“I don’t see cases like this every day,” I said, touched by his humility.
“Thank God, I don’t.”
“Well, I’d be lying to you. Dr. Scarpetta, if I said that it wasn’t real hard on me when I got called to that little girl’s scene. Maybe I should have spent a little more time.”
“I think Buncombe County is extremely lucky to have you,” I said sincerely as we opened the judge’s outer office door.
“I wish I had more doctors like you in Virginia. I’d hire you.” He knew I meant it and smiled as a secretary as old as any woman I’d ever met who was still employed peered up at us through thick glasses. She used an electric typewriter instead of a computer, and I surmised from the numerous gray steel cabinets lining walls that filing was her forte. Sunlight seeped wanly through barely opened Venetian blinds, a galaxy of dust suspended in the air. I smelled Rose Milk as she rubbed a dollop of moisturizing cream into her bony hands.
“Judge Begley’s expecting you,” she said before we introduced ourselves.
“You can just go on in. That door there.” She pointed to a shut door across from the one we had just come through.
“Now just so you know, court’s adjourned for lunch and he’s due back at exactly one.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“We’ll try not to keep him long.”
“Won’t make any difference if you try.” Dr. Jenrette’s shy knock on the judge’s thick oak door was answered by a distracted “Come in!” from the other side. We found His Honor behind a partner’s desk, suit jacket off as he sat erectly in an old red leather chair. He was a gaunt, bearded man nearing sixty, and as he glanced over notes in a legal pad, I made a number of telling assessments about him. The orderliness of his desk told me that he was busy and quite capable, and his unfashionable tie and soft-soled shoes bespoke someone who did not give a damn how people like me assessed him.
“Why do you want to violate the sepulchre?” he asked in slow Southern cadences that belied a quick mind as he turned a page in a legal pad.
“After going over Dr. Jenrette’s reports,” I replied! “we agree some questions were not answered by the first examination of Emily Steiner’s body.”
“I know of Dr. Jenrette but don’t believe I know you,” Judge Begley said to me as he placed the legal pad on the desk.
“I’m Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief medical examiner of Virginia.”
“I was told you had something to do with the FBI.”
“Yes, sir. I am the consulting forensic pathologist for the Investigative Support Unit.”
“Is that like the Behavioral Science Unit?”
“One and the same. The Bureau changed the name several years ago.”
“You’re talking about the folks who do the profiling of these serial killers and other aberrant criminals who until recently we didn’t have to worry about in these parts.” He watched me closely, lacing his fingers in his lap.
“That’s what we do,” I said.
“Your Honor,” Dr. Jenrette said.
“The Black Mountain Police has requested the assistance of the FBI. There’s some fear that the man who murdered the Steiner girl is the same man who killed a number of people in Virginia.”
“I’m aware of that. Dr. Jenrette, since you were so kind as to explain some of this when you called earlier. However, the only item on the agenda right now is your wish for me to grant you the right to dig up this little girl.
“Before I let you do something as upsetting and disrespectful as that, you’re going to have to give me a powerfully good reason. And I do wish the two of you would sit down and make yourselves comfortable. That’s why I have chairs on that side of my desk.”
“She has a mark on her skin,” I said as I seated myself.
“What sort of mark?” He eyed me with interest as Dr. Jenrette slipped a photograph out of an envelope and set it on the judge’s blotter.
“You can see it in the photograph,” Jenrette said. The judge’s eyes dropped to the photograph, his face unreadable.