Unnatural Instinct

FIFTEEN

When Jessica, Richard, and Shannon returned to the operations room, Jessica called the task force together, saying, “It's a new game, people.” Jessica paced the ops room. She told them what had come of the visit to the Washington Post newsroom, cursing under her breath as she finished. “This SOB sold his house through RE/MAX, they tell us from Iowa. The letter to the Post was mailed from Virginia. We're going to concentrate our search in the D.C. area and all around D.C. That's every state surrounding us: Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York. We canvas every RE/MAX realty in the book within a hundred mile radius of D.C.”

“ What about other realtors?” asked one of the team.

“ RE/MAX RE/MAX! That's our connection. Get hold of the 800 RE/MAX number, and put them to work. Chief Gorman in Iowa said his guys had run over a For Sale sign, said it was RE/MAX. Suppose he shopped RE/MAX for his safe location? Suppose he has one of those telephone book-sized available listings through RE/MAX, which he planned to use in Houston but then had to use in our area instead. Suppose the g'damn old fox never left the D.C. area?”

“ Else he had a place here all along,” suggested Keyes. “We should call Iowa back, have them run down if the family had any land holding in the D.C. area.”

“ We'll do that; in the meantime, we have to contact every realtor in the area.”

“ That's a lot of real estate offices to cover,” replied J. T.

“ Lew, get on the police band and ask after any crimes that might have a connection with real estate in any way, shape, or form in the past, say, seventy-two hours.”

“ He could be in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York. We've got to alert authorities in all the surrounding jurisdictions,” said Keyes.

“ Then let's do it. DeCampe is dead if she spends one more night in this man's control. As it is, if Father Pinwaring is correct, she may have already gone insane.”

“ I hope your hunch is right then,” Keyes said, their eyes meeting.

“ I know I'm right. Logically, if he's sold the farm in Iowa, purchased a brand-new, wide-bodied van for the express purpose of committing this crime, then he had no plans to return to Iowa. He had to've taken time to familiarize himself with some close by 'safe place' to take her.”

“ Then we need to check out realtors and real estate sales and rentals-yes, rentals most of all,” Richard Sharpe concurred. Tim O'Brien stood in the doorway and shouted, “We've got experts in real estate on the paper, Jess.”

“ What the hell're you doing here? This is a secure area, O'Brien.”

“ I only want to help.”

“ You only want a story.”

“ Damnit, Jess, don't you think I feel for this woman? After what Pinwaring said? Look, our guys in real estate know the territory from here to Nokesville, believe me. I can get them looking into it. They'd have some good ideas on just how to proceed, who to start with, where to go from there. I can call them. Tell them to concentrate attention on RE/MAX, if you'll let us help. Maybe our guys can unearth something. Who knows? Maybe this guy Purdy put in an ad a month ago in search of a secluded place, or perhaps he saw one in the realty section of the Post.”

Jessica sighed in response, and saying nothing but saying everything with her body language, she went to Lew Clemmens, who had gone to a computer and was furiously keying in a search of RE/MAX listings in remote areas around D.C. Meanwhile, all the others, including O'Brien, had taken to the phones, talking to every realtor and realty expert in town.

“ Lew,” Jessica said in her friend's ear, “what about the check on any violence done to anyone in the real estate business the past seventy-two hours?”

“ Our guys at Quantico are running it. Promise to get back pronto.”

She nodded, breathed heavily, and collapsed in the seat next to Lew, waiting for a hit. “Just on the off chance, have them search for anyone in the realty business who has turned up as Missing Persons, as well.”

“ Gotcha, boss.” Lew gave her a teddy bear smile.

Some things no one wanted to ever contemplate, such as the process of decay in one's own body, and so it was with Jessica, but she had to face it if she were to help Judge DeCampe and Kim Desinor. She called on an expert on decay, a forensic anthropologist who stood at the top of the profession, also on the FBI payroll.

