Trace

53

The construction workers are taking their lunch break, sitting on cinder blocks or on the seats of their big yellow machines, eating. Hard hats and weathered faces watch Scarpetta as she walks through thick red mud, holding up her long dark coat as if it is a long skirt.

She doesn't see the foreman she met the other day or anybody else who seems to be in charge, and the crew watches her and no one steps forward to see what she wants. Several men in dark, dusty clothing are gathered around a bulldozer, eating sandwiches and drinking sodas, and they stare at her as she picks her way in the mud, holding up her coat.

"I'm looking for the supervisor," she says when she gets close to them. "I need to get inside the building."

She glances at what is left of her former office. Half of the front area is now on the ground, but the back is still intact.

"No way," one of the men says with his mouth full. "Ain't nobody going inside." He resumes chewing and looks at her as if she is a crazy woman.

"The back of the building looks all right," she replies. "When I was chief medical examiner, this was my office. I came out here the other day after Mr. Whitby got killed."

"You can't go in there," the same man replies, and he gives his comrades a look as they stand around listening to the conversation. He gives them a look that says she is cra7.y.

"Where's your foreman?" she asks. "Let me talk to him."

The man removes a cell phone from his belt and calls the foreman. "Hey Joe," he says. "It's Bobby. Remember the lady who was down here the other day? The lady and the big cop from L.A.? Yeah, yeah, that's right. She's back and wants to talk to you. Okay." He ends the call and looks at her. "He went to get cigarettes and will be here in a minute," he says to her. "Why do you want to go in there anyway? I wouldn't think there's anything in there."

"Except ghosts," another man says, and his comrades laugh.

"When exactly did you start tearing this down?" she asks them.

"About a month ago. Right before Thanksgiving. Then we got weathered out for about a week because of the ice storm."

The men talk among themselves, arguing in a good-natured way about when exactly the wrecking ball struck the building the first time, and Scarpetta watches a man come around the side of the building. He is dressed in khaki work pants, a dark green jacket, and boots, his hard hat tucked under an arm as he heads toward them through the mud, smoking.

"That's Joe," the construction worker named Bobby says to her. "He's not gonna let you go in there, though. You don't want to go in there, ma'am. It ain't safe for a lot of reasons."

"When you started tearing this place down, did you have the power shut off or was it already off?" she asks.

"No way we'd start if the power was on."

"It hadn't been shut off long," another man says. "Remember before we started? People had to go through it. There were lights on then, weren't there?"

"Got no idea."

"Good afternoon," Joe the foreman says to Scarpetta. "What can I do for you?"

"I need to get inside the building. In the back door near the bay door," she replies.

"No way," he says adamantly, shaking his head and looking at the building.

"Could I talk to you for a minute?" Scarpetta says to him, and she moves away from the other workers.

"Hell no, I'm not letting you go in there. Why the hell would you want to?" Joe says, now that they are a good ten feet from the others and have a little privacy. "It isn't safe. Why do you want to?"

"Listen," she says, shifting her weight in the mud and no longer holding up the hem of her coat, "I helped examine Mr. Whitby. We found some strange evidence on his body, suffice it to say."

"You're kidding me."

She knew that would get his attention, and she adds, "There's something I need to check inside the building. Is it really unsafe or are we worried about lawsuits, Joe?"

He stares at the building and scratches his head, then rakes his fingers through his hair. "Well, it isn't going to fall down on us, not in the back there. I wouldn't go in the front."

"I don't want to go in the front," she replies. "The back is fine. We can go through that back door next to the bay door, and off to the right at the end of the hallway are stairs. We can take the stairs down one more level, to the lowest level. That's where I need to go."

"I know about the stairs. I've been in there before. You want to go down there to the first level? Good God. Now that's something."

"How long has the power been cut off?"

"I made sure of that before we started."

"Then it was on the first time you went through?" she says.

"There was lights. That would have been back in the summer, the first time I had to walk through the place. Be dark as pitch in there now. What evidence? I don't get it. You thinking something happened to him besides the tractor running him over? I mean, his wife's making a fuss, accusing all kinds of people of this and that. A lot of nonsense. I was here. Ain't nothing happened to him except he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had to fool with the starter."

"I need to look," she says. "You can come with me. I'd appreciate it if you would. All I need to do is take a look. I imagine the back door is locked. I don't have a key."

"Well, that's not what's going to keep us out." He stares at the building, then looks back at his men. "Hey Bobby!" he calls out. "Can you drill out the lock in the back door? Do it now. All right then," he says to her. "All right. I'll take you in there as long as we don't go near the front and we don't stay but a minute."