Body of Evidence

8

Miss Harper returned with more wine as the tall case clock on the landing outside the library chimed twelve times.

"The clock," she seemed compelled to explain. "It's ten minutes slow. Always has been."

The mansion's phones really were out. I had checked. The walk to town was several miles through what was now at least four inches of snow. I wasn't going anywhere.

Her brother was dead. Beryl was dead. Miss Harper was the only one left. I hoped it was a coincidence. I lit a cigarette and took a swallow of wine.

Miss Harper didn't have the physical strength to have killed her brother and Beryl. What if the killer were after Miss Harper, too? What if he came back?

My.38 was at home.

The police would be staking out the area.

In what! Snowmobiles! I realized Miss Harper was saying something else to me.

"I'm sorry," I said, forcing a smile.

"You look cold," she repeated.

Her face was placid as she seated herself on the baroque side chair and stared into the fire. The high flames sounded like a wind-whipped flag, and infrequent gusts of wind sent ashes blowing out on the hearth. But she appeared reassured by my company. Were I in her shoes, I wouldn't have wanted to be alone, either.

"I'm fine," I lied. I was cold.

"I'll be glad to get you a sweater."

"Please don't trouble yourself. I'm comfortable- really."

"It's quite impossible to heat this house," she went on. "The high ceilings. And it isn't insulated. You grow accustomed to it."

I thought of my gas-heated modern house in Richmond. I thought of my queen-size bed with its firm mattress and electric blanket. I thought of the carton of cigarettes in the cupboard near the refrigerator and of the good Scotch in my bar. I thought of the drafty, dusty dark upstairs of the Cutler Grove mansion.

"I'll be fine down here. On the sofa," I said.

"Nonsense. The fire will go out soon enough." She was fidgeting with a button on her sweater, her eyes not leaving the fire.

"Miss Harper," I tried one last time. "Do you have any idea who might have done this? To Beryl, to your brother. Or why?"

"You think it's the same man."

She presented this as a statement of fact, not a question.

"I have to consider it."

"I wish I could tell you something that would help," she answered. "But perhaps it doesn't matter. Whoever it is, what's done is done."

"Don't you want him punished?"

"There has been enough punishment. It won't undo what has been done," she said.

"Wouldn't Beryl want him caught?"

She turned to me, her eyes wide. "I wish you had known her."

"I think I did. I do know her in a way," I said gently.

"I can't explain…"

"You don't need to, Miss Harper."

"It could have been so nice…"

I saw her grief for an instant, her face contorted, then controlled again. She didn't need to finish the thought. It could have been so nice now that there was no one to keep Beryl and Miss Harper apart. Companions. Friends. Life is so empty when you are alone, when there is no one to love.

"I'm sorry," I said with feeling. "I'm so terribly sorry, Miss Harper."

"It is the middle of November," she replied, looking away from me again. "Unusually early for snow. The thaw will come quickly, Dr. Scarpetta. You will be able to get out by late morning. Those who forgot you will remember by then. It really was so good of you to come."

She seemed to have known that I would be here. I had the uncanny impression she had somehow planned it. Of course, that wasn't possible.

"One thing I will ask you to do," she said.

"What is that, Miss Harper?"

"Come back in the spring. Come back when it is April," she said to the flames.

"I would like that," I answered.

"The forget-me-nots will be in bloom. The bowling green will be pale blue with them. It is so lovely, my favorite time of year. Beryl and I used to pick them. Have you ever studied them up close? Or are you like most people who take them for granted, never give them a thought because they are so small? They are so beautiful if you hold them close. So beautiful, as if made of porcelain and painted by the perfect hand of God. We would wear them in our hair and put them in bowls of water in the house, Beryl and I. You must promise to come back in April. You will promise me that, won't you?"

She turned to me, and the emotion in her eyes pained me.

"Yes, yes. Of course I will," I replied, and I meant it.

"Is there anything special you eat for breakfast?" she asked as she got up.

"Whatever you fix for yourself will be fine."

"There's plenty in the refrigerator," she remarked oddly. "Bring your wine and I'll show you to your room."

