Cause Of Death

Chapter 2

LONG AFTER HE HAD DISAPPEARED INSIDE THE BUILDING with the anchor in front, I was sitting on the pier, struggling to pull a thick wet suit over my dive skin.

Not far from me, several rescuers prepared a flat-bottomed boat they had moored to a piling. Shipyard workers wandered about curiously, and on the dive platform, two men in royal blue neoprene tested buddy phones and seemed very thorough in their inspection of scuba gear, which included mine.

I watched the divers talk to each other, but I could not make out a word they said as they unscrewed hoses and fitted belts with weights. Occasionally, they glanced my way, and I was surprised when one of them decided to climb the ladder that led up to my pier. He walked over to where I was and sat beside me on my little patch of cold pavement.

"This seat taken?" He was a handsome young man, black and built like an Olympic athlete.

"There are a lot of people who want it, but I don't know where they are." I fought with the wet suit some more.

"Damn. I hate these things."

"Just think of it as putting on an inner tube."

"Yes, that's an enormous help."

"I need to talk to you about underwater comm equipment. You ever used it before?" he said.

I glanced up at his serious face and asked, "Are you with a squad?"

"Nope. I'm just plain ole Navy. And I don't know about you, but this sure isn't the way I planned to spend my New Year's Eve. Don't know why anybody'd want to dive in this river unless they got some sort of fantasy about being a blind tadpole in a mud puddle. Or maybe if you got ironpoor blood and think all the rust in there will help."

"All the rust in there will do is give you tetanus." I looked around. "Who else here is Navy versus squad?"

"The two with the rescue boat are squad. Ki Soo down there on the dive platform is the only other Navy except our intrepid investigator with NIS. Ki's good. He's my buddy."

He gave an okay sign to Ki Soo, who gave it back, and I found all of this rather interesting and very different from what I had experienced so far.

"Now listen up." My new acquaintance spoke as if he had worked with me for years. "Comm equipment's tricky if you've never used it. It can be real dangerous." His face was earnest.

"I'm familiar with it," I assured him with more ease than I felt.

"Well, you gotta be more than familiar. You gotta be buddies with it, because like your dive buddy, it can save your life." He paused. "It can also kill you."

I had used underwater communication equipment on only one other dive, and was still nervous about having my regulator replaced by a tightly sealed mask fitted with a mouthpiece and no purge valve. I worried about the mask flooding, about having to tear it off as I frantically groped for my alternate air source, or octopus. But I was not going to mention this, not here.

"I'll be fine," I assured him again.

"Great. I heard you were a pro," he said. "By the way, my name's Jerod, and I already know who you are." Sitting Indian-style, he was tossing gravel into the water and seemed fascinated by the slowly spreading ripples. "I've heard a lot of nice things about you. In fact, when my wife finds out I met you, she's going to be jealous."

I was not certain why a diver in the Navy would have heard anything about me beyond what was in the news, which wasn't always nice. But his words were a welcome salve to my raw mood, and I was about to let him know this when he glanced at his watch, then stared down at the platform and met Ki Soo's eyes.

"Dr. Scarpetta," Jerod said as he got up. "I think we're ready to rock and roll. How about you?"

"I'm as ready as I'm going to be." I got up, too.

"What's going to be the best approach?"

"The best way-in fact, the only way-is to follow his hose down."

We stepped closer to the edge of the pier and he pointed to the johnboat.

"I've already been down once, and if you don't follow the hose you'll never find him. You ever had to wade through a sewer with no lights on?"

"That one hasn't happened to me yet."

"Well, you can't see shit. And that's the same thing here."

"To your knowledge, no one has disturbed the body," I said.

"No one's been near it but me."

He watched as I picked up my buoyancy control vest, or BC, and tucked a flashlight in a pocket.

"I wouldn't even bother. In these conditions, all a flashlight's going to do is get in your way."

But I was going to bring it because I wanted any advantage I could possibly have. Jerod and I climbed down the ladder to the dive platform so we could finish preparations, and I ignored overt stares from shipyard men as I massaged cream rinse into my hair and pulled on the neoprene hood.

I strapped a knife to my inner right calf, and then grabbed each end of a fifteen-pound weight belt and quickly hoisted it around my waist. I checked safety releases, and pulled on gloves.

"I'm ready," I said to Ki Soo.

He carried over communication equipment and my regulator.

"I will attach your air hose to the face mask." He spoke with no accent. "I understand you've used comm equipment like this before."

"That's correct," I said.

He squatted beside me and lowered his voice as if we were about to conspire. "You, Jerod and I will be in constant contact with each other over the buddy phones."

They looked like bright red gas masks with a five-strap harness in back. Jerod moved behind me and helped me into my BC and air tank while his buddy talked on'

. "As you know," Ki Soo was saying, "you breathe normally and use the push-to-talk button on the mouthpiece when you want to communicate." He demonstrated. "Now we need to get this nice and secure over your hood and tuck it in. There, you get the rest of your hair tucked in and let me make sure this is nice and tight in back."

I hated buddy phones the most when I wasn't in the water because it was difficult to breathe. I sucked in air as best I could as I peered out through plastic at these two divers I had just entrusted with my life.

"There will be two rescuers in a boat and they will be monitoring us with a transducer that will be lowered into the water. Whatever we say will be heard by whoever is listening on the surface. Do you understand?" Ki Soo looked at me and I knew I had just been given a warning.

I nodded, my breathing loud and labored in my ears.

"You want your fins on now?"

I shook my head and pointed at the water.

"Then you go first and I will toss them to you."

