Patricia Cornwell - Unnatural Exposure

But Grigg had tuned him out, and he said to Kitchen, 'I'd like that vehicle information, too.'

'How about I get it for the last five trucks that were up there, to be safe,' Kitchen said to all of us.

'That will help a lot,' I said as I got up from the table. 'The sooner you could do that, the better.'

'What time you going to work on it tomorrow?' Ring asked me, remaining in his chair, as if there were little to do in life and so much time.

'Are you referring to the autopsy?' I asked.

'You bet.'

'I may not even open this one up for several days.'

'Why's that?'

'The most important part is the external examination. I will spend a very long time on that.' I could see his interest fade. 'I'll need to go through trash, search for trace, degrease and deflesh bones, get with an entomologist on the age of the maggots to see if I can get an idea of when the body was dumped, et cetera.'

'Maybe it's better if you just let me know what you find,' he decided.

Grigg followed me out the door and was shaking his head as he said in his slow, quiet way, 'When I got out of the army a long time ago, state police was what I wanted to be. I can't believe they got a bozo like that.'

'Fortunately, they're not all like him,' I said.

We walked out into the sun as the ambulance slowly made its way down the landfill in clouds of dust. Trucks were chugging in line and getting washed, as another layer of shredded modern America was added to the mountain. It was dark out when we reached our cars. Grigg paused by mine, looking it over.

'I wondered whose this was,' he said with admiration. 'One of these days I'm going to drive something like that. Just once.'

I smiled at him as I unlocked my door. 'Doesn't have the important things like a siren and lights.'

He laughed. 'Marino and me are in the same bowling league. His team's the Balls of Fire, mine's the Lucky Strikes. That ole boy's about the worst sport I ever seen. Drinks beer and eats. Then thinks everybody's cheating. He brought a girl the last time.' He shook his head. 'She bowled like the damn Flintstones, dressed like them, too. In this leopard-skin thing. All that was missing was a bone in her hair. Well, tell him we'll talk.'

He walked off, his keys jingling.

'Detective Grigg, thanks for your help,' I said. He gave me a nod and climbed into his Caprice.

When I designed my house, I made sure the laundry room was directly off the garage because after working scenes like this one, I did not want to track death through the rooms of my private life. Within minutes of my getting out of my car, my clothes were in the washing machine, shoes and boots in an industrial sink, where I scrubbed them with detergent and a stiff brush.

Wrapping up in a robe I kept hanging on the back of the door, I headed to the master bedroom and took a long, hot shower. I was worn out and discouraged. Right now, I did not have the energy to imagine her, or her name, or who she had been, and I pushed images and odors from my mind. I fixed myself a drink and a salad, staring dismally at the big bowl of Halloween candy on the counter as I thought of plants waiting to be potted on the porch. Then I called Marino.

'Listen,' I said to him when he answered the phone. 'I think Benton should be here for this in the morning.'

There was a long pause. 'Okay,' he said. 'Meaning you want me to tell him to get his ass to Richmond. Versus your telling him.'

'If you wouldn't mind. I'm beat.' 'No problem. What time?'

'Whenever he wants. I'll be down there all day.'

I went back to the office in my house to check e-mail before I went to bed. Lucy rarely called when she could use the computer to tell me how and where she was. My niece was an FBI agent, the technical specialist for their Hostage Rescue Team, or HRT. She could be sent anywhere in the world at a moment's notice.

Like a fretful mother, I found myself frequently checking for messages from her, dreading the day her pager went off, sending her to Andrews Air Force Base with the boys, to board yet another C-141 cargo plane. Stepping around stacks of journals waiting to be read and thick medical tomes that I recently had bought but had not yet shelved, I sat at my desk. My office was the most lived-in room in my house, and I had designed it with a fireplace and large windows overlooking a rocky bend in the James River.

Logging on to America Online, or AOL, I was greeted by a mechanical male voice announcing that I had mail. I had e-mail about various cases, trials, professional meetings and journal articles, and one message from someone I did not recognize. His user name was deadoc. Immediately, I was uneasy. There was no description of what this person had sent, and when I opened what he had written to me, it simply said, ten. A graphic file had been attached, and I downloaded and decompressed it. An image began to materialize on my screen, rolling down in color, one band of pixels at a time. I realized I was looking at a photograph of a wall the color of putty, and the edge of a table with some sort of pale blue cover on it that was smeared and pooled with something dark red. Then a ragged, gaping red wound was painted on the screen, followed by flesh tones that became bloody stumps and nipples.

I stared in disbelief as the horror was complete, and I grabbed the phone.

'Marino, I think you'd better get over here,' I said in a scared tone.

'What's wrong?' he said, alarmed.

'There's something here you need to see.'

'Are you okay?'

'I don't know.'

'Sit tight, Doc.' He took charge. 'I'm coming.'

I printed the file and saved it on my A drive, fearful it would somehow vanish before my eyes. While I waited for Marino, I dimmed the lights in my office to make details and colors brighter. My mind ran in a terrible loop as I stared at the butchery, the blood forming a vile portrait that for me, ordinarily, wasn't rare. Other physicians, scientists, lawyers and law enforcement officers frequently sent me photographs like this over the Internet. Routinely, I was asked, via e-mail, to examine crime scenes, organs, wounds, diagrams, even animated reconstructions of cases about to go to court.

This photograph could easily have been one sent by a detective, a colleague. It could have come from a Commonwealth's Attorney or CASKU. But there was one thing obviously wrong. So far we had no crime scene in this case, only a landfill where the victim had been dumped, and the trash and tattered bag that had been around her. Only the killer or someone else involved in the crime could have sent this file to me. Fifteen minutes later, at almost midnight, my doorbell rang, and I jumped out of my chair. I ran down the hall to let Marino in.

'What the hell is it now?' he said right off.

He was sweating in a gray Richmond police tee shirt that was tight over his big body and gut, and baggy shorts and athletic shoes with tube socks pulled up to his calves. I smelled stale sweat and cigarettes.

'Come on,' I said.

He followed me down the hall into my office, and when he saw what was on the computer screen, he sat in my chair, scowling as he stared.

'Is this what the shit I think it is?' he said.

'Appears the photograph was taken where the body was dismembered.' I was not used to having anyone in the private place where I worked, and I could feel my anxiety level rise.

'This is what you found today.'

'What you're looking at was taken shortly after death,' I said. 'But yes, this is the torso from the landfill.'

'How do you know?' Marino said.

His eyes were fastened to the screen, and he adjusted my chair. Then his big feet shoved books on the floor as he made himself more comfortable. When he picked up files and moved them to another corner of my desk, I couldn't stand it any longer.