Five Scarpetta Novels (110 page)

“Telecommunication, a restricted worldwide law enforcement web . . . You know, I don't know how much more I can stand this. He not only counters me, he flaunts it,” I muttered, staring at Ruffin as he hung up.

Marino glared at him.

“Interpol circulates color-coded notices for wanted and missing people, warnings, inquiries,” I went on in a distracted way as Ruffin stuffed a towel in the back pocket of his scrubs and got a pill counter out of a cabinet.

He sat on a stool in front of a steel sink, his back to me. He opened a brown paper bag marked with a case number and pulled out three bottles of Advil and two bottles of prescription drugs.

“An unidentified body is a black notice,” I said. “Usually suspected fugitives with international ties. Chuck, why are you doing that in here?”

“Like I told you, I'm behind on it. Never seen so many damn pills come in with bodies, Dr. Scarpetta. I can't keep up anymore. And I get up to sixty or seventy or something, and the phone rings and I lose count and have to start all over again.”

“Yeah, Chuckie-boy,” Marino said. “I can see why you'd lose count real easy.”

Ruffin started whistling.

“What are you so happy about all of a sudden?” Marino irritably asked, as Ruffin used tweezers to fill rows with pills on the little blue plastic tray.

“We're going to need to get fingerprints, dental charts, anything we can,” I said to Marino as I removed a section of deep muscle from the thigh for DNA. “Anything we can get needs to be sent to them,” I added.

“Them?” Marino asked.

I was getting exasperated.

“Interpol,” I said tersely.

The phone rang again.

“Hey, Marino, can you get that? I'm counting.”

“Tough shit,” he said to Ruffin.

“Are you listening to me?” I looked up at Marino.

“Yeah,” he said. “The state liaison's at State Police Criminal Investigation, used to be some guy who was a first sergeant and I remember asking him if he wanted to have a beer sometime at the F.O.P., or go grab a bite at Chetti's with some of the guys. You know, just being friendly, and he never even changed his tone of voice. I'm pretty sure I was being taped.”

I worked on a section of vertebral bone that I would clean with sulfuric acid and have trace check it for microscopic organisms called diatoms that were found in water all over the world.

“Wish I could remember his name,” Marino was saying. “So he took all the info, contacted D.C., and D.C. contacted Lyon, where all the secret squirrels are. I hear they got this real spooky-looking building on a hidden road, sort of like Batman and his cave. Electrified fences, razor wire and gates and guards carrying machine guns, the whole nine yards.”

“You've watched too much James Bond,” I said.

“Not since Sean Connery quit. Movies suck these days, and nothing's good on TV anymore. I don't even know why I bother.”

“Maybe you ought to consider reading a book now and then.”

“Dr. Scarpetta?” Chuck said, hanging up. “That was Dr. Cooper. The STAT alcohol's oh-point-oh-eight in the effusate, and zip-o in the brain.”

The 0.08 didn't mean much, since the brain didn't show an alcohol level, too. Perhaps the man was drinking before he died, or maybe what we had was postmortem-generated alcohol caused by bacteria. There were no other fluids for comparison, no urine or blood or fluid of the eye known as vitreous, which was too bad. If 0.08 was a true level, it might, at the very least, show that this man would have been somewhat impaired and therefore more vulnerable.

“How are you going to sign him out?” Marino asked.

“Acute seasickness.” Ruffin popped a towel at a fly.

“You know, you're really beginning to get on my nerves,” Marino warned him.

“Cause of death undetermined,” I said. “Manner, homicide. This isn't some poor dockworker who accidentally got locked inside a container. Chuck, I need a surgical pan. Leave it right here on the counter, and before the day is out, you and I need to talk.”

His eyes darted away from me like minnows. I pulled off my gloves and called Rose.

“Would you mind going into archives and finding one of my old cork cutting boards?” I asked her.

OSHA had decided that all cutting boards had to be Teflon-coated because porous ones were susceptible to contamination. That was appropriate if one worked around live patients or was making bread. I complied, but it didn't mean I threw anything away.

“I also need wig pins,” I went on. “There should be a little plastic box of them in the right top drawer of my desk. Unless someone stole those, too.”

“Not a problem,” Rose said.

“I think the boards are on a bottom shelf in the back of storage, next to the boxes of old medical examiner handbooks.”

“Anything else?”

“I don't guess Lucy's called,” I said.

“Not yet. If she does, I'll find you.”

I thought for a minute. It was past one o'clock. She was off the plane by now and could have called. Depression and fear rolled over me again.

“Send flowers to her office,” I said. “With a note that says, ‘Thanks for the visit, love, Aunt Kay.' ”

Silence.

“Are you still there?” I asked my secretary.

“You sure that's what you want to say?” she asked.

I hesitated.

“Tell her I love her and I'm sorry,” I said.

O
rdinarily, I would have used a permanent marker to outline the area of skin I needed to excise from a dead body, but in this case, no marker was going to show up on skin in such bad condition.

I did the best I could with a six-inch plastic ruler, measuring from the right base of the neck to the shoulder, and down to the bottom of the shoulder blade and back up.

“Eight and a half by seven by two by four,” I dictated to Ruffin.

