‘What’s wrong?’ he said, alarmed.
‘There’s something here you need to see.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Sit tight, Doc.’ He took charge. ‘I’m coming.’
I printed the file and saved it on my A drive, fearful it would somehow vanish before my eyes. While I waited for Marino, I dimmed the lights in my office to make details and colors brighter. My mind ran in a terrible loop as I stared at the butchery, the blood forming a vile portrait that for me, ordinarily, wasn’t rare. Other physicians, scientists, lawyers and law enforcement officers frequently sent me photographs like this over the Internet. Routinely, I was asked, via e-mail, to examine crime scenes, organs, wounds, diagrams, even animated reconstructions of cases about to go to court.
This photograph could easily have been one sent by a detective, a colleague. It could have come from a Commonwealth’s Attorney or CASKU. But there was one thing obviously wrong. So far we had no crime scene in this case, only a landfill where the victim had been dumped, and the trash and tattered bag that had been around her. Only the killer or someone else involved in the crime could have sent this file to me.
Fifteen minutes later, at almost midnight, my doorbell rang, and I jumped out of my chair. I ran down the hall to let Marino in.
‘What the hell is it now?’ he said right off.
He was sweating in a gray Richmond police tee shirt that was tight over his big body and gut, and baggy shorts and athletic shoes with tube socks pulled up to his calves. I smelled stale sweat and cigarettes.
‘Come on,’ I said.
He followed me down the hall into my office, and when he saw what was on the computer screen, he sat in my chair, scowling as he stared.
‘Is this what the shit I think it is?’ he said.
‘Appears the photograph was taken where the body was dismembered.’ I was not used to having anyone in the private place where I worked, and I could feel my anxiety level rise.
‘This is what you found today.’
‘What you’re looking at was taken shortly after death,’ I said. ‘But yes, this is the torso from the landfill.’
‘How do you know?’ Marino said.
His eyes were fastened to the screen, and he adjusted my chair. Then his big feet shoved books on the floor as he made himself more comfortable. When he picked up files and moved them to another corner of my desk, I couldn’t stand it any longer.
‘I have things where I want them,’ I pointedly said as I returned the files to their original messy space.
‘Hey, chill out, Doc,’ he said as if it didn’t matter. ‘How do we know that this thing ain’t a hoax?’
Again, he moved the files out of his way, and now I was really irritated.
‘Marino, you’re going to have to get up,’ I said. ‘I don’t let anybody sit at my desk. You’re making me crazy.’
He shot me an angry look and got up out of my chair. ‘Hey, do me a favor. Next time call somebody else when you got a problem.’
‘Try to be sensitive . . .’
He cut me off, losing his temper. ‘No. You be sensitive and quit being such a friggin’ fussbudges. No wonder you and Wesley got problems.’
‘Marino,’ I warned, ‘you just crossed a line and better stop right there.’
He was silent, looking around, sweating.
‘Let’s get back to this.’ I sat in my chair, readjusting it. ‘I don’t think this is a hoax, and I believe it’s the torso from the landfill.’
‘Why?’ He would not look at me, hands in his pockets.
‘Arms and legs are severed through the long bones, not the joints.’ I touched the screen. ‘There are other similarities. It’s her, unless another victim with a similar body type has been killed and dismembered in the same manner, and we’ve not found her yet. And I don’t know how someone could have perpetrated a hoax like this without knowing how the victim was dismembered. Not to mention, this case hasn’t hit the news yet.’