The man was the head of the most bizarre scientific research facility on the face of the earth, a one-of-a-kind place officially called the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Research Facility, but unofficially known as the Body Farm. And while they did not grow bodies there, they did grow maggots and decay. Everyone in the forensic community knew of the gruesomely genuine “back to nature” open air laboratory created by Dr. Will Bass, who at seventy-two still showed up for work to oversee training of young forensic scientists in the art and science of discovery through time of rot. A lot of jokes abounded about the farm and its creator, who at an early age had felt so incompetent at the task of determining time of death when faced with a corpse that he determined instead to devote his life to the question of how to read decaying bodies for clues. In a case that had embarrassed him, he'd been off time of death by 113 years, when it was determined the body was that of a Civil War veteran whose coffin had been disturbed in error during a disinterment.

Jessica telephoned the facility only to learn that Bass was in Zurich, lecturing; not surprised by this, she asked for whoever had been left in charge of the farm. Syd Fielding replied that she was talking to the right man. Fielding was one of Bass's disciples. There were some sixty forensic anthropologists who specialized in human degeneration, and Bass had trained two-thirds of them.

Jessica got right to the point, telling Dr. Fielding what they were faced with in the DeCampe kidnapping. He was appalled at the idea of someone being strapped to “one of those bodies we have in the field in advanced stage of decay.”

“ We fear the worst for good reason, sir. I need to know what kind of time we have left. If I bring you everything we have on when she disappeared and where we suspect she is, and the distances, times for both her and the body she's strapped to, maybe we can have some idea how much time she has left.”

“ Of course, we'll do all that we can here. You know if it has to do with decay, this is the place to ask your questions. How soon can you be here?”

“ I have a helicopter standing ready and have been cleared for the trip ASAP.”

“ We'll keep the facility open late then; you'll want to come to the main building. The pilot will know where to land.”

They hung up, and Jessica rushed to the waiting helicopter atop FBI headquarters. She'd hugged and kissed Richard good-bye, asking him, “Please, keep me abreast of any new developments, Richard. Don't hesitate to call.”

She then waved to Keyes and J. T., who had walked up with them. The trio stood on the shoulder of the helipad and waved her off.

An hour and a half later, Jessica heard the pilot's voice break into her sleep; having had no sleep for twenty-four hours, she'd nodded off to the hum of the rotors. “We're on approach for the Body Farm. Thought you'd want to be awake now,” he told her. “There.”

She shook off the drowsiness and saw that Pilot Marks was pointing ahead of them. She followed his gesture down to die ground, to a two-acre patch of dense woods-mostly thick oak, maple, and sycamore-the canopy thick and impenetrable. It was all one big swelling or hillside, bracketed on all sides by a stockade-style fence, large even from here, likely ten feet high. Overlaying the spikes of this stockade, a razor wire mesh meant to keep the dead in and the living out.

Jessica had read a great deal about Bass and his extensive research into decay and time-of-death assessment. She knew from her reading how many cases had been won by prosecutors across the country as a result of this facility, and that the information gleaned here had become textbook commonality among medical examiners, forensic scientists, and pathologists alike. Nowhere on the planet did corruption of the flesh do so much to help so many than here in the controversial Tennessee facility. The place was, in fact, extremely controversial from the day Bass had set up shop on university grounds, with public opinion-as usual-running high at the thought that such a place existed. People demanded to know where the bodies were harvested from, and it outraged people to learn that the bodies were placed in various staged scenarios: held below stagnated black water by chains, held in shallow sunlit water by weights, placed in deep burial pits, shallow graves, or merely half buried. Other “donor” bodies had been left entirely to the elements, and wild animals were left to their own devices to feed. Still other rancid bodies were placed inside burned-out Chevys, and in the trunks of Fords, all to advance the science of understanding rotting flesh-putrefaction.

Now the helicopter passed over the city, and Jessica felt a jolt of surprise at how close the Body Farm was to downtown Knoxville; in fact, it stood just across the Tennessee River from downtown. On a badly sultry day, she wondered what the wind would carry into the city. She knew that at any given time, at least forty bodies lay decomposing in their various poses beneath the canopy of trees, behind the stockade. There was even one pit called the mass grave, wherein slept a tangle of bodies. All to further science, so that when such sites occur in Albacore, Mississippi; Peoria, Illinois; Bonfire, New Mexico; Salem, Oregon; Worcester, Massachusetts; Senegal; or Bangladesh, then doctors on the scene might make some intelligent decisions on how and when the victims of murder met their end.

