Read the Excerpt: Identity Unknown by Patricia Cornwell
A Stryker saw grinds through bone, a knife rasping across a whetstone as water drums into deep metal sinks. Doctors call out organ weights, wound measurements and other findings as those assisting scribe. Rock and roll blares from the vintage boom box on a shelf, the autopsy suite not the quiet place one might expect.
Our caseload is heavy this Tuesday morning, the weather beautiful in Northern Virginia, the sun shining, the temperature in the seventies. People have been flocking to the parks, the nature trails, the waterfront, and with the good comes the awful. Violence, accidents and other senseless deaths escalate when the weather is nice, my idea of spring fever different from most.
I’m finishing a complicated case that I find especially disturbing, and there’s nothing more I can do for now. What’s needed is time for elusive injuries to creep out of hiding. When contusions occur close to death, the skin discoloration is subtle like shadows and easily missed. But with additional days in the cooler, the injuries become obvious like the bruised flesh of a peach turning brown.
I’m suspicious that faint marks on the victim’s upper arms and neck were caused by violent gripping and throttling. If I’m right, that will be incriminating for her parents, Ryder and Piper Briley. My decisions could result in them charged with child abuse and murder. Based on what I’ve witnessed at their home and during the autopsy, they’re a monstrous couple.
But it’s not up to me to judge. I’m not supposed to care about punishment. The forensic pathologist’s job is to present the facts with no interest in the outcome. That’s impossible unless you’re a robot or cold‐blooded. Luna Briley’s death is outrageous and infuriating. It was all I could do to keep my cool when I was at the scene yesterday.
I have no doubt that her entire short life was hellish, her influential parents unaccustomed to facing consequences. I’m sealing bullet fragments inside an evidence container when the old‐style wall phone begins to clangor near my workstation. I wonder who it is. Few people have this number.
“Someone expecting a call down here?” I raise my voice above the din.
My medical examiners are deep in their cases, scarcely glancing in my direction as the ringing continues.
“No problem. I’ll get it.” I mutter this to no one in particular.
Taking off my surgical mask and bloody gloves, I toss them into the biohazard trash. The floor is sticky beneath my Tyvek‐covered feet as I step over to the countertop. Taped to the cinderblock wall is a sign demanding clean hands only! and I grab the phone, the long cord hopelessly snarled.
“Doctor Scarpetta,” I answer, and there’s no response.
“Hello?” I detect the murmur of a talk show playing in the background. “Anybody there? Hello?”
Sensing someone on the line, I hang up. I’m returning to my table when the ringing starts again. This time I’m not as pleasant.
“Morgue,” I announce.
“Hate to interrupt. I know you’re slammed.” It’s my niece, Lucy Farinelli, a U.S. Secret Service agent and helicopter pilot. I can tell by the noise of throbbing engines and thudding rotor blades that she’s flying somewhere. She wouldn’t call like this unless it’s urgent.
“The phone just rang, and no one said anything. That wasn’t you by chance?” I ask her.
“It wasn’t, and I have bad news, Aunt Kay.”
Lucy never calls me that anymore unless no one else is listening. She must be flying alone, and I imagine her in the right seat of a cockpit that reminds me of a space shuttle.
“We’ve got a bizarre death that I suspect is somehow related to the little girl likely on your table as we speak,” she tells me somberly, and I detect an undercurrent of anger.
“I’m just finishing up with Luna Briley if that’s who you mean.” Rolling out a chair from the countertop, I sit down with my back to the room.
“I’m betting she’s not an accident,” Lucy says ominously.
“What bizarre death are you thinking might be related to her?” I slide a clipboard close, a pen attached by a plastic string. “Her scumbag billionaire father owns the Oz theme park you and I are familiar with. It’s abandoned now, and a couple of hours ago we found the body of a missing person there,” Lucy informs me in a reluctant tone, and I sense something coming I won’t want to hear. “I’m afraid it’s someone we know. You especially know,” she adds awkwardly, and I’m touched by dread.
I jot down today’s date, April 16. The time is 11:40 a.m. as she explains that Nobel laureate Sal Giordano was abducted last night near the Virginia and West Virginia border. He’s been violently killed, she says to my shock and horror, my inner voice already arguing.
It can’t be him.
“I’m really sorry, Aunt Kay. I know you two were close . . .”
There must be some mistake.