Skin is elastic. Once it is excised, it will contract, and it was important when I pinned it to the corkboard that I stretched it back to its original dimensions or any images that might be tattooed on the skin would be distorted.

Marino had left, and my staff was busy in their offices or the autopsy suite. Every now and then the closed-circuit TV showed a car pulling into the bay to bring a body or take one away. Ruffin and I were alone behind the closed steel doors of the decomposed room. I was going to hold him to a conversation.

“If you'd like to go with the police department,” I said, “fine.”

Glass clacked as he placed clean blood tubes in a rack.

“But if you're going to stay here, Chuck, you're going to have to be present, accountable and respectful.”

I retrieved a scalpel and a pair of forceps from the surgical table, and glanced at him. He seemed to be expecting what I said and had already thought about how he was going to reply.

“I may not be perfect, but I'm accountable,” he said.

“Not these days. I need more clamps.”

“There's a lot going on,” he said as he retrieved them from a tray and set them within my reach. “In my personal life, I mean. The wife, the house we bought. You wouldn't believe all the problems with it.”

“I'm sorry for your difficulties, but I have an entire state system to run. I frankly don't have time for excuses. If you don't carry your load, we have big problems. Don't make me walk into the morgue and find you haven't set up first. Don't make me look for you one more time.”

“We already have big problems,” he said as if this were the shot he'd been waiting to fire.

I began the incision.

“You just don't know it,” he added.

“Then why don't you tell me what these big problems are, Chuck?” I said. I reflected back the dead man's skin, down to the subcutaneous layer. Ruffin watched me clamp cut edges together to keep the skin taut. I stopped what I was doing and looked across the table at him.

“Go on,” I said. “Tell me.”

“I don't think it's my place to tell you,” Ruffin said, and I saw something in his eyes that unnerved me. “Look, Dr. Scarpetta. I know I haven't been Johnny-on-the-spot. I know I've slipped off to go to job interviews and maybe just haven't been accountable like I should be. And I don't get along with Marino. I admit all of it. But I'll tell you what everyone else won't if you promise not to punish me for it.”

“I don't punish people for being honest,” I said, angry that he would even suggest such a thing.

He shrugged, and I caught a glint of self-satisfaction because he had rattled me and he knew it.

“I don't punish, period,” I said. “I simply expect people to do what's right, and if they don't, they punish themselves. If you don't last in this job, it's your fault.”

“Maybe I used the wrong word,” he replied, moving back to the counter and leaning against it, arms crossed. “I don't express myself as good as you do, that's for sure. I just don't want you to get upset with me for shooting straight with you. Okay?”

I didn't answer him.

“Well, everybody's sorry about what happened last year,” he began his opening argument. “No one can imagine how you've dealt with it. Really. I mean, if someone did that to my wife, I don't know what I would do, especially if it was something like what happened to Special Agent Wesley.”

Ruffin had always referred to Benton as “special agent,” which I'd always thought was rather silly. If anyone had been unpretentious, if not embarrassed by the title, it was Benton. But as I pondered Marino's derisive remarks about Ruffin's infatuation with law enforcement, I gained more understanding. My wispy, weak morgue supervisor had probably been in awe of a veteran FBI agent, especially one who was a psychological profiler, and it occurred to me that Ruffin's good behavior in those earlier days might have had more to do with Benton than me.

“It affected all of us, too,” Ruffin was saying. “He used to come down here, you know, and order deli trays, pizza, joke around with us and shoot the breeze. A big, important guy like him not having any kind of attitude. It blew my mind.”

The pieces of Ruffin's past slipped into place, too. His father had died in an automobile accident when Ruffin was a child. He had been raised by his mother, a formidable, intelligent woman who taught school. His wife was very
strong, too, and now he worked for me. I always found it fascinating that so many people returned to the scenes of their childhood crimes, repeatedly seeking out the same villain, which in this case was a female authority figure like me.

“Everybody's been treating you like we're walking on eggshells,” Ruffin kept on making his case. “So no one's said anything when you don't pay attention, and all kinds of things are going on that you don't have a clue about.”

“Like what?” I asked as I carefully turned a corner with the scalpel.

“Well, for one thing, we got a damn thief in the building,” he retorted. “And I'm betting it's someone on our staff. It's been going on for weeks and you haven't done a thing about it.”

“I didn't know about it until recently.”

“Proving my point.”

“That's ridiculous. Rose doesn't withhold information from me,” I said.

“People treat her with kid gloves, too. Face it, Dr. Scarpetta. To the office, she's your snitch. People don't confide in her.”

I willed myself to concentrate as his words stung my feelings and my pride. I continued reflecting back tissue, careful not to buttonhole it or cut through it. Ruffin waited for my reaction. I met his eyes.

“I don't have a snitch,” I said. “I don't need one. Every member of my staff has always known he can come into my office and discuss anything with me.”

His silence seemed a gloating indictment. He continued his defiant, smug pose, enjoying this immensely. I rested my wrists on the steel table.

“I don't think it's going to be necessary to plead my case to anyone, Chuck,” I said. “I think you're the only one on my staff who has a problem with me. Of course, I can understand why you might feel at odds with a woman boss
when it appears that all of the power figures in your life have been women.”

