Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell
One microwave in the unit shared by sixty of us, and we all do the same damn things in Mama’s Test Kitchen, as the other inmates refer to me and my culinary creativity. Or they used to. Maybe they won’t anymore, even if the treats are my idea. Treats always have been all about me and my inventiveness. Who else would think of it when there’s not a damn thing to work with besides crap and more crap?
Crap we get from the commissary. Crap we get in the chow hall. Beef and cheese sticks, tortillas and butter pats I taught them to turn into potstickers. Pop-Tarts, vanilla-cream cookies and strawberry Kool-Aid to make strawberry cake. Yes, everybody does it when it’s treat time because I was doing it first.
I don’t care who submitted what. The recipes are mine! Who taught who the art of scraping vanilla cream out of cookies and whipping it up with Kool-Aid to make pink icing? Who showed them the art of dissolving Pop-Tarts and crumbled cookies in water (reconstituting and reinventing, as I repeatedly explain) and cooking it in the microwave until the center bounces back at a touch?
The Julia Childs of the slammer, that’s who. It was me. NOT YOU! I’ve done it all along because I’ve lived here longer than most of you are goddamn old, and my recipes are so legendary they’ve become like a quote or a cliché or a proverb with an origin long forgotten and therefore up for grabs in your small, ignorant minds. “A good man is hard to find ” wasn’t Flannery O’Connor’s idea, it was the title of a song. And “a house divided against itself cannot stand ” wasn’t Lincoln, it was Jesus. Nobody remembers where anything came from and they help themselves. They steal.
I did what I was told and published the recipes—my recipes—and gave no credit to anyone, including me, that’s the fucking irony. I’m the one cheated. All of you pouting, sulking, eating your slop in cold silence when I’m around as if you’ve been wronged. There’s no room at your table when I get there because the seat is saved.
Don’t think I don’t know the source. Lemmings led into the sea.
Lights out in five. And again the darkness comes.
Mindful of eyes and ears beyond the open door of the cell, I say nothing about what I’ve just read. I do not comment that at least one notepad seems to be missing, possibly a diary, maybe more than one that Kathleen had been keeping since June 3, and, more important, since she was moved to Bravo Pod. I don’t believe she abruptly stopped writing, certainly not after she was transferred into segregation.
During the past two weeks, I would have expected her to have written more, not less, having little to do twenty-three hours a day except to sit inside this tiny cell with no view and its terrible television reception, cut off from other inmates and her job in the library, and no longer having a magazine or e-mail access. What might she have recorded in writings that someone doesn’t want us to read? But I don’t ask, and I don’t mention how struck I am by her metaphor of lemmings led into the sea.
Are lemmings other inmates, and if so, who has led them? I envision Lola Daggette giving Tara Grimm the finger a few minutes ago, and it very well may have been Lola who instigated the kicking of the cell doors. Full of bravado and hostility and with no impulse control and a low IQ, she was someone Kathleen feared. But Lola Daggette isn’t the reason Kathleen is dead on her bed. Lola’s not the reason inmates in the general population of medium security started shunning Kathleen in the chow hall, either. How would inmates in other pods have a clue what Lola Daggette thinks or says, or whether she has a problem with someone? She is as isolated and confined in her upstairs cell as Kathleen was in this one.
I suspect Kathleen was referring to someone else, and I’m reminded of Tara Grimm’s explanation that Kathleen had to be moved into protective custody because word got out that she was a convicted child molester. What word? What got out? Information the warden could blame on others, something that was on TV, caught by another inmate, by someone, she wasn’t sure who, and I didn’t believe her when she offered this explanation in her office yesterday, and I don’t believe her now.
I suspect I know who has been doing the influencing. Provoke inmates into being angered over something as petty as credit in a magazine, and nothing got published in Inklingsthat Tara Grimm didn’t approve. She had the final say about recipes with no names attached, and inmates felt slighted and it’s true that small slights can be huge, and Kathleen got moved. Maybe in her paranoid and agitated state she came up with the reason: Lola Daggette was behind an unprecedented loss of freedom that must have felt like punishment. Or perhaps a suggestion was made to Kathleen. Guards like Officer Macon may have informed her, taunted her, teased her into believing that Lola was making threats, and maybe she was. It doesn’t matter. Lola didn’t kill her.
I don’t let on to Marino that anything is unusual when he rustles past me in white and places a digital thermometer on the foot of the bed to record the ambient temperature. He hands a second thermometer to Colin for the temperature of the body. Despite witness accounts that place the time of death at approximately twelve-fifteen p.m., we will calculate it ourselves based on postmortem changes. People make mistakes. They are shocked and traumatized, and get the details wrong. Some people lie. Maybe everybody at the GPFW does.
