I was returning from the snack bar, cup of coffee in hand, when I spotted Pat Harvey, elegant in a navy cashmere suit, a zip-up black leather portfolio under her arm. She was talking to several delegates in the hall, and glancing my way, she immediately excused herself.
“Dr. Scarpetta,” she said, offering her hand. She looked relieved to see me, but drawn and stressed.
I wondered why she wasn’t in Washington, and then she answered my unspoken question. “I was asked to lend my support to Senate Bill One-thirty,” she said, smiling nervously. “So I suppose both of us are here today for the same reason.”
“Thank you. We need all the support we can get.”
“I don’t think you have a worry,” she replied.
She was probably right. The testimony of the national drug policy director and the publicity it would generate would put considerable pressure on the Courts of Justice Committee.
After an awkward silence, with both of us glancing at the people milling about, I asked her quietly, “How are you?”
For an instant her eyes teared up. Then she gave me another quick, nervous smile and stared off down the hall. “If you’ll please excuse me, I see someone I need to have a word with.”
Pat Harvey was barely out of earshot when my pager went off.
A minute later I was on the phone.
“Marino’s on his way,” my secretary was explaining.
“So am I,” I said. “Get my scene kit, Rose. Make sure everything’s in order. Flashlight, camera, batteries, gloves.”
“Will do.”
Cursing my heels and the rain, I hurried down steps and along Governor Street, the wind tearing at my umbrella as I envisioned Mrs. Harvey’s eyes that split second when they had revealed her pain. Thank God she had not been standing there when my pager had sounded its dreadful alert.
5
The odor was noticeable from a distance. Heavy drops of rain smacked loudly against dead leaves, the sky as dark as dusk, winter-bare trees drifting in and out of the fog.
“Jesus,” Marino muttered as he stepped over a log. “They must be ripe. No other smell like it. Always reminds me of pickled crabs.”
“It gets worse,” promised Jay Morrell, who was leading the way.
Black mud sucked at our feet, and every time Marino brushed against a tree I was showered with freezing water. Fortunately, I kept a hooded Gore-Tex coat and heavy rubber boots in the trunk of my state car for scenes like this one. What I had been unable to find were my thick leather gloves, and it was impossible to navigate through the woods and keep branches out of my face if my hands were in my pockets.
I had been told there were two bodies, suspected to be a male and a female. They were less than four miles from the rest stop where Deborah Harvey’s Jeep had been found last fall.
You don’t know that it’s them, I thought to myself with every step.
But when we reached the perimeter of the scene, my heart constricted. Benton Wesley was talking to an officer working a metal detector, and Wesley would not have been summoned unless the police were sure. He stood with military erectness, exuding the quiet confidence of a man in charge. He seemed bothered neither by the weather nor by the stench of decomposing human flesh. He was not looking around and taking in the details the way Marino and I were, and I knew why. Wesley had already looked around. He had been here long before, I was called.
The bodies were lying next to each other, facedown in, a small clearing about a quarter of a mile from the muddy logging road where we had left our cars. They were so badly decomposed they were partially skeletonized. The long bones of arms and legs protruded like dirty gray sticks from rotted clothing scattered with leaves. Skulls were detached and had been nudged or rolled, probably by small predators, a foot or two away.
“Did you find their shoes and socks?”
I asked, not seeing either.
“No, ma’am. But we found a purse.”
Morrell pointed to the body on the right. “Forty-four dollars and twenty-six cents in it. Plus a driver’s license, Deborah Harvey’s driver’s license.”