Cause of Death

  I paused in her doorway.

  "Catechism. Using inclusive language, of course. I had a religion course at UVA. Do you want dinner?"

  "What would you like?" I said.

  "Whatever's easy." She came over and hugged me.

  "Aunt Kay, I'm sorry," she said.

  In the kitchen I opened the freezer first and was not inspired by anything I saw. Next I looked inside the refrigerator, but my appetite had gone into hiding along with my peace of mind. I ate a banana and made a pot of coffee. At half past eight, the base station on the counter startled me.

  "Unit six hundred to base station one," Marino's voice came over the air.

  I picked up the microphone and answered him, "Base station one."

  "Can you call me at a number""

  "Give it to me," I said, and I had a bad feeling.

  It was possible the radio frequency used by my office could be monitored, and whenever a case was especially sensitive, the detectives tried to keep all of us off the air.

  The number Marino gave me was for a pay phone.

  When he answered, he said, "Sorry, I didn't have any change."

  "What's going on?" I didn't waste time.

  "I'm skipping the M.E. on call because I knew you'd want us to get hold of you first."

  "What is it?"

  "Shit, Doc, I'm really sorry. But we've got Danny."

  "Danny?" I said in confusion.

  "Danny Webster. From your Norfolk office."

  "What do you mean you've got him?" I was gripped by fear. "What did he do?" I imagined he had gotten arrested driving my car. Or maybe he had wrecked it.

  Marino said, "Doc, he's dead."

  Then there was silence on his end and mine.

  "Oh God." I leaned against the counter and shut my eyes. "Oh my God," I said. "What happened?"

  "Look, I think the best thing is for you to get down here.

  "Where are you?"

  "Sugar Bottom, where the old train tunnel is. Your car's about a block uphill at Libby Hill Park." I asked nothing further but told Lucy I was leaving and probably would not be home until late. I grabbed my medical bag and my pistol, for I was familiar with the skid row part of town where the tunnel was, and I could not imagine what might have lured Danny there. He and his friend were to have driven my car and Lucy's Suburban to my office, where my administrator was to meet them in back and give them a ride to the bus station. Certainly, Church Hill was not far from the OCME, but I could not imagine why Danny would have driven anywhere in my Mercedes other than where he knew he was to be. He did not seem the type to abuse my trust.

  I drove swiftly along West Cary Street, passing huge brick homes with roof-, of copper and slate, and entrances barricaded by tall black wrought-iron gates. It seemed surreal to be speeding in the morgue wagon through this elegant part of the city while one of my employees lay dead, and I fretted over leaving Lucy alone again. I could not remember if I had armed the alarm system and turned the motion sensors off on my way out. My hands were shaking and I wished I could smoke.

  Libby Hill Park was on one of Richmond's seven hills in an area where real estate was now considered prime.

  Century-old row houses and Greek Revival homes had been brilliantly restored by people hold enough to reclaim a historic section of the city from the clutches of decay and crime. For most residents, the chance they took had turned out fine, but I knew I could not live near housing projects and depressed areas where the major industry was drugs. I did not want to work cases in my neighborhood.

  Police cruisers with lights throbbing red and blue lined both sides of Franklin Street. The night was very dark, and I could barely make out the octagonal bandstand or bronze soldier on his tall granite pedestal facing the James. My Mercedes was surrounded by officers and a television crew, and people had emerged on wide porches to watch. As I slowly drove past, I could not tell if my car had been damaged, but the driver's door was open, the interior light on.

  East past 29th Street, the road sloped down to a section known as Sugar Bottom, named for prostitutes once kept in business by Virginia gentlemen, or maybe it was for moonshine. I wasn't sure of the lore. Restored homes abruptly turned into slumlord apartments and leaning tarpaper shacks, and off the pavement, midway down the steep hill, were woods thick and dense where the C&O tunnel had collapsed in the twenties.

  I remembered flying over this area in a state police helicopter once, and the tunnel's black opening had peeked out of trees at me, its railroad bed a muddy scar leading to the river. I thought of the train cars and laborers supposedly still sealed inside, and again, I could not imagine why Danny would have come here willingly. If nothing else, he would have worried about his injured knee. Pulling over, I parked as close to Marino's Ford as I could, and instantly was spotted by reporters.

  "Dr. Scarpetta, is it true that's your car up the hill?"

  asked a woman journalist as she hurried to my side. "I understand the Mercedes is registered to you. What color is it? Is it black?" she persisted when I did not reply.

  "Can you explain how it got there?" A man pushed a microphone close to my face.

  "Did you drive it there?" asked someone else.

  "Was it stolen from you? Did the victim steal it from you'? Do you think this is about drugs?"

  Voices folded into each other because no one would wait his turn and I would not speak. When several uniformed officers realized I had arrived, they loudly intervened.

  "Hey, get back."

