The Body Farm

11

The member of the North Richmond Gang on trial the next morning wore a double-breasted navy suit and an Italian silk tie with a perfect Windsor knot. His white shirt looked crisp; he was cleanly shaven and minus his earring. Trial lawyer Tod Coldwell had dressed his client well because he knew that jurors have an exceedingly difficult time resisting the notion that what you see is what you get. Of course, I believed that axiom, too, which was why I introduced into evidence as many color photographs from the victim's autopsy as possible. It was safe to say that Coldwell, who drove a red Ferrari, did not like me much.

"Isn't it true, Mrs. Scarpetta," Coldwell pontificated in court this cool autumn day, "that people under the influence of cocaine can become very violent and even demonstrate superhuman strength?"

"Certainly cocaine can cause the user to become delusional and excited," I continued directing my answers to the jury.

"Superhuman strength, as you call it, is often associated with cocaine or PCP-which is a horse tranquilizer."

"And the victim had both cocaine and benzoylecgonine in his blood," Coldwell went on as if I had just agreed with him.

"Yes, he did."

"Mrs. Scarpetta, I wonder if you would explain to the jury what that means?"

"I would first like to explain to the jury that I am a medical doctor with a law degree. I have a specialty in pathology and a subspecialty in forensic pathology, as you've already stipulated, Mr. Coldwell. Therefore, I would appreciate being addressed as Dr. Scarpetta instead of Mrs. Scarpetta. "

"Yes, ma'am."

"Would you please repeat the question?"

"Would you explain to the jury what it means if someone has cocaine" -he glanced at his notes"-and benzoylecgonine in his blood?"

"Benzoylecgonine is the metabolite of cocaine. To say that someone had both on board means some of the cocaine the victim had taken had already metabolized and some had not," I replied, aware of Lucy in a back corner, her face partially hidden by a column. She looked miserable.

"Which would indicate he was a chronic abuser, especially since he had many old needle tracks. And this may also suggest that when my client was confronted by him on the night of July third, my client had a very excited, agitated, and violent person on his hands, and had no choice but to defend himself." Coldwell was pacing, his dapper client watching me like a twitchy cat.

"Mr. Coldwell," I said, "the victim-Jonah Jones-was shot sixteen times with a Tee-Nine nine-millimeter gun that holds thirty-six rounds. Seven of those shots were to his back, and three of them were close or contact shots to the back of Mr. Jones's head.

"In my opinion, this is inconsistent with a shooting in which the shooter was defending himself, especially since Mr. Jones had a blood alcohol of point two-nine, which is almost three times the legal limit in Virginia. In other words, the victim's motor skills and judgment were substantially impaired when he was assaulted. Frankly, I'm amazed that Mr. Jones could even stand up." Coldwell swung around to face Judge Poe, who had been nicknamed "the Raven" for as long as I had been in Richmond. He was weary to his ancient soul of drug dealers killing each other, of children carrying guns to school and shooting each other on the bus.

"Your Honor," Coldwell said dramatically, "I would ask that Mrs. Scarpetta's last statement be struck from the record since it is both speculative and inflammatory, and without a doubt beyond her area of expertise. "

"Well, now, I don't know that what the doctor has to say is beyond her expertise, Mr. Coldwell, and she's already asked you politely to refer to her properly as Dr. Scarpetta, and I'm losing patience with your antics and ploys…"

"But, Your Honor"

"The fact is that I've had Dr. Scarpetta in my courtroom on many occasions and I'm well aware of her level of expertise," the judge went on in his Southern way of speaking that reminded me of pulling warm taffy.

"Your Honor…?"

"Seems to me she deals with this sort of thing every day…"

"Your Honor?"

"Mr. Coldwell," the Raven thundered, his balding pate turning red, "if you interrupt me one more goddam time I'm going to hold you in contempt of court and let you spend a few nights in the goddam city jail! Are we clear?"

"Yes, sir." Lucy was craning her neck to see, and every juror was alert.

"I'm going to allow the record to reflect exactly what Dr. Scarpetta said," the judge went on.

