He smiled at this and said, “You bet we are.”
They walked on. Nothing in Jessica's experience could have prepared her for the sights and odors of the body farm. Commingled with the thick scent of dogwood and honeysuckle came the sickening sweet odor of decay in the wind. Animals here must have a field day, she thought. But then, the animal patterns of disturbance on and around the body were also major concerns of the anthropological forensics specialists. Jessica heard the rummaging and scurrying of any number of rodents, squirrels, and rabbit. She knew from her reading that they had foxes, wild boars, even a family of bears living on the compound in an attempt to simulate natural phenomena as much as possible.
Jessica had once visited a Civil War battleground within driving distance of Quantico, Virginia, and the place exuded the same eerie feeling as the Body Farm. But, as with the battlefield, vegetation and animal life had reclaimed the place, and here the thistle and bramble bush and rat and squirrel ruled. The incidental work of humans here, to further knowledge of death, dying, and decay in order to both dissuade murder and to catch murderers after the fact, seemed of less importance than the next leaf to be replaced. Birds hummed and chased one another here as if it were a gay, weekend park for families and children to play in. The death and the decay being studied-the concerns of man- were kept at bay by life.
They finished the quick tour of the facility, and Jessica was pleased to see they had found the gate again; a part of her mind found the place like a macabre maze from which she might never find her way.
Fielding broke her reverie now, asking, “Would you like to get some coffee? We can go over what you've brought in my office.”
“ That sounds good, yes.”
They exited the Body Farm, and he locked up behind them. “I do hope someone else has a key?” she mused. “Oh, sure, the instructor working with the group you saw. Any problems, they can reach my beeper number.” Now outside the Body Farm, Jessica began to breathe normally again.
Inside the nearby laboratory facility at the Body Farm, Jessica found that Bass and Fielding and their students were blessed with state-of-the-art equipment, hardware, and software. They had developed a cutting-edge laboratory here in the Bible belt, and they must be congratulated for it. Over coffee, she sat across from Fielding while he delved into the DeCampe case file, noting the details with rapid eye movements. Finally, he looked up at her and said, “I see why you called us. This… this is horrible if it can be believed.”
“ Believe it.”
Among the documents, findings, and suppositions made about the DeCampe case, Jessica had placed photos of Kim Desinor's wounds, photos taken by Dr. Shoate, which she had gotten copies of. “And these welts or bruises on Dr. Desinor? They're real?”
“ As real, I fear, as those on DeCampe.”
He breathed in deeply. “How long has the victim gone missing?”
'Two days, two nights now.”
“ How long since Desinor's first psychosomatic bruising?”
'Twenty-four hours later.”
“ Then perhaps she has twenty-four hours that DeCampe doesn't have, if she's running a day behind, so to speak.”
“ You think so?”
“ Something as bizarre as this? I am guessing at best. Sorry.”
She nodded, accepting this, sipping at her coffee. She felt a well of fear for Kim that filled her being.
“ And how long has Jimmy Lee Purdy's body been in his father's hands?”
“ Picked it up Sunday.”
“ Five days.”
“ He likely kept it on ice for as long as he could do so,” she said, adding, “Can you imagine a cop pulling him over and asking him what he's got in the rear?”
Fielding mused. Then he said, “For that matter, imagine pulling over in a highway oasis, and some old guy is replacing ice in the bottom of a coffin.”
“ If he kept it on ice until he reached D.C., and if the body decay on Purdy were forestalled as long as say the fourth or fifth day, and if she's been forced into contact with the decay for two days and two nights, what kind of estimate on her life span can you give me?”
“ So much depends on… on, well, on so much.”
“ What does that mean? I need some help here.”
“ It means, my dear Dr. Coran, that to determine what sort of clock you have to work with… well… given the dryness of the season in the D.C. area-you did say you suspect he is keeping her in the D.C. area, right?”
“
“ We've come to that conclusion, yes.”
“ Then, given conditions, and if she and the corpse to which she is lashed are being kept in an enclosed, confined space with a floor, that is one thing; atop soil is another, and we'd need to know the type of soil. Sorry, but this is all backward from our usual case. Our usual case involves-”
“ A dead body, I know, I know.”
“ After the fact of murder, yes.” He looked genuinely sorry at seeing her distress. For a moment, their eyes met. His eyes said he wanted to pull a miracle out of the hat for her but that he had none. “Evenings have been cool and dry as have been the days there, right? This will delay the process. If Jimmy Lee Purdy's body is not completely decomposed, as you suspect, she's got some time.”
“ How much time?” Jessica persisted.
“ Again, I don't know if she's been made wet, if she's been made to sweat, if she's in direct or indirect, prolonged or intermittent contact with the corpse-the decay, to be exact.”
“ What do you give her chances of being alive this time tomorrow?” Jessica pleaded. “Nil or nil?”
“ You're asking for an opinion I can't give.” He sat back in his chair and pushed off strands of thinning blond hair from his forehead. “We usually deal with fractures and gunshot wounds and insect activity here, not… What would you call this sort of murder? Induced decay? It's hard to contemplate how anyone could carry out such a sentence.”
“ A time, Doctor, a best guesstimate.”
“ Depends on if the old man wants to hasten it or not. If he cut her, for instance, at the areas of contact, it would hasten her gangrene, decay, and death. But if he wants it torturously slow, then he just lets the little microbes of decay do their own work. That would take more time, most certainly. If he's chosen the latter, then I give her maybe twenty-four hours more before the gangrene is likely to be irreversible. She may be helped to a clean bed and her braises helped by skin grafts, but if infected, gangrene works fast. It will kill her.”
“ We get the sense that this guy wants her to suffer over as long a period as he can make her suffer. It's about revenge.”
“ In that case… Yeah, I'd say then you have twenty-four, forty-eight hours tops.”
“ You can't be any more specific than that?”
'Too many variables. Is she getting water? Is she getting any nutrients? Has he tied her back-to-back, face-to-face, face-to-back? Has he placed her in the sun? The corpse's weight used against her? The level of putrefaction to begin with, yet another unknown. We're working with too many unknowns here.”
“ Then our time clock is forty-eight hours max.”
“ I believe so.”
Fielding blinked as he spoke and as he thought, with a wisp of light strands over a pale face. She had to admire the man. He had made his life's work the study of human decaying flesh in all its permutations and in every circumstance. He had been instrumental in creating the FBI's infamous Body Farm. And there was not a working M.E. in the country who had not benefited, directly or indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly, from the work of men like Bass and Fielding.
A body left for days in the sun, in the shade, in water, in sandy soil, in humus, inside the trunk of a car-they all showed different rates of decay. Fielding had been among the men who had catalogued these fine differences, and in effect had brought many fugitives to justice as a result However, the corpses used in the experiments-primarily prison inmates who had donated their bodies to the advancement of science while in no way knowing just how science would use them-had that fundamental difference from DeCampe. DeCampe was presumably lashed to Jimmy Lee Purdy's rotting corpse, but her flesh was alive, healthy, a vital heart pumping blood to every capillary. Her body would fight off the decay to some degree before eventually losing the battle. So Jessica had to know how much time she had left. Only a man of Fielding's experience might be able to give ho- a time line. The word deadline, she had avoided; it had taken on a whole new meaning in this case since she had met and spoken with Father Pinwaring.