“George, can I ask you about your tattoos?” I asked.
He blushed.
“I’m fascinated by them and need some help with a problem.”
“Sure,” he said with uncertainty.
“Do you have someone you go to? A real expert? Someone very experienced in tattooing?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I wouldn’t go to just anyone.”
“You get your tattoos locally? Because I need to find a place where I can ask some questions and not run into bad characters, if you know what I mean.”
“Pit,” he immediately said. “As in pit bull, but Pit’s his real name. John Pit. He’s a really good guy. You want me to call him for you?” he asked, stuttering badly.
“I would be grateful if you would,” I said.
Gara pulled a small address book out of his back pocket and looked up a number. When he got Pit on the line, he explained who I was, and apparently Pit was very agreeable.
“Here.” Gara handed me the phone. “I’ll let you explain the rest of it.”
That took several efforts. Pit was home and just waking up.
“So you think you might have some luck?” I asked.
“I’ve seen pretty much all the flash out there,” he replied.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is.”
“Flash’s the stencils, I guess you could call them. You know, the design people pick out. Every inch of wall space I got is covered with flash. That’s why I’m thinking you might want to come here instead of me coming to your office. We might see something that gives us a clue. But I will tell you I’m not open Wednesdays or Thursdays. And payday weekend just about killed me. I’m still recovering. But I’ll open up for you, since this must be important. You bringing in whoever’s got this tattoo?”
He still didn’t quite get it.
“No, I’m bringing the tattoo,” I said. “But not the person who goes with it.”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Okay, okay, now I’m hearing you. So you cut it off the dead guy.”
“Can you handle that?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. I can handle anything.”
“What time?”
“How ’bout as soon as you can get here?”
I hung up and was startled to see Ruffin in the doorway watching me. I had a feeling he’d been there for a while, listening to my conversation, since my back was to him as I’d taken notes. His face was tired, his eyes red, as if he’d been up half the night drinking.
“You don’t look well, Chuck,” I said without much sympathy.
“I was wondering if I could go home,” he said. “I think I’m coming down with something.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. There’s a new, very contagious strain going around, thought to be carried by the Internet. It’s called the six-thirty bug,” I said. “People dash home from work and log onto their home computers. If they have a home computer.”
Ruffin’s face turned white.
“That’s pretty funny,” Gara said. “But I don’t get the six-thirty part of it.”
“The time half the world signs onto AOL,” I replied. “Of course, Chuck, you can go home. Get some rest. I’ll walk you out. We need to stop in the decomposed room first and get the tattoo.”
I had removed it from the corkboard and placed it inside a jar of formalin.
“They say it is going to be a really weird winter,” Ruffin began to prattle. “I was listening to the radio this morning while I was driving in to work, and it’s like it’s going to get real cold closer to Christmas and then be like spring again in February.”
I opened the automatic doors to the decomposed room and walked in as trace evidence examiner Larry Posner and an Institute student worked on the dead man’s clothes.
“I’m always happy to see you guys,” I greeted them.
“Well, I’ve got to admit, you’ve given us another one of your challenges,” said Posner as he used a scalpel to scrape dirt off a shoe onto a sheet of white paper. “You know Carlisle?”
“Is he teaching you anything?” I asked the young man.
“Sometimes,” he replied.
“How ya doing, Chuck?” Posner said. “You don’t look so good.”
“Hanging in there.” Chuck kept up his sick routine.
“Sorry about the Richmond P.D.,” he said with a sympathetic smile.
Ruffin was visibly shaken.
“Excuse me?” he said.
Posner looked uncomfortable as he replied, “I heard the academy didn’t work out. You know, I just wanted to tell you not to be discouraged.”
Ruffin’s eyes cut to the phone.
“Most people don’t know this,” Posner went on as he started work on another shoe. “I flunked the first two tests in chemistry one-oh-one at VCU.”
“No kidding,” Ruffin muttered.
“Now you tell me.” Carlisle feigned horror and disgust. “And here I was told I’d get the best instructors in the world if I came here. I want my money back.”
“Got something to show you, Dr. Scarpetta,” Posner said, pushing back his face shield.
He set down the scalpel and folded the sheet of paper with a jeweler’s fold and moved over to the pair of black jeans Carlisle was working on. They were carefully laid out on the sheet-covered gurney. The waistband had been turned inside out to the hips, and Carlisle was gently collecting hairs with needle-nosed forceps.
“This is the damnedest thing,” Posner said, pointing a gloved finger without touching while his trainee carefully folded the jeans down another inch, revealing more hairs.
“We’ve already collected dozens,” Posner was telling me. “You know, we began folding down the jeans and found the expected pubic hair in the crotch, but then there’s this blond stuff. And each inch we go, there’s more of it. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t seem to,” I agreed.
“Maybe some sort of animal like a Persian cat?” Carlisle suggested.
Ruffin opened a cupboard and took out the plastic bottle of formalin that contained the tattoo.