"No further questions," Coldwell said tersely. Judge Poe concluded with a violent bang of the gavel that woke up an old woman toward the back who had been fast asleep beneath a black straw hat for most of the morning. Startled, she sat straight up and blurted, "Who is it?" Then she remembered where she was and began to cry.

"It's all right. Mama," I heard another woman say as we adjourned for lunch. Before leaving downtown, I stopped by the Health Department's Division of Vital Records, where an old friend and colleague of mine was the state registrar. In Virginia, one could not legally be born or buried without Gloria Loving's signature, and though she was as local as shad roe, she knew her counterpart in every state in the union. Over the years, I had relied on Gloria many times to verify that people had been on this planet or had not, that they had been married, divorced, or were adopted.

I was told she was on her lunch break in the Madison Building cafeteria. At quarter past one, I found Gloria alone at a table, eating vanilla yogurt and canned fruit cocktail. Mostly, she was reading a thick paperback thriller that was a New York Times bestseller, according to the cover.

"If I had to eat lunches like yours, I wouldn't bother," I said, pulling out a chair. She looked up at me, her blank expression followed by joy.

"Goodness gracious! Why, my Lord. What on earth are you doing here, Kay?"

"I work across the street, in case you've forgotten." Delighted, she laughed.

"Can I get you a coffee? Honey, you look tired." Gloria Loving's name had defined her at birth, and she had grown up true to her calling. She was a big, generous woman of some fifty years who deeply cared about every certificate that crossed her desk. Records were more than paper and nosology codes to her, and she would hire, fire, or blast General Assembly in the name of one. It did not matter whose.

"No coffee, thanks," I said.

"Well, I heard you didn't work across the street anymore."

"I love the way people resign me when I've not been here for a couple of weeks. I'm a consultant with the FBI now. I'm in and out a lot."

"In and out of North Carolina, I guess, based on what I've been following in the news. Even Clan Rather was talking about the Steiner girl's case the other night. It was on CNN, too. Lord, it's cold in here."

I looked around at the bleak state government cafeteria where few people seemed thrilled with their lives. Many were huddled over trays, jackets and sweaters buttoned to their chins.

"They've got all the thermostats reset to sixty degrees to conserve energy, if that isn't the joke of all time," Gloria went on.

"We have steam heat that comes out of the Medical College of Virginia, so cutting the thermostats doesn't save one watt of electricity."

"It feels colder in here than sixty degrees," I commented.

"That's because it's fifty-three, which is about what it is outside."

"You're welcome to come across the street and use my office," I said with a sly smile.

"Well, now, that's got to be the warmest spot in town. What can I do to help you, Kay?"

"I need to track down a SIDS that allegedly occurred in California around twelve years ago. The infant's name is Mary Jo Steiner, the parents' names Denesa and Charles."

She made the connection immediately but was too professional to probe.

"Do you know Denesa Steiner's maiden name?"

"Where in California?"

"I don't know that, either," I said.

"Any possibility you can find out? The more information, the better."

"I'd rather you try running what I've got. If that fails, I'll see what else I can find out."

"You said an alleged SIDS. There's some suspicion that maybe it wasn't a SIDS? I need to know in case it might have been coded another way."

"Supposedly, the child was a year old when she died. And that bothers me considerably. As you know, the peak age for SIDS is three to four months old. Over six months old, and SIDS is unlikely. After a year, you're almost always talking about some other subtle form of sudden death. So yes, the death could have been coded a different way." She played with her tea bag.

"If this was Idaho, I'd just call Jane and she could run the nosology code for SIDS and have an answer for me in ninety seconds. But California's got thirty-two million people. It's one of the hardest states. It might take a special run. Come on, I'll walk you out. That will be my exercise for the day. "

"Is the registrar in Sacramento?" We followed a depressing corridor busy with desperate citizens in need of social services.

"Yes. I'm going to call him as soon as I go back upstairs."

"I assume you know him, then."

"Oh, sure." She laughed.