In 1977, Will Bass realized a need for the farm, when he determined scientists simply did not know enough about normal and abnormal decay in human flesh. Bass was a visionary, a pioneer. He had turned the attitude and the tools of anthropology toward forensics long before anyone else connected the two fields. He made the tools of excavation and skeletal examination into one of the major modem weapons against crime.

All of Bass's best people were now sought after, and Syd Fielding was among the most sought after. Although Bass remained the paterfamilias of the Body Farm at age seventy- two, still held onto a set of keys, and kept close tabs on all the goings on, especially with the residents, Fielding had become the day-to-day manager of the facility. Aside from his duties here, Fielding was in demand on the lecture circuit, addressing M.E.'s and morticians, as well as consulting widely with law enforcement agencies, insurance investigators, and attorneys.

The farm had taught untold lessons to untold people in the field, lessons about whether or not larvae remained on the body, or whether or not empty pupae cases were left behind by maggots as they matured into flies. Such empty insect casings told a savvy forensics person whether or not at least one generation of flies had hatched and matured in the body or bodies, a cycle requiring two weeks or more.

Such information, along with milk labels, meat labels, the mold on the bread, the accumulated mail, all helped to point to a probable time of death, sometimes so accurate as to put a killer away.

On the ground now, the helicopter blades whining and winding down, Jessica was greeted behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center by a surprisingly young-looking Fielding, who had been sitting on the tailgate of a Dodge pickup. After introductions and handshakes, he led her to a large gate posted with Keep Out and No Trespassing signs. The stockade fence had not replaced an earlier chain-link fence but rather reinforced the interior chain-link fence, and it had the added feature of hiding from view what was going on inside. This Syd Fielding explained, adding, “We've had some attempts at sabotage; the new fence cost mightily, but it became necessary after the press got hold of our using bodies here that-in the local opinion-don't deserve our desecrating them as we do.”

Fielding was a short man with large hands and wide eyes behind thick glasses. An overbite gave him the appearance of a snapping turtle, and he had to work hard to get up a smile. His set of keys marked him as important here. He unlocked the stockade fence and snatched it open wide, but then he had to unlock the chain-link fence, and this gate pushed inward. Beyond these two gates, a huge wooden structure like something out of King Kong confronted them.

“ I see you've taken a great deal of precaution.”

“ Some fears never die. Fear of a rotting corpse in the neighborhood that is not under a cement slab to keep it in place is as alive here as it is in Transylvania, I can assure you. But we've also had attempts at break-ins, some serious protestor types, but more often local high schoolers.”

“ High schoolers, really?”

“ They don't call 'em the Wildcats for nothing. Place has become a beacon for Saturday night dares, a place to visit after the prom, you get the picture. Should something happen to a kid around here, you can bet we'd be shut down in a heartbeat, despite all the good we've done.”

“ Yeah, I can imagine.”

“ Place is not for the squeamish, Dr. Coran, and it's certainly not Peabody's Tomb or any other urban legend. It's a scientific experiment that has had multiple benefits for forensic science.”

“ You don't have to sell me. I know your work is necessary to the advancement of our understanding of decay, and that's precisely why I've come to you.”

“ Sorry Dr. Bass isn't here to meet you. Your reputation is well known here, however, and he did express his regrets.”

“ Likewise, sorry I missed him, but I'm sure you can help me.”

“ As we go through, you will see residents at work; most arrive before daybreak and leave early for classes. The lucky ones get to shower before they leave.”

He led her into the facility, and on entering, she was reminded of going to a private zoological garden. A thick layer of foliage encroached on the small pathway leading deeper into the wild forest, the foliage attempting to retake the road, to make it once more part of the hillside landscape. Here and there, Jessica saw a silent old automobile, weeds claiming it, that had been run up into the bushes. She saw another one in a small pond, half submerged.

At one clearing, she saw a handful of students with shovels, rakes, wire mesh screens, cameras, prongs, and specimen bags, all working away like a group of archeologists over a find, but the find here was a body, the skeletal remains of a decayed corpse.

“ They're simulating a case.”

“ Fascinating. How close is the simulation?”

“ As real as we can make it. They'll collect all the bone fragments from a victim who was set afire and then left to rot in a shallow grave. They'll take all the parts back with them to a clean, well-lit lab at the research facility. There they'll go at it like a jigsaw puzzle, putting the victim back together again and determining time of death, working backward, and learning exactly how he died.”