“If it was sleeping on top of the jeans while they were inside out, for example?” Carlisle went on. “You know, a lot of times when my jeans are a pain to get off, they end up inside out and tossed on a chair. And my dog loves to sleep on top of my clothes.”
“I don’t guess hanging things up or putting them in drawers ever occurs to you,” Posner remarked.
“Is that part of my homework?”
“I’ll go find a bag to put this in,” Ruffin said, holding up the jar. “In case it leaks or something.”
“Good idea,” I said. Then I asked Posner, “How quickly can you take a look at all this?”
“For you, I’ll ask the lethal question,” he said. “How quickly do you need it?”
I sighed.
“Okay, okay.”
“We’ve got Interpol trying to track down who this guy is. I feel under as much pressure as everybody else, Larry,” I said.
“You don’t need to explain. I know when you say jump, there’s always a good reason. I guess I put my foot in my mouth,” he added. “What’s with that kid? He acted like he didn’t know he wasn’t accepted at the police academy. Hell, it’s all over the building.”
“First of all, I didn’t know he didn’t get in,” I said. “And second, I don’t know why it’s all over the building.”
Even as I said it, Marino came to mind. He said he was going to fix Ruffin, and maybe he just did by somehow finding out the news and gleefully spreading it.
“Supposedly Bray’s the one who gave him the boot,” Posner went on.
Moments later, Ruffin returned with a plastic bag in hand. We left the decomposed room and washed up in our respective locker rooms. I took my time. I made him wait in the hall, knowing his anxiety was heating up with every second that went by. When I finally emerged, we walked together in silence, and he stopped twice to take a nervous drink of water.
“I hope I’m not
getting a fever,” he said.
I stopped and looked at him, and he involuntarily jerked away when I placed the back of my hand on his cheek.
“I think you’re fine,” I said.
I accompanied him through the lobby and into the parking lot, and by now he was clearly frightened.
“Is something wrong?” he finally asked, clearing his throat and putting on sunglasses.
“Why would you ask me that?” I innocently said.
“You walking me out here and everything.”
“I’m heading to my car.”
“I’m sorry I said to you what I did about problems here and the Internet stuff and everything,” he said. “I knew it was better to keep it to myself, that you would get mad at me.”
“Why would you think I’m mad at you?” I asked as I unlocked my car.
He seemed at a loss for words. I opened the trunk and set the plastic bag inside it.
“You got a nick on the paint there. Probably from a kicked-up rock, but it’s starting to rust . . .”
“Chuck, I want you to hear what I’m saying,” I calmly told him. “I know.”
“What? I don’t understand what you mean.” He tripped over words.
“You understand completely.”
I got into the front seat and turned on the engine.
“Get in, Chuck,” I said. “You don’t need to stand out in the cold. Especially since you’re not feeling well.”
He hesitated and exuded fear like an odor as he walked around to the passenger’s side.
“Sorry you weren’t able to make it to Buckhead’s. We had an interesting conversation with Deputy Chief Bray,” I said as he shut his door.
His mouth fell open.
“It’s a relief to me to have so many questions answered at last,” I went on. “E-mail, the Internet, rumors about my career, leaks.”
I waited to see what he would say to this and was startled when he blurted out, “That’s why I suddenly didn’t make it into the academy, isn’t it? You see her last night and this morning I get the news. You bad-mouthed me, told her not to hire me, then spread it everywhere to embarrass me.”
“Your name never came up once. And I most certainly haven’t spread anything about you anywhere.”
“Bullshit.” His angry voice trembled as if he might cry. “I’ve wanted to be a cop all my life, and now you ruined it!”
“No, Chuck, you ruined it.”
“Call the chief and say something. You can, you can,” he begged like a distraught child. “Please.”
“Why were you meeting Bray last night?”
“Because she told me to. I don’t know what she wanted. She just sent me a page and told me to be in the parking lot at Buckhead’s at five-thirty.”
“And of course, in her mind you never showed up. I expect that may have something to do with why you got bad news this morning. What do you think?”
“I guess,” he mumbled.
“How are you feeling? Still sick? If not, I’ve got to head out to Petersburg, and I think you should ride with me so we can finish this conversation.”
“Well, I . . .”
“Well what, Chuck?”
“I want to finish the conversation, too,” he said.
“Start with how you know Deputy Chief Bray. I find it rather extraordinary that you should have what seems to be a personal relationship with the most powerful person in the police department.”
“Imagine how I felt when it all started,” he innocently said. “See, Detective Anderson called me a couple months ago, said she was new and wanted to ask me questions about the M.E.’s office, about our procedures, and could I meet her at the River City Diner for lunch. That was when I got on the road to hell, and I know I should’ve said something to you about her call. I should’ve told you what I was doing. But you were teaching classes most of the day and I didn’t want to bother you, and Dr. Fielding was in court. So I told Anderson I’d be glad to help her out.”
“Well, it’s pretty obvious she didn’t learn anything.”
“She was setting me up,” he said, “and when I walked into the River City Diner, I couldn’t believe it. She was sitting in a booth with Deputy Chief Bray, and she told me she wanted to know all about the way our office runs, too.”