  "Now. You heard me."

  "Let the lady through."

  "Come on. We got a crime scene to work here. I hope that's all right with you."

  Marino was suddenly holding on to my arm. "Bunch of squirrels," he said as he glared at them. "Be real careful where you step. We got to go through the woods almost all the way to where the tunnel is. What kind of shoes you got on""

  "I'll be all right."

  There was a path, and it was long and led steeply down from the street. Lights had been set up to illuminate the way, and they cut a swath like the moon on a dangerous bay. On the margins, woods dissolved into blackness stirred by a subtle wind.

  "Be real careful," he said again. "It's muddy and there's shit all over the place."

  "What shit?" I asked.

  I turned on my flashlight and directed it straight down at the narrow muddy path of broken glass, rotting paper, and discarded shoes that glinted and glowed a washed-out white amid brambles and winter trees.

  "The neighbors have been trying to turn this into a landfill," he said.

  "He could not have gotten down here with his bad knee," I said. "What's the best way to approach this?"

  "On my arm."

  "No. I need to look at this alone."

  "Well, you're not going down there alone. We don't know if someone else might still be down there somewhere."

  "There's blood there." I pointed the flashlight, and several large drops glistened on dead leaves about six feet down from where I was.

  "There's a lot of it up here."

  "Any up by the street?"

  ' ''No. It looks like it pretty much starts right here, But we've found some on the path going all the way down to where he is,"

  "All right. Let's do it." I looked around and began careful steps, Marino's heavier ones behind me.

  Police had run bright yellow tape from tree to tree, seCuring as much of the area as possible, for right now we did not know how big this scene might be. I could not see the body until I emerged from the woods into a clearing where the old railroad bed led to the river south of me and disappeared into the tunnel's yawning mouth to the west.

  Danny Webster lay half on his back, half on his side in an awkward tangle of arms and legs. A large puddle of blood was beneath his head. I slowly explored him with the flashlight and saw an abundance of dirt and grass on his sweater and jeans, and bits of leaves and other debris clung to his blood-matted hair.

  "He rolled down the hill," I said as I noted that seve
ral straps had come loose in his bright red brace, and debris was caught in Velcro. "He was already dead or almost dead when he came to rest in this position."

  "Yeah, I think it's pretty clear he was shot up there," Marino said. "My first question was whether he bled while he maybe tried to get away. And he makes it about this far, then collapses and rolls the rest of the way."

  "Or maybe he was made to think he was being given a chance to get away." Emotion crept into my voice. "You see this knee brace he has on? Do you have any idea how slowly he would have moved were he trying to get down this path? Do you know what it's like to inch your way along on a bad leg?"

  "So some asshole was shooting fish in a barrel," Marino said.

  I did not answer him as I directed the light at grass and trash leading up to the street. Drops of blood glistened dark red on a flattened milk carton whitened by weather and time.

  "What about his wallet?" I asked.

  "It was in his back pocket. Eleven bucks and charge cards still in it," Marino said, his eyes constantly moving.

  I took photographs, then knelt by the body and turned it so I could get a better look at the back of Danny's ruined head. I felt his neck, and he was still warm, the blood beneath him coagulating. I opened my medical bag.

  "Here." I unfolded a plastic sheet and gave it to Marino.

  "Hold this up while I take his temperature."

  He shielded the body from any eyes but ours as I pulled down jeans and undershorts, finding that both were soiled.

  Although it was not uncommon for people to urinate and defecate at the instant of death, sometimes this was the body's response to terror. "You got any idea if he fooled around with drugs?" Marino asked.

  "I have no reason to think so," I said. "But I have no idea."

  "For example, he ever look like he lived beyond his means'? I mean, how much did he earn?"

  "He earned about twenty-one thousand dollars a year. I don't know if he lived beyond his means. He still lived at home.

  The body temperature was 94.5, and I set the thermometer on top of my bag to get a reading of the ambient air. I moved arms and legs, and rigor mortis had started only in small muscles like his fingers and eyes. For the most part, Danny was still warm and limber as in life, and as I bent close to him I could smell his cologne and knew I would recognize it forever. Making sure the sheet was completely under him, I turned him on his back, and more blood spilled as I began looking for other wounds.

  "What time did you get the call?" I asked Marino, who was moving slowly near the tunnel, probing its tangled growths of vines and brush with his light.

  "One of the neighbors heard a gunshot coming from this area and dialed 911 at seven-oh-five P.m. We found your car and him maybe fifteen minutes after that, So we're talking about two hours ago. Does that work with what you're finding?"

  "It's almost freezing out. He's heavily clothed and he's lost about four degrees. Yes, that works. How about handing me those bags over there. Do we know what happened to the friend who was supposed to be driving Lucy's Suburban?"