Her hand trailed the banister as she led her guest up the magnificent carved stairway to the second floor. There were no overhead lights, just lamps to light our way, and the musty air was as cold as a cellar.

"I'm on the other side of the hallway, three doors down, if you need anything," she told me, and she showed me inside a small bedroom.

The furnishings were mahogany with satinwood inlays, and on pale-blue-papered walls were several oil paintings of loosely arranged flowers and a vista of the river. The canopied bed was turned down and piled high with comforters, and an open doorway led into the tiled bath. The air was stale and smelled of dust, as if windows were never opened and nothing but memories ever stirred in here. I was sure that no one had slept in this room in many, many years.

"In the top dresser drawer is a flannel gown. There are clean towels and other necessities in the bath," Miss Harper said. "Now then, if you're all set?"

"Yes. Thank you."

I smiled at her. "Good night."

I shut the door and closed its feeble latch. The gown was the only garment inside the dresser, and tucked under it was a sachet that long ago had lost its scent. Every other drawer was empty. Inside the bath was a toothbrush still wrapped in cellophane, a tiny tube of toothpaste, a bar of lavender soap never used, and plenty of towels, as Miss Harper had promised. The sink was as dry as chalk, and when I turned the gold handles the water was liquid rust. It took forever to get clear and warm enough for me to dare to wash my face.

The gown, old but clean, was the washed-out blue of forget-me-nots, I thought. Getting in bed, I pulled the musty-smelling comforters up to my chin before switching off the lamp. The pillow was plump, and I could feel the prickly twill of feathers as I pushed and shoved it into a more comfortable shape. Wide awake, my nose cold, I sat up in the darkness of a room I was certain had once been Beryl's, and I finished my wine. The house was so still I imagined I could hear the all-absorbing quiet of the snow falling beyond the window.

I wasn't aware of dozing off, but when my eyelids flew open my heart was thudding violently, and I was afraid to move. I couldn't remember the nightmare. At first I wasn't sure where I was and if the noise I heard was real. The faucet in the bathroom was leaking, drops of water slowly clinking into the sink. Floorboards beyond my latched bedroom door creaked again, quietly.

My mind raced through an obstacle course of possibilities. The dropping temperature was causing wood to creak. Mice. Someone was slowly making his way down the hall. I strained to hear, holding my breath as slippered feet whispered past my shut door. Miss Harper, I concluded. It sounded as if she was going downstairs. I tossed and turned for what seemed like an hour. Eventually, I switched on the lamp and got out of bed. It was half past three, and there wasn't a hope I could go back to sleep. Shivering beneath my borrowed gown, I put on my overcoat, unlatched the door, and followed the pitch-black hallway until I recognized the shadowy shape of the curved banister at the top of the stairs.

The chilly entrance hall was dimly illuminated by moonlight seeping through small windows on either side of the front door. The snow had stopped and stars were out, tree branches and shrubbery formless beneath white frosting. I crept into the library, lured by the promise of heat from its crackling fire.

Miss Harper was sitting on the sofa, an afghan pulled around her. She was staring into the flames, her cheeks wet with tears she did not bother to brush away. Clearing my throat, I tentatively called her name, not wanting to startle her.

She did not move.

"Miss Harper?" I said again, louder. "I heard you come down…"

She was leaning against the serpentine-curved back of the sofa, her eyes unblinking as they stared dully into the fire. Her head fell limply to one side when I quickly sat next to her and pressed my fingers against her neck. She was very warm but pulseless. Pulling her down to the rug, I went from her mouth to her sternum, desperately trying to breathe life into her lungs and force her heart to beat. I don't know how long this went on. When I finally gave up, my lips were numb, the muscles in my back and arms quivering. I was trembling all over.

The telephones were still out. I could not call anyone. There was nothing I could do. I stood before the library window, parted the curtains and looked out through tears at the incredible whiteness lit up by the moon. Beyond, the river was black and I could not see across it. Somehow I managed to get her body back on the sofa and I gently covered it with the afghan while the fire burned down and the girl in the portrait receded into the shadows. Sterling Harper's death had caught me unawares and left me stunned. I sat on the rug in front of the sofa and watched the fire die. I could not keep that alive, either. In fact, I didn't even try.