The gleam in his eyes blinked out at the touch of his switch. Then anger hardened his face. I resumed reflecting back slippery, fragile tissue.

“But I appreciate your expressing your thoughts,” I said in a cool, calm way.

“It's not just my thoughts,” he replied, rudely. “Fact is, everyone thinks you're on your way out.”

“I'm glad you seem to know what everybody thinks,” I replied without showing the fury I felt.

“It's not hard. I'm not the only one who's noticed how you don't do things the way you used to. And you know you don't. You've got to admit that.”

“Tell me what I should admit.”

He seemed to have a list all ready.

“Out-of-character things. Like working yourself into the ground and going to scenes you don't need to, so you're tired all the time and don't notice what's going on in the office. And then upset people call and you don't take time to talk to them like you used to.”

“What upset people?” My self-control was about to snap. “I always talk to families, to anyone who asks, as long as the individual has a right to the information.”

“Maybe you should check with Dr. Fielding and ask him how many of your calls he's taken, how many families of your cases he's dealt with, how much he's covered up for you. And then your thing on the Internet. That's what's really gone too far. It's sort of the last straw.”

I was baffled.

“What
thing
on the Internet?” I demanded.

“Your chats or whatever it is you do. To be honest, since I don't have a home computer and don't use AOL or anything, I haven't seen it for myself.”

Bizarre, angry thoughts flew through my mind like a thousand starlings and overshadowed every perception I'd
ever had about my life. A myriad of ugly, dark thoughts clung to my reason and dug in with their claws.

“I didn't mean to make you feel bad,” Chuck said. “And I hope you know I understand how everything could get like this. After what you've been through.”

I didn't want to hear another goddamn word about what I'd been through.

“Thank you for your understanding, Chuck,” I said, my eyes piercing his until he looked away.

“We've got that case coming in from Powhatan, and it should have been here by now, if you want me to check on it,” he said, anxious to leave the room.

“Do that, and then get this body back in the fridge.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

The doors shut behind him, returning silence to the room. I reflected back the last of the tissue and placed it on the cutting board as frigid paranoia and self-doubt seeped under the heavy door of my self-confidence. I began anchoring the tissue with hatpins, stretching it and measuring and stretching. I set the corkboard inside the surgical pan and covered it with a green cloth and placed it inside the refrigerator.

I showered and changed in the locker room, and cleared my thoughts of phobias and indignation. I took a long enough break to drink a cup of coffee; it was so old, the bottom of the pot was black. I started a new coffee fund by giving my office administrator twenty dollars.

“Jean, have you been reading these chat sessions that I'm supposedly having on the Internet?” I asked her.

She shook her head but looked uncomfortable. I tried Cleta and Polly next and asked the same question.

Blood rose to Cleta's cheeks, and with eyes cast down she said, “Sometimes.”

“Polly?” I asked.

She stopped typing and also blushed.

“Not all the time,” she replied.

I nodded.

“It's not me,” I told them. “Someone is impersonating me. I wish I'd known about it before now.”

Both of my clerks looked confused. I wasn't sure they believed me.

“I can certainly understand why you didn't want to say anything to me when you became aware of these so-called chat sessions,” I went on. “I probably wouldn't have either if the roles were reversed. But I need your help. If you have any ideas about who might be doing this, will you tell me?”

They looked relieved.

“That's awful,” Cleta said with feeling. “Whoever's doing that ought to go to jail.”

“I'm sorry I didn't say anything,” Polly contritely added. “I don't have any idea about who would do something like that.”

“I mean it sort of sounds like you when you read it. That's the problem,” Cleta added.

“Sort of sounds like me?” I said, frowning.

“You know, it gives advice about accident prevention, security, how to deal with grief and all sorts of medical things.”

“You're saying it sounds like a doctor is writing it, or someone trained in health care?” I asked as my incredulity grew.

“Well, whoever it is seems to know what he's talking about,” Cleta replied. “But it's more conversational. Not like reading an autopsy report or anything like that.”

“I don't think it sounds much like her,” Polly said. “Now that I think about it.”

I noticed a case file on her desk that was open to color computer-generated autopsy photographs of a man whose shotgun-blasted head looked like a gory eggcup. I recognized him as the murder victim whose wife had been writing me from prison, accusing me of everything from incompetence to racketeering.

“What's this?” I asked her.

“Apparently, the
Times-Dispatch
and the A.G.'s office have heard from that crazy woman, and Ira Herbert called here a little while ago, asking about it,” she told me.

Herbert was the police reporter for the local newspaper. If he was calling, that probably meant I was being sued.

“And then Harriet Cummins called Rose to get a copy of his records,” Cleta explained. “It appears his psycho wife's latest story is he put the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe.”

“The poor man was wearing army boots,” I replied. “He couldn't possibly have pulled the trigger with his toe, and he was shot at close range in the back of the head.”

“I don't know what it is with people anymore,” Polly said with a sigh. “All they do is lie and cheat, and if they get locked up, they just sit around and stir up trouble and file lawsuits. It makes me sick.”