Unnatural Exposure (16 page)

'Now let me get this straight,' said Grigg. 'This is the exact same saw you use in the morgue.'

'No. Not exactly the same,' I said. 'I generally use a larger sectioning blade than was used here.'

'But this is from a medical sort of saw.' He held up the photograph.

' Correct.'

'Where would your average person get something like that?'

'Doctor's office, hospital, morgue, medical supply company,' I replied. 'Any number of places. The sale of them is not restricted.'

'So he could have ordered it without being in the medical profession.'

'Easily,' I said.

Ring said, 'Or he could have stolen it. He could have decided to do something different this time to throw us off.'

Lucy was looking at him, and I had seen the expression in her eyes before. She thought Ring was a fool.

'If we're dealing with the same killer,' she said, 'then why is he suddenly sending files through the Internet when he's never done that before, either?'

'Good point.' Frankel nodded.

'What files?' Ring said to her.

'We're getting to that.' Wesley restored order. 'We've got an M. O. that's different. We've got a tool that's different.'

'We suspect she has a head injury,' I said, sliding autopsy diagrams and the e-mail photos around the table, 'because of blood in her airway. This may or may not be different from the other cases, since we don't know their causes of death. However, radiologic and anthropologic findings indicate that this victim is profoundly older than the others. We also recovered fibers indicating she was covered in something consistent with a drop cloth when she was dismembered, again, inconsistent with the other cases.'

I explained in more detail about the fibers and paint, all the while vividly aware of Ring watching my niece and taking notes.

'So she was probably cut up in someone's workshop or garage,' Grigg said.

'I don't know,' I answered. 'And as you've seen from the photos sent to me through e-mail, we can only know that she's in a room with putty-colored walls, and a table.'

'Let me again point out that Keith Pleasants has an area behind his house that he uses for a workshop,' Ring reminded us. 'It has a big workbench in it and the walls are unpainted wood.' He looked at me. 'Which could pass for putty-colored.'

'Seems like it would be awfully hard to get rid of all the blood,' Grigg dubiously mused.

'A drop cloth with a rubber backing might explain the absence of blood,' Ring said. 'That's the whole point. So nothing leaks through.'

Everyone looked at me to see what I would say.

'It would have been very unusual not to get things bloody in a case like this,' I replied. 'Especially since she still had a blood pressure when she was decapitated. If nothing else, I would expect blood in wood grain, in cracks of the table.'

'We could try some chemical testing for that.' Ring was a forensic scientist now. 'Like luminol. Any blood at all, it's going to react to it and glow in the dark.'

'The problem with luminol is it's destructive,' I replied. 'And we're going to want to do DNA, to see if we can get a match. So we certainly don't want to ruin what little blood we might find.'

'It's not like we got probable cause to go in Pleasants' workshop and start any kind of testing anyway.' Grigg's stare across the table at Ring was confrontational.

'I think we do.' He stared back at him.

'Not unless they changed the rules on me.' Grigg spoke slowly.

Wesley was watching all this, evaluating everyone and every word the way he always did. He had his opinion, and more than likely it was right. But he remained silent as the arguing went on.

'I thought . . .' Lucy tried to speak.

'A very viable possibility is that this is a copycat,' Ring said.

'Oh, I think it is,' said Grigg. 'I just don't buy your theory about Pleasants.'

'Let me finish.' Lucy's penetrating gaze scanned the faces of the men. 'I thought I would give you a briefing on how the two files were sent via America Online to Dr Scarpetta's e-mail address.'

It always sounded odd when she called me by my professional name.

'I know I'm curious.' Ring had his chin propped on a hand now, studying her.

'First, you would need a scanner,' she went on. 'That's not hard. Something with color capabilities and decent resolution, as low as seventy-two dots per inch. But this looks like higher resolution to me, maybe three hundred dpi. We could be talking about something as simple as a hand-held scanner for three hundred and ninety-nine dollars, to a thirty-five-millimeter slide scanner that can run into the thousands . . .'

'And what kind of computer would you hook this up to,' Ring said.

'I was getting to that.' Lucy was tired of being interrupted by him. 'System requirements: Minimum of eight megs RAM, a color monitor, software like FotoTouch or ScanMan, a modem. Could be a Macintosh, a Performa 6116CD or even something older. The point is, scanning files into your computer and sending them through the Internet is very accessible to your average person, which is why telecommunications crimes are keeping us so busy these days.'

'Like that big child pornography, pedophile case you all just cracked,' Grigg said.

'Yes, photos sent as files through the World Wide Web, where children can talk to strangers again,' she said. 'What's interesting in the situation at hand, is scanning black and white is no big deal. But when you move into color, that's getting sophisticated. Also the edges and borders in the photos sent to Dr Scarpetta are relatively sharp, not much background noise.'

'Sounds to me this is someone who knew what he was doing,' Grigg said.

'Yes,' she agreed. 'But not necessarily a computer analyst or graphic artist. Not at all.'

'These days, if you've got access to the equipment and a few instruction books, anyone can do it,' said Frankel, who also worked in computers.

'All right, the photos were scanned into the system,' I said to Lucy. 'Then what? What is the path that led them to me?'

'First you upload the file, which in this case is a graphic or GIF file,' she replied. 'Generally, to send this successfully, you have to determine the number of data bits, stop bits, the parity setting, whatever the appropriate configuration is. That's where it's not user-friendly. But AOL does all that for you. So in this case, sending the files was simple. You upload and off they go.' She looked at me.

'And this was done over the telephone, basically,' Wesley said.

'Right.'

'What about tracing that?'

'Squad Nineteen's already on it.' Lucy referred to the FBI unit that investigated illegal uses of the Internet.