I did not cry when my father died. He had been sick so many years I became expert at cauterizing my emotions. He was in bed most of my childhood. When he finally died one evening at home, my mother's terrible grief drove me to a higher ground of detachment, and it was from this seemingly safer vantage point that I honed to perfection the art of surveying the wreckage of my family.

With what seemed unflappable reserve, I watched the anarchy that broke out between my mother and my younger sister, Dorothy, who had been consummately narcissistic and irresponsible since the day she was born.

I silently removed myself from the screaming matches and arguments while inwardly I ran for my life. AWOL from the wars within my house, I spent increasing lengths of time engaging the tutelage of the Gray Nuns after class or ensconcing myself in the library, where I began to realize the precocity of my mind and the rewards it would bring to me. I excelled in science and was intrigued by human biology. I was poring over Gray's Anatomy by the time I was fifteen, and it became the sine qua non of my self-education, the vessel of my epiphany. I was going to leave Miami for college. In an era when women were teachers, secretaries, and housewives, I was going to be a physician.

In high school I made all A's and played tennis and read during the holidays and summers while my family struggled on like wounded Confederate veterans in a world long since won by the North. I had little interest in dating and had few friends. Graduating at the top of my class, I went off to Cornell on a full scholarship,- then it was Johns Hopkins for medical school, law school at Georgetown after that, then back to Hopkins for my pathology residency. I was only vaguely aware of what I was doing. The career I had embarked upon would forever return me to the scene of the terrible crime of my father's death. I would take death apart and put it back together again a thousand times. I would master its codes and take it to court. I would understand the nuts and bolts of it. But none of it brought my father back to life, and the child inside me never stopped grieving.

Embers shifted on the hearth, and I dozed in fits and starts.

Hours later the details of my prison began to materialize in the chilled blue of dawn. Pain shot through my back and legs as I stiffly got to my feet and went to the window. The sun was a pale egg over the slate-gray river, tree trunks black against the white snow. The fire was cold, and two questions were tapping at the back of my feverish brain. Would Miss Harper have died had I not been here? How convenient for her to die while I was inside her house. Why did she come down to the library? I imagined her making her way down the stairs, stoking the fire and settling on the sofa. While she stared into the flames, her heart simply stopped. Or was it the portrait she had been looking at in the end?

I switched on every lamp. Pulling a chair close to the hearth, I climbed up and lifted the unwieldy painting free of its hooks. The portrait did not seem so unsettling up close, the total effect disintegrating into subtle shades of color and delicate brush strokes in heavy oil paint. Dust floated free of the canvas as I climbed down and laid the painting on the floor. There was no signature or date, nor was the portrait nearly as old as I had assumed. The colors had been deliberately muted to look old, and there wasn't the slightest bit of cracking evident in the paint.

Turning it over, I examined the brown paper backing. Centered on it was a gold seal embossed with the name of a Williamsburg picture-framing shop. I made note of it and climbed back up on the chair, returning the painting to its hooks. Then I squatted before the fireplace and delicately probed the debris with a pencil I had gotten out of my bag. On top of the charred chunks of wood was a peculiar layer of filmy white ash that wafted like cobwebs at the slightest stirring. Beneath this was a lump of what looked like melted plastic.

"No offense, Doc," Marino said, backing his car out of the lot, "but you look like hell."

"Thanks a lot," I muttered.

"Like I said, no offense. Guess you didn't get much sleep."

When I didn't show up to take care of Gary Harper's autopsy in the morning, Marino wasted no time calling the Williamsburg police. Midmorning two sheepish officers showed up at the mansion, chains clanking and chewing tracks into the smooth, heavy snow. After the depressing rounds of questions about Sterling Harper's death, her body was loaded into an ambulance headed for Richmond, and the officers deposited me at headquarters in downtown Williamsburg, where I was plied with coffee and doughnuts until Marino picked me up.

