Cruel and Unusual

8

The telephone rang for a long time at the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, located in the subterranean reaches of the Academy at Quantico. I could envision its bleak, confusing hallways and offices cluttered with the mementos of polished warriors like Benton Wesley, who had gone skiing, I was told.

"In fact, I'm the only one here at the moment," said the courteous agent who answered the phone.

"This is Dr. Kay Scarpetta and it's urgent that I reach him.

Benton Wesley returned my call almost immediately.

"Benton, where are you?”

I raised my voice above terrible static.

"In my car," he said. "Connie and I spent Christmas with her family in Charlottesville. We're just west of there on our way to Hot Springs. I heard about what happened to Susan Story. God, I'm sorry. I was going to call you tonight"

"You're breaking up. I almost can't hear you.”

"Hold on.”

I waited impatiently for a good minute. Then he was back.

"That's better. We were in a low area. Listen, what do you need from me?”

"I need the Bureau's help with analysis of some feathers."

"No problem. I'll call Downey.”

"I need to talk," I said with great reluctance, for I knew I was putting him on the spot. "I don't feel it can wait.”

"Hold on.”

This time the pause was not due to static. He was conferring with his wife.

"Do you ski?” His voice came back.

"It depends on who you ask.”

"Connie and I are on our way to the Homestead for a couple of days. We could talk there. Can you get away?”

"I'll move heaven and earth to, and I'll bring Lucy.”

"That's good. She and, Connie can pal around while you and I talk. I'll see about your room when we check in. Can you bring something for me to look at?”

"Yes.”

"Including whatever you've got on the Robyn Naismith case. Let's cover every base and every imagined one.”

"Thank you, Benton," I said gratefully. "And please thank Connie.”

I decided to leave the office immediately, and offered little explanation.

"It will be good for you," Rose said, jotting down the Homestead's number. She did not understand that my intention was not to unwind at a five-star resort. For an instant, her eyes were bright with tears as I told her to let Marino know where I was so he could contact me immediately if there were any new developments in Susan's case.

"Please don't release my whereabouts to anyone else," I added.

"Three reporters have called in the last twenty minutes," she said. "Including the Washington Post.”

"I'm not discussing Susan's case right now. Tell them the usual, that we're waiting on lab results. Just tell them I'm out of town and unavailable.”

I was haunted by images as I drove west toward the mountains. I pictured Susan in her baggy scrubs, and the faces of her mother and father as Marino told them their daughter was dead.

"Are you feeling okay?”

Lucy asked. She had been looking at me every other minute since we left my house.

"I'm just preoccupied," I replied, concentrating on the toad. "You're going to love skiing. I have a feeling you'll be good at it.”

She silently gazed out the windshield. The sky was a washed-out denim blue, mountains rising in the distance dusted with snow.

"I'm sorry about this," I added. "It seems that every time you visit, something happens and I can't give you my full attention.”

"I don't need your full attention.”

"Someday you'll understand.”

"Maybe I'm the same way about my work. In fact, maybe I learned from you. I'll probably be successful like you, too.”

My spirit felt as heavy as lead. I was grateful that I was wearing sunglasses. I did not want Lucy to see my eyes.

"I know you love me. That's what counts. I know my mother doesn't love me," my niece said.

"Dorothy loves you as much as she is able to love anyone.”

"You're absolutely right. As much as she is able to, which isn't much because I'm not a man. She only loves men.”

"No, Lucy. Your mother doesn't really love men. They are a symptom of her obsessive quest of finding somebody who will make her whole. She doesn't understand that she has to make herself whole.”

"The only thing 'whole' in the equation is she picks assholes every time.”

"I agree that her batting average hasn't been good.”

"I'm not going to live like that. I don't want to be anything like her.”

"You aren't," I said.

"I read in the brochure they have skeet shooting where we're going.”

"They have all sorts of things.”

"Did you bring one of the revolvers?”

"You don't shoot skeet with a revolver, Lucy.”

"You do if you're from Miami.”

"If you don't stop yawning, you're going to get me started.”

"Why didn't you bring a gun?” she persisted.

The Ruger was in my suitcase, but I did not intend to tell her that. "Why are you so worried about whether I brought a gun?”

I asked: "I want to be good at it. So good I can shoot the twelve off the dock every time I try," she said sleepily.

My heart ached as she rolled up her jacket and used it as a pillow. She lay next to me, the top of her head touching my thigh as she slept. She did not know how strongly tempted I was to send her back to Miami this minute. But I could tell she sensed my fear.

The Homestead was situated on fifteen thousand acres of forest arid streams in the Allegheny Mountains, the main section of the hotel dark red brick with white-pillared colonnades. The white cupola had a clock on each of its four sides that always agreed on the time and could be read for miles, and tennis courts and golf greens were solid white with snow.

"You're in luck," I said to Lucy as gracious men in gray uniforms stepped our way. "The ski conditions are going to be terrific.”

Benton Wesley had accomplished what he had promised, and we found a reservation waiting for us when we got to the front desk. He had booked a double room with glass doors opening onto a balcony overlooking the casino, and on top of a table were flowers from Connie and him. "Meet us on the slopes," the card read. "We scheduled a lesson for Lucy at three-thirty.”