Weighing at least eighty pounds more than when I had arrived, I cautiously made my way to the edge of the dive platform and checked again to make certain my mask was tucked into my hood. Cathodic protectors were like catfish whiskers trailing from the huge dormant ships, the water ruffled by wind. I steeled myself for the most unnerving giant stride I had ever made.

The cold at first was a shock, and my body took its time warming the water leaking into my rubber sheath as I pulled on my fins. Worse, I could not see my computer console or its compass. I could not see my hand in front of my face, and I now understood why it was useless to bring a flashlight. The suspended sediment absorbed light like a blotter, forcing me to surface at frequent intervals to get my bearings as I swam toward the spot where the hose led from the johnboat and disappeared beneath the surface of the river.

"Everybody ten-four?" Ki Soo's voice sounded in the receiver pressed against the bone of my skull.

"Ten-four," I spoke into the mouthpiece and tried to relax as I slowly kicked barely below the surface.

"You're on the hose?" It was Jerod who spoke this time.

"I've got my hands on it now." It seemed oddly taut, and I was careful to disturb it as little as possible.

"Keep following it down. Maybe thirty feet. He should be floating right above the bottom."

I began my descent, pausing at intervals to equalize the pressure in my ears as I tried not to panic. I could not see.

My heart was pounding as I tried to will myself to relax and take deep breaths. For a moment I stopped and floated as I shut my eyes and slowly breathed. I resumed following the hose down and panic seized me again when a thick rusting cable suddenly materialized in front of me.

I tried to get under it, but I could not see where it was coming from or going to, and I was really more buoyant than I wanted to be and could have used more weight in my belt or the pockets of my BC. The cable got me from the rear, clipping my K-valve hard. I felt my regulator tug as if someone were grabbing it from behind, and the loosened tank began to slide down my back, pulling me with it. Ripping open the Velcro straps of my BC, I quickly worked my way out of it as I tried to block out everything except the procedure I had been trained to do.

"Everything ten-four?" Ki Soo's voice sounded in my mask.

"Technical problem," I said.

I maneuvered the tank between my legs so I could float on it as if I were riding a rocket in cold, murky space. I readjusted straps and fought off fear.

"Need help?"

"Negative. Watch for cables," I said.

"You gotta watch for anything," his voice came back.

It entered my mind that there were many ways to die down here as I slipped my arms inside the BC. Rolling over on my back, I snugly strapped myself in.

"Everything ten-four?" Ki Soo's voice sounded again.

"Ten-four. You're breaking up."

"Too much interference. All these big tubs. We're coming down behind you. Do you want us closer?"

"Not yet," I said.

They were maintaining a prudent distance because they knew I wanted to see the body without distraction or interference. We did not need to get in each other's way.

Slowly, I dropped deeper, and closer to the bottom, I realized the hose must be snagged, explaining why it was so taut. I was not sure which way to move, and tried going several feet to my left, where something brushed against me. I turned and met the dead man face to face, his body bumping and nudging as I involuntarily jerked away. Languidly, he twisted and drifted on the end of his tether, rubber-sheathed arms out like a sleepwalker's as my motion pulled him after me.

I let him drift close, and he nudged and bumped some more, but now I was not afraid because I was no longer surprised. It was as if he were trying to get my attention or wanted to dance with me through the hellish darkness of the river that had claimed him. I maintained neutral buoyancy, barely moving my fins for I did not want to stir up the bottom or cut myself on rusting shipyard debris.

"I've got him. Or maybe I should say he got me." I depressed the push-to-talk button. "Can you copy?"

"Barely. We're maybe ten feet above you. Holding."

"Hold a few minutes more. Then we'll get him out."

I tried my flashlight one last time, just in case, but it still proved useless, and I realized I would have to see this scene with my hands. Tucking the light back in my BC, I held my computer console almost against my mask. I could barely make out that my depth was almost thirty feet and I had more than half a tank of air. I began to hover in the dead man's face, and through the murkiness could make out only the vague shape of features and hair that had floated free of his hood.

Gripping his shoulders, I carefully felt around his chest, tracing the hose. It was threaded through his weight belt and I began following it toward whatever it was caught on.

In less than ten feet, a huge rusty screw blossomed before my eyes. I touched the barnacle-covered metal of a ship's side, steadying myself so I did not float any closer. I did not want to drift under a vessel the size of a playing field and have to blindly feel my way out before I ran out of air.

The hose was tangled and I felt along it to see if it might be folded or compressed in a way that might have cut off the flow of air, but I could find no evidence of that. In fact, when I tried to free it from the screw, I found this was not hard to do. I saw no reason why the diver could not have freed himself, and I was suspicious his hose had gotten snagged after death.

"His air hose was caught." I got on the radio again. "On one of the ships. I don't know which."

"Need some help?" It was Jerod who spoke.

"No. I've got him. You can start pulling."

I felt the hose move.

"Okay. I'm going to guide him up," I said. "You keep pulling. Very slowly."

I locked my arms under the body from behind and began kicking with my ankles and knees instead of my hips because movement was restricted.

"Easy," I warned into the microphone, for my ascent could be no more than one foot a second. "Slowly.

Slowly."

Periodically, I looked up but could not see where I was until we broke the surface. Then suddenly the sky was painted with slate-gray clouds, and the rescue boat was rocking nearby. Inflating the dead man's BC and mine, I turned him on his belly and released his weight belt, almost dropping it because it seemed so heavy. But I managed to hand it up to rescuers who were wearing wet suits and seemed to know what they were doing in their old flat bottomed boat.