"No way I would've stayed in that house all night," Marino went on. "I don't care if it was twenty below. I'd freeze my ass off before I'd spend the night with a stiff-"

"Do you know where Princess Street is?" I interrupted.

"What about it?" His mirrored shades turned toward me.

The snow was white fire in the sun, the streets fast turning to slush.

"I'm interested in a five-oh-seven Princess Street address," I replied in a tone indicating I expected him to take me there.

The address was at the edge of the historic district, tucked between other businesses in Merchants' Square. In the recently plowed parking lot were no more than a dozen cars, their roofs thatched with snow. I was relieved to see that The Village Frame Shoppe amp; Gallery was open.

Marino didn't ask questions as I got out. He probably sensed I wasn't in the mood to answer any at the moment. There was only one other customer inside the gallery, a young man in a black overcoat casually riffling through a rack of prints while a woman with long blond hair worked an adding machine behind the counter.

"May I help you?" the blond woman inquired, blandly looking up at me.

"That depends on how long you've worked here," I answered.

The cool, dubious way she looked me over made me realize I probably did look like hell. I'd slept in my coat. My hair was a god-awful mess. Self-consciously reaching up to smooth down a cowlick, I realized I had somehow managed to lose an earring. I told the woman who I was and drove home the point by producing the thin black wallet containing my brass medical examiner's shield. "I've worked here two years," she said. "I'm interested in a painting your shop framed probably before your time," I told her. "A portrait Gary Harper may have brought in."

"Oh, God. I heard about it on the radio this morning. About what happened to him. Oh, God, how awful."

She was sputtering. "You'll need to speak to Mr. Hilgeman." She disappeared in back to fetch him.

Mr. Hilgeman was a tweedy, distinguished-looking gentleman who stated in no uncertain terms, "Gary Harper hasn't been in this shop in years, and no one here knew him well, at least not to my knowledge."

"Mr. Hilgeman," I said, "over the fireplace mantel in Gary Harper's library is a portrait of a blond girl. It was framed in your shop, possibly many years ago. Do you remember it?"

There wasn't the faintest spark of recognition in the gray eyes peering at me over reading glasses.

"It appears very old," I explained. "A good imitation but a rather unusual treatment of the subject. The girl is nine, ten, at the most twelve, but she's dressed more like a young woman, in white, and sitting on a small bench holding a silver hairbrush."

I could have kicked myself for not taking a Polaroid photograph of the painting. My camera was inside my medical bag and the thought had never occurred to me. I had been too distracted.

"You know," Mr. Hilgeman said, his eyes lighting up, "I think I might remember what you're talking about. A very pretty girl, but unusual. Yes. Rather suggestive, as I recall."

I didn't prod him.

"Must have been at least fifteen years ago… Let me see." He touched an index finger to his lips. "No."

He shook his head. "It wasn't me."

"It wasn't you? What wasn't you?" I asked.

"I didn't do the framing. That would have been Clara. An assistant who worked here then. I do believe - in fact I'm certain - Clara did the framing on that one. A rather expensive job and not really worth it, if you must know. The painting wasn't terribly good. Actually," he added with a frown, "it was one of her least successful efforts-"

"Her?"

I interrupted. "Do you mean Clara?"

"I'm talking about Sterling Harper."

He looked speculatively at me. "She's the artist." He paused. "That would have been years ago when she did a lot of painting. They had a studio in the house, as I understand it. I've never been there, of course. But she used to bring in a number of her works, most of them still lifes, landscapes. The painting you're interested in is the only portrait I recall."

"How long ago did she paint it?"

"At least fifteen years ago, as I've said."

"Did someone pose for it?" I asked.

"I suppose it could have been done from a photograph…"

He frowned. "Actually, I really can't answer your question. But if someone posed for it, I don't know who that might have been."

I didn't show my surprise. Beryl would have been sixteen or seventeen and living at Cutler Grove then. Was it possible Mr. Hilgeman, the people in town, didn't know this?

"It's rather sad," he mused. "Such talented, intelligent people. No family, no children."

"What about friends?" I asked.

"I really don't know either of them personally," he said.

And you never will, I thought morbidly.

