"And that's it?" I asked.
"She's called this many times to find out if her daughter suffered?"
"Well, no. She's had questions and information. Nothing of particular relevance. " He smiled sadly.
"I think she just needs someone to talk to. She's a sweet lady who's lost everyone in her life. I can't tell you how badly I feel for her and how much I pray they catch the horrible monster who did this. That Gault monster I've read about. The world will never be safe as long as he's in it."
"The world will never be safe. Dr. Jenrette. But I can't tell you how much we want to catch him, too. Catch Gault. Catch anybody who does something like this," I said as I opened a thick envelope of glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Only one was unfamiliar, and I studied it intensely for a long time as Dr. Jenrette's unemphatic voice went on. I did not know what I was seeing because I had never seen anything quite like this, and my emotional response was a combination of excitement and fear. The photograph showed Emily Steiner's left buttock, where there was an irregular brownish blotch on the skin no bigger than a bottle cap.
"The visceral pleura shows scattered petechiae along the interlobar fissures"
"What is this?" I interrupted Dr. Jenrette's dictation again. He put down the microphone as I came around to his side of the desk and placed the photograph in front of him. I pointed out the mark on Emily's skin as I smelled Old Spice and thought of my ex-husband. Tony, who had always worn too much of it.
"This mark on her buttock is not covered in your report," I added.
"I don't know what that is," he said without a trace of defensiveness. He simply sounded tired. "} just assumed it was some sort of postmortem artifact."
"I don't know of any artifact that looks like that. Did you resect it?"
"No."
"Her body was on something that left that mark." I returned to my chair, sat down, and leaned against the edge of his desk.
"It could be important."
"Yes, if that's the case, I could see how it might be important," he replied, looking increasingly dejected.
"She's not been in the ground long." I spoke quietly but with feeling. He stared uneasily at me.
"She's never going to be in better shape than she is now," I went on.
"I really think we ought to take another look at her." He did not blink as he wet his lips.
"Dr. Jenrette," I said, "let's get her up now." Dr. Jenrette flipped through cards in his Rolodex and reached for the phone.
I watched him dial.
"Hello, Dr. James Jenrette here," he said to whoever answered.
"I wonder if Judge Begley might be in? " The Honorable Hal Begley said he would see us in his chambers in half an hour. I drove while Jenrette gave directions, and I parked on College Street with plenty of time to spare. The Buncombe County Courthouse was an old dark brick building that I suspected had been the tallest edifice downtown until not too many years before. Its thirteen stories were topped by the jail, and as I looked up at barred windows against a bright blue sky, I thought of Richmond's overcrowded jail, spread out over acres, with coils of razor wire the only view. I believed it would not be long before cities like Asheville would need more cells as violence continued to become so alarmingly common.
"Judge Begley's not known for his patience," Dr. Jenrette warned me as we climbed marble steps inside the old courthouse. "I can promise he's not going to like your plan."
I knew that Dr. Jenrette did not like my plan, either, for no forensic pathologist wants a peer digging up his work. Dr. Jenrette and I both knew that implicit in all of this was that he had not done a good job.
"Listen," I said as he headed down a corridor on the third floor, "I don't like the plan, either. I don't like exhumations. I wish there were another way."
"I guess I just wish I had more experience in the kinds of cases you see every day," he added.
"I don't see cases like this every day," I said, touched by his humility.
"Thank God, I don't."
"Well, I'd be lying to you. Dr. Scarpetta, if I said that it wasn't real hard on me when I got called to that little girl's scene. Maybe I should have spent a little more time."
"I think Buncombe County is extremely lucky to have you," I said sincerely as we opened the judge's outer office door.
"I wish I had more doctors like you in Virginia. I'd hire you." He knew I meant it and smiled as a secretary as old as any woman I'd ever met who was still employed peered up at us through thick glasses. She used an electric typewriter instead of a computer, and I surmised from the numerous gray steel cabinets lining walls that filing was her forte. Sunlight seeped wanly through barely opened Venetian blinds, a galaxy of dust suspended in the air. I smelled Rose Milk as she rubbed a dollop of moisturizing cream into her bony hands.
"Judge Begley's expecting you," she said before we introduced ourselves.
"You can just go on in. That door there." She pointed to a shut door across from the one we had just come through.
"Now just so you know, court's adjourned for lunch and he's due back at exactly one."
"Thank you," I said.
"We'll try not to keep him long."
"Won't make any difference if you try." Dr. Jenrette's shy knock on the judge's thick oak door was answered by a distracted "Come in!" from the other side. We found His Honor behind a partner's desk, suit jacket off as he sat erectly in an old red leather chair. He was a gaunt, bearded man nearing sixty, and as he glanced over notes in a legal pad, I made a number of telling assessments about him. The orderliness of his desk told me that he was busy and quite capable, and his unfashionable tie and soft-soled shoes bespoke someone who did not give a damn how people like me assessed him.
"Why do you want to violate the sepulchre?" he asked in slow Southern cadences that belied a quick mind as he turned a page in a legal pad.
"After going over Dr. Jenrette's reports," I replied! "we agree some questions were not answered by the first examination of Emily Steiner's body."
"I know of Dr. Jenrette but don't believe I know you," Judge Begley said to me as he placed the legal pad on the desk.
"I'm Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia."
"I was told you had something to do with the FBI."
"Yes, sir. I am the consulting forensic pathologist for the Investigative Support Unit."
"Is that like the Behavioral Science Unit?"
"One and the same. The Bureau changed the name several years ago."
"You're talking about the folks who do the profiling of these serial killers and other aberrant criminals who until recently we didn't have to worry about in these parts." He watched me closely, lacing his fingers in his lap.
"That's what we do," I said.
"Your Honor," Dr. Jenrette said.
"The Black Mountain Police has requested the assistance of the FBI. There's some fear that the man who murdered the Steiner girl is the same man who killed a number of people in Virginia."
"I'm aware of that. Dr. Jenrette, since you were so kind as to explain some of this when you called earlier. However, the only item on the agenda right now is your wish for me to grant you the right to dig up this little girl.
"Before I let you do something as upsetting and disrespectful as that, you're going to have to give me a powerfully good reason. And I do wish the two of you would sit down and make yourselves comfortable. That's why I have chairs on that side of my desk."
"She has a mark on her skin," I said as I seated myself.
"What sort of mark?" He eyed me with interest as Dr. Jenrette slipped a photograph out of an envelope and set it on the judge's blotter.
"You can see it in the photograph," Jenrette said. The judge's eyes dropped to the photograph, his face unreadable.
"We don't know what the mark is," I explained.
"But it may tell us where the body lay. It may be some type of injury." He picked up the photograph, squinting as he examined it more closely.