Jerod, Ki Soo and I had to leave our masks on because we still had to swim back to the platform. So we were talking by buddy phone and breathing from our tanks as we maneuvered the body inside a chicken-wire basket. We swam it flush against the boat, then helped the rescuers lift it in as water poured everywhere.

"We need to take his mask off," I said, and I motioned to the rescuers.

They seemed confused, and wherever the transducer was, it clearly wasn't with them. They couldn't hear a word we said.

"You need some help getting your mask off?" one of them shouted as he reached toward me.

I waved him off and shook my head. Grabbing the side of the boat, I hoisted myself up enough to reach the basket.

I pulled off the dead man's mask, emptied it of water, and laid it next to his hooded head with its straying long wet hair. It was then I knew him, despite the deep oval impression etched around his eyes. I knew the straight nose and dark mustache framing his full mouth. I recognized the reporter who had always been so fair with me.

"Okay?" One of the rescuers shrugged.

I gave them an okay, although I could tell they did not understand the importance of what I had just done. My reason was cosmetic, for the longer the mask caused pressure against skin fast losing elasticity, the slighter the chance that the indentation would fade. This was an unimportant concern to investigators and paramedics, but not to loved ones who would want to see Ted Eddings' face.

"Am I transmitting?" I then asked Ki Soo and Jerod as we bobbed in the water.

"You're fine. What do you want done with all this hose?" Jerod asked.

"Cut it about eight feet from the body and clamp off the end," I said. "Seal that and his regulator in a plastic bag."

"I got a salvage bag in my BC,- Ki Soo volunteered.

"Sure. That will work."

After we had done what we could, we rested for a moment, floating and looking across muddy water to the johnboat and the hookah. As I surveyed where we had been, I realized that the screw Eddings' hose had snagged on belonged to the Exploiter. The submarine looked post-World War II, maybe around the time of the Korean War, and I wondered if it had been stripped of its finer parts and was on its way to being sold for scrap. I wondered if Eddings had been diving around it for a reason, or if after death, he had drifted there.

The rescue boat was halfway to the landing on the other side of the river where an ambulance waited to take the body to the morgue. Jerod gave me the okay sign and I returned it, although everything did not feel okay at all. Air rushed as we deflated our BCs, and we dipped back under water the color of old pennies.

There was a ladder leading from the river to the dive platform, and then another to the pier. My legs trembled as I climbed, for I was not as strong as Jerod and Ki Soo, who moved in all their gear as if it weighed the same as skin.

But I got out of my BC and tank myself and did not ask for help. A police cruiser rumbled near my car, and someone was towing Eddings' johnboat across the river to the landing. Identity would have to be verified, but I had no doubt.

"So what do you think?" a voice overhead suddenly asked.

I looked up to find Captain Green standing next to a tall, slender man on the pier. Green was apparently now feeling charitable, and reached down to help. "Here," he said.

"Hand me your tank."

"I won't know a thing until I examine him," I said as I lifted it up, then the other gear. "Thanks. The johnboat with the hose and everything else should go straight to the morgue," I added.

"Really? What are you going to do with it?" he asked.

"The hookah gets an autopsy, too."

"You're going to want to rinse your stuff really good," the slender man said to me as if he knew more than Jacques Cousteau, and his voice was familiar. "There's a lot of oil and rust in there."

"There certainly is," I agreed, climbing up to the pier.

"I'm Detective Roche," he then said, and he was oddly dressed in jeans and an old letter jacket. "I heard you say his hose was caught on something?"

"I did, and I'm wondering when you heard me say that."

I was on the pier now and not at all looking forward to carrying my dirty, wet gear back to my car.

"Of course, we monitored the recovery of the body." It was Green who spoke. "Detective Roche and I were listening inside the building."

I remembered Ki Soo's warning to me and I glanced at the platform below where he and Jerod were working on their own gear.

"The hose was snagged," I answered. "But I can't tell you when that happened. Maybe before his death, maybe after."

Roche didn't seem all that interested as he continued to stare at me in a manner that made me self-aware. He was very young and almost pretty, with delicate features, generous lips and short curly dark hair. But I did not like his eyes, and thought they were invasive and smug. I pulled off my hood and ran my fingers through my slippery hair, and he watched as I unzipped my wet suit and pulled the top of it down to my hips. The last layer was my dive skin, and water trapped between it and my flesh was chilling quickly. Soon I would be unbearably cold. Already, my fingernails were blue.

"One of the rescuers tells me his face looks really red," the captain said as I tied the wet suit's sleeves around my waist. "I'm wondering if that means anything."

"Cold livor," I replied.

He looked expectantly at me.

"Bodies exposed to the cold get bright pink," I said as I began to shiver.

"I see. So it doesn't-"

"No," I cut him off, because I was too uncomfortable to listen to them. "It doesn't necessarily mean anything".

Look, is there a ladies' room so I can get out of these wet things?" I cast about and saw nothing promising.

"Over there." Green pointed at a small trailer near the administration building. "Would you like Detective Roche to accompany you and show you where everything is?"

"That's not necessary."

"Hopefully, it's not locked," Green added.

That would be my luck, I thought. But it wasn't, and it was awful, with only toilet and sink, and nothing seemed to have been cleaned in recent history. A door leading to the men's room on the other side was secured by a two by-four with padlock and chain, as if one gender or the other were very worried about privacy.

There was no heat. I stripped, only to discover there was no hot water. Cleaning up as best I could, I hurried into a sweat suit, after-ski boots and cap. By now it was one-thirty and Lucy was probably at Mant's house. I hadn't even noted the tomato sauce yet. Exhausted, I was desperate for a long hot shower or bath.

