The mention of Lucy's name squeezed my heart with a hard, cold hand. She had always been difficult and complicated. Very few people knew her, even if they thought they did. Crouched behind her bunker of intelligence, overachievement and risk-taking was a furious, wounded child who went after dragons the rest of us feared. She was terrified of abandonment, imagined or not. Lucy always did the rejecting first.
"You ever notice how most people don't seem to be dressed very nice when they die," Chuck said. "Wonder why that is."
"Look, I'll put on clean gloves and stand in the corner," Marino said. "I need a cigarette bad."
"Except last spring when those kids got killed on their way home from the prom," Chuck went on. "The guy's in this blue tux and comes in with the flower in his lapel."
The waistband of the jeans was wrinkled inside the belt.
"Pants are too big in the waist," I said, sketching it on a form. "Maybe by a size or two. He may have been heavier at some point."
"Hard to tell what the hell size he was," Marino said. "Right now he's got a gut bigger than mine."
"He's full of gas," I said.
"Too bad that's not your excuse."' Ruffin was getting bolder.
"Sixty-eight inches and weighs one hundred pounds, meaning, when you consider fluid loss, he was probably one-forty, one-fifty in life;' I calculated. "An average-sized man who, as I just said, may have been heavier at some earlier point, based on his clothing. He's got weird hair on his clothes. Six, seven inches long, very pale yellow.".
I turned the jeans' left pocket inside out and found more hair and a sterling silver cigar clipper and lighter. I set them on a clean sheet of white paper, careful not to ruin potential fingerprints. In the right pocket were two fivefranc coins, an English pound and a lot уf folded foreign cash that I was not familiar with.
"No wallet, no passport, no jewelry," I said.
"Definitely looks like robbery," Marino said. "Except for the stuff in his pockets. That doesn't make much sense. You'd think if he was robbed, the person would've taken that, too:' "Chuck, have you called Dr. Boatwright yet?" I asked.
He was one of the odontologists, or forensic dentists, we routinely borrowed from the Medical College of Virginia.
"Just gonna do that:'
He peeled off his gloves and went to the phone. I heard him opening drawers and cabinets.
"You seen the phone sheet?" he asked.
"You're the one who's supposed to keep up with things like that," I said testily.
"I'll be right back." Ruffin couldn't wait to disappear somewhere yet one more time.
He trotted off, and Marino followed him with his eyes.
"Dumb as a bag of hammers;" he said.
"I don't know what to do about him," I commented. "Because he really isn't dumb, Marino. That's part of the problem."
"You tried asking him what the shit's going on? Like is he having memory lapses, attention disorder or something? Maybe he hit his head on something or's been playing with himself too much."
"I haven't asked him those things specifically."
"Don't forget last month when he lost a bullet down the sink, Doc. Then he acted like it was your fault, which was the bullshit of all time. I mean, I was standing right there."
I was struggling with the dead man's wet, slimy jeans, trying to work them down his hips and thighs.
"You want to give me a hand?" I asked.
We carefully pulled the jeans over the knees and feet. We pulled tiff black briefs, socks and the T-shirt, and I placed them on the sheet-covered gurney. I examined them carefully for tears or holes or any obvious trace evidence. I noted that the back of the trousers, especially the seat of them, was much dirtier than the front. The backs of the shoes were scuffed.
"Jeans, black briefs and T-shirt are Armani and Versace. The briefs are inside out," I continued taking inventory. "Shoes, belt, socks are Armani. See the dirt and scuffing?" I pointed them out. "Could be consistent with him being dragged from behind, if someone had him under the arms."
"That's what I'm thinking," Marino said.
Some fifteen minutes later, the doors slid open and Ruffin walked in, a phone sheet in hand. He taped it up on a cabinet door.
"I miss anything?" he cheerfully asked.
"We'll take a look at the clothes with the Luma-Light, then let them dry and trace can do their thing with them," I instructed Ruffin in an unfriendly tone. "Let his other personal effects air-dry, then bag them."
He yanked on gloves.
"Ten-four," he said with an edge.
"Looks like you're already studying to get into the academy." Marino picked on him some more. "Good for you, kid."
13
I lost myself in what I was doing, my mind pulled into a body that was completely autolyzed and putrefied and hardly recognizable as human.
Death had rendered this man defenseless, and bacteria had escaped from the gastrointestinal tract, invading as it pleased, fomenting, fermenting, and filling every space with gas. Bacteria broke down cell walls and turned the blood in veins and arteries a greenish-black, making the entire circulatory system visible through the discolored skin like rivers and tributaries on a map.
Areas of the body that had been covered by clothing were in much better shape than the head and hands.
"God, how would you like to run into him when you're skinny-dipping at night?" Ruffin said, looking at the dead man.
"He can't help it," I said.
"And guess what, Chuckie-boy?" Marino said. "After you die someday, you're gonna look ugly as hell, too."
"Dу we know exactly where the container was in the ship's-hold?" I asked Marino.
"A couple rows down."
"What about weather conditions during the two weeks it was out at sea?"
"Mostly mild, averaging around sixty with a high of seventy. Merry El Niсo. People are doing Christmas shopping in their friggin' shorts."
"So you're thinking maybe this guy died on board and someone stuck him inside the container?" Ruffin asked.
"No, that ain't what I'm thinking, Chuckie-boy."
"The name's Chuck.".
"Depends on who's talking to you. So here's the daily double, Chuckie-boy. If you got tons of containers stacked like sardines in a hold, tell me how you sneak a dead body into one," Marino said. "No way you could even open the door. Plus the seal was intact."
I pulled a surgical lamp close and collected fibers and debris, using forceps and a lens, or, in some instances, swabs.
"Chuck, we need to check on how much formalin we've got," I said. "It was low the other day. Or have you already taken care of that?"
"Not yet."
"Don't inhale too many fumes," Marino said. "You can see what it does to all those brains you haul over to MCV"
Formalin was a diluted formaldehyde, a highly reactive chemical used to preserve or "fix" surgical sections or organs, or in anatomical donations, entire bodies. It killed tissue. It was extremely corrosive to respiratory passages, skin and eyes.
"I'll go check out the formalin;" Ruffin said.
"Not now you won't;" I said. "Not until we're done here.
He pulled off the cap of a permanent marker.
"How about buzzing Cleta to see if Anderson left," I said. "I don't want her wandering around somewhere."
"I'll do it;" Marino said.
"I gotta admit, it still blows my mind a little to see chicks chasing after killers." Ruffin directed this at Marino. "Back when you got started, they probably did nothing but check parking meters."
Marino went to the phone.
"Take off your gloves;" I called after him, because be always forgot, no matter how many Clean Hands signs I posted.
I moved the lens slowly and stopped. The knees looked abraded and dirty, as if he had been kneeling on a rough, dirty surface without his pants on. I checked his elbows. They looked dirty and abraded, too, but it was hard to tell with certainty because his skin was in such bad shape. I dipped a cotton swab in sterile water as Marino hung up the phone. I heard him tear open another pair of gloves.