From Potter's Field

by Patricia Cornwell

  'That would be good.'

  'The labs have the casts.'

  'Yours?'

  'No, not ours,' said Commander Penn. 'NYPD's.'

  'This area of abrasion and patterned contusion right here is from the heel.' The light stopped below the left ear. 'The wavy lines are fairly clear and I see no trace embedded in the abrasion. There's also this pattern right here. I can't make it out. This contusion, uh, sort of a blotch with a little tail. I don't know what that is.'

  'We can try image enhancement.'

  'Right, right.'

  'What about his ear itself? Any pattern?'

  'It's hard to tell, but it's split versus cut. The jagged edges are nonabraded and connected by tissue bridges. And I would say based on this curved laceration right down here' - the latex-sheathed finger pointed - 'the heel smashed the ear.'

  'That's why it's split.'

  'A single blow delivered with great force.'

  'Enough to kill him?'

  'Maybe. We'll see. My guess is he's going to have fractures of the left temporal parietal skull and a big epidural hemorrhage.'

  'That's what I bet.'

  The gloved hands manipulated forceps and the light. A hair, black and about six inches long, clung to the bloody collar of Davila's commando sweater. The hair was collected and placed in an envelope as I worked my way through thick darkness, finding the door. Returning my tinted glasses to a cart, I slipped out. Marino was right behind me.

  'If that hair's his,' he said in the corridor, 'then he's dyed it again.'

  'I would expect him to have done that,' I said, envisioning the silhouette I had seen last night. Gault's face was very white but, I could not tell about his hair.

  'So he's not a redhead anymore.'

  'By now he may have purple hair, for all we know.'

  'He keeps changing his hair like that, maybe it will fall out.'

  'Not likely,' I said. 'But the hair may not be his. Dr. Jonas has dark hair about that long, and she was hovered over the body for a while last night.'

  We were in gowns, gloves and masks and looked like a team of surgeons about to perform some remarkable procedure like a heart transplant. Men were carrying in a shipment of pitiful pine boxes destined for Potter's Field, and behind glass, the morning's autopsies had begun. There were only five cases so far, one of them a child who obviously had died violently. Marino averted his gaze.

  'Shit,' he muttered, his face dark red. 'What a way to start your day.'

  I did not respond.

  'Davila'd only been married two months.'

  There was nothing I could say.

  'I talked to a couple guys who knew him.'

  The personal effects of the crack addict named Benny had been unceremoniously heaped on table four, and I decided to move them farther away from the dead child.

  'He always wanted to be a cop. I hear that all the damn time.'

  The trash bags were heavy, a foul odor drifting from the top of them, where they were tied. I began carrying them over to table eight.

  'You tell me why anybody wants to do this?' Marino was getting more furious as he grabbed a bag and followed me.

  'We want to make a difference,' I said. 'We want to somehow make things better.'

  'Right,' he said sarcastically. 'Davila sure as hell made a difference. He sure as hell made things better.'

  'Don't take that away from him,' I said. 'The good he did and might have done is all he has left.'

  A Stryker saw started, water drummed and X-rays bared bullets and bones in this theater with its silent audience and actors that were dead. Momentarily, Commander Penn walked in, eyes exhausted above her mask. She was accompanied by a dark young man she introduced as Detective Maier. He showed us the photographs of tread patterns left in the snows of Central Park.

  'They're pretty much to scale,' he explained. 'I will admit that the casts would be better if we could get them.'

  But NYPD had those, and I was willing to bet that the Transit Police would never see them. Frances Penn almost did not look like the same woman I had visited last night, and I wondered why she really had invited me to her apartment. What might she have confided had we not been summoned to the Bowery?

  We began untying bags and placing items on the table, except for the fetid wool blankets that had been Benny's home. These we folded and stacked on the floor. The inventory was an odd one that could be explained in only two ways. Either Benny had been living with someone who owned a pair of size seven and a half men's boots. Or he had somehow acquired the possessions of someone who owned a pair of size seven and a half men's boots. Benny's shoe size, we were told, was eleven.

  'What's Benny got to say this morning?' Marino asked.

  Detective Maier answered, 'He says the stuff in that pile just showed up on his blankets. He went up on the street, came back and there it was, inside the knapsack.' He pointed to a soiled green canvas knapsack that had many stories to tell.

  'When was this?' I asked.

  'Well now, Benny isn't real clear on that. In fact, he's not real clear on just about anything. But he thinks it was in the last few days.'

  'Did he see who left the knapsack?' Marino asked.

  'He says he didn't.'

  I held a photograph close to the bottom of one of the boots to compare the sole, and the size and stitching were the same. Benny had somehow acquired the belongings of the woman we believed Gault had savaged in Central Park. The four of us were silent for a while as we began going through each item we believed was hers. I felt lightheaded and weary as we began reconstructing a life from a tin whistle and rags.

