The Body Farm

2

Beyond windows in the boardroom plump groundhogs sunned themselves on the grass as I ate salad and Marino scraped the last trace of the fried chicken special off his plate.

The sky was faded denim blue, trees hinting of how brightly they would burn when fall reached its peak. In a way I envied Marino. The physical demands of his week would almost seem a relief compared to what waited for me, perched darkly over me, like a huge insatiable bird.

"Lucy's hoping you'll find time to do some shooting with her while you're here," I said

"Depends on if her manners have improved, " Marino pushed his tray away.

"Funny, that's what she usually says about you."

He knocked a cigarette out of his pack. "You Mind?"

"It doesn't matter because you're going to smoke anyway."

"You never give a fella any credit, Doc." The cigarette wagged as he talked.

"It's not like I haven't cut back." He fired up his lighter.

"Tell the truth. You think about smoking every minute."

"You're right. Not a minute goes by that I don't wonder how I stood doing anything so unpleasant and antisocial."

"Bullshit. You miss it like hell. Right now you wish you was me." He exhaled a stream of smoke and gazed out the window.

"One day this entire joint's going to end up a sinkhole because of these friggin' groundhogs."

"Why would Gault have gone to western North Carolina?" I asked.

"Why the hell would he go anywhere?" Marino's eyes got hard.

"You ask any question about that son of a bitch and the answer's the same.

Because he felt like it. And he ain't gonna stop with the Steiner girl.

Some other little kid-some woman, man, hell, it don't matter-is going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Gault gets another itch."

"And you really think he's still there?"

He tapped an ash.

"Yeah, I really think he is."

"Why?"

"Because the fun's just begun," he said as Benton Wesley walked in.

"The greatest goddam show on earth and he's sitting back watching, laughing his ass off as the Black Mountain cops run around in circles trying to figure out what the hell to do. They average one homicide a year there, by the way."

I watched Wesley head for the salad bar. He ladled soup into a bowl, placed crackers on his tray, and dropped several dollars in a paper plate set out for customers when the cashier wasn't around. He did not indicate that he had seen us, but I knew he had a gift for taking in the smallest details of his surroundings while seeming in a fog.

"Some of Emily Steiner's physical findings make me wonder if her body was refrigerated," I said to Marino as Wesley headed toward us.

"Right. I'm sure it was. At the hospital morgue." Marino gave me an odd look.

"Sounds like I'm missing something important," Wesley said as he pulled out a chair and sat down.

"I'm contemplating that Emily Steiner's body was refrigerated before it was left at the lake," I said.

"Based on what?"

A gold Department of Justice cuff link peeked out of his coat sleeve as he reached for the pepper shaker.

"Her skin was doughy and dry," I answered.

"She was well preserved and virtually unmolested by insects or animals."

"That pretty much shoots down the idea of Gault staying in some tourist trap motel," Marino said.

"He sure as hell didn't stash the body in his minibar." Wesley, always meticulous, spooned clam chowder away from him and raised it to his lips without spilling a drop.

"What's been turned in for trace?" I asked.

"Her jewelry and socks," Wesley replied.

"And the duct tape, which unfortunately was removed before being checked for prints. It was pretty cut up at the morgue."

"Christ," Marino muttered.

"But it's distinctive enough to hold promise. In fact, I can't say I've ever seen blaze orange duct tape before." He was looking at me.

"I certainly haven't," I said.

"Do your labs know anything about it yet?"

"Nothing yet except there's a pattern of grease streaks, meaning the edges of the roll the tape came from are streaked with grease. For whatever that's worth."

"What else do the labs have?" I asked. Wesley said, "Swabs, soil from under the body, the sheet and pouch used to transport her from the lake." My frustration grew as he continued to talk. I wondered what had been missed. I wondered what microscopic witnesses had been silenced forever.

"I'd like copies of her photographs and reports, and lab results as they come in," I said.

"Whatever's ours is yours," Wesley replied.

"The labs will contact you directly."

"We got to get time of death straight," Marino said.

"It ain't adding up."

"It's very important we sort that out," Wesley concurred.

"Can you do some more checking?"

"I'll do what I can," I said.

"I'm supposed to be in Hogan's Alley." Marino got up from the table as he glanced at his watch.

