I moved around taking photographs, then squatted and got out the long chemical thermometer, which I slid carefully under his sweater and wedged in the fold of his left arm. The temperature of the body was 92.4 degrees, the temperature of the air 31. The body was cooling at the rapid rate of approximately three degrees per hour because it was below freezing out and Harper wasn't heavyset or heavily dressed. Rigor had already started in the small muscles. I estimated he had been dead less than two hours.
Next I began looking for any trace evidence that might not survive the trip to the morgue. Fibers, hairs or any other debris adhering to blood could wait. I was worried about anything loose, slowly scanning his body and the area directly around it, when the narrow beam licked over something not far from his neck. I leaned closer without touching, puzzling over a small greenish lump of what looked remarkably like Play-Doh. Embedded in it were several more pellets. I was carefully sealing this inside a plastic envelope when the back door opened and I found myself staring directly up into the terrified eyes of a woman standing inside the foyer beside a police officer holding a metal clipboard.
Approaching footsteps belonged to Marino and Poteat. They ducked under the tape and were joined by the officer with the clipboard. The back door quietly shut.
"Will there be someone to stay with her?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah," the officer with the clipboard responded, his breath smoking out. "Miss Harper's got a friend coming, says she'll be okay. We'll have a couple units staked out nearby to make sure the guy doesn't come back for an encore."
"What we looking for?" Poteat asked me.
He slipped his hands in the pockets of his jacket and hunched his shoulders against the cold. Snowflakes as big as quarters were beginning to spiral down.
"More than one weapon," I replied. "The injuries to his head and face are blunt-force trauma." I pointed a bloody gloved finger. "Obviously, the injury to his neck was inflicted by a sharp instrument. As for the bird shot, the pellets aren't deformed, and it doesn't appear that any of them penetrated his body."
Marino looked positively baffled as he stared at the pellets scattered everywhere.
"That was my impression," Poteat said, nodding. "Don't appear the shot was fired, but I couldn't be sure. Then we're prob'ly not looking for a shotgun. A knife and maybe something like a tire tool?"
"Possibly but not necessarily," I answered. "All I can tell you with certainty right now is his neck was cut with something sharp, and he was beaten with something blunt and linear."
"That could be a lot of things, Doc," Poteat remarked, frowning.
"Yes, it could be a lot of things," I agreed.
Though I had my suspicions about the bird shot, I refrained from speculating, having learned the hard way from past experiences. Generalities often got interpreted literally, and at one crime scene the cops walked right past a bloody upholstery needle in the victim's living room because I had said that the weapon was "consistent with" an ice pick.
"The squad can move him," I announced, peeling off my gloves.
Harper was wrapped in a clean white sheet and zipped inside a body pouch. I stood next to Marino and watched the ambulance slowly head back down the dark, deserted drive. There were no lights or sirens-no need to rush when transporting the dead. The snow was coming down harder and it was sticking.
"You leaving?" Marino asked me.
"What are you going to do, follow me again?" I wasn't smiling.
He stared off at the old Rolls-Royce in the circle of milky light at the edge of the drive. Snowflakes melted as they hit the area of gravel stained with Harper's blood.
"I wasn't following you," Marino said seriously. "Got the radio message when I was almost back to Richmond-"
"Almost back to Richmond?" I interrupted. "Almost back from where*."
"From here," he said, fishing in a pocket for his keys. "Found out Harper was a regular at Culpeper's Tavern. I decide to buttonhole him. Was with him maybe a half hour before he basically tells me to screw myself. Then he splits. So I head out, am maybe fifteen miles from Richmond when Poteat gets a dispatcher to raise me and tell me what's gone down. I'm hauling ass back in this direction when I recognize your ride, stay with you to make sure you don't get lost."
"You're telling me you actually talked to Harper at the tavern tonight?"
I asked in amazement.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Then he leaves me and gets whacked about five minutes later."
Agitated and restless, he started moving toward his car. "Gonna meet with Poteat, see what all I can find out. And I'll be by in the morning to look in on the post if you've got no objections."
I watched him walk off, shaking snow out of his hair. He was gone by the time I turned the key in the Plymouth's ignition. The wipers pushed back a thin layer of snow, then stopped cold in the middle of the windshield. The engine of my state car made one last sick attempt before it became the second DOA of the night.
The Harper library was a warm, vibrant room of red Persian rugs and antiques crafted from the finest woods. I was fairly certain the sofa was a Chippendale, and I had never touched, much less sat on, a genuine Chippendale anything before. The high ceiling was ornamented in rococo molding, the walls lined with books, most of them leatherbound. Directly across from me was a marble fireplace recently stoked with split logs.
Leaning forward, I stretched my hands toward the flames and resumed studying the oil portrait over the mantel. The subject was a lovely young girl in white seated on a small bench, her hair long and very blond, her hands loosely curled around a silver hairbrush in her lap. She shimmered darkly in the rising heat, her eyes heavy lidded, her moist lips parted, the deeply scooped neckline of her dress exposing a porcelain-white, undeveloped bosom. I was wondering why this peculiar portrait was so prominently displayed when Gary Harper's sister came in and shut the door as quietly as she had opened it.
"I thought this might warm you," she said, handing me a glass of wine.
Setting the tray on the coffee table, she seated herself on the red velvet cushion of a baroque side chair, tucking her feet to one side the way proper ladies are taught to sit by their proper female elders.
"Thank you," I said, and again I apologized.
The battery in my state car was no longer in this world, and jumper cables were not going to bring it back. The police had radioed for a wrecker, and had promised to give me a lift back to Richmond as soon as they finished processing the scene. There was no choice. I wasn't going to stand outside in the snow or sit for an hour inside a squad car. So I had knocked on Miss Harper's back door.
She sipped her wine and stared vacantly into the fire. Like the expensive objects surrounding her, she was beautifully crafted, one of the most elegant women I thought I had ever seen. Silver-white hair softly framed her patrician face. Her cheekbones were high, her features refined, her figure lithe but shapely in a beige cowl-necked sweater and corduroy skirt. When I looked at Sterling Harper, the word "spinster" definitely did not enter my mind.
She was silent. Snow coldly kissed the windows and the wind moaned around the eaves. I could not imagine living alone in this house.
"Do you have any other family?" I asked.
"None living," she said.
"I'm sorry, Miss Harper…"
"Really. You must stop saying that, Dr. Scarpetta."
A large cut-emerald ring flashed in the firelight as she lifted her glass again. Her eyes focused on me. I remembered the terror in those eyes when she opened the door while I was examining her brother. She was remarkably steady now.
"Gary knew better," she suddenly commented. "I suppose what surprises me most is the way it happened. I wouldn't have expected someone to be so bold as to wait for him at the house."