Kay Scarpet - The Last Precinct Part 12

"How long could she have survived, bleeding like that?"

"Minutes." I find an autopsy photograph that shows the spinal cord after it has been removed from the body and centered on a green towel, along with a white plastic ruler for a scale. The smooth creamy cord is contused a violent purple-blue and partly severed in an area correlating with the gunshot wound that penetrated Luong's neck between the fifth and sixth cervical disks. "She would have been instantly paralyzed," I explain, "but the contusion means she had a blood pressure, her heart was still pumping, and we know that anyway from the arterial blood spatter at the scene. So yes. She was probably conscious as he dragged her by her feet along the aisle, back to the storeroom. What I can't say is how long she was conscious."

"She would have been able to see what he was doing and watch her own blood spurting out of her neck as she bled to death?" Berger's face is keen, her energy at a higher wattage that burns brightly in her eyes.

"Again, it depends on how long she was conscious," I tell her.

"But it's in the realm of possibility she might have been conscious the entire time he was dragging her down the aisle, back to the storeroom?"

"Absolutely."

"Could she talk or scream?"

"She might not have been able to do anything."

"But saying no one heard her scream, that wouldn't mean she was unconscious?"

"No, it wouldn't mean that necessarily," I reply. "If you've been shot in the neck and are hemorrhaging and being dragged..."

"Especially dragged by someone who looks like him."

"Yes. You might be too terrified to scream. He might have told her to shut up, for that matter."

"Good." Berger seems pleased. "How do you know he dragged her by the feet?"

"b.l.o.o.d.y drag pattern made by her long hair, and trails of blood from her fingers above her head," I describe. "If you're paralyzed and being dragged by your ankles, for example, your arms are going to spread. Like making angels in the snow."

"Wouldn't the human impulse be to grab your neck and try to stop the bleeding?" Berger asks. "And she can't. She's paralyzed and awake, watching herself die and antic.i.p.ating what the h.e.l.l he's going to do to her next." She pauses for impact. Berger has the jury in mind, and I can tell already that she didn't earn her incredible reputation accidentally. "These women really suffered," she quietly adds.

"They most certainly did." My blouse is damp and I am cold again.

"Did you antic.i.p.ate the same treatment?" She looks at me, a challenge in her eyes, as if daring me to explore everything that went through my mind when Chandonne forced his way through my front door and tried to throw his coat over my head. "Can you remember anything you thought?" she prods. "What did you feel? Or did it all happen so fast..."

"Fast," I cut in. "Yes, it happened fast," I go back. "Fast. And forever. Our internal clocks quit working when we are panicking, fighting for our lives. That's not a medical fact, just a personal observation," I add, groping, feeling my way through memories that aren't complete.

"Then minutes might have seemed like hours to Kim Lu-ong," Berger decides. "Chandonne was with you probably only minutes as he chased you through your great room. How long did it seem?" She is completely focused on this, riveted to me.

"It seemed ..." I struggle to describe it. There is no basis for comparison. "Like a flutter..." My voice trails off as I stare at nothing, unblinking, sweating and chilled.

"Like a flutter?" Berger sounds faintly incredulous. "Can you explain what you mean by that, by flutter?"

"Like reality distorts, ripples, like wind ruffling water, the way a puddle looks when wind blows across it, all of your senses suddenly so acute as the animal's survival instinct overrides the brain. You hear air move. You see air move. Everything seems in slow motion, collapsing in on itself, and endless. You see everything, every detail of what is happening, and notice ..."

"Notice?" Berger prods.

"Yes, notice" I talk on. "Notice the hair on his hands catching light like monofilament, like fis.h.i.+ng line, almost translucent. Notice that he looks almost happy."

"Happy? What do you mean?" Berger quietly asks me. "Was he smiling?"

"I would describe it differently. Not a smile so much as the primitive joy, l.u.s.t, raging hunger you see in the eyes of an animal about to be fed fresh raw meat." I take a deep breath, focusing on the wall inside my conference room, on a calendar with a Christmas snow scene. Berger sits rigidly, her hands motionless on top of the table. "The problem is not what you observe, it's what you remember," I go on more lucidly. "I think the shock of it all causes a disk error and you can't remember with the same degree of intense attention to detail. Maybe that's survival, too. Maybe we need to forget some things so we don't keep reliving them. Forgetting is part of healing. Like the Central Park jogger dragged off by a gang, raped, beaten, left for dead. Why would she want to remem-her? And I know you are well acquainted with that case," I add with irony. It was Berger's case, of course.

a.s.sistant District Attorney Berger s.h.i.+fts in her chair. "But you do remember," she quietly points out. "And you had seen what Chandonne does to his victims. 'Severe lacerations to the face.' " She begins skimming Luong's autopsy report out loud. " 'Ma.s.sive comminuted fractures of right parietal bone ... fracture of right frontal bone ... extending down the midline... bilateral subdural hematoma ... disruption of cerebral tissue beneath with accompanying subarachnoid hemorrhaging ... depressed fractures that drove the inner table of the skull into the underlying brain ... eggsh.e.l.l-like fractures ... clotting ..."

