Point of Origin ks-9

by Patricia Cornwell

  'Photographs,' he said quietly. 'Of Claire.'

  I hesitated.

  'I spent the last few nights in my beach house,' he went on to explain.

  'In Wrightsville Beach?' I said.

  'Yes. And I remembered these were in a filing cabinet drawer. I hadn't looked at them or even thought of them since we broke up. They were from some photo shoot. I don't recall the details, but she gave me copies when we first started seeing each other. I guess I told you she did some photographic modeling.'

  I slid what must have been about twenty eight-by-ten color prints from the envelope, and the one on top was startling. It was true what the governor had said to me at Hootowl Farm. Claire Rawley was physically magnificent. Her hair was to the middle of her back, perfectly straight, and seemed spun of gold as she stood on the beach in running shorts and a skimpy tank top that barely covered her breasts. On her right wrist she wore what appeared to be a large diving watch with a black plastic band and an orange face. Claire Rawley looked like a Nordic goddess, her features striking and sharp, her tan body athletic and sensual. Behind her on the sand was a yellow surfboard, and in the distance a sparkling ocean.

  Other photographs had been taken in other dramatic settings. In some she was sitting on the porch of a decaying Gothic southern mansion, or on a stone bench in an overgrown cemetery or garden, or playing the part of hardworking mate surrounded by weathered fishermen on one of Wilmington's trawlers. Some of the poses were rather slick and contrived, but it made no difference. In all, Claire Rawley was a masterpiece of human flesh, a work of art whose eyes revealed fathomless sadness.

  'I didn't know if these might be of any use to you,' Sparkes said after a long silence. 'After all, I don't know what you saw, I mean what was… Well.'

  He tapped the table nervously with his index finger.

  'In cases such as these,' I told him calmly, 'a visual identification simply isn't possible. But you never know when something like this might help. At the very least, there's nothing in these photos that might tell me the body isn't Claire Rawley.'

  I scanned the photographs again, to see if I noted any jewelry.

  'She's wearing an interesting watch,' I said, shuffling through the photographs again.

  He smiled and stared. Then he sighed.

  'I gave that to her. One of these trendy sports watches that's very popular with surfers. It had an off-the-wall name. Animal? Does that sound right?'

  'My niece may have had one of those once,' I recalled. 'Relatively inexpensive? Eighty, ninety dollars?'

  'I don't remember what I paid. But I bought it at the surf shop where she liked to hang out. Sweetwater Surf Shop on South Lumina, where Vito's, Reddog's, and Buddy's Crab are. She lived near there with several other women. An old not-so-nice condo on Stone Street.'

  I was writing this down.

  'But it was on the water. And that's where she wanted to be.'

  'And what about jewelry? Do you remember her wearing anything unusual?'

  He had to think.

  'Maybe a bracelet?'

  'I don't recall.'

  'Her keychain?'

  He shook his head.

  'What about a ring?' I then asked.

  'She wore funky ones now and then. You know, silver ones that didn't cost much.'

  'What about a platinum band?'

  He hesitated, knocked off balance.

  'You said platinum?' he asked.

  'Yes. And a fairly large size, too.'

  I stared at his hands.

  'In fact, it might fit you.'

  He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

  'My God,' he said. 'She must have taken it. I have a simple platinum band I used to wear when Claire and I were together. She used to joke that it meant I was married to myself.'

  'So she took it from your bedroom?'

  'From a leather box. She must have.'

  'Are you aware of anything else missing from the house?' I then asked.

  'One gun from my collection is unaccounted for. ATF recovered all the rest. Of course, they're ruined.'

  He was getting more depressed.

  'What kind of gun?'

  'A Calico.'

  'I hope that's not out on the street somewhere,' I said with feeling.

  A Calico was an especially nasty submachine gun that looked rather much like an Uzi with a large cylinder attached to the top of it. It was nine-millimeter and capable of firing as many as a hundred rounds.