I look around some more, entertaining the possibility that a notepad for June will turn up in here somewhere as I scan gray walls taped with the handwritten poems and passages of prose Kathleen mentioned to me in e-mails. The poem titled Fatethat she sent me is directly over the small steel ledge of a desk anchored to the wall. Near a steel stool bolted to the floor is another transparent plastic basket, this one large and stacked with undergarments, a uniform neatly folded, and packs of ramen noodles and two honey buns Kathleen must have gotten from the commissary. She told me she had no money because she no longer had her library job, yet she seems to have made purchases. Maybe they aren’t recent. I’m reminded she’s been in the segregation of Bravo Pod only two weeks. I poke the honey buns with my gloved finger. They don’t feel stale.
At the bottom of the plastic basket are copies of Inklings,several dozen of them, including the one for June that Kathleen referred to in the journal entry I just read. On the magazine’s front cover are artistic renderings of the contributors, Andy Warhol–like portraits of each woman who is famous for a month because something she wrote will be read by inmates at the GPFW and whoever else has access to the magazine. On the back cover are credits for the staff: the art director, the design team, and of course the editor, Kathleen Lawler, with special thanks to Warden Tara Grimm for her support of the arts, “for her humanity and enlightenment.”
“She’s still quite warm.” Colin is squatting next to the steel bed and holding up the thermometer. “Ninety-four-point-six.”
“It’s seventy-three in here,” Marino says, as his thick gloved fingers hold up the thermometer that was on the foot of the bed. He looks at his watch. “At two-nineteen.”
“Allegedly dead two hours and she’s cooled around four degrees,” I observe. “A little rapid but within normal limits.” That’s the best I can say.
“Well, she’s clothed and it’s relatively warm in here,” Colin agrees. “All we’re going to get is a ballpark.”
He’s implying that if Kathleen has been dead thirty minutes longer or even an hour longer than we’ve been led to believe by those giving us information, we aren’t going to know by postmortem indicators such as her temperature or rigor mortis.
“Rigor’s barely starting in her fingers.” Colin manipulates the fingers of Kathleen’s left hand. “Livor’s not apparent yet.”
“I wonder if she could have gotten overheated outside in the cage,” Marino says, looking around at the writings taped to the walls, taking in every inch of the cell. “Maybe she got heat exhaustion. That can happen, right? You come back inside, but you’ve already got a problem.”
“If she’d died of hyperthermia,” Colin says, as he stands up, “her core temperature would be higher than this. It would be higher than normal even after several hours, and her rigor l
“All she did was walk in the cage. And she rested every lap or two,” Marino repeats what’s been said.
“The definition of strenuous is different for different people,” Colin replies. “Someone who is sedentary inside a cell most of the time? She goes outdoors and it’s very hot and humid, and she loses too much fluid. Blood volume decreases, and that causes stress to the heart.”
“She was drinking water while she was outside,” Marino says.
“But was she drinking enough water? Was she drinking enough water inside her cell? I doubt it. On an average day the average person loses about ten cups of water. On an extremely hot, humid day, you can lose three gallons or more if you sweat enough,” Colin says.
He walks out of the cell, and I ask Chang if he has any objections to my continuing to examine what’s on the shelves and on the desk, and he indicates he doesn’t. I retrieve a transparent plastic basket of mail as I’m again reminded of the letters Jack Fielding supposedly wrote, describing how difficult I am, how awful I am to work for. I look for any letters from him or from Dawn Kincaid and don’t find them. I find nothing from anyone that might be important, except for a letter that appears to be from me. I stare in disbelief at the return address, at the CFC logo printed on a ten-by-thirteen-inch white envelope that Bryce orders in quantities of five thousand for the CFC:
Kay Scarpetta, MD, JD
COL USAF
Chief Medical Examiner and Director
Cambridge Forensic Center
The self-sealing flap has been slit open, probably by prison personnel who scan all incoming mail, and inside is a folded sheet with my office letterhead. The note is typed and supposedly signed by me in black ink:
June 26
Dear Kathleen,
I very much appreciate your e-mails to me about Jack and can only imagine your pain and it’s impact during what must be an oppressive confinement since you’ve been moved into protective custody. I look forward to chatting with you on June 30 and sharing confidences about the very special man we had in common. He certainly was a powerful influence on both of our lives, and it is important to me that you believe I wanted only the best for him and would never have intentionally hurt him.
I look forward to meeting you finally after all these years and to our continued communications. As always, let me know if there is anything you need.
Regards,
Kay
22
Isense Marino’s presence, and then he’s next to me, looking at the letter I hold in my purple nitrile gloved hands, reading what it says. I meet his eyes and barely shake my head.
“What the hell?” he asks under his breath.
I answer by pointing out the typed words it’s impact.The usage is improper. It’sshould be possessive, should be itsand not a contraction. But Marino doesn’t understand, and right now I’m not going to explain the inconsistencies or that the wording doesn’t sound like me and that I wouldn’t sign such a letter “Regards, Kay,” as if Kathleen Lawler and I really were friends.