“ I would have killed for such training when I was younger,” she said.

“ Careful how you phrase that,” he joked. “Of course, our John Doe really didn't die of his burns.”

“ Oh, really?” She kept pace with Fielding, whose feet moved like they had eyes over the well-worn path.

“ You see, the body came to us via an incident report in which a homeless man doused himself with gasoline and set himself aflame. However, on closer inspection, I determined the man had been decaying for two weeks before he was set aflame, so he could not have doused himself with the gasoline or lit the match. He was a bit too dead to have pulled that off.”

She laughed at this. Fielding had an entertainer's delivery when he spoke of his first love, anthropological forensics.

“ He was torched two weeks after being killed?”

“ Not someone but a gang of some ones-teens who came on the body where it lay in a drain pipe, and they decided it would be fun to watch it bum. After my determination, police set out to find the culprits. They weren't exactly up on charges of murder, but that kind of depraved act can't go unpunished.”

They now rounded a comer, and there ahead of them in a shallow backwash of a pond, lying face up and staring out at them, floated a decomposing, eyeless corpse, its lifeless sockets like Jell-0 by this point. Jessica felt a surge of emotions commingle deep within; while on the one hand, she applauded what the facility did for science and forensics in particular, she also despised what was necessary in reaching the findings-a kind of willful disrespect for the human re-mains.

Instead of dwelling on the eyeless man whose clothes still clung to its now-formless flesh beneath, thinking how like a character in Night of the Living Dead the corpse appeared, she said, “Of course, the resident students aren't told the due history of how the bodies came to their respective ends, right?”

“ Right, and that means those who piece the truth together from the remains become our brightest among the class.”

“ They'll know from the green bone effect that Bass discovered,” she said. “That's right. Green bone fractures differently in a fire than drier bone. They'll know-or should know-John Doe's fractures match those of a burned body, not someone burned alive.”

“ Dry bones are more brittle, so the fracture pattern will be different.”

“ And only a microscope will tell you that.”

“ Appears you are doing a lot here… down on the farm.”

He smiled at this and said, “You bet we are.”

They walked on. Nothing in Jessica's experience could have prepared her for the sights and odors of the body farm. Commingled with the thick scent of dogwood and honeysuckle came the sickening sweet odor of decay in the wind. Animals here must have a field day, she thought. But then, the animal patterns of disturbance on and around the body were also major concerns of the anthropological forensics specialists. Jessica heard the rummaging and scurrying of any number of rodents, squirrels, and rabbit. She knew from her reading that they had foxes, wild boars, even a family of bears living on the compound in an attempt to simulate natural phenomena as much as possible.

Jessica had once visited a Civil War battleground within driving distance of Quantico, Virginia, and the place exuded the same eerie feeling as the Body Farm. But, as with the battlefield, vegetation and animal life had reclaimed the place, and here the thistle and bramble bush and rat and squirrel ruled. The incidental work of humans here, to further knowledge of death, dying, and decay in order to both dissuade murder and to catch murderers after the fact, seemed of less importance than the next leaf to be replaced. Birds hummed and chased one another here as if it were a gay, weekend park for families and children to play in. The death and the decay being studied-the concerns of man- were kept at bay by life.

They finished the quick tour of the facility, and Jessica was pleased to see they had found the gate again; a part of her mind found the place like a macabre maze from which she might never find her way.

Fielding broke her reverie now, asking, “Would you like to get some coffee? We can go over what you've brought in my office.”

“ That sounds good, yes.”

They exited the Body Farm, and he locked up behind them. “I do hope someone else has a key?” she mused. “Oh, sure, the instructor working with the group you saw. Any problems, they can reach my beeper number.” Now outside the Body Farm, Jessica began to breathe normally again.

Inside the nearby laboratory facility at the Body Farm, Jessica found that Bass and Fielding and their students were blessed with state-of-the-art equipment, hardware, and software. They had developed a cutting-edge laboratory here in the Bible belt, and they must be congratulated for it. Over coffee, she sat across from Fielding while he delved into the DeCampe case file, noting the details with rapid eye movements. Finally, he looked up at her and said, “I see why you called us. This… this is horrible if it can be believed.”

“ Believe it.”

