The Body Farm

by Patricia Cornwell

  She pushes the button on the wall and closes the shades. She turns off the lights and walks out of the bedroom. Just off it is a small gym, then two master closets and a huge bathroom with a Jacuzzi built into agate the color of tiger’s eye. There has been no reason at all to suspect that Henri’s attacker entered the gym, closets, or bathroom, and each time Lucy has walked into them, she stands still to see what she feels. Each time, she feels nothing inside the gym and closets, but she feels something inside the bathroom. She looks at the tub and the windows behind it that open onto the water and the Florida sky, and she sees through his eyes. She doesn’t know why, but when she looks at that huge, deep tub built into agate, she feels that he looked at it, too.

  Then something occurs to her and she backs up to the archway that leads into the bathroom. Maybe when he came up the stone steps to the master floor, he turned left instead of right and ended up in the bathroom instead of the bedroom. That morning it was sunny, and light would have filled the windows. He could see. He might have hesitated and looked at the tub before turning around and heading silently into the bedroom, where Henri was clammy and miserable with a high fever, the blinds down and the room dark so she could sleep.

  So you came into my bathroom, Lucy says to the beast. You stood right here on the marble floor and looked at my tub. Maybe you never saw a tub like that. Maybe you wanted to imagine a woman naked in it, relaxing, minding her own business before you murdered her. If that’s your fantasy, she says to him, then you’re not very original. She walks out of the bathroom and back down the steps to the second floor, where she sleeps and has her office.

  Past the cozy movie theater is a large guest bedroom that she has converted into a library with built-in bookcases, the windows covered by black-out shades. Even on the sunniest day, this room is dark enough to develop film. She turns on a light, and hundreds of reference books and loose-leaf binders and a long table bearing laboratory equipment materialize. Against one wall is a desk that is centered by a Krimesite imager that looks like a stubby telescope mounted on a tripod stand. Next to it is a sealed plastic evidence bag, and inside is the drawing of the eye.

  Lucy plucks examination gloves out of a box on the table. Her best hope for fingerprints is the Scotch tape, but she’ll save that for testing later because it involves chemicals that will alter the paper and the tape. After brushing Magnadust over her entire back door and the windows nearest it, she lifted not a single print with ridge detail, not one, just smudges. Had she found a print, chances are it would be the yard man’s, Rudy’s, hers, or that of whoever washed the glass last, so there isn’t much point in feeling discouraged. Prints outside a house don’t mean much, anyway. What matters is what she finds on the drawing. Gloves on, Lucy unsnaps the clasps of a hard black briefcase lined with foam rubber and gently lifts out the SKSUV30 Puissant lamp. She carries it to the desk and plugs it into a surge protector power strip. Pressing the rocker switch, she turns on the high-intensity short-wave ultraviolet light, and then turns on the Krimesite imager.

  Opening the plastic bag, she grips the sheet of white paper by a corner and pulls it out. She turns it over, and the eye drawn in pencil stares at her as she holds it up to the overhead light. The white paper lights up and there is no watermark, just millions of cheap paper pulp fibers. The pencil-drawn eye dims as she lowers it, placing the sheet of paper in the center of the desk. When the beast taped the drawing to her door, he attached the tape to the back of it so the eye would be staring through the glass, into her house. She puts on a pair of orange-tinted protective goggles and centers the drawing under the imager’s military-grade ocular lens, and peers into the eyepiece, opening the UV aperture all the way while slowly rotating the focus barrel and focus ring until the honeycomb viewing screen is visible. With her left hand, she directs the UV light at her target, adjusting it to just the right angle, and begins moving the sheet of paper, scanning for prints, hoping the scope will pick them up so she doesn’t have to resort to destructive chemicals such as ninhydrin or cyanoacrylate. In the UV light, the paper is a ghostly greenish-white beneath the lens.

