Isle of Dogs

Twenty-three

The chief medical examiner, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, was in her office when Andy knocked on her open door.

"Doctor Scarpetta? Hi, " he said politely and a bit nervously. "If this isn't a bad time, I'd like to talk to you about the unidentified man who burned up on Canal Street last night. "

"Come in. " Dr. Scarpetta looked up from a stack of death certificates she was reviewing. "Have we met?"

"No, ma'am. But I've worked with Dr. Sawamatsu before. "

Andy introduced himself, and then explained that Regina was an intern with the state police, although he did not refer to her by name.

"And your name is?" Scarpetta inquired of her.

Regina stared at her, wide-eyed and tongue-tied. Regina had never met such a powerful woman before, and she was completely taken aback. Dr. Scarpetta was a very handsome blonde, maybe in her mid-forties, and was dressed in a sharp pinstriped suit. Why would someone who has everything going for her want to work with dead patients for a living? What should Regina say to explain herself, without giving away her identity and causing a stink?

"Reggie, " Regina blurted out.

"Officer Reggie, " Dr. Scarpetta said with a nod from her judge's chair behind her big desk. "And you'll vouch for her?" she said as a bit of a warning to Andy. "I don't routinely have police interns down here. "

"I'll take full responsibility, " Andy said, giving Regina a sharp glance.

"Oh, don't worry, " Regina eagerly spoke for herself. "I won't talk about anything I see or hear and won't touch or move anything in any way. "

"A very good idea, " Dr. Scarpetta replied, and she directed her attention to Andy. "The man has been identified by fingerprints. His name is Caesar Fender, a forty-one-year-old black male from Richmond. And we have a full house this morning, I'm sorry to say. Have you ever seen an autopsy?" she asked Regina.

"No, but not because I didn't want to. " Regina was desperate to impress this legendary woman doctor.

"I see!"

"When I took high school biology, I was the only one in my group who didn't mind dissecting a frog, " Regina boasted. "Guts have never bothered me at all. I don't think it would even bother me watching somebody die, like a death row inmate, maybe. "

"Well, I didn't like dissecting things in high school, " Dr. Scarpetta replied, much to Regina's surprise. "I felt very sorry for the frog. "

"I did, too, " Andy replied. "Mine was alive and I didn't think it was right to kill it. It still bothers me. "

"And I certainly am bothered when I've watched people die, inmates or otherwise. I guess you've never spent any time at scenes or in the E. R., " Dr. Scarpetta said, and she thought Andy's name seemed familiar as she shuffled through the papers on her desk and pulled out a report.

Sure enough, the name of the officer who had submitted the poisoned chocolates to the labs was Trooper Andy Brazil.

"I have something to discuss with you, " she said to him. "I think we need a moment of privacy. "

It was her way of politely ordering Regina out of the office.

"Please step out for a minute, " Andy said to her. "We'll be right with you. "

"How can I be an intern if you're always making me leave?" Regina said, a hint of her generally obnoxious personality creeping into her voice.

"I'm not always making you leave, " Andy replied, showing her to the door and pretty much pushing her out. "Stay, " he said, as if she were Frisky.

He shut the door and returned to Dr. Scarpetta's desk, pulling out a chair and seating himself.

"I just got the lab report for the chocolates, " the chief began. "This is serious enough that Doctor Pond wanted it brought to my attention immediately because I'm quite familiar with poisonings by laxatives. I had a case several years ago of a woman whose kids laced her hot chocolate with Ex-Lax-supposedly as a joke. The woman developed multiple organ failure, pulmonary edema, and went into a coma and died. "

She handed Andy the report as she went on to explain it.

"Tests were conducted with High Performance Liquid Chromatography, and the chocolates in question are, in fact, positive for phenolphthalein, or Pt, in various concentrations. Normal straight Ex-Lax, if taken in the proper doses, contains approximately ninety milligrams of Pt. But just one of the chocolates in the box you submitted contains in excess of two hundred milligrams, which at the very least would, if ingested, cause fluid and electrolyte loss, which is very dangerous, especially if the victim is older and not enjoying good health. "

"Well, that sums up the governor, " Andy said with growing concern. "What about fingerprints? Did the labs find anything on the paper the box was wrapped in? And was the handwritten note really written by the governor?"

Dr. Scarpetta sorted through several other reports.