"In fact, I guess they've started without me."

"I hope you plan to change your clothes first," Wesley said to him.

"Wear a sweatshirt with a hood."

"Yo. So I get dropped by heat exhaustion."

"Better than getting dropped by nine-millimeter paint bullets," Wesley said.

"They hurt like hell."

"What? You two been discussing this or something?" We watched him leave. He buttoned his blazer over his big belly, smoothed his wispy hair, rearranged his trousers as he walked. Marino had a habit of self-consciously grooming himself like a cat whenever he made an entrance or an exit. Wesley stared at the dirty ashtray where Marino had been sitting. He turned his eyes to me, and I thought they seemed uncommonly dark, his mouth set as if it had never known how to smile.

"You've got to do something about him," he said.

"I wish I had that power, Benton."

"You're the only one who comes close to having that power."

"That's frightening."

"What's frightening is how red his face got during the consultation. He's not doing a goddam thing he's supposed to do. Fried foods, cigarettes, booze. " Wesley glanced away.

"Since Doris left he's gone to hell."

"I've seen some improvement," I said.

"Brief remissions." He met my eyes again.

"In the main he's killing himself." In the main, Marino was and had been all of his life. And I did not know what to do about it.

"When are you going back to Richmond?" he asked, and I wondered what went on behind his walls. I wondered about his wife.

"That depends," I answered.

"I was hoping to spend a little time with Lucy."

"She's told you we want her back?"

I stared out at sunlit grass and leaves stirring in the wind.

"She's thrilled," I said.

"You're not."

"No."

"I understand. You don't want Lucy to share your reality, Kay." His face softened almost imperceptibly.

"I suppose it should relieve me that in one department, at least, you are not completely rational or objective."

I was not completely rational or objective in more than one department, and Wesley knew this all too well.

"I'm not even certain what she's doing over there," I said.

"How would you feel if it were one of your children?"

"The same way I always feel when it's my children. I don't want them in law enforcement or the military. I don't want them familiar with guns. And yet I want them involved in all of these things."

"Because you know what's out there," I said, my eyes again on his and lingering longer than they should. He crumpled his napkin and placed it on his tray.

"Lucy likes what she's doing. So do we."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"She's remarkable. The software she's helping us develop for VI CAP is going to change everything. We're not talking about that much time before it's possible for us to track these animals around the globe. Can you imagine if Gault had murdered the Steiner girl in Australia? Do you think we'd know?"

"Chances are we wouldn't," I said.

"Certainly not this soon. But we don't know it's Gault who killed her."

"What we do know is that time is more lives." He reached for my tray and stacked it on top of his. Both of us got up from the table.

"I think we should drop in on your niece," he said.

"I don't think I'm cleared."

"You're not. But give me a little time and I'll bet I can remedy that."

"I would love it."

"Let's see, it's one o'clock now. How about meeting me back here at four-thirty?" he said as we walked out of the Boardroom.

"How's Lucy getting along in Washington, by the way?" He referred to the least-sought-after dormitory, with its tiny beds and towels too small to cover anything that mattered.

"I'm sorry we couldn't have offered her more privacy."

"Don't be. It's good for her to have a roommate and suite mates not that she necessarily gets along with them."

"Geniuses don't always work and play well with others."

"The only thing she ever flunked on her report card," I said.

I spent the next several hours on the phone, unsuccessfully trying to reach Dr. Jenrette, who apparently had taken the day off to play golf. My office in Richmond, I was pleased to hear, was under control, the day's cases thus far requiring only views, which were external examinations with body fluids drawn. Blessedly, there had been no homicides from the night before, and my two court cases for the rest of the week had both settled. At the appointed time and place, Wesley and I met.

"Put this on." He handed me a special visitor's pass, which I clipped to my jacket pocket next to my faculty name tag.

"No problems?" I asked.

"It was a stretch, but I managed to pull it off."

"I'm relieved to know I passed the background check," I said ironically.

"Well, just barely."

"Thanks a lot." He paused, then lightly touched my back as I preceded him through a doorway.

"I don't need to tell you, Kay, that nothing you see or hear at ERF leaves the building."