"There are only fifty of us. We have no one to talk to but each other." That night I took Lucy to La Petite France, where I surrendered to Chef Paul, who sentenced us to languid hours of fruit-marinated lamb kabobs and a bottle of 1986 Chateau Gruaud Larose. I promised her crema di cioccolata eletta when we got home, a lovely chocolate mousse with pistachio and mars ala that I kept in the freezer for culinary emergencies. But before that we drove to Shocko Bottom and walked along cobblestones beneath lamplight in a part of the city that not so long ago I would not have ventured near. We were close to the river, and the sky was midnight blue with stars flung wide. I thought of Benton and then I thought of Marino for very different reasons.

"Aunt Kay," Lucy said as we entered Chetti's for cappuccino, "can I get a lawyer?"

"For what purpose?" I asked, although I knew.

"Even if the FBI can't prove what they're saying I did, they'll still slam me for the rest of my life." Pain could not hide behind her steady voice.

"Tell me what you want."

"A big gun."

"I'll find you one," I said.

I did not return to North Carolina on Monday as I had planned but flew to Washington instead. There were rounds to make at FBI headquarters, but more than anything I needed to see an old friend. Senator Frank Lord and I had attended the same Catholic high school in Miami, although not at the same time. He was quite a lot older than I, and our friendship did not begin until I was working for the Dade County Medical Examiner's Office and he was the district attorney. When he became governor, then senator, I was long gone from the southern city of my birth. He and I did not become reconnected until he was appointed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Lord had asked me to be an adviser as he fought to pass the most formidable crime bill in the history of the nation, and I had solicited his help, too. Unbeknownst to Lucy, he had been her patron saint, for without his intervention, she probably would not have been granted either permission or academic credit for her internship this fall. I wasn't certain how to tell him the news. At almost noon, I waited for him on a polished cotton couch in a parlor with rich red walls and Persian rugs and a splendid crystal chandelier. Outside, voices carried along the marble corridor, and an occasional tourist peeked through the doorway in hopes of catching a glimpse of a politician or some other important person inside the Senate dining room. Lord arrived on time and full of energy, and gave me a quick, stiff hug. He was a kind, unassuming man shy about showing affection.

"I got lipstick on your face." I wiped a smudge off his jaw.

"Oh, you should leave it so my colleagues have something to talk about."

"I suspect they have plenty to talk about anyway."

"Kay, it's wonderful to see you," he said, escorting me into the dining room.

"You may not think it's so wonderful," I said.

"Of course I will." We picked a table before a stained-glass window of George Washington on a horse, and I did not look at the menu because it never changed.

Senator Lord was a distinguished man with thick gray hair and deep blue eyes. He was quite tall and lean, and had a penchant for elegant silk ties and old-fashioned finery such as vests, cuff links, pocket watches and stickpins.

"What brings you to D.C.?" he asked, placing his linen napkin in his lap.

"I have evidence to discuss at the FBI labs," I said. He nodded.

"You're working on that awful case in North Carolina."

"Yes."

"That psycho must be stopped. Do you think he's there?"

"I don't know."

"Because I'm just wondering why he would be," Lord went on.

"It would seem he would have moved on to another place where he could lay low for a while. Well, I suppose logic has little to do with the decisions these evil people make."

"Frank," I said, "Lucy's in a lot of trouble."

"I can tell something's wrong," he said matter-of factly

"I see it in your face." He listened to me for half an hour as I told him everything, and I was so grateful for his patience. I knew he had to vote several times that day and that many people wanted slivers of his time.

"You're a good man," I said with feeling.

"And I have let you down. I asked you for a favor, which is something I almost never do, and the situation has ended in disgrace. "

"Did she do it?" he asked, and he had scarcely touched his grilled vegetables.

"I don't know," I replied.

"The evidence is incriminating." I cleared my throat.

"She says she didn't do it."

"Has she always told you the truth?"

"I thought so. But I've also been discovering of late that there are many important facets to her that she has not told me."

"Have you asked?"

"She's made it clear that some things aren't my business. And I shouldn't judge."

"If you're afraid of being judgmental, Kay, then you probably already are. And Lucy would sense this no matter what you say or don't say."

"I've never enjoyed being the one who criticizes and corrects her," I said, depressed.

"But her mother, Dorothy, who is my only sibling, is too male dependent and self-centered to deal with the reality of a daughter."

"And now Lucy is in trouble, and you are wondering how much of it is your fault."

