The Body Farm by Patricia Cornwell
“All right. Well that’s right here. Better to walk in than be carried,” he said with a hoarse laugh.
I got out money as he parked in front of a building small by London standards. Brick with granite trim and a strange parapet along the roof, it was surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence painted the color of rust. According to the date on a plaque at the entrance, the mortuary was more than a hundred years old, and I thought about how grim it would have been to practice forensic medicine in those days. There would have been few witnesses to tell the story except for the human kind, and I wondered if people had lied less in earlier times.
The mortuary’s reception area was small but pleasantly furnished like a typical lobby for a normal business. Through an open door was a corridor, and since I did not see anyone, I headed that way just as a woman emerged from a room, her arms loaded with oversized books.
“Sorry,” she said, startled. “But you can’t come back here.”
“I’m looking for Dr. Mant,” I said.
She wore a loose-fitting long dress and sweater, and spoke with a Scottish accent. “And who may I tell him is here to see him?” she politely said.
I showed her my credentials.
“Oh very good. I see. Then he’s expecting you.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” I said.
“I see.” She shifted the books to another arm and was very confused.
“He used to work with me in the States,” I said. “I’d like to surprise him, so I prefer to find him if you’ll just tell me where.”
“Dear me, that would be the Foul Room just now. If you go through this door here.” She nodded at it. “And you’ll see locker rooms to the left of the main mortuary. Everything you need is there, then turn left again through another set of doors, and right beyond that. Is that clear?” She smiled.
“Thank you,” I said.
In the locker room I put on booties, gloves and mask, and loosely tied a gown around me to keep the odor out of my clothes. I passed through a tiled room where six stainless-steel tables and a wall of white refrigerators gleamed. The doctors wore blue, and Westminster was keeping them busy this morning. They scarcely glanced at me as I walked past. Down the hall I found my deputy chief in tall rubber boots, standing on a footstool as he worked on a badly decomposing body that I suspected had been in water for a while. The stench was terrible, and I shut the door behind me.
“Dr. Mant,” I said.
He turned around and for an instant did not seem to know who I was or where he was. Then he simply looked shocked.
“Dr. Scarpetta? My God, why I’ll be bloody damned.” He heavily stepped off the stool, for he was not a small man. “I’m so surprised. I’m rather speechless!” He was sputtering, and his eyes wavered with fear.
“I’m surprised, too,” I somberly said.
“I quite imagine that you are. Come on. No need to talk in here with this rather ghastly floater. Found him in the Thames yesterday afternoon. Looks like a stabbing to me but we have no identity. We should go to the lounge,” he nervously talked on.
Philip Mant was a charming old gentleman impossible not to like, with thick white hair and heavy brows over keen pale eyes. He showed me around the corner to showers, where we disinfected our feet, stripped off gloves and masks and stuffed scrubs into a bin. Then we went to the lounge, which opened onto the parking lot in back. Like everything else in London, the stale smoke in this room had a long history, too.
“May I offer you some refreshment?” he asked as he got out a pack of Players. “I know you don’t smoke anymore, so I won’t offer.”
“I don’t need a thing except some answers from you,” I said.
His hands trembled slightly as he struck a match.
“Dr. Mant, what in God’s name are you doing here?” I started in. “You’re supposed to be in London because you had a death in the family.”
“I did. Coincidentally.”
“Coincidentally?” I said. “And what does that mean?”
“Dr. Scarpetta, I fully intended to leave anyway and then my mother suddenly died and that made it easy to choose a time.”
“Then you’ve had no intention of coming back,” I said, stung.
“I’m quite sorry. But no, I have not.” He delicately tapped an ash.
“You could at least have told me so I could have begun looking for your replacement. I’ve tried to call you several times.”
“I didn’t tell you and I didn’t call because I didn’t want them to know.”
“Them?” The word seemed to hang in the air. “Exactly who do you mean, Dr. Mant?”
He was very matter-of-fact as he smoked, legs crossed, and belly roundly swelling over his belt. “I have no idea who they are, but they certainly know who we are. That’s what alarms me. I can tell you exactly when it all began. October thirteenth, and you may or may not remember the case.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Well, the Navy did the autopsy because the death was at their shipyard in Norfolk.”
“The man who was accidentally crushed in a dry dock?” I vaguely recalled.
“The very one.”
“You’re right. That was a Navy case, not ours,” I said as I began to anticipate what he had to say. “Tell me what that has to do with us.”
“You see, the rescue squad made a mistake,” he continued. “Instead of transporting the body to Portsmouth Naval Hospital, where it belonged, they brought it to my office, and young Danny didn’t know. He began drawing blood, doing paperwork, that sort of thing, and in the process found something very unusual amongst the decedent’s personal effects.”
I realized Mant did not know about Danny.
“The victim had a canvas satchel with him,” he went on. “And the squad had simply placed it on top of the body and covered everything with a sheet. Poor form as it may be, I suppose had that not occurred we wouldn’t have had a clue.”