Because I could not get rid of him, Green walked me to my car and helped place my dive gear into the trunk. By now the johnboat had been loaded on a trailer and should have been enroute to my office in Norfolk. I did not see Jerod or Ki Soo and was sorry I could not say good-bye to them.

"When will you do the autopsy?" Green asked me.

I looked at him, and he was so typical of weak people with power or rank. He had done his best to scare me off, and when that had accomplished nothing he had decided we would be friends.

"I will do it now." I started the car and turned the heat up high.

He looked surprised. "Your office is open today?"

"I just opened it," I said.

I had not shut the door, and he propped his arms on top of the frame and stared down at me. He was so close, I could see broken blood vessels along his cheekbones and the wings of his nose, and changes in pigmentation from the sun.

"You will call me with your report?"

"When I determine cause and manner of death, certainly I will discuss them with you," I said.

"Manner?" He frowned. "You mean there's some question that he's an accidental death?"

"There can and will always be questions, Captain Green.

It is my job to question."

"Well, if you find a knife or bullet in his back, I hope you'll call me first," he said with quiet irony as he gave me one of his cards.

I drove away looking up the number for Mant morgue assistant and hoping I would find him home. I did.

"Danny, it's Dr. Scarpetta," I said.

"Oh, yes, ma'am," he said, surprised.

Christmas music sounded in the background and I heard the voices of people arguing. Danny Webster was in his early twenties and still lived with his family.

"I'm so sorry to bother you on New Year's Eve," I said, "but we've got a case I need to autopsy without delay. I'm on my way to the office now."

"You need me?" He sounded quite open to the idea.

"If you could help me, I can't tell you how much I would appreciate it. There's a johnboat and a body headed to I the office as we speak."

"No problem, Dr. Scarpetta," he cheerfully said. "I'll be right there."

I tried my house, but Lucy did not pick up, so I entered a code to check the answering machine's messages. There were two, both left by friends of Mant, expressing their sympathy. Snow had begun drifting down from a leaden sky, the interstate busy with people driving faster than was safe. I wondered if my niece had gotten delayed and why she hadn't called. Lucy was twenty-three and barely graduated from the FBI Academy. I still worried about her as if she needed my protection.

My Tidewater District Office was located in a small, crowded annex on the grounds of Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. We shared the building with the Department of Health, which unfortunately included the office of Shell Fish Sanitation. So between the stench of decomposing bodies and decaying fish, the parking lot was not a good place to be, no matter the time of year or day. Danny's ancient Toyota was already there, and when I unlocked the bay I was pleased to find the johnboat waiting.

I lowered the door behind me and walked around, looking. The long low-pressure hose had been neatly coiled, an d as I had requested one severed end and the regulator it was attached to were sealed inside plastic. The other end was still connected to the small compressor strapped to the inner tube. Nearby were a gallon of gasoline and the expected miscellaneous assortment of dive and boat equipment, including extra weights, a tank containing three thousand pounds per square inch of air, a paddle, life preserver, flashlight, blanket and flare gun.

Eddings also had attached an extra five-horsepower trolling engine that he clearly had used to enter the restricted area where he had died. The main thirty-five-horsepower engine was pulled back and locked, so its propeller would have been out of the water, and I remembered this was the position it was in when I saw the johnboat at the scene.

But what interested me more than any of this was a hard plastic carrying case open on the floor. Nestled in its foam lining were various camera attachments and boxes of Kodak 100 ASA film. But I saw no camera or strobe, and I imagined they were forever lost on the bottom of the Elizabeth River.

I walked up a ramp and unlocked another door, and inside the white-tiled corridor, Ted Eddings was zipped inside a pouch on top of a gurney parked near the X-ray room.

His stiff arms pushed against black vinyl as if he were trying to fight his way free, and water slowly dripped on the floor. I was about to look for Danny when he limped around a corner, carrying a stack of towels, his right knee in a bright red sports brace from a soccer injury that had necessitated a reconstruction of his anterior cruciate ligament.

"We really should get him in the autopsy suite," I said.

"You know how I feel about leaving bodies unattended in the hall."

"I was afraid someone would slip," he said, mopping up water with the towels.

"Well, the only someones here today are you and me."

I smiled at him. "But thank you for the thought, and I certainly don't want you to slip. How's the knee?"

"I don't think it's ever going to get better. It's already been almost three months and I still can barely go down stairs.

"Patience, keep up your physical exercise, and yes, it will get better," I repeated what I had said before. "Have you rayed him yet?"

Danny had worked diving deaths before. He knew it was highly improbable that we were looking for projectiles or broken bones, but what an X-ray might reveal was pneumothorax or a mediastinal shift caused by air leaking from lungs due to barotrauma.

"Yes, ma'am. The film's in the developer." He paused, his expression turning unpleasant. "And Detective Roche with Chesapeake's on his way. He wants to be present for the post."

Although I encouraged detectives to watch their cases autopsied, Roche was not someone I particularly wanted in my morgue.

"Do you know him?" I asked.

"He's been down here before. I'll let you judge him for yourself."

He straightened up and gathered his dark hair into a ponytail again, because strands had escaped and were getting in his eyes. Lithe and graceful, he looked like a young Cherokee with a brilliant grin. I often wondered why he wanted to work here. I helped him roll the body into the autopsy suite, and while he weighed and measured it, I disappeared inside the locker room and took a shower. As I was dressing in scrubs, Marino called my pager.

"What's up?" I asked when I got him on the phone.

"It's who we thought, right?" he asked.

"Tentatively, yes."

"You posting him now?"