"They did recover a latent by using the Luma-Lite and fluorescing dyes, and the print was run through AFIS, " she informed him. "They got a hit, and here is the identification number, which you can check yourself with the state police computer. " She wrote it down for him. "As for a documents examination, an exemplar of the governor's handwriting was inconsistent with the note that accompanied the chocolates. "

"So the note is a forgery. " Andy wasn't surprised.

"That's inconclusive because we need to get an official exemplar. The one we used preliminarily was from a letter the governor allegedly sent to Dr. Sawamatsu. "

"Right. And we shouldn't assume that the letter is genuine, " Andy agreed with her. "Or that the governor actually signed it himself. "

"Legally, we can't assume that. "

"Which reminds me, " Andy said. "And I hope this isn't out of line, Doctor Scarpetta. But it concerns me that Doctor Sawamatsu collects souvenirs, very inappropriate ones, or at least he brags as much to a lot of us. Do you ever go to his house?"

"No, " she replied, her expression turning hard.

One thing she absolutely would not tolerate was disrespect toward the dead. Nor was any member of her staff allowed to even think about collecting mementos, money, personal effects, weapons, drugs, or alcohol from a body or a crime scene.

"Maybe you should drop by unannounced to see him sometime, " Andy suggested. "At his house. "

"Don't worry, " she answered. "I will. "

"I'll get on the poisoned chocolates case right away, " Andy promised. "And I suppose the documents examiner needs an exemplar of the suspect's handwriting, too. "

"I wasn't aware you had a suspect, " she said. "But yes. Absolutely. If you can get his or her handwriting, that would be a very good thing. And I suggest you get an exemplar from the intended victim, as well. "

"From Superintendent Hammer?" Andy puzzled. "Why?"

"To rule out Munchausen's syndrome, " Dr. Scarpetta matter-of-factly stated. "Poisoning with Ex-Lax most often occurs when an individual chronically ingests it to get attention-for example, to gain sympathy from a parent or spouse. "

"You're saying it's possible Superintendent Hammer wanted us to think the governor'or someone pretending to be the governor sent her poisoned chocolates because she wants attention? I can't believe that for a minute! You don't know her, " Andy said politely but defensively.

"No, I don't know her at all, " Dr. Scarpetta replied. "But she's new in a very demanding position, and if her experience has been anything like mine, the governor never returns her phone calls or invites her to parties at the mansion. So she may have set up a situation to make it appear the governor was trying to poison her. If he suddenly found himself a suspect in an attempted murder, that would certainly get his attention, I should think. "

"Might I quickly ask you about Trish Thrash?" Andy jumped to that subject. "I know it's not my case, but I care about it a lot and as you may know, the killer left evidence on my doorstep for reasons unknown. "

"Oh? So that was you?" Scarpetta frowned a little, and it was obvious to Andy that she was upset by the case. "A terribly mean-spirited, brutal death, " she added. "But you were very wise to call Detective Slipper and not handle anything. We have recovered latent prints but have thus far gotten no hits in AFIS, and using STR we recovered DNA from the envelope but have gotten no hit on that, either. As for trace evidence, we did find several very long black hairs adhering to blood on the victim's clothing. "

"Female hairs?"

"I don't know, " Scarpetta replied. "But they could be. "

"But no hits? Interesting, " he mused. "I'm wondering if you got no hits because the individual is young with a juvenile record, which, of course, would be sealed. And until very recently, we weren't allowed to enter a juvenile's fingerprints or DNA profiles into the databases.

So maybe we're looking for a hardened criminal who is young and has long black hair and might just be a female, who kills for sport and may even be associated with Smoke's highway pirates, who possibly assaulted Moses Custer and murdered the Seven-Eleven clerk last night. "

"I don't know. "

Scarpetta got up from her desk and opened the door, and Regina rushed back into the office, her notepad and pen ready.

"I don't want to take up your time, Doctor Scarpetta, but we are very concerned about this fisherman case, " Andy went to the next item of business. "Especially since it's being called a hate crime, and I thought it a good idea to come down here personally to give you the information we have and see what you determine in the autopsy. A certain suspicious individual who witnessed the death claims the fisherman died of spontaneous human combustion that may have occurred when the hot lead and burning powder from a bullet caused synthetic fibers in the victim's shirt to ignite, thus supposedly explaining why he burst into flames. And let me add, this same suspicious individual is a prime suspect in the other case we were just discussing. "

"How come you left out the part about my being poisoned?" Regina blurted out. Obviously, she had eavesdropped through the shut door and heard at least some of the private conversation.

