Patricia Cornwell: Book of the Dead

“I believe you’ve ascertained that the sources of DNA collected from under her nails are males of European descent — in other words, Caucasian,” Benton says.

“Yes,” the lab director says.

“Dr. Scarpetta?” Captain Poma says. “Please continue.”

“May I have autopsy photo number twenty-six, please?” she says. “A posterior view during the external examination. Close-up of the wounds.”

They fill the screen. Two dark red craters with jagged edges. She points the laser, and the red dot moves over the massive wound where the right buttock used to be, then to a second area of flesh that has been excised from the back of the right thigh.

“Inflicted by a sharp cutting instrument, possibly with a serrated blade, that sawed through muscle and superficially cut the bone,” she says. “Inflicted postmortem, based on the absence of tissue response to the injuries. In other words, the wounds are yellowish.”

“Postmortem mutilation rules out torture, at least torture by cutting,” Benton adds.

“Then what explanation? If not torture?” Captain Poma asks him, both men staring at each other like two animals that are natural enemies. “Why else would a person inflict such sadistic, and, I would suggest, disfiguring, wounds on another human being? Tell us, Dr. Wesley, in all your experiences have you seen anything like this before, perhaps in other cases? Especially when you were such a famous profiler with the FBI?”

“No,” Benton says curtly, and any reference to his former career with the FBI is a calculated insult. “I’ve seen mutilation. But I’ve never seen anything quite like this. Especially what he did to her eyes.”

He removed them and filled the sockets with sand. Afterward, he glued her eyelids shut.

Scarpetta points the laser and describes this, and Benton is chilled again. Everything about this case chills him, unnerves and fascinates him. What is the symbolism? It’s not that he’s unfamiliar with the gouging out of eyes. But what Captain Poma suggests is far-fetched.

“The ancient Greek combat sport pankration? Perhaps you’ve heard of it,” Captain Poma says to the theater. “In pankration, one uses any means possible to defeat his enemy. It was common to gouge out the eyes and kill the person by stabbing or strangulation. Drew’s eyes were gouged out, and she was strangled.”

The general of the Carabinieri asks Benton, through the translator, “Then maybe there’s a connection to pankration? That the killer had this in his mind when he removed her eyes and strangled her?”

“I don’t think so,” Benton says.

“Then what explanation?” the general asks, and like Captain Poma, he wears a splendid uniform but with more silver and ornamentation around the cuffs and high collar.

“A more interior one. A more personal one,” Benton says.

“From the news, perhaps,” the general says. “Torture. The Death Squads in Iraq that pull out teeth and gouge out eyes.”

“I can only suppose that what this killer did is a manifestation of his own psyche. In other words, I don’t believe what he did to her is an allusion to anything even remotely obvious. Through her wounds, we get a glimpse into his inner world,” Benton says.

“This is speculation,” Captain Poma says.

“It’s a psychological insight based on many years of working violent crimes,” Benton replies.

“But it’s your intuition.”

“We ignore intuition at our peril,” Benton says.

“May we have the autopsy picture that shows her anteriorly during the external examination?” Scarpetta says. “A close-up of her neck.” She checks the list on the podium. “Number twenty.”

A three-dimensional image fills the screen: Drew’s body on a stainless-steel autopsy table, her skin and hair wet from washing.

“If you look here”—Scarpetta points the laser at the neck—“you notice a horizontal ligature mark.” The dot moves along the front of the neck. Before she can continue, she’s interrupted by Rome’s head of tourism.

“Afterwards, he removed her eyes. After death,” he says. “Versus while she was alive. This is important.”

“Yes,” Scarpetta replies. “Reports I’ve reviewed indicate the only pre-mortem injuries are contusions on the ankles and contusions caused by strangulation. The photograph of her dissected neck, please? Number thirty-eight.”

She waits, and images fill the screen. On a cutting board, the larynx and soft tissue with areas of hemorrhage. The tongue.

Scarpetta points out, “Contusions to the soft tissue, the underlying muscles, and fractured hyoid due to strangulation clearly indicate damage inflicted while she was still alive.”

“Petechiae of her eyes?”

“We don’t know if there were conjunctival petechiae,” Scarpetta says. “Her eyes are absent. But reports do indicate some petechiae of eyelids and face.”

“What he did to her eyes? You’re familiar with this from anything else in your experiences?”

“I’ve seen victims whose eyes were gouged out. But I’ve never seen or heard of a killer filling eye sockets with sand and then sealing the eyelids shut with — in this instance — an adhesive that according to your report is a cyanoacrylate.”

“Superglue,” Captain Poma says.

“I’m keenly interested in the sand,” she says. “It doesn’t appear to be indigenous to the area. More important, scanning electron microscopy with EDX found traces of what appears to be gunshot residue. Lead, antimony, and barium.”

“Certainly it isn’t from the local beaches,” Captain Poma says. “Unless many people shoot each other and we don’t know it.”

Laughter.

“Sand from Ostia would have basalt in it,” Scarpetta says. “Other components from volcanic activity. I believe all of you have a copy of the spectral fingerprint of the sand recovered from the body and a spectral fingerprint of sand from a beach area in Ostia.”

The sounds of paper rustling in the theater. Small flashlights click on.

“Both analyzed with Raman spectroscopy, using an eight-point-milliwatt red laser. As you can see, sand from the local beaches of Ostia and sand found in Drew Martin’s eye sockets have very different spectral fingerprints. With the scanning electron microscope, we can see the sand’s morphology, and backscattered electron imaging shows us the GSR particles we’re talking about.”

“The beaches of Ostia are very popular with tourists,” Captain Poma says. “But not so much this time of year. People from here and the tourists usually wait until it’s warmer. Late May, even June. Then many people from Rome especially crowd them, since the drive is maybe thirty, maybe forty minutes. It’s not for me,” as if anybody asked his personal feelings about the beaches of Ostia. “I find the black sand of the beaches ugly, and I would never go in the water.”

“I think what’s important here is where is the sand from, which seems to be a mystery,” Benton says, and it’s late afternoon now and everyone is getting restless. “And why sand at all? The choice of sand — this specific sand — means something to the killer, and it may tell us where Drew was murdered, or perhaps where her killer is from or spends time.”

“Yes, yes,” Captain Poma says with a hint of impatience. “And the eyes and very terrible wounds mean something to the killer. And thankfully, these details aren’t known to the public. We’ve managed to keep them away from journalists. So if there is another similar murder, we will know it isn’t a copy.”

The three of them sit in a candlelit corner of Tullio, a popular trattoria with a travertine facade, near the theaters, and an easy walk from the Spanish Steps.