Patricia Cornwell - Black Notice

In the locker room, I changed into a plastic apron and surgical gown. My fingers were clumsy with ties and I kept dropping things. I felt chilled and achy, as if I were coming down with the flu. I was grateful I could suit up in a face shield, mask, cap, booties, layers of gloves, and all that protected me from biological hazards and my emotions. I wanted no one to see me now. It was bad enough that Rose had.

Fielding was photographing Bray's body when I walked into the autopsy room, where my two assistant chiefs and three residents were working on new cases because the day kept bringing in the dead. There was then the noise of running water and steel instruments against steel, muted voices and sounds. The telephones wouldn't stop ringing.

There was no color in this steel place except the hues of death. Contusions and suffusion were purple-blue and livor mortis was pink. Blood was bright against the yellow of fat. Chest cavities were open like tulips and organs were in scales and on cutting boards, the smell of decay strong this day.

Two other cases were juveniles, one Hispanic, one white, both of them etched with crude tattoos and stabbed multiple times. Their faces of hate and anger were relaxed into those of the boys they might have been had life landed them on a different doorstep, perhaps with different genes. A gang had been their family, the street their home. They had died the way they lived.

"… deep penetration. Four inches over the left lateral back, through twelfth rib and- aorta, over a liter of blood in left and right chest cavity," Dan Chong was dictating into the microphone clipped to his scrubs as Amy Forbes worked across the table from him.

"Did he hemoaspirate?"

"Very minimally."

"And an abrasion on the left arm. Maybe from the terminal fall? Did I tell you I'm learning to scuba dive?"

"Huh. Good luck around here. Wait until you do your open water dive in the quarry. That's real fun. Especially in winter."

"God," Fielding said. "Je-sus Christ."

He was spreading open the body bag and bloody sheet inside it. I went to him and felt the shock all over again as we freed her from her wrappings:

"Jesus Christ," Fielding kept saying under his breath.

We lifted her onto the table and she stubbornly resumed the same position she'd had on the bed. We broke the rigor mortis in her arms and legs, relaxing those rigid muscles.

"What the fuck's wrong with people?" Fielding loaded film into a camera.

"Same thing that's always been wrong with them:' l said.

We lock-attached her transportable autopsy table to one of the wall-mounted dissecting sinks. For a moment, all work in the room stopped as the other doctors came over to look. They couldn't help themselves.

"Oh, my God;" Chong muttered.

Forbes could not speak as she stared in shock.

"Please," I said, searching their faces. "This is not a demo autopsy and Fielding and I will handle it."

I began going over the body with a lens, collecting more of that long, fine hellish hair.

"He doesn't care," I said. "He doesn't care if we know all about him."

"You think he knows you went to Paris?"

"I don't know how," I said. "But I suppose he could be in touch with his family. Hell, they probably know everything."

I envisioned their big house and its chandeliers and myself scooping water out of the Seine in possibly the very spot where the killer waded in to cure his affliction. I thought of Dr. Stvan and hoped she was safe.

"He's got a dusky brain, too." Chong had gotten back tohis own work in progress.

"Yeah, so does the other one. Heroin again, maybe. 'Fourth case in six weeks, all in the city."

"Must be some good stuff going around. Dr. Scarpetta?" Chong called over to me as if this were any other afternoon, and I was working any other case. "Same tattoo, tike a homemade rectangle. In the web of the left hand, must of hurt like hell. Same gang?"

"Photograph it," I said.

There were distinctive pattern injuries, especially on Bray's forehead and left cheek, where the crushing force of the blows had lacerated the skin and. left striated impact abrasions that I had seen before.

"Possibly the threads of a pipe?" Fielding ventured.

"It doesn't quite fit a pipe," I answered.

The external examination of Bray took two more hours as Fielding and I meticulously, measured, drew and photographed every wound. Her facial bones were crushed, the flesh lacerated over bony prominences. Her teeth were broken. Some were knocked out with such force they were halfway down her throat. Her lips, ears and the flesh of her chin were avulsed off the bone, and X rays revealed hundreds of fractures and punched-out areas in bone, especially the bone table of the skull.

I was taking a- shower at 7:00 P.m., and the water running off of me was pale red because I had gotten so bloody. I felt weak and light-headed, because I hadn't eaten since early morning. There was no one left in the office but me. I walked out of the locker room drying my hair with a towel, and Marino suddenly emerged from my office. I almost screamed. I placed a hand on my chest as adrenaline shocked me.

"Don't startle me like that!" I exclaimed.

"Didn't mean to." He looked grim.

"How'd you get in?"

"Night security. We're pals. I didn't want you walking out to your car by yourself. I knew you'd still be here."

I ran my fingers through my damp hair, and he followed me into my office. I draped the towel over my chair and began collecting everything that needed to go home with me. I noticed lab reports Rose had left on my desk. Fingerprints on the bucket found inside the container matched the unidentified dead man's.

"Well, a shitload of good that does," Marino said.

In addition, there was a DNA report with a note from Jamie Kuhn. He had used short tandem repeats, or STR, and already had results.

"… found a profile… very similar with very slight differences," I scanned out loud without much heart for it. "… consistent with the depositor of the biological sample… close relative…"

I looked up at Marino.

"So, long story short, the unidentified man's and the killer's DNA are consistent with these two individuals being related to each other. Period."

"Consistent," Marino said in disgust. "I hate all this scientific consistent shit! The two assholes are brothers"

I had no doubt of that.

"We need blood samples from the parents to prove it," I said.

"Let's just call 'em up and see if we can drop by," Marino cynically replied. "The lovely Chandonne sons. Hooray."

I threw the report on top of my desk.

"Hooray is right," I said.

"Who gives a shit."

"I sure would like to know what tool he used," I said.

"I've spent all afternoon calling these big hoity-toity mansions on the river." Marino had changed his lane of thought. "The good news is everyone seems to be present and accounted for. The bad news is we still got no idea where he's hanging put. And it's twenty-five degrees out there. No way he's just walking around or sleeping under a tree.

"What about hotels?"

"Nobody hairy with a French accent or ugly teeth. Nobody even close. And no-tell motels ain't too chatty with cops."

He was walking along the hallway with me, and he seemed in no hurry to leave, as if he had something else on his mind.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Besides everything?"

"Lucy was supposed to be in D.C. yesterday, Doe, to go before the review board. They've flown in four Waco guys to counsel her, the whole nine yards. And she insists on staying here until Jo's okay."

We walked out into the parking lot.

"Everybody understands that," he went on as my anxieties grew. "But that ain't the way it works when the director of ATF is rolling up his sleeves in this and she's a no-show."