“And that’s it?” I asked.
“She’s called this many times to find out if her daughter suffered?”
“Well, no. She’s had questions and information. Nothing of particular relevance. ” He smiled sadly.
“I think she just needs someone to talk to. She’s a sweet lady who’s lost everyone in her life. I can’t tell you how badly I feel for her and how much I pray they catch the horrible monster who did this. That Gault monster I’ve read about. The world will never be safe as long as he’s in it.”
“The world will never be safe. Dr. Jenrette. But I can’t tell you how much we want to catch him, too. Catch Gault. Catch anybody who does something like this,” I said as I opened a thick envelope of glossy eight-by-ten photographs. Only one was unfamiliar, and I studied it intensely for a long time as Dr. Jenrette’s unemphatic voice went on. I did not know what I was seeing because I had never seen anything quite like this, and my emotional response was a combination of excitement and fear. The photograph showed Emily Steiner’s left buttock, where there was an irregular brownish blotch on the skin no bigger than a bottle cap.
“The visceral pleura shows scattered petechiae along the interlobar fissures”
“What is this?” I interrupted Dr. Jenrette’s dictation again. He put down the microphone as I came around to his side of the desk and placed the photograph in front of him. I pointed out the mark on Emily’s skin as I smelled Old Spice and thought of my ex-husband. Tony, who had always worn too much of it.
“This mark on her buttock is not covered in your report,” I added.
“I don’t know what that is,” he said without a trace of defensiveness. He simply sounded tired. “} just assumed it was some sort of postmortem artifact.”
“I don’t know of any artifact that looks like that. Did you resect it?”
“No.”
“Her body was on something that left that mark.” I returned to my chair, sat down, and leaned against the edge of his desk.
“It could be important.”
“Yes, if that’s the case, I could see how it might be important,” he replied, looking increasingly dejected.
“She’s not been in the ground long.” I spoke quietly but with feeling. He stared uneasily at me.
“She’s never going to be in better shape than she is now,” I went on.
“I really think we ought to take another look at her.” He did not blink as he wet his lips.
“Dr. Jenrette,” I said, “let’s get her up now.” Dr. Jenrette flipped through cards in his Rolodex and reached for the phone.
I watched him dial.
“Hello, Dr. James Jenrette here,” he said to whoever answered.
“I wonder if Judge Begley might be in? ” The Honorable Hal Begley said he would see us in his chambers in half an hour. I drove while Jenrette gave directions, and I parked on College Street with plenty of time to spare. The Buncombe County Courthouse was an old dark brick building that I suspected had been the tallest edifice downtown until not too many years before. Its thirteen stories were topped by the jail, and as I looked up at barred windows against a bright blue sky, I thought of Richmond’s overcrowded jail, spread out over acres, with coils of razor wire the only view. I believed it would not be long before cities like Asheville would need more cells as violence continued to become so alarmingly common.
“Judge Begley’s not known for his patience,” Dr. Jenrette warned me as we climbed marble steps inside the old courthouse. “I can promise he’s not going to like your plan.”
I knew that Dr. Jenrette did not like my plan, either, for no forensic pathologist wants a peer digging up his work. Dr. Jenrette and I both knew that implicit in all of this was that he had not done a good job.
“Listen,” I said as he headed down a corridor on the third floor, “I don’t like the plan, either. I don’t like exhumations. I wish there were another way.”
“I guess I just wish I had more experience in the kinds of cases you see every day,” he added.