"We've got to hurry," I said to Lucy as we flung open suitcases. "You've got your first ski lesson in exactly forty minutes. Try these.”

I tossed her a pair of red ski pants, which were followed by jacket, socks, mittens, and sweater flying through the air and landing on her bed. "Don't forget your butt pack. Anything else you need we'll have to get later.”

"I don't have any ski glasses," she said, pulling a bright blue turtleneck over her head. "I'll go snowblind.”

"You can use my goggles. The sun will be going down soon anyway.”

By the time we caught the shuttle to the slopes, rented equipment for Lucy, and connected her with the instructor at the rope tow, it was twenty-nine minutes past three. Skiers were brilliant, spots of color moving downhill, and it was only whet, they got dose that they turned into people. I leaned forward in my.boots, skis firmly wedged against the slope as I scanned lines and lifts, my hand shielding my eyes. The sun was nearing the top of trees, the snow dazzled by its touch, but shadows were spreading and the temperature was dropping quickly.

I spotted the man and woman simply because their parallel skiing was so graceful, poles lifted, like feathers and barely flicking snow as they soared and turned like birds. I recognized Benton Wesley's silver hair and raised my hand. Glancing back at Connie and yelling something I could not hear, he pushed off and schussed downhill like a knife, skis so close together I doubted you could fit a piece of paper between them.

When he stopped in a spray of snow and pushed back his goggles, it suddenly occurred to me that if I did not know him I would have been watching him anyway. Black ski pants hugged well-muscled legs I had never known were beneath the trousers of his conservative suits, and the jacket he wore reminded me of a Key West sunset. His face and eyes were brightened by the cold, making his sharp features more striking than formidable. Connie eased to a stop beside him.

"It's wonderful that you're here," Wesley said, and I could never see him or hear his voice without being reminded of Mark. They had been colleagues' and best friends. They could have passed for brothers.

"Where's Lucy?” Connie asked.

"Conquering the rope tow even as we speak.” I pointed.

"I hope you didn't mind my signing her up for a lesson.”

"Mind? I can't thank you enough for being so thoughtful. She's having the time of her life.”

"I think I'll stand right here and watch her for a while," Connie said. "Then I'll be ready for something hot to drink and I have a feeling Lucy will be, too. Ben, you look like you haven't had enough.”

Wesley said to me, "You up for a few quick runs?”

We exchanged remarks about nonessential matters as we moved through the line, and then were silent when the lift swung around and seated us. Wesley lowered the bar as the cable slowly pulled us toward the mountaintop. The air was numbing and deliciously clean, and filled with the quiet sounds of skis swishing and dully slapping hard-packed snow. Snow from snow machines drifted like smoke through the woods between slopes.

"I talked to Downey," he said. "He'll see you at headquarters just as soon as you can get there.”

"That's good news," I said. "Benton, what have you been told?”

"Marino and I have talked several times. It appears you have several cases going on right now that aren't connected by evidence, necessarily, but by a peculiar coincidence in timing.”

"I think we're dealing with more than coincidence. You know about Ronnie Waddell's print turning up in Jennifer Deighton's house.”

"Yes.”

He stared off at a stand of evergreens backlit by the setting sun. "As I've told Marino, I'm hoping there's a logical explanation for how Waddell's print got there.”

"The logical explanation may very well be that he was, at some point, inside her house.”

"Then we're dealing with a situation so bizarre as to defy description, Kay. A death row convict is out on the street killing again. And we're supposed to assume someone else took his place in the chair on the night of December thirteenth. I doubt there would have been many volunteers.”

"You wouldn't think so," I said.

"What do you know about Waddell's criminal history?”

"Very little.”

"I interviewed him years ago, in Mecklenburg.“ I glanced over at him with interest. "I'll preface my next remarks by saying that he was not particularly cooperative in that he would not discuss Robyn Naismith's murder. He claimed that if he killed her, he didn't remember it. Not that this is unusual. Most of the violent offenders I have interviewed either claim to have poor recall; or they deny that they committed the crimes. I had a copy of Waddell's Assessment Protocol faxed to me before you got here. We'll go over it after dinner.”

“Benton, I'm already glad I'm here.”

He stared straight ahead, our shoulders barely touching. The slope beneath us got steeper as. we rode in silence for a while. Then he said, "How are you, Kay?”

"Better. There are still moments.”

"I know: There will always be moments. But fewer of them, I hope-. Days, perhaps, where you don't feel it.”

“Yes," I said. "There are days when I don't.”

"We've got a very good lead on the group responsible. We think we know who placed the bomb.”

We raised the tips of our skis and leaned forward as the lift eased us out like baby birds nudged from the nest. My legs were stiff and cold from the ride, and trails in the shade were treacherous with ice. Wesley's long white skis vanished against the snow and caught light at the same time. He danced down the slope in dazzling puffs of diamond dust, pausing every now and then to look back. I waved him on by barely lifting a pole as I made languid parallel toms and floated over moguls. Halfway into the run I was limber and warm, thoughts flying free.

When I returned to my room as it was getting dark, I discovered Marino had left a message that he would be at headquarters until five-thirty and for me to call ASAP.

"What's going on?”

I said when he answered…

"Nothing that's going to make you sleep better. For starters, Jason Story's badmouthing you to anyone who will stand still long enough to listen - including reporters.”

