Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

T he heavy rain drums the tent, thunder rumbling as Marino and I finish suiting up. We strap on belt-mounted blowers that will circulate purified air inside hoods that smell like plastic and are the yellowish green of tennis balls. The heavy rubber gloves we pull on will work well enough for my purposes.

“Truth is, we don’t know what’s out here, and normally we’d have drones patrolling,” Lucy is saying. “That’s not possible in this downpour. But our spectrum analyzers aren’t picking up any unusual signals in the noise floor.”

“All that means is nobody’s nearby with a cell phone or some other wireless device that probably wouldn’t work anyway this close to the heart of the Quiet Zone,” Marino retorts.

“You’re right about that,” Lucy admits.

He picks up the field cases, and I carry the wet cardboard box of body pouches. We step outside to loud rain splashing, lightning streaking and thunder cracking. Hurrying through wind and water, we’re careful not to slip in our ill-fitting rubber boots, the visibility poor, my face shield fogging up. Battery-powered auxiliary lighting has been set up inside the black tent, and my breath catches at the gruesome sight of him.

Sal is face up on the Yellow Brick Road, dark red blood coagulated around his head, and I’m shaken to my core. I know instantly that he was alive when dropped from the sky by a flying object we can’t identify. He has massive tissue response to his injuries, and I hope to God he wasn’t conscious at the time.

“How do you want to do this?” Marino says as we pat ourselves dry with paper towels left for us.

“We’re not going to do much here. Only what’s necessary while you take photographs,” I reply.

Our voices are muffled through the rubber speaking diaphragms in our plastic face covers. My breathing is loud, and I’m getting hot in heavy plastic. I ask for the handheld Geiger counter, battery powered, the size of an iPhone but no Wi-Fi required.

“Give me a few minutes,” I then say.

Stepping away from him, I can’t be crowded. And I need to be alone with Sal for now.

“I’ll be right here.” Marino waits near the tent’s opening, and I block him out, pretending he’s not there watching my every move.

I step closer to the body of a friend I’ve cared for half my life. Then I push away thoughts like that, telling myself now’s not the time. But I’m pained by the familiar chiseled cut of his jaw, the straight bridge of his nose, his lean but strong build and shoulder-length gray hair. I recognize the long scar on the left side of his abdomen from surgery to remove his appendix.

Also missing is the jewelry he had on when I saw him in his driveway yesterday. His smartwatch. Several inexpensive beaded bracelets. A fossilized shark’s tooth he wore as a necklace. A gold stud earring. From where I’m standing I can see the pi sign tattoo on his inner left wrist. Taking slow breaths to steady myself, I hold down the Geiger counter’s power button until it beeps.

The software runs through a systems check on the illuminated display, the detector working normally. I slowly walk around the body, waiting for an alarm to sound, and it doesn’t. The radiation level is below the safe threshold. We won’t need a hazmat team, but that doesn’t mean the body wasn’t exposed to something else harmful.

I step closer to look him over, naked on his back, his arms bent at awkward angles. His left leg is broken, the shattered femur protruding, the foot pointing the wrong direction. Sal is hardly recognizable, his face contused and swollen, his eyes barely open, his skin red as Lucy described earlier. The substantial amount of coagulated blood is from his lacerated right temple, and his right collarbone looks broken.

He sustained severe blunt force trauma after dropping from a significant height, and I open my scene case. I find the long glass chemical thermometer, and the ambient temperature is fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. The storm has cooled things off considerably. My rubber-sheathed fingers are clumsy peeling open the plastic wrapper of a disposable scalpel.

I kneel by the body, the bricks kept dry under the tent and littered with apple blossom petals that remind me of confetti. Making a tiny incision in the lower left abdomen, I focus on every detail of what I do. Trying not to see who it is. Trying not to think. Or feel. Or remember.

I insert the thermometer into the liver to take the core body temperature. It will be more reliable than infrared. Slipping brown paper bags over the hands and feet, I secure them with tape and rubber bands. Marino watches through his hooded full-face respirator. I tell him I’m ready, and he carries in the cardboard box, setting it down.

He lifts out two transparent plastic body pouches, spreading them open, one inside the other. The sound of the rain is a constant loud patter, the tent sides moving in the gusting wind.

“How long are you thinking he’s been dead?” he asks.