It’s impossible to imagine my writing or saying to her that I would “never have intentionally hurt” Jack Fielding, as if to imply I might have hurt him unintentionally, and I think of what Jaime said last night. Kathleen’s daughter, Dawn Kincaid, has been trumping up a case that I’m an unstable, violent person. But Dawn Kincaid could not have created this forged letter. It’s not possible she could have done such a thing from Butler State Hospital, where she would have been confined when this letter was mailed.
I hold up the sheet of stationery to the light, directing Marino’s attention to the absence of the CFC watermark, making sure he understands that the document is fake. Then I place the sheet of stationery on the desk and begin to do something he isn’t likely to see very often. I take off my gloves and stuff them in a pocket of my white jumpsuit. I start taking photographs with my phone.
“You want the Nikon?” he asks, his face baffled. “A scale—”
“No,” I interrupt him.
I don’t want the thirty-five-millimeter camera or a close-up lens or a tripod or special lighting. I don’t want a labeled six-inch ruler for a scale. I have a different reason for taking these pictures. I don’t tell him anything else, but I do feel compelled to say something to Chang, who is watching all this intently from his station in the open doorway.
“I assume you have a questioned-documents lab?” I step closer to him.
“We do.” He watches me type a text message to my chief of staff, Bryce.
“Samples of my office paper that are going to be sent to your labs by FedEx priority overnight? Who will sign for them?”
“Me, I guess.”
“Okay. Sammy Chang, GBI Investigative Division.” I type as I talk. “I’m going to wager a bet that an examination will show significant differences between the CFC’s authentic paper and this.” I indicate what’s on the desk. “The lack of a watermark, for example. I’m making sure my chief of staff sends the same letterhead, the same envelope, right away, and you can compare them yourself so you’ll have irrefutable proof of what I’m describing.”
“A watermark?”
“There’s not one. Possibly a different paper that can be determined under magnification or by analyzing chemical additives. Maybe a slightly different font. I don’t know. Well, big surprise. No signal in here. I’ll resend it later.”
The message and attached photographs to Bryce are saved as a draft, and I look past Chang and notice that the glass window in the cell across from us is empty. Ellenora isn’t looking out anymore. She is silent.
“The prison obviously checks mail when it’s delivered,” I say to Chang. “In other words, someone checked this envelope when it was delivered. Scanned it or opened it in front of Kathleen, whatever the usual protocol is. Possible you can find out what else might have been inside the envelope? The postage of a dollar and seventy-six cents is more than needed for a single sheet of stationery and a large Tyvek envelope unless something else was in it. Of course, it’s possible whoever sent it overpaid.”
“So you didn’t …” he starts to say, as he glances behind him.
“I absolutely didn’t.” I shake my head no. I did not write this letter. I did not mail it or whatever else might have been in the envelope. “Where is everybody?”
“They took her to a quiet place where Dr. Dengate can question her about what she observed. Of course, her story gets more elaborate each time.” He’s referring to Ellenora. “But Officer Macon’s right here.” He says it loudly enough for Officer Macon to hear him just fine.
“Maybe you can ask him about any mail Kathleen Lawler’s gotten in the past few days.” I refrain from adding that Chang shouldn’t count on being told the truth about a letter or about anything at all that goes on in this place.
I put on fresh gloves and pick up the letter written on what looks like my own office stationery, holding it up to the light again, relieved there is no watermark and at the same time suspecting that whoever forged a letter from me doesn’t seem to know that the CFC uses an inexpensive recycled twenty-five percent rag paper with a custom watermark to protect our correspondence and documents from this very threat. While it would be possible to create a reasonably good facsimile of my letterhead or any document I might generate, it is impossible to counterfeit such a thing and get away with it unless one has access to authentic CFC paper. It occurs to me that whoever sent this letter may not care whether the police, scientists, or even I am fooled. Possibly the only purpose of this faked letter was to fool Kathleen Lawler into believing it came from me.
I fold the letter in half, the way I found it, and return it to its large envelope, puzzled by the size, again wond
But what she really was saying was she appreciated my writing to her and perhaps sending her something. She would have received the forged letter before I saw her yesterday. It was postmarked in Savannah on June 26 at four-fifty-five p.m., mailed from a location, possibly a post office, with a 31401 zip code. Five days ago, a Sunday, I was home, and Lucy took Benton and me to a tequila bar that’s become a favorite hangout of hers, Lolita Cocina. The waitstaff certainly could testify to the fact that I was there that night. I could not have been a thousand miles south in Savannah at four-fifty-five p.m. and in Boston’s Back Bay by seven p.m., having dinner.
“Gonna grab a few things and find the little boys’ room.” Marino squeezes past me.
“I’ll have to take you,” I hear Officer Macon’s voice as it occurs to me that someone could claim Marino mailed the letter for me. He was down here by June 26, or at least nearby in South Carolina.
My attention returns to Chang. He is standing in the open doorway, his dark eyes watching me.
“If you’re fine with my checking a few more things, then I’ll be done in here and can show you what I’d like collected,” I say to him.