The Body Farm

  “That’s it?”

  “Yup. Except court. The good news is, I ruined his day. The better news is now we got something to investigate that may eventually send his ass to Mecklenburg where, as sweet-looking as he is, he’ll have lots of friends.”

  “Did you know it was him before he hit us?” I asked.

  “Nope. I had no idea.” We pulled back out into traffic.

  “And what did he say when he was questioned?”

  “What you’d expect. I stopped suddenly.”

  “Well, you did.”

  “And by law it’s all right to do that.”

  “What about following us? Did he have an explanation?”

  “He’s been out all day running errands and sightseeing. He doesn’t know what we’re talking about.”

  “I see. If you’re going to run errands, you need to bring along at least two guns.”

  “You want to tell me how the hell he can afford a car like that?” Marino glanced over at me. “He probably doesn’t make half what I do, and that Lexus he’s got probably cost close to fifty grand.”

  “The Colt he was carrying isn’t cheap, either,” I said. “He’s getting money from somewhere.”

  “Snitches always do.”

  “That’s all you think he is?”

  “Yeah, for the most part. I think he’s been doing shit work, probably for Green.”

  The radio suddenly interrupted us with the loud blare of an alert tone, and then we were given answers that were even worse than any we might have feared.

  “All units be advised that we have just received a teletype from state police that gives the following information,” a dispatcher repeated. “The nuclear power plant at Old Point has been taken over by terrorists. Shots have been fired and there are fatalities.”

  I was shocked speechless as the message went on and on.

  “The chief of police has ordered that the department move to emergency plan A. Until further notice all day shift units will remain on their posts. Updates will follow. All division commanders will report to the command post at the police academy immediately.”

  “Hell no,” Marino said as he slammed the accelerator to the floor. “We’re going to your office.”

  chapter

  13

  THE INVASION OF the old point nuclear power plant had happened swiftly and horrifically, and in disbelief we listened to the news while Marino sped through town. We did not utter a sound as an almost hysterical reporter at the scene rambled in a voice several octaves above what it usually was.

  “Old Point nuclear power plant has been seized by terrorists,” he repeated. “This happened about forty-five minutes ago when a bus carrying at least twenty men posing as CP&L employees stormed the main administration building. It is believed that at least three civilians are dead.” His voice was shaking, and we could hear helicopters overhead. “I can see police vehicles and fire trucks everywhere, but they can’t get close. Oh my God, this is awful . . .”

  Marino parked on the side of the street by my building. For a while we could not move as we listened to the same information again and again. It did not seem real, for less than a hundred miles from Old Point, here in Richmond, the afternoon was bright. Traffic was normal and people walked along sidewalks as if nothing had happened. My eyes stared without focusing, my thoughts flying through lists of what I must do.

  “Come on, Doc.” Marino cut the engine off. “Let’s go inside. I got to use the phone and get hold of one of my lieutenants. I’ve got to get things mobilized in case the lights go out in Richmond, or worse.”

  I had my own mobilizing to do and started with assembling everyone in the conference room, where I declared a statewide emergency.

  “Each district must be on standby and ready to implement its part of the disaster plan,” I announced to everyone in the room. “A nuclear disaster could affect all districts. Obviously, Tidewater is the most imperiled and the least covered. Dr. Fielding,” I said to my deputy chief, “I’d like to put you in charge of Tidewater and make you acting chief when I can’t be there.”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” he said bravely, although no one of sound mind would want the assignment I just gave him.

  “Now, I won’t always know where I’m going to be throughout this,” I said to other anxious faces. “Business goes on as usual here, but I want any bodies brought here. Any bodies from Old Point, I’m saying, starting with the shooting fatalities.”

  “What about other Tidewater cases?” Fielding wanted to know.

  “Routine cases are done as usual. I understand we do have another autopsy technician to fill in until we can find a permanent replacement.”

  “Any chance these bodies you want here might be contaminated?” my administrator asked, and he had always been a worrier.

  “So far we’re talking about shooting victims,” I said.

  “And they couldn’t be.”

  “No.”

  “But what about later?” he went on.

  “Mild contamination isn’t a problem,” I said. “We just scrub the bodies and get rid of the soapy water and clothes. Acute exposure to radiation is another matter, especially if the bodies are badly burned, if debris is burned into them, as it was in Chernobyl. Those bodies will need to be shielded in a special refrigerated truck, and all exposed personnel will wear lead-lined suits.”

  “Those bodies we’ll cremate?”

  “I would recommend that. Which is another reason why they need to come here to Richmond. We can use the crematorium in the anatomical division.”

  Marino stuck his head inside the conference room. “Doc?” He motioned me out.

  I got up and we spoke in the hall.

  “Benton wants us at Quantico now,” he said.

  “Well, it won’t be now,” I said.

  I glanced back at the conference room. Through the doorway I could see Fielding making some point, while one of the other doctors looked tense and unhappy.

  “You got an overnight bag with you?” Marino went on, and he knew I always kept one here.

  “Is this really necessary?” I complained.

  “I’d tell you if it wasn’t.”