An acclaimed astrophysicist, he’s an advisor to the White House and other top officials in the U.S. and internationally. Sal and I serve on several of the same government task forces and committees. We see each other regularly and have a history.
This can’t be right.
“You got how close to the body?” I hear myself asking the right questions.
“Close enough to get a good look without disturbing anything. He’s nude with no sign of personal effects so far, and I don’t think he’s been dead all that long . . .”
It could be someone else.
“Are we sure it’s him? Let’s start with that.” I envision his compelling face. I hear his lyrical voice and easy laugh.
“Average height, slender, with long wavy gray hair. A tattoo of a pi sign on his left inner wrist,” Lucy describes, and I go hollow inside. “There was a pungent odor that I could vaguely smell through my face mask. Sort of vinegary. Sharply acidic like white vinegar.”
“Any guesses about the source?” I hear myself asking as I try to quell my inner turmoil.
“Only that I smelled it all around the body.”
“What about obvious injuries?”
“A lot of trauma, especially to his face and head . . .”
No. No. No…
“His skin is strangely red,” she says. “Maybe from some type of radiation, and there’s a vortex of apple blossom petals around him like a crop circle . . .”
“A what?”
“It appears he was dropped out of the sky by a UAP . . .”
“Excuse me . . . ?” I’ve paused my pen on the call sheet.
“A UAP,” Lucy repeats. “An Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon. A UFO. Whatever you want to call it.”
***
Pressing the old phone’s handset close to one ear, I cover the other with my free hand, trying to block out the racket behind me. Members of my staff are talking in loud voices. A blaring buzzer announces the morgue’s vehicle bay door is opening. Water pounds in every sink, the cooler door slamming with a thud.
Lucy explains that at around six o’clock this morning, a UAP was detected on radar flying low and slow near the Oz theme park. After the Secret Service was notified that Sal was missing, my niece conducted an aerial search for him. Not having any luck, she decided to follow the flightpath the mysterious object had been on and was led directly to the body.
“Whatever the thing was, it flew over the very spot in the middle of the Haunted Forest,” Lucy explains. “The low‐flying craft had a signature that doesn’t match any algorithm. And since it wasn’t witnessed by anyone that we know of, we don’t have any clues as to what the UAP might have looked like to an observer.”
“A UAP as in a spaceship from another planet?” I glance around, making sure no one can hear me.
“What I know is that Sal Giordano was jettisoned from some type of flying object identity unknown,” Lucy states. “It was unrecognizable to radar. And to electro‐optical, telemetric and other sensors. Also to spectrum monitoring. That doesn’t mean it was from outer space. But we can’t assume it wasn’t.”
“I’ll plan knowing that’s a possibility.” My mind races through how best to handle this.
“I need to ask a couple of questions,” Lucy then says, another Stryker saw whining and grinding behind me.
“Of course.”
“You saw him yesterday.”
“Yes. It was his birthday.” I push away what I’m feeling. Guilt. I should have asked more questions.
I envision him squinting in the sun and smiling at me as we chatted on his driveway, both of us in a hurry. He was eager to get on the road, and I’d dropped by after a court hearing. He was dressed in cargo shorts, a loose white linen shirt like an ad for Banana Republic. I remember he seemed preoccupied as if something weighed heavily, but I didn’t pry. I never have. I assumed he was in a mood because he wasn’t happy turning sixty.
“Sounds like you were one of the last to see him alive.” Lucy’s voice over the phone, her helicopter thud‐thudding. “What can you tell me?”
I explain that I dropped by his house late yesterday morning with a gift basket he could take on the road. I knew he was on his way to West Virginia’s Green Bank Observatory, its steerable radio telescope the largest in the world. He’s been a frequent visitor since graduate school, the place important to his work.
“Did he mention having trouble with anyone? Anything unusual going on?” Lucy asks.
“Nothing jumps out except he was a bit melancholy about his birthday.” I ward off another wave of remorse and disbelief. “He didn’t say much about what he would be doing during his trip, and that was typical. We never quizzed each other about our work, most of it not up for discussion.”
Lucy informs me that last night at seven, Sal met two colleagues at the Red Caboose several miles from Green Bank. An hour and a half later a security camera caught him leaving the restaurant in his pickup truck, an old blue Chevy with a grumbly diesel engine I tease him about. Presumably, he was headed up the mountain to the Allegheny Peak Lodge where he always stayed.