"His rage has to go somewhere," I said, my mood darkening again.

"Well, what he's doing ain't good, but it also ain't the worst of our problems. We can't locate ten print cards for Waddell.”

"Not anywhere?”

"You got it. We've checked his files at Richmond P.D., the State Police, and the FBI. That's every jurisdiction that should have them. No cards. Then I contacted Donahue at the pen to see if I could track down Waddell's personal effects; such as books, letters, hairbrush, toothbrush - anything that might be a source for latent prints. And guess what? Donahue says the only things Waddell's mother wanted were his watch and ring. Everything else Corrections destroyed.”

I sat heavily on the edge of the bed.

“And I saved the best for last, Doc. Firearms hit paydirt and you ain't going to believe it. The bullets recovered from Eddie Heath and Susan Story was fired from the same gun, a twenty-two.”

“Dear God,” I said.

Downstairs in the Homestead Club, a band was playing jazz, but the audience was small and the music was not too loud to talk over. Connie had taken Lucy to a movie, leaving Wesley and me at a table in a deserted corner of the dance floor. Both of us were sipping cognac. He did not seem as physically tired as I was, but tension had returned to his face.

Reaching behind him, he took another candle from an unoccupied table and set it by two others he had claimed. The light was unsteady but adequate, and though we did not get long stares from guests, we did get glances. I supposed it seemed a strange place to work, but the lobby and dining room were not private enough, and Wesley was much too circumspect to suggest we meet in his room or mine.

“There would seem to be a number of conflicting elements here,” he said. “But human behavior is not set in stone. Waddell was in prison for ten years. We don't know how he might have changed. I would categorize Eddie Heath's murder as a sexually motivated homicide while, at first glance, Susan Story's homicide appears to be an execution, a hit.”

“As if two different perpetrators are involved,” I said, toying with my cognac.

He leaned forward, idly flipping through Robyn Naismith's case file. “It's interesting,” he said, without looking up. “You hear so much about modus operandi, about the offender's signature. He always selects this type of victim or chooses this sort of location and prefers knives and so on. But, in fact, this isn't always the case. Nor is the emotion of the crime always obvious. I said that Susan Story's homicide, at first glance, does not appear to be sexually motivated. But the more I've thought about it the more I believe there is a sexual component. I think this killer is into piquerism.”

“Robyn Naismith was stabbed multiple times,” I said. “Yes. I'd say that what was done to her is a textbook example. There was no evidence of rape - not that this means it didn't occur. But no semen. The repeated Plunging of the knife in her abdomen, buttocks, and breasts was a substitute for penile penetration. Obvious piquerism. Biting is less obvious, not at all related to any components of the sexual act, it is my opinion, but again a substitute for penile penetration. Teeth sinking into flesh, cannibalism, like John Joubert did to the news delivery boys he murdered in Nebraska. Then we have bullets. You would not associate shootings with piquerism unless you thought about it for a moment. Then the dynamics, in some instances, become clear. Something penetrating flesh. That was the Son of Sam's thing.”

“There's no evidence of piquerism in Jennifer Deighton's death.”

“True. This goes back to what I was saying. There isn’t always a clear pattern. Certainly, we're not talking about a clear pattern here, but there is one element that the murders of Eddie Heath, Jennifer Deighton, and Susan Story have in common. I would classify the crimes as organized.”

“Not as organized with Jennifer Deighton,” I pointed out “It appears the killer attempted to disguise her death as a suicide and failed. Or perhaps he did not intend to kill her at all and got carried away with a choke hold.”

“Her death before she was placed inside her car probably wasn't the plan,” Wesley agreed. “But the fact is, it appears there was a plan. And the garden hose hooked up to the exhaust pipe was severed with a sharp tool that was never recovered. Either the killer brought his own tool or weapon to the scene, or he deposed of whatever it was he found at her house and used. That's organized behavior. But before we go too far with this, let me remind you that we don't have a twenty-two bullet or other piece of evidence that might link Jennifer Deighton's homicide with the homicides of the Heath boy and Susan.”

“I think we do, Benton. Ronnie Waddell's print was recovered from a dining room chair inside Jennifer Deighton's house.”

“We don't know that it was Ronnie Waddell who pumped slugs into the other two.”

“Eddie Heath's body was positioned in a manner reminiscent of Robyn Naismith's case. The boy was attacked amp;e night Ronnie Waddell was to be executed. Don't you there's some weird thread here?”

“Let's put it this way,” he said. “I don't want to think it.”

“Neither of us wants to. Benton, what's your gut feel He motioned for the waitress to bring more cognac, candlelight illuminating the clean lines of his left cheek bone and chin.

“My gut feeling? Okay. I have a very bad gut feeling about all of this,” he said. “I believe Ronnie Waddell is the common denominator, but I don't know what that means. A latent print recently found at a scene was identified as his, yet we can't locate his ten print cards or anything else that might effect a positive identification.

He also wasn't printed at the morgue, and the person who allegedly forgot to do so has since been murdered with the same gun used on Eddie Heath. Waddell's legal counsel, Nick Grueman, apparently knew Jennifer Deighton, and in fact, it appears she faxed a message to Grueman days before she was murdered. Finally, yes, there is a subtle and peculiar similarity between Eddie Heath's and Robyn Naismith's deaths. Frankly, I can't help but wonder if the attack on Heath wasn't, for some reason, intended to be symbolic.”