"I'm about to start," I said.

"Give me fifteen minutes. I'm almost there."

"You're coming here?" I said, perplexed.

"I'm on my car phone. We'll talk later. I'll be there soon.

As I wondered what this was about, I also knew that Marino must have found something in Richmond. Otherwise, his coming to Norfolk made no sense. Ted Eddings' death was not Marino's jurisdiction unless the FBI had already gotten involved, and that would not make sense, either.

Both Marino and I were consultants for the Bureau's Criminal Investigative Analysis program, more commonly known as the profiling unit, which specialized in assisting police with unusually heinous and difficult deaths. We routinely got involved in cases outside of our domains, but by invitation only, and it was a little early for Chesapeake to be calling the FBI about anything.

Detective Roche arrived before Marino did, and he was carrying a paper bag and insisting that I give him gown, gloves, face shield, cap and shoe covers. While he was in the locker room fussing with his biological armor, Danny and I began taking photographs and looking at Eddings exactly as he had come to us, which was still in a full wet suit that continued to slowly drip on the floor.

"He's been dead awhile," I said. "I have a feeling that whatever happened to him occurred shortly after he went into the river."

"Do we know when that was?" Danny asked as he fit scalpel handles with new blades.

"We're assuming it was sometime after dark."

"He doesn't look very old."

"Thirty-two."

He stared at Eddings's face and his own got sad. "It's like when kids end up in here or that basketball player who dropped dead in the gym the other week." He looked at me. "Does it ever get to you?"

"I can't let it get to me because they need me to do a good job for them," I said as I made notes.

"What about when you're done?" He glanced up.

"We're never done, Danny," I said. "Our hearts will stay broken for the rest of our lives, and we will never be done with the people who pass through here."

"Because we can't forget them." He lined a bucket with a viscera bag and put it near me on the floor. "At least I can't."

"If we forget them, then something is wrong with us," I said.

Roche emerged from the locker room looking like a disposable astronaut in his face shield and paper suit. He kept his distance from the gurney but got as close as he could to me.

I said to him, "I've looked inside the boat. What items have you removed?"

"His gun and wallet. I got both of them here with me," he replied. "Over there in the bag. How many pairs of gloves you got on?"

"What about a camera, film, anything like that?"

"What's in the boat is all there is. Looks like you got on more than one pair of gloves." He leaned close, his shoulder pressing against mine.

"I've double-gloved." I moved away from him.

"I guess I need another pair."

I unzipped Eddings' soggy dive boots and said, "They're in the cabinet over there."

With a scalpel I opened the wet suit and dive skin at the seams because they would be too difficult to pull off a fully rigorous body. As I freed him from neoprene, I could see that he was uniformly pink due to the cold. I removed his blue bikini bathing suit, and Danny and I lifted him onto the autopsy table, where we broke the rigidity of the arms and began taking more photographs.

Eddings had no injuries except several old scars, mostly on his knees. But biology had dealt him an earlier blow called hypospadias, which meant his urethra opened onto the underside of his penis instead of in the center. This moderate defect would have caused him a great deal of anxiety, especially as a boy. As a man he may have suffered sufficient shame that he was reluctant to have sex.

Certainly, he had never been shy or passive during professional encounters. In fact, I had always found him quite confident and charming, when someone like me was rarely charmed by anyone, least of all a journalist. But I also knew appearances meant nothing in terms of how people behaved when two of them were alone, and then I tried to stop right there.

I did not want to remember him alive as I made annotations and measurements on diagrams fastened to my clipboard. But a part of my mind tackled my will, and I returned to the last occasion I had seen him. It was the week before Christmas and I was in my Richmond office with my back to the door, sorting through slides in a carousel. I did not hear him behind me until he spoke, and when I turned around, I found him in my doorway, holding a potted Christmas pepper thick with bright red fruit.

"You mind if I come in?" he asked. "Or do you want me to walk all the way back to my car with this." I said good afternoon to him while I thought with frustration of the front office staff. They knew not to let reporters beyond the locked bulletproof partition in the lobby unless I was asked, but the female clerks, in particular, liked Eddings a little too much. He walked in and set the plant on the carpet by my desk, and when he smiled, his entire face did.

"I just thought there ought to be something alive and happy in this place." His blue eyes fixed on mine.

"I hope that isn't a comment about me." I could not help but laugh.

"Are you ready to turn him?"

The body diagram on my clipboard came into focus, and I realized Danny was speaking to me.

"I'm sorry," I muttered.

He was eyeing me with concern while Roche wandered around as if he had never been inside a morgue, peering through glass cabinets and glancing back in my direction.

"Everything all right?" Danny asked me in his sensitive way.

"We can turn him now," I said.

My spirit shook inside like a small hot flame. Eddings had worn khaki range pants and a black commando sweater that day, and I tried to remember the look in his eyes. I wondered if there had been anything behind them that might have presaged this.

Refrigerated by the river, his body was cold to my touch, and I began discovering other aspects of him that distorted the familiar, making me feel even more disturbed. The absence of first molars signaled orthodonture. He had extensive, very expensive porcelain crowns, and contact lenses tinted to enhance eyes already vivid. Remarkably, the right tens had not been washed away when his mask had flooded, and his dull gaze was weirdly asymmetrical, as if two dead people were staring out from sleepy lids.

I was almost finished with the external examination, but what was left was the most invasive, for in any unnatural death, it was necessary to investigate a patient's sexual practices. Rarely was I given a sign as obvious as a tattoo depicting one orientation or another, and as a rule, no one the individual was intimate with was going to step forth to volunteer information, either. But it really would not have mattered what I was told or by whom. I would still check for evidence of anal intercourse.

