Point of Origin

  The new autopsy room was much bigger than the one before as it was better designed to utilize space. No longer were large steel tables built into the floor, so they could be parked out of the way when not in use. The five new tables were transportable and could be wheeled out of the refrigerator, and wall-mounted dissecting sinks accommodated both right- and left-handed doctors. Our new tables had roller trays so we no longer had to use our backs to lift or move bodies, and there were non-clogging aspirators, and eye wash stations, and a special dual exhaust duct connected to the building’s ventilation system.

  All in all, the Commonwealth had granted me most of what I needed to ease the Virginia Medical Examiner System into the third millennium, but in truth, there was no such thing as change, at least not for the better. Each year we explored more damage done by bullets and blades, and more people filed frivolous lawsuits against us, and the courts miscarried justice as a matter of course because lawyers lied and jurors did not seem interested in evidence or facts anymore.

  Frigid air rushed as I opened the cooler’s massive door, and I walked past body bags and bloody plastic shrouds and stiff protruding feet. Brown-paper-bagged hands meant a violent death, and small pouches reminded me of a sudden infant death and the toddler who had drowned in the family pool. My fire case was swathed, broken glass and all, just as I had left it. I rolled the gurney out into a blaze of fluorescent light. Then I changed shoes again and walked to the other end of the first floor, where our offices and conference room were sequestered from the dead.

  It was almost eight-thirty, and residents and clerical staff were getting coffee and traveling the hall. We exchanged our usual detached good mornings as I headed toward Fielding’s open door. I knocked once and walked in as he talked on the phone and hastily scribbled information on a call sheet.

  “Start again?” he said in his strong blunt voice as he cradled the receiver between his shoulder and chin and absently ran his fingers through his unruly dark hair. “What’s the address? What’s the officer’s name?”

  He did not glance up at me as he wrote.

  “You got a local phone number?”

  He quickly read it back to make sure he’d gotten it right.

  “Any idea what kind of death this is? Okay, okay. What cross street and will I see you in your cruiser? All right, you’re good to go.”

  Fielding hung up and looked harried for so early in the morning.

  “What have we got?” I asked him as the business of the day began to mount.

  “Looks like a mechanical asphyxiation. A black female with a history of alcohol and drug abuse. She’s hanging off the bed, head against the wall, neck bent at an angle inconsistent with life. She’s nude, so I think I’d better take a look to make sure this isn’t something else.”

  “Someone definitely should take a look,” I agreed.

  He got my meaning.

  “We can send Levine if you want.”

  “Good idea, because I’m going to start the fire death and would like your help,” I said. “At least in the early stages.”

  “You got it.”

  Fielding pushed back his chair and unfolded his powerful body. He was dressed in khakis, a white shirt with sleeves rolled up, Rockports, and an old woven leather belt around his hard, trim waist. Past forty now, he was no less diligent about his physical condition, which was no less remarkable than it had been when I had first hired him shortly after I had taken office. If only he cared about his cases quite so much. But he had always been respectful and faithful to me, and although he was slow and workmanlike, he was not given to assumptions or mistakes. For my purposes, he was manageable, reliable, and pleasant, and I would not have traded him for another deputy chief.

  We entered the conference room together, and I took my seat at the head of the long glossy table. Charts and models of muscles and organs and the anatomical skeleton were the only decor, save for the same dated photographs of previous male chiefs who had watched over us in our previous quarters. This morning, the resident, a fellow, my three deputy and assistant chiefs, the toxicologist, and my administrators were present and accounted for. We had a medical student from MCV who was doing her elective here, and a forensic pathologist from London who was making the rounds in American morgues to learn more about serial murders and gunshot wounds.

  “Good morning,” I said. “Let’s go over what we’ve got, and then we’ll talk about our fire fatality and the implications of that.”

  Fielding began with the possible mechanical asphyxiation, and then Jones, the administrator for the central district, which was the physical office where we were located, quickly ran through our other cases. We had a white male who fired five bullets into his girlfriend’s head before blasting away at his own misguided brain. There were the sudden infant death and the drowning, and a young man who may have been changing out of his shirt and tie when he smashed his red Miata into a tree.

  “Wow,” said the medical student, whose name was Sanford. “How do you figure he was doing that?”

  “Tank top half on, shirt and tie crumpled on the passenger’s seat,” Jones explained. “Seems he was leaving work to meet some friends at a bar. We’ve had these cases before—someone changing clothes, shaving, putting on makeup while they’re driving.”

  “That’s when you want the little box on the death certificate that says manner of death was stupid,” Fielding said.

  “Quite possibly all of you are aware that Carrie Grethen escaped from Kirby last night,” I went on. “Though this does not directly impact this office, clearly we should be more than a little concerned.”

  I tried to be as matter-of-fact as possible.

  “Expect the media to call,” I said.

  “They already have,” said Jones as he peered at me over his reading glasses. “The answering service has received five calls since last night.”

  “About Carrie Grethen.” I wanted to be sure.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “And four more calls about the Warrenton case.”