"You're right, Benton. You don't need to tell me." Outside the Boardroom, the PX was packed with National Academy students in red shirts browsing at everything imaginable emblazoned with "FBI." Fit men and women politely passed us on steps as they headed to class, not a single blue shirt to be found in the color-coded crowd, for there had been no new agent classes in over a year. We followed a long corridor to the lobby, where a digital sign above the front desk reminded guests to keep visitor's passes properly displayed. Beyond the front doors, distant gunfire peppered the perfect afternoon. The Engineering Research Facility was three beige concrete-and-glass pods with large bay doors and high chain-link fences. Rows of parked cars bore testament to a population I never saw, for ERF seemed to swallow its employees and send them away at moments when the rest of us were unconscious. At the front door, Wesley paused by a sensor module with a numeric keypad that was attached to the wall. He inserted his right thumb over a reading lens, which scanned his print as the data display instructed him to type in his Personal Identification Number. The biometric lock was released with a faint click.

"Obviously, you've been here before," I commented as he held the door for me.

"Many times," he said.

I was left to wonder what business typically brought him here as we followed a beige-carpeted corridor, softly lit and silent, and more than twice the length of a football field. We passed laboratories where scientists in somber suits and lab coats were busily engaged in activities I knew nothing of and could not identify at a glance. Men and women worked in cubicles and over countertops scattered with tools, hardware, video displays, and strange devices. Behind windowless double doors a power saw whined through wood. At an elevator, Wesley's fingerprint was required again before we could access the rarefied quiet where Lucy spent her days. The second floor was, in essence, an air-conditioned cranium enclosing an artificial brain. Walls and carpet were muted gray, space precisely partitioned like an ice cube tray. Each cubicle contained two modular desks with sleek computers, laser printers, and piles of paper. Lucy was easy to spot. She was the only analyst wearing FBI fatigues.

Her back was to us as she talked into a telephone headset, one hand manipulating a stylus over a computerized message pad, the other typing on a keyboard. If I had not known better, I might have thought she was composing music.

"No, no," she said.

"One long beep followed by two short ones and we're probably talking about a malfunction with the monitor, maybe the board containing the video chips." She swiveled around in her chair when her peripheral vision picked us up.

"Yes, it's a huge difference if it's just one short beep," she explained to the person on the line.

"Now we're talking about a problem in a system board. Listen, Dave, can I get back with you?"

I noticed a biometric scanner on her desk, half buried beneath paper.

On the floor and filling a shelf overhead were formidable programming manuals, boxes of diskettes and tapes, stacks of computer and software magazines, and a variety of pale blue bound publications stamped with the Department of Justice seal.

"I thought I'd show your aunt what you're up to," Wesley said. Lucy slipped off the headset, and if she was happy to see us I could not tell.

"Right now I'm up to my ears in problems," she said.

"We're getting errors on a couple four-eighty-six machines." She added for my benefit, "We're using PCS to develop the Crime Artificial Intelligence Network known as CAIN."

"CAIN?" I marveled.

"That's a rather ironic acronym for a system designed to track violent criminals." Wesley said, "I suppose you could look at it as the ultimate act of contrition on the part of the world's first murderer. Or maybe it simply takes one to know one."

"Basically," Lucy went on, "our ambition is for CAIN to be an automated system that models the real world as much as possible."

"In other words," I said, "it's supposed to think and act the way we do."

"Exactly." She resumed typing.

"The crime analysis report you're accustomed to is right here." Appearing on the screen were queries from the familiar fifteen-page form I had been filling out for years whenever a body was unidentified or the victim of an offender who probably had murdered before and would again.

"It's been condensed a little." Lucy brought up more pages.

"The form's never really been the problem," I pointed out.

"It's getting the investigator to complete the darn thing and send it in."

"Now they'll have choices," Wesley said.

"They can have a dumb terminal in their precinct that will allow them to sit down and fill in the form on-line. Or for the true Luddite, we have paper-a bubble form or the original one, which can be sent off as usual or faxed."

"We're also working with handwriting recognition technology," Lucy went on.

"Computerized message pads can be used while the investigator's in his car, the squad room, waiting around for court. And anything we get on paper-handwritten or otherwise-can be scanned into the system.

"The interactive part comes when CAIN gets a hit or needs supplementary information. He'll actually communicate with the investigator by modem, or by leaving messages in voice or by electronic mail."

