From Potter`s Field

'She was in Seattle?'

'Right. Everyone in our academy knew about her because she had such an incredible mouth. Her gold foil restorations and dental anomalies were used in slide presentations at a number of our meetings,'

'Do you recall her name?'

'Sorry. She wasn't my patient. But it seems I remember hearing she was a professional musician until she was in some terrible accident. That was when her dental problems began,'

The lady I'm talking about has a lot of enamel loss,' I said. 'Probably from overbrushing,'

'Oh absolutely. The lady out here did, too,'

'It doesn't sound to me as if the lady out there was a street person,' I said.

'Couldn't be. Someone paid for that mouth,'

'My lady was a street person when she died in New York,' I said.

'Geez, that makes me sad. I guess whoever she was, she really couldn't care for herself,'

'What is your name?' I asked.

'I'm Jay Bennett,'

'Dr. Bennett? Do you remember anything else that might have been said during one of these slide presentations?'

A long silence followed. 'Okay, yes. This is very vague,' He hesitated again. 'Oh, I know,' he said. The lady out here was related to someone important. In fact, that might be who she lived with out here before she disappeared.'

I gave him further information so he could call me again. I hung up the phone and met Wesley's stare.

'I think Jane is Gault's sister,' I said.

'What?' He was genuinely shocked.

'I think Temple Gault murdered his sister,' I repeated. 'Please tell me you didn't already know that.'

He got upset.

'I've got to verify her identity,' I said, and I had no emotion left in me right now.

'Won't her dental records do that?'

'If we find them. If she still has X rays left. If the army stays out of my way.'

'The army doesn't know about her.' He paused, and for an instant his eyes were bright with tears. He looked away from me. 'He just told us what he did when he sent the message from CAIN today.'

'Yes,' I said. 'He said CAIN killed his brother. The description of Gault with her in New York sounded more like two men than a woman and a man.' I paused. 'Are there other siblings?'

'Just a sister. We've known she lived on the West Coast but have never been able to locate her because apparently she doesn't drive. DMV has no record of a valid license. Truth is, we've never been certain she is alive.'

I said to him, 'She's not.'

He flinched and looked away.

'She hadn't lived anywhere - at least not in recent years,' I said, thinking of her pitiful belongings and malnourished body. 'She'd been on the street for a while. In fact, I'd say she survived out there all right until her brother came to town.'

His voice caught and he looked wrecked as he said, 'How could anyone do something like that?'

I put my arms around him. I did not care who walked in. I hugged him as a friend.

'Benton,' I said. 'Go home.'

17

I spent the weekend and the New Year at Quantico, and though there was considerable mail on Prodigy, verifying Jane's identity was not promising.

Her dentist had retired last year and her Panorex X-rays had been reclaimed for silver. The missing films, of course, were the biggest disappointment, for they might have shown old fractures, sinus configurations, bony anomalies, that could have effected a positive identification. As for her charts, when I touched upon that subject, her dentist, who was retired and now living in Los Angeles, got evasive.

'You do have them, don't you?' I asked him point-blank on Tuesday afternoon.

'I've got a million boxes in my garage.'

'I doubt you have a million.'

'I have a lot.'

'Please. We're talking about a woman we're unable to identify. All human beings have a right to be buried with their name.'

'I'm going to look, okay?'

Minutes later, I said to Marino on the phone, 'We're going to have to try for DNA or a visual ID.'

'Yo,' he said drolly. 'And just what are you going to do? Show Gault a photograph and ask if the woman he did this to looks like his sister?'

'I think her dentist took advantage of her. I've seen it before.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Occasionally, someone takes advantage. They chart work they didn't do so they can collect from Medicare or the insurance company.'

'But she had a hell of a lot of work done.'

'He could have charted a hell of a lot more. Trust me. Twice as many gold foil restorations, for example. That would have meant thousands of dollars. He says he did them when he didn't. She's mentally impaired, living with an elderly uncle. What do they know?'

'I hate assholes.'

'If I could get hold of his charts, I would report him. But he's not going to give them up. In fact, they probably no longer exist.'

'You got jury duty at eight in the morning,' Marino said. 'Rose called to let me know.'

'I guess that means I leave here very early tomorrow.'

'Go straight to your house and I'll pick you up.'

'I'll just go straight to the courthouse.'

'No you won't. You ain't driving downtown by yourself right now.'

'We know Gault's not in Richmond,' I said. 'He's back wherever he usually hides out, an apartment or room where he has a computer.'

'Chief Tucker hasn't rescinded his order for security for you.'

'He can't order anything for me. Not even lunch.'

'Oh yeah he can. All he does is assign certain cops to you. You either accept the situation or try to outrun them. If he wants to order your damn lunch, you'll get that, too.'

The next morning, I called the New York Medical Examiner's Office and left a message for Dr. Horowitz that suggested he begin DNA analysis on Jane's blood. Then Marino picked me up at my house while neighbors looked out windows and opened handsome front doors to collect their newspapers. Three cruisers were parked in front, Marino's unmarked Ford in the brick drive. Windsor Farms woke up, went to work and watched me squired away by cops. Perfect lawns were white with frost and the sky was almost blue.

When I arrived at the John Marshall Courthouse, it was as I had done so many times in the past. But the deputy at the scanner did not understand why I was here.

'Good morning, Dr. Scarpetta,' he said with a broad smile. 'How about that snow? Don't it just make you feel like you're living in the middle of a Hallmark card? And Captain, a nice day to you, sir,' he said to Marino.

I set off the X-ray machine. A female deputy appeared to search me while the deputy who enjoyed snow went through my bag. Marino and I walked downstairs to an orange-carpeted room filled with rows of sparsely populated orange chairs. We sat in the back, where we listened to people dozing, crackling paper, coughing and blowing their noses. A man in a leather jacket with shirt-tail hanging out prowled for magazines while a man in cashmere read a novel. Next door a vacuum cleaner roared. It butted into the orange room's door and quit.

Including Marino, I had three uniformed officers around me in this deadly dull room. Then at eight-fifty a.m. the jury officer walked in late and went to a podium to orient us.

'I have two changes,' she said, looking directly at me. 'The sheriff on the videotape you're about to see is no longer the sheriff.'

Marino whispered in my ear, 'That's because he's no longer alive.'.

'And,' the jury officer went on, 'the tape will tell you the fee for jury duty is thirty dollars, but it's still twenty dollars.'

'Nuts.' Marino was in my ear again. 'Do you need a loan?'

We watched the video and I learned much about my important civic duty and its privileges. I watched Sheriff Brown on tape as he thanked me again for performing this important service. He told me I had been called up to decide the fate of another person and then showed the computer he had used to select me.

'Names called are then drawn from a jury ballot box,' he recited with a smile. 'Our system of justice depends on our careful consideration of the evidence. Our system depends on us.'