Card in the name of Ken L. Perley. A retired high-school teacher. Norfolk. Seventy, lives alone.”

  “Do we have any idea how someone might have gotten access to his card?” Wesley asked.

  “It doesn’t appear Perley uses his credit cards much. Last time was in a Norfolk restaurant, a Red Lobster. This was on October second, when he and his son went out to dinner. The bill was twenty-seven dollars and thirty cents, including the tip, which he put on AmEx. Neither he nor the son remembers anything unusual that night. But when it was time to pay the bill, the credit card was left on the table in plain view for quite a long interval because the restaurant was very busy. At some point while the card was out, Perley went to the men’s room, and the son stepped outside to smoke.”

  “Christ. That was intelligent. Did someone from the wait staff notice anyone coming over to the table?” Wesley said to Lucy.

  “Like I said, it was busy. We’re running down every charge made that night to get a list of customers. Problem’s going to be the people who paid cash.”

  “And I suppose it’s too soon for the AOL charges to have come up on Perley’s American Express,” he said.

  “Right. According to AOL, the account was just opened recently. A week after the dinner at the Red Lobster, to be exact. Perley’s being very cooperative with us,” Lucy added. “And AOL is leaving the account open without charge in the event the perpetrator wants to send something else.”

  Wesley nodded. “Though we can’t assume it, we should consider that the killer, at least in the Atlantic landfill case, may have been in Norfolk as recently as a month ago.”

  “This case is definitely sounding local.” I made that point again.

  “Possible any of the bodies could have been refrigerated?” Ring asked.

  “Not this one,” Wesley was quick to answer. “Absolutely not. This guy couldn’t stand looking at his victim. He had to cover her up, cut through the cloth, and my guess is, didn’t go very far away to dispose of her.”

  “Shades of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart,”’ Ring said.

  Lucy was reading something on her laptop screen, quietly hitting keys, her face tense. “We just got something from Squad Nineteen,” she said, continuing to scroll down. “Deadoc logged on fifty-six minutes ago.” She looked up at us. “He sent e-mail to the president.”
>
  • • •

  The electronic mail was sent directly to the White House, which was no great feat since the address was public and readily available to any user of the Internet. Once again, the message was oddly in lowercase and used spaces for punctuation, and it read: apologize if not I will start on france.

  “There are a number of implications,” Wesley was saying to me as gunshots from the range upstairs thudded like a distant, muffled war going on. “And all of them make me nervous about you.”

  He stopped at the water fountain.

  “I don’t think this has anything to do with me,” I said. “This has to do with the president of the United States.”

  “That’s symbolic, if you want to know my guess. Not literal.” We started walking. “I think this killer is disgruntled, angry, feels a certain person in power or perhaps people in power are responsible for his problems in life.”

  “Like the Unabomber,” I said as we took the elevator up.

  “Very similar. Perhaps even inspired by him,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Can I buy you a beer before you leave?”

  “Not unless someone else is driving.” I smiled. “But you can talk me into coffee.”

  We walked through the gun-cleaning room, where dozens of FBI and DEA agents were breaking down their weapons, wiping them and blasting parts with air. They glanced at us with curious eyes, and I wondered if they had heard the rumors. My relationship with Wesley had been an item of gossip for quite a long time at the Academy, and it bothered me more than I let on. Most people, it seemed, maintained their belief that his wife had left because of me when, in fact, she had left because of another man.

  Upstairs, the line was long in the PX, a mannequin modeling the latest sweatshirt and range pants, and Thanksgiving pumpkins and turkeys in the windows. Beyond, in the Boardroom, the TV was loud, and some people were already into popcorn and beer. We sat as far away from everyone as we could, both of us sipping coffee.

  “What’s your slant on the France connection?” I asked.

  “Obviously, this individual is intelligent and follows the news. Our relations with France were very strained during their nuclear weapons testing. You may recall the violence, vandalism, boycotting of French wine and other products. There was a lot of protesting outside French embassies, the U.S. very much involved.”