The Body Farm

21

I left Black Mountain the next morning, which was a Monday, and Wesley wanted to go with me but I chose to go alone. I had unfinished business, and he needed to stay with Marino, who was in the hospital after having Demerol pumped out of his stomach. He would be fine, at least physically, then Wesley was bringing him to Quantico. Marino needed to be debriefed like an agent who's been under deep cover. He needed rest, security, and his friends.

On the plane I had a row to myself and made many notes. The case of Emily Steiner's murder had been cleared when I had killed her mother.

I had given my statement to the police, and the case would be under investigation for a while. But I was not worried and had no reason to be. I just did not know what to feel. It bothered me some that I did not feel sorry.

I was aware only of feeling so tired that the slightest exertion was an effort. It was as if I had been transfused with lead. Even moving the pen was hard, and my mind would not work fast. At intervals I found myself staring without seeing or blinking, and I would not know how long I had been doing that or where I had gone. My first job was to write up the case, and in part this was for the FBI investigation, and in part it was for the police investigating me. The pieces were fitting together well, but some questions would never be answered because there was no one left to tell. For example, we would never know exactly what happened the night of Emily's death. But I had developed a theory.

I believed she hurried home before her meeting ended and got into a fight with her mother. This may have happened over dinner, when I suspected Mrs. Steiner may have punished Emily by heavily salting her food. Salt ingestion is a form of child abuse that, horrifically, is not uncommon.

Emily may have been forced to drink salt water. She would have begun to vomit, which would only have served to make her mother madder. The child would have gone into hypematremia, finally a coma, and she would have been near death or already dead when Mrs. Steiner carried her down to the basement. Such a scenario would explain Emily's seemingly contradictory physical findings. It would explain her elevated sodium and lack of vital response to her injuries.

As for why the mother chose to emulate Eddie Heath's murder, I could only imagine that a woman suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy would have been intensely interested in such a notorious case. Only Denesa Steiner's reaction would not have been like someone else's. She would have imagined the attention a mother would get if she lost a child in such a ghastly fashion.

It was a fantasy that would have been exciting for her, and she might have worked it out in her head. She might have deliberately poisoned and killed her daughter that Sunday night to carry out her plan. Or she might have carried out her plan after accidentally poisoning Emily while enraged. I would never know the answer, but at this point it did not matter. This case would never see a courtroom.

In the basement, Mrs. Steiner placed her daughter's body in the tub. I suspected it was at this point she shot her in the back of the head so blood would go down the drain. She undressed her, which would explain the coin Emily had not tithed that night because she had left her meeting before the boy she loved had taken up the collection. The quarter inadvertently slipped out of Emily's pocket when her pants were being pulled off, and her bare buttock rested on top of it for the next six days.

I imagined it was night when, almost a week later, Mrs. Steiner retrieved Emily's body, which essentially had been refrigerated all this time. She might have wrapped it in a blanket, explaining wool fibers we found. She might have placed it in plastic leaf bags. The microscopic traces of pith wood made sense, too, since Mr. Steiner had used pith buttons in the basement for years when he worked on clocks. So far, the blaze orange duct tape Mrs. Steiner had torn off in strips to tape her daughter and herself had not turned up, nor had the22-caliber gun. I doubted they ever would. Mrs. Steiner was too smart to hold on to those items, for they were incriminating.

In retrospect, it all seemed so simple, in many ways so obvious. For example, the sequence in which the duct tape was torn off the roll was exactly right for what had happened. Of course, Mrs. Steiner would have bound her daughter first, and there would have been no need to tear off all the strips and stick them on the edge of a piece of furniture. Her mother did not need to subdue her, since Emily wasn't moving. Both of Mrs. Steiner's hands, therefore, would have been free.

But when Mrs. Steiner bound herself, that was a little trickier. She tore off all the strips at once and stuck them on her dresser. She made a token effort of taping herself, so she could get out, and she did not realize she used the strips out of sequence, not that she would have had reason to know it mattered.

In Charlotte, I changed planes for Washington, and from there I took a taxi to the Russell Building, where I had an appointment to see Senator Lord. He was on the Senate floor voting when I arrived at half past three. I waited patiently in the reception area while young women and men answered telephones nonstop, for everyone in the world wanted his help. I wondered how he lived with the burden. He walked in soon enough and smiled at me. I could tell from his eyes he knew everything that had happened.

"Kay, it's so good to see you."

