Cause of Death (2 page)

I had heard this before and was patient when I replied, "People who work in funeral homes drive hearses. I don't work in a funeral home. I am a medical examiner."

"I'm going to need some other form of identification."

I gave him my driver's license, and had no doubt that this sort of interference wasn't going to improve once he allowed me to drive through. He stepped back from my car, lifting a portable radio to his lips.

"Unit eleven to unit two." He turned away from me as if about to tell secrets.

"Two," floated back the reply.

I got a Dr. Scaylatta here." He mispronounced my name worse than most people did.

"Ten-four. We're standing by."

"Ma'am," the security guard said to me, "just drive through and you'll find a parking lot on your right." He pointed. "You need to leave your car there and walk to Pier Two, where you'll find Captain Green. That's who you need to see."

"And where will I find Detective Roche?" I asked.

"Captain Green's who you need to see," he repeated.

I rolled my window up as he opened a gate posted with signs warning that I was about to enter an industrial area where spray painting was an imminent hazard, safety equipment was required and parking was at my own risk. In the distance, dull gray cargo and tank landing ships, and mine sweepers, frigates and hydrofoils intimidated the cold horizon. On the second pier, emergency vehicles, police cars and a small group of men had gathered.

Leaving my car as instructed, I briskly walked toward them as they stated. I had left my medical bag and dive gear in the car, so I was an empty-handed, middle-aged woman in hiking boots, wool slacks and pale army-green Schoffel coat. The instant I set foot on the pier, a distinguished, graying man in uniform intercepted me as if I were trespassing. Unsmiling, he stepped in my path.

"May I help you?" he asked in a tone that said halt, as the wind lifted his hair and colored his cheeks.

I again explained who I was.

"Oh, good." He certainly did not sound as if he meant it. "I'm Captain Green with Navy Investigative Service.

We really do need to get on with this. Listen," he turned away from me and spoke to someone else. "We gotta get those CPs off. . .

"Excuse me. You're with NISI cut in, for I was going to get this cleared up now. "It was my belief that this shipyard is not Navy property. If it is Navy property, I shouldn't be here. The case should be the Navy's and autopsied by Navy pathologists."

. "Ma'am," he said as if I tried his patience, "this shipyard is a civilian contractor-operated facility, and therefore not naval property. But we have an obvious interest because it appears someone was diving unauthorized around our vessels.

"Do you have a theory as to why someone might have done that?" I looked around.

"Some treasure hunters think they're going to find cannonballs, old ship bells and whatnot in waters around here."

We were standing between the cargo ship El Paso and the submarine Exploiter, both of them lusterless and rigid in the river. The water looked like cappuccino, and I realized that visibility was going to be even worse than I had feared. Near the submarine, there was a dive platform. But I saw no sign of the victim or the rescuers and police supposedly working his death. I asked Green about this as wind blowing off the water numbed my face, and his reply was to give me his back again.

"Look, I can't be here all day waiting for Stu," he said to a man in coveralls and a filthy ski jacket.

"We could haul Bo's butt in here, Cap'n," was the reply.

"No way Jose," Green said, and he seemed quite familiar with these shipyard men. "No point in calling that boy."

Hell," said another man with a long tangled beard.

We all know he ain't gonna be sober this late in the morning."

"Well, now if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black," Green said, and all of them laughed.

The bearded man had a complexion like raw hamburger.

He slyly eyed me as he lit a cigarette, shielding it from the wind in rough bare hands.

"I hadn't had a drink since yesterday. Not even water," he swore as his mates laughed some more. "Damn, it's cold as a witch's titty." He hugged himself. "I should'a wore a better coat."

"I tell you what's cold is that one over yonder." Another worker spoke, dentures clicking as he talked about what I realized was the dead diver. "Now that boy's cold."

"He don't feel it now."

I controlled my mounting irritation as I said to Green, "I know you're eager to get started, and so am I. But I don't see any rescuers or police. I haven't seen the johnboat or the area of the river where the body is located."

I felt half a dozen pairs of eyes on me, and I scanned the eroded faces of what easily could have been a small band of pirates dressed for modern times. I was not invited into their secret club and was reminded of those early years when rudeness and isolation could still make me cry.

Green finally answered, "The police are inside using the phones. In the main building there, the one with the big anchor in front. The divers are probably in there too staying warm. The rescue squad is at a landing on the other side of the river where they've been waiting for you to get here.

And you might be interested in knowing that this same landing is where the police just found a truck and trailer they believe belonged to the deceased. If you follow me."

He began walking. "I'll show you the location you're interested in. I understand you plan on going in with the other divers."

"That's right." I walked with him along the pier.

"I sure as hell don't know what you expect to see."

"I learned long ago to have no expectations, Captain Green."

As we passed old, tired ships, I noticed many fine metal lines leading from them into the water. "What are those?" I asked.

"CPs-cathodic protectors," he answered. "They're electrically charged to reduce corrosion."

"I certainly hope someone has turned them off."

"An electrician's on the way. He'll turn off the whole pier."

"So the diver could have run into CPs. I doubt it would have been easy to see them."

"It wouldn't matter. The charge is very mild," he said as if anyone should know that. "It's like getting zapped with a nine-volt battery. CPs didn't kill him. You can already mark that one off your list."