Marino was wiping off his windshield with a chamois cloth when I went back out into the parking lot. The melted snow and salt left by road crews had splotched and dulled his beautiful black car. He didn't look happy about it. On the pavement beneath the driver's door was an untidy collection of cigarette butts he had unceremoniously dumped from his ashtray.

"Two things/' I began very seriously as we buckled up. "In the mansion's library is a portrait of a young blond girl that Miss Harper apparently had framed in this shop approximately fifteen years ago."

"Beryl Madison?" He got out his lighter.

"It may very well be a portrait of her," I replied. "But if so, it depicts her at an age much younger than she would have been when the Harpers met her. And the treatment of the subject is a little peculiar. Lolita-like…"

"Huh?"

"Sexy," I said bluntly. "A little girl painted to look sensual."

"Yo. So now you're going to tell me Gary Harper was a closet pedophile."

"In the first place, his sister painted the portrait," I said.

"Shit," he complained.

"Secondly," I went on, "I got the distinct impression the owner of the framing shop has no idea Beryl ever lived with the Harpers. It makes me wonder if other people know. And if not, I wonder how that's possible. She lived in the mansion for years, Marino. It's just a couple of miles from town. This is a small town."

He stared straight ahead as he drove and didn't say a word.

"Well," I decided, "it may all be idle speculation. They were reclusive. Perhaps Gary Harper did his best to hide Beryl from the world. Whatever the case, the situation doesn't sound exactly healthy. But it may have nothing to do with their deaths."

"Hell," he said shortly, "healthy ain't the word for it. Reclusive or not, it don't make sense for no one to know she was there. Not unless they had her locked up or chained to a bedpost. Damn perverts. I hate perverts. I hate people picking on kids. You know?"

He glanced over at me again. "I really do hate that. I'm getting that feeling again."

"What feeling?"

"That Mr. Pulitzer Prize took Beryl out," Marino said. "She's going to spill the beans in her book, and he freaks, comes to see her and brings a knife."

"Then who killed him?"

I asked. "So maybe his batty sister did."

Whoever murdered Gary Harper was strong enough to inflict blows so forceful he was rendered unconscious almost immediately, and cutting someone's throat didn't fit with a female assailant. In fact, I had never had a case in which a woman did such a thing.

After a long silence, Marino asked, "Did Old Lady Harper strike you as senile?"

"Rather eccentric. But not senile," I said. "Crazy?"

"No."

"Based on how you've described things, it don't sound to me like her response to her brother getting whacked was exactly appropriate," he answered.

"She was in shock, Marino. People who are in shock do not react appropriately to anything."

"You thinking she committed suicide?"

"Certainly that's possible," I replied. "You find any drugs at the scene?"

"Some over-the-counter meds, none of them lethal," I said.

"No injuries?"

"None I could see."

"So, you know what the hell killed her?" he asked, looking over at me, his face hard.

"No," I answered. "At the moment I have absolutely no idea."

"I assume you're heading back to Cutler Grove," I said to Marino as he parked behind the OCME.

"Real thrilled about it, too," he grumbled. "Go home and get some decent sleep."

"Don't forget Gary Harper's typewriter."

Marino dug in a pocket for his lighter.

"The make and model, and any used ribbons," I reminded him.

He lit a cigarette.

"And any stationery or typing paper in the house. I suggest you collect the ashes in the fireplace yourself. It's going to be extremely difficult to preserve them-"

"No offense, Doc, but you're beginning to sound like my mother or something."

"Marino," I snapped, "I'm serious."

"Yeah, you're serious, all right-seriously in need of a good night's sleep," he said.

Marino was as frustrated as I and probably needed sleep, too.

The bay was locked and empty, the cement floor mottled with oil stains. Inside the morgue I was aware of the tedious humming of electricity and generators I hardly noticed during business hours. The rush of foul-smelling air seemed unusually loud as I entered the refrigerator.

