“I’m a middle-aged woman set in her ways,” I said as my voice shook. “I can’t help it. All I have is what I’ve built. No children. I can’t stand my only sister and she can’t stand me. My father was in bed dying my entire childhood, then gone when I was twelve. Mother’s impossible, and now she’s dying of emphysema. I can’t be what you want, the good wife. I don’t even know what the hell that is. I only know how to be Kay. And going to a psychiatrist isn’t going to change a goddamn thing.”
He said to me, “And I’m in love with you and want to marry you. And I can’t seem to help that, either.”
I did not reply.
He added, “And I thought you were in love with me.”
Still, I could not speak.
“At least you used to be,” he went on as pain overwhelmed his voice. “I’m leaving.”
He started to get up again, and I put my hand on his arm.
“Not like this.” I looked at him. “Don’t do this to me.”
“To you?” He was incredulous.
I dimmed the lights until they were almost out, and the moon was a polished coin against a clear black sky scattered with stars. I got more wine and started the fire, while he watched everything I did.
“Sit closer to me,” I said.
He did, and I took his hands this time.
“Benton, patience. Don’t rush me,” I said. “Please. I’m not like Connie. Like other people.”
“I’m not asking you to be,” he said. “I don’t want you to be. I’m not like other people, either. We know what we see. Other people couldn’t possibly understand. I could never talk to Connie about how I spend my days. But I can talk to you.”
He kissed me sweetly, and we went deeper, touching faces, tongues and nimbly undressing, doing what we once did best. He gathered me in his mouth and hands, and we stayed on the couch until early morning, as light from the moon turned chilled and thin. After he drove home, I carried wine throughout my house, pacing, wandering with music on and flowing out speakers in every room. I landed in my office, where I was a master at distraction.
I began going through journals, tearing out articles that needed to be filed. I began working on an article I was due to write. But I was not in the mood for any of it, and decided to check my e-mail to see if Lucy had left word about when she might make it to Richmond. AOL announced I had mail waiting, and when I checked my box I felt as if someone had struck me. The address deadoc awaited me like an evil stranger.
His message was in lowercase, with no punctuation except spaces. It said, you think you re so smart. I opened the attached file and once again watched color images paint down my screen, severed feet and hands lined up on a table covered with what appeared to be the same bluish cloth. For a while I stared, wondering why this person was doing this to me. I hoped he had just made a very big mistake as I grabbed the phone.
“Marino!” I exclaimed when I got him on the line.
“Huh? What happened?” he blurted as he came to.
I told him.
“Shit. It’s three friggin’ o’clock in the morning. Don’t you ever sleep?”
He seemed pleased, and I suspected he figured I wouldn’t have called him if Wesley had still been here.
“Are you okay?” he then asked.
“Listen. The hands are palm up,” I said. “The photograph was taken at close range. I can see a lot of detail.”
“Like what kind of detail? Is there a tattoo or something?”
“Ridge detail,” I said.
Neils Vander was the section chief of fingerprint examination, an older man with wispy hair and voluminous lab coats perpetually stained purple and black with ninhydrin and dusting powder. Forever in a hurry and prepossessed, he was from genteel Virginia stock. Vander had never called me by my first name or referred to anything personal about me in all the years I had known him. But he had his way of showing he cared. Sometimes it was a doughnut on my desk in the morning or, in the summer, Hanover tomatoes from his garden.
Known for an eagle eye that could match loops and whorls at a glance, he was also the resident expert in image enhancement and, in fact, had been trained by NASA. Over the years, he and I had materialized a multitude of faces from photographic blurs. We had conjured up writing that wasn’t there, read impressions and restored eradications, the concept really very simple even if the execution of it was not.
A high-resolution image processing system could see two hundred and fifty-six shades of gray, while the human eye could differentiate, at the most, thirty-two. Therefore, it was possible to scan something into the computer and let it see what we could not. Deadoc may have sent me more than he bargained for. The first task this morning was to compare a morgue photograph of the torso with the one sent to me through AOL.
“Let me get a little more gray over here,” Vander said as he worked computer keys. “And I’m going to tilt this some.”
“That’s better,” I agreed.
We were sitting side by side, both of us leaning into the nineteen-inch monitor. Nearby, both photographs were on the scanner, a video camera feeding their images to us live.
“A little more of that.” Another shade of gray washed over the screen. “Let me bump this a tad more.”
He reached over to the scanner and repositioned one of the photographs. He put another filter over the camera lens.
“I don’t know,” I said as I stared. “I think it was easier to see before. Maybe you need to move it a little more to the right,” I added, as if we were hanging pictures.
“Better. But there’s still a lot of background interference I’d like to get rid of.”
“I wish we had the original. What’s the radiometric resolution of this thing?” I asked, referring to the system’s capability of differentiating shades of gray.
“A whole lot better than it used to be. Since the early days, I guess we’ve doubled the number of pixels that can be digitalized.”
Pixels, like the dots in dot matrix, were the smallest elements of an image being viewed, the molecules, the impressionistic points of color forming a painting.
