Douglas Preston - Two Graves

It was impossible not to mind her, but Pizzetti made an effort, resuming her rundown of all the preliminary results, relevant or not. Ziewicz listened with great attention and then, as Pizzetti continued, clasped her hands behind her back and made an excruciatingly slow turn around the two gurneys, the one holding the body and the other all the parts, examining them with redly pursed lips.

After several minutes, she issued a low hmmmm . And then another, with a nod, a grunt, a mumble.

Pizzetti fell silent.

Ziewicz straightened up, turned to D’Agosta. “Lieutenant, do you recall, these many years ago, the museum murders?”

“How could I forget?” It was the first time he had encountered the formidable woman, back in the days before she’d been appointed chief M.E.

“I never thought I’d live to see a case as unusual as that one. Until now.” She turned to Pizzetti and said, “You’ve missed something.”

D’Agosta could see Pizzetti freeze. “Missed… something?”

A nod. “Something crucial. Indeed, the very thing that lifts this case into…” She gestured toward the sky with a plump hand. “The stratosphere.”

A long, panicked silence followed. Ziewicz turned to D’Agosta. “Lieutenant, I’m surprised at you.”

D’Agosta found himself more amused than challenged. “What, you glimpse a claw in there somewhere?”

Ziewicz tilted her head back and issued a musical laugh. “You are very funny.” She turned back to Pizzetti while everyone else in the room exchanged puzzled glances. “A good forensic pathologist goes into an autopsy with no preconceptions whatsoever.”

“Yes,” said Pizzetti.

“But you did come in here with a preconception.”

Pizzetti’s visible panic mounted. “I don’t believe I did. I had an open mind.”

“You tried, but you did not succeed. You see, Doctor, you assumed you were dealing with something—a single corpse.”

“Respectfully, Dr. Ziewicz, I did not. I’ve examined each wound and I specifically looked for substituted body parts. But each part goes with the others. They all match up. None were switched with any other corpse.”

“Or so it seems. But you did not do a complete inventory.”

“An inventory?”

Ziewicz moved her ponderous bulk over to the second gurney, where pieces of the face had been rinsed and laid out. She pointed to a small piece of flesh. “What’s this?”

Pizzetti leaned forward, peering. “A piece of… the lip, is what I assumed.”

“Assumed.” Ziewicz reached out, selected a set of long tweezers from a tray, and picked up the piece with great delicacy. She placed it on the stage of a stereo zoom microscope, switched on the light, and stepped back, inviting Pizzetti to look.

“What do you see?” Ziewicz asked.

Pizzetti looked into the scope. “Again, it seems like a bit of lip.”

“Do you see cartilage?”

A pause. Pizzetti poked at the bit of flesh with the tweezers. “Yes, a tiny fragment.”

“So I ask again: what is it?”

“Not a lip then, but… an earlobe. It’s an earlobe.”

“Very good.”

Pizzetti straightened up, her face a mask of tension. Ziewicz seemed to expect more, however, and so after a moment Pizzetti stepped over to the gurney and examined the two ears lying like pale shells on the stainless steel.

“Um, I note that the ears are both present and undamaged. The lobes are not missing.” Pizzetti paused. After a moment, she went back to the stereo zoom and stared once more into the eyepieces, poking and prodding the earlobe with the tip of the tweezers. “I’m not sure this belonged to the perpetrator.”

“No?”

“This earlobe,” said Pizzetti, speaking carefully, “does not appear to have been torn or cut off in the process of struggle. Rather, it appears to have been removed surgically, with care, using a scalpel.”

D’Agosta remembered a small detail from the surveillance tapes he had spent hours watching, and it sent a shock through his system. He cleared his throat. “I will note for the record that the surveillance tapes indicate the perp had a small bandage over his left earlobe.”

“Oh, my God,” Pizzetti blurted into the stunned silence that followed this announcement. “You don’t think he cut off his own earlobe and left it at the scene of the crime?”

Ziewicz gave a wry smile. “An excellent question, Doctor.”

A long silence developed in the room, and finally Pizzetti said: “I’ll order up a full analysis on this earlobe, microscopics, tox tests, DNA, the works.”

Her smile broadening, Dr. Ziewicz peeled off her gloves and pulled down her mask, tossing them in the waste. “Very good, Dr. Pizzetti. You have redeemed yourself. A good day to you all, ladies and gentlemen.”

And she left.

4

DR. JOHN FELDER WALKED UP THE FRONT STEPS OF THE rambling gothic mansion. It was a brilliant late-autumn morning, the air crisp, the sky a cloudless blue. The mansion’s exterior had recently been given a thorough cleaning, and the aged bricks fairly shone in the sunlight. Even the black bars on the ornate windows had been polished. The only thing, it seemed, that had not been cleaned was a bronze plaque, screwed into the front façade: MOUNT MERCY HOSPITAL FOR THE CRIMINALLY INSANE.

Felder buzzed the front door and waited while it was unlocked from within. The door was opened by Dr. Ostrom himself—director of Mount Mercy. Felder ignored the chilly frown that gathered on Ostrom’s face. The man was not happy to see him.

Ostrom took a step back, allowing Felder to slip inside the building. Then he nodded to a waiting guard, who immediately relocked the door.

“Dr. Ostrom,” Felder said. “Thank you for allowing this visitation.”

“I did try to reach Pendergast in order to secure his approval,” Ostrom told him. “However, I’ve been unable to contact the man, and I could think of no sound reason to deny your request any longer, given your position—technically, anyway—as court-appointed psychiatrist.” He led Felder to a far side of the waiting area and lowered his voice. “However, there are some ground rules you must agree to abide by.”

“Of course.”

“You must limit your visit, and any future visits, to ten minutes.”

Felder nodded.

“You must not unduly excite the patient.”

“No, certainly not.”

“And there is to be no further talk of any extracurricular—”

“Doctor, please ,” Felder interrupted, as if even the mention of such a subject was painful.

At this, Ostrom looked satisfied. “In that case, come with me. You’ll find that she occupies the same room as before, although we have elevated the level of security.”

Felder and Ostrom followed an orderly down a long corridor, lined on both sides by unmarked doors. As he walked, Felder felt a shiver run down his spine. Barely two weeks had passed since this very building had witnessed the greatest shame and humiliation of his professional life. Because of him, a patient had been allowed to escape Mount Mercy. No, not to escape, he reminded himself: to be kidnapped, by a man posing as a fellow psychiatrist. At the thought, Felder’s cheeks flamed afresh. He himself had bought the whole deception, hook, line, and sinker. If it hadn’t been for the patient’s quick restoration to Mount Mercy, his career would have been jeopardized. As it was, he’d been given a one-month mandatory leave of absence. It had been a near miss, an extremely near miss. Yet here he was, back again. What drew him to this patient like a moth to a flame?

They waited while the orderly unlocked a heavy steel door, then they proceeded down another endless, echoing passage, stopping finally before a door identical to all the others, save that a guard stood before it. Ostrom turned to Felder.