14
Lucy was not in a private room, and I walked right past her at first because she did not look like anyone I knew. Her hair, stiff with blood, was dark red and standing up, her eyes black-and-blue. She was propped up in bed in a drug-induced stage that was neither here nor there. I got close to her and took her hand.
"Lucy?" She barely opened her eyes.
"Hi," she said groggily.
"How are you feeling?"
"Not too bad. I'm sorry. Aunt Kay. How did you get here?"
"I rented a car."
"What kind?"
"A Lincoln."
"Bet you got one with air bags on both sides." She smiled wanly.
"Lucy, what happened?"
"All I remember is going to the restaurant. Then someone was sewing up my head in the emergency room."
"You have a concussion."
"They think I hit the top of my head on the roof when the car was flipping.
I feel so bad about your car." Her eyes filled with tears.
"Don't worry about the car. That's not important. Do you remember anything at all about the accident?" She shook her head and reached for a tissue.
"Do you remember anything about dinner at the Outback or your visit to Green Top?"
"How did you know? Oh, well." She drifted for a moment, eyelids heavy.
"I went to the restaurant about four."
"Who did you meet?"
"Just a friend. I left at seven to come back here."
"You had a lot to drink," I said.
"I didn't think I had that much. I don't know why I ran off the road, but I think something happened."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know. I can't remember, but it seems like something happened."
"What about the gun store? Do you remember stopping there?"
"I don't remember leaving."
"You bought a.380 semiautomatic pistol, Lucy. Do you remember that?"
"I know that's why I went there."
"So you go to a gun shop when you've been drinking. Can you tell me what was in your mind?"
"I didn't want to be staying at your house without protection. Pete recommended the gun."
"Marino did?" I asked, shocked.
"I called him the other day. He said to get a Sig and said he always uses Green Top in Hanover."
"He's in North Carolina," I said.
"I don't know where he was. I called his pager and he called me back."
"I have guns. Why didn't you ask me?"
"I want my own and I'm old enough now." She could not keep her eyes open much longer.
I found her doctor on the floor and caught up with him for a moment before I left. He was very young and talked to me as if I were a worried aunt or mother who did not know the difference between a kidney and a spleen. When he rather abruptly explained to me that a concussion was basically a bruised brain resulting from a severe blow, I did not say a word or change the expression on my face. He blushed when a medical student, who happened to be one of my advisees, passed us in the hall and greeted me by name.
I left the hospital and went to my office, where I had not been for more than a week. My desk looked rather much as I feared it would, and I spent the next few hours trying to clear it while I tried to track down the state police officer who worked Lucy's accident. I left a message, then called Gloria Loving at Vital Records.
"Any luck?" I asked.
"I can't believe I'm getting to talk to you twice in one week. Are you across the street again?"
"I am." I couldn't help but smile.
"No luck so far, Kay," she said.
"We haven't found any record in California of a Mary Jo Steiner who died of SIDS. We're trying to code the death several other ways. Is it possible you could get a date and place of death?"
"I'll see what I can do," I said.
I thought of calling Denesa Steiner and ended up just staring at the phone.
I was about to do it when State Police Officer Reed, whom I had been trying to reach, returned my call.
"I wonder if you could fax me your report," I said to him.
"Actually, Hanover's got a lot of that."
"I thought the accident occurred on Ninety-five," I said, for the interstate was state police jurisdiction, no matter the locale.
"Officer Sinclair rolled up just as I did, so he gave me a hand. When the tags came back to you, I thought it was important to check that out." Oddly, it had not crossed my mind before this moment that tags coming back to me would have created quite a stir.
"What is Officer Sinclair's first name?" I asked.
"His initials are A. D." I believe. "
I was very fortunate that Officer Andrew D. Sinclair was in his office when I called him next. He told me Lucy was involved in a single-car accident that occurred while she was driving at a high rate of speed southbound on Ninety-five just north of the Henrico County line.
"How high a rate of speed?" I asked him.
"Seventy miles per hour."
"What about skid marks?"
"We found one thirty-two feet long where it appears she tapped her brakes and then went off the road."
"Why would she tap her brakes?"
"She was traveling at a high rate of speed and under the influence, ma'am. Could be she drifted off to sleep and suddenly was on somebody's bumper."
"Officer Sinclair, you need a skid mark of three hundred and twenty-nine feet to calculate that someone was driving seventy miles an hour. You have a thirty-two-foot skid mark here. I don't see how you can possibly calculate that she was driving seventy miles an hour."
"The speed limit on that stretch is sixty-five" was all he had to say.
"What was her blood alcohol?"
"Point one-two."
"I wonder if you could fax me your diagrams and report as soon as possible and tell me where my car was towed."
"It's at Covey's Texaco in Hanover. Off Route One. It's totaled, ma'am. If you can give me your fax number, I'll get you those reports right away."
I had them within the hour, and by using an overlay to interpret the codes I determined that Sinclair basically assumed Lucy was drunk and fell asleep at the wheel. When she suddenly awoke and tapped her brakes, she went into a skid, lost control of the car, left the pavement, and over corrected This resulted in her jerking back onto the road and flipping across two lanes of traffic before crashing upside down into a tree.
I had serious problems with his assumptions and one important detail. My Mercedes had anti lock brakes. When Lucy hit the brakes she should not have gone into the sort of skid Officer Sinclair had described.
I left my office and went downstairs to the morgue. My deputy chief. Fielding, and two young female forensic pathologists I had hired last year had cases on the three stainless steel tables. The sharp noise of steel against steel rose above the background thunder of water drumming into sinks, air blowing, and generators humming. The huge stainless steel refrigerator door opened with a loud suck as one of the morgue assistants rolled out another body.
"Dr. Scarpetta, can you look at this?" Dr. Wheat was a woman from Topeka. Her intelligent gray eyes peered out at me from behind a plastic face shield speckled with blood.
I went to her table.
"Does this look like soot in the wound?" She pointed a bloody gloved finger at a bullet wound to the back of the neck.
I bent close.
"It's got burned edges, so maybe it's searing. Was there clothing?"
"He didn't have a shirt on. It happened in his residence."
"Well, this is an ambiguous one. We need to get a microscopic."
"Entrance or exit?" Fielding asked as he studied a wound from his own case.
"Let me get your vote while you're here."
"Entrance," I said.
"Me, too. Are you going to be around?"
"In and out."
"In and out of town or in and out of here?"
"Both. I've got my Skypager."
"It's going all right?" he asked, his formidable biceps bunching as he cut through ribs.