Postmortem(96)

The three of us spent the next hour drafting the language in Abby’s article.

“We can’t have attribution,” she insisted. “No way. If these quotes are attributed to the chief medical examiner, it will sound fishy because you’ve refused to talk in the past. And you’ve been ordered not to talk now. It’s got to look like the information was leaked.”

“Well,” I commented dryly, “I suppose you can pull your famous ’medical source’ out of your hat.”

Abby read the draft aloud. It didn’t set well with me. It was too vague. “Alleged” this and “possible” that.

If only we had his blood. The enzyme defect, if it existed, could be assayed in his leukocytes, his white blood cells. If only we had something.

As if on cue my telephone buzzed. It was Rose. “Dr. Scarpetta, Sergeant Marino’s here. He says it’s urgent.”

I met him in the lobby. He was carrying a bag, the familiar gray plastic bag used to hold clothing connected to criminal cases.

“You ain’t gonna believe this.” He was grinning, his face flushed. “You know Magpie?”

I was staring at the bulging bag, my confusion apparent.

“You know, Magpie. All over the city with all his earthly belongings in a grocery cart he swiped somewhere. Spends his hours rummaging through garbage cans and Dumpsters.”

“A street person?” What was Marino talking about?

“Yo. The Grand Dragon of street persons. Well, over the weekend he’s fishing around in this Dumpster less than a block from where Henna Yarborough was whacked and guess what? He finds himself a nice navy blue jumpsuit, Doc. Flips him right out because the damn thing’s stained with blood. He’s a snitch of mine, see. Has the brains to stuff the thing in a trash bag, and’s been wheeling the damn thing around for days, looking for me. So he waves me down on the street a little while ago, charges me the usual ten-spot, and Merry Christmas.”

He was untwisting the tie around the top of the bag. “Take a whiff.”

It almost knocked me over, not just the stench of the days-old bloody garment but a powerful maple-sweetish, sweaty odor. A chill ran down my spine.

“Hey,” Marino went on, “I bopped by Petersen’s apartment before I come over here. Had him take a whiff.”

“Is it the odor he remembers?”

He shot his finger at me and winked. “Bingo.”

For two hours Vander and I worked on the blue jumpsuit. It would take a while for Betty to analyze the bloodstains, but there was little doubt in our minds the jumpsuit was worn by the killer. It sparkled under the laser like mica-flecked blacktop.

We suspected when he assaulted Henna with the knife he got very bloody and wiped his hands on his thighs. The cuffs of the sleeves were also stiff with dried blood. Quite likely it was his habit to wear something like a jumpsuit over his clothes when he struck. Maybe it was routine for him to toss the garment into a Dumpster after the crime. But I doubted it. He tossed this one because he made this victim bleed.

I was willing to bet he was smart enough to know bloodstains are permanent. If he were ever picked up, he had no intention of having anything hanging in his closet that might be stained with old blood. He had no intention of anyone’s tracing the jumpsuit either. The label had been removed.

The fabric looked like a cotton and synthetic blend, dark blue, the size a large or perhaps an extra-large. I was reminded of the dark fibers found on Lori Petersen’s windowsill and on her body. There were a few dark fibers on Henna’s body as well.

The three of us had said nothing to Marino about what we were doing. He was out on the street somewhere, maybe at home drinking beer in front of the TV. He didn’t have a clue. When the news broke, he was going to think it was legitimate, that the information was leaked and related to the jumpsuit he turned in and to the DNA reports recently sent to me. We wanted everybody to think the news was legitimate.

In fact, it probably was. I could think of no other reason for the killer’s having such a distinctive body odor, unless Petersen was imagining things and the jumpsuit just happened to be tossed on top of a Mrs. Butterworth’s maple syrup bottle inside the Dumpster.

“It’s perfect,” Wesley was saying. “He never thought we’d find it. The toad had it all figured out, maybe even knew where the Dumpster was before he went out that night. He never thought we’d find it.”

I stole a glance at Abby. She was holding up amazingly well.

“It’s enough to run with,” Wesley added. I could see the headline:

DNA, NEW EVIDENCE:

SERIAL KILLER MAY HAVE

METABOLIC DISORDER

If he truly did have maple syrup urine disease, the front-page story ought to knock him off his feet.