Kay Scarpet - Cruel And Unusual Part 26

The microscopic debris showed up on the monitor as a fascinating variety of colors, shapes, fibers, and the familiar barbules and triangular nodes.

"Well, that puts a pretty big hole in my personal theory," Downey said. "If weare talking about three homicides that occurred at different locations and at different times."

"Thatas what weare talking about."

"If just one of these feathers was eider duck, then Iad be tempted to consider the possibility that it was a contaminant. You know, you see these labels that say one hundred percent acrylic and it turns out to be ninety percent acrylic and ten percent nylon. Labels lie. If the run before your acrylic sweater, for example, was a lot of nylon jackets, then the very first sweaters that come off afterward will have nylon contaminants. As you run more sweaters through, the contaminant is dissipated."

"In other words, " I said, "if somebody is wearing a down-filled jacket or owns a comforter that got eider contaminants in it when it was manufactured, then the probability is almost nonexistent that this individualas jacket or comforter would be leaking only the eiderdown contaminants."

"Precisely. So weall a.s.sume the item in question is filled with pure eiderdown, and that is extremely curious. Usually what Iam going to see in cases that come through here are your Kmart-variety jackets, gloves, or comforters filled with chicken feathers or maybe goose. Eider is a specialty item, a very exclusive shop item. A vest, jacket, comforter, or sleeping bag filled with eiderdown is going to have very low leakage, be very well made - and prohibitively expensive."

"Have you ever had eiderdown submitted as evidence before?"

"This is the first."

"Why is it so valuable?"

"The insulating qualities Iave already described. But aesthetic appeal also has a lot to do with it. The common eideras down is snow-white. Most down is dingy."

"And if I purchased a specialty item filled with eiderdown, would I be aware that itas filled with this snow-white down or would the label simply say aduck downa?a'

"Iam quite sure youad be aware of it," he said. "The label would probably say something like aone hundred percent eiderdown.a'

There would have to be something that would justify the price."

"Can you run a computer check on down distributors?"

"Sure. But to state the obvious, no distributor is going to be able to tell you the eiderdown youave collected is theirs, not without the accompanying garment or item. Unfortunately, a feather isnat enough."

"I donat know," I said. "It might be."

By noon I had walked two blocks to where I had parked my car, and was inside with the heater blasting. I was so close to New Jersey Avenue that I felt like the tide being pulled by the moon. I fastened my seat belt, fiddled with the radio, and twice reached for the phone and changed my mind. It was crazy to even consider contacting Nicholas Grueman.

He wonat be in anyway, I thought, reaching for the phone again and dialing.

"Grueman," the voice said.

"This is Dr. Scarpetta."

I raised my voice above the heateras fan.

"Well, h.e.l.lo. I was just reading about you the other day. You sound like youare calling from a car phone."

"Thatas because I am. I happen to be in Washington."

"Iam truly flattered that you would think of me while youare pa.s.sing through my humble town."

"There is nothing humble about your town, Mr. Grueman, and there is nothing social about this call. I thought you and I should discuss Ronnie Joe Waddell."

"I see. How far are you from the Law Center?"

"Ten minutes."

"I havenat eaten lunch and I donat suppose you have, either. Does it suit you if I have sandwiches sent in?"

"That would be fine," I said.

The Law Center was located some thirty-five blocks from the universityas main campus, and I remembered my dismay many years before when I realized that my education would not include walking the old, shaded streets of the Heights and attending cla.s.ses in fine eighteenth-century brick buildings. Instead, I was to spend three long years in a brand-new facility devoid of charm in a noisy, frantic section of D.C. My disappointment, however, did not last long. There was a certain excitement, not to mention convenience, in studying law in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. But perhaps more significant was that .I had not been a student long when I met Mark.

What I remembered most about my early encounters with Mark James during the first semester of our first year was his physical effect on me. At first I found the very sight of him unsettling, though I had no idea why. Then, as we became acquainted, his presence sent adrenaline charging through my blood. My heart would gallop and I would suddenly find myself acutely aware of his every gesture, no matter how common. For weeks, our conversations were entranced as they stretched into the early-morning hours. Our words were not elements of speech as much as they were notes to some secret inevitable crescendo, which happened one night with the dazzling unpredictability and force of an accident.