  'You need to report all this to the police, to ATF,' I told him.

  'Some of it I already have.'

  'Not some. All of it, Kenneth.'

  'I understand,' he said. 'And I will. But I want to know if it's her, Dr Scarpetta. Please understand that I don't care about much else at the moment. I will confess to you that I have called her condo. Neither of her roommates have seen her for over a week. Last she spent the night in her place was the Friday night before the fire, the day before it, in other words. The young lady I talked to said Claire seemed distracted and depressed when they ran into each other in the kitchen. She made no mention of going out of town.'

  'I see that you are quite an investigator,' I said.

  'Wouldn't you be if you were me?' he asked.

  'Yes.'

  Our eyes met and I read his pain. Tiny beads of sweat followed the line of his hair, and he talked as if his mouth were dry.

  'Let's get back to the photos,' I said. 'Exactly why were these photos taken? Modeling for whom? Do you know?'

  'Something local, as I vaguely recall it,' he said, staring past me out the window. 'I think she told me it might have been a Chamber of Commerce thing, something to help advertise the beach.'

  'And she gave you all these for what reason?'

  I continued slowly going through the pictures.

  'Just because she liked you? Perhaps she wanted to impress you?'

  He laughed ruefully.

  'I wish those were the only reasons,' he replied. 'She knows I have influence, that I know people in the film industry and so on. And I'd like you to hang on to these photos, please.'

  'So she was hoping you might help her career,' I said, looking up at him.

  'Of course.'

  'And did you?'

  'Dr Scarpetta, it's a simple fact of life that I have to be careful of who and what I promote,' he stated candidly. 'And it would not have looked especially appropriate if I were handing around photos of my beautiful, young white lover in hopes that I might help her career. I tend to keep my relationships as private as possible.'

  Indignation shone in his eyes as he fingered his coffee mug.

  'It isn't me who broadcasts my personal life. Never has been. And I might add that you shouldn't believe everything you read.'

  'I never do,' I said. 'I of all people know better than that, Kenneth. To be honest, I'm not as interested in your personal life as I am in knowing why you have chosen to give these photos to me instead of to Fauquier County investigators or ATF.'

  He looked steadily at me, and then replied, 'For identification reasons I've already stated. But I also trust you, and that's the more important element in the equation. No matter our differences, I know you would not railroad anyone or falsely accuse.'

  'I see.'

  I was feeling more uncomfortable by the moment and frankly wished he would decide to leave so I didn't have to do it for him.

  'You see, it would be far more convenient to blame everything on me. And there are plenty of people out there who have been after me for years, people who would love to see me ruined or locked up or dead.'

  'None of the investigators I'm working with feel that way,' I said.

  'It's not you or Marino or ATF I'm worried about,' he quickly replied. 'It's factions who have political power. White supremacists, militia types who are secretly in bed with people whose names you know. Trust me.'

  He stared off, his jaw muscles knotting.

  'The deck's stacked against me,' he went on. 'If
someone doesn't get to the bottom of what happened here, my days are numbered. I know it. And anyone who can slaughter innocent, helpless horses can do anything.'

  His mouth trembled and his eyes brightened with tears.

  'Burning them alive!' he exclaimed. 'What kind of monster could do something like that!'

  'A very terrible monster,' I said. 'And it seems there are many terrible monsters in the world these days. Can you tell me about the foal? The one I saw when I was at the scene? I assumed one of your horses somehow got away?'

  'Windsong,' he verified what I expected as he wiped his eyes on his napkin. 'The beautiful little fella. He's actually a yearling, and he was born right on my farm, both parents were very valuable racehorses. They died in the fire.' He got choked up again. 'How Windsong got out I have no clue. It's just bizarre.'

  'Unless Claire - if it is Claire - perhaps had him out and never got a chance to put him back in his stall?' I suggested. 'Perhaps she had met Windsong during one of her visits to your farm?'

