The Body Farm

I turned the fire off and checked the burglar alarm one more time to make certain it was armed, then I walked back to my bedroom and shut the door. Still, I could not sleep, so I sat up in lamplight listening to the weather as I studied the journal that had been printed by Eddings’ fax machine. There were eighteen numbers dialed over the past two weeks, and all of them were curious and suggestive that he certainly had been home at least some of the time and doing something in his office.

  What also struck me right away was that if he had worked at home, I would have expected numerous transmissions to the AP office downtown. But this was not the case. Since mid-December, he had faxed his office only twice, at least from the machine we had found at his house. This was simple enough to determine because he had entered a speed dial label for the wire service’s fax number, so “AP DESK” appeared in the journal’s identification column, along with less obvious labels like “NVSE,” “DRMS,” “CPT” and “LM.” Three of those numbers had Tidewater, Central and Northern Virginia area codes and exchanges, while the area code for DRMS was Memphis, Tennessee.

  I tried to sleep but information drifted past my eyes and questions spoke because I could not shut them off. I wondered who Eddings had been contacting in these different places, or if it mattered. But what I could not get away from was where he had died. I could still see his body suspended in that murky river, tethered by a useless hose caught on a rusting screw. I could feel his stiffness as I held him in my arms and swam him up with me. I had known before I had ever reached the surface that he had been dead many hours.

  At three A.M. I sat up in bed and stared at the darkness. The house was quiet except for its usual shifting sounds, and I simply could not turn off my conscious mind. Reluctantly, I put my feet on the floor, my heart beating hard, as if it were startled that I should stir at such an hour. In my office I shut the door and wrote the following brief letter:

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

  I realize this is a fax number, otherwise I would call in person. I need to know your identification, if possible, as your number has shown up on the printout of a recently deceased individual’s fax machine. Please contact me at your earliest convenience. If you need verification of the authenticity of this communication, contact Captain Pete Marino of the Richmond Police Department.

  I gave telephone numbers and signed my title and my name, and I faxed the letter to every speed dial listing in Eddings’ journal, except, of course, the Associated Press. For a while I sat at my desk, staring rather glazed, as if my fax machine were going to solve this case immediately. But it remained silent as I read and waited. At the reasonable hour of six A.M., I called Marino.

  “I take it there was no riot,” I said after the phone banged and dropped and his voice mumbled over the line. “Good, you’re awake,” I added.

  “What time is it?” He sounded as if he were in a stupor.

  “It’s time for you to rise and shine.”

  “We locked up maybe five people. The rest got quiet after that and went back inside. What are you doing awake?”

  “I’m always awake. And by the way, I could use a ride to work today and I need groceries.”

  “Well, put on some coffee,” he said. “I guess I’m coming over.”

  chapter

  8

  WHEN HE ARRIVED, Lucy was still in bed and I was making coffee. I let him in, dismayed again when I looked out at my street. Overnight, Richmond had turned to glass, and I had heard on the news that falling branches and trees had knocked down power lines in several sections of the city.

  “Did you have any trouble?” I asked, shutting the front door.

  “Depends on what kind you mean.” Marino set down groceries, took off his coat and handed it to me.

  “Driving.”

  “I got chains. But I was out till after midnight and I’m tired as hell.”

  “Come on. Let’s get you some coffee.”

  “None of that unleaded shit.”

  “Guatemalan, and I promise it’s leaded.”

  “Where’s the kid?”

  “Asleep.”

  “Yo. Must be nice.” He yawned again.

  I began making fresh fruit salad in my kitchen with its many windows. Through them the river was pewter and slow. Rocks were glazed, the woods a fantasy just beginning to sparkle in the wan morning light. Marino poured his own coffee, adding plenty of sugar and cream.

  “You want some?” he asked.

  “Black, please.”

  “I think by now you don’t have to tell me.”

  “I never make assumptions,” I said, getting plates out of a cabinet. “Especially about men, who seem to have a Mendelian trait which precludes them from remembering details important to women.”

