Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 24

Both tty07 and tty14 were connected directly to the computer. Unplugging tty07 first, I roamed from terminal to terminal to see which had been disconnected as a result. The terminal in Ben Stevens's office was down, then up again when I reconnected the cable. Next I set about to trace tty14, and was perplexed when the unplugging of that cable seemed to illicit no response. Terminals on the desks of my staff continued to work without pause. Then I remembered Susan. Her office was downstairs in the morgue.

Unlocking her door, I noticed two details the instant I walked into her office. There were no personal effects, such as photographs and knickknacks, to be seen, and on a bookshelf over the desk were a number of UNIX, SQL, and WordPerfect reference guides. I vaguely recalled that Susan had signed up for several computer courses last spring. Flipping a switch to turn on her monitor, I tried to log in and was baffled when the system responded. Her terminal was still connected; it could not be tty14. And then I realized something so obvious that I might have laughed were I not horrified.

Back upstairs, I paused in my office doorway, looking in as if someone I had never met worked here. Pooled around the workstation on my desk were lab reports, call sheets, death certificates, and page proofs of a forensic pathology textbook I was editing, and the return bearing my microscope didn't look much better. Against a wall were three tall filing cabinets, and across from them a couch situated far enough away from bookcases that you could easily go around it to reach books on lower shelves. Directly behind my chair was an oak credenza I had found years earlier in the state's surplus warehouse. In drawers had locks, making it a perfect repository for my pocketbook and active cases that were unusually sensitive. I kept the key under my phone, and I thought again of last Thursday when Susan had broken jars of formalin while I was doing Eddie Heath's autopsy.

I did not know the device number of my terminal, for there had never been occasion when it mattered. Seating myself at my desk and sliding out the keyboard drawer, I tried to log in but my keystrokes were ignored. Disconnecting tty14 had disconnected me.

“Damn,” I whispered as my blood ran cold. “Damn!”

I had sent no notes to my administrator's terminal. It was not I who had typed “I can't find it.” In fact, when the file was accidentally created late last Thursday afternoon, I was in the morgue. But Susan wasn't. I had given her my keys and told her to lie down on the couch in my office until she recovered from the formalin spill. Was it possible that she not only had broken into my directory but also had gone through files and the paperwork on my desk? Had she attempted to send a note to Ben Stevens because she couldn't find what they were interested in? One of the trace evidence examiners from upstairs suddenly appeared in my doorway, startling me.

“Hello,” he muttered as he looked through paperwork, his lab coat buttoned up to his chin. Pulling out a multiple-page report, he walked in and handed it to me.

“I was getting ready to leave this in your box,” he said. “But since you're still here, I'll give it to you in person. I've finished examining the adhesive residue you-lifted from Eddie Heath's wrists.”

“Building materials?” I asked, scanning the first page of the report.

“That's right. Paint, plaster, wood, cement, asbestos, glass. Typically, we find this sort of debris in burglary cases, often on the suspects' clothing, in their cuffs, pockets, shoes, and so on.”

“What about on Eddie Heath's clothes?”

“Some of this same debris was on his clothes.”

“And the paints? Tell me about them.”

“I found bits of paint from five different origins. Three of them are layered, meaning something was painted and repainted a number of times.”

“Are the origins vehicular or residential?” I inquired.

“Only one is vehicular, an acrylic lacquer typically used as a top coat in cars manufactured by General Motors.”

It could have come from the vehicle used to abduct Eddie Heath, I thought. And it could have come from anywhere.

“The color?” I inquired.

“Blue.”

“Layered?”

“No.”

“What about the debris from the area of pavement where the body was found? I asked Marino to get sweepings to you and he said he would.”

“Sand, dirt, bits of paving material, plus the miscellaneous debris you might expect around a Dumpster. Glass, paper, ash, pollen, rust, plant material.”

“That's different from what you found adhering to the residue on his wrists?”

“Yes. It would appear to me that the tape was applied and removed from his wrists in a location where there's debris from building materials and birds.”

“Birds?”

“On the third page of the report,” he said. “I found a lot of feather parts.”

Lucy was restless and rather irritable when I got home. Clearly, she had not had enough to occupy her during the day, for she had taken it upon herself to rearrange my study. The laser printer had been moved, as had the modem and all of my computer reference guides.

“Why did you do this?” I asked.

She was in my chair, her back to me, and she replied without turning around or slowing her finger; on the keyboard. “It makes more sense this way.”

“Lucy, you can't just go into someone else's office and move everything around. How would you feel ft I did that to you?”

“There would be no reason to rearrange anything of mine. It's all arranged very sensibly.”

She stopped typing and swiveled around. “See, now you can reach the printer without getting up from the chair. Your books are right here within reach, and the modem is out of your way completely. You shouldn't set books, coffee cups, and things on top of a modem.”

“Have you been in here all day?” I asked.

“Where else would I be? You took the car. I went Jogging around your neighborhood. Have you ever tried to run on snow?”

Pulling up a chair, I opened my briefcase and got out the paper bag Marino had given me. “You're saying you need a car.”

“I feel stranded.”

“Where would you like to go?”

“To your club. I don't know where else. I'd simply like the option. What's in the bag?”

“Books and a poem Marino gave me.”

“Since when is he a member of the literati?” She got up and stretched. “I'm going to make a cup of herbal tea. Would you like some?”

“Coffee, please.”

“It's bad for you,” she said as she left the room.

“Oh, hell, “I muttered irritably as I pulled the books and poem out of the bag and red fluorescent powder got all over my hands and clothes.

Neils Vander had done his usual thorough examination, and I had forgotten his passion for his new toy. Several months ago he had acquired an alternate light source and had retired the laser to the scrap heap. The Luma-Lite, with its “state-of-the-art three-hundred-and-fifty-watt high-intensity blue enhanced metal vapor arc lamp,” as Vander lovingly described it whenever the subject came up, turned virtually invisible hairs and fibers a burning orange. Semen stains and street drug residues jumped out like solar flares, and best of all, the light could pick up fingerprints that never would have been seen-in the past.

Vander had gone the gamut on Jennifer Deighton's paperback novels. They had been placed in the glass tank and exposed to vapors from Super Glue, the cyanoacrylate ester that reacts to the components of perspiration transferred by human skin. Then Vander had dusted the slick covers of the books with the red fluorescent powder that was now all over me. Finally, he had subjected the books to the cool blue scrutiny of the Luma-Lite and purpled pages with Ninhydrin. I hoped he would be rewarded for all of his trouble. My reward was to go into the bathroom and clean up with a wet washcloth.

Flipping through Paris Trout was unrevealing. The novel told the story of the heartless murder of a black girl, and if that was significant to Jennifer Deighton's own story, I could not imagine why. Seth Speaks was a spooky account of someone supposedly from another life communicating through the author. It did not really surprise me that Miss Deighton, with her otherworldly inclinations, might read such a thing. What interested me most was the poem.