  “Let’s get to that,” I said. “There will be no information coming from this office at this point. Not about the escape from Kirby nor the Warrenton death. Fielding and I will be downstairs the better part of the day, and I want no interruptions that aren’t absolutely necessary. This case is very sensitive.”

  I looked around the table at faces that were somber but alive with interest.

  “At present I don’t know if we’re dealing with an accident, suicide, or homicide, and the remains have not been identified. Tim,” I addressed the toxicologist, “let’s get a STAT alcohol and CO. This lady may have been a drug abuser, so I’ll want a drug screen for opiates, amphetamines and methamphetamine, barbiturates, cannabinoids, as fast as you can get it.”

  He nodded as he wrote this down. I paused long enough to scan newspaper articles that Jones had clipped for me, then I followed the hallway back to the morgue. In the ladies’ locker room I removed my blouse and skirt and went to a cabinet to fetch a transmitter belt and mike that had been custom-designed for me by Lanier. The belt went around my upper waist under a long-sleeved blue surgical gown so the mike key would not come into direct contact with bloody hands. Last, I clipped the cordless mike to my collar, laced up my morgue shoes again, covered them with booties, and tied on a face shield and surgical mask.

  Fielding emerged into the autopsy room the same time I did.

  “Let’s get her into X ray,” I said.

  We rolled the steel table across the corridor into the X-ray room and lifted the body and accompanying fire debris by corners of the sheets. This we transferred onto a table beneath the C-arm of the Mobile Digital Imaging System, which was an X-ray machine and fluoroscope in one computer-controlled unit. I went through the various set-up procedures, locking in various connecting cables and turning on the work station with a key. Lighted segments and a time line lit up on the control panel, and I loaded a film cassette into the holder and pressed a floor pedal to activate the video m
onitor.

  “Aprons,” I said to Fielding.

  I handed him a lead-lined one that was Carolina blue. Mine was heavy and felt full of sand as I tied it in back.

  “I think we’re ready,” I announced as I pressed a button.

  By moving the C-arm, we were able to capture the remains in real time from many different angles, only unlike the examination of hospital patients, what we viewed did not breathe or beat or swallow. Static images of dead organs and bones were black and white on the video screen, and I saw no projectiles or anomalies. As we pivoted the C-arm some more, we discovered several radiopaque shapes that I suspected were metal objects mingled with the debris. We watched our progress on screen, digging and sifting with our gloved hands until I closed my fingers around two hard objects. One was the size and shape of a half dollar, the other smaller than that and square. I began cleaning them in the sink.

  “What’s left of a small silver metal belt buckle,” I said as I dropped it into a plasticized carton, which I labeled with a Magic Marker.

  My other find was easier, and I did not have to do much to it to determine that it was a wristwatch. The band had burned off and the sooty crystal was shattered. But I was fascinated by the face, which upon further rinsing turned out to be a very bright orange etched with a strange abstract design.

  “Looks like a man’s watch to me,” Fielding observed.

  “Women wear watches this big,” I said. “I do. So I can see.”

  “Some kind of sports watch, maybe?”

  “Maybe.”

  We rotated the C-arm here and there, continuing to excavate as radiation from the X-ray tube passed through the body and all the muck and charred material surrounding it. I spotted what looked like the shape of a ring located somewhere beneath the right buttock, but when I tried to grab it, nothing was there. Since the body had been on its back, much of the posterior regions had been spared, including clothing. I wedged my hands under the buttocks and worked my fingers into the back pockets of the jeans, recovering half a carrot and what appeared to be a plain wedding band that at first looked like steel. Then I realized it was platinum.

  “That looks like a man’s ring, too,” Fielding said. “Unless she had really big fingers.”

  He took the ring from me to examine it more closely. The stench of burned decaying flesh rose from the table as I discovered more strange signs pointing to what this woman may have done prior to dying. There were dark, coarse animal hairs adhering to wet filthy denim, and though I couldn’t be certain, I was fairly sure their origin was equine.

  “Nothing engraved in it,” he said, sealing the ring inside an evidence envelope.

  “No,” I confirmed with growing curiosity.

  “Wonder why she had it in her back pocket instead of wearing it.”

  “Good question.”

  “Unless she was doing something that might have caused her to take it off,” he continued to think aloud. “You know, like people taking off their jewelry when they wash their hands.”

  “She may have been feeding the horses.”

  I collected several hairs with forceps.

  “Maybe the black foal that got away?” I supposed.

  “Okay,” he said, and he sounded very dubious. “And what? She’s paying attention to the little guy, feeding him carrots, and then doesn’t return him to his stall? A little later, everything burns, including the stables and the horses in them? But the foal gets away?”

  He glanced at me across the table.

  “Suicide?” he continued to speculate. “And she couldn’t bring herself to kill the colt? What’s his name, Windsong?”

  But there were no answers to any of these questions right now, and we continued to make X rays of personal effects and pathology, to give us a permanent case record. But mostly we explored, in real time on screen, recovering grommets from jeans and an intrauterine device that suggested she had been sexually active with males.