“A clue about what?”
“What this fellow had, apparently, was a copy of a rather sinister bible that I came to find out later is connected to a cult. The New Zionists. An absolutely terrible thing, that book was, describing in detail torture, murder, things like that. It was dreadfully unsettling, in my view.”
“Was it called the Book of Hand?” I asked.
“Why yes.” His eyes lit up. “It was, indeed.”
“Was it in a black leather binder?”
“I believe it was. With a name stamped on it that oddly enough was not the name of the decedent. Shapiro, or something.”
“Dwain Shapiro.”
“Of course,” he said. “Then you already know about this.”
“I know about the Book but not why this individual had it in his possession, because certainly his name was not Dwain Shapiro.”
He paused to rub his face. “I think his name was Catlett.”
“But he could have been Dwain Shapiro’s killer,” I said. “That could be why he had the bible.”
Mant did not know. “When I realized we had a naval case in our morgue,” he said, “I had Danny transport the body to Portsmouth. Clearly, the poor man’s effects should have gone with him.”
“But Danny kept the book,” I said.
“I’m afraid so.” He leaned forward and crushed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table.
“Why would he do that?”
“I happened to walk into his office and spotted it, and I asked him why in the world he had it. His explanation was that since the book had another individual’s name on it, he wondered if it hadn’t been accidentally picked up at the scene. That perhaps the satchel belonged to someone else, as well.” He paused. “You see, he was still rather new and I think he’d simply made an honest mistake.”
“Tell me something,” I said, “were any reporters calling the office or coming around at this time? For example, might anyone have inquired about the man crushed to death in the shipyard?”
“Oh yes, Mr. Eddings
“Might Danny have talked to Eddings?”
Mant stared off in thought. “It seems I did see the two of them talking some. But young Danny certainly knew better than to give him a quote.”
“Might he have given Eddings the Book, assuming that Eddings was doing a story on the New Zionists?”
“Actually, I wouldn’t know. I never saw the Book again and assumed Danny had returned it to the Navy. I miss the lad. How is he, by the way? How is his knee? I called him Hop-Along, you know.” He laughed.
But I did not answer his question or even smile. “Tell me what happened after that. What made you afraid?”
“Strange things. Hang-ups. I felt I was being followed. My morgue supervisor, as you recall, abruptly quit with no good explanation. And one day when I went out to the parking lot, there was blood all over the windshield of my car. I actually had it tested in the lab, and it was type butcher shop. From a cow, in other words.”
“I presume you have met Detective Roche,” I said.
“Unfortunately. I don’t fancy him a’tall.”
“Did he ever try to get information from you?”
“He would drop by. Not for postmortems, of course. He doesn’t have the stomach for them.”
“What did he want to know?”
“Well, the Navy death we talked about. He had questions about that.”
“Did he ask about his personal effects? The satchel that inadvertently came into the morgue along with the body?”
Mant was trying to remember. “Well, now that you’re prodding this rather pathetic memory of mine, it seems I do recall him asking about the satchel. And I referred him to Danny, I believe.”
“Well, Danny obviously never gave it to him,” I said. “Or at least not the Book, because that has turned up since.”
I did not tell him how because I did not want to upset him.
“That bloody Book must be terribly important to someone,” he mused.
I paused as he smoked again. Then I said, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you just run and never say a word?”
“Frankly, I didn’t want you dragged into it as well. And it all sounded rather fantastic.” He paused, and I could tell by his face he sensed other bad events had occurred since he had left Virginia. “Dr. Scarpetta, I’m not a young man. I only want to peacefully do my job a little while longer before I retire.”
I did not want to criticize him further because I understood what he had done. I frankly could not blame him and was glad he had fled, for he probably had saved his own life. Ironically, there had been nothing important he knew, and had he been murdered, it would have been for no cause, as Danny’s murder was for no cause.
Then I told the truth as I pushed back images of a knee brace as bright red as blood spilled, and leaves and trash clinging to gory hair. I remembered Danny’s brilliant smile and would never forget the small white bag he had carried out of the cafe on a hill, where a dog had barked half the night. In my mind, I would always see the sadness and fear in his eyes when he helped me with the murdered Ted Eddings, whom I now realized he had known. Together, the two young men had inadvertently led each other a step closer to their eventual violent deaths.
“Dear Lord. The poor boy,” was all Mant could say.
He covered his eyes with a handkerchief, and when I left him, he was still crying.
chapter
15
WESLEY AND I flew back to New York that night, and arrived early because tail winds were more than a hundred knots. We went through customs and got our bags, then the same shuttle met us at the curb and returned us to the private airport where the Learjet was waiting.
The weather had suddenly warmed and was threatening rain, and we flew between colossal black thunderheads lighting up with violent thoughts. The storm loudly cracked and flashed as we sped through what seemed the middle of a feud. I had been briefed a little as to the current state of affairs, and it had come as no surprise that the Bureau had established an outpost along with others set up by police and rescue crews.
