The Body Farm

by Patricia Cornwell

  “No, it couldn’t,” he said. “There’s no fission material mixed in with your sample. No strontium, cesium, iodine, barium. You would have already seen those with SEM.”

  “No isotopes like that came up,” I agreed. “Only uranium and other nonessential elements that you might expect with soil tracked in on the bottom of someone’s shoes.”

  I looked at peaks and valleys of what could have been a scary cardiogram while Matthews made notes.

  “Would you like printouts of all of this?” he asked.

  “Please. What is depleted uranium used for?”

  “Generally, it’s worthless.” He hit several keys.

  “If it didn’t come from a nuclear power plant, then from where?”

  “Most likely a facility that does isotopic separation.”

  “Such as Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” I suggested.

  “Well, they don’t do that anymore. But they certainly did for decades, and they must have warehouses of uranium metal. Now there also are plants in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Kentucky.”

  “Dr. Matthews,” I said. “It appears someone had depleted uranium metal on the bottom of his shoes and tracked it into a car. Can you give me any logical explanation as to how or why?”

  “No.” His expression was blank. “I don’t think I can.”

  I thought of the jagged and spherical shapes the scanning electron microscope had revealed to me, and tried again. “Why would someone melt uranium two-thirty-eight? Why would they shape it with a machine?”

  Still, he did not seem to have a clue.

  “Is depleted uranium used for anything at all?” I then asked.

  “In general, big industry doesn’t use uranium metal,” he answered. “Not even in nuclear power plants, because in those the fuel rods or pellets are uranium oxide, a ceramic.”

  “Then maybe I should ask what depleted uranium metal could, in theory, be used for,” I restated.

  “At one time there was some talk by the Defense Department about using it for armor plating on tanks. And it’s been suggested that it could be used to make bullets or other types of projectiles. Let’s see. I guess the only other thing we know that it’s good for is shielding radioactive material.”

  “What sort of radioactive material?” I said as my adrenal glands woke up. “Spent fuel assemblies, for example?”

  “That would be the idea if we knew how to get rid of nuclear waste in this country,” he wryly said. “You see, if we could remove it to be buried a thousand feet beneath Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for example, then U-238 could be used to line the casks needed for transport.”

  “In other words,” I said, “if the spent assemblies are to be removed from a nuclear power plant, they will have to be put in something, and depleted uranium is a better shield than lead.”

  He said this was precisely what he meant, and receipted my sample back to me, because it was evidence and one day could end up in court. So I could not leave it here, even though I knew how Marino would feel when I returned it to his trunk. I found him walking around, his sunglasses on.

  “What now?” he said.

  “Please pop the trunk.”

  He reached inside the car and pulled a release as he said, “I’m telling you right now, that it ain’t going in no evidence locker in my precinct or at HQ. No one’s going to cooperate, even if I wanted them to.”

  “It has to be stored,” I simply said. “There’s a twelve-pack of beer in here.”

  “So I didn’t want to have to bother stopping for it later.”

  “One of these days, you’re going to get in trouble.” I shut the trunk of his city-owned police car.

  “Well, how about you store the uranium at your office,” he said.

  “Fine.” I got in. “I can do that.”

  “So, how was it?” he asked, starting the engine.

  I gave him a summary, leaving out as much scientific detail as I could.

  “You’re telling me that someone tracked nuclear waste into your Benz?” he asked, baffled.

  “That’s the way it appears. I need to stop by and talk to Lucy again.”

  “Why? What’s she got to do with it?”

  “I don’t know that she does,” I said as he drove down the mountain. “I have a rather wild idea.”

  “I hate it when you get those.”

  Janet looked worried when I was back at their door, this time with Marino.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked, letting us in.

  “I think I need your help,” I said. “Strike that. What I mean is that both of us do.”

  Lucy was sitting on the bed, a notebook open in her lap. She looked at Marino. “Fire away. But we charge for consultations.”

