Autopsy (Kay Scarpetta, #25)(83)

We have an hour before the train comes through again, possibly the same one that shrieked to a stop four nights ago. Those aboard can’t feel the same about Daingerfield Island.

“Let’s do this.” Marino cuts the engine. “It’s getting to be Miller time,” he says as if assuming we’ll discover in short order that my idea is a wild goose chase.

We climb out of his truck, an owl clucking so close by that you can hear the rush of its powerful wings lifting off from a tree shrouded in fog. We shine our lights up and down the tracks, finding little evidence that runners or nature lovers spend time back here. I don’t notice any trash, no sign of people having picnics or anything else.

Opening my scene case, I find the spray bottle, the hydrogen peroxide, the liter of distilled water. Resorting to basic high school chemistry, I’ll mix up a solution that emits light instead of heat when it reacts to the hemoglobin in blood no longer visible.

But that’s not the only thing luminol takes a shine to, glowing sapphire blue when in contact with copper, for example. While false positives like that can be problematic at crime scenes, in this instance, it’s exactly what I want.

“Why are you doing it the hard way?” Marino asks as we put on gloves and face masks.

“Because Fabian decided to help himself to my supply closet,” I reply. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Luminol is old school. Unlike more modern premixed reagents, it must be used in the dark, and is unforgiving. Once I mix it up inside the bottle, I have at most two hours. After that it’s no longer effective.

“If you’ll help me out with your flashlight, please,” I say to Marino as I turn off mine, handing it to him. “So that I can see what I’m doing.”

Pouring distilled water into the spray bottle, I dribble in a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide, tucking extra gloves and evidence bags in my coat pocket.

“Ready,” I let him know, and he turns off his flashlight.

It’s very dark by the tracks as I carefully step, my boots feeling the rails, the wooden ties. I begin misting the rocky ballast where I examined Gwen’s body, and don’t have to go far when crevasses between the deeply piled stones give us the first hint of blue.

“Holy crap!” Only Marino doesn’t say crap as I crouch down, moving small rocks out of the way while spraying. “Maybe it’s reacting to rust?” he suggests.

“There’s rust for sure. But also, something else,” I reply, a flattened penny luminescing.





CHAPTER 33


SECONDS LATER, I FIND other flattened pennies glowing and dimming like fireflies to the sound of my spraying.

I place each coin in an evidence bag that I tuck in a coat pocket. After collecting several more, I stop spraying so we can see what we’ve got, and I’m feeling foolish.

“Somebody’s been putting them out here for a long time,” I decide. “Or maybe a lot of people have.”

“That’s what I’m wondering.” Marino turns on his light, stepping close to me as I pull out the small bags so we can examine them. “I’m not sure it’s a good thing to find a lot of them.”

“I’m not sure, either,” I reply with extreme misgivings, having found eight pennies so far. “If I’ve picked up that many this quickly, there’s probably a lot more.” I can’t help but be disappointed.

Marino shines the flashlight on the misshapen, badly tarnished wafers of metal. They would be difficult to see when mixed with dirt, rocks and other debris, some of the pennies the same brown as dead leaves. Others are patinated a bluish green, and I can’t tell the dates.

I start spraying again, and a few minutes later find a coin that’s incompletely run over. Part of it is flattened, the rest of it untouched by the train’s iron wheels.

“I need you again,” I call out to Marino.

“What have you got?” He’s back with his light, shining it at what I’m holding in my gloved palm.

“I can’t see the entire date.” I look closely, wondering why I didn’t think to bring a hand magnifier. “Just the first three numbers. Nineteen seventy-something.”

“That’s a long time to be out here,” he says as I place the penny inside another evidence baggie. “At least forty years if the penny was left back then,” he adds, and I can hear it in his tone.

The penny found by Gwen’s body might be significant. But it’s unlikely the rest of them are, and I resume spraying like someone possessed. I find more coins, some intact, others partially run over. All appear to have been out here for months and years unlike the one minted in 2020 that August found. I’m almost out of luminol when Marino hisses at me to stop.

“Doc!” he says in an intense stage whisper, and I turn around as he pulls out his gun.

The lighted orb looks like a bleary moon floating along the dark foggy tracks, and it isn’t a train headed in our direction. There’s no sound except the constant planes taking off and landing in the gloom, and what we’re seeing isn’t Hookerman or ball lightning, either.

“What the hell?” Marino has his gun drawn and pointed down by his side. “Who’s there?” he yells as the light bobs closer. “Don’t make me shoot!”

“It’s Fruge!” she calls out, picking up her pace.