Bentonenlarges the area of skin between the shoulder blades, and she studies the raw abrasion.
“To answer one of your questions,” she says, “yes, it’s possible to tell if an abrasion embedded with splinters might have occurred before or after death. It depends on whether there is tissue response. I don’t guess we have histology.”
“If there are slides, I wouldn’t know,”Bentonreplies.
“Does Thrush have access to a SEM-EDS, a scanning electron microscope with an energy dispersive x-ray system?”
“The state police labs have everything.”
“What I’d like to suggest is he get a sample of the alleged splinters, magnify them one hundred times up to five hundred times and see what they look like. And it would be a good idea to also check for copper.”
Bentonlooks at her, shrugs. “Why?”
“It’s possible we’re finding it all over the place. Even in the storage area of the former Christmas shop. Possibly from copper sprays.”
“TheQuincyfamily was in the landscaping business. I would assume a lot of commercial citrus growers use copper sprays. Maybe the family tracked it into the back of The Christmas Shop.”
“And possibly bodypaint in there, too-in the storage area where we found blood.”
Bentonfalls silent, something else coming to him.
“A common denominator in Basil’s murders,” he says. “All of the victims, at least the ones whose bodies were recovered, had copper. The trace had copper in it, also citrus pollen, which didn’t mean much. There’s citrus pollen all over the place inFlorida. Nobody thought about copper sprays. Maybe he took them someplace where copper sprays were used, someplace with citrus trees.”
He looks out the window at the gray sky as a snowplow works loudly on his street.
“What time do you need to head out?” Scarpetta clicks on a photograph of the abraded area on the dead woman’s back.
“Not until late afternoon. Basil’s coming in at five.”
“Wonderful. See how inflamed it is just in that one discrete area?” She points it out. “An area where there’s been a removal of the epithelial layer of the skin by rubbing against some sort of rough surface. And if you zoom in”-she does-“you can see that before she was cleaned up, there’s serosanguineous fluid on the surface of the abrasion. See it?”
“Okay. What looks like a little bit of scabbing. But not the entire area.”
“If an abrasion is deep enough, you get leakage of fluid from the vessels. And you’re right, the entire area isn’t scabbing, which makes me suspect that the abraded area is actually several scrape abrasions of differing age, injuries caused by repeated contact with a rough surface.”
“That’s strange. I’m trying to imagine it.”
“I wish I had the histology. Polymorphonuclear white cells would indicate the injury is maybe four to six hours old. As for the brownish-reddish scabs, you generally start seeing those in a minimum of eight hours. She lived for at least a little while after she got this injury, these scrapes.”
She studies more photographs, studies them closely. She makes notes on a legal pad.
She says, “If you look at photographs thirteen through eighteen, you’ll see, just barely, areas of what looks like localized red swelling on the backs of her legs and buttocks. What they look like to me are insect bites that have begun to heal. And if you go back to the picture of the abrasion, there’s some localized swelling and barely visible petechial hemorrhaging, which can be associated with spider bites.
“If I’m right, microscopically you should see a congestion of blood vessels and an infiltration of white blood cells, mainly eosinophils, depending on her response. It’s not very accurate, but we could look for tryptase levels, too, in the event she had an anaphylactic response. But I would be surprised. Certainly she didn’t die of anaphylactic shock from an insect bite. I wish I had the damn histology. Could be more in there than splinters. Urticating hairs. Spiders-tarantulas, specifically-flick them, part of their defense system. Ev and Kristin’s church is next door to a pet store that sells tarantulas.”
“Itching?”Bentonasks.
“If she got flicked, she would have itched like hell,” Scarpetta says. “She might have rubbed up against something, scratching herself raw.”
53
She suffered.
“Wherever he kept her, she suffered from bites that were painful and itchy and awful,” Scarpetta says.
“Mosquitoes?”Bentonsuggests.
“Just one? Just one bad bite between her shoulder blades? There are no other similar abrasions with inflammation anywhere else on her body, except on her elbows and knees,” she goes on. “Mild abrasions, scrapes, such as you might expect if someone were kneeling or propping herself up by her elbows on a rough surface. But those abraded areas don’t look anything like this.”
She again points out the inflamed area between the shoulder blades.
“It’s my theory she was kneeling when he shot her,”Bentonsays. “Based on the blood pattern on her slacks. Could you get abrasions on your knees if you had pants on when you were kneeling?”
“Sure.”
“Then he killed her first, then undressed her. That tells a different story, now doesn’t it. If he really wanted to sexually humiliate and terrorize, he would have made her undress, made her kneel nude, then put the shotgun barrel in her mouth and pulled the trigger.”
“What about the shotgun shell in her rectum.”
“Could be anger. Could be he wanted us to find it and link it to the case inFlorida.”
“You’re suggesting her murder might have been impulsive, perhaps anger-driven. Yet you’re also suggesting a significant element of premeditation, of game playing, as if he wanted us to link her case to that robbery-homicide.” Scarpetta looks at him.
“It all means something, at least to him. Welcome to the world of violent sociopaths.”
“Well, one thing is clear,” she says. “For a while, at least, she was held hostage some place where there was insect activity. Possibly fire ants, maybe spiders, and your normal hotel room or house isn’t likely to have an infestation of fire ants or spiders, not around here. Not this time of year.”
“Except tarantulas. Usually they’re pets, unrelated to the climate,”Bentonsays.
“She was abducted from someplace else. Where exactly was the body found?” she then asks. “Right atWalden Pond?”
“About fifty feet off a path that isn’t used much this time of year but certainly is used some. A family hiking near the pond found her. Their black Lab ran off into the woods and started barking.”
“What a horrible thing to happen upon when you’re minding your own business atWalden Pond.”
She scans the autopsy report on the screen.
“She wasn’t out there long, her body dumped after dark,” she says. “If what I’m reading here is accurate. The after-dark part makes sense. And maybe he put her where he did, off the path and not in clear view, because he wasn’t taking any chance of being seen. If anybody happened to show up-although not likely after dark-he’s out of sight in the woods with her. And this business”-she points at the hooded face and what looks like a diaper-“you could do this in minutes if you’d premeditated it, already cut the eyeholes into the panties, if the body was already nude and so on. It all makes me suspect he’s familiar with the area.”
“It makes sense he is.”
“Are you hungry or do you intend to obsess up here all day?”
“What did you make? Then I’ll decide.”
“Risotto alla Sbirraglia. Also known as chicken risotto.”
“Sbirraglia?” He takes her hand. “That some exotic breed of Venetian chicken?”
“Supposedly from the wordsbirri, which is pejorative for the police. A little humor on a day that hasn’t been funny.”
“I don’t understand what the police have to do with a chicken dish.”