"What are you looking for?" Roche returned to the table and stood close behind me.

"Proctitis, anal tunneling, small fissures, thickening of the epithelium from trauma," I replied as I worked.

"Then you're assuming he's queer." He peered over my shoulder.

The color mounted to Danny's cheeks, and anger sparked in his eyes.

"Anal ring, epithelium are unremarkable," I said, scribbling notes. "In other words, he has no injury that would be consistent with an active homosexual lifestyle. And, Detective Roche, you're going to have to give me a little more room."

I could feel his breath on my neck.

"You know, he's been in this area a lot doing interviews."

"What sort of interviews?" I asked, and he was seriously getting on my nerves.

"That I don't know."

"Who was he interviewing?"

"Last fall he did a piece on the Inactive Ship Yard. Captain Green could probably tell you more."

"I was just with Captain Green, and he didn't tell me about that."

"The story ran in The Virginian Pilot, back in October, I think. It wasn't a big deal. Just your typical feature," he said. "My personal opinion is he decided to come back to snoop around for something bigger."

"Such as?"

"Don't ask me. I'm not a reporter." He glanced across the table at Danny. "I personally hate the media. They're always coming up with these wild theories and will do anything to prove them. Now this guy's kinda famous around here, being a big-shot reporter for the AP and all. Rumor has it when he gets with girls it's window dressing. You get beyond it and nothing's there, if you know what I mean." He had a cruel smile on his face, and I could not believe how much I did not like him when we had only met today.

"Where are you getting your information?" I asked.

"I hear things."

"Danny, let's get hair and fingernail samples," I said.

"You know, I take the time to talk to people on the street," Roche added as he brushed against my hip.

"You want his mustache plucked, too?" Danny fetched forceps and envelopes from a surgical cart.

"May as well."

"I guess you're going to test him for HIV.- Roche brushed against me again.

"Yes," I replied.

"Then you're thinking he might be queer."

I stopped what I was doing because I'd had enough.

"Detective Roche-I turned around to face him, and my voice was hard-if you are going to be in my morgue, then you will give me room to work. You will stop rubbing against me, and you will treat my patients with respect. This man did not ask to be here dead and naked on this table.

And I don't like the word queer."

"Well, irregardless of what you call it, his orientation might somehow be important." He was nonplussed, if not pleased by my irritation.

"I don't know for a fact that this man was or was not gay," I said. "But I do know for a fact that he did not die of AIDS."

I grabbed a scalpel off a surgical cart and his demeanor abruptly changed. He backed off, suddenly unnerved because I was about to start cutting, so now I had that problem to cope with, too.

"Have you ever seen an autopsy?" I said to him.

"A few." He looked like he might throw up "Why don't you go sit down over there," I suggested none too kindly as I wondered why Chesapeake had assigned him to this case or any case. "Or go out in the bay."

"It's just hot in here."

"If you get sick, go for the nearest trash can." It was all Danny could do not to laugh.

"I'll just sit over here for a minute." Roche went to the desk near the door.

I swiftly made the Y incision, the blade running from shoulders to sternum to pelvis. As blood was exposed to air, I thought I detected an odor that made me stop what I was doing.

"You know, Lipshaw's got a really good sharpener out I wish we could get," Danny was saying. "It hone-grinds with water so you can just stick the knives in there and leave them."

What I was smelling was unmistakable, but I could not believe it.

"I was just looking at their new catalog," he went on.

"Makes me crazy all the cool things we can't afford."

This could not be right.

"Danny, open the doors," I said with a quiet urgency that startled him.

"What is it?" he asked in alarm.

"Let's get plenty of air in here. Now," I said.

He moved fast with his bad knee and opened double doors that led into the hall.

"What's wrong?" Roche sat up straighter.

"This man has a peculiar odor." I was unwilling to voice my suspicions right then, especially to him.

"I don't smell anything." He got up and looked around, as if this mysterious odor might be something he could see.

Eddings' blood reeked of a bitter almond smell, and it did not surprise me that neither Roche nor Danny could detect it. The ability to smell cyanide is a sex-linked recessive trait that is inherited by less than thirty percent of the population. I was among the fortunate few.

"Trust me." I was reflecting back skin from ribs, careful not to puncture the intercostal muscles. "He smells very strange."

"And what does that mean?" Roche wanted to know.

"I won't be able to answer that until tests are conducted," I said. "In the meantime, we'll thoroughly check out all of his equipment to make sure everything was functioning and that he didn't, for example, get exhaust fumes down his hose."

"You know much about hookahs?" Danny asked me, and he had returned to the table to help.

"I've never used one."

I undermined the midline chest incision laterally. Reflecting back tissue, I formed a pocket in a side of skin, which Danny filled with water. Then I immersed my hand and inserted the scalpel blade between two ribs. I checked for a release of bubbles that might indicate a diving injury had caused air to leak into the chest cavity. But there were none.

"Let's get the hookah and the hose out of the boat and bring them in," I decided. "It would be good if we could get hold of a dive consultant for a second opinion. Do you know anyone around here we might be able to reach on a holiday?"

"There's a dive shop in Hampton Roads that Dr. Mant sometimes uses."

He got the numbers and called, but the shop was closed this snowy New Year's Eve, and the owner did not seem to be at home. Then Danny went out to the bay, and when he returned a brief time later, I could hear a familiar voice talking loudly with him as heavy footsteps sounded along the hallway.

"They wouldn't let you if you were a cop," Pete Marino's voice projected into the autopsy suite.