"We're not going to talk about that right now, " Andy warned her, knowing full well that if she divulged too much, it would become clear that she was not an intern but the pampered youngest daughter of the governor.

"It was awful!" Regina said to Dr. Scarpetta. "I ate these cookies and all of a sudden, I was doubled over with the worst pain I've ever felt in my life. Well, it wasn't really all of a sudden. I didn't feel too bad until I was hiding behind the boxwood in the garden, and then I got cramps and gas.

"Next thing I know, an EPU trooper's rushing me to the hospital where I was subjected to terrible indignities, like peeing in a little plastic cup and then watching a nurse put a little stick in it. They wanted number two also, but I had nothing left in me after that terrible attack. My pee turned pink and it scared me to death! I thought I was peeing blood, but the nurse said it was a chemical test that made it turn pink, but it meant the worst. Someone put Ex-Lax in my cookies and tried to kill me in cold blood!

"Or maybe someone was trying to kill someone else, but I was the innocent one who ate the cookies, " she continued, clearly enjoying her own story. "The nurse said that pee usually has a pH of four or six, and the Ex-Lax makes pee turn pink if the pH exceeds seven. "

Regina had no clue as to what all this meant, but she reckoned that pH was spelled pee-h, and whatever the h-part was, it must be devastatingly affected by Ex-Lax. She was fairly certain her h-factor was still off, since she had been weak and pale when she'd pried herself out of bed earlier.

"I'm just lucky I'm not one of your cases this morning!" Regina said with great drama.

"Yes, you are, " Dr. Scarpetta agreed. "We're all lucky we aren't cases this morning or any morning. Trooper

Brazil, we've X-rayed the fisherman's body already, and there is no bullet. "

"Then what else might have caused him to burn up?"

"Of course, we'll test for accelerants and other chemicals, " she said, slipping off her suit jacket and hanging it behind the door. "This is one of those cases when the external examination tells us quite a lot. " She put on a lab coat. "For example, there is a great deal of charring that is more pronounced posteriorly, which is consistent with whatever burned him entering the body at about the midline of the chest. A little left of the midline, in the area of the heart, to be precise. "

Andy and Regina followed Dr. Scarpetta out into the corridor.

"Then he didn't just burn up for no reason-not if something entered his chest, " Andy said as Regina faithfully took notes.

"No weapon found at the scene?" the chief inquired.

"No, ma'am. "

"How do you spell accelerant?" Regina was struggling, and the chief had not even gotten to the really big words yet.

"This suspicious individual who witnessed the death, did he mention to you what color the flames were or their intensity?" Dr. Scarpetta asked. "If they were an intense white, or blue, or red, for example?"

"Is midline one or two words?" Regina's voice was getting strained and petulant.

"No. I also wouldn't expect him to be reliable, " Andy answered the chief.

"One word, " she said to Regina.

"How do you spell posteriorly?"

"We'll worry about that later, " Andy said in a tone that suggested Regina should not butt in again to volunteer indiscretions or to question spellings.

"Most significant is a whitish-gray lumpy residue inside the chest cavity, which is certainly consistent with some incendiary device or other material burning inside the body. " Dr. Scarpetta stopped before the ladies' locker-room door. "You'll have to go in through the men's room, " she instructed Andy. "Officer Reggie and I will meet you in the changing room and we'll get started. "

"Insedentary?" Regina was beginning to panic, and her reaction to insecurity and fear was always unfortunate. "What kind of device? What the hell's a insedentary device?" Her disposition turned ugly. "I can't write this fast and it's not fair] Why should I know how to spell words like this? I'm not used to them. It's not like I hear them every day at the mansion!"

Dr. Scarpetta gave Regina a quizzical look. "Maybe this isn't a good time for you to see your first autopsy, " the chief decided.

Andy got on his portable radio and raised Trooper Macovich on the air. "Can you return the package to its origin?" he asked in the code language of the EPU. "And I need you to check out an ID number with AFIS. "

"Ten-fo, ' Macovich's voice came back, decidingly lacking in enthusiasm.