  Our findings included a zipper and a blackened lump the size of a baseball that turned out to be a steel bracelet with small links and a serpent silver ring that held three copper keys. Other than sinus configurations, which are as distinct as fingerprints in every human being, and a single porcelain crown on the right maxillary central incisor, we discovered nothing else obvious that might effect an identification.

  At close to noon, we rolled her back across the corridor into the autopsy room and attached her table to a dissecting sink in the farthest corner, out of the main traffic. Other sinks were busy and loud as water drummed stainless steel, and stepladders were scooted as other doctors weighed and sectioned organs and dictated their findings into tiny mikes while various detectives looked on. The chatter was typically blunt with fractured sentences, our communication as random and disjointed as the lives of our cases.

  “Excuse me, need to be right about where you are.”

  “Darn, I need a battery.”

  “What kind?”

  “Whatever the hell goes in this camera.”

  “Twenty dollars, right front pocket.”

  “Probably not robbery.”

  “Who’s gonna count pills. Got a shitload.”

  “Dr. Scarpetta, we just got another case. Possible homicide,” a resident loudly said as he hung up a phone that was designated for clean hands.

  “We may have to hold it until tomorrow,” I responded as our work load worsened.

  “We’ve got the gun from the murder-suicide,” one of my assistant chiefs called out.

  “Unloaded?” I answered back.

  “Yeah.”

  I walked over to make sure, for I never made assumptions when firearms came in with bodies. The dead man was big and still dressed in Faded Glory jeans, the pockets turned inside out by police. Potential gunshot residue on his hands was protected by brown paper bags, and blood trickled from his nose when a wooden block was placed beneath his head.

  “Do you mind if I handle the gun?” I asked the detective, above the whine of a Stryker saw.

  “Be my guest. I’ve already lifted prints.”

  I picked up the Smith & Wesson pistol and pulled back the slide to check for a cartridge, but the chamber was clear. I dabbed a towel over the bullet wound in the head, as my morgue supervisor, Chuck Ruffin, honed a knife with long sweeps over a sharpening stone.

  “See the black around there and the muzzle imprint?” I said as the detective and a resident leaned close. “You can see the sight here. It’s contact right-handed. The exit’s here, and you can see by the dripping he was lying on his right side.”

  “That’s how we found him,” the detective said as the saw whined on and a bony dust drifted through the air.

  “Be sure to note the caliber, make, and model,” I said as I returned to my own sad chore. “And is the ammunition ball versus hollow point?”

  “Ball. Remington nine-mill.”

  Fielding had parallel-parked another table nearby and covered it with a sheet that he had piled with the fire debris that we had already sifted through. I began measuring the lengths of her badly burned femurs in hopes I could make an estimate of height. The rest of her legs were gone from just above the knees to the ankles, but her feet had been spared by her boots. In addition, she had burn amputations of her forearms and hands. We collected fragments of fabric and drew diagrams and collected more animal hairs, doing all that we could before beginning the difficult task of removing the glass.

  “Let’s get the warm water going,” I said to Fielding. “Maybe we can loosen without tearing skin.”

  “It’s like a damn roast stuck to the pan.”

  “Why are you guys always making food analogies?” came a deep, sure voice I recognized.

  Teun McGovern, in full morgue protective garb, was walking toward our table. Her eyes were intense behind her face shield, and for an instant we stared straight at each other. I was not the least bit surprised that ATF would have sent a fire investigator to watch the postmortem examination. But I had never expected Mc
Govern to show up.

  “How’s it going in Warrenton?” I asked her.

  “Working away,” she replied. “We haven’t found Sparkes’s body, which is a good thing, since he’s not dead.”

  “Cute,” Fielding said.

  McGovern positioned herself across from me, standing far enough back from the table to suggest to me that she had seen very few autopsies.

  “So what exactly are you doing?” she asked as I picked up a hose.

  “We’re going to run warm water between the skin and the glass in hopes we can peel the two apart without further damage,” I replied.

  “And what if that doesn’t work?”

  “Then we got a big fat mess,” Fielding said.

  “Then we use a scalpel,” I explained.

  But this was not necessary. After several minutes of a constant warm bath, I began to very slowly and gently separate the thick broken glass from the dead woman’s face, the skin pulling and distorting as I peeled, making her all the more horrible to look at. Fielding and I worked in silence for a while, gently laying shards and sections of heat-stressed glass into a plastic tub. This took about an hour, and when we were done, the stench was stronger. What was left of the poor woman seemed more pitiful and small, and the damage to her head was even more striking.

  “My God,” McGovern said as she stepped closer. “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  The lower part of the face was chalky bone, a barely discernible human skull with open jaws and crumbling teeth. Most of the ears were gone, but from the eyes up, the flesh was cooked and so remarkably preserved that I could see the blond fuzz along the hairline. The forehead was intact, although slightly abraded by the removal of the glass, so that it was no longer smooth. If there had been wrinkles, I could not find them now.

  “I can’t figure out what the hell this is,” Fielding said as he examined the bits of material mingled with hair. “It’s everywhere, all the way down to her scalp.”

  Some of it looked like burned paper, while other small pieces were pristinely preserved and a neon pink. I scraped some of it onto my scalpel and placed it into another carton.