"I'm not conscious of wondering that."

"We rarely are conscious of those primitive anxieties that creep out from under reason. And the only way to banish them is to rum on all the lights. Do you think you're strong enough to do that?"

"Yes."

"Let me remind you that if you ask, you also must be able to live with the answers."

"I know."

"Let's just suppose for a moment that Lucy's innocent," said Senator Lord.

"Then what?" I asked.

"If Lucy didn't violate security, obviously someone else did. My question is why?"

"My question is how," I said. He gestured for the waitress to bring coffee.

"What we really must determine is motive. And what would Lucy's motive be? What would anybody's motive be?" Money was the easy answer, but I did not think that was it and told him so.

"Money is power, Kay, and everything is about power. We fallen creatures can never get enough of it."

"Yes, the forbidden fruit."

"Of course. All crime stems from it," he said.

"Every day that tragic truth is carried in on a stretcher," I agreed.

"Which tells you what about the problem at hand?" He stirred sugar into his coffee.

"It tells me motive."

"Well, of course. Power, that's it. Please, what would you like me to do?" my old friend asked.

"Lucy will not be charged with any crime unless it is proven that she stole from ERF. But as we speak, her future is ruined-at least in terms of a career in law enforcement or any other one that might involve a background investigation."

"Have they proven that she was the one who got in at three in the morning?"

"They have as much proof as they need, Frank. And that's the problem.

I'm not certain how hard they'll work to clear her name, if she is innocent.

"If?"

"I'm trying to keep an open mind." I reached for my coffee and decided that the last thing I needed was more physical stimulation. My heart was racing and I could not keep my hands still.

"I can talk to the director," Lord said.

"All I want is someone behind the scenes making sure this thing is thoroughly investigated. With Lucy gone, they may not think it matters, especially since there is so much else to cope with. And she's just a college student, for God's sake. So why should they care?"

"I would hope the Bureau would care more than that," he said, his mouth grim.

"I understand bureaucracies. I've worked in them all my life."

"As have I."

"Then you must be clear on what I'm saying."

"I am."

"They want her in Richmond with me until next semester," I said.

"Then that is their verdict." He reached for his coffee again.

"Exactly. And that's easy for them, but what about my niece? She's only twenty-one years old. Her dream has just blown up mid flight What is she supposed to do? Go back to UVA after Christmas and pretend nothing went wrong?"

"Listen." He touched my arm with a tenderness that always made me wish he were my father.

"I will do what I can without the impropriety of meddling with an administrative problem. Trust me on that front?"

"I do."

"In the meantime, if you don't mind a little personal advice?" He motioned for the waitress as he glanced at his watch.

"Well, I'm late." He looked back at me.

"Your biggest problem is a domestic one."

"I disagree," I said with feeling.

"You can disagree all you like." He smiled at the waitress as she gave him the check.

"You're the closest thing to a mother Lucy has ever had. How are you going to help her through this?"

"I thought I was doing that today."

"And I thought you were doing this because you wanted to see me. Excuse me? " He motioned for the waitress.

"I don't think this is our check. We didn't have four entrees."

"Let me see. Oh, my. Oh, I sure am sorry. Senator Lord. It's the table there."

"In that case, make Senator Kennedy pay both tabs. His and mine." He handed her both bills.

"He won't object. He believes in tax and spend." The waitress was a big woman in a black dress and white apron, and hair stiffened into a black pageboy. She smiled and suddenly felt fine about her mistake.

"Yes, sir! I sure will tell the senator that."

"And you tell him to add on a generous tip, Missouri," he said as she walked off.

"You tell him I said so." Missouri Rivers wasn't a day younger than seventy, and since she'd left Raleigh decades ago on a northbound train, she had seen senators feast and fast, resign and get reelected, fall in love and fall from glory. She knew when to interrupt and get on with the business of serving food, and when to refill tea or simply disappear. She knew the secrets of the heart hidden so well in this lovely room, for the true measure of a human being is the way he treated people like her when no one was observing. She loved Senator Lord.

I knew that from the soft light in her eyes when she looked at him or heard his name.

"I'm just encouraging you to spend some time with Lucy," he continued.