  Sparkes took a deep breath, rubbing his eyes. 'No, I don't think Windsong had been born yet. In fact, I remember Wind, his mother, was pregnant during Claire's visits.'

  'Then Claire might have assumed that Windsong was Wind's yearling.'

  'She might have figured that out.'

  'Where is Windsong now?' I asked.

  'Thankfully he was captured and is at Hootowl Farm, where he is safe and will be well taken care of.'

  The subject of his horses was devastating to him, and I did not believe he was performing. Despite his skills as a public figure whose talent was to change polls and people, Sparkes could not be this good an actor. His self-control was about to collapse, and he was struggling mightily and about to succumb. He pushed back his chair and got up from my table.

  'One other thing I should tell you,' he said as I walked him to the front door. 'If Claire were alive, I believe she would have tried to contact me, somehow. If nothing else, through a letter. Providing she knew about the fire, and I don't know how she couldn't have known about it. She was very sensitive and kind, no matter her difficulties.'

  'When was the last time you saw her?' I opened the front door.

  Sparkes looked into my eyes, and once again I found the intensity of his personality as compelling as it was disturbing. I could not abide the thought that he still somewhat intimidated me.

  'I suppose a year ago or so.'

  His silver Jeep Cherokee was in the drive, and I waited until he was inside it before I shut the door. I could not help but wonder what my neighbors might have thought had they recognized him in my driveway. On another occasion, I might have laughed, but I found nothing the least bit amusing about his visit. Why he had come in person instead of having the photographs delivered to me was my first important question.

  But he had not been inappropriate in his curiosity about the case. He had not used his power and influence to try to manipulate me. He had not attempted to influence my opinions or even my feelings about him, at least not that I could tell.

  11

  I HEATED UP my coffee and returned to my study. For a while, I sat in my ergonomically correct chair and went through Claire Rawley's photographs again and again. If her murder was premeditated, then why did it just so happen to occur while she was somewhere she was not supposed to be?

  Even if Sparkes's enemies were to blame, wasn't it a bit too coincidental for them to strike when she just happened to have showed up, uninvited, at his house? Would even the coldest racist burn horses alive, just to punish their owner?

  There were no answers, and I began going through the ATF cases again, scanning page after page as hours sped by and my vision went in and out of focus. There were church burnings, residential and business fires, and a series of bowling alleys with the point of origin always the same lane. Apartments and distilleries and chemical companies and refineries had blazed into annihilation, and in all instances, the causes were suspicious even if arson could not be proven.

  As for homicides, they were more unusual and usually perpetrated by the relatively unskilled robber or spouse who did not understand that when an entire family disappears and bone fragments turn up in a pit where trash is burned in the back, the police most likely will be called. Also, people already dead don't breathe CO or have bullets in them that show up on X-ray. By ten o'clock that evening, I had, however, come across two deaths that held my attention. One had happened this past March, the other six months before that. The more recent case had occurred in Baltimore, the victim a twenty-five-year-old male named Austin Hart who was a fourth-year medical student at Johns Hopkins when he died in a house fire not far off campus. He had been the only one home at the time because it was spring break.

  According to the brief police narrative, the fire started on a Sunday evening and was fully involved by the time the fire department got there. Hart was so badly burned, he could be identified only by striking similarities of tooth root and trabecular alveolar bone points in antemortem and postmortem radiographs. The origin of fire was a bathroom on the first floor, and no electrical arcing, no accelerants were detected.

  ATF had been involved in the case upon invitation by the Baltimore fire department. I found it interesting that Teun McGovern had been called in from Philadelphia to lend her expertise, and that after weeks of painstaking sifting through debris and interviewing witnesses and conducting examinations at ATF's Rockville labs, the evidence suggested the fire was incendiary, and the death, therefore, a homicide. But neither could be proven, and fire modeling could not begin to account for how such a fast-burning fire could have started in a tiny tile bathroom that had nothing in it but a porcelain sink and toilet, a window shade, and a tub enclosed in a plastic curtain.

