Flesh and Blood: A Scarpetta Novel by Patricia Cornwell

Author:Patricia Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery, Thriller
ISBN: 9780062325365
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2014-11-04T12:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

SHE ISN’T AT HER console and we step inside. I look through the wall of thick lead-lined glass that connects her office to the scanner room but Anne isn’t there either.

The lights are off, the white Somatom CT scanner vaguely illuminated, large bore with a downward tilted table, developed for the military when we went to war with Iraq. Using high-resolution 3-D imaging, we can visualize a body internally before it’s autopsied, and I notice what’s on one of the desk’s displays. Case number CFC979. Gracie Smithers.

“The roof would have been the most likely area if the person was going to get an unobstructed view of your backyard.” Lucy continues talking about what she saw when she overflew the Academy of Arts and Sciences. “I had the camera going.” She refers to the stabilized camera mounted on her helicopter. “And there was no one but we saw evidence that somebody had been up there.”

“Janet was flying with you this morning.” I study oblique and axial images of the airway, sinuses and tracheobronchial tree, noting dark spaces indicating gas and froth that are common in drownings. “Are the two of you doing all right?”

“A section of the roof on the second floor and there was a baseball cap and a jacket we could see when I zoomed in,” Lucy says. “Obviously someone was up there. We’re fine.”

“You have a new Ferrari and aren’t wearing your ring.” Coronal images of the lungs, the distal bronchi are full of fluid, and I click on other images. “You look like you’ve lost weight and your hair needs cutting.”

The maxillary sinuses are also full of fluid and there’s a high-density particulate material in the sphenoid sinus. I find more of it around the vocal cords and in the airway and lungs.

Sand.

“Of course a maintenance worker could have left them up there,” Lucy says. “But I seriously doubt it.”

“I haven’t seen you in a month.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Are you avoiding me?”

“Why would I?”

“Because when you do?” I click on images of the head. “It’s never a sign of anything happy.”

“A surgical hat and jacket,” Lucy says.

“What do you mean surgical?”

“The patina color of the roof is the bluish green of classic scrubs. The baseball cap and jacket are teal green with a caduceus embroidered on them.”

“In other words whoever might have had them on would have blended with the roof.”

“Especially if the person also was wearing matching scrub pants and shirt.”

“That sounds bizarre.”

“Not really,” Lucy says. “They blend with the environment and also wouldn’t stand out to anybody who spotted this person because a lot of med students and techs walk around in scrubs. That particular section of the cantilevered roof is accessible only by an exterior ladder which is supposed to be restricted to maintenance.”

“Supposed to be?” I click on more CT images and what I’m seeing is depressing and cruel. “But anybody could climb up?”

“Yes but just anybody wouldn’t.”

Sagittal images reveal a linear fracture in the anterior cranial fossae with underlying contusion. Axial images are the problem.

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