He waited until our drinks had been set before us, then opened a manila envelope that was attached to Robyn Naismith's case. That small act triggered something I had not thought of before.

“I had to get her photographs from Archives,” I said.

Wesley glanced at me as he slipped on his glasses.

“In cases this old, the paper records have been reduced to microfilm, the printouts of which are in the file you've got. The original documents are destroyed, but we keep the original photos. They go to Archives.”

“Which is what? A room in your building?”

“No, Benton. A warehouse near the state library - the same warehouse where the Bureau of Forensic Science stores evidence from its old cases.”

“Vander still hasn't found the photograph of the bloody thumbprint Waddell left inside Robyn Naismith's house?”

“No,” I said as Wesley met my eyes. We both knew that Vander was never going to find it.

“Christ,” he said. “Who retrieved Robyn Naismith's photos for you?”

“My administrator,” I replied. “Ben Stevens. He made a trip to Archives a week or so before Waddell's execution.”

“Why?”

“During the final stages of the appeals process, there are always a lot of questions asked and I like to have ready, access to the case or cases involved. So a trip to Archives is routine. What's a little different in the instance we're talking about is I didn't have to ask Stevens to get the photos from Archives. He volunteered.”

“And that's unusual?”

“In retrospect, I must admit that it is.”

“The implication,” Wesley said, “is that your administrator may have volunteered because what he was really interested in was Waddell's file - or more specifically, the photograph of the bloody thumbprint that's supposed to be inside it.”

“All I can say with certainty is if Stevens wanted to tamper with a file in Archives, he couldn't do so unless he had legitimate reason for visiting Archives. If, for example, it came back to me that he had been there when none of the medical examiners had made a request, it would look odd.”

I went on to tell Wesley about the breach of security in my office computer, explaining that the two terminals involved were assigned to me and Stevens. While I talked, Wesley took notes. When I fell silent he looked up at me.

“It doesn't sound as if they found what they were looking for,” he said.

“My suspicion is that they didn't.”

“That brings us around to the obvious question. What were they looking for?”

I slowly swirled my cognac. In the candlelight it was liquid amber, and each sip deliciously burned going down. “Maybe something pertaining to Eddie Heath's death. I was looking for any other cases in which victims may have had bite marks or cannibalistic-type injuries, and had a file in my directory. Beyond that, I can't imagine what anyone might have been looking for.”

“Do you ever keep intradepartmental memos in your directory?”

“In word processing, a subdirectory.”

“Same password to access those documents?”

“Yes.”

“And in word processing you would store autopsy reports and other documents pertaining to cases?”

“I would. But at the time my directory was broken into there wasn't anything sensitive on file that I can think of.”

“But whoever broke in didn't necessarily know that.”

“Obviously not,” I said.

“What about Ronnie Waddell's autopsy report, Kay? When your directory was broken into, was his report in the computer?”

“It would have been. He was executed Monday, December thirteenth. The break-in occurred late on the afternoon of Thursday, December sixteenth, while I was doing Eddie Heath's post and Susan was upstairs in my office, supposedly resting on the couch after the formalin spill.”

“Perplexing.”

He frowned. “Assuming Susan is the one who went into your directory, why would she be interested in Waddell's autopsy report - if that's what this is all about? She was present during his autopsy. What could she have read in your report that she wouldn't have already known?”

“Nothing I can think of.”

“Well, let me rephrase that. What pertaining to his autopsy would she not have learned from being present the night his body was brought to the morgue? Or maybe I'd better say the night a body was brought to the morgue, since we're no longer so sure this individual was Waddell,” he added grimly.

“She wouldn't have had access to lab reports,” I said. “But the lab work wouldn't have been completed by the time my directory was broken into. Tox and HIV screens, for example, take weeks.”

“And Susan would have known that.”

“Certainly.”

“So would your administrator.”

“Absolutely.”

“There must be something else,” he said.

There was, but as it came to mind I could not imagine the significance.

“Waddell - or whoever the inmate was - had an envelope in the back pocket of his jeans that he wanted buried with him. Fielding wouldn't have opened this envelope until he had gone upstairs with his paperwork after the post.”

“So Susan couldn't have known what was inside the envelope while she was in the morgue that night?”

Wesley asked with interest.

“That's right. She couldn't have.”

“And was there anything of significance inside this envelope?”

“There was nothing inside but several receipts for food and tolls.”

Wesley frowned. “Receipts,” he repeated. “What in God's name would he have been doing with those? Do you have them here?”

“They're in his file.”

I got out the photocopies. “The dates are all the same, November thirtieth.”

“Which should have been about the time Waddell was transported from Mecklenburg to Richmond.”

“That's right. He was transported fifteen days before his execution,” I said.

“We need to run down the codes on these receipts, see what locations we get. This may be important. Very important, in light of what we're contemplating.”

“That Waddell is alive?”

“Yes. That somehow a switch was made and he was released. Maybe the man who went to the chair wanted these receipts in his pocket when he died because he was trying to tell us something.”

“Where would he have gotten them?”