We had stopped at the end of the pier where the rear of the partially submerged submarine was in plain view. Anchored no more than twenty feet from it was the dark green aluminum johnboat with its long black hose leading from the compressor, which was nestled in an inner tube on the passenger's side. The floor of the boat was scattered with tools, scuba equipment and other objects that I suspected had been rather carelessly gone through by someone. My chest tightened, for I was angrier than I would show.

"He probably just drowned," Green was saying. "Almost every diving death I've seen was a drowning. You die in water as shallow as this, that's what it's going to be."

"I certainly find his equipment unusual." I ignored his medical pontifications.

He stared at the johnboat barely stirred by the current.

"A hookah. Yeah, it's unusual for around here."

"Was it running when the boat was found?"

"Out of gas."

"What can you tell me about it? Homemade?"

"Commercial," he said. "A five-horsepower gasoline driven compressor that draws in surface air through a lowpressure hose connected to a second-stage regulator. He could have stayed down four, five hours. As long as his fuel lasted." He continued to stare off.

"Four or five hours? For what?" I looked at him. "I can understand that if you're collecting lobsters or abalone.

He was silent.

"What is down there?" I said. "And don't tell me Civil War artifacts because we both know you're not going to find those here."

"In truth, not a damn thing's down there."

"Well," I said, "he thought something was."

"Unfortunately for him, he thought wrong. Look at those clouds moving in. We're definitely going to get it." He flipped his coat collar up around his ears. "I assume you're a certified diver."

"For many years."

"I'm going to need to see your dive card."

I looked out at the johnboat and the submarine nearby as I wondered just how uncooperative these people intended to be.

"You've got to have that with you if you're going in," he said. "I thought you would have known that."

"And I thought the military did not run this shipyard."

"I know the rules here. It doesn't matter who runs it."

He stared at me.

"I see." I stared back. "And I suppose I'm going to need a permit if I want to park my car on this pier so I don't have to carry my gear half a mile."

"You do need a permit to park on the pier."

"Well, I don't have one of those. I don't have my PADI advanced and rescue dive cards or my dive log. I don't have my licenses to practice medicine in Virginia, Maryland or Florida."

I spoke very smoothly and quietly, and because he could not rattle me, he became more determined. He blinked several times, and I could feel his hate.

"This is the last time I'm going to ask you to allow me to do my job," I went on. "We have an unnatural death here that is in my jurisdiction. If you would rather not cooperate, I will be happy to call the state police, the U. S. Marshal, FBI. Your choice. I can probably get somebody here in twenty minutes. I've got my portable phone right here in my pocket." I patted it.

"You want to dive--he shrugged--then go right ahead. But you'll have to sign a waiver relieving the shipyard of any responsibility, should something unfortunate happen. And I seriously doubt there are any forms like that here."

"I see. Now I need to sign something you don't have."

"That's correct."

"Fine," I said. "Then I'll just draft a waiver for you."

"A lawyer would have to do that, and it's a holiday."

"I am a lawyer and I work on holidays."

His jaw muscles knotted, and I knew he wasn't going to bother with any forms now that it was possible to have one.

We started walking back, and my stomach tightened with dread. I did not want to make this dive and I did not like the people I had encountered this day. Certainly, I had gotten entangled in bureaucratic barbed wire before when cases involved government or big business. But this was different.

"Tell me something," Green spoke again in his scornful tone, "do chief medical examiners always personally go in after bodies?"

"Rarely."

"Explain why you think it is necessary this time."

"The scene of death will be gone the moment the body is moved. I think the circumstances are unusual enough to merit my taking a look while I can, and I'm temporarily covering my Tidewater District, so I happened to be here when the call came in."

He paused, then unnerved me by saying, "I certainly was sorry to hear about Dr. Mant's mother. When will he be back to work?"

I tried to remember this morning's phone call and the man called Young with his exaggerated Southern accent.

Green did not sound native to the South, but then neither did I, and that didn't mean either of us couldn't imitate a drawl.

"I'm not certain when he'll return," I warily replied.

"But I'm wondering how you know him."

"Sometimes cases overlap, whether they should or not."

I was not sure what he was implying.

"Dr. Mant understands the importance of not interfering," Green went on. "People like that are good to work with."

"The importance of not interfering with what, Captain Green?"

"If a case is the Navy's, for example, or this jurisdiction or that. There are many different ways that people can interfere. All are a problem and can be harmful. That diver, for example. He went where he didn't belong and look what happened."

I had stopped walking and was staring at him in disbelief.

"It must be my imagination," I said, "but I think you're threatening me."

"Go get your gear, you can park closer in, by the fence over there," he said, walking off.

Chapter
2

LONG AFTER HE HAD DISAPPEARED INSIDE THE BUILDING with the anchor in front, I was sitting on the pier, struggling to pull a thick wet suit over my dive skin.

Not far from me, several rescuers prepared a flat-bottomed boat they had moored to a piling. Shipyard workers wandered about curiously, and on the dive platform, two men in royal blue neoprene tested buddy phones and seemed very thorough in their inspection of scuba gear, which included mine.

I watched the divers talk to each other, but I could not make out a word they said as they unscrewed hoses and fitted belts with weights. Occasionally, they glanced my way, and I was surprised when one of them decided to climb the ladder that led up to my pier. He walked over to where I was and sat beside me on my little patch of cold pavement.