From Potter's Field

  'She keeps many secrets from me. It seems the two of you conspire against me and I'm left in the dark. It's bad enough that . . .' I caught myself.

  Wesley looked into my eyes. 'Kay, this has nothing to do with my relationship with you.'

  'I would certainly hope not.'

  'You want to know everything Lucy is doing,' he said.

  'Of course.'

  'Do you tell her everything you're doing when you're working a case?'

  'Absolutely not.'

  'I see.'

  'Why did you hang up on me?'

  'You got me at a bad time,' he answered.

  'You've never hung up on me before, no matter how bad the time.'

  He took his glasses off and carefully folded them. He reached for his coffee mug, looked inside and saw it was empty. He held it in both hands.

  'I had someone in my office, and I didn't want this individual to know you were on the line,' he said.

  'Who was it?' I said.

  'Someone from the Pentagon. I won't tell you his name.'

  'The Pentagon?' I said, mystified.

  He was quiet.

  'Why would you be concerned that someone from the Pentagon might know I was calling you?' I then asked.

  'It seems you've created a problem,' Wesley simply said, setting the coffee mug down. 'I wish you hadn't started poking around Ft. Lee.'

  I was astonished,

  'Your friend Dr. Gruber may be fired. I would advise you to refrain from contacting him further.'

  'This is about Luther Gault?' I asked.

  'Yes, General Gault.'

  They can't do anything to Dr. Gruber,' I protested.

  'I'm afraid they can,' Wesley said. 'Dr. Gruber conducted an unauthorized search in a military database. He got you classified information.'

  'Classified?' I said. 'That's absurd. It's one page of routine information that you can pay twenty dollars to see while you're visiting the Quartermaster Museum. It's not like I asked for a damn Pentagon file.'

  'You can't pay the twenty dollars unless you are the individual or have power of attorney to access that individual's file.'

  'Benton, we're talking about a serial killer. Has everybody lost their minds? Who the hell cares about a generic computer file?'

  The army does.'

  'Are we dealing with national security?'

  Wesley did not answer me.

  When he offered nothing more, I said, 'Fine. You guys can have your little secret. I'm sick and tired of your little secrets. My only agenda is to prevent more deaths. I'm no longer certain what your agenda is.' My stare was unforgiving and hurt.

  'Please,' Wesley snapped. 'You know, some days I wish I smoked like Marino does.' He blew out in exasperation. 'General Gault is not important in this investigation. He does not need to be dragged into it.'

  'I think anything we know about Temple Gault's family could be important. And I can't believe you don't feel that way. Background information is vital to profiling and predicting behavior.'

  'I'm telling you, General Gault is off limits.'

  'Why?'

  'Respect.'

  'My God, Benton.' I leaned forward in my chair. 'Gault may have killed two people with a pair of his uncle's damn jungle boots. And just how is the army going to like it when that hits Time magazine and Newsweek?'

  'Don't threaten.'

  'I most certainly will. I will do more than threaten if people don't do the right thing. Tell me about the general. I already know his nephew inherited his eyes. And the general was a bit of a peacock, since it seems he preferred being photographed in a splendid mess uniform like Eisenhower would have worn.'

  'He may have had an ego but was a magnificent man, by all accounts,' Wesley said.

  'Was he Gault's uncle, then? Are you admitting it?'

  Wesley hesitated. 'Luther Gault is Temple Gault's uncle.'

  'Tell me more.'

  'He was born in Albany and graduated from the Citadel in 1942. Two years later, when he was a captain, his division moved to France, where he became a hero in the Battle of the Bulge. He won the Medal of Honor and was promoted again. After the war, he was sent to Ft. Lee as officer in charge of the uniform research division of the Quartermaster Corps.'

  'Then the boots were his,' I said.

  'They certainly could have been.'

  'Was he a big man?'

  'I am told that he and his nephew would have been the same size when General Gault was younger.'

  I thought of the photograph of the general in the dress mess jacket. He was slender and not particularly tall. His face was strong, eyes unwavering, but he did not look unkind.

  'Luther Gault also served in Korea,' Wesley went on. 'For a while he was assigned to the Pentagon as the assistant chief of staff, then it was back to Ft. Lee as the deputy commander. He finished his career in MAC-V.'

  'I don't know what that is,' I said.

  'Military Assistance Command - Vietnam.'

  'After which he retired to Seattle?' I said.

  'He and his wife moved there.'

  'Children?'

  'Two boys.'

  'What about the general's interaction with his brother?'

  'I don't know. The general is deceased and his brother will not talk to us.'

  'So we don't know how Gault might have wound up with his uncle's boots.'