Among the documents, findings, and suppositions made about the DeCampe case, Jessica had placed photos of Kim Desinor's wounds, photos taken by Dr. Shoate, which she had gotten copies of. “And these welts or bruises on Dr. Desinor? They're real?”

“ As real, I fear, as those on DeCampe.”

He breathed in deeply. “How long has the victim gone missing?”

'Two days, two nights now.”

“ How long since Desinor's first psychosomatic bruising?”

'Twenty-four hours later.”

“ Then perhaps she has twenty-four hours that DeCampe doesn't have, if she's running a day behind, so to speak.”

“ You think so?”

“ Something as bizarre as this? I am guessing at best. Sorry.”

She nodded, accepting this, sipping at her coffee. She felt a well of fear for Kim that filled her being.

“ And how long has Jimmy Lee Purdy's body been in his father's hands?”

“ Picked it up Sunday.”

“ Five days.”

“ He likely kept it on ice for as long as he could do so,” she said, adding, “Can you imagine a cop pulling him over and asking him what he's got in the rear?”

Fielding mused. Then he said, “For that matter, imagine pulling over in a highway oasis, and some old guy is replacing ice in the bottom of a coffin.”

“ If he kept it on ice until he reached D.C., and if the body decay on Purdy were forestalled as long as say the fourth or fifth day, and if she's been forced into contact with the decay for two days and two nights, what kind of estimate on her life span can you give me?”

“ So much depends on… on, well, on so much.”

“ What does that mean? I need some help here.”

“ It means, my dear Dr. Coran, that to determine what sort of clock you have to work with… well… given the dryness of the season in the D.C. area-you did say you suspect he is keeping her in the D.C. area, right?”

“

“ We've come to that conclusion, yes.”

“ Then, given conditions, and if she and the corpse to which she is lashed are being kept in an enclosed, confined space with a floor, that is one thing; atop soil is another, and we'd need to know the type of soil. Sorry, but this is all backward from our usual case. Our usual case involves-”

“ A dead body, I know, I know.”

“ After the fact of murder, yes.” He looked genuinely sorry at seeing her distress. For a moment, their eyes met. His eyes said he wanted to pull a miracle out of the hat for her but that he had none. “Evenings have been cool and dry as have been the days there, right? This will delay the process. If Jimmy Lee Purdy's body is not completely decomposed, as you suspect, she's got some time.”

“ How much time?” Jessica persisted.

“ Again, I don't know if she's been made wet, if she's been made to sweat, if she's in direct or indirect, prolonged or intermittent contact with the corpse-the decay, to be exact.”

“ What do you give her chances of being alive this time tomorrow?” Jessica pleaded. “Nil or nil?”

“ You're asking for an opinion I can't give.” He sat back in his chair and pushed off strands of thinning blond hair from his forehead. “We usually deal with fractures and gunshot wounds and insect activity here, not… What would you call this sort of murder? Induced decay? It's hard to contemplate how anyone could carry out such a sentence.”

“ A time, Doctor, a best guesstimate.”

“ Depends on if the old man wants to hasten it or not. If he cut her, for instance, at the areas of contact, it would hasten her gangrene, decay, and death. But if he wants it torturously slow, then he just lets the little microbes of decay do their own work. That would take more time, most certainly. If he's chosen the latter, then I give her maybe twenty-four hours more before the gangrene is likely to be irreversible. She may be helped to a clean bed and her braises helped by skin grafts, but if infected, gangrene works fast. It will kill her.”

“ We get the sense that this guy wants her to suffer over as long a period as he can make her suffer. It's about revenge.”

“ In that case… Yeah, I'd say then you have twenty-four, forty-eight hours tops.”

“ You can't be any more specific than that?”

'Too many variables. Is she getting water? Is she getting any nutrients? Has he tied her back-to-back, face-to-face, face-to-back? Has he placed her in the sun? The corpse's weight used against her? The level of putrefaction to begin with, yet another unknown. We're working with too many unknowns here.”

“ Then our time clock is forty-eight hours max.”

“ I believe so.”

Fielding blinked as he spoke and as he thought, with a wisp of light strands over a pale face. She had to admire the man. He had made his life's work the study of human decaying flesh in all its permutations and in every circumstance. He had been instrumental in creating the FBI's infamous Body Farm. And there was not a working M.E. in the country who had not benefited, directly or indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly, from the work of men like Bass and Fielding.

