Kay Scarpet - Cruel And Unusual Part 3

"Eddie Heath was not delivering papers when he was a.s.saulted."

"Doesnat matter. I wouldnat permit it, not these days. Letas see."

She touched a finger to the side of her nose. "Fieldingas downstairs doing an autopsy and Susanas off delivering several brains to MCV for consultation. Other than that, nothing happened while you were out except the computer went down."

"Is it still down?"

"I think Margaretas working on it and is almost done," Rose said.

"Good. When itas up again, I need her to do a search for me. Codes to look for would be cutting, mutilation, cannibalism, bite marks. Maybe a free-format search for the words excised, skin, fresh - a variety of combination of them. You might try dismemberment, too, but I donat think thatas what weare really after."

"For what part of the state and what time period?" Rose took notes.

"All of the state for the past five years. Iam particularly interested in cases involving children, but letas not restrict ourselves to that. And ask her to see what the Trauma Registryas got. I spoke with the director at a meeting last month and he seemed more than willing for us to share data."

"You mean you also want to check victims who have survived?"

"If we can, Rose. Letas check everything to see if we find any cases similar to Eddie Heathas."

"Iall tell Margaret now and see if she can get started," my secretary said on her way out.

I began going through the articles she had clipped from a number of morning newspapers. Unsurprisingly, much was being made of Ronnie Waddellas allegedly bleeding from "his eyes, nose, and mouth."

The local chapter of Amnesty International was claiming that his execution was no less inhumane than any homicide. A spokesman for the ACLU stated that the electric chair "may have malfunctioned, causing Waddell to suffer terribly," and went on to compare the incident to the execution in Florida in which synthetic sponges used for the first time had resulted in the condemned manas hair catching fire.

Tucking the news stories inside Waddellas file, I tried to antic.i.p.ate what pugilistic rabbits his attorney, Nicholas Grueman, would pull out of his hat this time. Our confrontations, though infrequent, had become predictable. His true agenda, I was about to believe, was to impeach my professional competence and in general make me feel stupid. But what bothered me most was that Grueman gave no indication that he remembered I had once been his student at Georgetown. To his credit, I had despised my first year of law school, had made my only B, and missed out on Law Review. l would never forget Nicholas Grueman as long as I lived, and it did not seem right that he should have forgotten me.

I heard from him on Thursday, not long after I had been informed that Eddie Heath was dead.

"Kay Scarpetta?" Gruemanas voice came over the line.

"Yes."

I closed my eyes and knew from the pressure behind them that a raging front was rapidly advancing.

"Nicholas Grueman here. Iave been looking over Mr. Waddellas provisional autopsy report and have a few questions."

I said nothing.

"Iam talking about Ronnie Joe Waddell."

"What can I help you with?"

"Letas start with his so-called almost tubular stomach. An interesting description, by the way. Iam wondering if thatas your vernacular or a bona fide medical term? Am I correct in a.s.suming Mr. Waddell wasnat eating?"

"I canat say that he wasnat eating at all. But his stomach had shrunk. It was empty and clean."

"Was it, perhaps, reported to you that he may have been on a hunger strike?"

"No such thing was reported to me."

I glanced up at the clock and light stabbed my eyes. I was out of aspirin and had left my decongestant at home.

I heard pages flip.

"It says here that you found abrasions on his arms, the inner aspects of both upper arms," Grueman said.

"Thatas correct."

"And just what, exactly, is an inner aspect?"

"The inside of the arm above the antecubital fossa."

A pause. "The antecubital fossa," he said in amazement.

"Well, let me see. Iave got my own arm turned palm up and am looking at the inside of my elbow. Or where the arm folds, actually. That would be accurate, wouldnat it? To say that the inner aspect is the side where the arm folds, and the antecubual fossa, therefore, is where the arm folds?"

"That would be accurate."

"Well, well, very good. And to what do you attribute these injuries to the inner aspects of Mr. Waddenas "Possibly to restraints," I said testily.

"Restraints?"

"Yes, as in the leather restraints a.s.sociated with the electric chair."

"You said possibly. Possibly restraints?"

"Thatas what I said."

"Meaning, you canat say with certainty, Dr. Scarpetta?"

"Thereas very little in this life that one can say with certainty, Mr. Grueman."

"Meaning that it would be reasonable to entertain the possibility that the restraints that caused the abrasions could have been of a different variety? Such as the human variety? Such as marks left by human hands?"

"The abrasions I found are inconsistent with injuries inflicted by human hands," I said.

"And are they consistent with the injuries inflicted by the electric chair, with the restraints a.s.sociated with it?"

"It is my opinion that they would be."

"Your opinion, Dr. Scarpettaa?"

"I havenat actually examined the electric chaira I said sharply.

This was followed by a long pause, for which Nicholas Grueman had been famous in the cla.s.sroom when he wanted a studentas obvious inadequacy to hang in the air. I envisioned him hovering over me, hands clasped behind his back, his face expressionless as the clock ticked loudly on the wall. Once I had endured his silent scrutiny for more than two minutes as my eyes raced blindly over pages of the casebook opened before me. And as I sat at my solid walnut desk some twenty years later, a middle-aged chief medical examiner with enough degrees and certificates to paper a wall, I felt my face begin to burn. I felt the old humiliation and rage.

Susan walked into my office as Grueman abruptly ended the encounter with "Good day" and hung up..

"Eddie Heathas body is here."

Her surgical gown was untied in back and clean, the expression on her face distracted. "Can he wait until the morning?"

"No," I said. "He canat."