  “Give me just fifteen minutes to finish up this meeting.”

  I brought confusion and fear to closure as best I could, and told the other doctors I could be gone for days because I’d just been summoned to Quantico. But I would wear my pager. Then Marino and I took my car instead of his, since he had already made arrangements for repairs to the bumper Roche had hit. We sped north on 95 with the radio on, and by now we had heard the story so many times we knew it as well as the reporters.

  In the past two hours, no one else had died at Old Point, at least not that anybody knew of, and the terrorists had let dozens of people go. These fortunate ones had been allowed to leave in twos and threes, according to the news. Emergency medical personnel, state police and the FBI were intercepting them for examinations and interviews.

  We arrived at Quantico at almost five, and Marines in camouflage were vigorously blasting the rapid approach of night. They were crowded in trucks and behind sandbags on the range, and when we passed close to a knot of them gathered by the road, I was pained by their young faces. I rounded a bend, where tall tan brick buildings suddenly rose above trees. The complex did not look military, and in fact, could have been a university were it not for the rooftops of antennae. A road leading to it stopped midway at an entrance gate where tire shredders bared teeth to people going the wrong way.

  An armed guard emerged from his booth and smiled because we were no strangers, and he let us through. We parked in the big lot across from the tallest building, called Jefferson, which was basically the Academy’s self-contained downtown. Inside were the post office, the indoor range, dining hall and PX, with upper floors for dormitory rooms, including security suites for protected witnesses and spies.

  New agents in khaki and dark blue were honing weapons in the gun-cleaning room. It seemed I had smell
ed the solvents all of my life, and could hear compressed air blasting through barrels and other parts whenever I wanted to in my mind. My history had become entwined with this place. There was scarcely a corner that did not evoke emotion, for I had been in love here, and had brought into this building my most terrible cases. I had taught and consulted in their classrooms, and inadvertently given them my niece.

  “God knows what we’re about to walk into,” Marino said as we got on the elevator.

  “We’ll just take it one inch at a time,” I said as the new agents in their FBI caps vanished behind shutting steel doors.

  He pressed the button for the lower level, which had been intended as Hoover’s bomb shelter in a different age. The profiling unit, as the world still called it, was sixty feet below ground, with no windows or any other relief from the horrors it found. I frankly had never understood how Wesley could endure it year after year, for whenever I sat in consultations that lasted more than a day, I was crazed. I had to walk or drive my car. I had to get away.

  “An inch at a time?” Marino repeated as the elevator stopped. “There ain’t no inch or mile that’s going to help this scenario. We’re a day late and a dollar short. We started putting the pieces together after the game was goddamn over.”

  “It isn’t over,” I said.

  We walked past the receptionist and around a corner, where a hallway led to the unit chief’s office.

  “Yeah, well, let’s hope it don’t end with a bang. Shit. If only we had figured it out sooner.” His stride was long and angry.

  “Marino, we couldn’t have known. There isn’t a way.”

  “Well, I think we should have figured out something sooner. Like in Sandbridge, when you got the weird phone call and then everything else.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” I said. “What? A phone call should have tipped us off that terrorists were about to seize a nuclear power plant?”

  Wesley’s secretary was new and I could not remember her name.

  “Good afternoon,” I said to her. “Is he in?”

  “May I tell him who you are?” she asked with a smile.

  We told her, and were patient as she rang him. They did not speak long.

  When she looked back at us she said, “You may go in.”

  Wesley was behind his desk, and when we walked in he stood. He was typically preoccupied and somber in a gray herringbone suit and black and gray tie.

  “We can go in the conference room,” he said.

  “Why?” Marino took a chair. “You got some other people coming?”

  “Actually, I do,” he replied.

  I stood where I was and would not give him my eyes any longer than was polite.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he reconsidered. “We can stay in here. Hold on.” He walked to the door. “Emily, can you find another chair?”

  We got settled while she brought one in, and Wesley was having a hard time keeping his thoughts in one place and making decisions. I knew what he was like when he was overwhelmed. I knew when he was scared.

  “You know what’s going on,” he said as if we did.

  “We know what everybody else does,” I replied. “We’ve heard the same news on the radio probably a hundred times.”

  “So how about starting from the beginning,” Marino said.

  “CP&L has a district office in Suffolk,” Wesley began. “At least twenty people left there this afternoon in a bus for an alleged in-service in the mock control room of the Old Point plant. They were men, white, thirties to early forties, posing as employees, which they obviously are not. And they managed to get into the main building where the control room is located.”

  “They were armed,” I said.

  “Yes. When it was time for them to go through the X-ray machines and other detectors at the main building, they pulled out semiautomatic weapons. As you know, people have been killed—we think at least three CP&L employees, including a nuclear physicist who just happened to be paying a site visit today and was going through security at the wrong time.”

  “What are their demands?” I asked, and I wondered how much Wesley had known and for how long. “Have they said what they want?”

  He met my eyes. “That’s what worries us the most. We don’t know what they want.”

  “But they’re letting people go,” Marino said.