“We got some grants, you know. One of these days, I want to move us into ultraviolet imaging. I can’t even tell you what I could do with cyanoacrylate,” he went on about Super Glue, which reacted to components in human perspiration and was excellent for developing fingerprints difficult to see with the unaided eye.
“Well, good luck,” I said, because money was always tight no matter who was in office.
Repositioning the photograph again, he placed a blue filter over the camera lens, and dilated the lighter pixel elements, brightening the image. He enhanced horizontal details, removing vertical ones. Two torsos were now side by side. Shadows appeared, gruesome details sharper and in contrast.
“You can see the bony ends.” I pointed. “Left leg severed just proximal to the lesser trochanter. Right leg”—I moved my finger on the screen—“about an inch lower, right through the shaft.”
“I wish I could correct the camera angle, the perspective distortion,” he muttered, talking to himself, which he often did. “But I don’t know the measurements of anything. Too bad whoever took this didn’t include a nice little ruler as a scale.”
“Then I would really worry about who we were dealing with,” I commented.
“That’s all we need. A killer who’s like us.” He defined the edges, and readjusted the positions of the photographs one more time. “Let’s see what happens if I superimpose them.”
He did, and the overlay was amazing, bone ends and even the ragged flesh around the severed neck, identical.
“That does it for me,” I announced.
“No question about it in my mind,” he agreed. “Let’s print this out.”
He clicked the mouse and the laser printer hummed on.
Removing the photographs from the scanner, he replaced them with the one of the feet and hands, moving it around until it was perfectly centered. As he began to enlarge images, the
sight became even more grotesque, blood staining the sheet bright red, as if it had just been spilled. The killer had neatly lined up feet like a pair of shoes, hands side by side like gloves.
“He should have turned them palm down,” Vander said. “I wonder why he didn’t?”
Using spatial filtering to retain important details, he began eliminating interference, such as the blood and the texture of the blue table cover.
“Can you get any ridge detail?” I asked, leaning so close, I could smell his spicy aftershave.
“I think I can,” he said.
His voice was suddenly cheerful, for there was nothing he liked better than reading the hieroglyphics of fingers and feet. Beneath his gentle, distracted demeanor was a man who had sent thousands of people to the penitentiary, and dozens to the electric chair. He enlarged the photograph and assigned arbitrary colors to various intensities of gray, so we could see them better. Thumbs were small and pale like old parchment. There were ridges.
“The other fingers aren’t going to work,” he said, staring, as if in a trance. “They’re too curled for me to see. But thumbs look pretty darn good. Let’s capture this.” Clicking into a menu, he saved the image on the computer’s hard disk. “I’m going to want to work on this for a while.”
That was his cue for me to leave, and I pushed back my chair.
“If I get something, I’ll run it through AFIS right away,” he said of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, capable of comparing unknown latent prints against a databank of millions.
“That would be great,” I said. “And I’ll start with HALT.”
He gave me a curious look, because the Homicide Assessment and Lead Tracking System was a Virginia database maintained by the state police in conjunction with the FBI. It was the place to start if we suspected the case was local.
“Even though we have reason to suspect the other cases are not from here,” I explained to him, “I think we should search everything we can. Including Virginia databases.”
Vander was still making adjustments, staring at the screen.
“As long as I don’t have to fill out the forms,” he replied.
In the hallway were more boxes and white cartons marked EVIDENCE lining either side and stacked to the ceiling. Scientists walked past, preoccupied and in a hurry, paperwork and samples in hand that might send someone to court for murder. We greeted each other without slowing down as I headed to the fibers and trace evidence lab, which was big and quiet. More scientists in white coats were bent over microscopes and working at their desks, black counters haphazardly arranged with mysterious bundles wrapped in brown paper.
Aaron Koss was standing in front of an ultraviolet lamp that was glowing purple-red as he examined a slide through a magnifying lens to see what the reflective long wavelengths might tell him.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Same to you.” Koss grinned.
Dark and attractive, he seemed too young to be an expert in microscopic fibers, residues, paints and explosives. This morning, he was in faded jeans and running shoes.
“No court for you,” I said, for one could usually tell by the way people were dressed.
“Nope. Lucky me,” he said. “Bet you’re curious about your fibers.”
“I was in the neighborhood,” I said. “Thought I’d drop by.”
I was notorious for making evidence rounds, and in the main, the scientists endured my intensity patiently, and in the end were grateful. I knew I pressured them when caseloads were already overwhelming. But when people were being murdered and dismembered, evidence needed to be examined now.
“Well, you’ve granted me a reprieve from working on our pipe-bomber,” he said with another smile.
“No luck with that,” I assumed.
“They had another one last night. I-195 North near Laburnum, right under the nose of Special Operations. You know, where Third Precinct used to be, if you can believe that?”
“Let’s hope the person sticks with just blowing up traffic signs,” I said.
