The Stones Cry Out (31 page)

John said, "Actually, we found a sandal first. Really, really high heel. Blue, shiny."

I stared at him. Was he leering?

Bauer cleared her throat and snapped on latex gloves. Cradling the rotting foot, she tapped a button on the floor. It started an unseen recorder documenting her preliminary observations.

“Signs of violent amputation. Possible cause of bone breakage was the weight of the garbage, particularly if the body was suffering rigor and decomposition of skin and ligaments." She set down the foot, returning to the body. "My assistant noted one gunshot wound, back of the head. I’ll say now that it’s the probable cause of death, although I see contusions on her face that appear to precede death."

“About that bullet in the head,” John said. “Can you get us anything on the caliber?”

Without a word Bauer walked over to the stainless steel counter. When she lifted an electric saw, I turned around and stared across the room. Sink. Soap dispensers. Laminated documents on the wall. The buzzing triggered my gag reflex which felt almost worn out from the landfill. I wondered how long it would be before I could eat again.

When the buzzing stopped, I held my breath and turned around. Bauer’s rubber apron was shiny and red. Bright freckles sprayed her safety goggles. In her bloody gloved fingers she held a bullet. The brass so bright it looked cleaned. She tossed the cartridge into a metal bedpan. It landed with a
ping.

John stepped forward, picked up the pan. He held it under the pendant light. “Looks like thirty-eight,” he told me, before turning to Bauer. “Her body was wrapped in plastic."

"What kind of plastic?"

"Lawn bags, garbage bags. The big black things. Duct-taped around her like a mummy."

"Not like a mummy," she corrected him. "Mummies are embalmed first. But the plastic changes what I said about her time in the landfill. I was assuming accelerated decay because her skin would have been in contact with acidic municipal waste. And the heat of summer. But the bags would alter the rate of decomposition.

Bauer’s small hands hovered two inches above the mottled brown and green skin, moving like augers. Wisps of her pale blond hair peeked out from under her surgical cap. Somehow, despite bloody gloves and an apron smeared with blood, the medical examiner looked clean, sparkling clean. Something about her reminded me of a diamond. Earth's hardest substance, glittering with weightless light.

Her hand stopped. "There."

"Where there?" John said.

She pointed at the right leg. "Do you see those?"

"Worms?” he said. “Yeah. I've been looking at them all day."

“She means the pupae sacs."

For the first time, Bauer looked at me directly. "Yes, that is correct."

John said, "Raleigh here used to work in the Bureau's lab, in DC."

"Entymology?" she asked.

"Mineralogy."

She raised an eyebrow. “Can you explain to Agent Breit the significance of these 'worm' holes in her skin?"

“When maggots turn into flies they leave behind empty pupae cases. If you see the sacs, that means there’s been at least one fly cycle since time of death. You can get a timeline because each fly cycle requires a minimum of fourteen days."

"And the soil," she said. “I presume you collected some.”

"Yeah," John said, "Raleigh took a bunch of it. What gives?"

Her eyes were twinkling. She enjoyed talking over his head, playing with his ego.

"I took soil samples because as the human body decomposes, it releases five fatty acids. The chemical composition of those acids varies with time. Like the pupae sacks, the acids can help pinpoint time of death."

John looked at Bauer. "Okay, so what do we need you for?"

She threw him a withering glance. "My concern would be that the landfill seepage can interfere with the fatty acid detection. Too many broths in the soup, so to speak." She carefully pulled off the gloves and threw them in the lined garbage can marked Medical Waste. "I have another matter pending at the moment, rather urgent. So my assistants will finish this later today. Do we have an ID?"

Before I left her apartment, Mrs. Saunders had answered another despairing question. “The mother says dental records are at MCV," I said. “The family went to the student dentists, for free.”

"I have the number, I’ll put in a call."

"You have my number, too,” John said.

Bauer threw him another look, then walked out of the room.

I was still not sure what had just happened. Something passed between John and Bauer, something that nudged at my conscience. John had acted so different, so strange – leering during an autopsy. And Bauer was even crisper than usual, cutting the exam short.

As we walked down South Jackson Street to our cars, I finally said, “What happened in there?”

“What d’you mean?” He stopped and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

"You smoke?"

"Yeah, after being in that place. Gets rid of that dead smell, you know."

I did know, and was reaching into my purse for a breath mint when I saw the nail polish in the clear evidence bag. John had already told me he didn't think it was worth adding to the investigation--one more expense for testing, which he would have to justify to Phaup.

I lifted the plastic bag. "I should take this back to the mother."

John pulled on the smoke, sucking so hard he burned the ember down an inch. "You really want them to check it?" he asked.

I hesitated. It was his case now. But, boy, did it feel good to be asked. I nodded. “The minerals in the polish can give us an absolute match.”

"Tell them to take a sample from her nail, fast,” he said. “Phaup's back in two days."

"You don’t mind, really?"

"No. In fact take it directly to Bauer. Tell her I want the test done."

In the ME building, the receptionist said Bauer was unavailable right now. On a hunch, I asked her to tell Bauer it was John Breit calling.

Moments later the ME came striding out of her office. She was wearing fresh scrubs.

"Oh, it’s you. Forget something?" Her tone said we were good friends now. Science girls who spoke the same language.

“The pedicure, on the broken foot?” I held up the bottle of nail polish. "John wants to know if the polish matches this sample."

Her eyes were golden, almost citrine. She took the bottle from my hand, turning it slowly. "What mineral does this color remind you of, Agent Harmon?"

"Corundum."

"Corundum, yes. But that wouldn't sell any nail polish. ‘Ruby red’ might."