  “Yeah, well, I could give you a list of things Doris never remembered, starting with using my tools and not putting them back,” he said of his ex-wife.

  I worked at the counter while he looked around as if he wanted to smoke. I wasn’t going to let him.

  “I guess Tony never fixed coffee for you,” he said.

  “Tony never did much of anything for me except try to get me pregnant.”

  “He didn’t do a very good job unless you didn’t want kids.”

  “Not with him I didn’t.”

  “What about now?”

  “I still don’t want them with him. Here.” I handed Marino a plate. “Let’s sit.”

  “Wait a minute. This is it?”

  “What else do you want?”

  “Shit, Doc. This ain’t food. And what the hell are these little green slices with black things.”

  “The kiwi fruit I told you to get. I’m sure you must have had it before,” I patiently said. “I’ve got bagels in the freezer.”

  “Yeah, that’d be good. With cream cheese. You got any poppyseed?”

  “If you have a drug test today you’ll come up positive for morphine.”

  “And don’t give me any of that nonfat stuff. It’s like eating paste.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “Paste is better.”

  I left off the butter, determined to make him live for a while. By now Marino and I were more than partners or even friends. We were dependent on each other in a way neither could explain.

  “So tell me what all you did,” he said as we sat at my breakfast table by a wide pane of glass. “I know you been up all night doing something.” He took a large bite of bagel and reached for his juice.

  I told him about my visit with Mrs. Eddings, and about the note I had written and sent to numbers belonging to places I did not know.

  “It’s weird he was faxing things everywhere but his office.”

  “He sent two faxes to his office,” I reminded him.

  “I need to talk to those people.”

  “Good luck. Remember, they’re reporters.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. To those drones, Eddings is just another story. Only thing they care about is what they’re going to do with the info. The worse his death is, the better they like it.”

  “Well, I don’t know. But I suspect whoever he associated with in that office is going to be extremely careful about what is said. I’m not sure I blame them. A death investigation is frightening to people who did not ask to be invited.”

  “What’s the status of his tox?” Marino asked.

  “Hopefully today,” I said.

  “Good. You get your verification it’s cyanide, then maybe we can work this thing the way it ought to be worked. As it is, I’m trying to explain superstitions to the commander of A Squad and wondering what the hell I’m going to do about the Keystone Kops in Chesapeake. And I’m telling Wesley it’s a homicide and he’s asking for proof because he’s on the spot, too.”

  The mention of his name was disturbing, and I looked out the window at unnavigable water moving thickly between big, dark rocks. The sun was lighting up gray clouds in the eastern part of the sky, and I heard the shower running in the back part of the house where Lucy was staying.
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  “Sounds like Sleeping Beauty’s awake,” Marino said. “She need a ride?”

  “I think she’s involved with the field office today. We should get going,” I added, for staff meeting at my office was always at eight-thirty.

  He helped gather dishes and we put them in the sink. Minutes later, I had on my coat, my medical bag and briefcase in hand, when my niece appeared in the foyer, hair wet, her robe pulled tight.

  “I had a dream,” she said in a depressed voice. “Someone shot us in our sleep. Nine-millimeter to the back of the head. They made it look like a robbery.”

  “Oh really?” Marino asked, pulling on rabbit fur–lined gloves. “And where was yours truly? ’Cause that ain’t going to happen if I’m in the house.”

  “You weren’t here.”

  He gave her an odd look as he realized she was serious. “What the hell’d you eat last night?”

  “It was like a movie. It must have gone on for hours.” She looked at me, and her eyes were puffy and exhausted.

  “Would you like to come to the office with me?” I asked.

  “No, no. I’ll be fine. The last thing I feel like being around right now is a bunch of dead bodies.”

  “You’re going to get together with some of the agents you know in town?” I uneasily said.