  With her fingertip, she moves the paper until the piece of Scotch tape is in the field of view. Nothing, she thinks. Not even a smudge. She could try rosaniline chloride or crystal violet, but now is not the time for that. Maybe later. Sitting down at the desk, she stares at the drawing of the eye. That’s all it is, just an eye, the pencil outline of an eye, iris and pupil, fringed in long lashes. A woman’s eye, she thinks, drawn with what looks like a number-two pencil. Mounting a digital camera to a coupler, she takes photographs of magnified areas of the drawing, then makes photocopies.

  She hears the garage door go up and turns off the UV lamp and the scope and places the drawing back inside the plastic bag. A video screen on the desk shows Rudy backing the Ferrari into the garage. Lucy tries to decide what to do about him as she shuts the library door and quickly skips down the stone steps. She imagines him walking out the door and never coming back and has no idea what would become of her and the secret empire she has created. First there would be the blow, then numbness, then pain, and then she would get over it. This is what she tells herself when she opens the door off the kitchen and he is there, holding up her car keys as if he is holding up a dead mouse by the tail.

  “I guess we should go ahead and call the police,” she says, taking the keys from him. “Since technically this is an emergency.”

  “I guess you didn’t find prints or anything else important,” Rudy says.

  “Not with the scope. I’ll do the chemicals if the police don’t take the drawing. I’d rather they didn’t take it. Actually, we won’t let them take it. But we should call. See anybody while you were out?” She walks across the kitchen and picks up the phone. “Anybody besides all the women who ran off the road when they saw you coming?” She looks at the keypad and enters 9-1-1.

  “No prints so far,” Rudy says. “Well, it ain’t over ’til it’s over. What about indented writing?”

  She shakes her head and says, “I want to report a prowler.”

  “Is the person on the property now, ma’am?” the operator asks in her calm, capable voice.

  “Doesn’t appear to be,” Lucy said. “But I think this might be related to a B-and-E your department already knows about.”

  The operator verifies the address and asks the complainant’s name because the name of the resident showing up on her video screen is whatever limited liability corporate name Lucy happened to have selected for this particular property. She can’t remember what it is. She owns a number of properties and all of them are in different LLC names.

  “My name’s Tina Franks.” Lucy uses the same alias she used last time she called the police, the morning Henri was attacked and Lucy panicked and made the mistake of dialing 911. She tells the operator her address or, more specifically, Tina Franks’s address.

  “Ma’am, I’m dispatching a unit to your home right now,” the operator says.

  “Good. You happen to know if CSI John Dalessio is on duty?” Lucy talks to the operator easily and with no fear. “He might want to know about this. He responded to my house the other time, so he’s familiar.” She picks out two apples from a bowl of fruit in the kitchen’s center island.

  Rudy rolls his eyes and indicates that he can get hold of CSI Dalessio a lot more quickly than the 911 operator can. Lucy smiles at the joke and shines an apple on her jeans and tosses it to him. She buffs the other apple and bites into it as if she’s on the phone with a take-out restaurant or the dry cleaner or Home Depot and not the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.

  “Do you know which detective worked your breaking and entering, originally?” the 911 operator asks. “Normally, we don’t contact the crime scene investigator, just the detective.”

  “All I know is I dealt with CSI Dalessio,” Lucy replies. “I don’t think a detective ever came to the house, just to the hospital, I guess. When my houseguest went to the hospital.”

&
nbsp; “He’s marked off, ma’am, but I can get him a message,” the 911 operator says, and she sounds a bit uncertain, and she should be uncertain since CSI John Dalessio is someone the operator has never talked to or ever met or heard on the air. In Lucy’s world, a CSI is a Cyber Space Investigator who exists only in whatever computer Lucy or those who work for her hacked into, which in this case is the Broward County Sheriff’s Department computer.

  “I’ve got his card. I’ll call him. Thanks for your help,” Lucy says, disconnecting the line.

  She and Rudy stand in the kitchen, eating their apples, looking at each other.

  “Kind of a funny thing when you think about it,” she says, hoping Rudy will start seeing the situation with the local cops as funny. “We call the police as a formality. Or worse, because it entertains us.”