I remove the thermometer, holding it up to the auxiliary light, wiping off blood.

“His liver temp’s eighty-five degrees,” I tell Marino. “Rigor and livor mortis are well advanced, and based on everything else I’m seeing, I estimate he’s been dead six or seven hours. No longer than that.”

“Well, it’s almost three o’clock now. You’re saying he might have still been alive at eight or nine this morning?” Marino asks doubtfully.

“Yes.”

“If the UAP was spotted on radar at six? Then he was alive when he was thrown overboard and slowly died?” Marino’s eyes are startled behind plastic.

“He wouldn’t have bled like this unless he still had a blood pressure,” I reply. “After he hit the ground, he survived for a while. I can’t tell you exactly how long.”

“I wonder how high up he was when he went overboard.” Marino looks up at the stormy sky as if he might find the answer.

“I don’t know,” I reply.

“If the radiation level is normal, why’s his skin so damn red?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You sure the detector’s working okay?” Marino asks.

“I took multiple readings, and it seems fine,” I reply.

Having done what’s needed for now, we grab the body by the ankles and under the arms. His limbs and neck are stiff, and my heart aches as we lift him. Blood seeps from the head and leg wounds, dripping as we set him down inside the spread-open pouches. We begin peeling off the protective backing to the adhesive seals, the distorted dead face showing through the clear plastic.

Using the flat of his hand like an iron, Marino presses down the seam from one end to the other for the first bag, then the second. When he’s done, I spray disinfectant over the pouched body front and back. We spray down our PPE. Taking it off, we stuff it into garbage bags that I hand to Tron through the tent’s opening.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes with the van,” she says as we give her our scene cases next. “Stay here out of the rain. We’ve already taken down the other tent, clearing out as fast as we can because of what’s moving in.”

“This really sucks,” Marino complains.

We wait near the opening, peering out at the empty grassy area where the big blue tent was but moments ago.

“I can’t believe we’re going to fly in this.” He’s not going to stop worrying about it.

“If Lucy thinks it’s okay, then it is.”

“Her idea of okay isn’t the same as mine,” he replies as my satellite phone rings.

I dig it out of my briefcase, the caller ID out of area .

“Who’s calling me? And how did the person get this number. Hello?” I answer, switching to speakerphone.

“Doctor Scarpetta?” The voice sounds female and familiar.

“And who is this?”

“This is Heidi, the governor’s scheduler. Your secretary said this was the only way to reach you right now, and I apologize for the intrusion. Please hold for Governor Dare.”

“Where are you?” she asks right off.

“At a scene in the western part of the state, and this is a bad time to talk, Roxane.”

“What’s this I hear about you threatening Ryder Briley inside his own house yesterday?” Her voice is demanding over the phone. “Not that I have an ounce of sympathy for him. But I understand he’s suing me, the medical examiner’s office, God knows who else and I absolutely don’t need publicity like this.”

“Ryder Briley is lying,” I reply. “He’s doing what he can to divert attention away from his daughter’s death investigation and perhaps other bad things going on.”

I explain that he’s been calling my office, parking outside my building, doing his best to intimidate. He attempted to have his daughter’s body spirited away before I’m done with it.

“What’s the loud background noise?” the governor asks. “Sounds like you’re in a carwash.”

“We’re in a tent, and it’s raining very hard.”

“What can you tell me about Luna Briley’s autopsy?”

“She died from a gunshot wound to the head.”

“I’m asking for the truth, Kay. Do you think she shot herself as the Brileys are claiming all over the news?”

“I think the parents have plenty to worry about.” That’s as much as I’m going to say, but it’s enough.

“Then she may have been murdered with her father’s gun,” the governor replies predictably. “And the parents were the only other people home when the shooting occurred, based on what I’ve heard?”

“The best person to talk to about the case is Alexandria investigator Blaise Fruge.”

“What I want to know from you, Kay, is whether you’re going to call Luna Briley’s death an accident or a homicide. Because it certainly sounds suspicious to me.”

“There are a lot of questions yet to be answered.”

“Prison would be exactly what Ryder Briley deserves,” she says, and I abruptly end the call as if the signal was dropped.

I can’t let her try to influence me or appear to be doing that, and I want no record of it. Looking up her cell phone number in my contacts list, I try her back, ending the call when she answers. I do this one more time before texting her that I’m in a bad cell and we’ll have to talk later.

