Evil-thinking, evil-plotting, evil-acting malignancy. It pervaded, surrounded, and permeated all comers of life, she now reasoned. Certainly it lay thick and all but palpable inside the human psyche and here in her autopsy room. Here evil grinned back at her like a maniacal foe and a familiar one, perched gargoyle fashion over her autopsy table.
Likely after reading about poisons on the Internet, Lawrence Hampton, the man behind bars, decided to give his date flowers. He now intended to run an insanity defense, and he was giving police nothing. Jessica's line of forensic inquiry might prove him monstrously evil in having beaten a comatose woman to death, or it might prove the accidental overdose killed her. The sequence of events meant everything in this case. Young Hampton had botched his entire ugly plan by ensuring the girl's death from the beginning, because he didn't know what amounted to an unsafe formula or dosage.
Cleaning up, John Thorpe tossed the saw onto a metal table, shattering Jessica's reverie. “You were right, as usual. God, look at the swelling to the brain. Lot of internal injury to the melon. You don't get that kind of reaction from a dead person.”
“She took a hell of a beating.”
“I agree, she went into coma before she died. Given this evidence, he killed her with his hands. Must've gone into a rage after the drug refused to wear off.”
“So we nail his ass in court for the more tortuous death. It'll add fifty years to his sentence by itself. Good work,” she agreed. “Now get some photos of this, log it, and we'll try to put Adinatella back together again.”
Jessica thought about Adinatella's family, her father and mother, who had brought her into this world, how they must have felt when they left the hospital with their infant daughter wrapped in a blanket; how they must have nurtured her and sent her off to college. All the love and attention showered on Adinatella, and in one moment some stranger snuffs out their child's life, and for what? To fulfill an animal lust.
“Shameful waste of a beautiful young woman,” said JT, as if reading Jessica's thoughts.
“It's an awful sorry business we're in, JT.”
After another hour of autopsy work, John Thorpe and Jessica Coran walked from the dissecting room, leaving interns to handle the final cleanup and the disposition of the body. Jessica dug her left thumb into her right palm to remove her right surgical glove, and then followed up with the left. The pair of medical examiners stripped their surgical garb as they walked, dumping their green hair nets and aprons into a hamper. Going to their respective locker rooms, Jessica called out, “Question for you, JT.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you really think I may have… might be… may've gotten involved with Richard Sharpe because he's… you know, at a distance?”
“Good God, Jess, you're not paying any attention to all that bullswallop going around about you, now, are you?”
“Bull swallop? Going around about me?”
“Usual crap out of the usual mouths, about how you like to keep your friends and lovers at safe arm's length. I mean, it's nobody's damn business but your own.”
“I hadn't heard anything to that effect,” she confessed.
“Oh, sorry. I wouldn't've repeated it had I known you hadn't… I mean, I don't do that silly gossip thing. I mean… sorry.”
“You think there's any truth to it?”
“Not the least.”
“Come on. You do, don't you?” He hemmed and said, “You just happen to fall for the wrong guys, and they're always out of reach, one way or another.” He saw the flame of hurt flash and die along her face. “I mean… first Otto Boutine, both married and your superior. I know… I know all about his wife's debilitating disease, that he was a romantic figure as a result of the wife's inability to… Well, all the same, the man was out of reach, or should've been.”
“Otto was different from all the rest. You can't compare-”
“Then that guy Alan Rhychman in New York who stands you up in Hawaii just so he can run for police commissioner. What a hoot.”
“Alan saw a chance to make a difference in New York, and he has, from what I've heard.”
“Still, out of reach. And then came Jim Parry, not only Mr. FBI but Mr. Hawaii as well.”
“James and I had a fulfilling, long-lasting relationship that beat the odds for a long time. You've got to admit that.”
“Still, out of reach, Jess.”
“It isn't like I've had a lot of choice, given my commitments and lifestyle.”
Rubbing stiffness from his neck, JT continued: “Love makes fools of fools.”
“All of us, I know.”
“Nay, nay! Not an ounce of truth to it, my dear friend,” he facetiously added. “And so now we are moving on, a healthy thing. Now it's Inspector Richard Sharpe, Scotland Yard. Nay! Pay no heed. Love must remain blind and stumbling. If Cupid should see too clearly, can it be called love at all? If love is measured and controlled, Jessica, it's no fun. So relax, enjoy, and stop worrying about controlling your every step and your every relationship. Remember the centipede who was asked, 'How in God's name do you walk with all those feet at once?' The moment he considered the question, he stumbled over himself. So, does that answer your question, just a bit?”
“Donna Lemonte always says that I put up barriers around me.”
“Just because you've switched from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic? At least Scotland Yard's closer to Virginia than Hawaii-”
“New Scotland Yard,” she corrected him. “And it's not the Atlantic to us; to us, it's the Pond.”
“Whatever you call it, your shrink friend is going to see it as a big barrier. You must always consider the source.”
“Thanks for being your usual candid but sensitive self, JT. It's what I love most about you.”
“A friend should be candid and sensitive, however much the truth hurts.”
“So, when are you going to hang out your shingle and start charging for all this psychoanalysis, Dr. Thorpe?”
“Honestly, I'm only an amateur at love, psychology, and relationships myself, a novice. So any advice I may have for the lovelorn you may want to drop in the hamper along with the dirty linen.”
“I'll take that advice, John,” she replied dully, dropping her shoulders and turning to the door marked ladies' locker room.
“G'night,” he said, and suddenly feeling the weight of the day and the long autopsy, JT trundled off through the door marked gentlemen's locker room.
As the door was closing on JT's tired form, she shouted, “I ought to arrange to have your brain dissected, JT. No one would believe it! It'd make The New England Journal of Medicine]”
“I can see the screaming title: 'Thorpe's Brain Found Befuddled over Relationship Issues!' “ He had turned and now held the door open with his right foot.
“Likely a defect in the DNA strand, the relationship gene,” she added.
“Not every problem has a genetic excuse, Dr. Coran, or are you now grasping at self-justifying straws?” He allowed the door to close on his half grin.
“Touched,” she said to the door, turned, and went to her locker. She desperately wanted to shower and change out of the uniform of the death investigator.
TWO
All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.