"Ten-twenty-five us in the morgue bay. "

"Ten-fo. Be there in fifteen. "

"Now you've really done it, " Andy complained to Regina minutes later as they waited inside the frigid bay, sitting in plastic chairs by the Coke machine.

Two Swifty's Removal Service attendants were carrying a pouched body on a stretcher, making their way slowly and with difficulty down the ramp. The attendants, a man and a woman dressed in dark suits, seemed to be having a hard time getting the stretcher's legs to unfold.

"I didn't do a thing, " Regina retorted. "You're not nice to me!"

"I told you to be quiet and mind your p's and q's and you didn't, " Andy said.

The attendants were in a bind. They couldn't open the stretcher's legs, which meant they couldn't set down the dead person, who clearly was very big, and so there wasn't a free hand to open the van's tailgate.

"Look at that, " Regina said, pointing at the attendants. "Why don't you go help those poor people instead of sitting here picking on me. "

"As long as you stay in your chair and behave, " said Andy, who didn't trust Regina for a minute.

He trotted over to the van.

"Here, let me help, " he said to the female attendant.

"That's mighty nice of you, " she replied, and gave him her end of the stretcher.

"I thought you got this thing fixed, Sammy, " she irritably said to her partner as she tugged on the stuck stretcher legs.

"It just needed oiling, Maybeline. "

"Then why ain't it working? These legs are froze stiff and one of the wheels was sticking the other day. Bet you didn't get that fixed, neither. "

Sammy was silent as Andy held on with one hand and tried the van door with the other.

"How many times I got to tell you, don't say you getting something fixed and then I find out you didn't. " Maybeline was furious. "Breaking my back doing this stinking job and you sitting around all the time watching the TV. "

"I think the tailgate's locked, " Andy said as the stretcher fishtailed and moved around perilously. "I think it's best you forget the legs and let's unlock the van. Then we can just slide the body in. We won't need to roll it. "

"Can't roll it anyway, not with that stuck wheel Sammy couldn't bother to fix. What did you do with the keys?" Maybeline yanked at the stretcher's legs.

"In my pocket. I can't get 'em right this minute. I don't exactly have a hand free. " Sammy was about to lose his temper. "Quit tugging on the legs before we drop the damn body on the floor!"

Regina, sensing an emergency, made her way over to the stretcher at the same time the buzzer sounded and the bay door began to screech open.

"I'll get the keys out for you, " she told Sammy as she began to pat him down the way she saw cops search people on TV.

Regina had no reason to know that Sammy was extremely ticklish. When she started digging in the right front pocket of his pants, he shrieked and jumped six inches into the air. What Macovich witnessed when he drove into the bay was a crazy white man in a dark suit screaming with laughter and begging that ugly Crimm daughter to "Stop!" Next, the man grabbed himself, and the end of the stretcher he had been holding crashed to the floor and the huge black body pouch thudded on concrete. Andy, meanwhile, was shouting at Regina, and a woman attendant howled in pain as the stretcher pinched her hand and knocked her in the face, leaving her bleeding and holding her nose and a finger.

Macovich thought it wise to remain inside his unmarked car and observe the altercation, which was quickly turning violent. Let's see what the pretty white boy does about this, he unkindly thought. That's what you get for being the teacher pet and babysitting the guv's nasty daughter. Ha. Ha. Yeah, I ain't seen a good fight in a while. Wait 'til Doc Sca'petta sees what you doing out here. Huh. She kick your butt to the moon and complain to Sup'intendent Hammer.

"You idiot!" Andy shouted at Regina.

"You're the idiot!" she fired back at the top of her lungs.

"Now look at what you did!" Sammy bellowed at her. "You better hope this dead lady's family don't see her body all banged up! Wait 'til the funeral home find it with bruises and busted bones!"

"Dead bodies don't get bruises, " Andy told him. "And I doubt any bones were broken. "

Sammy was enraged by the sight of Maybeline bleeding, and he shoved Regina against the van and snatched his keys from her. She shoved him back and kicked his ankle. Then she socked him in the eye and bit his hand when he grabbed her by the arm. Andy got between them and was putting Sammy in a chokehold as the door leading inside the building flew open and Dr. Scarpetta, dressed in a surgical gown and gloves, emerged to see what all the commotion was about.

"That's enough, " she announced in a voice that commanded attention. "Stop it right now!"