Patricia Cornwell - Point of Origin

Rich Sinclair's work area was carpeted and well lighted, and overlooked the coliseum, which had always reminded me of a metal mushroom about to take flight. He was using weights to test the trigger pull of a Taurus pistol, and Marino and I walked in to the sound of the hammer clicking against the firing pin. I was not in a chatty mood and did my best not to seem rude as I told Sinclair outright what I needed, and that I needed it now.

'This is the metal turning from Warrenton,' I said, opening that evidence button. 'And this is the one recovered from the body in the Lehigh fire.'

I opened that evidence button next.

'Both have striations that are clearly visible on SEM,' I explained.

The point was to see if the striations, or toolmarks, matched, indicating that the same instrument had been used to produce the magnesium shavings that had been recovered this far. The ribbons of metal were very fragile and thin, and Sinclair used a narrow plastic spatula to pick them up. They weren't very cooperative and tended to jump around as if they were trying to escape as he coaxed them from their sea of cotton. He used squares of black cardboard to center the shaving from Warrenton on one, and the shavings from Lehigh on the other. These he placed on stages of the comparison microscope.

'Oh yeah,' Sinclair said without pause. 'We've got some good stuff.'

He manipulated the shavings with the spatula, flattening them some as he bumped the magnification up to forty.

'Maybe a blade of some type,' he said. 'The striations are probably from the finishing process and end up being a defect because no finishing process is going to be perfectly smooth. I mean, the manufacturer's going to be happy, but he's not at our end seeing this. There, here's an even better area, I think.'

He moved aside so we could take a look. Marino bent over the eyepieces first.

'Looks like ski tracks in snow,' was his comment. 'And that's from the blade, right? Or whatever?'

'Yes, imperfections, or toolmarks, made by whatever shaved this metal. Do you see the match, when one shaving is lined up with the other?'

Marino didn't.

'Here, Doc, you look.' Sinclair got out of my way.

What I saw through the microscope was good enough for court, the striations of the Warrenton shaving in one field of light matching the striations of the shaving in the other. Clearly, the same tool had shaved something made of magnesium in both homicide cases. The question was what this tool might be, and because the shavings were so thin, one had to consider a sharp blade of some type. Sinclair made several Polaroid photographs for me and slid them into glyassine envelopes.

'Okay, now what?' Marino asked as he followed me through the center of the firearms lab, past scientists busy processing bloody clothing under biohazard hoods, and others examining a Phillips screwdriver and machete at a big U-shaped counter.

'Now I go shopping,' I said.

I did not slow down as I talked but, in fact, was getting more frantic because I knew I was getting closer to reconstructing what Carrie or her accomplice or someone had done.

'What do you mean, shopping?'

Through the wall I could hear the muffled bangs of test fires in the range.

'Why don't you check on Lucy?' I said. 'And I'll get back to both of you later.'

'I don't like it when you do this later shit,' Marino said as elevator doors parted. 'That means you're running around on your own and poking your nose in things that maybe you shouldn't. And this ain't the time for you to be out on the street with nobody around. We got not a clue where Carrie is.'

'That's right, we don't,' I said. 'But I'm hoping that's going to change.'

We got out on the first floor, and I headed with purpose to the door leading to the bay, where I unlocked my car. Marino looked so frustrated, I thought he might launch into a tantrum.

'You want to tell me where the hell you're going?' he demanded at the top of his voice.

'A sports store,' I said, cranking the engine. 'The biggest one I can find.'

That turned out to be Jumbo Sports south of the James, very close to the neighborhood where Marino lived, which was the only reason I was aware of the store, since prowling for basketballs, frisbees, free weights, and golf clubs rarely entered my mind.

I took the Powhite Parkway, and two toll booths later was exiting on Midlothian Turnpike, heading toward downtown. The sports store was -big and built of red brick, with stick figures of red-painted athletes framed in white on the outside walls. The parking lot was unexpectedly full for this time of day, and I wondered how many well-toned people spent their lunch hours here.

I had no idea where anything was and had to take a few moments to study the signs above miles of rows. Boxing gloves were on sale, and there were exercise machines capable of tortures I did not know. Racks of clothes for every sport were endless and in blazing colors, and I wondered what had happened to civilized white, which was still what I wore on the much-appreciated occasion I found time to play tennis. I deduced that knives would be with camping and hunting gear, a generous area against the back wall. There were bows and arrows, targets, tents, canoes, mess kits, and camouflage, and at this hour, I was the only woman who seemed interested. At first, no one was inclined to wait on me as I hovered patiently over a showcase of knives.

A sunburnt man was looking for a BB gun for his son's tenth birthday, while an older man in a white suit was inquiring about snakebite kits and mosquito repellent. When my patience was no more, I interrupted.

'Excuse me,' I said.

The clerk, who was college age, didn't seem to hear me at first.

'Thing is, you should check with your doctor before using a snakebite kit,' the clerk was saying to the elderly man in white.

'How the hell am I supposed to do that when I'm out in the middle of the woods somewhere and some copperhead's just bit me?'

'I meant check with him before you go out in the woods, sir.'

As I listened to their backward logic I could stand it no longer.

'Snakebite kits are not only useless, but they're harmful,' I said. 'Tourniquets and local incision, sucking out the venom and all that just make matters worse. If you get bitten,' I said to the man in white, 'what you need to do is immobilize that part of your body, and avoid damaging first aid, and get to a hospital.'

The two men were startled.

'So there's no point in taking anything along?' the man in white asked me. 'No point in buying anything, you're saying?'

'Nothing but a good pair of boots and a walking stick you can poke around with,' I replied. 'Stay out of tall grass and don't stick your hands into hollows or holes. Since venom is transported through the body by the lymphatic system, broad compression bandages - like an Ace bandage - are good, and a splint to keep the limb absolutely immobilized.'

'You some kind of doctor?' the clerk asked.

'I've dealt with snake bites before.'

I didn't add that in those instances, the victims had not lived.

'I'm just wondering if you have knife sharpeners here,' I said to the clerk.

'Kitchen sharpeners or ones for camping?'

'Let's start with camping,' I said.

He pointed to a wall where a vast variety of whetstones and other types of sharpeners hung from pegs. Some were metal, others ceramic. All of the brands were proprietary enough not to reveal the composition on the packages. I scanned some more, my eyes stopping on a small package on the bottom row. Beneath clear plastic was a simple rectangular block of grayish-silver metal. It was called a fire starter and was made of magnesium. Excitement mounted as I read the instructions. To start a fire, one simply needed to scrape a knife on the surface of the magnesium and build a pile of shavings as small as the size of a quarter. Matches weren't necessary, for the fire starter included a sparking insert for ignition.