Off the expressway, he took the Seventh Street exit into the old cobblestone lanes of Shockoe Slip, then turned north onto Fourteenth, where I went to work every day when I was in town. Virginia's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, was a squat stucco building with tiny dark windows that reminded me of unattractive, suspicious eyes. They overlooked slums to the east and the banking district to the west, and suspended overhead were highways and railroad tracks cutting through the sky.
Marino pulled into the back parking lot, where there was an impressive number of cars, considering the condition of the roads. I got out in front of the shut bay door and used a key to enter another door to one side. Following the ramp intended for stretchers, I entered the morgue, and could hear the noise of people working down the hall. The autopsy suite was past the walk-in refrigerator, and doors were open wide. I walked in while Fielding, my deputy chief, removed various tubes and a catheter from the body of a young woman on the second table.
"You ice-skate in?" he asked and he did not seem surprised to see me.
"Close to it. I may have to borrow the wagon today. At the moment I'm without a car."
He leaned closer to his patient, frowning a bit as he studied the tattoo of a rattlesnake coiled around the dead woman's sagging left breast, its gaping mouth disturbingly aimed at her nipple.
"You tell me why the hell somebody gets something like this," Fielding said.
"I'd say the tattoo artist got the best end of that deal," I said. "Check the inside of her lower lip. She's probably got a tattoo there."
He pulled down her lower lip, and inside it in big crooked letters was Fuck You.
Fielding looked at me in astonishment. "How'd you know that?"
"The tattoos are homemade, she looks like a biker-type and my guess is she's no stranger to jail."
"Right on all counts." He crabbed a clean towel and wiped his face.
My body-building associate always looked as if he were about to split his scrubs, and he perspired while the rest of us were never quite warm. But he was a competent forensic pathologist. He was pleasant and caring, and I believed he was loyal.
"Possible overdose," he explained as he sketched the tattoo on a chart. "I guess her New Year was a little too happy-"
"Jack," I said to him, "how many dealings have you had with the Chesapeake police?"
He continued to draw. "Very little."
"None recently?" I asked.
"I really don't think so. Why?" He glanced up at me.
"I had a rather odd encounter with one of their detectives."
"in connection with Eddings?" He began to rinse the body, and long dark hair flowed over bright steel.
"Right."
"You know, it's weird but Eddings had just called me.
It couldn't have been more than a day before he died," Fielding said as he moved the hose.
"What did he want?" I asked.
"I was down here doing a case, so I never talked to him.
Now I wish I had." He climbed up a stepladder and began taking photographs with a Polaroid camera. "You in town long?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Well, if you need me to help out in Tidewater some, I will." The flash went off and he waited for the print. "I don't know if I told you, but Ginny's pregnant again and would probably love to get out of the house. And she likes the ocean. Tell me the name of the detective you're worried about, and I'll take care of him."
"I wish somebody would," I said.
The camera flashed again, and I thought about Mant's cottage and could not imagine putting Fielding and his wife in there or even nearby.
"it makes sense for you to stay here anyway," he added.
"And hopefully Dr. Mant isn't going to stay in England forever."
"Thank you," I said to him with feeling. "Maybe if you could just commute several times a week."
"No problem. Could you hand me the Nikon?"
"Which one?"
"Uh, the N-50 with the single-reflex lens. I think it's in the cabinet over there." He pointed.
"We'll work out a schedule," I said as I got the camera for him. "But you and Ginny don't need to be in Dr. Mant's house, and you're going to have to trust me on that."
"You have a problem?" He ripped out another print and handed it down.
"Marino, Lucy and I started our New Year with slashed tires."
He lowered the camera and looked at me, shocked.
"Shit. You think it was random?"
"No, I do not," I said.
I took the elevator up to the next floor and unlocked my office and the sight of Eddings' Christmas pepper surprised me like a blow. I could not leave it on the credenza, so I picked it up and then did not know where to move it. For a moment, I walked around, confused and upset, until I finally put it back where it had been, because I could not throw it out or subject some other member of my staff to its memories.
Looking through Rose's adjoining doorway, I was not surprised that she wasn't here. My secretary was advancing in years and did not like to drive downtown even on the nicest days. Hanging up my coat, I carefully looked around, satisfied that all seemed in order except for the cleaning job done by the custodial crew that came in after hours. But then, none of the sanitation engineers, as they were called by the state, wanted to work in this building. Few lasted long and none would go downstairs.
I had inherited my quarters from the previous chief, but beyond the paneling, nothing was as it had been back in those cigar-smoky days when forensic pathologists like Cagney nipped bourbon with cops and funeral home directors, and touched bodies with bare hands. My predecessor had not worried much about alternate light sources and DNA.
I remembered the first time I had been shown his space after he had died and I was being interviewed for his position. I had surveyed macho mementos he had proudly displayed, and when one of them turned out to be a silicone breast implant from a woman who had been raped and murdered, I had been tempted to stay in Miami.
I did not think the former chief would like his office now, for it was nonsmoking, and disrespect and sophomoric behavior were left outside the door. The oak furniture was not the state's but my own, and I had hidden the tile floor with a Sarouk prayer rug that was machine-made but bright.
There were corn plants and a ficus tree, but I did not bother with art, because like a psychiatrist, I wanted nothing provocative on my walls, and frankly, I needed all the space I could find for filing cabinets and books. As for trophies, Cagney would not have been impressed with the toy cars, trucks and trains I used to help investigators reconstruct accidents.
I took several minutes to look through my in-basket, which was full of red-bordered death certificates for medical examiner cases and green-bordered ones for those that were not. Other reports also awaited my initialing, and a message on my computer screen told me I needed to check my electronic mail. All that could wait, I thought, and I walked back out into the hall to see who else was here.
Only Cleta was, I discovered, when I reached the front office, but she was just who I needed to see.
"Dr. Scarpetta," she said, startled. "I didn't know you were here."
"I thought it was a good idea for me to return to Richmond right now," I said, pulling a chair close to her desk.
"Dr. Fielding and I are going to try to cover Tidewater from here."
Cleta was from Florence, South Carolina, and wore a lot of makeup and her skirts too short because she believed that happiness was being pretty, which was something she would never be. In the midst of sorting grim photographs by case number, she sat straight in her chair, a magnifying glass in hand, bifocals on. Nearby was a sausage biscuit on a napkin that she probably had gotten from the cafeteria next door, and she was drinking Tab.
"Well, I think the roads are starting to melt," she let me know.
"Good." I smiled. "I'm glad you're here."
She seemed very pleased as she plucked more photographs out of the shallow box.
"Cleta," I said, "you remember Ted Eddings, don't you?"