Patricia Cornwell - Trace

Coming up." He opens a drawer, finds a magnifying glass, and gives it to her. "See anything? I didn't."

"Does she have any history of seizures?"

"Not according to what I've been told."

"Well, I don't see any injury." She is looking for evidence that Gilly might have bitten her tongue. "And you swabbed her tongue, the inside of her mouth?"

"Oh yeah. I swabbed her everything," Fielding says, returning to the counter and leaning against it again. "I didn't find anything obvious. Preliminarily, the labs haven't found anything to indicate sexual assault. I don't know about whatever else they've found, if anything yet."

"It says in your CME-1 that her body was clothed in pajamas when it came in. The top was inside out."

"That sounds right." He picks up the file and starts flipping through it.

"You photographed the hell out of everything." She doesn't ask, simply verifies what should be accepted as routine.

"Hey," he says, laughing. "Who taught my sorry ass?"

She gives him a quick look. She taught him better than this, but she doesn't say it. "I'm happy to report you didn't miss anything on the tongue." She drops it back into the bag, where it rests on top of the other tan pieces and parts of Gilly Paulsson's rotting organs. "Let's turn her over. We're going to have to take her out of the pouch."

They do this in stages. Fielding grips the body under the arms and lifts while Scarpetta pulls the pouch out from under it, and then he rolls the body over on its face as she works the pouch out of the way, its heavy vinyl complaining in heavy rumbles as she folds it up and sets it back on the gurney. She and Fielding see the bruise on Gilly's back at the same time.

"I'll be damned," he says, unnerved.

It is a faint blush, somewhat round, and about the size of a silver dollar on the left side of the back, just below the scapula.

"I swear that wasn't here when I posted her," he says, leaning close, adjusting the surgical light to get a better look. "Shit. I can't believe I missed it."

"You know how it is," Scarpetta replies, and she doesn't tell him what she thinks. There is no point in criticizing him. It's too late for that. "Contusions always show up better after the body's been autopsied," she says.

She plucks a scalpel off the surgical cart and makes deep linear incisions in the reddish area, checking to see if the discoloration might be a postmortem artifact, and therefore superficial, but it's not. Blood in the underlying soft tissue is diffuse, usually meaning some trauma broke blood vessels while the body still had a blood pressure, and that's all a bruise or contusion is, just lots of little blood vessels that get smashed and leak. Fielding places a six-inch plastic rule next to rhe incised area of reddish flesh and starts taking photographs.

"What about her bed linens?" Scarpetta asks. "You checked them?"

"Never seen them. The cops took them, handed them over to the labs. Like I said, no seminal fluid. Damn, I can't believe I missed this bruise."

"Let's ask if they see any pulmonary edema fluid on the sheets, the pillow, and if so, have the stain scraped for ciliated respiratory epithelium. You find that, it supports a death by asphyxia."

"Shit," he says. "I don't know how I missed that bruise. Then you're thinking this is a homicide, for sure."

"I'm thinking someone got on top of her," Scarpetta says. "She's facedown and the person has a knee in her upper back, leaning on her with all his weight and holding her hands up and out above her head, palms down on the bed. That would explain the bruises on the tops of her hands and on her back. I'm thinking she's a mechanical asphyxia, a homicide, absolutely. Someone sits on your chest or back, and you can't breathe. It's a horrible way to die."

The lady next door lives in a flat-roofed house of curved white concrete and glass that interacts with nature and reflects the water, earth, and sky, and reminds Lucy of buildings she has seen in Finland. At night her neighbor's house looks like an immense lantern lit up.

There is a fountain in the front courtyard, where tall palms and cacti have been wound with strands of colorful lights for the holidays. An inflated green Grinch scowls near the soaring double glass doors, a festive touch that Lucy would find comical if someone else lived inside. In the upper left side of the door frame is a camera that is supposed to be invisible, and as she presses the doorbell she imagines her image filling a closed-circuit video screen. No response, and she presses the button again. Still there is no answer.

Okay. I know you're home because you picked up your newspaper and the flag is up on your mailbox, she thinks. I know you're watching me, probably sitting right there in the kitchen staring at me on your video screen, got the Aiphone up to your ear to see if I'm breathing or talking to myself, and it just so happens I'm doing both, idiot. Answer your damn door or I'll stand out here all day.

This goes on for maybe five minutes. Lucy waits in front of the heavy glass doors, imagining what the lady is seeing on the video screen and deciding she can't look threatening in jeans, t-shirt, fanny pack, and running shoes. But she has to be annoying as she keeps pressing the bell. Maybe the lady is in the shower. Maybe she isn't looking at the video monitor at all. Lucy rings once more. She's not going to come to the door. I knew you wouldn't, idiot, Lucy silently says to the lady. I could be standing out here having a heart attack on camera and you couldn't be bothered. I guess I'm going to have to make you come to the door. She cnvi'-:io!!-: Rudv nuHins' out his fake TO to snnv the hell our of the Hispanic not even two hours earlier, and she decides, All right then, let's try this and see what you do now. Slipping a thin black wallet out of the back pocket of her tight-fitting jeans, she flashes a badge up close to the not-so-secret camera.

"Hello," she says out loud. "Police. Don't be alarmed, I live next door, but I'm a cop. Please come to the door." She rings the bell again and continues holding up her fake credentials directly in front of the pinhole camera.

Lucy blinks in the sunlight, sweating. She waits and listens but doesn't hear a sound. Just when she is about to flash her fake badge again, suddenly there is a voice, as if God is a bitchy woman.

"What do you want?" asks the voice through an invisible speaker near the so-called invisible camera on the upper door frame.

"I've had a trespasser, ma'am," Lucy replies. "I think you might want to know what's happened next door at my house."

"You said you're the police," the unfriendly voice accuses, and the accent is deeply southern.

"I'm both."

"Both what?"

Both the police and your neighbor, ma'am. My name's Tina. I wish you'd come to the door."

Silence, then in less than ten seconds, Lucy sees a figure floating toward the glass doors from the inside, and that figure becomes a woman in her forties dressed in a tennis warm-up suit and jogging shoes. It seems to take her forever to get all the locks undone, but the neighbor does and deactivates the alarm and opens one of the glass doors. At first, she doesn't seem to have any intention of inviting Lucy in, but stands in the doorway, staring at her without a trace of warmth.

"Make this quick," says the lady. "I don't like strangers and have no interest in knowing my neighbors. I'm here because I don't want neighbors. In case you haven't figured it out, this isn't a neighborhood, anyhow. It's where people come to be private and left alone."

"What isn't?" Lucy warms up to her task. She recognizes the tribe of the self-consumed, curdled rich and plays a little naive. "Your house isn't or the neighborhood isn't?"

"Isn't what?" The woman's hostility is briefly supplanted by bewilderment. "What are you talking about?"