"Clotting suggests a survival time of at least six minutes from the time the injury was inflicted." I return to my role of interpreter for the dead.

"A h.e.l.l of a long time," Berger observes, and I can imagine her making a jury sit in silence for six minutes to show them just how long.

"The crushed facial bones, and here"I touch areas of a photograph"the splits and tears to skin made by some sort of tool that left a pattern of round and linear wounds."

"Pistol whipping."

"In this case, the Luong case, yes. In Bray's case, he used an unusual type of hammer."

"A chipping hammer."

"I can see you've done your homework."

"A funny habit of mine," she says.

"Premeditation," I go on. "He brought his weapons to the scenes versus using something he found when he got there. And this photo here"I pick out another horror"shows knuckle bruises from punching. So he also used his fists to beat her, and from this angle we can see her sweater and bra over there on the floor. It appears he tore them off with his bare hands."

"Based on what?"

"Under the scope you can see that the fibers are torn instead of cut," I reply.

15S.

Berger is staring at a body diagram. "Don't think I've ever seen so many bite marks inflicted by a human. Frenzied. Any reason to suspect he might have been under the influence of drugs when he committed these murders?"

"I wouldn't have a way to know."

"What about when you encountered him?" she asks. "When he attacked you on Sat.u.r.day, shortly after midnight. And by the way, he had the same odd type of hammer, as I understand? A chipping hammer?"

" 'Frenzied' is a good word for it. But I would have no reason to know whether he was on drugs." I pause. "Yes, he had a chipping hammer with him when he tried to attack me."

"Tried? Let's state the facts." She gives me her eyes. "He attacked you. Not tried. He attacked you and you escaped. You got a good look at the hammer?"

"Good point, if we're stating facts. It was a tool of some sort. I know what a chipping hammer looks like."

"What do you remember? The flutter," she refers back to rny strange rendition. "Those endless minutes, the hair on his hands catching light like monofilament."

I envision a black coil handle. "I saw the coil," I tell her as best I can. "I remember that. It's so unusual. A chipping hammer has a handle that looks like a thick, black spring."

"You sure? That's what you saw when he came after you?" She pushes me.

"I am vaguely sure."

"It would be helpful if you are more than vaguely sure," she responds.

"I saw the tip of it. Like a big black beak. When he raised it to hit me. Yes, I'm sure. He had a chipping hammer." I become defiant. "That's exactly what he had."

"They took Chandonne's blood in the E.R.," Berger informs me. "Negative for drugs and alcohol."

She is testing me. She already knew Chandonne was negative for drags and alcohol, yet she withheld that detail long enough to hear my impressions. She wants to see if I can be objective when talking about my own case. She wants to see if I can stick to the facts. I hear Marino down the hall. He walks in with three steaming foam cups and sets them on the table, sliding a black coffee my way. "I don't know what you take, but you got cream," he rudely tells Berger. "And yours truly takes it fully loaded with cream and sugar because I sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't want to do anything that might deprive me of my nourishment."

"How seriously messed up would someone be if he got formalin in his eyes?" Berger says to me.

"Depends on how quickly the person rinsed," I objectively answer, as if her inquiry is theoretical and not an allusion to my maiming another human being.

"Must hurt like living h.e.l.l. An acid, right? I've seen what it does to tissueturns it into rubber," she comments.

"Not literally."

"Of course not literally," she agrees with a trace of a smile that suggests I ought to lighten up a little, as if that is possible.

"If you suspend tissue in formalin for a long period of time, or inject itin embalming, for example," I explain, "then yes, it fixes tissue, preserves it indefinitely."

But Berger has little interest in the science of formalin. I am not even sure how interested she is in the extent of any permanent damage the chemical may have caused Chandonne. I have the sensation she is more focused on how I feel about causing him pain and possible disability. She does not ask me. She just looks at me. I am beginning to feel the weight of those looks. Her eyes are like experienced palpating hands feeling for any anomaly or tenderness.

"We got any idea who he's going to get for a lawyer?" Marino reminds us he is present.

Berger sips her coffee. "The six-million-dollar question."

"So you don't got a clue," Marino says with suspicion.

"Oh, I have a clue. It will be someone you definitely won't like."

"Huh," he retorts. "That's easy to predict. I've never met a defense attorney I liked."

"At least it will be my problem," she says. "Not yours." She puts him in his place again.

I bristle at this, too. "Look," I tell her, "trying him in New York isn't something that makes me happy."

"I understand how you feel."

"I seriously doubt it."

"Well, I've talked to your friend Mr. Righterenough to tell you exactly how it would go if you put Monsieur Chandonne on trial here in Virginia." She is cool now, the expert, just a little sardonic. "The court would nol-pros the impersonating-an-officer charge and reduce attempted murder to entering a dwelling with intent to commit murder." She pauses, looking for my reaction. "He never actually touched you. That's the problem."

"Actually, it would have been more of a problem if he had," I answer, refusing to show that she is really beginning to p.i.s.s me off.