“Perhaps during the transport from Mecklenburg to Richmond, which would have been an ideal time to pull something,” Wesley replied. “Maybe two men were transported, Waddell and someone else.”

“You're suggesting they stopped for food?”

“Guards aren't supposed to stop for anything while transporting a death row inmate. But if some conspiracy were involved, anything could have happened. Maybe they stopped and got take-out food, and it was during this interval that Waddell was freed. Then the other inmate was taken onto Richmond and put in Waddell's cell. Think about it. How would any of the guards or anybody else at Spring Street have any way of knowing the inmate brought in wasn't Waddell?”

“He might say he wasn't, but that doesn't mean that anyone would have listened.”

“I suspect they wouldn't have listened.”

“What about Waddell's mother?”

I asked. “Supposedly, she had a contact visit with him hours before the execution. Certainly, she would know B the inmate she saw was not her son.”

“We need to verify that the contact visit occurred.But whether it did or didn't, it would have been to Mrs. Waddell's benefit to go along with any scheme. I don't imagine she wanted her son to die.”

“Then you're convinced that the wrong man was executed, “I said reluctantly, for there were few theories, at the moment, that I more wanted to disprove.

His answer was to open the envelope containing Robyn Naismith's photographs and slide out a thick stack of color prints that would continue to shock me no matter how many times I looked at them. He slowly shuffled through the pictorial history of her terrible death.

Then he said, “When we consider the three homicides tha thave just occurred, Waddell doesn't profile right.”

“What are you saying, Benton? That after ten years in prison his personality changed?”

“All I can say to you is that I've heard of organized killers decompensating, flying apart. They begin to make mistakes. Bundy, for example. Toward the end he became frenzied. But what you generally don't see is a disorganized individual swinging the other way, the psychotic person becoming methodical, rational becoming organized.”

When Wesley alluded to the Bundys and Son of Sams in the world, he did so theoretically, impersonally, as if his analyses and theories were formulated from secondary sources. He did not brag. He did not name-drop or assume the role of one who knew these criminal personally. His demeanor, therefore, was deliberately misleading.

He had, in fact, spent long, intimate hours with the likes of Theodore Bundy, David Berkowitz, Sirhan Sfrhan, Richard Speck, and Charles Manson, in addition to the lesser-known black holes who had sucked light from the planet Earth. I remembered Marino telling me once that when Wesley returned from some of these pilgrimages into maximum-security penitentiaries, he would look pale and drained. It almost made him physically ill to absorb the poison of these men and endure the attachments they inevitably formed to him. Some of the worst sadists in recent history regularly wrote letters to him, sent Christmas cards, and inquired after his family. It was no small wonder that Wesley seemed like a man with a heavy burden and so often was silent. In exchange for information, he did the one thing that not one of us wants to do. He allowed the monster to connect with him.

“Was it determined that Waddell was psychotic?” I asked.

“It was determined that he was sane when he Murdered Robyn Naismith.”

Wesley pulled out a photograph and slid it across the table to me. “But frankly, I don't think he was.”

The photograph was the one I remembered most vividly, and as I studied it I could not imagine an unsuspecting soul walking in on such a scene.

Robyn Naismith's living room did not have much fur niture, just several barrel chairs with dark green cushions and a chocolate-brown leather couch. A small Bakhara rug was in the middle of the parquet floor, the calls wide planks stained to look like cherry or mahogany. A console television was against the wall directly across from the front door, affording whoever sintered a full frontal view of Ronnie Joe Waddell's horrible artistry.

What Robyn's friend had seen the instant she unlocked the door and pushed it open as she called out Robyn's name was a nude body sitting on the floor, back propped against the TV, skin so streaked and smeared ` with dried blood that the exact nature of the injuries could not be determined until later at the morgue. In the photograph, coagulating blood pooled around Robyn's buttocks looked like red tinted tar, and tossed nearby were several bloody towels. The weapon was never found, though police did determine that a German made stainless steel steak knife was missing from a set hanging in the kitchen, and the characteristics of the blade were consistent with her wounds.

Opening Eddie Heaths file folder, Wesley withdrew a scene diagram drawn by the Henrico County police officer who had discovered the critically wounded boy behind the vacant grocery store. Wesley placed the diagram next to the photograph of Robyn Naismith. For a moment, neither of us spoke as our eyes went back and forth from one to the other. The similarities were more pronounced than I had imagined, the positions of the bodies virtually identical, from the hands by the sides to the loosely piled clothing near the bare feet.

“I have to admit, it's eerie as hell,” Wesley remarked. “It's almost as if Eddie Heath's scene is a mirror image of this one.”

He touched the photograph of Robyn Naismith.”

Bodies positioned like rag dolls, propped against boxlike objects. A big console TV. A brown Dumpster.”

Spreading more photographs oh the table like playing cards, he drew another from the deck. This one was a close-up of her body at the morgue, the ragged tangential circles of human bite marks apparent on her left breast and left inner thigh.

“Again, a striking similarity,” he said. “Bite marks here and here corresponding closely with the areas of missing flesh on Eddie Heath's shoulder and thigh. In other words” - he slipped off his glasses and looked up at me - “Eddie Heath was probably bitten, the flesh excised to eradicate evidence.”

“Then his killer is at least somewhat familiar with forensic evidence,” I said.

