“Dr. Scarpetta, is it true that’s your car up the hill?”
asked a woman journalist as she hurried to my side. “I understand the Mercedes is registered to you. What color is it? Is it black?” she persisted when I did not reply.
“Can you explain how it got there?” A man pushed a microphone close to my face.
“Did you drive it there?” asked someone else.
“Was it stolen from you? Did the victim steal it from you’? Do you think this is about drugs?”
Voices folded into each other because no one would wait his turn and I would not speak. When several uniformed officers realized I had arrived, they loudly intervened.
“Hey, get back.”
“Now. You heard me.”
“Let the lady through.”
“Come on. We got a crime scene to work here. I hope that’s all right with you.”
Marino was suddenly holding on to my arm. “Bunch of squirrels,” he said as he glared at them. “Be real careful where you step. We got to go through the woods almost all the way to where the tunnel is. What kind of shoes you got on””
“I’ll be all right.”
There was a path, and it was long and led steeply down from the street. Lights had been set up to illuminate the way, and they cut a swath like the moon on a dangerous bay. On the margins, woods dissolved into blackness stirred by a subtle wind.
“Be real careful,” he said again. “It’s muddy and there’s shit all over the place.”
“What shit?” I asked.
I turned on my flashlight and directed it straight down at the narrow muddy path of broken glass, rotting paper, and discarded shoes that glinted and glowed a washed-out white amid brambles and winter trees.
“The neighbors have been trying to turn this into a landfill,” he said.
“He could not have gotten down here with his bad knee,” I said. “What’s the best way to approach this?”
“On my arm.”
“No. I need to look at this alone.”
“Well, you’re not going down there alone. We don’t know if someone else might still be down there somewhere.”
“There’s blood there.” I pointed the flashlight, and several large drops glistened on dead leaves about six feet down from where I was.
“There’s a lot of it up here.”
“Any up by the street?”
‘ ”No. It looks like it pretty much starts right here, But we’ve found some on the path going all the way down to where he is,”
“All right. Let’s do it.” I looked around and began careful steps, Marino’s heavier ones behind me.
Police had run bright yellow tape from tree to tree, seCuring as much of the area as possible, for right now we did not know how big this scene might be. I could not see the body until I emerged from the woods into a clearing where the old railroad bed led to the river south of me and disappeared into the tunnel’s yawning mouth to the west.
Danny Webster lay half on his back, half on his side in an awkward tangle of arms and legs. A large puddle of blood was beneath his head. I slowly explored him with the flashlight and saw an abundance of dirt and grass on his sweater and jeans, and bits of leaves and other debris clung to his blood-matted hair.
“He rolled down the hill,” I said as I noted that several straps had come loose in his bright red brace, and debris was caught in Velcro. “He was already dead or almost dead when he came to rest in this position.”
“Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear he was shot up there,” Marino said. “My first question was whether he bled while he maybe tried to get away. And he makes it about this far, then collapses and rolls the rest of the way.”
“Or maybe he was made to think he was being given a chance to get away.” Emotion crept into my voice. “You see this knee brace he has on? Do you have any idea how slowly he would have moved were he trying to get down this path? Do you know what it’s like to inch your way along on a bad leg?”