"And don't get caught up in slaying other people's dragons, especially her dragons."

"I don't believe she can slay this dragon alone."

"My point is that Lucy doesn't need to know from you we had this conversation today. She doesn't need to know from you that I will pick up the phone on her behalf as soon as I return to my office. If anybody tells her anything, let it be me."

"Agreed," I said.

A little later I caught a taxi outside the Russell Building and found Benton Wesley where he said he would be at precisely two-fifteen. He was sitting on a bench in the amphitheater outside FBI headquarters, and though he seemed engrossed in a novel, he sensed me long before I was about to call his name.

A group taking a tour paid no attention to us as they walked past, and Wesley closed his book and slipped it into the pocket of his coat as he got up.

"How was your trip?" he asked.

"By the time I get to and from National, it takes as long to fly as it does to drive."

"You flew?" He held the door to the lobby for me.

"I'm letting Lucy use my car." He slipped off his sunglasses and got each of us a visitor's pass.

"You know the director of the crime labs, Jack Cartwright?"

"We've met."

"We're going to his office for a quick and dirty briefing," he said.

"Then there's a place I want to take you."

"Where might that be?"

"A place that's difficult to go to."

"Benton, if you're going to be cryptic, then I'll have no choice but to retaliate by speaking Latin."

"And you know how much I hate it when you do that." We inserted our visitor's passes into a turnstile and followed a long corridor to an elevator. Every time I came to headquarters I was reminded of how much I did not like the place. People rarely gave me eye contact or smiled, and it seemed everything and everyone hid behind various shades of white and gray. Endless corridors connected a labyrinth of laboratories that I could never find when left to my own devices, and worse, people who worked here did not seem to know how to get anywhere, either. Jack Cartwright had an office with a view, and sunlight filled his windows, reminding me of the splendid days I missed when I was working hard and worried.

"Benton, Kay, good afternoon." Cartwright shook our hands.

"Please have a seat. And this is George Kilby and Seth Richards from the labs. Have you met? "

"No. How do you do?" I said to Kilby and Richards, who were young, serious, and soberly attired.

"Would anybody like coffee?" Nobody did, and Cartwright seemed eager to get on with our business. He was an attractive man whose formidable desk bore testimony to the way he got things done. Every document, envelope, and telephone message was in its proper place, and on top of a legal pad was an old silver Parker fountain pen that only a purist would use. I noticed he had plants in his windows and photographs of his wife and daughters on the sills. Outside sunlight winked on windshields as cars moved in congested herds, and vendors hawked T-shirts, ice cream, and drinks.

"We've been working on the Steiner case," Cart- wright began, "and there are a number of interesting developments so far. I will start with what is probably most important, and that's the typing of the skin found in the freezer.

"Although our DNA analysis is not finished, we can tell you with certainty that the tissue is human and the ABO grouping is 0-positive. As I'm sure you know, the victim, Emily Steiner, was also 0-positive. And the size and shape of the tissue are consistent with her wounds. "

"I'm wondering if you've been able to determine what sort of cutting instrument was used to excise the tissue," I said, taking notes.

"A sharp cutting instrument with a single edge."

"Which could be just about any type of knife," Wesley said. Cartwright went on.

"You can see where the point penetrated the flesh first as the assailant began to cut. So we're talking about a knife with a point and a single edge. That's as much as we can narrow it down. And by the way" -he looked at Wesley"-we've found no human blood on any of the knives you had sent in. Uh, the things from the Ferguson house." Wesley nodded, his face impervious as he listened.

"Okay, trace evidence," Cartwright resumed.

"And this is where it begins to get interesting. We have some unusual microscopic material that came from Emily Steiner's body and hair, and also from the bottoms of her shoes. We've got several blue acrylic fibers consistent with the blanket from her bed, plus green cotton fibers consistent with the green corduroy coat she wore to the youth group meeting at her church.

"There are some other wool fibers that we don't know the origin of.

Plus we found dust mites, which could have come from anywhere. But what couldn't have come from anywhere is this. " Cartwright swiveled around in his chair and turned on a video display on the credenza behind him. The screen was filled with four different sections of some sort of cellular material that brought to mind honeycomb, only this had peculiar areas stained amber.