  “I know. And that worries me, too,” Wesley stated. “Terrorists generally don’t do that.” His telephone rang. “This is different.” He picked up the receiver. “Yes,” he said. “Good. Send him in.”

  Major General Lynwood Sessions was in the uniform of the Navy he served when he entered the office and shook hands with each of us. He was black, maybe forty-five and handsome in a way that was not to be dismissed. He did not take off his jacket or even loosen a button as he formally took a chair and set a fat briefcase beside him.

  “General, thank you for coming,” Wesley began.

  “I wish it were for a happier reason,” he said as he bent over to get out a file folder and legal pad.

  “Don’t we all,” Wesley said. “This is Captain Pete Marino with Richmond, and Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia.” He looked at me and held my gaze. “They work with us. Dr. Scarpetta, as a matter of fact, is the medical examiner in the cases that we believe are related to what is happening today.”

  General Sessions nodded and made no comment.

  Wesley said to Marino and me, “Let me try to tell you what we know beyond the immediate crisis. We have reason to believe that vessels in the Inactive Ship Yard are being sold to countries that should not have them. This includes Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Algeria.”

  “What sort of vessels?” Marino asked.

  “Mainly submarines. We also suspect that this shipyard is buying vessels from places like Russia and then reselling them.”

  “And why have we not been told this before?” I asked.

  Wesley hesitated. “No one had proof.”

  “Ted Eddings was diving in the Inactive Yard when he died,” I said. “He was near a submarine.”

  No one replied.

  Then the general said, “He was a reporter. It’s been suggested that he might have been looking for Civil War relics.”

  “And what was Danny doing?” I measured my words because I was getting tired of this. “Exploring a historic train tunnel in Richmond?”

  “It’s hard to know what Danny Webster was into,” he said. “But I understand the Chesapeake police found a bayonet in the trunk of his car, and it is consistent with the tool marks left on your slashed tires.”

  I looked a long time at him. “I don’t know where you got your information, but if what you’ve said is true, then I suspect Detective Roche turned that evidence in.”

  “I believe he turned in the bayonet, yes.”

  “I believe all of us in this room can be trusted.” I kept my eyes on his. “If there is a nuclear disaster, I am mandated by law to take care of the dead. There are already too many dead at Old Point.” I paused. “General Sessions, now would be a very good time to tell the truth.”

  The men were silent for a moment.

  Then the general said, “NAVSEA has been concerned about that shipyard for a while.”

  “NAVSEA? What the hell is that?” Marino asked.

  “Naval Sea Systems Command,” he said. “They’re the people responsible for making certain that shipyards like the one in question abide by the appropriate standards.”

  “Eddings had the label N-V-S-E programmed into his fax machine,” I said. “Was he in communication with them?”

  “He had asked questions,” General Sessions said. “We were aware of Mr. Eddings. But we could not give him the answers he wanted. Just as we could not answer you, Dr. Scarpetta, when you sent us a fax asking who we were.” His face was inscrutable. “I’m certain you can understand that.”

  “What is D-R-M-S out of Memphis?” I then asked.

  “Another fax number that Eddings call
ed, as did you,” he said. “Defense Reutilization Marketing Service. They handle all surplus sales, which must be approved by NAVSEA.”

  “This is making sense,” I said. “I can see why Eddings would have been in touch with these people. He was on to what was happening at the Inactive Yard, that the Navy’s standards were being violated in a rather shocking way. And he was probing for his story.”

  “Tell me more about these standards,” Marino said. “Exactly what is the shipyard supposed to abide by?”

  “I’ll give you an example. If Jacksonville wants the Saratoga or some other aircraft carrier, then NAVSEA makes certain that any work done to it meets the Navy’s standards.”

  “Like in what way?”

  “For example, the city has to have the five million it will take to fix it up, and the two million for maintenance each year. And the water in the harbor must be at least thirty feet deep. On the other hand, where the ship is moored, someone from NAVSEA, probably a civilian, is going to appear about once a month and inspect the work being done to the vessel.”

  “And this has been happening at the Inactive Ship Yard?” I asked.

  “Well, right now, we’re not sure of the civilian doing it.” The general looked straight at me.

  Then it was Wesley who spoke, “That’s the problem. There are civilians everywhere, some of them mercenaries who would buy or sell anything with absolute reckless disregard for national security. As you know, a civilian company runs the Inactive Yard. It inspects the ships being sold to cities or for salvage.”

  “What about the submarine in there now, the Exploiter?” I asked. “The one I saw when I recovered Eddings’ body?”

  “A Zulu V class ballistic missile sub. Ten torpedo tubes plus two missile tubes. It was made from 1955 to 1957,” General Sessions said. “Since the sixties, all subs built in the U.S. are nuclear-powered.”

  “So the sub we’re talking about is old,” Marino said. “It’s not nuclear.”

  The general replied, “It couldn’t be nuclear-powered. But you can put any type of warhead on a missile or torpedo you want.”

  “Are you saying that the sub I dove near might be retrofitted to fire nuclear weapons?” I asked as this frightening specter just loomed bigger.