Patricia Cornwell - From Potter's Field

I could not count the violent deaths I had worked since my career began, yet I understood many of them better than I let on from the witness stand. It is not difficult to comprehend people being so enraged, drugged, frightened or crazy that they kill.

Even psychopaths have their own twisted logic. But Temple Brooks Gault seemed beyond description or deciphering.

His first encounter with the criminal justice system had been less than five years ago when he was drinking White Russians in a bar in Abingdon, Virginia. An intoxicated truck driver, who did not like effeminate males, began to harass Gault, who had a black belt in karate. Without a word, Gault smiled his strange smile. He got up, spun around and kicked the man in the head. Half a dozen off-duty state troopers happened to be at a nearby table, which was perhaps the only reason Gault was caught and charged with manslaughter.

His career in Virginia's state penitentiary was brief and bizarre. He became the pet of a corrupt warden, who falsified Gault's identity, facilitating his escape. Gault had been out but a very short time before he happened upon a boy named Eddie Heath and killed him in much the same style he had butchered the woman in Central Park. He went on to murder my morgue supervisor, the prison warden and the prison guard named Helen. At the time, Gault was thirty-one years old.

Flakes of -snow had begun to drift past my window and in the distance were caught like fog in trees. Hoofs rang against pavement as a horse-drawn carriage went by with two passengers bundled in plaid blankets. The white mare was old and not surefooted, and when she slipped the driver beat her savagely. Other horses looked on in sad relief against the weather, heads down, coats unkempt, and I felt rage rise in my throat like bile. My heart beat furiously. I suddenly swung around as someone knocked on my door.

'Who is it?' I demanded.

Wesley said, after a pause, 'Kay?'

I let him in. A baseball cap and the shoulders of his overcoat were wet from snow. He pulled off leather gloves and stuffed them in pockets, and removed his coat without taking his eyes off me.

'What is it?' he asked.

'I'll tell you exactly what it is.' My voice shook. 'Come right over here and look.' I grabbed his hand and pulled him to the window. 'Just look! Do you think those poor, pathetic horses ever get a day off? Do you think they are properly cared for? Do you think they're ever groomed or adequately shod? You know what happens when they stumble - when it's icy and they're old as hell and almost fall?'

'Kay…'

'They're just beaten harder.'

'Kay…'

'So why don't you do something about it?' I railed on.

'What would you like me to do?'

'Just do something. The world is full of people who don't do anything and I'm goddam tired of it.'

'Would you like me to file a complaint with the SPCA?' he asked.

'Yes, I would,' I said. 'And I will, too.'

'Would it be okay if we did that tomorrow since I don't think anything's open today?'

I continued looking out the window as the driver beat his horse again. 'That's it,' I snapped.

'Where are you going?' He followed me out of the room.

He hurried after me as I headed to the elevator. I strode across the lobby and out the hotel's front door without a coat. By now, snow was falling hard, and the icy street was smooth with it. The object of my wrath was an old man in a hat hunched over in the driver's seat. He sat up straighter when he saw this middle-aged lady coming with a tall man in her wake.

'You like nice carriage ride?' he asked in a heavy accent.

The mare strained her neck toward me and cocked her ears as if she knew what was coming. She was scarred skin and bones with overgrown hoofs, her eyes dull and rimmed in pink.

'What is your horse's name?' I inquired.

'Snow White.' He looked as miserable as his pitiful mare as he started to cite his fares.

'I'm not interested in your fares,' I said as he looked wearily down at me.

He shrugged. 'So how long you want ride?'

'I don't know,' I said curtly. 'How long do I need to ride before you start beating Snow White again? And do you beat the shit out of her more or less when it's Christmas?'

'I am good to my horse,' he said stupidly.

'You are cruel to this horse and probably to everything alive and breathing,' I said.

'I have job to do,' he said as his eyes narrowed.

'I am a doctor and I am reporting you,' I said as my voice got tighter.

'What?' he chortled. 'You horse doctor?'

I stepped closer to the driver's box until I was inches from his blanket-covered legs. 'You whip this mare one more time, and I will see it,' I said with the iron calm I reserved for people I hated. 'And this man behind me will see it. From that window right up there-' I pointed. 'And one day you will wake up and find I have bought your company and fired you.'

'You do not buy company.' He glanced up curiously at the New York Athletic Club.

'You do not understand reality,' I said.

He tucked his chin into his collar and ignored me.

I was silent as I returned to my room, and Wesley did not speak, either. I took a deep breath and my hands would not stop shaking. He went to the minibar and poured us each a whiskey, then sat me on the bed, propped several pillows behind me, and took off his coat and spread it over my legs.

He turned lights off and sat next to me. For a while he rubbed my neck while I stared out the window. The snow-sky looked gray and wet, but not dreary as when it rained. I wondered about the difference, why snow seemed soft while rain felt hard and somehow colder.

It had been bitterly cold and raining in Richmond the Christmas when police discovered Eddie Heath's frail, naked body. He was propped against a Dumpster behind an abandoned building with windows boarded up, and though he would never regain consciousness, he was not yet dead. Gault had abducted him from a convenience store where Eddie had been sent by his mother to pick up a can of soup.

I would never forget the desolation of that filthy spot where the boy had been found or Gault's gratuitous cruelty of placing near the body the small bag containing the can of soup and candy bar Eddie had purchased before his death. The details made him so real that even the Henrico County officer wept. I envisioned Eddie's wounds and remembered the warm pressure of his hand when I examined him in pediatric intensive care before he was disconnected from life support.

'Oh God,' I muttered in this dim room. 'Oh God, I'm so tired of all this.'

Wesley did not reply. He had gotten up and was standing before the window, drink in hand.

'I'm so tired of cruelty. I'm so tired of people beating horses and killing little boys and head-injured women.'

Wesley did not turn around. He said, 'It's Christmas. You should call your family.'

'You're right. That's just what I need to cheer me up.' I blew my nose and reached for the phone.

At my sister's house in Miami, no one answered. I dug an address book out of my purse and called the hospital where my mother had been for weeks. A nurse in the intensive care unit said Dorothy was with my mother and she would get her.

'Hello?'

'Merry Christmas,' I said to my only sibling.

'I guess that's an irony when you consider where I am. There's certainly nothing merry about this place, not that you would know since you aren't here.'

'I'm quite familiar with intensive care,' I said. 'Where is Lucy and how is she?'

'She's out running errands with her friend. They dropped me off and will be back in an hour or so. Then we're going to Mass. Well, I don't know if the friend will since she's not Catholic.'

'Lucy's friend has a name. Her name is Janet, and she is very nice.'

'I'm not going to get into that.'