Dust

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Who did that?”

  “I can’t tell you who.”

  “You think maybe she shut the door after he cut her the first time?” Marino moves next to me, holding his camera, handing me the thermometers.

  “She might have. I just know that someone did.”

  The storm door in the entryway opens and Lucy is here. I give her the package with the adhesive stubs in it and she stuffs it into a big pocket on the leg of her flight suit.

  “Benton’s walking around and the others can’t be far behind,” I say to her.

  “I’ll be out of here in ten minutes max.”

  “He didn’t come with them. He came alone. That’s my point,” I add.

  “To get here first,” she says and she knows what it means.

  Then she’s gone through the open steel door, jogging toward the back offices where what she wants is in a closet. It’s past three now and I’m listening for cars pulling up. I’m looking for Benton and I’m waiting for the arrival of the rest of them. He isn’t acting as if he’s part of them and I’m reminded of the way he was talking when we were following the railroad tracks. He talked about the FBI as if he wasn’t FBI and right now he’s not. Benton is here to solve these homicides and Granby is coming with a very different agenda in mind, one I certainly don’t trust.

  I unbutton the top of the dark green fleece and tuck a thermometer under the arm. I set the second thermometer on top of a counter.

  “It could have been a reflex when she was ambushed by the attack.” I measure the wound on the left side of her neck. “It may be as you suggested, that he came up behind her and she turned at the same time he sliced, missing major vessels, and the blade went through her jaw. Maybe she pushed the refrigerator door shut or fell against it. That incision is three and a half inches long, from left to right and upward.”

  Marino squints as he scribbles on the notepad. He pats himself down for his glasses as if he can’t remember which pocket. He finds them, cleans the lenses on his shirt, and he puts them on.

  “There are shallow incisions that run parallel, strange ones with abraded edges and some of the skin is peeled back.” I give him the measurements. “I have no idea unless the tip of the blade is bent.”

  He looks up from his notes, his eyes magnified. “Why would he use a knife with a bent blade?”

  “Maybe it got that way because of something he did with it. I’ve seen acutely bent blade tips in stabbings when the blade tip strikes bone.”

  “Was anybody stabbed?”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “Didn’t look to me the other two were,” Marino says.

  “I haven’t gotten there yet.”

  “There’s no blood on their backs, no indication they have other injuries. I think he cut their throats and that was it,” he says.

  “That was enough.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “This second incision is five inches and one-quarter and I’m thinking it was inflicted from in front. He was facing her.”

  I show him the deep cut on her left index finger, across the first knuckle.

  “Like this.” I get up to show him. “The first incision is when my back’s to him and I’m turning around.”

  I act it out.

  “I hate it when you treat yourself like an anatomical doll. It gives me the creeps,” Marino says.

  “Then I’m going to grab the left side of my neck while drops of blood are falling straight down, perpendicular to the floor.” I show him. “Those drops are perfectly round like the ones close to the refrigerator door and on the tops of her shoes. Now I’m facing my attacker and he cuts again, cutting my left index finger. I’m still upright but moving this way.”

  I step to the right of the refrigerator.

  “Then I’m facing forward, toward the counter, possibly leaning against it, my hands on my neck.”

  “Maybe he held her there.” Marino looks at the waves of arterial blood on the cabinets. “Maybe he had his hand on her back until she started getting too weak to run or struggle. I’m thinking he might have held the other two down. They’re bleeding to death at their desks and he pushes his hand against their backs so they can’t get up. It would only take a few minutes. It would explain why there’s blood only on their desks and under them. Most people would try to get up but they didn’t.”

  “We’ll see when I look at them,” I reply. “Here’s the arterial pattern on the cupboard, and a mist of it on the glass from her strangling on her blood, forcibly exhaling it because her trachea is severed. She’s aspirating blood. It’s accumulating in her airway and lungs and now she’s going down and here’s the pattern on the cabinets beneath the stove and the sink.”

  I point out waves of blood drips, the crests and troughs from blood spurting in rhythm to the beating of her heart. Large drops of dried blood with long tails trickle down, across a cabinet, up and down and up, getting weaker and lower.

  “She’s on her knees,” I continue, “explaining the spatter here on the floor from blood dripping into blood and the blood soaked into the knees and lower area of her pants legs. And this puddle indicates where she died but not in this position.”

  I look up as Lucy walks swiftly through the front office, carrying a tower server through the entryway, pushing through the doors with her foot. Marino moves the plastic ruler, using it as a scale in photographs he takes, and I show him smeared areas of blood on the floor that tell me the most important part of the story as I hear the loud rumble of Lucy’s SUV and then she’s driving away fast.

  “Blood already had begun to clot when she was moved.” I point out a red outlined circle and a smear, a distinctive pattern shaped like a big tadpole. “What you’re seeing is a drop of blood that was coagulating when something was dragged over it and that happened after some time had passed. There are more of these smeared clots. Here and here and here.”

  He begins taking photographs of them, placing the labeled scale next to each one.

  “I wonder if you’re picking up on the same thing I am,” he says. “The way her arms are resting on her belly like she’s sleeping. It reminds me of Gail Shipton.”