Keep me informed, she writes back as I’m looking out at the rain, catching a movement in the corner of my eye.

I feel something looking at me as the hair pricks up on my arms and the back of my neck. Then I catch a movement in an empty window of the Witch’s Castle, something stirring slightly. A shape in the gloom.

“We’ve got company,” I inform Marino.

He looks where I point, but the castle window is dark, nothing there.

“I don’t see anything,” he says.

“I saw something.”

“Probably your eyes playing tricks on you.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell him as he looks around tensely, his hand near his gun again.

“I’m feeling worse about this place every minute,” he decides.

When the van pulls up, we lift the body, carrying it out. The cold rain loudly spatters the transparent plastic, my boots splashing through puddles. The investigator named Rob is behind the wheel, and Tron jumps out of the passenger side. She opens the tailgate while telling us that tornadoes are touching down less than thirty miles away.

“We need to get out of here.” She’s emphatic as we slide in the body.

“What about the tent?” Marino asks.

“We’re leaving it for now.”

Dripping as we climb into the van, Marino and I buckle ourselves into the cloth-covered bench seat, sliding the door shut. Then we’re following the Yellow Brick Road, no one saying much, the presence of the body in back palpable like an undertow. I’m staring out my window when the van suddenly brakes to a stop.

“Whoa!” Rob looks shocked.

“Holy shit!” Marino exclaims.

“Nobody open your doors,” Tron warns as I see what they’re talking about.

The spotted cat is the size of a Labrador retriever, standing on the yellow bricks in the flare of headlights no more than twenty feet from our van’s front bumper. A male leopard or a cheetah I decide as it comes closer. He seems unbothered by the rain, twitching his tail, staring at us with eyes glowing bright white like something supernatural.

“I wonder if he escaped from the wildlife institute near Monterey,” I suggest.

“That’s maybe thirty miles from here,” Tron replies. “Still a pretty good distance, though.”

“Hell, that would be nothing for a cheetah. They can run as fast as a car,” Marino says as if he’s an expert. “I’m pretty sure that’s what this is. Their heads are smaller than a leopard’s.”

“Why end up here?” Tron asks.

“That’s what I’m wondering,” I reply, the big cat standing as still as a statue, staring.

“Although it’s odd that the Brileys own this theme park and also give a lot of money to the wildlife institute,” Tron adds.

“Maybe someone’s illegal pet that’s wandered off.” Rob watches through the sweeping wipers. “It’s used to people or it wouldn’t be this close to us, just standing there like that. I bet if I got out it would come right up to me.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Marino says as I roll down my window halfway. “Whether it’s used to people or not it could tear you apart. And there’d be no way for us to stop it.”

“I may have seen him in a second-floor window of the Witch’s Castle as we were leaving. Maybe that’s where he’s been holing up,” I explain, not needing a cell signal to take a picture with my phone. “Poor thing’s probably hungry. Although he doesn’t look all that thin to me. His ribs aren’t showing.”

I think of what’s left in my briefcase, doubting he’d want a granola bar.

“Maybe he knows what we’ve got in the back of the van.” Marino adds a horrific thought. “If Lucy hadn’t found the body when she did, maybe that big cat would have gotten to it first.”

“I was just thinking the same thing.” Tron follows my lead, taking a picture through the windshield. “What’s strange is the body was there for a while before Lucy and I found it but the cat stayed away.”

“We need to report him to animal control and send a picture,” I explain, and the big cat saunters off as if he heard me, disappearing in the fog. “I don’t want him or something else hurt. And he can’t survive out here. If nothing else, someone will end up shooting him.”

“You got that right,” Marino says. “If he’d showed up while we were waiting in the tent I might have done just that.”

“There’s been enough death and destruction today,” I reply with a sudden spike of emotion.

“We’ll call it in.” Rob resumes driving slowly as I roll up my window, looking for the cat and not seeing it, the encounter surreal.

It feels symbolic, of what I don’t know, but I’m reminded of Sal. He was always kind to animals and especially fond of cats, although he hadn’t owned one in a while. But whenever he’d come to the house for dinner, he’d dote on Lucy’s rescued Scottish fold, Merlin, who stalks our property like something wild.