"I know, but I don't understand it," Danny said.

"Well, I'll give you one damn good reason. Hair as long as yours gives the assholes out there one more thing to grab. Me'? I'd cut it off. Besides, the girls would like you better."

He had arrived in time to help carry in the hookah and coils of hose, and was giving Danny a fatherly lecture. It had never been hard for me to understand why Marino had terrible problems with his own grown son.

"You know anything about hookahs?" I asked Marino as he walked in. He looked blankly at the body "What?

He's got some weirdo disease?"

"The thing you're carrying is called a hookah," I explained.

He and Danny set the equipment on top of an empty steel table next to mine.

"Looks like dive shops are closed for the next few days," I added. "But the compressor seems pretty simple a pump driven by a five-horsepower engine which pulls air through a filtered intake valve, then through the lowpressure hose connected to the diver's second-stage regulator. Filter looks all right. Fuel line is intact. That's all I can tell you."

"The tank's empty," Marino observed.

"I think he ran out of gas after death."

"Why?" Roche had walked over to where we were, and he stared intensely at me and the front of my scrubs as if he and I were the only two people in the room. "How do you know he didn't lose track of time down there and run out of gas?"

"Because even if his air supply quit, he still had plenty of time to get to the surface. He was only thirty feet down," I said.

"That's a long way if maybe your hose has gotten hung up on something."

"It would be. But in that scenario, he could have dropped his weight belt."

"Has the smell gone away?" he asked.

"No, but it's not as overpowering."

"What smell?" Marino wanted to know.

"His blood has a weird odor."

"You mean like booze?"

"No, not like that."

He sniffed several times and shrugged as Roche moved past me, averting his gaze from what was on the table. I could not believe it when he brushed against me again though he had plenty of room and I had given him a warning. Marino was big and balding in a fleece-lined coat, and his eyes followed him.

"So, who's this?" he asked me.

"Yes, I guess the two of you haven't met," I said. "Detective Roche of Chesapeake, this is Captain Marino with Richmond."

Roche was looking closely at the hookah, and the sound of Danny cutting through ribs with shears on the next table was getting to him. His complexion was the shade of milk glass again, his mouth bowed down.

Marino lit a cigarette and I could tell by the expression on his face that he had made his decision about Roche, and Roche was about to know it.

"I don't know about you," he said to the detective, "but one thing I discovered early on, is once you come to this joint, you never feel the same about liver. You watch." He tucked the lighter back inside his shirt pocket. "Me, I used to love it smothered in onions." He blew out smoke.

"Now, on the pain of death you couldn't make me touch it."

Roche leaned closer to the hookah, almost burying his face in it, as if the smell of rubber and gasoline was the antidote he needed. I resumed work.

"Hey, Danny," Marino went on, "you ever eat shit like kidneys and gizzards since you started working here?"

"I've never ate any of that my entire life," he said as we removed the breastplate. "But I know what you mean.

When I see people order big slabs of liver in restaurants, I almost have to dive for the door. Especially if it's even the slightest bit pink."

The odor intensified as organs were exposed, and I leaned back.

"You smelling it?" Danny asked.

"Oh, yeah," I said.

Roche retreated to his distant corner, and now that Marino had had his fun, he walked over and stood next to me.

"So you think he drowned?" Marino quickly asked.

"At the moment I'm not thinking that. But certainly, I'm going to look for it," I said.

"What can you do to figure out he didn't drown?"

Marino was not very familiar with drownings, since people rarely committed murder that way, so he was intensely curious. He wanted to understand everything I was doing.

"Actually, there are a lot of things I'm doing," I said as I worked. "I've already made a skin pocket on the side of the chest, filled it with water and inserted a blade in the thorax to check for bubbles. I'm going to fill the pericardial sac with water and insert a needle into the heart, again to see if any bubbles form. And I'll check the brain for petechial hemorrhages, and look at the soft tissue of the mediastinum for extraalveolar air."

"What will all that show?" he asked.

"Possibly pneumothorax or air embolism, which can occur in less than fifteen feet of water if the diver is breathing inadequately. The problem is that excessive pressure in the lungs can result in small tears of the alveolar walls, causing hemorrhages and air leaks into one or both pleural cavities."

"And I'm assuming that could kill you," he said.

"Yes," I said. "That most certainly could."

"What about when you come up and go down too fast?"

He had moved to the other side of the table so he could watch.

"Pressure changes, or barotraurna, associated with descent or ascent aren't very likely in the depth he was diving.

And as you can see, his tissues aren't spongy as I would expect them to be were he a death by barotraurna. Would you like some protective clothing?"

"So I can look like I work for Terminex?" Marino looked in Roche's direction.

"Just hope you don't get AIDS," Roche wanly said from far away.

Marino put on apron and gloves as I began explaining the pertinent negatives I needed to look for in order to also rule out a death by decompression or the bends, or drowning. It was when I inserted an eighteen-gauge needle into the trachea to obtain a sample of air for cyanide testing that Roche decided to leave. He rapidly walked across the room, paper rattling as he collected his evidence bag from a counter, "so we won't know anything until you do tests," he said from the doorway.

"That's correct. For now his cause and manner of death are pending." I paused and looked up at him. "You'll get a copy of my report when it's complete. And I'd like to see his personal effects before you leave."

He would come no closer, and my hands were bloody.

I looked at Marino. "Would you mind?"

"It would be my pleasure."

He went to him, took the bag and gruffly said, "Come on. We'll go through it in the hall so you can get some air. " They walked just beyond the doorway, and as I continued to work, paper rattled some more. I heard Marino drop the magazine from a pistol, open the slide and loudly complain that the gun had not been made safe.