  He sat by the fire, while I took a chair close to him.

  “This person who has been getting into CP&L’s computer,” I said. “Do we know what else he has gotten into besides customer billing?”

  “I can’t say we know everything,” Lucy replied. “But the billing is a certainty, and customer info is in general.”

  “Meaning what?” Marino asked.

  “Meaning that the information about customers includes billing addresses, phone numbers, special services, energy-use averaging, and some customers are part of a stock-sharing program—”

  “Let’s talk about stock sharing,” I stopped her. “I’m involved in that program. Part of my check every month buys stock in CP&L, and therefore the company has some financial information on me, including my bank account and social security number.” I paused, thinking. “Could that sort of thing be important to this hacker?”

  “Theoretically, it could,” Lucy said. “Because you’ve got to remember that a huge database like CP&L’s isn’t going to reside in any one place. They’ve got other systems with gateways leading to them, which might explain the hacker’s interest in the mainframe in Pittsburgh.”

  “Maybe it explains something to you,” said Marino, who always got impatient with Lucy’s computer talk. “But it don’t explain shit to me.”

  “If you think of the gateways as major corridors on a map—like I-95, for example,” she patiently said, “then if you go from one to the other, theoretically you could start cruising the global web. You could pretty much get into anything you want.”

  “Like what?” he asked. “Give me an example that I can relate to.”

  She rested the notebook in her lap and shrugged. “If I broke into the Pittsburgh computer, my next stop would be at AT&T.”

  “That computer’s a gateway into the telephone system?” I asked.

  “It’s one of them. And that’s one of the suspicions Jan and I have been working on—that this hacker’s trying to figure out ways to steal electricity and phone time.”

  “Of course, at the moment this is just a theory,” Janet said. “So far, nothing has come up that might tell us what the hacker’s motive is. But from the FBI’s perspective, the break-ins are against the law. That’s what counts.”

  “Do you know which CP&L customer records were accessed?” I asked.

  “We know that this person has access to all customers,” Lucy replied. “And we’re talking millions. But as for individual records that we know were looked at in more detail, those were few. And we have them.”

  “I’m wondering if I could see them,” I said.

  Lucy and Janet paused.

  “What for?” Marino asked as he continued to stare at me. “What are you getting at, Doc?”

  “I’m getting at that uranium fuels nuclear power plants, and CP&L has two nuclear power plants in Virginia and one in Delaware. Their mainframe is being broken into. Ted Eddings called my office with radioactivity questions. In his home PC he had all sorts of files on North Korea and suspicions that they were attempting to manufacture weapons-grade plutonium in a nuclear reactor.”

  “And the minute we start looking into anything in Sandbridge we get a prowler,” Lucy added. “Then someone slashes our tires and Detective Roche threatens you
. Now Danny Webster comes to Richmond and ends up dead and it appears that whoever killed him tracked uranium into your car.” She looked at me. “Tell me what you need to see.”

  I did not require a complete customer list, for that would be virtually all of Virginia, including my office and me. But I was interested in any detailed billing records that were accessed, and what I was shown was curious but short. Out of five names, I recognized all but one.

  “Does anybody know who Joshua Hayes is? He has a post office box in Suffolk,” I said.

  “All we know so far,” said Janet, “is that he’s a farmer.”

  “All right,” I moved on. “We’ve got Brett West, who is an executive at CP&L. I can’t remember his title.” I looked at the printout.

  “Executive Vice President in charge of Operations,” Janet said.

  “He lives in one of those brick mansions near you, Doc,” Marino said. “In Windsor Farms.”

  “He used to. If you study his billing address,” Janet pointed out, “you’ll see it changed as of last October. It appears he moved to Williamsburg.”

  There were two other CP&L executives whose records had been perused by whoever was illegally prowling the Internet. One was the CEO, the other the president. But it was the identity of the fifth electronic victim that truly frightened me.