I followed him through another room with more desks and people on more telephones; then we were in his private office, and he shut the door. He had many beautiful paintings by very fine artists, and it was clear he loved good books.

"The Director called me earlier today. What a nightmare. I'm not sure I know what to say," he said.

"I'm doing all right."

"Here, please." He directed me to the couch and faced me from an unimposing chair. Senator Lord rarely put his desk between himself and others. He did not need to, for as was true with every powerful person I had known, and there were but a few, his greatness made him humble and kind.

"I'm walking around in a stupor. A weird state of mind," I went on.

"It's later I'll be in trouble. Posttraumatic stress and that sort of thing. Knowing about it doesn't make you immune."

"I want you to take good care of yourself. Go someplace and rest for a while."

"Senator Lord, what can we do about Lucy? I want her name cleared."

"I believe you've already managed to do that."

"Not entirely. The Bureau knows it couldn't have been Lucy's thumb scanned into the biometric lock system. But this doesn't entirely exculpate my niece. At least that's the impression I've gotten."

"Not so. Not so at all." Senator Lord recrossed his long legs and stared off.

"Now, there may be a problem in terms of what circulates throughout the Bureau. The gossip, I mean. Since Temple Gault has become part of the picture, there is much that cannot be discussed."

"So Lucy will just have to hold up under everybody's stare because she won't be permitted to divulge what happened," I said.

"That's correct."

"Then there will be those who do not trust her and will think she shouldn't be at Quantico."

"There may be those."

"That's not good enough." He regarded me patiently.

"You can't protect her forever, Kay. Let her take her licks and suffer her slights. In the long run, she will be the better for it. Just keep her legal." He smiled.

"I'm going to do my best to do that," I said.

"She still has a DUI hanging over her head."

"She was the victim of a hit-and-run or even an attempted murder. I should think that might change the scenario a bit in the eyes of the judge. I also will suggest she volunteer to perform some sort of community service."

"Do you have something in mind?" I knew he did or he would not have mentioned it.

"As a matter of fact I do. I wonder if she would be willing to return to ERF? We don't know how much of CAIN Gault has tampered with. I'd like to suggest to the Director that the Bureau use Lucy to follow Gault's tracks through the system to see what can be salvaged."

"Frank, I know she would be thrilled," I said as my heart filled with gratitude.

"I can't think of anyone better qualified," he went on.

"And it will give her a chance for restitution. She did not willingly do anything wrong, but she used poor judgment."

"I will tell her," I said. From his office I went to the Willard and got a room. I was too tired to return to Richmond, and what I really wanted to do was fly to Newport. I wanted to see Lucy, even if only for an hour or two. I wanted her to know what Senator Lord had done, that her name was cleared, her future bright. Everything was going to be just fine. I knew it. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her. I wanted to see if I could find words that for me were so hard. I tended to hold love hostage in my heart because, if expressed, I feared it might abandon me as many people in my life had.

So it had been my habit to bring what I feared upon me. In my room I called Dorothy and got no answer. Next I called my mother.

"Where are you this time?" she asked, and I could hear water running.

"I'm in Washington," I said.

"Where's Dorothy?"

"It just so happens she's right here helping me with dinner. We're having lemon chicken and salad-you should see the lemon tree, Katie. And the grapefruits are huge. I'm washing the lettuce even as we speak. If you would visit your mother once in a blue moon, we could eat together. Normal meals. We could be a family. "

"I would like to speak to Dorothy."

"Hold on." The phone clunked against something, then Dorothy was on.

"What's the name of Lucy's counselor at Edgehill?" I asked right off.

"I'm assuming they've assigned someone to her by now."

"Doesn't matter. Lucy's not there anymore."

"I beg your pardon?" I asked.

"What did you just say?"

"She didn't like the program and told me she wanted to leave. I couldn't force her. She's a grown woman. And it's not like she was committed or something."

"What?" I was shocked.

"Is she there? She returned to Miami?"

"No," said my sister, who was quite calm.

"She wanted to stay in Newport for a while. She said it wasn't safe to come back to Richmond right now, or some nonsense like that. And she didn't want to come down here."

"She's in Newport alone with a goddam head injury and a problem with alcohol and you're not doing anything about it?"

"Kay, you're overreacting, as usual."

"Where is she staying?"

"I have no idea. She said she just wanted to bum around for a while."

"Dorothy!"

