J. T. leaned in, for she was as much as talking to herself. "So?" he asked.
"So, I guess you're dead right, J. T." John Thorpe's big, round brown eyes grew larger. "How's that?"
''We've got to crack this code of his." She now looked at and pointed to the message left by the killer. "It's got to make sense to someone somewhere. This guy has had to've talked to someone about himself, his fantasy, his sexual needs, his plans, his obsession-madness… and maybe his interest in numbers and words such as 'traitors' and violents.' "
"We could send it around to our university consultants, our arcane friends in academia. Who knows? Maybe one of them will recognize something. Maybe a mathematician…"
"I was thinking the same, but we also want to touch on medical people, mental facilities in particular. Maybe we should go public with what we know, spread it across the tube and the headlines. Somebody's got to know something about this nutcase, and we need information now, before he phones-kills-again."
"Obviously our documents guys aren't having much luck with the first message," he replied.
"But now this"-she again pointed at the new message-"may spur them on. Let's do both-send it to Quantico, as we did the other, and forward it on to our contacts at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, all the major universities in the network, and our medical lists."
She turned now to McEvetty, a bearded, rugged-looking man who might well have been wearing buckskin and rawhide, he so looked the mountain man type, and she said to him, "Do you have a photographer on hand?"
"Jake's just waiting word. He's having a doughnut and coffee at the coffee and gift shop off the lobby. They opened early for us."
"Send for him. Get photos of everything, starting with the mirror, and have them send up some coffee. I need something pleasant to smell in here. What about that secretion search, Captain Brightpath? Do you have the wherewithal, or do we call for help?''
"On it," he responded, going for a phone.
"So, what're you waiting for, McEvetty?" she scolded.
"Yes, ma'am, ahhh… Doctor." McEvetty's moist eyes, very like those of a doe or an ox, seemingly saying that he much admired her show of strength in the face of such horror.
She turned once more to J. T. and asked, "Can you take care of getting the information around? The photos of the handwriting, the shoeprint cast, what we've got here, and route it all to-"
"Sure. I'll get on it; that is, unless…"
She studied the hesitation in his features, glad to have her confidant and familiar friend alongside her. "Unless what?"
He whispered, so the others would not hear, " 'Less you really want me to handle the body, Jess. Burn victims are tough, I know."
Drowning victims in the water for long duration aside, burn victims in which the entire body, head to toe, was covered in the creosote of superheated human tissues and fat represented the most difficult cases for the forensic medical person, no matter how toughened or jaded. The corpse repulsed the physician. And this did not make for the best of working relationships or conditions. Usually Jessica felt a sense of bonding with the victim, a close-knit relationship in which she shared secrets with the deceased, down to the pallor of the skin, the size and shape of every organ, inside and out. But how was this possible here? Here such a bonding was virtually impossible when looking into so completely annihilated a face and human form, when having to look into the mask of a creature molded of fire. All this was true, despite a generalized and sometimes overwhelming sense of empathy with the victim's pain, felt even more strongly if you had prior knowledge that the victim was alive when put to the torch.
Jessica could not deny the powerful impact on both the doctor and the forensic process such a thoroughly repugnant, desecrated body meant. It was just shy of dealing with an exhumed body, a years' old cadaver from a grave, and in some regard worse, for the odor of burned flesh was worse than the odor of decay.
Jessica dropped her gaze from J. T., sheepishly whispering in reply, "I'm fine here. Go on with Brightpath. Be sure we get all the equipment we need here."
Jessica relocated her black valise, and next she located a scalpel, the one given to her by her father. She'd pulled down her mask earlier, and she placed it back over her nose and mouth, her white lab coat now having a patina of soot.
Jessica stepped closer to the mummylike corpse, inching closer until she stood abutting the blackened bed and the blackened east wall. She now meant to go to work gathering immediate samples for later lab work. She was all right, she told herself, but her thoughts over the ungainly thing at her fingertips continued.
The men in the room watched in a kind of rapt awe.
Most victims of complete burn such as this meant ample cause to rush through an autopsy. And in the rush, vital clues could be lost, and often were. Most certainly the coroner's usual care, precision, and thoroughness were impeded, if not breached completely. A good forensics man or woman knew this going in, so Jessica fought the overwhelming desire to be done with the body as quickly as possible, but Jessica also well understood the all-too-human response to the catastrophic annihilation of the body, its tissues and organs, to fire. She also understood J. T.'s chivalrous gesture was not without reservation, that he would prefer to make other vital arrangements and leave the autopsy to her. Despite his outward gallantry, she guessed that Thorpe was inwardly pleased that she hadn't jumped at the chance to trade places.
"Are you sure, Jess?" He was pushing his luck now.
"Damn it, J. T., I'm sure… I'm okay here. Now get going. You've got phone calls to make, people to wake up, and get that damned photographer out of the coffee shop and up here."
"If you want me to take charge here, Jess… just say the word."
She grit her teeth. "Now you're getting on my nerves."
"Whataya mean, Jess? I'm just trying to show a little sensitivity. You women always want a show of concern, but you also want to be treated like equals. Suppose I asked McEvetty or Kaminsky here about how their morning's going." He shrugged and frowned, a bit tired of her show of bravado in the face of a death so without integrity as this. And for a moment the others saw and heard what amounted to a married couple arguing about nothing. They had worked many cases together, elbow to elbow, but usually J. T.'s help came in the safe confines of a well-lit lab back in Virginia. "What?" he repeated, his voice giving way to anger.
"Go, get photos of this bastard's message. Get copies to Santiva and to the academics and the nuthouses, okay? I'll see to the body."
J. T. nodded, folding her hands in his like they were an omelet. "Whatever you want, Jess."
She bit her lip and held back a curse, finally bursting with, "What I want has very little to do with anything these days, John. This motherless… monster is using me, and I don't like it, not one fucking bit do I like it. Get that photographer in here and take care of that decoding angle for me, okay?"
"You didn't cause this, Jess," he reassured her, studying her constricted features. "And nobody can believe you did."
Ignoring this, she turned to the bed and the body, which in the fire had become an unrecognizable lump of extraneous waste dumped here like one might find back of a plastics factory: Body in repose, hands and arms, feet and legs arched inward in what firemen called the "fetal fire position," the dead man frozen in a moment of excruciating pain, the gaping fissure of the mouth, the gaping holes where the eyes had been, all worked in tandem to create a mask of grimacing, tortured distress, the agony visible through the newly formed body armor of blackened tissue.
The mattress had created first a thick, black, choking smoke when the flame from the butane torch ignited it along with the body itself, the result discoloring the bedpost, walls, and ceiling, and then the mattress had exploded into flame due to the gases released. Again this meant the killer must also be using a mask or filter of some sort, if not a small oxygen tank. She made a mental note to follow up with an exhaustive list of professions that employed such materials and instruments.