The boy looked smaller on the cold steel table than he had seemed in the bright sheets of his hospital bed. There were no rainbows in this room, no walls or windows decorated with dinosaurs or color to cheer the heart of a child. Eddie Heath had come in naked with IV needles, catheter, and dressings still in place. They seemed sad remnants of what had held him to this world and then disconnected him from it, like string tailing a balloon blowing forlornly through empty air. For the better part of an hour I doc.u.mented injuries and marks of therapy while Susan took photographs and answered the phone.

We had locked the doors leading into the autopsy suite, and beyond I could hear people getting off the elevator and heading home in the rapidly descending dark. Twice the buzzer sounded in the bay as funeral home attendants arrived to bring a body or take one away. The wounds to Eddies shoulder and thigh were dry and a dark shiny red.

"G.o.d," Susan said, staring. "G.o.d, who would do something like that? Look at all the little cuts to the edges, too. Itas like somebody cut crisscrosses and then removed the whole area of skin."

"Thatas precisely what I think was done."

"You think someone carved some sort of pattern?"

"I think someone attempted to eradicate something. And when that didnat work, he removed the skin."

"Eradicate what?"

"Nothing that was already there," I said. "He had no tattoos, birthmarks, or scars in those areas. If something wasnat already there, then perhaps something was added and had to be removed because of the potential evidentiary value."

"Something like bite marks."

"Yes," I said.

The body was not yet fully rigorous and was still slightly warm as I began swabbing any area that a washcloth might have missed. I checked axillas, gluteal folds, behind ears and inside them, and inside the navel. I clipped fingernails into clean white envelopes and looked for fibers and other debris in hair.

Susan continued to glance at me, and I sensed her tension. Finally she asked, "Anything special youare liking for?"

"Dried seminal fluid, for one thing," I said.

"1n his axilla?"

"There, in any crease in skin, any orifice, anywhere."

"You donat usually look in all those places."

"I donat usually look for zebras."

"For what?"

"We used to have a saying in medical school. If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses. But in a case like this I know weare looking for zebras," I said. I began going over every inch of the body with a lens.

When I got to his wrists, I slowly turned his hands the way and that, studying them for such a long time that Susan stopped what she was doing. I referred to the diagrams on my clipboard, correlating each mark of therapy with the ones I had drawn "Where are his charts?" I glanced around.

"Over here."

Susan fetched paperwork from a countertop. I began flipping through charts, concentrating particularly on emergency room records and the report filled in by the rescue squad. Nowhere did it indicate that Eddie Heathas hands had been bound. I tried to remember what Detective Trent had said to me when describing the scene where the boyas body had been found. Hadnat Trent said that Eddieas hands were by his sides? "You find something?"

Susan finally asked.

"You have to look through the lens to see. There. The undersides of his wrists and here on the left one, to the left of the wrist bone. You see the gummy residue? The traces of adhesive? It looks like smudges of grayish dirt."

"Just barely. And maybe some fibers sticking to it," Susan marveled, her shoulder pressed against mine as slue stared through the lens.

"And the skinas smooth," I continued to point out. "Less hair in this area than here and here."

"Because when the tape was removed, hairs would have been pulled out."

"Exactly. Weall take wrist hairs for exemplars. The adhesive and fibers can be matched back to the tape, if the tape is ever recovered. And if the tape that bound him is recovered, it can be matched back to the roll."

"I donat understand."

She straightened up and looked at me. "His IV lines were held in place with adhesive tape. You sure thatas not the explanation?"

"There are no needle marks on these areas of his wrists that would indicate marks of therapy," I said to her. "And you saw what was taped to him when he came in. Nothing to account for the adhesive here."

"True."

"Letas take photographs and then Iam going to collect this adhesive residue and let Trace see what they find."

"His body was outside next to a Dumpster. Seems like that would be a Trace nightmare."

"It depends on whether this residue on his wrists was in contact with the pavement."

I began gently sc.r.a.ping the residue off with a scalpel.

"I donat guess they did a vacuuming out there."

"No, Iam sure they wouldnat have. But I think we can still get sweepings if we ask nicely. It canat hurt to try."

I continued examining Eddie Heathas thin forearms and wrists, looking for contusions or abrasions I might have missed. But I did not find any.

"His ankles look okay," Susan said from the far end of the table. "I donat see any adhesive or areas where the hair is gone. No injuries. It doesnat look like he was taped around his ankles. just his wrists."

I could recall only a few cases in which a victimas tight bindings had left no mark on skin. Clearly, the strapping tape, had been in direct contact with Eddies skin. He should have moved his hands, wriggled as his discomfort had grown and his circulation had been restricted. But he had not resisted. He had not tugged or squirmed or tried to get away.

I thought of the blood drips on the shoulder of his jacket and the soot and stippling on the collar. I again checked around his mouth, looked at his tongue, and glanced over his charts. If he had been gagged, there was no evidence of it now, no abrasions or bruises, no traces of adhesive. I imagined him propped against the Dumpster, naked and in the bitter cold, his clothing piled by his side, not neatly, not sloppily, but casually from the way it had been described to me. When I tried to sense the emotion of the crime, I did not detect anger, panic, or fear.

"He shot him first, didnat he?"

Susanas eyes were alert like those of a wary stranger you pa.s.s on a desolate, dark street. "Whoever did this taped his wrist, together after he shot him."

"Iam thinking that."

"But thatas so weird," she said. "You donat need to bind someone youave just shot in the head."

"We donat know what this individual fantasizes about."