“Describe them for me,” I said.
“We’re talking about two areas. One on his inner right thigh, you know, up high near the groin. The other’s in the area of his right shoulder. Chunks of flesh are missing – cut out. And there’s weird cuts and scratches around the edges of the wounds. He’s at Henrico Doctor’s.”
“Did you find the excised tissue?”
My mind was racing through other cases, looking for something similar.
“Not so far. We’ve got men out there still searching. But it’s possible the assault occurred inside a car.”
“Whose car?”
“The assailant’s. The grocery store parking lot where the kid was found is a good three or four miles from the convenience store where he was last seen. I’m thinking he got into somebody’s car, maybe was forced to.”
“You got photographs of the injuries before the doctors started working on him?”
“Yes. But they haven’t done much. Because of the amount of skin missing, they’ll have to do skin grafts full grafts, is what they said, if that tells you anything.”
It told me they had debrided the wounds, had him on intravenous antibiotics, and were waiting to do a gluteal graft. If, however, that was not the case and they had undermined the tissue around the injuries and sutured them, then there wasn’t going to be much left for me to see.
“They haven’t sutured his wounds,” I said.
‘That’s what I’ve been told.’
“Do you want me to take a look?”
“That would be really great,” he said, relieved. “You should be able to see the wounds real well.”
“When would you like me to do this?”
“Tomorrow would work.”
“All right. What time? The earlier the better.”
“Eight hundred hours? I’ll meet you in front of the ER.”
“I’ll be there,” I said as the anchorman stared grimly at me. Hanging up, I reached for the remote control and turned up the sound.
“. . . Eugenia? Can you tell us if there’s been any word from the governor?”
The camera shifted to the Virginia State Penitentiary, where for two hundred years the Commonwealth’s worst criminals had been warehoused along a rocky stretch of the James River at the edge of downtown. Sign-carrying protesters and capital punishment enthusiasts gathered in the dark, their faces harsh in the glare of television lights. It chilled my soul that some people were laughing.
A pretty, young correspondent in a red coat filled the screen “As you know, Bill,” she said, “yesterday a telephone line was set up between Governor Norring’s office and the penitentiary. Still no word, and that speaks volumes. Historically, when the governor doesn’t intend to intervene, he remains silent.”
“How are things there? Is it relatively peaceful so far?”
“So far, yes, Bill. I’d say several hundred people are standing vigil out here. And of course, the penitentiary itself is almost empty. All but several dozen of the inmates have already been transported to the new correctional facility in Greensville.”
I turned off the TV and moments later was driving east with my doors locked and the radio on. Fatigue seeped through me like anesthesia. I felt dreary and numb. I dreaded executions. I dreaded waiting for someone to die, then running my scalpel through flesh as warm as mine. I was a physician with a law degree. I had been trained to know what gave life and what took it, what was right and what was wrong. Then experience had become my mentor, wiping its feet on that pristine part of myself that was idealistic and analytical. It is disheartening when a thinking person is forced to admit that many cliches are true. There is no justice on this earth. Nothing would ever undo what Ronnie Joe Waddell had done.
He had been on death row nine years. His victim had not been my case because she had been murdered before I had been appointed chief medical examiner of Virginia and had moved to Richmond. But I had reviewed her records. I was well aware of every savage detail. On the morning of September fourth, ten years before, Robyn Naismith called in sick at Channel 8, where she was an anchorwoman. She went out to buy cold remedies and returned home. The next day, her nude, battered body was found in her living room, propped against the TV. A bloody thumbprint recovered from the medicine cabinet was later identified as Bonnie Joe Waddell’s.