  “I don’t know. We were going to work with closed-cycle oxygen respiration, but I just don’t think I feel up to putting on a wet suit and getting in some indoor pool that stinks like chlorine. I think I’ll just wait around for my car, then leave.”

  Marino and I didn’t talk much as we drove downtown, his mighty tires gouging glazed streets with clanking teeth. I knew he was worried about Lucy. As much as he abused her, if anyone else tried to do the same Marino would destroy that person with his big bare hands. He had known her since she was ten. It was Marino who had taught her to drive a five-speed pickup truck and shoot a gun.

  “Doc, I got to ask you something,” he finally spoke as the rhythm of chains slowed at the toll booth. “Do you think Lucy’s doing okay?”

  “Everyone has nightmares,” I said.

  “Hey, Bonita,” he called to the toll taker as he handed his pass card out the window, “when you going to do something about this weather?”

  “Don’t you be blaming this on me, Cap’n.” She returned his card, and the gate lifted. “You told me you’re in charge.”

  Her mirthful voice followed us as we drove on, and I thought how sad it was that we lived in a day when even toll booth attendants had to wear plastic gloves for fear they may come in contact with someone else’s flesh. I wondered if we would reach a point when all of us lived in bubbles so we did not die of diseases like the Ebola virus and AIDS.

  “I just think she’s acting a little weird,” Marino went on as his window rolled up. After a pause, he asked, “Where’s Janet?”

  “With her family in Aspen, I think.”

  He stared straight ahead and drove.

  “After what happened at Dr. Mant’s house, I don’t blame Lucy for being a little rattled,” I added.

  “Hell, she’s usually the one who looks for trouble,” he said. “She doesn’t get rattled. That’s why the Bureau lets her hang out with HRT. You ain’t allowed to get rattled when you’re dealing with white supremacists and terrorists. You don’t call in sick because you’ve had a friggin’ bad dream.”

  Off the expressway, he took the Seventh Street exit into the old cobblestone lanes of Shockoe Slip, then turned north onto Fourteenth, where I went to work every day when I was in town. Virginia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, was a squat stucco building with tiny dark windows that reminded me of unattractive, suspicious eyes. They overlooked slums to the east and the banking district to the west, and suspended overhead were highways and railroad tracks cutting through the sky.

  Marino pulled into the back parking lot, where there was an impressive number of cars, considering the condition of the roads. I got out in front of the shut bay door and used a key to enter another door to one side. Following the ramp intended for stretchers, I entered the morgue, and could hear the noise of people working down the hall. The autopsy suite was past the walk-in refrigerator, and doors were open wide. I walked in while Fielding, my deputy chief, removed various tubes and a catheter from the body of a young woman on the second table.

  “You ice-skate in?” he asked and he did not seem surprised to see me.

  “Close to it. I may have to borrow the wagon today. At the moment I’m without a car.”

  He leaned closer to his patient, frowning a bit as he studied the tattoo of a rattlesnake coiled around the dead woman’s sagging left breast, its gaping mouth disturbingly aimed at her nipple.

  “You tell me why the hell somebody gets something like this,” Fielding said.

  “I’d say the tattoo artist got the best end of that deal,” I said. “Check the inside of her lower lip. She’s probably got a tattoo there.”

  He pulled down her lower lip, and inside it in big crooked letters was Fuck You.

  Fielding looked at me in astonishment. “How’d you know that?”

  “The tattoos are homemade, she looks like a biker-type and my guess is she’s no stranger to jail.”

  “Right on all counts.” He grabbed a clean towel and wiped his face.

  My body-building associate always looked as if he were about to split his scrubs, and he perspired while the rest of us were never quite warm. But he was a competent forensic pathologist. He was pleasant and caring, and I believed he was loyal.

  “Possible overdose,” he explained as he sketched the tattoo on a chart. “I guess her New Year was a little too happy.”

  “Jack,” I said to him, “how many dealings have you had with the Chesapeake police?”

  He continued to draw. “Very little.”

  “None recently?” I asked.