"Let me remind you she's my daughter, not yours."

"That will always be the biggest tragedy of her life."

"Why don't you just for once keep your fucking nose out of it!" she snapped.

"Dorothy!" I heard my mother in the background.

"I don't allow the F word!"

"Let me tell you something." I spoke in the cold, measured words of homicidal rage.

"If anything has happened to her, I will hold you one hundred percent accountable. You are not only a terrible mother, you are a horrible human being. I am truly sorry you are my sister."

I hung up the phone. I got out the telephone directory and began calling airlines. There was one flight to Providence that I could get on if I hurried. I ran out of the room and kept going just as fast through the Willard's elegant lobby. People stared.

The doorman got me a cab and I told the driver I would double his fare if he could get me to National fast. He drove like hell. I got to the terminal as my flight was being called, and when I found my seat, tears welled up in my throat and I fought them back. I drank hot tea and closed my eyes. I was unfamiliar with Newport and had no idea where to stay.

The taxi from Providence to Newport was going to take more than an hour, the driver told me, because it was snowing. Through water-streaked windows I looked out at dark faces of sheer walls of granite on roadsides. The stone was lined with drill holes and dripping with ice, and a draft creeping in from the floor was damp and miserably cold. Big flakes of snow spiraled into the windshield like fragile white bugs, and if I stared too hard at them I started to get dizzy.

"Do you have any recommendations for a hotel in Newport? " I asked the driver, who spoke in the manner peculiar to Rhode Islanders.

"The Marriott would be your best bet. It's right on the water and all the shopping and restaurants are within walking distance. There's also a Doubletree on Goat Island."

"Let's try the Marriott."

"Yes, ma'am. The Marriott it is."

"If you were a young lady looking for work in Newport, where would you go? My twenty-one-year- old niece would like to spend some time here." It seemed stupid to pose such a question to a perfect stranger. But I did not know what else to do.

"In the first place, I wouldn't pick this time of year. Newport's pretty damn dead."

"But if she did pick it this time of year. If she had time off from school, for example."

"Umm." He thought as I got caught up in the rhythm of the windshield wiper blades.

"Maybe in the restaurants?" I ventured.

"Oh, sure. Lots of young people working in the restaurants. The ones on the water. The money's pretty good because the main industry's tourists in Newport. Don't let anybody tell you it's fishing. These days, a boat with a thirty-thousand-pound hold comes back in with maybe three thousand pounds of fish. And that's on a good day."

He continued to talk as I thought about Lucy, about where she would go. I tried to get into her mind, to read it, to somehow reach her through my thoughts. I said many silent prayers and fought back tears and the most terrible of all fears. I could not deal with another tragedy. Not Lucy. That loss would be the last. It would be too much.

"How late do most of these places stay open?" I asked.

"What places?"

I realized he had been talking about butterfish, something about them being used in cat food.

"The restaurants," I said.

"Would they still be open now?"

"No ma'am. Not most of'em. It's almost one a.m. Your best bet if you want to find your niece a job is to go out in the morning. Most places open by eleven, some earlier than that if they serve breakfast."

My taxi driver, of course, was right. I could do nothing now but go to bed and try to get some sleep. The room I got at the Marriott overlooked the harbor. From my window the water was black, and the lights of men out fishing bobbed on a horizon I could not see.

I got up at seven because there was no point in lying in bed any longer. I had not slept and had been afraid to dream.

Ordering breakfast, I opened curtains and looked out at a day that was steely gray, water almost indistinguishable from sky. In the distance, geese flew in formation like fighter planes, and snow had turned to rain. Knowing not much would be open this early did not stop me from trying, and by eight I was out of the hotel with a list of popular inns, pubs, and restaurants I had gotten from the concierge.

For a while I walked the wharfs, where sailors were dressed for the weather in yellow slickers and bib pants. I stopped to talk to anyone who would listen, and my question each time was the same, just as their answers were all the same. I described my niece, and they did not know if they had seen her. There were so many young women working in places along the water.

I walked without an umbrella, the scarf around my head not keeping out the rain. I walked by sleek sailboats and yachts battened down with heavy plastic for the winter, past piles of massive anchors broken and eaten with rust. Not many people were around, but many places were open for the day, and it did not occur to me until I saw ghosts, goblins, and other spooky creatures in the shop windows of Brick Market Place that today was Halloween.