"The potential's enormous," Wesley said to me.

I knew the real reason he had brought me here. This cubicle felt far removed from inner-city field offices, bank robberies, and drug busts. Wesley wanted me to believe if Lucy worked for the Bureau, she would be safe. Yet I knew better, for I understood the ambushes of the mind. The clean pages my young niece was showing me in her pristine computer would soon carry names and physical descriptions that would make violence real. She would build a data base that would become a landfill of body parts, tortures, weapons and wounds. And one day she would hear the silent screams. She would imagine the faces of victims in crowds she passed.

"I assume what you're applying to police investigators will also have meaning for us," I said to Wesley.

"It goes without saying that medical examiners will be part of the network." Lucy showed us more screens and elaborated on other marvels in words difficult even for me. Computers were the modern Babel, I had decided. The higher technology reached, the greater the confusion of tongues.

"That's the thing about Structure Query Language," she was explaining.

"It's more declarative than navigational, meaning the user specifies what he wants accessed from the data base instead of how he wants it accessed."

I had begun watching a woman walking in our direction. She was tall, with a graceful but strong stride, a long lab coat flowing around her knees as she slowly stirred a paintbrush in a small aluminum can.

"Have we decided what we're going to run this on eventually?" Wesley continued chatting with my niece.

"A mainframe?"

"Actually, the trend is toward downsized client data base server environments. You know, minis, LANS. Everything gets smaller." The woman turned into our cubicle, and when she looked up, her eyes went straight to mine and held for a piercing instant before shifting away.

"Was there a meeting scheduled that I didn't know about?" she said with a cool smile as she set the can on her desk. I got the distinct impression she was displeased by the intrusion.

"Carrie, we'll have to take care of our project a little later. Sorry," Lucy said. She added," I assume you've met Benton Wesley. This is Dr. Kay Scarpetta, my aunt. And this is Carrie Grethen. "

"A pleasure to meet you," Carrie Grethen said to me, and I was bothered by her eyes.

I watched her slide into her chair and absently smooth her dark brown hair, which was long and pinned back in an old-fashioned French twist.

I guessed she was in her mid-thirties, her smooth skin, dark eyes, and cleanly sculpted features giving her face a patrician beauty both remarkable and rare. As she opened a file drawer, I noted how orderly her work space was compared to my niece's, for Lucy was too far gone into her esoteric world to give much thought to where to store a book or stack paper. Despite her ancient intellect, she was very much the college kid who chewed gum and lived with clutter. Wesley spoke.

"Lucy? Why don't you show your aunt around?"

"Sure." She seemed reluctant as she exited a screen and got up.

"So, Carrie, tell me exactly what you do here," I heard him say as we walked away. Lucy glanced back in their direction, and I was startled by the emotion flickering in her eyes.

"What you see in this section is pretty self-explanatory," she said, distracted and quite tense.

"Just people and workstations."

"All of them working on VI CAP

"There's only three of us involved with CAIN. Most of what's done up here is tactical" -she glanced back again.

"You know, tactical in the sense of using computers to get a piece of equipment to operate better. Like various electronic collection devices and some of the robots Crisis Response and HRT use." Her mind was definitely elsewhere as she led me to the far end of the floor, where there was a room secured by another biometric lock.

"Only a few of us are cleared to go in here," she said, scanning her thumb and entering her Personal Identification Number. The gunmetal-gray door opened onto a refrigerated space neatly arranged with workstations, monitors, and scores of modems with blinking lights stacked on shelves. Bundled cables running out the backs of equipment disappeared beneath the raised floor, and monitors swirling with bright blue loops and whorls boldly proclaimed "CAIN." The artificial light, like the air, was clean and cold.

"This is where all fingerprint data are stored," Lucy told me.

"From the locks?" I looked around.

"From the scanners you see everywhere for physical access control and data security."

"And is this sophisticated lock system an ERF invention?"

"We're enhancing and troubleshooting it here. In fact, right now I'm in the middle of a research project pertaining to it. There's a lot to do." She bent over a monitor and adjusted the brightness of the screen.

"Eventually we'll also be storing fingerprint data from out in the field when cops arrest somebody and use electronic scanning to capture live fingerprints," she went on.