  'Kay, there is a code with Medal of Honor winners. They are in their own class. The army gives them a special status and they are stringently protected.'

  'That's what all this secrecy is about?' I said.

  'The army isn't keen on having the world know that their Medal of Honor-winning two-star general is the uncle of one of the most notorious psychopaths our country has seen. The Pentagon is not exactly keen on having it known that this killer - as you have already pointed out - may have kicked several people to death with General Gault's boots.'

  I got up from my chair. 'I'm tired of boys and their codes of honor. I'm tired of male bonding and secrecy. We are not kids playing cowboys and Indians. We're not neighborhood children playing war.' I was drained. 'I thought you were more highly evolved than that.'

  He stood up, too, as my pager went off. 'You're taking this the wrong way,' he said.

  I looked at the display. The area code was Seattle, and without asking Wesley's permission I used his phone.

  'Hello,' said a voice I did not know.

  'This number just paged me,' I was confused.

  'I didn't page anybody. Where are you calling from?'

  'Virginia.' I was about to hang up.

  'I just called Virginia. Wait a minute. Are you calling about Prodigy?'

  'Oh. Perhaps you talked to Lucy?'

  'LUCYTALK?'

  'Yes.'

  'We just this minute sent mail to each other. I'm responding to the gold foil query. I'm a dentist in Seattle and a member of the Academy of Gold Foil Operators. Are you the forensic pathologist?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Thank you so much for responding. I'm trying to identify a dead young woman with extensive gold foil restorations.'

  'Please describe them.'

  I told him about Jane's dental work and the damage to her teeth. 'It's possible she was a musician,' I added. 'She may have played the saxophone,'

  There was a lady from out here who sounds a lot like that,'

  'She was in Seattle?'

  'Right. Everyone in our academy knew about her because she had such an incredible mouth. Her gold foil restorations and dental anomalies were used in slide presentations at a number of our meetings,'

  'Do you recall her name?'

  'Sorry. She wasn't my patient. But it seems I remember hearing she was a professional musician until she was in some terrible accident. That was when her dental problems began,'

  The lady I'm talking about has a lot of enamel loss,' I said. 'Probably from overbrushing,'

  'Oh absolutely. The lady out here did, too,'

  'It doesn't sound to me as if the lady out there was a
street person,' I said.

  'Couldn't be. Someone paid for that mouth,'

  'My lady was a street person when she died in New York,' I said.

  'Geez, that makes me sad. I guess whoever she was, she really couldn't care for herself,'

  'What is your name?' I asked.

  'I'm Jay Bennett,'

  'Dr. Bennett? Do you remember anything else that might have been said during one of these slide presentations?'

  A long silence followed. 'Okay, yes. This is very vague,' He hesitated again. 'Oh, I know,' he said. The lady out here was related to someone important. In fact, that might be who she lived with out here before she disappeared.'

  I gave him further information so he could call me again. I hung up the phone and met Wesley's stare.

  'I think Jane is Gault's sister,' I said.

  'What?' He was genuinely shocked.

  'I think Temple Gault murdered his sister,' I repeated. 'Please tell me you didn't already know that.'

  He got upset.

  'I've got to verify her identity,' I said, and I had no emotion left in me right now.

  'Won't her dental records do that?'

  'If we find them. If she still has X rays left. If the army stays out of my way.'

  'The army doesn't know about her.' He paused, and for an instant his eyes were bright with tears. He looked away from me. 'He just told us what he did when he sent the message from CAIN today.'

  'Yes,' I said. 'He said CAIN killed his brother. The description of Gault with her in New York sounded more like two men than a woman and a man.' I paused. 'Are there other siblings?'

  'Just a sister. We've known she lived on the West Coast but have never been able to locate her because apparently she doesn't drive. DMV has no record of a valid license. Truth is, we've never been certain she is alive.'

  I said to him, 'She's not.'

  He flinched and looked away.

  'She hadn't lived anywhere - at least not in recent years,' I said, thinking of her pitiful belongings and malnourished body. 'She'd been on the street for a while. In fact, I'd say she survived out there all right until her brother came to town.'

  His voice caught and he looked wrecked as he said, 'How could anyone do something like that?'

  I put my arms around him. I did not care who walked in. I hugged him as a friend.

  'Benton,' I said. 'Go home.'

  17

  I spent the weekend and the New Year at Quantico, and though there was considerable mail on Prodigy, verifying Jane's identity was not promising.

  Her dentist had retired last year and her Panorex X-rays had been reclaimed for silver. The missing films, of course, were the biggest disappointment, for they might have shown old fractures, sinus configurations, bony anomalies, that could have effected a positive identification. As for her charts, when I touched upon that subject, her dentist, who was retired and now living in Los Angeles, got evasive.

