Certainly, he had never been shy or passive during professional encounters. In fact, I had always found him quite confident and charming, when someone like me was rarely charmed by anyone, least of all a journalist. But I also knew appearances meant nothing in terms of how people behaved when two of them were alone, and then I tried to stop right there.
I did not want to remember him alive as I made annotations and measurements on diagrams fastened to my clipboard. But a part of my mind tackled my will, and I returned to the last occasion I had seen him. It was the week before Christmas and I was in my Richmond office with my back to the door, sorting through slides in a carousel. I did not hear him behind me until he spoke, and when I turned around, I found him in my doorway, holding a potted Christmas pepper thick with bright red fruit.
"You mind if I come in?" he asked. "Or do you want me to walk all the way back to my car with this." I said good afternoon to him while I thought with frustration of the front office staff. They knew not to let reporters beyond the locked bulletproof partition in the lobby unless I was asked, but the female clerks, in particular, liked Eddings a little too much. He walked in and set the plant on the carpet by my desk, and when he smiled, his entire face did.
"I just thought there ought to be something alive and happy in this place." His blue eyes fixed on mine.
"I hope that isn't a comment about me." I could not help but laugh.
"Are you ready to turn him?"
The body diagram on my clipboard came into focus, and I realized Danny was speaking to me.
"I'm sorry," I muttered.
He was eyeing me with concern while Roche wandered around as if he had never been inside a morgue, peering through glass cabinets and glancing back in my direction.
"Everything all right?" Danny asked me in his sensitive way.
"We can turn him now," I said.
My spirit shook inside like a small hot flame. Eddings had worn khaki range pants and a black commando sweater that day, and I tried to remember the look in his eyes. I wondered if there had been anything behind them that might have presaged this.
Refrigerated by the river, his body was cold to my touch, and I began discovering other aspects of him that distorted the familiar, making me feel even more disturbed. The absence of first molars signaled orthodonture. He had extensive, very expensive porcelain crowns, and contact lenses tinted to enhance eyes already vivid. Remarkably, the right tens had not been washed away when his mask had flooded, and his dull gaze was weirdly asymmetrical, as if two dead people were staring out from sleepy lids.
I was almost finished with the external examination, but what was left was the most invasive, for in any unnatural death, it was necessary to investigate a patient's sexual practices. Rarely was I given a sign as obvious as a tattoo depicting one orientation or another, and as a rule, no one the individual was intimate with was going to step forth to volunteer information, either. But it really would not have mattered what I was told or by whom. I would still check for evidence of anal intercourse.
"What are you looking for?" Roche returned to the table and stood close behind me.
"Proctitis, anal tunneling, small fissures, thickening of the epithelium from trauma," I replied as I worked.
"Then you're assuming he's queer." He peered over my shoulder.
The color mounted to Danny's cheeks, and anger sparked in his eyes.
"Anal ring, epithelium are unremarkable," I said, scribbling notes. "In other words, he has no injury that would be consistent with an active homosexual lifestyle. And, Detective Roche, you're going to have to give me a little more room."
I could feel his breath on my neck.
"You know, he's been in this area a lot doing interviews."
"What sort of interviews?" I asked, and he was seriously getting on my nerves.
"That I don't know."
"Who was he interviewing?"
"Last fall he did a piece on the Inactive Ship Yard. Captain Green could probably tell you more."
"I was just with Captain Green, and he didn't tell me about that."
"The story ran in The Virginian Pilot, back in October, I think. It wasn't a big deal. Just your typical feature," he said. "My personal opinion is he decided to come back to snoop around for something bigger."
"Such as?"
"Don't ask me. I'm not a reporter." He glanced across the table at Danny. "I personally hate the media. They're always coming up with these wild theories and will do anything to prove them. Now this guy's kinda famous around here, being a big-shot reporter for the AP and all. Rumor has it when he gets with girls it's window dressing. You get beyond it and nothing's there, if you know what I mean." He had a cruel smile on his face, and I could not believe how much I did not like him when we had only met today.
"Where are you getting your information?" I asked.
"I hear things."
"Danny, let's get hair and fingernail samples," I said.
"You know, I take the time to talk to people on the street," Roche added as he brushed against my hip.
"You want his mustache plucked, too?" Danny fetched forceps and envelopes from a surgical cart.
"May as well."
"I guess you're going to test him for HIV.- Roche brushed against me again.
"Yes," I replied.
"Then you're thinking he might be queer."
I stopped what I was doing because I'd had enough.
"Detective Roche-I turned around to face him, and my voice was hard-if you are going to be in my morgue, then you will give me room to work. You will stop rubbing against me, and you will treat my patients with respect. This man did not ask to be here dead and naked on this table.
And I don't like the word queer."
"Well, irregardless of what you call it, his orientation might somehow be important." He was nonplussed, if not pleased by my irritation.
"I don't know for a fact that this man was or was not gay," I said. "But I do know for a fact that he did not die of AIDS."
I grabbed a scalpel off a surgical cart and his demeanor abruptly changed. He backed off, suddenly unnerved because I was about to start cutting, so now I had that problem to cope with, too.
"Have you ever seen an autopsy?" I said to him.
"A few." He looked like he might throw up "Why don't you go sit down over there," I suggested none too kindly as I wondered why Chesapeake had assigned him to this case or any case. "Or go out in the bay."
"It's just hot in here."
"If you get sick, go for the nearest trash can." It was all Danny could do not to laugh.
"I'll just sit over here for a minute." Roche went to the desk near the door.
I swiftly made the Y incision, the blade running from shoulders to sternum to pelvis. As blood was exposed to air, I thought I detected an odor that made me stop what I was doing.
"You know, Lipshaw's got a really good sharpener out I wish we could get," Danny was saying. "It hone-grinds with water so you can just stick the knives in there and leave them."
What I was smelling was unmistakable, but I could not believe it.
"I was just looking at their new catalog," he went on.
"Makes me crazy all the cool things we can't afford."
This could not be right.
"Danny, open the doors," I said with a quiet urgency that startled him.
"What is it?" he asked in alarm.
"Let's get plenty of air in here. Now," I said.
He moved fast with his bad knee and opened double doors that led into the hall.
"What's wrong?" Roche sat up straighter.
"This man has a peculiar odor." I was unwilling to voice my suspicions right then, especially to him.
"I don't smell anything." He got up and looked around, as if this mysterious odor might be something he could see.