  The fire before that, in October, happened in Venice Beach, California, again at night, in an ocean front house within ten blocks of the legendary Muscle Beach gym. Marlene Farber was a twenty-three-year-old actress whose career consisted mainly of small parts on soap operas and sitcoms, with most of her income generated from television commercials. The details of the fire that burned her cedar shake house to the ground were just as sketchy and inexplicable as those of Austin Hart's.

  When I read that the fire was believed to have started in the master bathroom of her spacious dwelling, adrenaline kicked in. The victim was so badly burned, she was reduced to white, calcinated fragments, and a comparison of antemortem and postmortem X-rays of her remains was made to a routine chest film taken two years before. She was identified, basically, by a rib. No accelerants were detected, nor was there any explanation of what in the bathroom could have ignited a blaze that had shot up eight feet to set fire to the second floor. A toilet, tub, sink, and countertop with cosmetics, of course, were not enough. Nor, according to the National Weather Service satellite, had lightning struck within a hundred miles of her address during the past forty-eight hours.

  I was mulling over this with a glass of pinot noir when Marino called me at almost one A.M.

  'You awake?' he asked.

  'Does it matter?'

  I had to smile, for he always asked that when he called at impolite hours.

  'Sparkes owned four Mac tens with silencers that he supposedly bought for around sixteen hundred dollars apiece. He had a claymore mine he bought for eleven hundred, and an MP40 sub. And get this, ninety empty grenades.'

  'I'm listening,' I said.

  'Says he was into World War II shit and just collected it as he went along, like his kegs of bourbon, which came from a distillery in Kentucky that went kaput five years ago. The bourbon he gets nothing more than a slap on the hand, because in light of everything else, who gives a shit about that. As for the guns, all are registered and he's paid the taxes. So he's clean on those scores, but this cockeyed investigator in Warrenton has a notion that Sparkes's secret thing is selling arms to anti-Castro groups in South Florida.'

  'Based on what?' I wanted to know.

  'Shit, you got me, but the investigators in Wa
rrenton are running after it like a dog chasing the postman. The theory is that the girl who burned up knew something, and Sparkes had no choice but to get rid of her, even if it meant torching everything he owned, including his horses.'

  'If he were dealing arms,' I said impatiently, 'then he would have had a lot more than a couple old submachine guns and a bunch of empty grenades.'

  'They're going after him, Doc. Because of who he is, it may take a while.'

  'What about his missing Calico?'

  'How the hell do you know about that?'

  'A Calico is unaccounted for, am I correct?'

  'That's what he says, but how do you…'

  'He came to see me today.'

  There was a long pause.

  'What are you talking about?' he asked, and he was very confused. 'Came to see you where?'

  'My house. Uninvited. He had photographs of Claire Rawley.'

  Marino was silent so long this time I wondered if we had been disconnected.

  'No offense,' he finally said. 'You sure you're not getting sucked in because of who…'

  'No,' I cut him off.

  'Well, could you tell anything from what you looked at?' He backed down.

  'Only that his alleged former girlfriend was extraordinarily beautiful. The hair is consistent with the victim's, and the height and weight estimates. She wore a watch that sounds similar to the one I found and hasn't been seen by her roommates since the day before the fire. A start, but certainly not enough to go on.'

  'And the only thing Wilmington P.D.'s been able to get from the university is that there is a Claire Rawley. She's been a student off and on but not since last fall.'

  'Which would have been close to the time Sparkes broke up with her.'

  'If what he said was true,' Marino pointed out.

  'What about her parents?'

  'The university's not telling us anything else about her. Typical. We got to get a court order. And you know how that goes. I'm thinking you could try to talk to the dean or someone, soften them up a little. People would rather deal with doctors than cops.'

  'What about the owner of the Mercedes? I guess he still hasn't turned up?'