  'You do have them, don't you?' I asked him point-blank on Tuesday afternoon.

  'I've got a million boxes in my garage.'

  'I doubt you have a million.'

  'I have a lot.'

  'Please. We're talking about a woman we're unable to identify. All human beings have a right to be buried with their name.'

  'I'm going to look, okay?'

  Minutes later, I said to Marino on the phone, 'We're going to have to try for DNA or a visual ID.'

  'Yo,' he said drolly. 'And just what are you going to do? Show Gault a photograph and ask if the woman he did this to looks like his sister?'

  'I think her dentist took advantage of her. I've seen it before.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Occasionally, someone takes advantage. They chart work they didn't do so they can collect from Medicare or the insurance company.'

  'But she had a hell of a lot of work done.'

  'He could have charted a hell of a lot more. Trust me. Twice as many gold foil restorations, for example. That would have meant thousands of dollars. He says he did them when he didn't. She's mentally impaired, living with an elderly uncle. What do they know?'

  'I hate assholes.'

  'If I could get hold of his charts, I would report him. But he's not going to give them up. In fact, they probably no longer exist.'

  'You got jury duty at eight in the morning,' Marino said. 'Rose called to let me know.'

  'I guess that means I leave here very early tomorrow.'

  'Go straight to your house and I'll pick you up.'

  'I'll just go straight to the courthouse.'

  'No you won't. You ain't driving downtown by yourself right now.'

  'We know Gault's not in Richmond,' I said. 'He's back wherever he usually hides out, an apartment or room where he has a computer.'

  'Chief Tucker hasn't rescinded his order for security for you.'

  'He can't order anything for me. Not even lunch.'

  'Oh yeah he can. All he does is assign certain cops to you. You either accept the situation or try to outrun them. If he wants to order your damn lunch, you'll get that, too.'

  The next morning, I called the New York Medical Examiner's Office and left a message for Dr. Horowitz that suggested he begin DNA analysis on Jane's blood. Then Marino picked me up at my house while neighbors looked out windows and opened handsome front doors to collect their newspapers. Three cruisers were parked in front, Marino's unmarked Ford in the brick drive. Windsor Farms woke up, went to work and watched me squired away by cops. Perfect lawns were white with frost and the sky was almost blue.

  When I arrived at the John Marshall Courthouse, it was as I had done so many times in the past. But the deputy at the scanner did not understand why I was here.

  'Good morning, Dr. Scarpetta,' he said with a broad smile. 'How about that snow? Don't it just make you feel like you're living in the middle of a Hallmark card? And Captain, a nice day to you, sir,' he said to Marino.

  I set off the X-ray machine. A female deputy appeared to search me while the deputy who enjoyed snow went through my bag. Marino and I walked downstairs to an orange-carpeted room filled with rows of sparsely populated orange chairs. We sat in the back, where we listened to people dozing, crackling paper, coughing and blowing their noses. A man in a leather jacket with shirt-tail hanging out prowled for magazines while a man in cashmere read a novel. Next door a vacuum cleaner roared. It butted into the orange room's door and quit.

  Including Marino, I had three uniformed officers around me in this deadly dull room. Then at eight-fifty a.m. the jury officer walked in late and went to a podium to orient us.

  'I have two changes,' she said, looking directly at me. 'The sheriff on the videotape you're about to see is no longer the sheriff.'

  Marino whispered in my ear, 'That's because he's no longer alive.'.

  'And,' the jury officer went on, 'the tape will tell you the fee for jury duty is thirty dollars, but it's still twenty dollars.'

  'Nuts.' Marino was in my ear again. 'Do you need a loan?'

  We watched the video and I learned much about my important civic duty and its privileges. I watched Sheriff Brown on tape as he thanked me again for performing this important service. He told me I had been called up to decide the fate of another person and then showed the computer he had used to select me.

  'Names called are then drawn from a jury ballot box,' he recited with a smile. 'Our system of justice depends on our careful consideration of the evidence. Our system depends on us.'

  He gave a phone number I could call and reminded all of us that coffee was twenty-five cents a cup and no change was available.

  After the video, the jury officer, a handsome black woman, came over to me.

  'Are you police?' she whispered.

  'No,' I said, explaining who I was as she looked at Marino and the other two officers.

  'We need to excuse you now,' she whispered. 'You shouldn't be here. You should have called and told us. I don't know why you're here at all.'

  The other draftee
s were staring. They had been, staring since we walked in, and the reason crystallized. They were ignorant of the judicial system, and I was surrounded by police. Now the jury officer was over here, too. I was the defendant. They probably did not know that defendants don't read magazines in the same room with the jury pool.