"What you're looking at," Cartwright told us, "are sections of a plant called Sambucus simpson ii which is simply a woody shrub indigenous to the coastal plains and lagoons of southern Florida. What's fascinating are these dark spots right here." He pointed to the stained areas.

"George" -he looked at one of the young scientists"-this is your bailiwick."

"Those are tannin sacs." George Kilby moved closer to us, joining the discussion.

"You can see them especially well here on this radial section."

"What exactly is a tannin sac?" Wesley wanted to know.

"It's a vessel that transports material up and down the plant's stem."

"What sort of material?"

"Generally waste products that result from cellular activities. And just so you know, what you're looking at here is the pith. That's the part of the plant that has these tannin sacs."

"Then you're saying that the trace evidence in this case is pith?" I asked. Special Agent George Kilby nodded.

"That's right. The commercial name is pith wood even though technically there really is no such thing."

"What is pith wood used for?" Wesley asked. It was Cartwright who answered, "It's often used to hold small mechanical parts or pieces of jewelry. For example, a jeweler might stick a small earring or watch gear into a pith button so it doesn't roll off the table or get brushed off by his sleeve. These days, most people just use Styrofoam."

"Was there much of this pith wood trace on her, body?" I asked.

"There was a fair amount of it, mostly in the bloody areas, which was where most of her trace was."

"If someone wanted pith wood Wesley said," where would he get it? "

"The Everglades, if you wanted to cut down the shrub yourself," Kilby replied.

"Otherwise you'd order it."

"From where?"

"I know there's a company in Silver Spring, Maryland." Wesley looked at me.

"Guess we need to find out who repairs jewelry in Black Mountain." I said to him, "I'd be surprised if they even have a jeweler in Black Mountain." Cartwright spoke again.

"In addition to the trace evidence already mentioned, we found microscopic pieces of insects. Beetles, crickets, and roaches nothing peculiar, really. And there were flecks of white and black paint, neither of them automotive. Plus, she had sawdust in her hair."

"From what kind of wood?" I asked.

"Mostly walnut, but we did also identify mahogany." Cartwright looked at Wesley, who was looking out the window.

"The skin you found in the freezer didn't have any of this same material on it, but her wounds did."

"Meaning those injuries were inflicted before her body came in contact with wherever it was that it picked up this trace?" Wesley said.

"You could assume that," I said.

"But whoever excised the skin and saved it may have rinsed it off. It would have been bloody."

"What about the inside of a vehicle?" Wesley went on.

"Such as a trunk?"

"It's a possibility," Kilby said.

I knew the direction Wesley's thoughts were heading. Gault had murdered thirteen-year-old Eddie Heath inside a beat-up used van that had been rife with a baffling variety of trace evidence. Succinctly put, Mr. Gault, the psychopathic son of a wealthy pecan plantation owner in Georgia, derived intense pleasure from leaving evidence that seemed to make no sense.

"About the blaze orange duct tape," Cartwright said, finally getting around to that subject.

"Am I correct in saying a roll of it has yet to show up?"

"We haven't found anything like that," Wesley replied. Special Agent Richards looked through pages of notes as Cartwright said to him, "Well, let's get on with that, because I personally think it's going to be the most important thing we've got in this case." Richards began talking in earnest, for like every devout forensic scientist I had met, he had a passion for his specialty. The FBI's reference library of duct tapes contained more than a hundred types for the purpose of identification when duct tape was involved in the commission of a crime. In fact, malevolent use of the silvery stuff was so common that I honestly could not pass by a roll of it in hardware or grocery stores without household thoughts turning into remembered horrors.

I had collected body parts of people blown up by bombs made with duct tape.

I had removed it from the bound victims of sadistic killers and from bodies weighted with cinder blocks and dumped into rivers and lakes. I could not count the times I had peeled it from the mouths of people who were not allowed to scream until they were wheeled into my morgue. For it was only there the body could speak freely. It was only there someone cared about every awful thing that had been done.

"I've never seen duct tape like this before," Richards was saying.

"And due to its high yarn count I can also say with confidence that whoever bought the tape did not get it from a store."