Since those days, the Law Centeras physical plant had significantly grown and changed. The Criminal Justice Clinic was on the fourth floor, and when I got off the elevator there was no one in sight and offices I pa.s.sed looked unoccupied. It was, after all, still the holidays, and only the relentless or desperate would be inclined to work. The door to room 418 was open, the secretaryas desk vacant, the door to Gruemanas inner office ajar.

Not wanting to startle him, I called out his name as I approached his door. He did not answer.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Grueman? Are you here?" I tried again as I pushed his door open farther.

His desk was inches deep in clutter that pooled around a computer, and case files and transcripts were stacked on the floor along the base of the crowded bookcases. Left of his desk was a table bearing a printer and a fax machine that was busily sending something to someone. As I stood quietly staring around, the telephone rang three times and then stopped. Blinds were drawn in the window behind the desk, perhaps to reduce the glare on the computer screen, and leaning against the sill was a scarred and battered brown leather briefcase.

"Sorry about that." A voice behind me nearly sent me out of my shoes. "I stepped out for just a moment and was hoping Iad get back before you arrived."

Nicholas Grueman did not offer me his hand or a personal greeting of any kind. His preoccupation seemed to be returning to his chair, which he did very slowly and with the aid of a silver-topped cane.

"I would offer you coffee, but none is made when Evelyn isnat here," he said, seating himself in his judgeas chair. "But the deli that will be delivering lunch shortly is bringing something to drink. I hope you can wait, and please take a chair, Dr. Scarpetta. It makes me nervous when a woman is looking down on me."

I pulled a chair closer to his desk and was amazed to realize that in the flesh Grueman was not the monster I recalled from my student days. For one thing, he seemed to have shrunk, though I suspected the more likely explanation was that I had inflated him to Mount Rushmore proportions in my imagination. I saw him now as a slight, white-haired man whose face had been carved by the years into a compelling caricature. He still wore bow ties and vests and smoked a pipe, and when he looked at me, his gray eyes were as capable of dissection as any scalpel. But I did not find them cold. They were simply unrevealing, as were mine most of the time.

"Why are you limping?" I boldly asked him.

"Gout. The disease of despots," he said without a smile.

"It acts up from time to time, and please spare me any good advice or remedies. You doctors drive me to distraction with your unsolicited opinions on every subject from malfunctioning electric chairs to the food and drink I should exclude from my miserable diet."

"The electric chair did not malfunction," I said. "Not in the case Iam sure youare alluding to."

"You cannot possibly know what I am alluding to, and it seems to me that during your brief tenure here I had to admonish you more than once about your great facility for making a.s.sumptions. I regret that you did not listen to me. You are still making a.s.sumptions, though in this instance your a.s.sumption was, in fact, correct."

"Mr. Grueman, I am flattered that you remember me as a student, but I did not come here to reminisce about the wretched hours I spent in your cla.s.sroom. Nor am I here to engage, again, in the mental martial arts you seem to thrive on. For the record, I will tell you that you have the distinction of being the most misogynistic and arrogant professor I encountered during my thirty-some years of formal education. And I must thank you for schooling me so well in the art of dealing with b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, for the world is full of them and I must deal with them every day."

"Iam sure you do deal with them every day, and I havenat decided yet whether youare good at it."

"Iam not interested in your opinion on that subject. I would like you to tell me more about Ronnie Joe Waddell."

"What would you like to know beyond the obvious fact that the ultimate outcome was incorrect? How would you like politics to determine whether you are put to death, Dr. Scarpetta? Why, just look at whatas happening to you now. Isnat your recent bad press politically motivated, at least in part? Every party involved has his own agenda, something to gain from disparaging you publicly. It has nothing to do with fairness or truth. So just imagine what it would be like if these same people possessed the power to deprive you of your liberty or even of your life.

"Ronnie was torn to pieces by a system that is irrational and unfair. It made no difference what earlier precedents were applied or whether claims were addressed on direct or collateral review. It made no difference what issue I raised because in this instance in your lovely Commonwealth, habeas did not serve as a deterrent designed to ensure that state trial and appellate judges conscientiously sought to conduct their proceedings in a manner consistent with established const.i.tutional principles. G.o.d forbid that there should have been the slightest interest in const.i.tutional violations on furthering the evolution of our thinking in some area of the law. In the three years that I fought for Ronnie, I might as well have been dancing a jig."

