Page 1 of Unnatural Death

CHAPTER 1

ISTEP OFF THE ELEVATOR on the morgue level, the air foul beneath a cloying patina of deodorizer. A stuttering fluorescent light is enough to cause vertigo, the white tile floor blood-dripped and dirty. Cinder block walls are scuffed and smudged, the red biohazard trash cans overflowing.

It’s a few minutes past nineA.M.,November first, and yesterday was the deadliest Halloween on record in Northern Virginia. People were busy killing themselves and others, the weather dangerously stormy. I left my Alexandria office late and was back before daylight. We’re far from caught up, and I’d be inside the autopsy suite right now if I hadn’t been summoned to a scene that promises to be a nightmare.

Two campers have been killed near an abandoned gold mine sixty miles southwest of here. The primitive wilderness of Buckingham Run isn’t a place people hike or visit, and I’ve looked up information about it, getting a better idea what to expect. Virginia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner hasn’t had a case from there in its eighty-some-year history. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been fatalities no one knows about.

Buckingham Run isn’t mapped or accessible by motorized ground transportation, and I wouldn’t dare try it on foot. Thousands of acres are riddled with mineshafts and tunnels, among other life-threatening hazards that include contamination by poisons. There’s no telling what might live in vast forestland that’s been relatively untouched by humans since before the American Civil War.

It goes without saying there are large wild animals, perhaps some that people wouldn’t imagine, and I’m not talking about only bears. Images flash nonstop from videos that Pete Marino has been sending since he arrived at the scene.The nude female body impaled by hiking poles floating in a lake reflecting fall colors. The campsite scattered near the entrance of the abandoned gold mine,DANGERandGO AWAYbarely legible on centuries-old warning signs.

Marino filmed with his phone while shining a light down a mineshaft, illuminating a body caught in collapsed wooden scaffolding, the bloody face staring up blindly. I can hear Marino’s booted feet moving through loose rocks and grit. I see his light painting over rusty iron rails … An ore cart shrouded in spiderwebs … Then he’s exclaiming “Holy shit,” the light stopping on a bare footprint that seems to have been left by a giant …

Leaving the building. I send a text to Marino’s satellite phone.

A former homicide detective I’ve worked with most of my career, he’s my forensic operations specialist. Several hours ago, he was airlifted to the scene with Secret Service investigators. Marino is getting an overview before I show up and is excited bythe find of a lifetime, as he puts it. I’m not sharing his positive sentiments about evidence that’s sensational and likely fake. Any way I look at it, we could have a real mess on our hands.

If you want me to bring anything else tell me now. Typing with my thumbs, I push through the ladies’ room door.

I feel for the wall switch, turning on the light inside a closet-size space with a sink, a toilet and a plastic chair with uneven legs. By now I’m programmed not to pass up a chance to use the facilities. In the early days I might have been the only female except for maybe the victim. At death scenes I don’t get to borrow the bathroom, and where I’m going doesn’t have one.

While I’m washing up with institutional soap, my computer-assistedsmartring alerts me that Marino is answering my texts to him. Drying my hands with cheap paper towels, I unlock my phone.

Bring bolt cutters, he’s written back, and I’ve already thought of it.

All set. Anything else?I answer.

A snakebite kit.

Don’t have.

There’s one in my truck.

They don’t work, I reply, and we’ve been through this countless times since I’ve known him.

Better than nothing.

They’re not.

What if someone gets bit?He adds the emoji of a coiled snake.

I answer with the emojis of a helicopter and a hospital before tucking my phone in a pocket. Reapplying lip balm, I brush on mineral sunblock, spritzing myself but good with insect repellent. I pick up my Kevlar briefcase, a birthday gift from my Secret Service agent niece, Lucy Farinelli. Looping the strap over my shoulder, I’m confronted by my reflection in the mirror.

It’s as bad as I expected after days of little sleep, eating on the run and too much coffee. When Lucy notified me about the two victims inside Buckingham Run, she said to dress for extreme conditions. The tactical cargo pants and shirt, the boots I’m wearing wouldn’t be flattering on most women. I’m no exception. I text Lucy that I’ll meet her outside. First, I need to chat with Henry Addams, I tell her, and she’ll understand why.

The funeral director is on his way here to pick up a body from an unrelated case, an alleged suicide from yesterday. I texted him that we need to talk when he gets here. He doesn’t know what’s happened inside Buckingham Run. Nothing has been on the news yet. But he’ll realize something is going on or I wouldn’t have communicated that I’m waiting for him.

As I follow the corridor, observation windows on either side offer remnants of recent horrors. Air-drying in the evidence room are the bloody clown costumes donned by two ex-cons who picked the wrong home to invade last night. The Bozos (as they’re being called) got a trick rather than a treat when they were greeted with a shotgun.

Sneakers with laces tied in double bows were left in the road at the scene of a pedestrian hit-and-run. A shattered wrist- watch shows that time stopped at nine p.m. for the victim of an armed robbery in a retirement home parking lot. The paper strip from a fortune cookie reads,Your luck is about to change, and it did when a woman fell off her deer stand.

Inside the CT room’s scanner, images on monitors are of a fractured skull. The decomp autopsy room’s door is closed, the red light illuminated. Inside is the badly decomposed body of a possible drowning in the Potomac River, the victim last seen fishing almost a week ago.

I’m walking past a supply closet when Fabian Etienne emerges from it. He’s holding a box of exam gloves as if he just happened to be in the area, and I know his ploys.

* * *

“Hey! Doctor Scarpetta!” Fabian’s voice interrupts my grim preoccupations. “Wait up!” Flashing me one of his big smiles, he’s been watching the cameras, waiting for me to head out of the building.

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