  “Captain Green.” I stared at Marino, stunned.

  His face was vague. “I got no idea who you’re talking about.”

  “He was present at the Inactive Ship Yard when I got Eddings’ body out of the water,” I said. “He’s with Navy Investigative Services.”

  “I hear you.” Marino’s face darkened, and Lucy and Janet’s IOC case dramatically shifted before their eyes.

  “Maybe it’s not surprising this person breaking in would be curious about the highest-ranking officials of the corporation he’s violating, but I don’t see how NIS fits in,” Janet said.

  “I’m not sure I want to know how it might,” I said. “But if what Lucy has to say about gateways is relevant, then maybe the final stop for this hacker is certain people’s telephone records.”

  “Why?” Marino asked.

  “To see who they were calling.” I paused. “The sort of information a reporter might be interested in, for example.”

  Getting up from the chair, I began to pace about as fear tingled along my nerves. I thought of Eddings poisoned in his boat, of Black Talons and uranium, and I remembered that Joel Hand’s farm was in Tidewater somewhere.

  “This person named Dwain Shapiro who owned the bible you found in Eddings’ house,” I said to Marino. “He allegedly died in a carjacking. Do we have any further information on that?”

  “Right now we don’t.”

  “Danny’s death could have been signed out as the same sort of thing,” I said.

  “Or yours could have. Especially because of the type of car. If this were a hit, maybe the assailant didn’t know that Dr. Scarpetta isn’t a man,” Janet said. “Maybe the gunman was cocky and only knew what you would be driving.”

  I stopped by the hearth as she went on.

  “Or maybe the killer didn’t figure out Danny wasn’t you until it was too late. Then Danny had to be dealt with.”

  “Why me?” I said. “What would be the motive?”

  It was Lucy who replied, “Obviously, they think you know something.”

  “They?”

  “Maybe the New Zionists. The same reason they killed Ted Eddings,” she said. “They thought he knew something or was going to expose something.”

  I looked at my niece and Janet as my anxieties got more inflamed.

  “For God’s sake,” I said to them with feeling, “don’t do anything more on this until you talk to Benton or someone. Damn! I don’t want them thinking you know something, too.”

  But I knew Lucy, at least, would not listen. She would be on her keyboard with renewed vigor the moment I shut the door.

  “Janet?” I held the gaze of my only hope for their playing it safe. “Your hacker is very possibly connected to people being murdered.”

  “Dr. Scarpetta,” she said, “I understand.”

  Marino and I left UVA, and the gold Lexus we had already seen twice this day was behind us all the way back to Richmond. Marino drove with his eyes constantly on his mirrors. He was sweating and mad because the DMV computer wasn’t up yet, and the plate number he had called in was taking forever to come back. The person behind us in the car was young and white. He wore dark glasses and a cap.

  “He doesn’t care if you know who he is,” I said. “If he cared, he wouldn’t be so obvious, Marino. This is just one more intimidation attempt.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s see who intimidates who,” he said, slowing down.

  He stared in the rearview mirror again, slowing more, and the car got closer. Suddenly, he hit his brakes hard. I didn’t know who was more shocked, our tailgater or me, as the Lexus’s brakes screeched, horns blaring all around, and the car clipped the rear end of Marino’s Ford.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “Looks like someone’s just rear-ended a policeman.”

  He got out and subtly unsnapped his holster while I looked on in disbelief. I slipped out my pistol and dropped it in a pocket of my coat as I decided I should get out, too, since I had no idea what was about to happen. Marino was by the Lexus’s driver’s door, watching the traffic at his back as he talked into his portable radio.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them at all times,” he ordered the driver again in a loud, authoritative voice. “Now I want you to give me your driver’s license. Slow.”

  I was on the other side of the car, near the passenger’s door, and I knew who the offender was before Marino saw the license, and the photograph on it.

