I flipped through more certificates as I followed the long teal- and plum-carpeted hallway to my corner office. Rose worked in an open space with plenty of windows, and it wasn't possible to reach my door without entering her airspace. She was standing before an open filing cabinet drawer, fingers impatiently fluttering through labeled tabs.
"How are you?" she asked around a pen clamped in her mouth. "Marino's looking for you:' "Rose, we need to get Dr. Carmichael on the line."
"AgainT»
"'Fraid so."
"He rinds to retire."
My secretary had been saying this for years. She pushed the drawer shut and pulled open another one.
"Why is Marino looking for me? Did he call me from home?"
She took the pen out of her mouth.
"He's here. Or was. Dr: Scarpetta, do you remember that letter you got last month from that hateful woman?"
"Which hateful woman?" I asked, looking up and down the hallway for Marino and seeing no sign of him. - `"The one in prison for murdering her husband right after she took out a million-dollar fife insurance policy on him."
"Oh, that one," I said.
I slipped off my suit jacket as I walked into my office _ and set my briefcase on the floor.
"Why is Marino looking for me?" I asked again.
Rose didn't answer. I had noticed she was getting hard of hearing, and every reminder of her encroaching frailties frightened me. Lput the death certificates on top of a stack of about a hundred others I hadn't gotten around to reviewing yet and draped my suit jacket over my chair.
"Point is," Rose loudly said, "she's since sent you another letter. This time accusing you of racketeering."
I retrieved my lab coat from the back of the door.
"She claims you conspired with the insurance company and changed her husband's manner of death from accident to homicide so they wouldn't have to pay out the money. And for this you got quite a large kickback, which is-according to her-how you can afford your Mercedes and expensive suits."
I threw my lab coat over my shoulders and pushed my arms through the sleeves.
"You know, I can't keep up with the crazies anymore, Dr. Scarpetta. Some of them really frighten me, and I think the Internet is making all of it worse."
Rose peeked around the doorway.
"You aren't listening to a word I'm saying," she said.
"I get suits on sale," I replied. "And you blame everything on the Internet."
I probably wouldn't bother shopping for clothes at all if Rose didn't force me out the door every now and then when stores were clearing out last season's styles. I hated shopping, unless it was for good wine or food. I hated crowds. I hated malls. Rose hated the Internet and believed the world would end one day because of it. I'd had to force her to use e-mail.
"If Lucy calls, will you make sure I get it no matter where I am?" I said as Marino walked into Rose's office. "And try her field office, too. You can patch her through."
The thought of Lucy knotted my stomach. I'd lost my temper and hurled words at her I didn't mean. Rose glanced at me. Somehow she knew.
"Captain," she said to Marino, "you look mighty spiffy this morning."
Marino grunted. Glass rattled as he opened a jar of lemon drops on her desk and helped himself.
"What do you want me to do with this crazy lady's letter?" Rose peered through the open doorway at me, reading glasses perched on her nose as she dug through another drawer.
"I think it's time we forward the lady's file-if you ever find it to the A.G.'s office," I said. "In case she sues. Which will probably lie next. Good morning, Marino."
"You still talking about that nutcake I locked up?" he asked, sucking candy.
"That's right," I remembered. "That nutcake was one of your cases."
"So I guess I'll get sued, too."
"Probably," I muttered as I stood at my desk, shuffling through yesterday's telephone messages. "Why does everybody call when I'm not here?"
"I'm kinda getting into being sued," Marino said. "Makes me feel special."
"I just can't get used to you in uniform, Captain Marino," Rose said. "Should I salute?"
"Don't turn me on, Rose:' "I thought your shift didn't start until three," I said.
"Nice thing about me being sued is the city's gotta pay. Ha. Ha. Screw 'em."
"We'll see how Ha Ha it is when you end up paying one of these days and lose your truck and aboveground swimming pool. Or all those Christmas decorations and extra fuse boxes, God forbid," Rose told him as I opened and shut my desk drawers.
"Has anybody seen my pens?" I asked. "I don't have a single goddamn pen. Rose? Those Pilot rolling ball pens. I had at least a box of them on Friday. I know I did because I bought them myself last time I was at Ukrops. And I don't believe it. My Waterman's missing, too!"
"Don't say I didn't warn you about leaving anything valuable around here," Rose told me.
"I gotta smoke," Marino said to me. "I've had it with these damn smoke-free buildings. All these dead people in your joint and the state's worried about smoking. What about all those formalin fumes? A few good whiffs of that will drop a horse."
"Damn!" I shoved one drawer shut and yanked open another. "And guess what else? No Advil, no BC powders -and no Sudafed. Now I'm really getting angry."
"Coffee money, Cleta's portable phone, lunches, and now your pens and aspirin. I've gotten to where I take my pocketbook everywhere I go. The office's started calling whoever it is `The Body Snatcher,' " Rose angrily said. "Which I don't think is funny in the least."
Marino walked over and put his arm around her.
"Sweetheart, you can't blame a guy for wanting to snatch your body," he sweetly said in her ear. "I've been wanting to ever since I first laid eyes on you way back when I had to teach the doc everything she knows."
Rose demurely pecked his cheek and leaned her head against his shoulder. She looked defeated and suddenly very old.
"I'm tired, Captain," Rose muttered.
"Me too, sweetheart. Me, too."
I looked at my watch.
"Rose, please tell everyone staff conference's going to be a few minutes late. Marino, let's talk."
The smoking room was a corner in the bay where there were two chairs, a Coke machine and a dirty, dented ashcan that Marino and I put between us. Both of us lit up, and I felt the same old bite of shame.
"Why are you here?" I asked. "Didn't you cause enough problems for yourself yesterday?"
"I was thinking about what Lucy said last night," Marino said. "About my current situation, you know. How it's like I'm hitting the bricks, out of service, finished, Doc. I can't take it, if you want to know the truth. I'm a detective. I've been one almost all my life. I can't do this uniform shit. I can't work for assholes like Diane `Donkey' Bray."
"That's why you took the field investigation exam last year," I reminded him. "You don't have to stay with the police department, Marino. Not with any police department. You've got more than enough years in to retire. You can make your own rules."
"No offense, Doc, but I don't want to work for you, either," he said. "Not part-time or on a case basis or whatever."
The state had given me two slots for field investigators, and I had not filled either one of them yet.
"The point is, you have options," I replied, touched by hurt I would not show.
He was silent. Benton walked into my mind and I saw his feelings in his eyes, and then he was gone. I felt the cooling shadow of Rose and feared the loss of Lucy. I thought of getting old and people vanishing from my life.
"Don't quit on me, Marino," I told him.
He didn't answer me right away, and when he did, his eyes blazed.
"Fuck 'em all, Doc," he said. "No one's telling me what to do. If I want to work a case, I'll goddamn work it."
He tapped an ash and seemed very pleased with himself.
"I don't want you fired or demoted," I said.
"They can't demote me no lower than I am," he said with another lightning bolt of anger. "They can't make me less than a captain, and there's no assignment worse than I got. And let 'em fire me. But guess what? They won't. And you want to know why? Because I could go to Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, you name it. You don't know how many times I've been asked to take over investigations in other departments."