I walked for hours along the cobblestone of Thames Street, looking in the windows of shops selling everything from scrimshaw to fine art. I turned up Mary Street and passed Inntowne Inn, where the clerk had never heard my niece's name. Nor did anyone know her at Christie's, where I drank coffee before a window and looked out at Narragansett Bay. Docks were wet and dotted white with sea gulls all facing the same way, and I watched as two women walked out to look at the water. They were bundled up in hats and gloves, and something about them that made me think they were more than friends. I got upset about Lucy again and had to leave.

I ducked inside the Black Pearl at Bannister's Wharf, then Anthony's, the Brick Alley Pub, and the Inn at Castle Hill. Callahan's Cafe Zeida and a quaint place that sold strudels and cream could not help me, and I went into so many bars I lost track and wound up in some of them twice. I saw no sign of her. No one could help me. I wasn't sure anyone cared, and I walked along Bowden Wharf in despair as rain fell harder. Water swept down in sheets from a slate-gray sky, and a lady hurrying past gave me a smile.

"Honey, don't drown," she said. "Nothing's that bad."

I watched her go inside the Aquidneck Lobster Company at the end of the wharf, and I chose to follow her because she had been friendly. I watched her go into a small office behind a partition of glass so smoky and taped with invoices that I could see only dyed curls and hands moving between the slips of paper.

To get to her I passed green tanks the size of boats filled with lobsters, clams, and crabs. They reminded me of the way we stacked gurneys in the morgue. Tanks were stacked to the ceiling, and bay water pumped through overhead pipes poured into them and spilled onto the floor. The inside of the lobster house sounded like a monsoon and smelled like the sea. Men in orange bib pants and high rubber boots had faces as weathered as the docks, and they spoke in loud voices to one another.

"Excuse me," I said at the small office door, and I did not know that a fisherman was with the woman because I had not been able to see him.

He had raw red hands and was sitting in a plastic chair, smoking.

"Honey, you're drenched. Come in and get warm." The lady, who was overweight and worked too hard, smiled again.

"You want to buy some lobsters?" She started to get up.

"No," I quickly said.

"I've lost my niece. She wandered off or we got our directions mixed up or something. I was supposed to meet her. Well, I just wonder if you might have seen her. "

"What does she look like?" asked the fisherman.

I described her.

"Now, where was it you saw her last?" The woman looked confused.

I took a deep breath, and the man had me figured out. He read every word of me. I could see it in his eyes.

"She ran off. They do it sometimes, kids do," he said, taking a drag on a Marlboro.

"Question is, where'd she run off from? You tell me that, and maybe I'll have a better idea about where she might be."

"She was at Edgehill," I said.

"She just got out?" The fisherman was from Rhode Island, his last syllables flattened as if he were stepping on the end of his words.

"She walked out."

"So she didn't do the program or her insurance quit. Happens a lot around here. I got buddies been in that joint and have to leave after four or five days because insurance won't pay. A lot of good it does."

"She didn't do the program," I said. He lifted his soiled cap and smoothed back wild black hair.

"I know you must be worried sick," said the woman.

"I can make you some instant coffee."

"You are very kind, but no, thank you."

"When they get out early like that, they usually start drinking and drugging again," the man went on.

"I hate to tell you, but it's the way it goes. She's probably working as a waitress or bartender so she can be near what she wants. The restaurants around here pay pretty good. I'd try Christie's, the Black Pearl over there on Bannister's Wharf, Anthony's on Waites Wharf."

"I've tried all those."

"How about the White Horse? She could make good money there."

"Where's that?"

"Over there." He pointed away from the bay.

"Off Marlborough Street, near the Best Western."

"Where would someone stay?" I asked.

"She's not likely to want to spend a lot of money."

"Honey," said the woman, "I'll tell you what I'd try. I'd try the Seaman's Institute. It's just right over there. You had to walk right past it to get here." The fisherman nodded as he lit another cigarette.

"There you go.

That'd be a good place to start. And they got waitresses, too, and girls working in the kitchen. "

"What is it?" I asked.

"A place where fishermen down on their luck can stay. Sort of like a small YMCA, with rooms upstairs and a dining hall and snack bar."

"The Catholic church runs it. You might talk to Father Ogren. He's the priest there."

"Why would a twenty-one-year-old girl go there versus some of these other places you've mentioned?" I asked.