"He may have raised that hammer to strike you, but he never did." Her eyes are steady on mine. "For which we're all grateful."

"You know what they say, your rights are honored only in the breach." I lift my coffee.

"Righter would have filed a motion to have all of the charges combined into one trial, Dr. Scarpetta. And then what would have been your role? Expert witness? Fact witness? Or victim? The conflict is glaringly apparent. Either you testify as the medical examiner and the attack on you is completely left out, or you're simply a victim who survived and someone else testifies to your record. Or worse"she pauses for effect"Righter stipulates your reports. He seems to have a habit of that, from what I understand."

"The guy's got the guts of an empty sock," Marino says. "But the Doc's right. Chandonne ought to pay for what he tried to do to her. And he sure as h.e.l.l should pay for what he did to the other two women. And he ought to get the death penalty. At least down here, we'd fry him."

"Not If Dr. Scarpetta were somehow discredited as a witness, Captain. A good defense attorney would be quick to paint her as conflicted and squirt a lot of ink into the water.

"Don't matter. It's all moot, right?" Marino says. "He ain't being tried here and I wasn't born yesterday. He won't ever be tried here. You guys will lock him up and us small-timers down here will never get our day in court."

"What was he doing in New York two years ago?" I ask. "Do you have any ideas about that?"

"Huh," Marino says as if he knows details that have not been shared with me yet. "That's a story."

"Could it be his family has cartel connections in my fair city?" Berger lightly suggests.

"h.e.l.l, they probably have a d.a.m.n penthouse apartment," Marino retorts.

"And Richmond?" Berger goes on. "Isn't Richmond a stopping-off point between New York and Miami along the I-95 drug corridor?"

"Oh yeah," Marino answers. "Before Project Exile got going and slapped these drones with time in federal prison if they were caught with guns, drugs. Yeah, Richmond used to be a real popular place to do your business. So if the Chandonne cartel's in Miamiand we already know that, based on the undercover stuff Lucy was doing down thereand if there's a big New York connection, then no big surprise that cartel guns and drugs were ending up in Richmond, too."

"Were?" she queries. "Maybe still are."

"I guess all this will keep ATF busy for a while," I say.

"Huh," Marino snorts again.

A weighty pause, then Berger says, "Well, now that you've brought that up." Her demeanor tells me she is about to give me news I will not appreciate. "ATF has a little problem, it appears. As do the FBI and the French police. The hope, obviously, was to use Chandonne's arrest as an opportunity to get warrants to search his family's Paris home and maybe during the course of it find evidence that might help bring down the cartel. But we're having a little difficulty placing Jean-Baptiste inside the family house. In fact, we have nothing to prove who he is. No driver's license. No pa.s.sport or birth certificate. No record this bizarre man even exists. Only his DNA, which is so close to the DNA of the man found in your port we can a.s.sume they are probably related, probably brothers. But I need something more tangible than that if I'm going to get a jury on my side."

"And no way in h.e.l.l his family's going to come forward and claim the Loup-Garou," Marino says in awful French. "That's the whole reason there's no record of him to begin with, right? The mighty Chandonnes don't want the world to know they got a son who's a hairy-a.s.s serial-killing freak."

"Wait a minute," I stop them. "Didn't he identify himself when he was arrested? Where did we get the name Jean-Baptiste Chandonne, if not from him?"

"We got it from him." Marino rubs his face in his hands. "s.h.i.+t. Show her the videotape," he suddenly blurts out to Berger. I have no idea what videotape he is talking about, and Berger isn't at all happy he mentioned it. "The Doc has a right to know," he says.

"What we have here is a new spin on a defendant who has a DNA profile but no ident.i.ty." Berger sidesteps the subject Marino has just tried to force.

What tape? I think, as paranoia heats up. What tape?

"You got it with you?" Marino regards Berger with open hostility, the two of them squaring off in a stony angry tableau, staring across the table at each other. His face darkens. He outrageously grabs her briefcase and slides it toward him as if he plans to help himself to whatever is inside it. Berger places her hand on top of it with an arresting look. "Captain!" she warns in a tone that bodes the worst trouble he has ever seen. Marino withdraws his hand, his face a furious red. Berger opens her briefcase and gives me her full attention. "I have every intention of showing the tape to you," she measures her words. "I just wasn't going to do it right this minute, but we can." She is very controlled but I can tell she is very angry as she slides a videotape out of a manila envelope. She gets up and inserts it into the VCR. "Someone know how to work this thing?"["_Toc37098913"]

CHAPTER 11.

I TURN ON THE TELEVISION AND HAND BERGER THE remote control.

"Dr. Scarpetta"she completely ignores Marino"before we get into this, let me give you a little background on how the district attorney's office works in Manhattan. As I've already mentioned, we do a number of things very differently from what you're accustomed to here in Virginia. I was hoping to explain all that to you before you were subjected to what you are about to see. Are you familiar with our system of homicide call?"

"No," I reply as my nerves tighten and begin to hum.