"Can someone try to find out who Rick is before he disappears? Maybe intercept him when he gets off the bus?" I asked.
"I'll call Norfolk P.D. I got to anyway because somebody's got to go over to Danny's house and notify his family before they hear about this from the media."
"His family lives in Chesapeake," I told him the bad news, and I knew I would need to talk to them, too.
"Shit," Marino said.
"Don't talk to Detective Roche about any of this, and I don't want him anywhere near Danny's family."
"Don't worry. And you'd better get hold of Dr. Mant."
I tried the number for his mother's flat in London, but there was no answer, and I left an urgent message. There were so many calls to make, and I was drained. I sat next to Lucy on the couch.
"How are you doing?" I said.
"Well, I looked at the catechism but I don't think I'm ready to be confirmed."
"I hope someday you will be."
"I have a headache that won't go away."
"You deserve one."
"You're absolutely right." She rubbed her temples.
"Why do you do it after all you've been through?
could not help but ask.
"I don't always know why. Maybe because I have to be such a tight-ass all the time. Same thing with a lot of the agents. We run and lift and do everything right. Then we blow it off on Friday night."
"Well, at least you were in a safe place to do that this time."
"Don't you ever lose control?" She met my eyes. "Because I've never seen it."
"I've never wanted you to see it," I said. "That's all you ever saw with your mother, and you've needed someone to feel safe with."
"But you didn't answer my question." She held my gaze.
"What? Have I ever been drunk?"
She nodded.
"It isn't something to be proud of, and I'm going to bed." I got up.
"More than once?" Her voice followed me as I walked off.
I stopped in the doorway and faced her. "Lucy, throughout my long, hard life there isn't much I haven't done. And I have never judged you for anything you've done. I've only worried when I thought your behavior placed you in harm's way." I spoke in understatements yet again.
"Are you worried about me now?"
I smiled a little. "I will worry about you for the rest of my life."
I went to my room and shut the door. I placed my Browning by my bed and took a Benadryl because otherwise I would not sleep the few hours that were left. When I awakened at dawn, I was sitting up with the lamp on, the latest Journal of the American Bar Association still in my lap. I got up and walked out into the hall where I was surprised to find Lucy's door open. her bed unmade. She was not in the gathering room on the couch, and I hurried into the dining room at the front of the house. I stared out windows at an empty expanse of frosted brick pavers and grass, and it was obvious the Suburban had been gone for some time.
"Lucy," I muttered as if she could hear me. "Damn you, Lucy," I said.
I WAS TEN MINUTES LATE FOR STAFF MEETING, WHICH WAS unusual, but no one commented or seemed to care. The murder of Danny Webster was heavy in the air as if tragedy might suddenly rain down on us all. My staff was slowmoving and stunned, no one thinking very clearly. After all these years, Rose had brought me coffee and had forgotten I drink it black.
The conference room, which had been recently refurbished, seemed very cozy with its deep blue carpet, long new table and dark paneling. But anatomical models on tables and the human skeleton beneath his plastic shroud were reminders of the hard realities discussed in here. Of course, there were no windows, and art consisted of portraits of previous chiefs, all of them men who stared sternly down at us from the walls.
Seated on either side of me this morning were my chief and assistant chief administrators, and the chief toxicologist from the Division of Forensic Science upstairs. Fielding, to my left, was eating plain yogurt with a plastic spoon, while next to him sat the assistant chief and the new fellow, who was a woman.
"I know you've heard the terrible news about Danny Webster," I somberly proceeded from the head of the table.
where I always sat. "Needless to say, it is impossible to describe how a senseless death like this affects each one of us.
"Dr. Scarpetta," said the assistant chief, "is there anything new?"
"At the moment we know the following," I said, and I repeated all that I knew. "It appeared at the scene last night that he had at least one gunshot wound to the back of the head," I concluded.
"What about cartridge cases?" Fielding asked.
"Police recovered one in woods not too far from the street."
"So he was shot there at Sugar Bottom versus in or near the car."
"It does not appear he was shot inside or near the car," I said.
"Inside whose car?" asked the fellow, who had gone to medical school late in life and was far too serious.
"Inside my car. The Mercedes."
The fellow seemed very confused until I explained the scenario again. Then she made a rather salient comment.
"Is there any possibility you were the intended victim?"
"Jesus." Fielding irritably set down the yogurt cup.
"You shouldn't even say something like that."
"Reality isn't always pleasant," said the fellow, who was very smart and just as tedious. "I'm simply suggesting that if Dr. Scarpetta's car was parked outside a restaurant she has gone to numerous times before, maybe someone was waiting for her and got surprised. Or maybe someone was following and didn't know it wasn't her inside, since it was dark by the time Danny was on the road heading here."
"Let's move on to this morning's other cases," I said, as I took a sip of Rose's saccharine coffee whitened with nondairy creamer.
Fielding moved the call sheet in front of him and in his usual impatient northern tone went down the list. In addition to Danny, there were three autopsies. One was a fire death, another a prisoner with a history of heart disease, and a seventy-year-old woman with a defibrillator and pacemaker.
"She has a history of depression, mostly over her heart problems," Fielding was saying, "and this morning at about three o'clock her husband heard her get out of bed.
Apparently she went into the den and shot herself in the chest."
Possible views were of other poor souls who during the night had died from myocardial infarcts and wrecks in cars.
I turned down an elderly woman who clearly was a victim of cancer, and an indi-ent man who had succumbed to his t, coronary disease. Finally, we pushed back chairs and I went downstairs. My staff was respectful of my space and did not question what I was going through. No one spoke on the elevator as I stared straight ahead at shut doors, and in the locker room we put on gowns and washed our hands in silence. I was pulling on shoe covers and gloves when Fielding got close to me and spoke in my ear, "Why don't you let me take care of him?" His eyes were earnest on mine.
"I'll handle it," I said. "But thank you."
"Dr. Scarpetta, don't put yourself through it, you know'?
I wasn't here the week he came in. I never met him."
"It's okay, Jack." I walked away.
This was not the first time I had autopsied people I knew, and most police and even the other doctors did not always understand. They argued that the findings were more objective if someone else did the case, and this simply wasn't true as long as there were witnesses. Certainly, I had not known Danny intimately or for long, but he had worked for me, and in a way had died for me. I would give him the best that I had.
He was on a gurney parked next to table one, where I usually did my cases, and the sight of him this morning was worse and hit me with staggering force. He was cold and in full rigor, as if what had been human in him had given up during the night, after I had left him. Dried blood smeared his face, and his lips were parted as if he had tried to speak when life had fled from him. His eyes stared the slitted dull stare of the dead, and I saw his red brace and remembered him mopping the floor. I remembered his t, cheerfulness, and the sad look on his face when he talked about Ted Eddings and other young people suddenly gone.