  “It’s similar.”

  “Someone posing the body in a peaceful position. Almost like he felt bad about it.”

  “He looked her in the face when he cut her throat a second time. He didn’t feel bad about it,” I reply. “I think you’re going to find this isn’t her fleece.” I remove the thermometer from under her arm, noting her black padded push-up bra.

  Her chest has a wide circumference but her breasts are small.

  “Eighty-point-six.” I pick up the thermometer from the counter. “It’s a seventy-one degrees in here. She’s been dead at least three hours, probably closer to four.”

  “What do you mean it’s not her fleece?” Marino frowns.

  “I think she was dressed in it after she was dead. It has what appears to be the same residue that fluoresces in UV. It’s all over the fleece, and the blood pattern on it is inconsistent with her injuries and the way she would have bled out.”

  I unbutton the fleece all the way and turn her partially on her side, her body leaning heavily against my Tyvek-covered thigh. Livor has begun to form on her back but is far from set. When I press my finger into her flesh it easily blanches, the same way it does when someone is alive. I notice her well-defined muscularity. And when I rest her on her back again I unbutton her pants and unzip the fly. Underneath are women’s black panties. And then I touch her face with my finger and makeup is transferred to my glove. I ask Marino to open one of the kits I brought with me.

  “There should be some towelettes in there,” I say to him, and he hands me one.

  I wipe her cheeks and upper lip and the stubble wouldn’t have been noticeable because her face is close shaven and covered with layers of foundation and powder. Her chest and lower abdomen have been waxed, I suspect, and when I pull down her panties the answer is there.

  “You got to be
shitting me.” Marino stares.

  “A male taking female hormones and the killer dressed him in his own bloody fleece.”

  “What the hell?”

  “Switching clothes because he needed to disguise himself as best he could in case he was seen somewhere. The suspect running through the park at around eleven…,” I begin to remind him. “And you wouldn’t do that if you came here intending to murder people. He came here for another reason and something went terribly wrong and now he’s got to escape.”

  “Shit. The black hoodie with Marilyn Monroe on it, which is what Rooney said Haley Swanson had on this morning when he talked to him in the projects. Shit!” Marino exclaims in astonishment. “He kills Swanson and then puts his damn hoodie on? It would have been bloody as hell. What kind of fucking lunatic would do something like that?”

  “Locate a photograph of Haley Swanson as quickly as you possibly can,” I tell him as the storm door in the entryway opens. “We need to see if that’s who this is.”

  “Hell yeah, that’s who it is,” Marino says and he’s already stepping away to make a call, probably to Machado.

  Benton is walking across the room, heading toward me, as I hear the distant noise of another vehicle or maybe more than one along the driveway.

  “They’re here,” he says simply.

  “Do they know you are?” I ask as he reaches us and looks at the body and the blood.

  “They’re about to,” Benton says.

  37

  It’s after six p.m. and as dark as a moonless night when I begin packing up.

  I’ve done what can be done, which is very little in the final scheme of things when I examine ruined biology, when I smell its foulness and touch what feels unnatural after life has given up. I know what killed the people at Double S and am faced with a much bigger problem that can’t be resolved by CT scans or autopsies. The victims have said what they need to say and now I’m after their killer and the FBI official protecting him.

  I take off my coveralls, booties, and gloves and stuff them into a bright red biohazard trash bag on the floor inside the entranceway where Benton waits with a stony resolve about what we intend to do. It’s important I look for the type of weapon that was used and I don’t believe the killer found it in the office kitchen or inside this building and I seriously doubt he brought it with him when he showed up at Double S and murdered three people this morning.

  The bodies and any evidence relating to them are my jurisdiction and that certainly includes any weapon used. This is my argument but it’s far from the whole truth about why I refuse to leave the scene even as I’m about to give the appearance that I have. While I’m exerting my authority as a chief medical examiner, what I’m feeling like is an intruder or a spy as I plot, plan, and sneak around. Granby and his agents would never allow me inside Dominic Lombardi’s house, not in a million years no matter what I argue, but that’s where I’m headed.

  Benton is going to take me and in the process blatantly counter a direct order because he’s not motivated by politics or personal advancement or dishonesty. It’s never about anything like that with him and he’s incensed by the situation he finds himself in, which isn’t entirely new but so much worse it’s shocking. Respecting me professionally and doing what I’ve asked would get him fired if he still had a job he could be fired from. Granby stripped him of his power and dignity and he did it in front of everyone. No crystal balls are needed here, Granby had the nerve to say. Have a drink or two or three and he told us to have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. By the time that happens Granby will be ruined. I will make sure of it.

  I will see whatever there is to see before it has been tampered with. I’ll take photographs to preserve the truth before Granby can continue to distort and manipulate it in whatever fashion suits his pathological ambition and need to cover up lies he’s told and whatever crimes he’s committed. He’s not going to get away with it. We won’t let him and it’s all in the execution. We can’t do anything we would have to misrepresent later, Benton and I strategized as we stood outside a little while ago, our voices quiet beneath the diesel rumble of my boxy white office truck parked in front, the tailgate open and a hydraulic ramp lowered.