  “Well, well, Detective Roche,” Marino raised his voice above the rush of traffic. “Fancy we should run into you. Or vice versa.” His tone turned hard. “Get out of the car. Now. You got any firearms on you?”

  “It’s between the seats. In plain view,” he said, coldly.

  Then Roche slowly got out of the car. He was tall and slender in fatigue pants, a denim jacket, boots and a large black dive watch. Marino turned him around and ordered him again to keep his hands in plain view. I stood where I was while Roche’s sunglasses fixed on me, his mouth smug.

  “So tell me, Detective Cock-Roche,” Marino said, “who you snitching for today? Might it be Captain Green you’ve been talking to on your portable phone? You been telling him everywhere we’ve been going today and what we’re doing, and how much you’ve been scaring our asses as we spot you in our mirrors? Or are you obvious just because you’re a dumb shit?”

  Roche said nothing, his face hard.

  “Is that what you did to Danny, too? You called the tow lot and said you were the doc and wanted to know what time to pick up your car. Then you passed the info down the line, only it just so happened it wasn’t the doc driving that night. And now a kid’s missing half his head because some soldier of fortune didn’t know the doc ain’t a man or maybe mistook Danny for a medical examiner.”

  “You can’t prove anything,” Roche said with the same mocking smile.

  “We’ll see how much I can prove when I get hold of your cellular phone bills.” Marino moved closer so Roche could feel his big presence, his belly almost touching him. “And when I find something, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than a driving penalty. At the very least I’m going to nail your pretty ass for being an accomplice to murder prior to the fact. That ought to get you about fifty years.

  “In the meantime”—Marino jabbed a thick finger at his face—“I’d better never see you even within a mile of me again. And I wouldn’t recommend you getting anywhere close to the doc, either. You’ve never seen her when she gets irritated.”

  Marino lifted his radio and got back on the air to check the status of getting an officer to the scene, and even as his request was broadcast again, a cruiser appeared on 64. It pulled in behind us on the shoul
der, and a uniformed female sergeant from Richmond P.D. got out. She walked our way with purpose, her hand discreetly near her gun.

  “Captain, good afternoon.” She adjusted the volume on the radio on her belt. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Well, Sergeant Schroeder, it seems this person’s been tailgating me for the better part of the day,” Marino said. “And unfortunately, when I was forced to apply my brakes due to a white dog running in front of my vehicle, he struck me from the rear.”

  “Was this the same white dog?” the sergeant asked without a trace of a smile.

  “Looked like the same one we’ve had problems with.”

  They went on with what must have been the oldest police joke, for when it came to single-car accidents, it seemed a ubiquitous white canine was always to blame. It darted in front of vehicles and then was gone until it darted in front of the next bad driver and again got blamed.

  “He has at least one firearm inside his vehicle,” Marino added in his most serious police tone. “I want him thoroughly searched before we get him inside.”

  “All right, sir, you need to spread your arms and legs.”

  “I’m a cop,” Roche snapped.

  “Yes, sir, so you should know exactly what I’m doing,” Sergeant Schroeder matter-of-factly stated.

  She patted him down, and discovered an ankle holster on his inner left leg.

  “Now ain’t that sweet,” Marino said.

  “Sir,” the sergeant said a little more loudly as another unmarked unit pulled up, “I’m going to have to ask you to remove the pistol from your ankle holster and place it inside your vehicle.”

  A deputy chief got out, resplendent in patent leather, navy and brass, and not exactly thrilled to be on the scene. But it was procedure to call him whenever a captain was involved in any police matter, no matter how small. He silently looked on as Roche removed a Colt .380 from the black nylon holster. He locked it inside the Lexus and was red with rage as he was placed in the back of the patrol car, where he was interviewed while I waited inside the damaged Ford.

  “Now what happens?” I asked Marino when he returned.

  “He’ll be charged with following too close and be released on a Virginia Uniform Summons.” He buckled up and seemed pleased.