“Who did?”
“Bray did.”
“I see. Big surprise,” I said.
“I guess I was really flattered but nervous, too, because I didn’t understand what was going on. I mean, next thing, she’s telling me to walk back to police headquarters with her and Anderson.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this at the time?” I said as we drove toward Fifth Street to pick up I-95 South.
“I don’t know . . .” His voice trailed off.
“I think you do.”
“I was scared.”
“Might it have anything to do with your ambition of becoming a police officer?”
“Well, let’s face it,” he said. “What better connection could I have? And somehow she knew I was interested and when we got to her office, she closed the door and sat me across from her desk.”
“Was Anderson there?”
“Just Bray and me. She said that with my experience I might think about becoming a crime-scene technician. I felt like I’d won the lottery.”
I was working hard at keeping my distance from cement barriers and aggressive drivers while Ruffin continued his choirboy act.
“I have to admit I was in a dream after that and lost interest in my job, and I’m sorry for that,” he said. “But it wasn’t until two weeks later that Bray e-mailed me . . .”
“Where did she get your e-mail address?”
“Uh, she asked for it. So she e-mailed me and said she wanted me to drop by her house at five-thirty, that she had something very confidential to discuss with me.
“And I’m telling you, Dr. Scarpetta, I didn’t want to go. I knew something bad was going to come out of it.”
“Such as?”
“I halfway wondered if maybe she was going to hit on me or something.”
“Did she? What happened when you got to her house?” I asked.
“Gosh, this is really hard to say.”
“Say it.”
“She got me a beer and moved her chair real close to the couch where I was sitting. She asked me all kinds of questions about myself like she was really interested in me as a person. And . . .”
A loaded-down logging truck pulled in front of me and I sped around it.
“I hate those things,” I said.
“Me, too,” Chuck said, and his shoe-licking tone was making me sick.
“And what? You were telling me?” I said.
He took a deep breath. He got very interested in the trucks bearing down on us and the men working with mounds of asphalt on the roadside. It seemed as if this stretch of I-95 near Petersburg had been under construction since the Civil War.
“She wasn’t in a uniform, if you get what I mean,” he resumed with overblown sincerity. “She, well, she had on a business suit, but I don’t think she was wearing a bra, or at least the blouse . . . you could sort of see through it.”
“Did she ever try to seduce you, make any overture at all beyond how she was dressed?” I asked.
“No, ma’am, but it was like maybe she was hoping I would. And now I know why. She wouldn’t go for it, but she’d hold it over me. Just one more way to control me. So when she got me my second beer, she got down to what she wanted. She said it was important I know the truth about you.”
“Which is?”
“She said you’re unstable. Everybody knew you’d lost your grip, those were her exact words, that you were almost bankrupt because you’re a compulsive shopper . . .”
“Compulsive shopper?”
“She said something about your house and car.”
“Why would she know anything about my house?” I asked, realizing that Ruffin knew about both, among many other things.
“I don
’t know,” he said. “I guess the worst thing, though, was what she said about your work. That you’d been screwing up cases and the detectives were beginning to complain except for Marino. He was covering up for you, which was why she was going to have to do something about him eventually.”
“And she certainly did,” I said without a trace of emotion.
“Gee, do I have to go on?” he said. “I don’t want to say all these things to you!”
“Chuck, would you like a chance to start over and undo some of the damage you’ve done?” I set him up.
“God, if only I could,” he said, as if he really meant it.
“Then tell me the truth. Tell me everything. Let’s get you back on the right track so you can have a happy life,” I encouraged him.
I knew the little bastard would turn on anyone if it was in his best interest.
“She said one of the reasons she’d been hired was the chief, the mayor and city council wanted to get rid of you but didn’t know how,” Ruffin went on as if the words caused him pain. “That they couldn’t because you don’t work for the city, the governor basically had to do it. She explained to me it’s like when a new city manager is hired because people want to get rid of a bad police chief. It was amazing. She was so convincing, I was sucked in. Then, and I’ll never forget it, she got up from her chair and sat next to me. She looked into my eyes.
“She said, ‘Chuck, your boss is going to ruin your life, do you understand? She’s going to take down everyone around her, especially you.’ I asked her why me? And she said, ‘Because you’re a nothing to her. People like her may act nice, but deep down they think they’re God and have contempt for minions.’ She asked me if I knew what a minion was, and I said I didn’t. She told me it was a servant. Well, that got me mad.”
“I guess so,” I said. “I’ve never treated you or anyone like a servant, Chuck.”
“I know. I know!”
I believed some of his account was true. Most of it was self-serving and slanted, I was sure.
“So I started doing things for her. Little things at first,” he went on. “And every time I did one bad thing, it got easier to do the next. It’s like I got harder and harder inside and talked myself into believing everything I was doing was justified, even right. Maybe so I could sleep at night. Then the things she wanted got big, like the e-mail, only she got Anderson to give me those assignments. Bray’s too slippery to get caught.”