  'Can't we call her something?' Marino said. 'It's bugging me she's got no name.'

  'What would you like to call her?' Commander Penn asked.

  'Jane.'

  Detective Maier glanced up at Marino. 'That's very original. What's her last name, Doe?'

  'Any possibility the saxophone reeds are Benny's?' I asked.

  T don't think so,' Maier said. 'He said all this stuff was in the knapsack. And I'm not aware Benny's musically inclined.'

  'He plays an invisible guitar sometimes,' I said.

  'So would you if you smoked crack. And that's all he does. He begs and smokes crack.'

  'He used to do something before he did that,' I said.

  'He was an electrician and his wife left him.'

  'That's no reason to move into a sewer,' said Marino, whose wife also had left him. 'There's gotta be something else.'

  'Drugs. He ended up across the street in Bellevue. Then he'd sober up and they'd let him out. Same old thing, over and over.'

  'Might there have been a saxophone that went with the reeds, and perhaps Benny hocked it?' I asked.

  'I got no way to know,' Maier answered. 'Benny said this is all there was.'

  I thought of the mouth of this woman we now called Jane, of the cupping of the front teeth that the forensic dentist blamed on smoking a pipe.

  'If she has a long history of playing a clarinet or saxophone,' I said, 'that could explain the damage to her front teeth.'

  'What about the tin whistle?' Commander Penn asked.

  She bent closer to a gold metal whistle with a red mouthpiece. The brand was Generation, it was British made and did not look new.

  'If she played it a lot, then that probably just added to the damage to her front teeth,' I said. 'It's also interesting that it's an alto whistle and the reeds are for an alto sax. So she may have played an alto sax at some point in her life.'

  'Maybe before her head injury,' Marino said.

  'Maybe,' I said.

  We continued sifting through her belongings and reading them like tea leaves. She liked sugarless gum and Sensodyne toothpaste, which made sense in light of her dental problems. She had one pair of men's black jeans, size thirty-two in the waist and thirty-four in length. They were old and rolled up at the cuffs, suggesting they were hand-me-downs or she had gotten them in a secondhand clothing store. Certainly they were much too
big for the size she was when she died.

  'Are we certain these don't belong to Benny?' I asked.

  'He says they don't,' Maier replied. 'The stuff he says belongs to him is in that bag.' He pointed to a bulging bag on the floor.

  When I slipped a gloved hand into a back pocket of the jeans, I found a red-and-white paper tag that was identical to the ones Marino and I had been given when we visited the American Museum of Natural History. It was round, the size of a silver dollar and attached to a loop of string. Printed on one side was Contributor, with the museum's logo on the other.

  'This should be processed for prints,' I said, placing the tag in an evidence bag. 'She should have touched it. Or Gault may have touched it if he paid for admission into the exhibits.'

  'Why would she save something like that?' Marino said. 'Usually you take it off your shirt button and drop it in the trash on your way out.'

  'Perhaps she put it in her pocket and forgot,' Commander Penn said.

  'It could be a souvenir,' suggested Maier.

  'It doesn't look like she collects souvenirs,' I said. 'In fact, she seems very deliberate about what she kept and what she didn't.'

  'Are you suggesting she might have kept the tag so someone would eventually find it?'

  'I don't know,' I said.

  Marino lit a cigarette.

  'That makes me wonder if she knew Gault,' Maier said.

  I replied, 'If she did, and if she knew she was in danger, then why did she go with him into the park at night?'

  'See, that's what don't add up.' Marino exhaled a large cloud of smoke, his mask pulled down.

  'It doesn't if she was a complete stranger to him,' I said.

  'So maybe she knew him,' Maier said.

  'Maybe she did,' I agreed.

  I slid my hand into other pockets of the same black pants and found eighty-two cents, a saxophone reed that had been chewed and several neatly folded Kleenex tissues. An inside-out blue sweatshirt was size medium, and whatever had been written on the front of it was too faded to read.

  She also had owned two pairs of gray sweatpants and three pairs of athletic socks with different-colored stripes. In a compartment of the knapsack was a framed photograph of a spotted hound sitting in the dappled shadows of trees. The dog seemed to be grinning at whoever was taking the picture while a figure in the far background looked on.

  'This needs to be processed for prints,' I said. 'In fact, if you hold it obliquely you can see latents on the glass.'

  'I bet that's her dog,' Maier said.

  Commander Penn said, 'Can we tell what part of the world it was taken in?'

  I studied the photograph more closely. 'It looks flat. It's sunny. I don't see any tropical foliage. It doesn't look like a desert.'

  'In other words, it could be almost anywhere,' Marino said.

  'Almost,' I said. 'I can't tell anything about the figure in the background.'

  Commander Penn examined the photograph. 'A man, maybe?'

