Patricia Cornwell - Body of Evidence

"It's a long shot," Wesley said, and he looked very tense. "But see how far you can run with it, Pete. If nothing else, maybe Harper would have a few guesses about this 'M' Beryl was writing. Obviously, it was someone she knew well, a friend, a lover. Someone out there has got to know who it is. We find that out, we're getting somewhere."

Marino didn't like it. "I know what I've heard," he said.

"Harper ain't going to talk with me and I don't got probable cause to force him into it. I also don't think he's the guy who whacked Beryl even if he did have motive, maybe. Seems to me he would have done it and been done with it. Why draw it out for nine, ten months? And she'd recognize his voice if it was him calling."

"Harper could have hired somebody," Wesley said.

"Right. And we would have found her a week later with a nice clean gunshot wound in the back of her head," Marino answered. "Most hit men don't stalk their victims, call 'em up, use a blade, rape 'em."

"Most of them don't," Wesley agreed. "But we can't be sure rape occurred, either. There was no seminal fluid."

He glanced at me, and I nodded a confirmation. "The guy may be dysfunctional. Then again, the crime could be staged, her body positioned to looked like a sexual assault when it really wasn't. It all depends on who was hired, if this is the case, and what the plan was. For example, if Beryl turned up shot while she was in the middle of a dispute with Harper, the cops put him first on the list. But if her murder looks like the work of a sexual sadist, a psychopath, Harper doesn't enter anybody's mind."

Marino was staring off at the bookcase, his meaty face flushed. Slowly turning uneasy eyes on me, he said, "What else you know about this book she was writing?"

"Only what I've said, that it was autobiographical and possibly threatening to Harper's reputation," I replied.

"That's what she was working on down there in Key West?"

"I would assume so. I can't be certain," I said.

He hesitated. "Well, I hate to tell you, but we didn't find nothing like that inside her house."

Even Wesley looked surprised. "The manuscript in her bedroom?"

"Oh, yeah." Marino reached for his cigarettes. "I've glanced at it. Another novel with all this Civil War romance shit in it. Sure don't sound like this other thing the doc's describing."

"Does it have a title or a date on it?" I asked.

"Nope. Don't even look like it's all there, for that matter. About this thick."

Marino measured off about an inch with his fingers. "Got a lot of notes written in the margins, about ten more pages written in longhand."

"We'd better take a second look through all of her papers, her computer disks, make sure this autobiographical manuscript isn't there," Wesley said. "We also need to find out who her literary agent or editor is. Maybe she mailed the manuscript to someone before she left Key West. What we'd better make sure of is that she didn't return to Richmond with the thing. If she did and now it's gone, that's significant, to say the least."

Glancing at his watch, Wesley pushed back his chair as he announced apologetically, "I've got another appointment in five minutes."

He escorted us out to the lobby.

I couldn't get rid of Marino. He insisted on walking me to my car.

"You got to keep your eyes open."

He was at it again, giving me one of the "street smart" lectures he had given me numerous times in the past. "A lot of women, they never think about that. I see 'em all the time walking along and not having the foggiest idea who's looking at 'em, maybe following 'em. And when you get to your car, have your damn keys out and look under it, okay? Be surprised how many women don't think about that either. If you're driving along and realize someone's following you, what do you do?"

I ignored him.

"You head to the nearest fire station, okay? Why? Because there's always somebody there. Even at two in the morning on Christmas. That's the first place you head."

Waiting for a break in traffic, I began digging for my keys. Glancing across the street, I noticed an ominous white rectangle under the wiper blade of my state car. Hadn't I put in enough change? Damn.

"They're all over the place," Marino went on. "Just start looking for 'em on your way home or when you're running around doing your shopping."

I shot him one of my looks, then hurried across the street.

"Hey," he said when we got to my car, "don't get hot at me, all right? Maybe you should feel lucky I hover over you like a guardian angel."

The meter had run out fifteen minutes ago. Snatching the ticket off the windshield, I folded it and stuffed it in his shirt pocket.

"When you hover back to headquarters," I said, "take care of this, please."

He was scowling at me as I drove off.

Ten blocks away I pulled into another metered space and dropped in my last two quarters. I kept a red MEDICAL EXAMINER plate in plain view on the dash of my state car. Traffic cops never seemed to look. Several months ago, one of them had the nerve to write me up while I was downtown working a homicide scene the police had called me to in the middle of the day.

Hurrying up cement steps, I pushed through a glass door and went inside the main branch of the public library, where people moved about noiselessly and wooden tables were stacked with books. The hushed ambiance inspired the same reverence in me as it had when I was a child. Locating a row of microfiche machines halfway across the room, I began pulling up an index of books written under Beryl Madison's various pen names and jotting down the titles. The most recent work, a historical novel set during the Civil War and published under the pen name Edith Montague, had come out a year and a half ago. Probably irrelevant, and Mark was right, I thought. Over the past ten years, Beryl had published six novels. I had never heard of a single one of them.

Next I began a search of periodicals. Nothing. Beryl wrote books. Apparently she had not published anything, nor had there been any interviews of her, in magazines. Newspaper clips should be more promising. There were a few book reviews published in the Richmond Times over the past few years. But they were useless because they referred to the author by pen name. Beryl's killer knew her by her real name.

Screen after screen of hazy white type went by. "Mab-erly," "Macon," and finally "Madison."

There was one very short piece about Beryl published in the Times last November:

Novelist Beryl Stratton Madison will lecture to the Daughters of the American Revolution this Wednesday at the Jefferson Hotel at Main and Adams streets. Ms. Madison, protegee of Pulitzer Prize-winner Gary Harper, is most known for historical fiction set during the American Revolution and the Civil War. She will speak on "The Viability of Legend as a Vehicle for Fact."

Jotting down the pertinent information, I lingered long enough to locate several of Beryl's books and check them out. Back at the office, I busied myself with paperwork, my attention continually tugged toward the phone. It's none of your business. I was well aware of the boundary separating my jurisdiction from that of the police.

The elevator across the hall opened and custodians began talking in loud voices as they went to the janitorial closet several doors down. They always arrived at around six-thirty. Mrs. J. R. McTigue, listed in the paper as being in charge of reservations, wasn't going to answer anyway. The number I had copied was probably the DAR's business office, which would have closed at five.

The phone was picked up on the second ring.

After a pause, I asked, "Is this Mrs. J. R. McTigue?"

"Why, yes. I'm Mrs. McTigue."

It was too late. There was no point in being anything other than direct. "Mrs. McTigue, this is Dr. Scarpetta…"