"How can you be so sure of that?" Wesley asked, "This is industrial grade, with a yarn count of sixty-two warp and a fifty-six woof, versus your typical economy grade of twenty ten that you might pick up at Walmart or Safeway for a couple of bucks. The industrial grade can cost as much as ten bucks a roll."

"Do you know where the tape was manufactured?" I asked.

"Shuford Mills of Hickory, North Carolina. They're one of the biggest duct tape manufacturers in the country. Their best-known brand is Shurtape."

"Hickory is only sixty miles or so east of Black Mountain," I said.

"Have you talked to anyone at Shuford Mills?" Wesley asked Richards.

"Yes. They're still trying to track down information for me. But this much we already know. The blaze orange tape was a specialty item that Shuford Mills manufactured solely for a private label customer in the late eighties."

"What is a private label customer?" I asked.

"Someone who wants a special tape and orders maybe a minimum of five hundred cases of it. So there could be hundreds of tapes out there we're never going to see, unless it turns up like this blaze orange tape did."

"Can you give me an example of what sort of person might design his own duct tape?" I inquired further.

"I know some stock car racers do," Richards replied.

"For example, the duct tape Richard Petty has made for his pit crew is red and blue, while Daryl Waltrip's is yellow. Shuford Mills also had a contractor some years back who was sick of his workers walking off the job with his expensive tape. So he had his own bright purple tape made. You know, you got purple tape repairing your ductwork at home or fixing the leak in your kid's wading pool, and it's pretty obvious you stole it."

"Could that be the purpose of the blaze orange tape? To prevent workers from stealing it?" I asked.

"Possibly," said Richards.

"And by the way, it's also flame retardant."

"Is that unusual?" Wesley asked.

"Very much so," Richards replied.

"I associate flame- retardant duct tapes with aircraft and submarines, neither of which would have any need of a tape that's blaze orange, or at least I wouldn't think so."

"Why would anyone need a tape that is blaze orange?" I asked.

"The million-dollar question," Cartright said.

"When I think of blaze orange, I think of hunting and traffic cones."

"Let's get back to the killer taping up Mrs. Steiner and her daughter," Wesley suggested.

"What else can you tell us about the mechanics of that?"

"We found traces of what appears to be furniture varnish on some of the tape ends," Richards said.

"Also, the sequence the tape was torn from the roll is inconsistent with the sequence it was applied to the mother's wrists and ankles. All this means is that the assailant tore off as many segments of tape as he thought he would need, and probably stuck them to the edge of a piece of furniture. When he began binding Mrs. Steiner, the tape was ready and waiting for him to use, one piece at a time."

"Only he got them out of order," Wesley said.

"Yes," said Richards.

"I have them numbered according to the sequence they were used to bind the mother and her daughter. Would you like to look?" We said that we would. Wesley and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the Materials Analysis Unit, with its gas chromatographs, mass spectrometers, differential scanning calorimeters, and other intimidating instruments for determining materials and melting points. I parked myself near a portable explosive detector while Richards went on about the weird duct tape used to bind Emily and her mother. He explained that when he had used hot blowing air to open the tape receipted to him by the Black Mountain police, he counted seventeen pieces ranging from eight to nineteen inches in length. Mounting them on sheets of thick transparent vinyl, he had numbered the segments two different ways-to show the sequence the tape had been torn from the roll and the sequence the assailant had used when he taped his victims.

"The sequence of the tape used on the mother is completely out of whack," he was saying.

"This piece here should have been first. Instead, it was last. And since this one was torn from the roll second, it should have been used second instead of fifth.

"The little girl, on the other hand, was taped in sequence. Seven pieces were used, and they went around her wrists in the order they were torn from the roll."

"She would have been easier to control," Wesley remarked.

"One would think so," I said, and then I asked Richards, "Did you find any of the varnish-type residue on the tape recovered from her body?"

"No," he replied.

"That's interesting," I said, and the detail bothered me. We saved the dirty streaks on the tape for last. They had been identified as hydrocarbons, which is just a highbrow name for grease. So this didn't guide us a bit one way or another because unfortunately grease is grease. The grease on the tape could have come from a car. It could have come from a Mack truck in Arizona.