Patricia Cornwell - Trace

"I've never heard that story before," she says. "All I remember is the chronic exposure part and that he did have fibrosis, or I should say he does have pulmonary fibrosis."

"There's no question about that. He has scarring of the interstitial tissue, significant damage to the lung tissue as evidenced by biopsy. He isn't faking."

"We're trying to find him," Scarpetta says. "Is there anything you can tell me that might give us a lead as to where to look?"

"I don't mean to state the obvious. But what about people he worked with?"

"The police are checking all of that. I'm not hopeful. When he worked for me he was a loner," she replies. "I know his prescription for prednisone is due to be renewed within days. Is he religious about doing that?"

"It's been my experience he goes through phases with his meds. He'll be fastidious for a year, then maybe he backs off from the stuff for months because it makes him gain weight."

"Is he overweight?"

"Last time I saw him, he was very overweight."

"How tall is he and how much did he weigh?"

"He's maybe five-eight. When I saw him in October, he looked like he weighed in excess of two hundred pounds and I told him that just put more of a strain on his breathing, not to mention his heart. I've gone back and forth with him about the corticosteroids because of the weight problem, and he can get very paranoid when he's on his meds."

"You worry about steroid psychosis?"

"Always worry about that with anyone. If you've ever seen steroid psychosis, you worry. But I've never decided if Edgar Allan is off when he's on his meds or just oft. How did he do it, if you don't mind my asking? How did he kill the girl, the Paulsson girl?"

"You've heard of Burke and Hare? Early nineteenth-century Scotland, the two men who killed people and sold their bodies for medical dissection? There was quite a scarcity of bodies for dissection and in fact the only way some medical students could learn anatomy was from robbing fresh graves or getting bodies in other illicit ways."

"Body snatching," Dr. Philpott says. "I know a little about Burking, as it's called. Can't say I've ever heard of a modern case. The Resurrectionists, I believe those men were called back then, the ones who robbed graves and procured bodies for dissection."

"These days we're not talking about killing someone and selling the body. But Burking happens. It's so difficult to detect, we don't know just how often it happens."

"Suffocation or arsenic or what?"

"In forensic pathology, Burking refers to homicide by mechanical asphyxia. Burke's MO, legend has it, was to select someone feeble, usually an old person, a child, someone sick, and sit on the chest and cover the nose and mouth."

"That's what happened to that poor girl?" Dr. Philpott asks, his face deeply lined with distress. "That's what he did to the Paulsson girl?"

"As you know, sometimes a diagnosis is made based on the lack of a diagnosis. A process of elimination," Scarpetta replies. "She has no findings except what appear to be fresh bruises that certainly would be consistent with someone sitting on her chest, her hands pinned. She had a nosebleed." She doesn't want to say much more about it. "Obviously, this is extremely confidential."

"I have no idea where he might be," Dr. Philpott grimly says. "If he calls in for any reason, I'll tell you right away."

"Let me give you Pete Marino's number." She starts writing it down.

"Edgar Allan's really not someone I know much about. I never did like him, truth be told. He's a strange one, gave me a creepy feeling, and while his mother was alive, she always came with him to his appointments. I'm talking about when he was a grown man, right up until she died."

"What did she die of?"

"That worries me, now that we're talking about this," he says, his face grim. "She was obese and took terrible care of herself. One winter she got the flu and died at home. There was nothing suspicious about it at the time. Now I wonder."

"Might I look at his medical record? And hers, if you still have it?" Scarpetta asks.

"Now, I wouldn't have hers easily accessible since she died so long ago. But I can let you look at his. You can sit right here and do it. I have it out on my desk." He gets up from his chair and leaves the kitchen, and he moves more slowly and seems tireder than he did earlier.

Scarpetta looks out the window at a blue jay robbing the bird feeder dangling from the bare branch of an oak tree. The jay is a flurry of blue aggression, and seeds fly as it pillages the feeder, bounces off in a feathery blue spurt, and is gone. Edgar Allan Pogue may get away with it. Fingerprints don't prove much, and the cause and manner of death will be debated. There is no telling how many people he has killed, she thinks, and now she has to worry about what he was doing when he worked for her. What was he doing down there belowground? She sees him down there in scrubs. He was pale and thin back then, and she remembers his white face looking at her, stealing shy glances at her when she got off that awful service elevator and showed up to talk to Dave, who didn't like Edgar Allan much either and probably wouldn't have a clue where he is.

Scarpetta spent as little time in the Anatomical Division as she could. It was a depressing place, and there was so little state funding for it, so little paid by the medical colleges that needed the bodies, not enough money to allow the dead any dignity at all. And the crematorium was always breaking down. There were baseball bats propped in a corner because when cremains were removed from the oven, some chunks of bone needed to be pulverized or they would not fit in the cheap urns supplied by the state. A grinder was too expensive, and a baseball bat worked fine for reducing chunks of bone to a manageable size, to dust. She didn't want to be reminded of what went on down there, and she visited that division only when necessary and avoided the crematorium, avoided looking at the baseball bats. She knew about the baseball bats and kept away from them, pretending they weren't there.

I should have bought a grinder, she thinks as she sits looking at the empty bird feeder. I should have bought one with my own money. I should never have allowed baseball bats. I wouldn't allow them now.

"Here," Dr. Philpott says as he returns to the kitchen and hands her a thick file folder with Edgar Allan Pogue's name printed on it. "I've got to get back to my patients. But I'll check in to see if you need anything."

The truth is, she wasn't keen on the Anatomical Division. She is a forensic pathologist, a lawyer, and not a funeral home director or embalmer. She always assumed that those dead people had nothing to say to her because there was no mystery surrounding their deaths. If people can die peacefully, those people did. Her mission is people who don't die peacefully. Her mission is people who die violently and suddenly and suspiciously, and she did not want to talk to the people in the vats, so she avoided that subterranean part of her world back then. She avoided the people who worked in it and she avoided the people who were dead in it. She didn't want to spend time with Dave or Edgar Allan. No, she did not.

When pink bodies were cranked up by pulleys and chains and with hooks, she didn't want to see it. No, she did not.

I should have paid more attention, she thinks, and her stomach is sour from the coffee. I didn't do as much as I could have. She slowly scans Pogue's medical records. I should have bought a grinder, she thinks, and she looks for the address Pogue gave Dr. Philpott. According to Pogue's records, he lived in Ginter Park, on the north side of the city, until 1996, then his address changed to a post office box. Nowhere in his record is there a mention of where he has lived since 1996, and she wonders it that is when he moved into the house behind the Paulssons' back fence, Mrs. Arnette's house. Maybe he killed her too and became a squatter.