  'It could be a woman,' I said.

  'Yeah, I think it is,' said Maier. 'A real thin one.'

  'So maybe it's Jane,' Marino said. 'She liked baseball caps, and this person has on some kind of cap.'

  I looked at Commander Penn. 'I'd appreciate copies of any photographs, including this one.'

  'I'll get them to you ASAP.'

  We continued our excavation of this woman who seemed to be in the room with us. I felt her personality in her paltry possessions and believed she had left us clues. Apparently, she had worn men's undershirts instead of bras, and we found three pairs of ladies' panties and several bandannas.

  All of her belongings were worn and dirty, but there was a suggestion of order and care in neatly mended tears, and the needles, thread and extra buttons she had kept in a plastic box. Only the black jeans and faded sweatshirt had been rudely wadded or were inside out, and we suspected this was because she had been wearing them when Gault forced her to disrobe in the dark.

  By late morning, we had gone through every item with no success in getting closer to identifying the victim we had begun to call Jane. We could only assume that Gault got rid of any identification she might have carried, or else Benny had taken what little money she might have owned and disposed of what she had kept it in. I didn't understand the chronology of when Gault might have left the knapsack on Benny's blanket, if that was, in fact, what Gault had done.

  'How much of this stuff are we checking for prints?' Maier said.

  'In addition to the items we've already gotten,' I suggested, 'the tin whistle has a good surface for prints. You might try an alternate light source on the knapsack. Especially the inside of the flap, since it's leather.'

  'The problem's still her,' Marino said. 'Nothing here's going to tell us who she is.'

  'Well, I got news for you,' said Maier. 'I don't think identifying Jane's gonna help us catch the guy who killed her.'

  I looked at him and watched his interest in her fade. The light went out of his eyes, and I had seen this before in deaths where the victim was no one. Jane had gotten as much time as she was going to get. Ironically, she would have gotten even less had her killer not been notorious.

  'Do you think Gault shot her in the park, then went from there to the tunnel where her knapsack was found?' I asked.

  'He might have,' Maier said. 'All he had to do was leave Cherry Hill and catch the subway at, say, Eighty-sixth or Seventy-seventh Streets. It would take him straight to the Bowery.'

  'Or he could have taken a taxi, for that matter,' Commander Penn said. 'What he couldn't have done was walk. It's quite a distance.'

  'What if the knapsack was left at the scene, right out there by the fountain?' Marino then asked. 'Possible Benny might have found it?'

  'Why would he be in Cherry Hill at that hour? Remember what the weather was like,' Commander Penn said.

  A door opened and several attendants wheeled in a gurney carrying Davila's body.

  'I don't know why,' Maier said. 'Did she have her knapsack with her at the museum?' he asked Commander Penn.

  1 believe it was mentioned that she had some sort of bag slung over one shoulder.'

  'That could have been the knapsack.'

  'It could have.'

  'Does Benny sell drugs?' I asked.

  'After a while you gotta sell if you're gonna buy,' Maier said.

  'There may be a connection between Davila and the murdered woman,' I said.

  Commander Penn watched me with interest.

  'We shouldn't discount that possibility,' I went on. 'At a glance, it seems unlikely. But Gault and Davila were both down in that tunnel at the same time. Why?'

  'Luck of the draw.' Maier stared off.

  Marino didn't comment. His attention had drifted to autopsy table five, where two medical examiners were photographing the slain officer from different angles. An attendant with a wet towel scrubbed blood off the face in a manner that would have been rough could Davila feel. Marino was unaware anyone was watching him, and for a moment his vulnerability showed. I saw the ravages from years of storms, and the weight pressing his shoulders.

  'And Benny was in that same tunnel, too,' I said. 'He either got the knapsack from the murder scene or from someone, or it was dropped on his blankets as he claims.'

  'Frankly, I don't think it just turned up on his blankets,' Maier said.

  'Why?' Commander Penn asked him.

  'Why would Gault want to carry it from Cherry Hill? Why not just leave it and be on his way?' he said.

  'Maybe there was something in it,' I said.

  'Like what?' Marino asked.

  'Like anything that might identify her,' I said. 'Maybe he didn't want her identified and needed a chance to go through her effects.'

  'That could be,' Commander Penn said. 'Certainly we have found nothing among her belongings that would seem to identify her.'

  'But in the past Gault hasn't seemed to care whether we identified his victims,' I said. 'Why care now? Why would he care
about this head-injured, homeless woman?'

  Commander Penn did not seem to hear me, and no one else answered. The medical examiners had begun undressing Davila, who did not want their help. He held his arms rigidly folded across his torso, as if blocking blows in football. The doctors were having a terrible time getting the commando sweater free of limbs and over his head when a pager went off. We involuntarily touched our waistbands, then stared toward Davila's table as the beeping continued.