“Almost any felon who has spent time in prison is familiar with forensic evidence. If Waddell didn't know about bite mark identification when he murdered Robyn Naismith, he would know about it now.”

“You're talking like he's the killer again,” I pointed out. “A moment ago you said he doesn't profile right.”

“Ten years ago, he didn't profile right. That's all I'm Asserting.”

“You've got his Assessment Protocol. Can we talk about it?”

“Of course.”

The Protocol was actually a forty-page FBI questionnaire filled in during a face-to-face prison interview with a violent offender.

“Flip through this yourself,” Wesley said, sliding Waddell's Protocol in front of me. “I'd like to hear your thoughts without further input from me.”

Wesley's interview of Ronnie Joe Waddell had taken place six years ago at death row in Mecklenburg `County. The Protocol began with the expected descriptive data. Waddell's demeanor, emotional state, mannerisms, and style of conversation indicated that he was agitated and confused. Then, when Wesley had given him opportunity to ask questions, Waddell asked only one: “I saw little white flakes when we passed a window. Is it snowing or are they ashes from the incinerator?”

The date on the Protocol, I noted, was August.

Questions about how the murder might have been prevented went nowhere. Would Waddell have killed his victim in a populated area? Would he have killed her if witnesses had been present? Would anything have stopped him from killing her? Did he think that capital punishment was a deterrent? Waddell said he could not remember killing “the lady on TV.”

He did not know what would have stopped him from committing an act he could not recall. His only memory was of being “sticky.”

He said it was like waking up from a wet dream. The stickiness Ronnie Waddell experienced was not semen. It was Robyn Naismith's blood.

“His problem list sounds rather mundane,” I thought out loud. “Headaches, extreme shyness, marked daydreaming, and leaving home at the age of nineteen. I don't see anything here that one might consider the usual red flags. No cruelty to animals, fire setting, assaults, et cetera.”

“Keep going,” Wesley said.

I scanned several more pages. “Drugs and alcohol,” I said.

“If he hadn't been locked up, he would have died a junkie or gotten shot on the street,” Wesley said. “And what's interesting is the substance abuse did not begin until early adulthood. I remember Waddell told me he had never tasted alcohol until he was twenty and away from home.”

“He was raised on a farm?”

“In Suffolk. A fairly big farm that grew peanuts, corn, Bans. His entire family lived on it and worked for owners. There were four children, Ronnie Joe the youngest. Their mother was very religious and took the children to church every Sunday. No alcohol, swearing, cigarettes. His background was very sheltered. He'd really never been off the farm until his father died and he decided to leave. He took the bus to Richmond had little trouble getting work because of his physical strength. Breaking up asphalt with a jackhammer, lifting heavy loads, that sort of thing. My theory is he could not handle temptation when he was finally faced with it. First it was beer and wine, then marijuana. Within a year he was into cocaine and heroin, buying and selling, and stealing whatever he could get his hands on.“

”When I asked him how many criminal acts he had committed that he had never been arrested for, he said he was doing burglaries, breaking into cars - property crimes, in other words. Then he broke into Robyn Naismith's house and she had the misfortune of coming home while he was there.”

”He wasn't described as violent, Benton,” I pointed out.

“Yes. He never profiled as your typical violent offender. The defense claimed that he was made temporarily insane by drugs and alcohol. To be honest, I think this was the case. Not long before he murdered Robyn Naismith he had started getting into PCP. It is quite possible that when Waddell encountered Robyn Naismith he was completely deranged and later had little or no recollection of what he did to her.”

“Do you remember what he stole, if anything?” I asked. “I wonder if there was clear evidence when he broke into her house that his intent was to commit burglary.”

“The place was ransacked. We know her jewelry was missing. The medicine cabinet was cleaned out and her billfold was empty. It's hard to know what else was stolen because she lived alone.”

“No significant relationship?”

“A fascinating point.”

Wesley stared off at an old couple dancing soporifically to the husky tones of a saxophone. “Semen stains were recovered from a bed sheet and the mattress cover. The stain on the sheet had to be fresh unless Robyn didn't change her bed linens very often, and we know that Waddell was not the origin of the stains. They didn't match his blood type.”

“No one who knew her ever made reference to a lover?”

“No one ever did. Obviously, there was keen interest in who this person was, and since he never contacted the police, it was suspected that she had been having an affair, possibly with one of her married colleagues or sources:' “Maybe she was,” I said.”

But he wasn't her killer.”

“No. Ronnie Joe Waddell was her killer. Let's take a look.”

I opened Waddell's file and showed Wesley the photographs of the executed inmate I had autopsied on me night of December thirteenth. “'Can you tell if this is the man you interviewed six years ago?”

Wesley impassively studied the photographs, going through them one by one. He looked at close-ups of me face and back of the head, and glanced over shots of the upper body and hands. He detached a mug shot from Waddell's Assessment Protocol and began comparing as I looked on.

“I see a resemblance,” I said.

“That's about as much as we can say,” Wesley replied. “The mug shot's ten years old. Waddell had a beard and mustache, was very muscular but lean. His face was lean. This guy”-he pointed to one of the morgue photographs - “is shaven and much heavier. His face is much fuller. I can't say these are the same man, based on these photos.”

I couldn't confirm it, either. In fact, I could think of old pictures of me that no one else would recognize.