A body left for days in the sun, in the shade, in water, in sandy soil, in humus, inside the trunk of a car-they all showed different rates of decay. Fielding had been among the men who had catalogued these fine differences, and in effect had brought many fugitives to justice as a result However, the corpses used in the experiments-primarily prison inmates who had donated their bodies to the advancement of science while in no way knowing just how science would use them-had that fundamental difference from DeCampe. DeCampe was presumably lashed to Jimmy Lee Purdy's rotting corpse, but her flesh was alive, healthy, a vital heart pumping blood to every capillary. Her body would fight off the decay to some degree before eventually losing the battle. So Jessica had to know how much time she had left. Only a man of Fielding's experience might be able to give ho- a time line. The word deadline, she had avoided; it had taken on a whole new meaning in this case since she had met and spoken with Father Pinwaring.

Fielding now wanted to show her some insect data, larvae that hatched from one of his bodies out at the Body Farm, determining some special facts about the type of mite he was currently fascinated with. He mumbled something about larval sacs having a kind of beauty all their own.

“ Yeah, I expect they do, Dr. Fielding.”

“ Are you staying over long enough to have dinner?” he then asked. “I would love to take you to dinner.”

She realized now how hard he had been staring at her, and why. She did not interest him as much as his insect findings, but she did interest him. “No, I'll be going directly back. Time being so limited, you see.”

“ Of course. Maybe you'd like to return for another visit? Really get familiar with what we do here.”

“ Perhaps in the future.”

“ It does indeed sound like a most impossible case, an absolute horror. I certainly do not envy you your job, Dr. Coran.”

The man works nine to five studying decay in corpses, and he's pitying me, she glumly thought.

She stood to leave, and he insisted on walking her back to the waiting helicopter. “You know, all the variables that make it impossible for me to be precise on how long Maureen Decampe has to live could also be working in her favor, you realize?”

“ The nights of dry lightning, no rain, drought conditions, yes, they have worked in her favor, I'm sure.” Jessica knew that decay fed more rapidly in dampness.

“ But then a bam like you describe is in itself a micro- ecology,” countered Dr. Fielding, ushering her along the corridor and out into the light, “and it will be dimly lit, no sunshine, and little wind blowing through, if he's using it as a prison, a place to keep someone locked inside, and to keep others out.” Jessica nodded several times. “Then we must find her tonight.”

“ But you understand, this is all assuming she has had no respite from contact with the decaying corpse.”

“ What do you mean?”

“ If her captor is wishing to prolong her agony, he will feed her, give her water, drag it out.” Fielding gritted his teeth and shook his head as if to shake out an image. “My God, all the years I've worked with decaying corpses, and it would never have occurred to me that someone could concoct so horrid a murder as you are suggesting.”

“ Vengeance is a strong motivator, Syd, and often it acts as the mother of invention.”

Dr. Fielding's eyes opened beyond the sad, fleshy slits they had become with early middle age, working in the field he did. “You think the killer inventive? Imaginative?” He actually smiled like a teacher trying to embarrass her. Was it a trick question?

“ Not really; he's just very familiar with images he's taken from the Bible.”

“ I should like to learn more about this citizen among us.”

“ I would love to tell you more, but I have to get back to the task force.”

“ Sorry I couldn't have been of more help to you,” he said, accepting her hand in his, shaking it, and warmly smiling. “You remind me of a tenacious colleague of mine.”

“ Oh, and who would that be?”

“ Dr. Bass, of course, another jack bull.”

“ Me… a terrier? Funny, I do seem to recall someone characterizing me as a tenacious bitch on more than one occasion.”

“ Oh, no, I only meant it in the best possible light, that you are tenacious-a good quality to have for a medical examiner and seeker of truth.”

“ Why, thank you. Doctor. I've been called just about everything, but that is the nicest thing I've heard in a long time.”

“ You have a high PQ.”

“ PQ?”

“ Persistence quotient”

She smiled and again thanked him. They parted with promises to see one another again, Jessica telling him that when she could find the time, she would come for a longer visit to the facility.

The helicopter flight back gave Jessica the freedom to think; she weighed up everything they knew at this point including what Fielding had said about the variables quite possibly favoring that DeCampe remained alive still.