“Because I was staying in her house that summer,” Lucy said. “Benton never came over, not once. And when she wasn’t at the office or at a scene, she was with me. I was a screwed-up pudgy little brat, mad as hell and desperate for her attention. In other words, just looking to get into trouble, and not in a position to really understand that the kind of trouble she dealt with caused people to end up raped and murdered. She didn’t run around and leave me alone, not for a minute, not with a serial killer terrorizing the city. I never saw a Seven-Eleven coffee cup, just so you know.”
“It means nothing that you didn’t see one,” Berger said. “Why would she show it to you, much less explain why she’d carried it home from her office conference room?”
“She wouldn’t have,” Lucy said. “But I’m sort of sorry I didn’t see one. She was really all alone back then.”
Scarpetta turned Terri Bridges’s body on its side to look at it, front and back.
Other than the marks on the neck and a small cut on one wrist, the only injuries Scarpetta saw began mid-thigh, anteriorly, or on the front. These were long, narrow bruises with multiple linear abrasions that would have bled, most of them horizontal, as if she had been struck with something like a board that had a flat surface with an edge.
Her knees were badly bruised and abraded, as were the tops of her feet, and under the magnification of the hand lens, Scarpetta discovered tiny blondish splinters as fine as hair embedded in each. The vivid redness and lack of swelling of the wounds indicated all of them had been inflicted close to the time of death. That could have been minutes. It could have been an hour.
Dr. Lester’s response to the discovery of the splinters anteriorly, on the knees, on the feet, was that perhaps, at some point, the body was dragged, and only those areas of it had been in contact with a wooden surface, a floor. Scarpetta remarked that few wooden floors were rough enough to cause splinters, unless the wood was untreated.
“You aren’t going to get me to rule out an accident yet,” Dr. Lester stubbornly asserted. “Bondage, beatings, whippings, severe spanking. And sometimes things go too far.”
“What about a struggle?” Benton said. “Does that also factor into your theory that this might be an accident?”
“Writhing, screaming in pain. I’ve seen it on videotapes that profilers like you show at meetings,” Dr. Lester said, and the crease between her eyebrows seemed deeper, like a crevice dividing her forehead. “Couples turn the camera on, never knowing their perverted rituals will end in death.”
“If you could go through the photographs,” Scarpetta said to Benton. “The ones from the scene. Let’s look at a few things.”
He retrieved an envelope from a counter and together they arranged photos of the bathroom. She pointed to one that showed the vanity, and directly above it, the oval mirror that was slightly askew.
Scarpetta said, “The injuries to her legs were caused by moderate to severe blunt force with an object that is flat and has an edge. The edge of the vanity and the underside of its drawer, maybe? If she’d been seated in front of the vanity? That could explain why all of her injuries are anterior and from the mid-thigh down. Nothing posterior, or on any area of her upper body. Nothing on her back or buttocks, which are usually the preferred target for spanking.”
“You know if police found any weapon at the scene that might have caused these bruises and abrasions?” Benton asked Dr. Lester.
“Not that I’ve been told,” she replied. “That doesn’t surprise me. If whoever she was with left the scene with whatever was used around her neck, maybe he also left with whatever was used to beat her. If she were beaten. Frankly, I’d lean more toward homicide if she’d been raped. But there’s no evidence of that. No inflammation, no lacerations, no seminal fluid . . .”
Scarpetta returned to the gurney and moved the surgical lamp over the pelvis.
Dr. Lester watched her and said, “As I’ve told you, I took swabs.”
She was beginning to sound unnerved and defensive.
“I also took the initiative to make several slides, which I examined microscopically for sperm,” she said. “Negative. And samples went to the DNA lab, and you’re aware of those results. Doesn’t seem likely intercourse occurred, in my opinion. Doesn’t mean that wasn’t the intention. I think we have to at least be sure she wasn’t planning something consensual, and the foreplay involved bondage.”
“Was there lubricant at the scene? Something, perhaps, in her bathroom or by her bed that might indicate the source of it might have been the victim? I didn’t see anything like that listed in the police report, as I’ve said,” Scarpetta said.
“They say no.”
“Well, that’s extremely important,” Scarpetta said. “If there’s no source of it in her apartment, that might suggest whoever she was with brought it with him. And there are a plethora of reasons intercourse could have occurred or been attempted and there’s no sperm or semen. The most obvious is erectile dysfunction, which isn’t uncommon in rape. Other possible scenarios? He’d had a vasectomy, or suffered from azoospermia, resulting in a complete absence of sperm cells. Or a blocked ejaculatory duct. Or retrograde ejaculation, when the sperm and semen flow backward into the bladder instead of out of the penis and into the vagina. Or medications that interfere with the formation of sperm.”
“Again, I’ll remind you of what I said earlier. Not only is there no sperm, but under UV, nothing fluoresced that might indicate the presence of semen, either. Whoever she was with, it doesn’t appear he ejaculated.”
“Depends on if the semen was deep in the vaginal canal or rectum,” Scarpetta said. “Without dissection or some type of forensic fiber-optic technology that can incorporate UV, you’re not going to see anything. Did you try the light source on the inside of her mouth? You did swab her rectum and her mouth?”
“Of course.”
“Fine. I’d like to take a look.”
“Help yourself.”
The more determined Scarpetta got, the less combative and self-assured Dr. Lester sounded.
Scarpetta opened a cabinet and found a speculum still in its wrapper. She put on fresh gloves and went through the same procedure with the body that a gynecologist did during a routine pelvic exam. She inspected the external genitalia and saw no injury or abnormalities, then, with the speculum, spread open the vaginal canal, where she found enough lubricant for several swabs, which she smeared on slides. She swabbed the rectum. She swabbed the inside of the mouth and throat, because it’s not uncommon for a victim to aspirate or swallow seminal fluid while being orally sodomized.
“Stomach contents?” Scarpetta asked.
“A small amount of brownish fluid, about twenty cc’s. She hadn’t eaten for hours, at least,” Dr. Lester said.
“You kept it?”
“No point. I’m having the usual body fluids screened for drugs.”
“I wasn’t thinking about drugs as much as the possibility of semen,” Scarpetta said. “If she was orally sodomized, you might find semen in the stomach. Might even find it in the lungs. Unfortunately, we have to think creatively.”
She retrieved a scalpel from a cart and snapped in a new blade. She began incising contusions on Terri’s knees, and could feel the broken patellae beneath the abraded skin. Each kneecap was fractured into several pieces—a typical injury in car accidents where knees impact the dashboard.
“If you’ll make sure I have electronic images of all x-rays,” she said.
She incised contusions on the thighs and discovered ruptured blood vessels more than an inch deep, all the way to muscle. Using a six-inch ruler as a scale, she got Benton to help with photographs, and she made notes on body diagrams she retrieved from cubbyholes above the counter.
With forceps, she removed splinters from the knees and the tops of the feet and placed them on several dry slides. Seating herself before the compound microscope, she manipulated light and contrast and moved the slide on the stage. At a magnification of 100X, she could see the tracheids, the water-conducting cells of the wood, and