“Do you have any suggestions about how we're going to resolve this problem?” I asked Wesley.

“I'll toss out a few things,” he said, stacking the photographs and straightening the edges against the tabletop. “Your old friend Nick Grueman's some kind of player in all this, and I've been thinking about the best way to deal with him without tipping our hand. If Marino or I talk to him, he'll know instantly that something's up.”

I knew where this was going and I tried to interrupt, but Wesley would not let me. “Marino's mentioned your difficulties with Grueman, that he calls and in general jerks you around. And then, of course, there is the past, your years at Georgetown. Maybe you should talk with him.”

“I don't want to talk with him, Benton.”

“He may have photographs of Waddell, letters, other documents. Something with Waddell's prints. Or maybe there's something he might say in the course of conversation that would be revealing. The point is, you have access to him, if you wish, through your normal activities, when the rest of us don't. And you're going to D.C. anyway to see Downey.”

“No,” I said.

“It's just a thought.”

He looked away from me and motioned for the waitress to bring the check. “How long will Lucy be visiting you?” he asked.

“She doesn't have to be back at school until January seventh.”

“I remember she's pretty good with computers.”

“She's more than pretty good.”

Wesley smiled a little. “So Marino's told me. He says she thinks she can help with AFIS.”

“I'm sure she'd like to try.”

I suddenly felt protective again, and torn. I wanted to send her back to Miami, and yet I didn't.

“You may or may not remember, but Michele works for the Department of Criminal justice Services, which assists the State Police in running AFIS,” Wesley said.

“I should think that might worry you a little right now.” I finished my brandy.

“There isn't a day of my life that I don't worry,” he said.

The next morning a light snow began to fall as Lucy and I dressed in ski clothes that could be spotted from here to the Eiger.

“I look like a traffic cone,” she said, staring at her blaze orange reflection in the mirror.

“That's right If you get lost on a trail. It won't be hard to find you.”

I swallowed vitamins and two aspirin with the sparkling water from the minibar.

My niece eyed my outfit, which was almost as electric as hers, and shook her head. “For someone so conservative, you certainly dress like a neon peacock for sports.”

“I try not to be a stick-in-the-mud all of the time. Are you hungry?”

“Starved.”

“Benton's supposed to meet us in the dining-room at eight-thirty. We can go down now if you don't want to wait.”

“I'm ready. Isn't Connie going to eat with us?”

“We're going to meet her on the slopes. Benton wants talk shop first.”

“I would think it must bother her to be left out,” Lucy said. “Whenever he talks with anyone, it seems she isn't invited.”

I locked the room door and we headed down the quiet corridor.

“I suspect Connie doesn't wish to be involved,” I said in a low voice. “For her to know every detail of her husband's work would only be a burden for her.”

“So he talks to you instead.”

“About cases, yes.”

“About work. And work is what matters most to both of you.”

“Work certainly seems to dominate our lives.”

“Are you and Mr. Wesley about to have an affair?”

“We're about to have breakfast.”

I smiled.

The Homestead's buffet was typically overwhelming. Long cloth-covered tables were laden with Virginia cured bacon and ham, every concoction of eggs imaginable, pastries, breads, and griddle cakes. Lucy seemed immune to the temptations, and headed straight for the cereals and fresh fruit. Shamed into good behavior by her example and by my recent lecture to Marino about his health, I avoided everything I wanted, including coffee.

“People are staring at you, Aunt Kay,” Lucy said under her breath.

I assumed the attention was due to our vibrant attire until I opened the morning's Washington Post and was shocked to discover myself on the front page. The headline read, “MURDER IN THE MORGUE,” the story a lengthy account of Susan's homicide, which was accompanied by a prominently placed photograph of me arriving at the scene and looking very tense. Clearly, the reporter's major source was Susan's distraught husband, Jason, whose information painted a picture of his wife leaving her job under peculiar, if not suspicious, circumstances less than a week before her violent death.

It was asserted, for example, that Susan recently confronted me when I attempted to list her as a witness in the case of a murdered young boy, even though she had not been present during his autopsy. When Susan became ill and stayed out of work “after a formalin spill,” I called her home with such frequency that she was afraid to answer me phone, then I showed up on her doorstep the night before her murder” with a poinsettia and vague offers of favors.

“I walked into my house after Christmas shopping and there was the Chief Medical Examiner inside my living room,” Susan's husband was quoted. “She [Dr. Scarpetta] left right away, and as soon as the door shut Susan started crying. She was terrified of something but wouldn't tell me what.”

As unsettling as I found Jason Story's public disparagement of me, worse was the revelation of Susan's recent financial transactions. Supposedly, two weeks before her death she paid off more than three thousand dollars in credit card bills after having deposited thirty five hundred dollars into her checking account. The sudden windfall could not be explained. Her husband had been laid off from his sales job during the fall and Susan earned less than twenty thousand dollars a year.

“Mr. Wesley's here,” Lucy said, taking the paper from me.

Wesley was dressed in black ski pants and turtleneck, a bright red jacket tucked under his arm. I could tell by the expression on his face, the firm set of his jaw, that he was aware of the news.

“Did the Post try to talk to you?”

He pulled out a chair. “I can't believe they ran the damn thing without giving you a chance for comment.”