Ruby was the red form of corundum. My face turned almost as red as the polish. Caught showing off. Maybe that was her game plan.

She smiled. “Is he outside?"

"John?”

“Yes. Smoking a cigarette, am I right?”

I nodded.

Her smile was feline and suddenly I knew. John craved that smoke for reasons that had nothing to do with the stench of death.

And everything to do with the way certain people can pierce the human heart.

Later that day, I parked the Benz on Church Hill and watched the activity at a three-story Georgian on East Franklin Street.

The house belonged to Mayor Louis Mendant. In the hour that I sat there, several people came and went. None of them looking like they were on official city business, especially on a Sunday. When a short school bus stopped at the curb, the pneumatic doors sighed open, and a young girl jumped out. She was carrying a violin case, and her skinny legs kicked out from under a pleated school uniform. As the bus passed by, I read the named on its side. St. Catherine's School. My old alma mater. The most expensive private school in Richmond. And the youth orchestra must have had a Sunday performance at some church.

The girl skipped across the street, the plaid skirt parachuting around her legs. Bounding up the brick stoop, she threw open the front door and leaped inside. The door was painted yellow, as yellow as the school bus. The brick house was painted blue. Sapphire blue.

Climbing out of the car, I walked down the herringbone brick sidewalk. From this side of Church Hill, the view showed the James River lazing across the land like melted glass. It was the city’s most spectacular vista, and it had drawn settlers to this hill more than three hundred years ago. Tobacco merchants, cotton traders. Colonial bankers and sea captains. Prosperous men, they lined Church Hill with proud homes that testified to their fortunes -- fortunes often built with the economic advantages of slavery.

And fortunes that evaporated with the War of Northern Aggression.

But the houses went into real descent during the 1950s, with public school integration and Richmond’s white exodus. Squatters, scavengers, and salvage yards hollowed out the historic cores, and crime took care of the exteriors.

But a resurgence began during the 1990s, and the grand homes were restored down to their handmade shutters and gas lanterns. History didn’t just repeat itself; it pivoted on paradoxes. The new home owners were mostly black, many the descendants of slaves. And now they were the inadvertent inheritors of antebellum fortunes.

The street’s exception was Mayor Mendant's house. While his neighbors retained the historic architecture, the mayor had added crimson awnings hunched over the sash windows, clashing with both the blue brick and yellow front door. As I walked up the brick stoop, I saw dog droppings in the small front yard. The grass was pale as straw, and the presumed grass-killer barked when I knocked on the front door. Barked and barked. A sharp sound. Meaning an ankle biter.

The mayor cracked the door four inches, peering out at me. The dog was trying to get past his legs.

"You people don't know how to call?" he asked.

"I was in the neighborhood."

"And my dog doesn't bite unless I tell him to."

With that, he opened the door.

The dog was a terrier, and as I stepped into the foyer its nails scrabbled across the polished marble floor. Sniffing my pant leg, he shoved his snout into my ankle like it was a buried bone.

"If you’re here to ask about witnesses," he said, "I asked around. Nobody saw anything."

"I figured that."

"You could’ve listened to me in the beginning, but you people just don't get it." The mayor grabbed the brass doorknob, believing we were done. "And y'all better come to some conclusions. People don’t like waiting this long."

"The FBI is still working on the case, Mr. Mayor." John had not closed it. Now he wasn’t interested in closing it. "But I’m here on a different matter. The landfill over on P Street?"

His hand was still on the knob, but he hesitated one split-second. His agate-like eyes clouded. "The landfill.”

“Yes.”

“Why’re you asking about the landfill?"

"Funny, Harrison Fielding said the same thing. But this morning the FBI found a dead body in there."

He let go of the doorknob. The dog’s wet nose was against my sock.

"J.R.! Knock it off."

I gritted my teeth, feeling the snuffling breath cold and moist on my skin.

"J.R.!"

The dog ignored the mayor.

He stomped over to a staircase that rose wide and grand from the foyer. The second-story landing was empty.

"Marlene!" He called up the stairs. "Come get your dog!"

The girl from the bus appeared at the top of the stairs. She had changed out of her uniform into cutoffs and sauntered down. I shifted her age to thirteen, packing coiled teenage attitude. She scooped up the small dog and climbed back up the stairs. The dog gazed at us over her shoulder, his lip curling contemptuously.

The mayor gestured toward the parlor across the foyer.

Like the rest of the house, the room had its own sense of style. Teak desk. Victorian fainting couch covered with leopard print. He turned his back to close the tall pocket doors that slid on old casters. As soon as they closed, the atmosphere shifted. The room suddenly had the plush silence of a luxury car. I decided it was because of the walls. Slightly padded, the walls were covered with amber suede.

I took a seat on the serengeti fainting couch while the mayor lifted the rolling cover of a walnut secretary, revealing a small humidor. The rows of cigars lined up like bullets in a magazine. For several moments, he shuffled the selection, turning his back to block my view. He finally chose a cigar that resembled a Scud missile, and I tried to forget any Freudian theories I might have learned.

"You wanted to know about the landfill."

In the room’s echoless atmosphere his voice sounded almost muffled. I swallowed, trying to pop my ears, and waited a moment for him to light the cigar. But the room had no aroma of tobacco. He was just holding it. Like a weapon.

"A garbage dump doesn’t improve a neighborhood,” I said. “I'm curious why you would put so much support into it."

"You haven't noticed? The city needs money. Why should we turn down that kind of revenue."

"I can think of two reasons. One, it’s a blight. And two, Harrison Fielding owns that land."