  I slipped the brown paper bags over the hands and secured them at the wrist with rubber bands to preserve fragile evidence like gunshot residue, or fibers or flesh beneath fingernails, supposing he had struggled with his assailant.

  But I did not think he had. Whatever had happened, I suspected Danny had done exactly as he had been told.

  "At the present time we don't know anything about whoever his friend is," Marino said. "I can send a unit down to your office to check."

  "I think that's a good idea. We don't know that the friend isn't somehow connected to this."

  "One hundred," Marino said into his portable radio as I began taking photographs again.

  "One hundred," the dispatcher came back.

  "Ten-five any unit that might be in the area of the medical examiner's office at Fourteenth and Franklin."$

  Danny had been shot from behind, the wound close range, if not contact. I started to ask Marino about cartridge cases when I heard a noise I knew all too well.

  "Oh no," I said as the beating sound got louder. "Marino, don't let them get near."

  But it was too late, and we looked up as a news helicopter appeared and began circling low. Its searchlight swept the tunnel and the cold, hard ground where I was on my knees, brains and blood all over my hands. I shielded my eyes from the blinding glare as leaves and dirt stormed and bare trees rocked. I could not hear what Marino yelled as he furiously waved his flashlight at the sky while I shielded the body with my own as best I could.

  I enclosed Danny's head in a plastic bag and covered him with a sheet while the crew for Channel 7 destroyed the scene because they were ignorant or did not care, or maybe both. The helicopter's passenger door had been removed, and the cameraman hung out in the night as the light nailed me for the eleven o'clock news. Then the blades began their thunderous retreat.

  "Goddainnsonofabitch!" Marino was screaming as he shook his fist after them. "I ought to shoot your ass out of the air!"

  CHAPTER 10

  A CAR WAS DISPATCHED THERE, I ZIPPED THE body inside a pouch, and when I stood I felt faint. For an instant I had to steady myself as my face got cold and I could not see.

  "The squad can move him," I told Marino. "Can't someone get those goddamn television cameras out of here?"

  Their bright lights floated like satellites up on the dark street as they waited for us to emerge. He gave me a look because we both knew nobody could do a thing about reporters or what they used to record us. As long as they did not interfere with the scene, they could do as they pleased, especially if they were in helicopters we could not stop or catch.

  "You going to transport him yourself?" he asked me.

  "No. A squad's already there," I said. "And we need some help getting him back up there. Tell them to come on now.

  He got on the radio as our flashlights continued to lick over trash and leaves and potholes filled with muddy water.

  Then Marino said to me, "I'm going to keep a few guys out here poking around for a while. Unless the perp collected his cartridge case, it's got to be out here somewhere." He looked up the hill. "Problem is, some of those mothers can eject a long way and that goddamn chopper blew stuff all the hell over the place."

  Within minutes, paramedics were coming down with a stretcher, feet crunching broken glass, metal clanging, We waited until they had lifted the body, and I probed the ground where it had been. I stared into the black opening of a tunnel that long ago had been dug into a Mountainside too soft to support it, and I moved closer until I was just inside its mouth. A wall scaled it deep inside, and whitewash on bricks glinted in my light. Rusting railroad spikes protruded from rotting ties covered with mud, and scattered about were old tires and bottles.

  "Doc, there's nothing in there." Marino was picking his way right behind me. "Shit." He almost slipped. "We've already looked."

  "Well, obviously, he couldn't have escaped through here," I said as my light discovered cobblestones and dead weeds. "And no one could hide in here. And your average person shouldn't have known about this place, either."

  "Come on." Marino's voice was gentle but firm as he touched my arm.

  "This wasn't picked randomly. Not many people around here even know where this is." My light moved more.

  "This was someone who knew exactly what he was doing."

  "Doc," he said as water dripped, "this ain't safe."

  "I doubt Danny knew about this place. This was premeditated and cold-blooded." My voice echoed off old, dark walls.

  Marino held my arm this time, and I did not resist him.

  "You've done all you can do here. Let's go."

  Mud sucked at my boots and oozed over his black military shoes as we followed the rotting railroad bed back out into the night. Together, we climbed up the littered hillside, carefully stepping around blood spilled when Danny's body had been rolled down the steep slope like garbage. Much of it had been displaced by the helicopter's v
iolent wind, and that would one day matter if a defense attorney thought it did. I averted my face from the glare of cameras and flashing strobes. Marino and I got out of the way, and we did not talk to anyone.

  "I want to see my car," I said to him as his unit number blared.

  "One hundred," he answered, holding the radio close to his mouth.

  "Go ahead, one-seventeen, II the dispatcher said to some body else.

  "I checked the lot front and back, Captain," Unit 117 said to Marino. "No sign of the vehicle you described."

  "Ten-four." Marino lowered the radio and looked very annoyed. "Lucy's Suburban ain't at your office. I don't get it," he said to me. "None of this is making sense."