The Body Farm

"Nine-one-one."

I hung up, my pulse pounding in my neck as chills raced up to the roots of my hair. I looked around at red spatters on the dark gray leather, on the dash and console, and all over the inside of the roof. They were too red and thick. Here and there bits of angel hair pasta were cemented to the interior of my car.

I got out a metal fingernail file and scraped off greenish paint from the damage to the rear. Folding the paint flecks into a tissue, next I tried to pry off the damaged taillight unit. When I couldn't, I got the man to fetch a screwdriver.

"It's a '92," I said as I rapidly walked away, leaving him staring after me with an open mouth.

"Three hundred and fifteen horsepower. It cost eighty thousand dollars. There are only six hundred in this country-were. I bought it at McGeorge in Richmond. I don't have a husband." I was breathing hard as I got in the Lincoln.

"It's not blood inside it, goddam it. Goddam it. Goddam it! " I muttered on as I slammed the door shut and started the engine. Tires squealed as I shot out into the highway and raced back to 95 South. Just past the Atlee/Elmont exit I slowed down and pulled off the road. I kept as far off the pavement as I could, and when cars and trucks roared past I was hit by walls of wind. Sinclair's report stated that my Mercedes had left the pavement approximately eighty feet north of the eighty-six-mile marker. I was at least two hundred feet north of that when I spotted a yaw mark not far from broken taillight glass in the right lane. The mark, which was a sideways scuff about two feet long, was about ten feet from a set of straight skid marks that were approximately thirty feet long. I darted in and out of traffic, collecting glass.

I started walking again, and it was approximately another hundred feet before I got to marks on pavement that Sinclair had diagrammed in his report. My heart skipped another beat as I stared, stu

I drove back to Richmond not sure what to do or whom to call. Then I thought of Investigator McKee with the state police. We had worked many traffic fatality scenes together and spent many hours in my office moving Matchbox cars on my desk until we believed we had reconstructed what had led to a crash. I left a message with his office, and he returned my call shortly after I got home.

"I didn't ask Sinclair if he got casts of the tire impressions where she left the road, but I can't imagine he would have," I said, after explaining a little of what was going on.

"No, he wouldn't have," McKee concurred.

"I heard a lot about it. Dr. Scarpetta. There was a lot of talk. And the thing was, what Reed first noticed when he responded to the scene was your low number tag. "

"I talked to Reed briefly. He wasn't very involved."

"Right. Under ordinary circumstances, when the Hanover officer… uh, Sinclair, rolled up. Reed would have told him things were under control and done all the diagrams and measurements himself. But he sees this low three-digit tag and bells go off. He knows the car belongs to somebody important in government.

"Sinclair gets to do his thing while Reed gets on the radio and the phone, calls for a supervisor, runs the tag ASAP. Bingo. The car comes back to you, and now his first thought is ifs you inside. So you can imagine how it was out there."

"A circus."

"You got it. Turns out Sinclair just got out of the academy. Your wreck was his second."

"Even if it was his twentieth, I can see how he might have made a mistake.

There was no reason for him to look for skid marks two hundred feet up from where Lucy went off the road."

"And you're certain it was a yaw mark you saw?"

"Absolutely. You make those casts, and you're going to find the impression on the shoulder's going to match the impression back there on the road. The only way that yaw mark or scuff could have been left was if an outside force caused the car to suddenly change direction."

"And then acceleration marks two hundred or so feet later," he thought out loud.

"Lucy gets hit from the rear, taps her brakes, and keeps on going. Seconds later she suddenly accelerates and loses control."

"Probably about the same time she dialed Nine-one- one," I said.

"I'll check with the cellular phone company and get the exact time of that call. Then we'll find it on the tape."

"Someone was on her bumper with their high beams on, and she flipped on the night mirror, and finally resorted to putting up the rear sunscreen to block out the glare. She didn't have the radio or CD player on because she was concentrating hard. She was wide awake and scared because someone's on top of her.

"This person finally hits her from the rear and Lucy applies the brakes," I continued to reconstruct what I believed had happened.

"She drives on, and realizes the person is gaining on her again. Panicking, Lucy floors it and loses control. All of this would have taken place in seconds."

"If what you found out there is right, it sure could have happened exactly like that."

"Will you look into it?"

"You bet. What about the paint?"

"I'll turn it, the taillight unit, and everything else in to the labs and ask them to put a rush on it."

"Put my name on the paperwork. Have them call me with the results right away." It was five o'clock and dark out when I got off the phone in my upstairs office. I looked around dazed, and felt like a stranger in my house. Hunger gnawing my stomach was followed by nausea, and I drank Mylanta from the bottle and rummaged in the medicine cabinet for Zantac. My ulcer had vanished during the summer, but unlike former lovers, it always came back. Both phone lines rang and were answered by voice mail. I heard the fax machine as I soaked in the tub and sipped wine on top of medicine. I had so much to do. I knew my sister, Dorothy, would want to come immediately. She always rose to crisis occasions because it fed her need for drama. She would use it for research. No doubt, in her next children's book, one of her characters would deal with an auto wreck. Critics again would rave about the sensitivity and wisdom of Dorothy, who mothered people she imagined much better than she did her only daughter. The fax, I found, was Dorothy's flight schedule. She was arriving late tomorrow afternoon and would stay with Lucy in my home.

"She won't be in the hospital long, will she?" she asked, when I called her minutes later.

"I imagine I'll be bringing her here in the afternoon," I said.

"She must look terrible."

"Most people do after automobile accidents."

"But is any of it permanent?" She almost whispered.

"She won't be disfigured, will she?"

"No, Dorothy. She won't be disfigured. How aware have you been of her drinking?"

"Now how would I know anything about that? She's up there near you in school and never seems to want to come home. And when she does she certainly doesn't confide in me or her grandmother. I would think if anyone were aware, you should have been."

"If she's convicted of DUI, the courts could order her into treatment," I said as patiently as possible. Silence. Then, "My God."

I went on, "Even if they don't, it would be a good idea for two reasons. The most obvious is that she needs to deal with the problem. Second, the judge may look upon her case with more sympathy if she volunteers to get some help. "