  He shrugs his muscular shoulders, crunching into the apple and wiping juice off his mouth with the back of a hand. “Always good to include the local cops. In a limited way, of course. You never know when we might need them for something.” Now he’s turning the local cops into a game, his favorite game. “You asked for Dalessio, so it’s on record. Not our fault he’s hard to track down. They’ll spend the rest of their careers trying to figure out who the hell Dalessio is and did he quit or get fired or what? Did anyone ever meet him? He’ll become a legend, give them something to talk about.”

  “Him and Tina Franks,” Lucy says, chewing a piece of apple.

  “Fact is,” he replies, “you’d have a hell of a lot harder time proving you’re Lucy Farinelli than Tina Franks or whoever else you decide to be on any given day. We’ve got birth certificates and all the other paper shit for our fake IDs. Hell, I can’t tell you where my real birth certificate is.”

  “I’m not sure I know who I am anymore,” she says, handing him a paper towel.

  “Me, either.” He takes another big bite out of the apple.

  “I’m not sure I know who you are, now that you mention it. So you’ll answer the door when the cop shows up and have him call CSI Dalessio to pick up the drawing.”

  “That’s the plan.” Rudy smiles. “Worked like a charm last time.”

  Lucy and Rudy keep jump-out bags and crime scene kits at strategic locations, such as residences and vehicles, and it is amazing what they manage to get away with by virtue of ankle-high black leather boots, black polo shirts, black cargo pants, dark windbreakers with forensics on the back in bold yellow letters, the usual camera and other basic equipment, and most important of all, body language and attitude. The simple plan is usually the best one, and after Lucy found Henri and panicked and called 911 for an ambulance, she called Rudy. He changed his clothes and simply walked in her front door after the police had been there a few minutes, and he said he was new with the crime scene unit and the officers didn’t have to hang around while he processed the house, and that was fine with them, because to hang around with the crime scene technicians amounts to babysitting in the eyes of cops.

  Lucy, or Tina Franks, as she identified herself on that terrible day, offered her own lies to the police that morning. Henri, also given a false name, was a guest visiting from out of town, and while Lucy was in the shower, Henri, who was sleeping off a hangover, heard the intruder and fainted, and because she tends to get hysterical and hyper-ventilate and may very well have been attacked, Lucy called for an ambulance. No, Lucy never saw the intruder. No, nothing was taken as far as Lucy could tell. No, she doesn’t think Henri was sexually assaulted but she ought to be checked at the hospital because that’s what people do, right? That’s what they do on all those cops shows on television, right?

  “Wonder how long it will take them to figure out that CSI Dalessio never seems to show up anywhere except your house,” Rudy says, amused. “Damn good thing their department’s taken over most of Broward. It’s as huge as Texas and they don’t know who the hell is coming or going.”

  Lucy looks at her watch, timing the marked unit that should be headed this way now. “Well, what matters is we included Mr. Dalessio so he doesn’t get his feelings hurt.”

  Rudy laughs, his mood much improved. He can’t stay irritable for long when the two of them swing into motion. “Okay. The police will be here any minute. Maybe you should scram. I won’t give the uniform guy the drawing. I’ll give him Dalessio’s number, tell him I’d be more comfortable talking to the CSI since I met him last week when you called about the B-and-E. So he’ll get Dalessio’s voice mail, and after he leaves, yours truly, the legendary Dalessio, will call him back and tell him I’ll take care of things.”

  “Don’t let the cops in my office.”

  “The door’s locked, right?”

  “Yes,” she says. “If you’re worried about your Dalessio cover being blown, call me. I’ll come right back and deal with the cops myself.”

  “Going somewhere?” Rudy asks.

  “I think it’s time I introduce myself to my neighbor,” Lucy says.

  13.

  THE DECOMPOSED ROOM is a small mortuary with a walk-in cooler and double sinks and cabinets, all in stainless steel, and a special ventilation system that sucks noxious odors and microorganisms out through an exhaust fan. Every inch of walls and floor is painted with nonslip gray acrylic that is nonabsorbent and can withstand scrubbing and bleach.

