Patricia Cornwell - Cause Of Death

He would come no closer, and my hands were bloody.

I looked at Marino. "Would you mind?"

"It would be my pleasure."

He went to him, took the bag and gruffly said, "Come on. We'll go through it in the hall so you can get some air. " They walked just beyond the doorway, and as I continued to work, paper rattled some more. I heard Marino drop the magazine from a pistol, open the slide and loudly complain that the gun had not been made safe.

"I can't believe you're carrying this thing around loaded," Marino's voice boomed. "Jesus Christ! You know, it's not like this is your firiggin' lunch in a bag."

"It's not been processed for prints yet."

"Well, then you put on gloves and dump the ammo like I just did. And then you clear the chamber, the way I just did. Where'd you go? The Keystone Police Academy where they also must have taught you your gentlemanly manners?"

Marino went on, and it was now clear to me why he had taken Roche into the hall, and it wasn't for fresh air. Danny glanced across the table at me and grinned.

Moments later Marino returned to us shaking his head, and Roche was gone. I was relieved, and it showed.

"Good God," I said. "What's his story?"

"He thinks with the head God gave him," Marino said.

"The one between his legs."

"Like I said," Danny replied, "he's been down here a couple of times before, bothering Dr. Mant about things.

But what I didn't tell you is he always talked to him upstairs. He never would come down to the morgue."

"I'm shocked," Marino drolly said.

"I heard that when he was in the police academy he called in sick the day they were supposed to come down here for the demo autopsy," Danny went on. "Plus, he just got transferred over from juvenile. So he's been a homicide detective for only about two months."

"Oh, now that's good," Marino said. "Just the kind of person we want working something like this." I asked him, "Can you smell the cyanide?"

"Nope. Right now all I smell is my cigarette, which is exactly how I want it."

"Danny?"

"No, ma'am." He sounded disappointed.

"So far I'm seeing no evidence that this is a diving death. No bubbles in the heart or thorax. No subcutaneous emphysema. No water in the stomach or lungs. I can't tell if he's congested." I cut another section of heart. "Well, he does have congestion of the heart, but is it due to the left heart failing the right-just due to dying, in other words? And he does have some reddening of the stomach wall, which is consistent with cyanide."

"Doc," Marino said, "how well did you know him?"

"Personally, really not at all."

"Well, I'm going to tell you what was in the bag because Roche didn't know what he was looking at and I didn't want to tell him."

He at last slipped out of his coat and looked for a safe place to hang it, deciding on the back of a chair. He lit another cigarette.

"Damn, these floors kill my feet," he said as he went to the table where hookah and hose were piled, and leaned against the edge. "It must kill your knee," he said to Danny.

"Totally kills it."

"Eddings' got a Browning nine-millimeter pistol with a Birdsong desert brown finish," Marino said.

. "What's Birdsong?" Danny placed the spleen in a hanging scale.

"The Rembrandt of pistol finishes. Mr. Birdsong's the guy you send your weapon to if you want it waterproofed and painted to blend with the environment," Marino answered. "What he does, basically, is strip it, sandblast it and then spray it with Teflon, which is baked on. All of HRT's pistols have a Birdsong finish."

HRT was the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. I felt sure that given the number of stories Eddings had done on law enforcement, he would have been exposed to the FBI Academy at Quantico and its finest trained agents.

"Sounds like something Navy SEALs would have, too," Danny suggested.

"Them, SWAT teams, counterterrorist, guys like me."

Marino was looking again at the hookah's fuel line and intake valves. "And most of us have Novak sights like he's got, too. But what we don't have is KTW metal-piercing ammo, also known as cop killers."

"He's got Teflon-coated ammo?" I glanced up.

"Seventeen rounds, one in the chamber. All with red lacquer around the primer for waterproofing."

"Well, he didn't get armor-piercing ammo here. At least not legally, because it's been outlawed in Virginia for years. And as for the finish on his pistol, are you certain it's Birdsong, the same company the Bureau uses?"

"Looks like Birdsong's magic touch to me," Marino replied.. "Course, there are other outfits that do similar work."

I opened the stomach as Marino continued to close like a fist. Eddings had seemed such a fan of law enforcement. I had heard he used to ride along with the police, and go to their picnics and their balls. He had never struck me as gung-ho about weapons, and I was stunned that he would have loaded a pistol with illegal ammunition notorious for being used to murder and maim the very people who were his sources and perhaps his friends.

"Gastric contents are just a small amount of brownish fluid," I continued. "He didn't eat near the time of death, not that I would have expected him to if he planned to dive."

"Any chance fuel exhaust could have gotten to him, say if the wind blew just right?" Marino continued studying the hookah. "Couldn't that also make him pink?"

"Certainly, we'll test for carbon monoxide. But that doesn't explain what I'm smelling."

"And you're sure?"

"I know what I'm smelling," I said.

"You think he's a homicide, don't you," Danny said to me.

"No one should be talking about this." I pulled a cord down from an overhead reel and plugged in the Stryker saw. "Not to the Chesapeake police. Not to anyone. Not until all tests are concluded and I make an official release.

I don't know what's going on here. I don't know what was going on at the scene. So we must exercise even more caution than usual."

Marino was looking at Danny. "How long you been working in this joint?" he asked.

"Eight months."

"You heard what the doc just said, right?"

Danny looked up, surprised by Marino's change in tone.

"You know how to keep your mouth shut, right?" Marino went on. "That means no bragging to the boys, no trying to impress your family or your girlfriend. You got that?"

Danny held in his anger as he made an incision low around the back of the head, ear to ear.

"See, if anything leaks, me and the doc here are going to know where it came from." Marino continued an attack that seemed completely unprovoked.

Danny reflected back the scalp. He pulled it forward over the eyes to expose the skull, and Eddings' face collapsed, sad and slack, as if he knew what was happening and was grieving. I turned on the saw, and the room was filled with the high whine of blade cutting bone.

THE SUN HAD DIPPED LOW BEHIND Ika veil of gray, and snow was several inches deep and hung like smoke in the air. Marino and I followed Danny's footsteps across the parking lot, for the young man had already gone, and I felt bad for him.

"Marino," I said, "you just can't talk to people like that.

My staff knows about discretion. Danny did nothing to merit your treating him so rudely, and I don't appreciate it."

"He's a kid," he said. "You raise him right and he'll take good care of you. Thing is, you got to believe in discipline."

"It is not your job to discipline my staff. And I have never had a problem with him."

"Yeah? And maybe this is one time when you don't need a problem with him," he replied.

"I really would appreciate it if you wouldn't try to run my office."

I was tired and out of sorts, and Lucy still was not answering the phone at Mant's house. Marino had parked next to me, and I unlocked my driver's door.