"What const.i.tutional violations are you referring to?" I asked.

"How much time do you have? But letas begin with the prosecutionas obvious use of peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory manner. Ronnieas rights under the equal protection clause were violated from h.e.l.l to breakfast, and prosecutorial misconduct blatantly infringed his Sixth Amendment right to a jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community. I donat suppose you saw Ronnieas trial or even know much about it since it was more than nine years ago and you were not in Virginia. The local publicity was overwhelming, and yet there was no change of venue. The jury was comprised of eight women and four men. Six of the women and two of the men were white. The four black jurors were a car salesman, a bank teller, a nurse, and a college professor. The professions of the white jurors ranged from a retired railroad switchman who still called blacks an.i.g.g.e.rsa to a rich housewife whose only exposure to blacks was when she watched the news and saw that another one of them had shot someone in the projects. The demographics of the jury made it impossible for Ronnie to be sentenced fairly."

"And youare saying that such a const.i.tutional impropriety or any other in Waddellas case was politically motivated? What possible political motivation could there have been for putting Ronnie Waddell to death?"

Grueman suddenly glanced toward the door. "Unless my ears deceive me, I believe lunch has arrived."

I heard rapid footsteps and paper crinkle, then a voice called out, "Yo, Nick. You in here?"

"Come on in, Joe," Grueman said without getting up from his desk.

An energetic young black man in blue jeans and tennis shoes appeared and placed two bags in front of Grueman.

"This oneas got the drinks, and in here we got two sailor sandwiches, potato salad, and pickles. Thatas fifteen-forty."

"Keep the change. And look, Joe, I appreciate it. Donat they ever give you a vacation?"

"People donat quit eating, man. Gotta run."

Grueman distributed the food and napkins while I desperately tried to figure out what to do. I was finding myself increasingly swayed by his demeanor and words, for there was nothing shifty about him, nothing that struck me as condescending or insincere.

"What political motivation?" I asked him again as I unwrapped my sandwich.

He popped open a ginger ale and removed the top from his container of potato salad.

"Several weeks ago I thought I might just get an answer to that question," he said. "But then the person who could have helped me was suddenly found dead inside her car. And Iam quite certain you know who Iam talking about, Dr. Scarpetta. Jennifer Deighton is one of your cases, and although it has yet to be publicly stated that her death is a suicide, that is what one has been led to believe. I find the timing of her death rather remarkable, if not chilling."

"Am I to understand that you knew Jennifer Deighton?" I asked as blandly as possible.

"Yes and no. Iad never met her, and our telephone conversations, what few we had, were very brief. You see, I never contacted her until after Ronnie was dead."

"From which I am also to understand that she knew Waddell."

Grueman took a bite of his sandwich and reached for his ginger ale. "She and Ronnie definitely knew each other," he said. "As you must know, Miss Deighton had a horoscope service, was into parapsychology and that sort of thing. Well, eight years ago, when Ronnie was on death row in Mecklenburg, he happened to see an advertis.e.m.e.nt for her services in some magazine. He wrote to her, initially in hopes that she could look into her crystal ball, so to speak, and tell him his future. Specifically, I think he wanted to know if he was going to die in the electric chair, and this is not an uncommon phenomenon - inmates writing psychics, palm readers, and asking about their futures, or contacting the clergy and asking for prayers. What was a little more unusual in Ronnieas case was that he and Miss Deighton apparently began an intimate correspondence that lasted until several months before his death. Then her letters to him suddenly stopped."

"Are you considering that her letters to him might have been intercepted?"

"There is no question about that. When I talked to Jennifer Deighton on the telephone, she claimed that she had continued to write to Ronnie. She also said that she had received no letters from him over the past several months, and Iam very suspicious that this is because his letters were intercepted as well."

"Why did you wait to contact her until after the execution?" I puzzled.

"I did not know about her before then. Ronnie said nothing about her to me until our last conversation, which was, perhaps, the strangest conversation Iave ever had with any inmate Iave represented."

Grueman toyed with his sandwich and then pushed it away from him. He reached for his pipe. "Iam not sure if youare aware of this, Dr. Scarpetta, but Ronnie quit on me."

"I have no idea what you mean."