“Let’s hope.” He stepped back from the UV lamp and got very serious. “Here’s what I’ve got so far from what you’ve turned in to me. Fibers from fabric remnants embedded in bone. Hair. And trace that was adhering to blood.”
“Her hair?” I asked, perplexed, for I had not receipted the long, grayish hairs to Koss. That was not his specialty.
“What I saw under the scope don’t look human to me,” he replied. “Maybe two different types of animal. I’ve sent them on to Roanoke.”
The state had only one hair expert, and he worked out of the western district forensic labs.
“What about the trace?” I asked.
“My guess is it’s going to be debris from the landfill. But I want to look under the electron microscope. What I’ve got under UV now is fibers,” he went on. “I should say they’re fragments, really, that I gave an ultrasonic bath in distilled water to remove blood. You want to take a look?”
He gave me room to peer through the lens, and I smelled Obsession cologne. I could not help but smile, for I remembered being his age and still having the energy to preen. There were three mounted fragments fluorescing like neon lights. The fabric was white or off-white, one of them spangled with what looked like iridescent flecks of gold.
“What in the world is it?” I glanced up at him.
“Under the stereoscope, it looks synthetic,” he replied. “The diameters regular, consistent like they would be if they were extruded through spinnerettes, versus being natural and irregular. Like cotton, let’s say.”
“And the fluorescing flecks?” I was still looking.
“That’s the interesting part,” he said. “Though I’ve got to do further tests, at a glance it looks like paint.”
I paused for a moment to imagine this. “What kind?” I asked.
“It’s not flat and fine like automotive. This is gritty, more granular. Seems to be a pale, eggshell color. I’m thinking it’s structural.”
“Are these the only fragments and fibers you’ve looked at?”
“I’m just getting started.” He moved to another countertop and pulled out a stool. “I’ve looked at all of them under UV, and I’d say that about fifty percent of them have this paint-type substance soaked into the material. And although I can’t definitively say what the fabric is, I do know that all of the samples you submitted are the same type, and probably from the same source.”
He placed a slide in the stage of a polarizing microscope, which, like Ray-Ban sunglasses, reduced glare, splitting light in different waves with different refractive index values to give us yet another clue as to the identity of the material.
“Now,” he said, adjusting the focus as he stared into the lens without blinking. “This is the biggest fragment recovered, about the size of a dime. There are two sides to it.”
He moved out of the way and I looked at fibers reminiscent of blond hairs with speckles of pink and green along the shaft.
“Very consistent with polyester,” Koss explained. “Speckles are delusterants used in manufacturing so the material isn’t shiny. I also think there’s some rayon mixed in, and based on all this would have decided what you’ve got here is a very common fabric that could be used in almost anything. Anything from blouses to bedspreads. But there’s one big problem.”
He opened a bottle of liquid solvent used for temporary mountings, and with tweezers, removed the cover slide and carefully turned the fragment over. Dripping xylene, he covered the slide again and motioned for me to bend close.
“What do you see?” he asked, and he was proud of himself.
“Something grayish and solid. Not the same material as the other side.” I looked at him in surprise. “This fabric has a backing on it?”
“Some kind of thermoplastic. Probably polyethylene terephthalate.”
“Which is used in what?” I wanted to know.
“Primarily soft drink bottles, film. Blister packs used in packing.
”
I stared at him, baffled, for I did not see how those products could have anything to do with this case.
“What else?” I asked.
He thought. “Strapping materials. And some of it, like bottles, can be recycled and used for carpet fibers, fiberfill, plastic lumber. Just about anything.”
“But not fabric for clothing.”
He shook his head, and said with certainty, “No way. The fabric in question is a rather common, crude polyester blend lined with a plastic-type material. Definitely not like any clothing I’ve ever heard of. Plus, it appears to be saturated with paint.”
“Thank you, Aaron,” I said. “This changes everything.”
When I got back to my office, I was surprised and annoyed to find Percy Ring sitting in a chair across from my desk, flipping through a notebook.
“I had to be in Richmond for an interview at Channel Twelve,” he innocently said, “so I thought I might as well come by to see you. They want to talk to you, too.” He smiled.
I did not answer him, but my silence was loud as I sat in my chair.
“I didn’t think you would do the interview. And that’s what I told them,” he went on in his easy, affable way.
“And so tell me, what exactly did you say this time?” My tone was not nice.
“Excuse me?” His smile faded and his eyes got hard. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the investigator. Figure it out.” My eyes were just as hard as his.
He shrugged. “I gave the usual. Just the basic information about the case and its similarities to the other ones.”
“Investigator Ring, let me make this very clear yet one more time,” I said with no attempt to hide my disdain for him. “This case is not necessarily like the other ones, and we should not be discussing it with the media.”
“Well, now, it appears you and I have a different perspective, Dr. Scarpetta.”
Handsome in a dark suit and paisley suspenders and tie, he looked remarkably credible. I could not help but recall what Wesley had said about Ring’s ambitions and connections, and the idea that this egotistical idiot would one day run the state police or be elected to Congress was one I could not stand.