'I'm not sure what the crime would be in this case,' Wesley pointed out. 'Obscenity, if the photos are fakes, and unfortunately, that isn't illegal.'

'The photographs aren't fake,' I said.

'Hard to prove.' He held my gaze.

'What if they're not fake?' Ring asked.

'Then they're evidence,' Wesley said, adding after a pause, 'A violation of Title Eighteen, Section Eight-seventy-six. Mailing threatening communications.'

'Threats towards who?' Ring asked.

Wesley's eyes were still on me. 'Clearly, towards the recipient.'

'There's been no blatant threat,' I reminded him. 'All we want is enough for a warrant.'

'We got to find the person first,' Ring said, stretching and yawning in his chair like a cat.

'We're watching for him to log on again,' Lucy replied. 'It's being monitored around the clock.' She continued hitting keys on her laptop, checking the constant flow of messages. 'But if you imagine a global telephone system with some forty million users, and no directory, no operators, no directory assistance, that's what you've got with the Internet. There's no list of membership, nor does AOL have one, unless you voluntarily choose to fill out a profile. In this case, all we have is the bogus name deadoc.'

'How did he know where to send Dr Scarpetta's mail?' Grigg looked at me.

I explained, and then asked Lucy, 'This is all done by charge card?'

She nodded. 'That much we've traced. An American Express Card in the name of Ken L. Perley. A retired high-school teacher. Norfolk. Seventy, lives alone.'

'Do we have any idea how someone might have gotten access to his card?' Wesley asked.

'It doesn't appear Perley uses his credit cards much. Last time was in a Norfolk restaurant, a Red Lobster. This was on October second, when he and his son went out to dinner. The bill was twenty-seven dollars and thirty cents, including the tip, which he put on AmEx. Neither he nor the son remembers anything unusual that night. But when it was time to pay the bill, the credit card was left on the table in plain view for quite a long interval because the restaurant was very busy. At some point while the card was out, Perley went to the men's room, and the son stepped outside to smoke.'

'Christ. That was intelligent. Did someone from the wait staff notice anyone coming over to the table?' Wesley said to Lucy.

'Like I said, it was busy. We're running down every charge made that night to get a list of customers. Problem's going to be the people who paid cash.'

'And I suppose it's too soon for the AOL charges to have come up on Perley's American Express,' he said.

'Right. According to AOL, the account was just opened recently. A week after the dinner at the Red Lobster, to be exact. Perley's being very cooperative with us,' Lucy added. 'And AOL is leaving the account open without charge in the event the perpetrator wants to send something else.'

Wesley nodded. 'Though we can't assume it, we should consider that the killer, at least in the Atlantic landfill case, may have been in Norfolk as recently as a month ago.'

'This case is definitely sounding local.' I made that point again.

'Possible any of the bodies could have been refrigerated?' Ring asked.

'Not this one,' Wesley was quick to answer. 'Absolutely not. This guy couldn't stand looking at his victim. He had to cover her up, cut through the cloth, and my guess is, didn't go very far away to dispose of her.'

'Shades of "The Tell-Tale Heart,"' Ring said.

Lucy was reading something on her laptop screen, quietly hitting keys, her face tense. 'We just got something from Squad Nineteen,' she said, continuing to scroll down. 'Deadoc logged on fifty-six minutes ago.' She looked up at us. 'He sent e-mail to the president.'

The electronic mail was sent directly to the White House, which was no great feat since the address was public and readily available to any user of the Internet. Once again, the message was oddly in lowercase and used spaces for punctuation, and it read: apologize if not I will start on france.

'There are a number of implications,' Wesley was saying to me as gunshots from the range upstairs thudded like a distant, muffled war going on. 'And all of them make me nervous about you.'

He stopped at the water fountain.

'I don't think this has anything to do with me,' I said. 'This has to do with the president of the United States.'

'That's symbolic, if you want to know my guess. Not literal.' We started walking. 'I think this killer is disgruntled, angry, feels a certain person in power or perhaps people in power are responsible for his problems in life.'

'Like the Unabomber,' I said as we took the elevator up.

'Very similar. Perhaps even inspired by him,' he said, glancing at his watch. 'Can I buy you a beer before you leave?'

'Not unless someone else is driving.' I smiled. 'But you can talk me into coffee.'

We walked through the gun-cleaning room, where dozens of FBI and DEA agents were breaking down their weapons, wiping them and blasting parts with air. They glanced at us with curious eyes, and I wondered if they had heard the rumors. My relationship with Wesley had been an item of gossip for quite a long time at the Academy, and it bothered me more than I let on. Most people, it seemed, maintained their belief that his wife had left because of me when, in fact, she had left because of another man.

Upstairs, the line was long in the PX, a mannikin modeling the latest sweatshirt and range pants, and Thanksgiving pumpkins and turkeys in the windows. Beyond, in the Boardroom, the TV was loud, and some people were already into popcorn and beer. We sat as far away from everyone as we could, both of us sipping coffee.

'What's your slant on the France connection?' I asked.

'Obviously, this individual is intelligent and follows the news. Our relations with France were very strained during their nuclear weapons testing. You may recall the violence, vandalism, boycotting of French wine and other products. There was a lot of protesting outside French embassies, the U. S. very much involved.'

'But that was a couple years ago.'

'Doesn't matter. Wounds heal slowly.' He stared out the window at darkness gathering. 'And more to the point, France would not appreciate our exporting a serial killer to them. I can only suppose that is what deadoc is implying. Cops from France and other nations have been worrying for years that our problem would eventually become theirs. As if violence is a disease that can spread.'