"The last time I talked with Ronnie was one week before he was to be transported from Mecklenburg to Richmond. At that time, he stated that he knew he was going to be executed and that nothing I did was going to make a difference. He said that what was going to happen to him had been set into motion since the beginning and he had accepted the inevitability of his death. He said that he was looking foward to dying and preferred that I cease pursuing federal habeas corpus relief. Then he requested that I not call him or come see him again."

"But he didnat fire you."

Grueman shot flame into the bowl of his briar pipe and sucked on the stem. "No, he did not. He simply refused to see me or talk to me on the phone."

"It would seem that this alone would have warranted a stay of execution pending a competency determination," I said.

"I tried that. I tried citing everything from Hays versus Murphy to the Lordas Prayer. The court rendered the brilliant decision that Ronnie had not asked to be executed. Head simply stated that he looked forward to death, and the pet.i.tion was denied."

"If you had no contact with Waddell in the several weeks before his execution, then how did you learn of Jennifer Deighton?"

"During my last conversation with Ronnie he made three last requests of me. The first was that I see to it that a meditation he had written was published in the newspaper days before his death. He gave this to me and I worked it out with the Richmond Times-Dispatch."

"I read it," I said.

"His second request - and I quote - was aDonat let nothing happen to my friend.a'

And I asked him what friend he referred to, and he said, and again I quote, aIf youare a good man, look out for her. She never hurt no one.a'

He gave me her name and asked me not to contact her until after his death. Then I was to call and tell her how much she had meant to him. Well, of course I did not abide by that wish to the letter. I tried to contact her immediately because I knew I was losing Ronnie and I felt that something was terribly wrong. My hope was that this friend might be able to help. If they had corresponded with each other, for example, then maybe she could enlighten me."

"And did you reach her?"

I asked, recalling Marinoas telling me that Jennifer Deighton had been in Florida for two weeks around Thanksgiving.

"No one ever answered the phone," Grueman replied. "I tried on and off for several weeks, and then, to be frank, because of timing and health fortuities relating to the pace of litigation, the holidays, and a G.o.d-awful ambush of gout, my attention was diverted. I did not think to call Jennifer Deighton again until Ronnie was dead and I needed to contact her and convey, per Ronnieas request, that she had meant a lot to him, et cetera."

"When you had attempted to reach her earlier," I said, "did you leave messages on her answering machine?"

"It wasnat turned on. Which makes sense, in retrospect. She didnat need to return from vacation to face five hundred messages from people who canat make a decision until their horoscopes have been read. And if she left a message on her machine saying that she was out of town for two weeks, that would have been a perfect invitation for burglars."

"Then what happened when you finally reached her?"

"That was when she divulged that they had corresponded for eight years and that they loved each other. She claimed that the truth would never be known. I asked her what she meant but she would not tell me and got off the phone. Finally, I wrote her a letter imploring her to speak with me."

"When did you write this letter?" I asked.

"Let me see. The day after the execution. I suppose that would have been December fourteenth."

"And did she respond?"

"She did, by fax, interestingly enough. I did not know she had a fax machine, but my fax number was on my stationery. I have a copy of her fax if you would like to see it."

He shuffled through thick file folders and other paperwork on his desk. Finding the file he was looking for, he flipped through it and withdrew the fax, which I recognized instantly. "Yes, Iall cooperate," it read, "but itas too late, too late, too late. Better you should come here. This is all so wrong!"

I wondered how Grueman would react if he knew that her communication with him had been recreated through image enhancement in Neils Vanderas laboratory.

"Do you know what she meant? What was too late and what was so wrong?" I asked.

"Obviously, it was too late to do anything to stop Ronnieas execution since that had already occurred four days earlier. Iam not certain what she thought was so wrong, Dr. Scarpetta. You see, I have sensed for quite some time that there was something malignant about Ronnieas case. He and I never developed much of a rapport and that alone is odd. Generally, you get very close. Iam the only advocate in a system that wants you dead the only one working for you in a system that doesnat work for you. But Ronnie was so aloof with his first attorney that this individual decided the case was hope-less and quit. Later, when I took on the case, Ronnie was just as distant. It was extraordinarily frustrating. Just when I would think he was beginning to trust me, a wall would go up. He would suddenly retreat into silence and literally begin to perspire."

"Did he seem frightened?"