Lucy, I was relieved to hear, had been brought in from the field, and was working again in the Engineering Research Facility, or ERF, where she was safe. What Wesley did not tell me until we reached the Academy was that she had been deployed along with the rest of HRT and would not be at Quantico long.
“Out of the question,” I said to him as if I were a mother refusing permission.
“I’m afraid you don’t have a say in this,” he replied.
He was helping me carry my bags through the Jefferson lobby, which was deserted this Saturday night. We waved to the young women at the registration desk as we continued arguing.
“For God’s sake,” I went on, “she’s brand-new. You can’t just throw her into the middle of a nuclear crisis.”
“We’re not throwing her into anything.” He pushed open glass doors. “All we need are her technical skills. She’s not going to be doing any sniper-shooting or jumping out of planes.”
“Where is she now?” I asked as we got on an elevator.
“Hopefully in bed.”
“Oh.” I looked at my watch. “I guess it is midnight. I thought it was tomorrow and I should be getting up.”
“I know. I’m screwed up, too.”
Our eyes met and I looked away. “I guess we’re supposed to pretend nothing happened,” I said with an edge to my voice, for there had been no discussion of what had gone on between us.
We walked out into the hall and he pressed a code into a digitalized keypad. A lock released and he opened another glass door.
“What good would it do to pretend?” he said, entering another code and opening another door.
“Just tell me what you want to do,” I said.
We were inside the security suite where I usually stayed when work or danger kept me here overnight. He carried my bags into the bedroom as I drew draperies across the large window in the living room. The decor was comfortable but plain, and when Wesley did not respond, I remembered it probably was not safe to talk intimately in this place where I knew at the very least phones were monitored. I followed him back out into the hall and repeated my question.
“Be patient,” he said, and he looked sad, or maybe he was just weary. “Look, Kay, I’ve got to go home. First thing in the morning we’ve got to do a surveillance by air with Marcia Gradecki and Senator Lord.”
Gradecki was the United States attorney general, and Frank Lord was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and an old friend.
“I’d like you along since overall you seem to know more of what’s been going on than anyone else. Maybe you can explain to them the importance of the bible these wackos believe. That they’ll kill for it. They’ll die for it.”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “And we need to talk about how we’re going to—God forbid—handle the contaminated dead should these goddamn assholes decide to blow up the reactors.” He looked at me again. “All we can do is try,” he said, and I knew he referred to more than the present crisis.
“That’s what I’m doing, Benton,” I said, and I walked back inside my suite.
I called the switchboard and asked them to ring Lucy’s room, and when there was no answer, I knew what that meant. She was at ERF, and I could not call there because I did not know where in that building the size of a football field she might be. So I put on my coat and walked out of Jefferson because I could not sleep until I saw my niece.
ERF had its own guard gate not far from the one at the entrance of the Academy, and most of the FBI police, by now, knew me pretty well. The guard on duty looked surprised when I appeared, and he walked outside to see what I wanted.
“I think my niece is working late,” I began to explain.
“Yes, ma’am. I did see her go in earlier.”
“Is there any way you can contact her?”
“Hmmm.” He frowned. “Might you have any idea what area she’d likely be in?”
“Maybe the computer room.”
He tried that to no avail, then looked at me. “This is important.”
“Yes, it is,” I said with gratitude.
He raised his radio to his mouth.
“Unit forty-two to base,” he said.
“Forty-two, come in.”
“You ten-twenty-five me at ERF gate?”
“Ten-four.”
We waited for the guard to arrive, and he occupied the booth while his partner let me inside the building. For a while we roamed long empty hallways, trying locked doors that led into machine shops and laboratories where my niece might be. After about fifteen minutes of this, we got lucky. He tried a door and it opened onto an expansive room that was a Santa’s workshop of scientific activity.
Central to this was Lucy, who was wearing a data glove and head-mounted display connected to long thick black cables snaking over the floor.
“Will you be okay?” the guard asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
Co-workers in lab coats and coveralls were busy with computers, interface devices and large video screens, and they all saw me walk in. But Lucy was blind. She really was not in this room but the one in the small CRTs covering her eyes as she conducted a virtual-reality walk-through along a catwalk in what I suspected was the Old Point nuclear power plant.
“I’m going to zoom in now,” she was saying as she pressed a button on top of the glove.
The area on the video screen suddenly got bigger as the figure that was Lucy stopped at steep grated stairs.
“Shit, I’m zooming out,” she said impatiently. “No way this is going to work.”
“I promise it can,” said a young man monitoring a big black box. “But it’s tricky.”
She paused and made some other adjustment. “I don’t know, Jim, is this really high-res data or is the problem me?”
“I think the problem’s you.”
“Maybe I’m getting cyber sick,” my niece then said as she moved around inside what looked like conveyor belts and huge turbines that I could see on the video screen.