"She wouldn't," the fisherman said, "unless she don't want to drink. No drinking in that place. " He shook his head. "That's exactly where you go if you leave a program early but don't want to be drinking and drugging anymore. I've known a bunch of guys to go there. I even stayed there once."

It was raining so hard when I left that water coming down bounced off pavement back up toward the loud, liquid sky. I was soaked to my knees, hungry, cold, and with no place left to go, as was true of many people who came to the Seaman's Institute.

It looked like a small brick church with a menu out front written with chalk on a chalkboard and a banner that said everyone is welcome. I stepped inside and saw men sitting at a counter drinking coffee while others were at tables in a plain dining room across from the front door. Eyes turned to me with mild curiosity, and the faces reflected years of cruel weather and drink. A waitress who looked no older than Lucy asked if I would like a meal.

"I'm looking for Father Ogren," I said.

"I've not seen him lately, but you can check the library or the chapel."

I climbed stairs and entered a small chapel that was empty save for saints painted in frescoes on plaster walls. It was a lovely chapel with needlepoint cushions in nautical designs and a floor of varying colors of marble inlaid with shapes of shells. I stood very still looking around at Saint Mark holding a mast while Saint Anthony of Padua blessed the creatures of the sea. Saint Andrew carried nets, and words from the Bible were painted along the top of the wall. For he make the storm to cease so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they are at rest and so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.

I dipped my hand into a large shell filled with holy water and blessed myself. Praying a while before the altar, I placed a gift in a small straw basket. I left a bill for Lucy and me and a quarter for Emily. Beyond the door I heard cheery voices and whistling of residents on the stairs. Rain on the roof sounded like drum rolls on a mattress and beyond opaque windows gulls cried.

"Good afternoon," a quiet voice behind me said.

I turned around to find Father Ogren, dressed in black.

"Good afternoon. Father," I said.

"You must have had a long walk in the rain." His eyes were kind, his face very gentle.

"I am looking for my niece. Father, and am in despair."

I did not have to talk about Lucy long. In fact, I'd scarcely described her before I could tell the priest knew who she was, and my heart seemed to open like a rose.

"God is merciful and good," he said with a smile.

"He led you here as he leads others here who have been lost at sea. He led your niece here days ago. I believe she's in the library. I put her to work there cataloging books and doing other odds and ends. She's very smart and has a marvelous idea about our computerizing everything."

I found her at a refectory table in a dim room of dark paneling and shopworn books. Her back was to me as she worked out a program on paper without benefit of a computer, the way fine musicians compose their symphonies in silence. I thought she looked thinner. Father Ogren patted my arm as he left, and he quietly shut the door.

"Lucy," I said. She turned and looked at me in astonishment.

"Aunt Kay? My God," she said in the hushed tone of libraries.

"What are you doing here? How did you know?" Her cheeks were flushed, a scar on her forehead bright red.

I pulled up a chair and took one of her hands in both of mine.

"Please come home with me." Lucy continued to stare at me as if I had been dead.

"Your name has been cleared."

"Completely?"

"Completely."

"You got me my big gun."

"I said I would."

"You're the big gun, aren't you. Aunt Kay?" she whispered, looking away.

"The Bureau has accepted that it was Carrie who did this to you," I said. Her eyes filled with tears.

"What she did was horrible, Lucy. I know how hurt and angry you must be. But you are fine. The truth is known and ERF wants you back. We'll work on your DUI. The judge will have more sympathy since someone ran you off the road and the evidence proves that. But I still want you to get treatment."

"Can't I do it in Richmond? Can't I stay with you?"

"Of course you can." She looked down as tears spilled over. I did not want to hurt her further but I had to ask.

"It was Carrie you were with in the picnic area the night I saw you out there. She must smoke."

"Sometimes." She wiped her eyes.

"I'm so sorry."

"You wouldn't understand it."

"Of course I understand it. You loved her."

"I still do." She began to sob.

"That's what's so stupid. How could I? But I can't help it. And all along"

She blew her nose.

"All along she was with Jerry or whoever. Using me."

"She uses everyone, Lucy. It wasn't only you." She wept as if she would the rest of her life.

"I understand how you feel," I said, pulling her close.

"You can't just stop loving somebody. Lucy, it will take time."

I held her for a long while, my neck wet with her tears. I held her until the horizon was a dark blue line across the night, and in her spartan room we packed up her belongings. We walked along cobblestone and pavement deep with puddles as Halloween glowed in windows and the rain began to freeze.