"I can't believe you're carrying this thing around loaded," Marino's voice boomed. "Jesus Christ! You know, it's not like this is your firiggin' lunch in a bag."

"It's not been processed for prints yet."

"Well, then you put on gloves and dump the ammo like I just did. And then you clear the chamber, the way I just did. Where'd you go? The Keystone Police Academy where they also must have taught you your gentlemanly manners?"

Marino went on, and it was now clear to me why he had taken Roche into the hall, and it wasn't for fresh air. Danny glanced across the table at me and grinned.

Moments later Marino returned to us shaking his head, and Roche was gone. I was relieved, and it showed.

"Good God," I said. "What's his story?"

"He thinks with the head God gave him," Marino said.

"The one between his legs."

"Like I said," Danny replied, "he's been down here a couple of times before, bothering Dr. Mant about things.

But what I didn't tell you is he always talked to him upstairs. He never would come down to the morgue."

"I'm shocked," Marino drolly said.

"I heard that when he was in the police academy he called in sick the day they were supposed to come down here for the demo autopsy," Danny went on. "Plus, he just got transferred over from juvenile. So he's been a homicide detective for only about two months."

"Oh, now that's good," Marino said. "Just the kind of person we want working something like this." I asked him, "Can you smell the cyanide?"

"Nope. Right now all I smell is my cigarette, which is exactly how I want it."

"Danny?"

"No, ma'am." He sounded disappointed.

"So far I'm seeing no evidence that this is a diving death. No bubbles in the heart or thorax. No subcutaneous emphysema. No water in the stomach or lungs. I can't tell if he's congested." I cut another section of heart. "Well, he does have congestion of the heart, but is it due to the left heart failing the right-just due to dying, in other words? And he does have some reddening of the stomach wall, which is consistent with cyanide."

"Doc," Marino said, "how well did you know him?"

"Personally, really not at all."

"Well, I'm going to tell you what was in the bag because Roche didn't know what he was looking at and I didn't want to tell him."

He at last slipped out of his coat and looked for a safe place to hang it, deciding on the back of a chair. He lit another cigarette.

"Damn, these floors kill my feet," he said as he went to the table where hookah and hose were piled, and leaned against the edge. "It must kill your knee," he said to Danny.

"Totally kills it."

"Eddings' got a Browning nine-millimeter pistol with a Birdsong desert brown finish," Marino said.

. "What's Birdsong?" Danny placed the spleen in a hanging scale.

"The Rembrandt of pistol finishes. Mr. Birdsong's the guy you send your weapon to if you want it waterproofed and painted to blend with the environment," Marino answered. "What he does, basically, is strip it, sandblast it and then spray it with Teflon, which is baked on. All of HRT's pistols have a Birdsong finish."

HRT was the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team. I felt sure that given the number of stories Eddings had done on law enforcement, he would have been exposed to the FBI Academy at Quantico and its finest trained agents.

"Sounds like something Navy SEALs would have, too," Danny suggested.

"Them, SWAT teams, counterterrorist, guys like me."

Marino was looking again at the hookah's fuel line and intake valves. "And most of us have Novak sights like he's got, too. But what we don't have is KTW metal-piercing ammo, also known as cop killers."

"He's got Teflon-coated ammo?" I glanced up.

"Seventeen rounds, one in the chamber. All with red lacquer around the primer for waterproofing."

"Well, he didn't get armor-piercing ammo here. At least not legally, because it's been outlawed in Virginia for years. And as for the finish on his pistol, are you certain it's Birdsong, the same company the Bureau uses?"

"Looks like Birdsong's magic touch to me," Marino replied.. "Course, there are other outfits that do similar work."

I opened the stomach as Marino continued to close like a fist. Eddings had seemed such a fan of law enforcement. I had heard he used to ride along with the police, and go to their picnics and their balls. He had never struck me as gung-ho about weapons, and I was stunned that he would have loaded a pistol with illegal ammunition notorious for being used to murder and maim the very people who were his sources and perhaps his friends.

"Gastric contents are just a small amount of brownish fluid," I continued. "He didn't eat near the time of death, not that I would have expected him to if he planned to dive."

"Any chance fuel exhaust could have gotten to him, say if the wind blew just right?" Marino continued studying the hookah. "Couldn't that also make him pink?"

"Certainly, we'll test for carbon monoxide. But that doesn't explain what I'm smelling."

"And you're sure?"

"I know what I'm smelling," I said.

"You think he's a homicide, don't you," Danny said to me.

"No one should be talking about this." I pulled a cord down from an overhead reel and plugged in the Stryker saw. "Not to the Chesapeake police. Not to anyone. Not until all tests are concluded and I make an official release.

I don't know what's going on here. I don't know what was going on at the scene. So we must exercise even more caution than usual."

Marino was looking at Danny. "How long you been working in this joint?" he asked.

"Eight months."

"You heard what the doc just said, right?"

Danny looked up, surprised by Marino's change in tone.

"You know how to keep your mouth shut, right?" Marino went on. "That means no bragging to the boys, no trying to impress your family or your girlfriend. You got that?"

Danny held in his anger as he made an incision low around the back of the head, ear to ear.

"See, if anything leaks, me and the doc here are going to know where it came from." Marino continued an attack that seemed completely unprovoked.

Danny reflected back the scalp. He pulled it forward over the eyes to expose the skull, and Eddings' face collapsed, sad and slack, as if he knew what was happening and was grieving. I turned on the saw, and the room was filled with the high whine of blade cutting bone.