  The centerpiece of this special room is a single transportable autopsy table, which is nothing more than a cart frame with casters equipped with swivel wheels that have brakes, and a body tray that rolls on bearings, all of which is supposed to eliminate the need for human beings to lift bodies in the modern world, but in reality doesn’t. People in the morgue still struggle with dead weight and always will. The table is sloped so it can drain when it is attached to the sink, but that won’t be necessary this morning. There is nothing left to drain. Gilly Paulsson’s body fluids were collected or washed down the drain two weeks ago when Fielding autopsied her the first time.

  This morning, the autopsy table is parked in the middle of the acrylic painted floor, and Gilly Paulsson’s body is inside a black pouch that looks like a cocoon on top of the shiny steel table. There are no windows in this room, none that open onto the outside, only a row of observation windows that were installed too high for anyone to see through them, a design flaw that Scarpetta didn’t complain about when she moved into the building eight years ago because no one needs to observe what goes on in this room, where the dead are bloated and green and covered with maggots or burned so badly they look like charred wood.

  She has just walked in, having spent a few minutes in the women’s locker room to suit up in the appropriate biohazard gear. “I’m sorry to interrupt your other case,” she says to Fielding, and in her mind she sees Mr. Whitby in olive-green pants and his black jacket. “But I believe your boss really thought I was going to do this without you.”

  “How much did he brief you?” he asks from behind his face mask.

  “Actually, he didn’t,” she says, working her hands into a pair of gloves. “I know nothing more than what he told me yesterday when he called me in Florida.”

  Fielding frowns and he has started to sweat. “I thought you were just in his office.”

  It occurs to her that this room might be bugged. Then she remembers when she was chief and tried out a variety of dictating equipment in the autopsy suite, all to no avail because there is too much background noise in the morgue and it tends to foil even the best transmitters and recorders. With that in mind, she moves to the sink and turns on the water, and it drums loudly and hollowly against steel.

  “What’s that for?” Fielding asks, unzipping the pouch.

  “I thought you might like a little water music while we work.”

  He looks up at her. “It’s safe to talk in here, I’m pretty sure. He’s not that smart. Besides, I don’t think he’s ever been in the decomp room. He probably doesn’t know where it is.”

  “It’s easy to underestimate people you don’t like,” she says, helping him open the flaps of
the pouch.

  Two weeks of refrigeration have retarded decomposition, but the body is desiccating, or drying out, and on its way to being mummified. The stench is strong but Scarpetta doesn’t take it personally. A bad smell is just another way the body speaks, no offense intended, and Gilly Paulsson can’t help herself, not the way she looks or stinks or the fact that she is dead. She is pale and vaguely green and bloodless, her face emaciated from dehydration, her eyes open to slits, the sclera beneath the lids dried almost black. Her lips are dried brown and barely parted, her long blond hair tangled around her ears and under her chin. Scarpetta notes no external injuries to the neck, including any that might have been introduced at autopsy, such as the deadly sin of a buttonhole, which should never happen but does when someone inexperienced or careless is reflecting back tissue inside the neck to remove the tongue and larynx and accidentally pokes through the surface of the skin. An autopsy-induced cut to the neck is not easily explained to distraught families.

  The Y incision begins at the ends of the clavicle and meets at the sternum, and travels down, taking a small detour around the navel and terminating at the pubis. It is sutured with twine that Fielding begins to cut with a scalpel, as though he is opening the seams of a hand-stitched rag doll, while Scarpetta picks up a file folder from a countertop and glances through Gilly’s autopsy protocol and the initial report of investigation. She was five-foot-three and weighed a hundred and four pounds and would have turned fifteen in February had she lived. Her eyes were blue. Repeatedly on Fielding’s autopsy report are the words “within normal limits.” Her brain, her heart, her liver, and her lungs, all of her organs were just what they should have been for a healthy young girl.