“A reporter from the Post called as I was leaving the office yesterday, “I replied. “He wanted to question me about Susan's homicide and I chose not to talk to him. I guess that was my chance.”

“So you didn't know anything, had no forwarning about the slant of this thing.”

“I was in the dark until I picked up the paper.”

“It's all over the news, Kay.”

He met my eyes. “I heard it on television this morning. Marino called. The press in Richmond is having a field day. The implication is that Susan's murder may be connected to the medical examiner's office - that you may be involved and have suddenly left town.”

“That's insane.”

“How much of the article is true?” he asked.

“The facts have been completely distorted. I did call Susan's house when she didn't show up at work. I wanted to make certain she was all right, and then I needed to find out if she remembered printing Waddell at the morgue. I did go see her on Christmas Eve to give her a gift and the poinsettia. I suppose my promise of favors was when she told me she was quitting and I said for her to let me know if she needed a reference, or if there was anything I could do for her.”

“What about the business of her not wanting to be listed as a witness in Eddie Heath's case?”

“That was the afternoon she broke several jars of formalin and retreated upstairs to my office. It's routine to list autopsy assistants or techs as witnesses when they assist in the posts. In this instance, Susan was present for only the external examination and was adamant about not wanting her name on Eddie Heath's autopsy report.

I thought her request and demeanor were weird, but there was no confrontation.”

“This article makes it look as if you were paying her off,” Lucy said. “That's what I would wonder if I read this and didn't know.”

“I certainly wasn't paying her off, but it sounds as if someone was,” I said.

“It's all making a little more sense,” Wesley said. “If this bit about her financial picture is accurate, then Susan had gotten a substantial sum of money, meaning she must have supplied a service to someone. Around this same time your computer was broken into and Susan's personality changed. She became nervous and unreliable. She avoided you as much as she could. I think she couldn't face you, Kay, because she knew she was betraying you.”

I nodded, struggling for composure. Susan had gotten into something she did not know how to get out of, and it occurred to me that this might be the real explanation for why she fled from Eddie Heath's post and then from Jennifer Deighton's. Her emotional outbursts had nothing to do with witchcraft or feeling dizzy after being exposed to formalin fumes. She was panicking. She did not want to witness either case.

“Interesting,” Wesley said when I voiced my theory. “If you ask what of value did Susan Story have to sell, the answer is information. If she didn't witness the posts, she had no information. And whoever was buying this information from her is quite likely the person she was going to meet on Christmas Day.”

“What information would be so important that someone would be willing to pay thousands of dollars for it and then murder a pregnant woman?” Lucy asked bluntly.

We did not know, but we had a guess. The common denominator, once again, seemed to be Ronnie Joe Waddell.

“Susan didn't forget to print Waddell or whoever it was that was executed,” I said. ”She deliberately didn't print him.”

“That's the way it looks,” Wesley agreed. “Someone else asked her to conveniently forget to print him. Or to lose his cards in the event that you or another member of your staff printed him.”

I thought of Ben Stevens. The bastard.

“And this brings us back to what you and I concluded last night, Kay,” Wesley went on. “We need to go back to 'the night Waddell was supposed to have been executed and determine who it was they strapped in the chair. And a place to start is AFIS. What we want to know is if and what records were tampered with.”

He was talking to Lucy now. “I've got it set up for you to go through the journal tapes, if you're willing.”

“I'm willing,” Lucy said. “When do you want me to start?”

“You can start as soon as you want because the first step will involve only the telephone. You need to call Michele. She's a systems analyst for Department of Criminal Justice Services and works out of the State Police headquarters. She's involved with AFIS and will go into detail with you about how everything works. Then she'll begin mounting the journal tapes so you can access them.”

“She doesn't mind my doing this?” Lucy asked warily.

“On the contrary. She's thrilled. The journal tapes are nothing more than audit logs, a record of changes made to the AFIS data base. They're not readable, in other words. I think Michele called them 'hex dumps’ if that means anything to you.”

“Hexadecimal, or base sixteen. Hieroglyphics, in other words,” Lucy said. “It means that I'll have to decipher the data and write a program that will look for anything that's gone against the identification numbers of the records you're interested in.”

“Can you do it?” Wesley asked.

“Once I figure out the code and record layout. Why doesn't the analyst you know do it herself?'

“We want to be as discreet as possible. It would attract notice if Michele suddenly abandoned her normal duties and started wading through journal tapes ten hours a day. You can work invisibly from your aunt's home computer by dialing in on a diagnostic line.”

“As long as when Lucy dials in it can't be traced back to my residence,” I said.

“It won't be,” Wesley said.

“And no one is likely to notice that someone from the outside is dialing into the State Police computer and wading through the tapes?” I asked.

“Michele says she can maneuver it so there's no problem.”

Unzipping a pocket of his ski jacket, Wesley slipped out a card and gave it to Lucy. “Here are her work and home phone numbers.”

“How do you know you can trust her?” Lucy asked. “If tampering has gone on, how do you know she's not involved?”

“Michele has never been good at lying. From the time she was a little girl she would stare down at her feet and turn as red as Rudolf's nose.”

“You knew her when she was a little girl?” Lucy looked baffled.

“And before,” Wesley said. “She's my eldest daughter.”