“He was due at the observatory before daylight this morning to track the radio waves of the rising sun,” Lucy is saying. “When he didn’t show up, it was discovered that he never checked into the lodge last night. It seems that shortly after he drove away from the restaurant he had an encounter of the wrong kind.”
“What about his truck?” I ask, a gurney trundling past.
“About two miles from there. Apparently, it plunged off the road with no one inside and is halfway down the mountain in a ravine. First responders report that the engine was running at the time of the crash, the doors locked, the front seat belts fastened but no sign of anyone.”
“How far is that from where his body somehow ended up?” I continue writing down the details.
“Ninety miles, in Augusta County.”
“The theme park has been abandoned how long?” I ask, and Lucy was in high school the last time I took her there.
“It was permanently shuttered at the beginning of COVID,” she answers. “Since then it’s fallen to ruin and been vandalized. As you remember, it’s off the beaten track in the Blue Ridge foothills. You’d have to know about it or you wouldn’t think to leave a body there. It’s not the only stop we’ll be making, and we’ll talk more later. I’m an hour out from Washington National.”
“Marino and I will be there with our gear.”
“A bad storm front is on the way, and it’s going to get nasty later in the day,” she adds. “You can expect a lot of turbulence and tricky maneuvering. He won’t be happy.”
“That’s an understatement. Fly safe,” I tell her.
***
I return the handset to its cradle, the long cord twisting and coiling like something alive. Reaching for my cell phone, I write a text to Pete Marino, a former homicide detective I’ve worked with most of my career. He’s my head of investigations and hates flying in helicopters, especially when Lucy is at the stick.
Add bad weather to the equation, and he’ll be an ill‐tempered mess. Introduce the subject of UAPs and I’ll never hear the end of it. An enthusiast of most things paranormal, including Bigfoot, ghosts and flying saucers, he’s quick to tell you about his close encounters. Marino will hope the UAP really is from outer space. At the same time, he’ll panic should that turn out to be the case.
I inform him that we’re needed at a scene some 150 miles west of our office here in Alexandria. Lucy will be flying us there and possibly to other locations. In addition to the usual equipment, he’s to bring Level‐A hazmat protection. We’ll need total containment body pouches and a radiation detector. It would be a good idea to include toiletries and a change of clothing. I have no idea how long we’ll be gone.
You seen the weather report?! he fires back with emojis of a thunder cloud, lightning and a coffin.
Bring a rain jacket.
We’re better off driving & transporting the body ourselves.
Not an option, I answer. Lucy wants us with her. See you soon.
I work my hands into a pair of gloves as death investigator
Fabian Etienne sharpens another knife on the far side of the room. In his late twenties, he’s exotically attractive, attired in his usual black scrubs, these with a spiderweb pattern. His long black hair is pinned up under a matching surgical cap, his arms and neck a tattoo gallery.
He’s been keeping busy since he got here this morning, fooling himself into thinking I don’t notice that he’s avoiding me.
I understand better than most that some deaths are impossibly hard. It doesn’t matter that he grew up in the business, his father a legendary Louisiana coroner. Fabian is experienced and for the most part fearless. But he’s self‐absorbed and overly sensitive. I motion for him that I could use some help.
He’ll be with me in a minute, he indicates. While waiting, I finish labeling test tubes and other evidence. I can’t stop seeing Sal Giordano’s keen eyes, his Einstein-wild hair. Thoughts enter my mind as if from him, and it won’t be the same when we’re not sitting next to each other at meetings. We won’t be grabbing lunch, a drink, or riding together and catching up.
È quello che è, amore.
It is what it is, he’d say. I imagine him telling me not to feel upset even as what I’m thinking seems heartless and disrespectful. As unlikely as it seems, I have no choice but to consider that he might have been inside a spacecraft of nonhuman origin. Possibly he was exposed to unknown pathogens or radioactive contaminants. I’ll be treating his remains like an extreme biohazard.
The murder scene is bizarre, with a crop circle of petals around the body, and Giordano’s skin is strangely red. Scarpetta’s niece Lucy believes he was dropped from an unidentified flying craft. Scarpetta knows an autopsy can reveal the dead’s secrets, but she is shocked to find her friend seems to have deliberately left her a clue.
As the investigators are torn between suspicions of otherworldly forces, and of Giordano himself, Scarpetta detects an explanation closer to home that, in her mind, is far more evil…
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