  We agreed that if we get caught in even one deception or are accused of fabricating anything at all it would discredit everything else. So we’ll document our every move and protect what we can in a way we can prove, and Benton won’t need to verbalize a single detail he shouldn’t share with his lover, his wife. I was here because I had a right to be. I’ll be asked in court about the weapon and I’m expected to have an answer. And as for the confidential information that Lucy is sending wirelessly to Benton, it’s too damn bad if I happen to see it for myself as text messages land on his phone.

  He doesn’t need to tell me classified details about the Russian or Israeli mafia or money laundering or other massive crimes that possibly include murder for hire. I can’t help what I overhear or see with my own eyes that might explain why Granby continues to shield a spectacle murderer who has rapidly spun out of control. And I can almost conjure him up, his pale skin and dark hair, compactly built and wearing size-eight running gloves that look like rubber bare feet. By now there can be no doubt it was the killer behind my wall this morning and I envision him in the rainy dark in a kelly green button-up fleece and bareheaded, oblivious to the wet and cold.

  I imagine his wide eyes and dilated pupils, his limbic system roaring like an inferno as he witnessed my bedroom light blink on at a few minutes past four a.m. Then the light in my bathroom was next, and after that the stained glass was illuminated over the landings on the stairs as he witnessed my response to the evil thing he’d done.

  I can imagine the intensity of his excitement as he watched me emerge from the back door and heard me talking to my skittish old dog, the lady doctor getting ready to respond to a murder scene choreographed by a profoundly disturbed human being who fancies himself more powerful and professional than any of us. I see him as a crazed cruel monster and maybe it’s true that he went into overdrive after the massacre in Connecticut. Maybe he got curious about me. And then I wonder how he felt when I opened my door and yelled at him like a nagging next-door neighbor.

  I doubt he was frightened. He might have been amused or more excited and aroused, and I imagine him running nimbly back to the MIT campus along the railroad tracks to watch me show up with Marino, to watch Lucy land her helicopter and Benton climb out. What fanfare and reward for a sadistic narcissist and I feel certain he’d been watching me for days as he premeditated Gail Shipton’s murder, gathering intelligence about her, stalking, fantasizing what a superhero he would be when he created more terror and drama and in the process eliminated what he wrongly rationalized was a problem for Double S, assuming he rationalizes or reasons or has any logic at all.

  The killer didn’t need to be asked to murder Gail Shipton nor would he have been, Benton has said repeatedly over recent hours. On his own this deluded, violent individual took care of someone who in his mind was a thorn in Lombardi’s side. When this rogue killer showed up or was summoned to Double S this morning, it’s possible he expected to get praised and rewarded as he devoured cupcakes on the soundproof sunporch. But that’s not how it worked out for him or for any of them, Benton theorized not long before Granby wrapped his arm around him and told him condescendingly to go home and enjoy the rest of his life.

  The killer is rapidly decompensating. He may have become psychotic, Benton explained as the bodies were pouched and carried like black cocoons out to my truck. Lombardi was the intended target but his murder wasn’t planned. His assistant Caminska was personal but not as much. And the third victim, who we believe is Haley Swanson, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Swanson took the commuter train to Concord to meet with Lombardi because suddenly there was, to say the least, an unexpected PR dilemma, Benton did his best to impress upon his FBI colleagues. The killer is someone Lombardi knew but murder
ing Gail Shipton wasn’t in Double S’s plans or best interest. It wasn’t necessary and would only bring unwanted attention and public scrutiny, which is the last thing organized criminals want or need. In fact, Lombardi may have been enraged when he found out the news.

  Crisis management is what Benton called what may have gone on early this morning. It’s likely the killer was castigated and berated for the reckless thing he’d done, and Benton could well imagine this person driving off stung and belittled and then returning on foot to slaughter Lombardi and whoever else was inside this building. But Granby hasn’t listened and not because he doesn’t care. He cares, all right, because he can’t possibly solve the cases honestly.

  He damn well knows what he assumes we don’t, the falsified DNA, the tampering in CODIS. He has to be frantically aware that DNA recovered in the cases here in Massachusetts or some place else won’t come back to Martin Lagos who isn’t leaving biological evidence anywhere. He’s nothing but a string of numbers in a database, a stain that couldn’t have been left by him on a pair of Sally Carson’s cotton panties.

  “The blood card from her autopsy in Virginia will have to be reanalyzed but we can’t mention this to anyone right now. It will have to wait until it’s safe to address,” I say to Benton as I go through my scene case, doing a last-minute inventory.

  I pick up envelopes and containers I’ve labeled and sealed, evidence from three people savagely killed, each of their tracheas cut all the way through like a vacuum cleaner hose.

  “That’s how we undo the tampering and show Sally Carson’s profile was changed to Martin Lagos’s,” I explain. “We can straighten this out but the timing is imperative and right now we really don’t know who to trust but absolutely not the head of your labs in Quantico. I worry she’s in thick with Granby.”

  “Someone is,” Benton says.