  “I really don’t think so. Why?” He glanced up at me.

  “I had a rather odd encounter with one of their detectives.”

  “In connection with Eddings?” He began to rinse the body, and long dark hair flowed over bright steel.

  “Right.”

  “You know, it’s weird but Eddings had just called me. It couldn’t have been more than a day before he died,” Fielding said as he moved the hose.

  “What did he want?” I asked.

  “I was down here doing a case, so I never talked to him. Now I wish I had.” He climbed up a stepladder and began taking photographs with a Polaroid camera. “You in town long?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, if you need me to help out in Tidewater some, I will.” The flash went off and he waited for the print. “I don’t know if I told you, but Ginny’s pregnant again and would probably love to get out of the house. And she likes the ocean. Tell me the name of the detective you’re worried about, and I’ll take care of him.”

  “I wish somebody would,” I said.

  The camera flashed again, and I thought about Mant’s cottage and could not imagine putting Fielding and his wife in there or even nearby.

  “It makes sense for you to stay here anyway,” he added. “And hopefully Dr. Mant isn’t going to stay in England forever.”

  “Thank you,” I said to him with feeling. “Maybe if you could just commute several times a week.”

  “No problem. Could you hand me the Nikon?”

  “Which one?”

  “Uh, the N-50 with the single-reflex lens. I think it’s in the cabinet over there.” He pointed.

  “We’ll work out a schedule,” I said as I got the camera for him. “But you and Ginny don’t need to be in Dr. Mant’s house, and you’re going to have to trust me on that.”

  “You have a problem?” He ripped out another print and handed it down.

  “Marino, Lucy and I started our New Year with slashed tires.”

  He lowered the camera and looked at me, shocked. “Shit. You think it was random?”

  “No, I do not,??
? I said.

  I took the elevator up to the next floor and unlocked my office and the sight of Eddings’ Christmas pepper surprised me like a blow. I could not leave it on the credenza, so I picked it up and then did not know where to move it. For a moment, I walked around, confused and upset, until I finally put it back where it had been, because I could not throw it out or subject some other member of my staff to its memories.

  Looking through Rose’s adjoining doorway, I was not surprised that she wasn’t here. My secretary was advancing in years and did not like to drive downtown even on the nicest days. Hanging up my coat, I carefully looked around, satisfied that all seemed in order except for the cleaning job done by the custodial crew that came in after hours. But then, none of the sanitation engineers, as they were called by the state, wanted to work in this building. Few lasted long and none would go downstairs.

  I had inherited my quarters from the previous chief, but beyond the paneling, nothing was as it had been back in those cigar-smoky days when forensic pathologists like Cagney nipped bourbon with cops and funeral home directors, and touched bodies with bare hands. My predecessor had not worried much about alternate light sources and DNA.

  I remembered the first time I had been shown his space after he had died and I was being interviewed for his position. I had surveyed macho mementos he had proudly displayed, and when one of them turned out to be a silicone breast implant from a woman who had been raped and murdered, I had been tempted to stay in Miami.

  I did not think the former chief would like his office now, for it was nonsmoking, and disrespect and sophomoric behavior were left outside the door. The oak furniture was not the state’s but my own, and I had hidden the tile floor with a Sarouk prayer rug that was machine-made but bright. There were corn plants and a ficus tree, but I did not bother with art, because like a psychiatrist, I wanted nothing provocative on my walls, and frankly, I needed all the space I could find for filing cabinets and books. As for trophies, Cagney would not have been impressed with the toy cars, trucks and trains I used to help investigators reconstruct accidents.

  I took several minutes to look through my in-basket, which was full of red-bordered death certificates for medical examiner cases and green-bordered ones for those that were not. Other reports also awaited my initialing, and a message on my computer screen told me I needed to check my electronic mail. All that could wait, I thought, and I walked back out into the hall to see who else was here. Only Cleta was, I discovered, when I reached the front office, but she was just who I needed to see.