"The offender's prints will go straight into CAIN, and if he's committed other crimes from which latent prints were recovered and scanned into the system, we'll get a hit in seconds."

"I assume this will somehow be linked to automated fingerprint identification systems around the country."

"Around the country and hopefully around the world. The point is to have all roads lead here."

"Is Carrie also assigned to CAIN?" Lucy seemed taken aback.

"Yes."

"So she's one of the three people."

"That's right." When Lucy offered nothing further, I explained, "She struck me as unusual."

"I suppose you could say that about everybody here," my niece answered.

"Where is she from?" I persisted, for I had taken an instant dislike to Carrie Grethen. I did not know why.

"Washington State."

"Is she nice?" I asked.

"She's very good at what she does."

"That doesn't quite answer my question." I smiled.

"I try not to get into the personalities of this place. Why are you so curious?" Defensiveness crept into her tone.

"I'm curious because she made me curious," I simply said.

"Aunt Kay, I wish you'd stop being so protective.

Besides, it's inevitable in light of what you do professionally that you're going to think the worst about everyone. "

"I see. I suppose it's also inevitable, in light of what I do professionally, that I'm going to think everyone is dead," I said dryly.

"That's ludicrous," my niece said.

"I was simply hoping you'd met some nice people here."

"I would appreciate it if you would also quit worrying about, whether I have friends."

"Lucy, I'm not trying to interfere with your life. All I ask is that you're careful."

"No, that isn't all you ask. You are interfering."

"It is not my intention," I said, and Lucy could make me angrier than anyone I knew.

"Yes, it is. You really don't want me here."

I regretted my next words even as I said them.

"Of course I do. I'm the one who got you this damn internship." She just stared at me.

"Lucy, I'm sorry. Let's not argue. Please." I lowered my voice and placed my hand on her arm. She pulled away.

"I've got to go check on something." To my amazement, she abruptly walked off, leaving me alone in a high-security room as arid and chilly as our encounter had become. Colors eddied on video displays, and lights and digital numbers glowed red and green as my thoughts buzzed dully like the pervasive white noise. Lucy was the only child of my irresponsible only sister, Dorothy, and I had no children of my own. But my love for my niece could not be explained by just that.

I understood her secret shame born of abandonment and isolation, and wore her same suit of sorrow beneath my polished armor. When I tended to her wounds, I was tending to my own. This was something I could not tell her. I left, making certain the door was locked behind me, and it did not escape Wesley's notice when I returned from my tour without my guide. Nor did Lucy reappear in time to say goodbye.

"What happened?" Wesley asked as we walked back to the Academy.

"I'm afraid we got into another one of our disagreements," I replied.

He glanced over at me.

"Someday get me to tell you about my disagreements with Michele."

"If there's a course in being a mother or an aunt, I think I need to enroll. In fact, I wish I had enrolled a long time ago. All I did was ask her if she'd made any friends here and she got angry."

"What's your worry?"

"She's a loner." He looked puzzled.

"You've alluded to this before. But to be honest, she doesn't impress me as a loner at all."

"What do you mean?" We stopped to let several cars pass. The sun was low and warm against the back of my neck, and he had taken off his suit jacket and draped it over his arm. He gently touched my elbow when it was safe to cross.

"I was at the Globe and Laurel several nights ago and Lucy was there with a friend. In fact, it may have been Carrie Grethen, but I'm really not sure. But they seemed to be having a pretty good time." My surprise couldn't have been much more acute had Wesley just told me Lucy had hijacked a plane.

"And she's been up in the Boardroom a number of late nights. You see one side of your niece, Kay. What's always a shock to parents or parental figures is that there's another side they don't see."

"The side you're talking about is completely foreign to me," I said, and I did not feel relieved. The idea that there were elements of Lucy I did not know was only more disconcerting. We walked in silence for a moment, and when we reached the lobby I quietly asked, "Benton, is she drinking?"

"She's old enough."

"I realize that," I said.

I was about to ask him more when my heavy preoccupations were aborted by the simple, swift action of his reaching around and snapping his pager off his belt. He held it up and frowned at the number in the display.

"Come on down to the unit," he said, "and let's see what this is about."