Their bodies were on gurneys parked together against the left wall. Maybe it was because I was so tired. But when I pulled the sheet back from Sterling Harper, I went weak in the knees and dropped my medical bag to the floor. I recalled the keen beauty of her face, the terror in her eyes when the mansion's back door opened and she looked out as I attended to her dead brother, my gloved hands bright red with his blood. Brother and sister were present and accounted for. That was all I needed to know. I covered her gently, shrouding a face now as empty as a rubber mask. All around were tagged and protruding naked feet.

I had vaguely noticed the yellow film box beneath Sterling Harper's gurney when I had first walked into the refrigerator. But it wasn't until I reached down to pick up my medical bag that I took a good look and realized the significance. Kodak thirty-five millimeter, twenty-four exposure. The film on state contract for my office was Fuji, and we always ordered the thirty-six exposure. The paramedics who had transported Miss Harper's body would have been in and out many hours ago, and they wouldn't have taken any photographs.

I went back out into the hallway. The light over the elevator caught my attention, and I realized it was stopped on the second floor. Someone else was in the building! It was probably just the security guard making his rounds. Then, as my scalp began to prickle, I thought of the empty film box again. Gripping the strap of my medical bag tightly, I decided to take the stairs. On the second-floor landing I slowly opened the door and listened before stepping inside. The offices in the east wing were empty, the lights out. I turned right into the main hallway, passing the empty classroom, the library, and Fielding's office. I didn't hear or see anyone. Just to be sure, I decided as I turned into my office to call security.

When I saw him, I stopped breathing. For a terrible moment my mind wouldn't work. He was deftly and silently riffling through an open filing cabinet. The collar of a navy jacket was up around his ears, eyes masked by dark aviator glasses, hands sheathed in surgical gloves. Over a powerful shoulder was a leather strap attached to a camera. He looked as solid and hard as marble, and it wasn't possible for me to step out of sight fast enough. The gloved hands suddenly stilled.

When he lunged, it was a reflex, my medical bag looping back like an Olympic hammer. Momentum propelled it with such force between his legs the impact jarred the sunglasses from his face. He fell forward, doubling over in agony and knocked sufficiently off balance for me to send him sprawling with a kick to the ankles. He must not have felt any better when the hard metal lens of his camera was the only cushion between his ribs and the floor.

Medical impedimenta scattered as I frantically dug out of my bag the small canister of Mace I always carried, and he bellowed when the heavy stream hit him in the face. He clawed at his eyes, rolling around, screaming, while I grabbed the phone and called for help. I squirted him one more time for good measure just before the security guard hustled in. Then the cops arrived. My hysterical hostage begged to be taken to the hospital as an unsympathetic officer wrenched his arms behind his back, snapped on cuffs, and frisked him.

According to his driver's license, the intruder's name was Jeb Price, age thirty-four, address Washington, D.C. Wedged in the back of his corduroy trousers was a Smith amp; Wesson 9-millimeter automatic with fourteen rounds in the clip and one in the chamber.

I don't remember going into the morgue office and getting the keys off the pegboard for the other state car leased by the OCME. But I must have, because I was parking the dark blue station wagon in my driveway as night began to fall. Used to transport bodies, the car was oversize, the tailgate window discreetly covered with a screen, and in back was a removable plyboard floor that required hosing down several times a week. The car was a cross between a family wagon and a hearse, and the only thing harder to parallel park, in my opinion, was the QE2.

Like a zombie, I went straight upstairs without bothering to play back my telephone messages or turn off the answering machine. My right elbow and shoulder ached. The small bones in my hand hurt. Laying my clothes on a chair, I took a hot bath and numbly fell into bed. Deep, deep sleep. Sleep so deep it was like dying. Darkness was heavy and I was trying to swim through it, my body like lead, as the ringing telephone by my bed was abruptly cut off by my answering machine.

"… don't know when I'll be able to call back, so listen. Please listen, Kay. I heard about Gary Harper…"

My heart was pounding as my eyes opened, Mark's urgent voice pulling me out of my torpor.

"… Please stay out of it. Don't get involved. Please. I'll talk to you again as soon as I'm able…"

By the time I found the receiver I was listening to a dial tone. Replaying his message, I slumped against pillows and began to cry.