Patricia Cornwell - The Scarpetta Factor

“I want to ask about the position of the body at the scene,” said Detective Bonnell, soft-spoken but confident and at times wry and hard to read. “Dr. Scarpetta, did you find any indication that she might have been pulled by her arms or dragged? Because I found the positioning strange. Almost a little ridiculous, like she was dancing ‘Hava Nagila,’ the way her legs were bent froglike and her arms straight up. I know that probably sounds strange to say, but it did cross my mind when I first saw her.”

Benton was looking at the scene photographs on his computer, and he answered before Scarpetta could. “The position of the body is degrading and mocking.” Clicking on more photographs. “She’s exposed in a sexually graphic manner that’s intended to show contempt and to shock. No effort was made to conceal the body but exactly the opposite. The position she’s in was staged.”

“Other than the position you’ve described, there was no evidence she’d been dragged.” Scarpetta answered Bonnell’s question. “No abrasions posteriorally, no bruises around her wrists, but you need to bear in mind that she wasn’t going to have a vital response to injuries. She wasn’t going to have bruising if she was grabbed by the wrists after death. In the main, the body was relatively injury-free, except for her head wound.”

“Let’s assume you’re right about her having been dead for a while.” It was Berger talking, broadcasting forcefully from the sleek black speaker Benton used for conference calling. “I’m thinking there might be some explanation for this.”

“The explanation is what we know happens to the body after death,” Scarpetta said. “How rapidly it cools, the way uncirculating blood settles to the dependent regions due to gravity and what that looks like, and the characteristic stiffening of the muscles due to the decline of adenosine triphosphate.”

“There can be exceptions, though,” Berger said. “It’s well established that these types of artifacts associated with time of death can greatly vary depending on what the person was doing right before he or she died, the weather conditions, body size, and how the person was dressed, and even what sort of drugs someone might have been on. Am I correct?”

“Time of death isn’t an exact science.” Scarpetta wasn’t at all surprised that Berger was debating her.

It was one of those situations when truth made everything immeasurably harder.

“Then it’s within the realm of possibility there were circumstances that could explain why Toni’s rigor and livor seemed so well advanced,” Berger said. “For example, if she was exerting a lot of energy, was running, perhaps running away from her assailant, when he hit her on the back of the head. Couldn’t that account for an unusually rapid onset of rigor mortis? Or even instantaneous rigor, what’s known as a cadaveric spasm?”

“No,” Scarpetta answered. “Because she didn’t die immediately after she was struck in the head. She survived for a while, and in fact would have been anything but physically active. She would have been incapacitated, basically in a coma and dying.”

“But if we’re objective about it,” as if hinting Scarpetta might not be, “her livor, for example, can’t tell you exactly when she died. There are many variables that can affect lividity.”

“Her livor’s not telling me exactly when she died, but an estimation. It does, however, tell me unequivocally that she was moved.” Scarpetta was beginning to feel as if she was on the witness stand. “Possibly this was when she was transported to the park, and likely whoever is responsible didn’t realize that by positioning her arms the way he did, he offered an obvious inconsistency. Her arms were not above her head while her livor was forming, but closer to her sides, palms down. Also, there are no indentations or marks from clothing, yet there is blanching under the band of her watch, indicating it was on her wrist after livor was intensifying and becoming fixed. I’m suspicious that for at least twelve hours after death she was completely nude, except for her watch. She wasn’t even wearing her socks, which were an elastic material that would have left marks. When she was dressed before her body was transported to the park, her socks were put on the wrong feet.”

She told them about Toni’s anatomically correct running socks, adding that typically when assailants dress their victims after the fact, there are telltale signs of it. Often mistakes are made. For example, clothing is twisted or inside out. Or in this case, an inadvertent reversal of left and right.

“Why leave the watch on?” Bonnell asked.

“Unimportant to whoever undressed her.” Benton was looking at scene photos on his screen, zooming in on the BioGraph watch on Toni’s left wrist. “Removing jewelry, except for purposes of taking souvenirs, isn’t as sexually charged as removing clothing, exposing bare flesh. But it’s all a matter of what’s symbolic and erotic to the offender. And whoever was with her body wasn’t in a hurry. Not if he had her for a day and a half.”

“Kay, I’m wondering if you’ve ever had a case when someone has been dead only eight hours but it looks like he or she’s been dead almost five times that long?” Berger had her mind made up and was doing her damnedest to lead the witness.

“Only in cases where the onset of decomposition is dramatically escalated, such as in a very hot tropical or subtropical environment,” Scarpetta said. “When I was a medical examiner in South Florida, escalated decomposition wasn’t uncommon. I saw it often.”

“In your opinion, was she sexually assaulted in the park, or perhaps in a vehicle and then moved and displayed as Benton has described?” Berger asked.

“I’m curious. Why a vehicle?” Benton said, leaning back in his chair.

“I’m posing the possible scenario that she was sexually assaulted and murdered in a vehicle, then dumped and displayed where she was found,” Berger said.

“There’s nothing I observed during the external examination or during the autopsy that would tell me she was assaulted inside a vehicle,” Scarpetta answered.

“I’m thinking about the injuries she might have if she’d been sexually assaulted in the park, on the ground,” Berger said. “I’m asking if it’s been your experience when someone is sexually assaulted on a hard surface, such as the ground, that there would be bruises, abrasions.”

“Often I will find that.”

“As opposed to being raped, for example, in the backseat of a car, where the surface under the victim is more forgiving than frozen earth that’s covered with stones and sticks and other debris,” Berger continued.

“I can’t tell from the body whether she was assaulted in a vehicle,” Scarpetta repeated.

“Possible she got into a vehicle, was hit in the head, and then the person sexually assaulted her, was with her for a period of time before dumping her body where she was found.” Berger wasn’t asking. She was telling. “And her livor, her rigor, her temperature are, in fact, confusing and misleading because her body was barely clothed and exposed to near-freezing conditions. And if it’s true she died a lingering death, perhaps lingered for hours because of her head injury-that maybe livor was advanced because of that.”

“There are exceptions to the rules,” Scarpetta said. “But I don’t think I can offer the exceptions you seem to be looking for, Jaime.”

“I’ve done a lot of literature searches over the years, Kay. Time of death is something I deal with and argue in court fairly frequently. I’ve found a couple of interesting things. Cases of people who die lingering deaths, let’s say from cardiac failure or cancer, and livor mortis begins before they’re even dead. And again, there are cases on record of people going into instantaneous rigor. So, hypothetically, if for some reason Toni’s livor was already developing right before she died and she went into instantaneous rigor for some very unusual reason? And I believe that can happen in as phyxial deaths, and she did have a scarf tied around her neck, appears to have been strangled in addition to being hit with a blunt object. Wouldn’t it be possible that she’d really been dead a much shorter period than you’re assuming? Maybe dead for just a few hours? Fewer than eight hours?”