From the doorway, Mae Borden cleared her throat discreetly.
"Matthew, are you okay?"
"Huh? Oh, sure. I'm fine."
He glanced back at the tree, but the tanager was gone.
"You were thinking about your wife, weren't you?"
"No, I mean yes. Yes, I was."
"I thought so."
"You know, Mae, it's been almost four years and the feelings haven't really changed inside me at all. If anything, I miss her more than ever. First it's a cloud that reminds me of her, then a scene in the woods, or the way a woman on the sidewalk looks from behind. Just now it was a bird — a tanager. Only this time it didn't just remind me of her, Mae, I had this powerful feeling it was her. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to get my brain around how long forever is. I keep thinking that some director's going to walk into the room, clap his hands, and announce that this scene is over and we get to move on to the next — the one where she's waiting at home to tell me about her day with the kids at school."
Mae crossed the room and set her hand on his shoulder.
"You have every right to hold fast to the memories of her," she said, "so long as they don't blot out the life you have left to live. With your dad gone, and your mother, bless her soul, getting more and more… sick, and the hours you spend working here and in the hospital, and now this mine thing, I wonder sometimes how you do it. The trick is to have those memories remind you not of what life was, but of how wonderful it can be again if you'd allow it."
"I hear you."
"I hope you do."
Mae walked around to the corner of the desk and picked up the stack of magenta fliers.
"You going to throw those away?" Matt asked.
"No," she said, her tone and expression bittersweet. "I'm going to put them up all around town. Who knows?"
As she left Matt's office, the phone was ringing. Through his open door he heard her answer it.
"Dr. Rutledge's office… When?… Any idea why?… I'll tell him right away… Thank you. Thank you for calling."
She set the receiver down and moments later appeared at the doorway.
"Matthew, that was Janice in the ICU. Darryl Teague just had a sudden cardiac arrest. They tried resuscitating him, but nothing worked. He's dead."
CHAPTER 4
It was the second straight day of unremitting rain. Nikki Solari hated running in this kind of weather, but today she was considering doing it anyway. It had been more than a week since her roommate and close friend, Kathy Wilson, had stormed from their South Boston flat. A week without so much as a word — to her or to their mutual friends. The police had been surprisingly little help. Nikki had filled out the appropriate forms and brought in some photographs, but so far, nothing.
"… Miss Solari, try to relax. I'm sure your friend will turn up."
"It's Doctor Solari, and why are you so sure?"
"That's the way it is with cases like this. Everyone worries and the missing person just shows up."
"Well, this missing person is an incredibly talented musician who would never leave her band in the lurch, which she has. She is a wonderfully dependable friend who would never do anything to upset me, which she has. And she is an extremely compassionate and kind woman who would never say anything abusive to anyone, yet before she disappeared she had become abusive to everyone."
"Doctor Solari, tell me something honestly. Were you and Miss Wilson lovers?"
"Oh, Christ…"
Nikki desperately needed to wrest the worry from her brain, if only for a while, and the only ways she had ever been able to do so were running, making music, and performing autopsies.
It was eleven in the morning. One more hour until lunch. She could go out and splash through a few miles then. She stood by the window of her office watching the cars creep down Albany Street past the modern building that was the headquarters of the chief medical examiner and his staff. This was her third year as an associate in ME Josef Keller's office. She was fascinated by the work and absolutely adored the man. But the past week had been hell. She glanced over at her desk. There were reports to be read, dictations to do, and several boxes of slides to review, but the concentration just wasn't there.
"Hey, there, beautiful, you've got a case."
Without waiting for an invitation, Brad Cummings strode into the office. Divorced with a couple of kids, Cummings was the deputy chief medical examiner. He was athletic, urbane, and, in the eyes of perhaps every woman in the city except Nikki, handsome. She found him smug, self-absorbed, and way too pretty — quite possibly the absolute antithesis of what she was looking for in a man.
"Where's Dr. Keller?" she asked.
"Away until one. That means I'm the boss until then, so I get to say who gets what case, and you get this tubber."
"This what?"
"Sixty-six-year-old guy had a coronary getting into his Jacuzzi, smacked his head on the side, and went for the eternal swim. He's just eight months post-bypass surgery. I spoke to his doctor, who said he was on mucho cardiac meds and undoubtedly had an MI. So, he's really just a 'View.' You don't have to cut on him at all. And that means we have time to go have lunch at that place on Newbury Street I've been telling you about."
"Brad, I don't want to go out with you."
"But I thought you broke up with that drip you were dating."
"Correction, that drip broke up with me. And I'm not interested in starting up with another one."
"She digs me. I can tell."
At the best of times, Nikki had precious little patience for the man.
"Brad, you have more than enough scalps hanging on your lodge pole without mine. And I'm sure there are plenty more where those came from. We'll keep getting along fine so long as you keep things on a business or collegial basis. But I promise you, Brad, call me beautiful again, or sweets, or honey, or babe, or anything other than Nikki or Dr. Solari, and I'll write you up and hand it over to Dr. Keller. Clear?"
"Hey, easy does it."
Nikki could tell that he stopped himself at the last possible instant from adding "babe."
"I'm going to get started on the new case," she said.
"I told you, this is a straightforward View. No scalpel required, just eyeball him and sign off."
"If it's all the same to you, I'll make that decision after I've seen the guy."
Nikki didn't add that there wasn't a chance in the world she would pass on this case regardless of how open-and-shut it was. Here was the perfect opportunity to get her mind off of Kathy for a few hours without getting soaked on the streets of Boston.
"Suit yourself," Cummings said. "Three days."
"What?"
"Three days. That's how long the dude's been in the water. He's a little, um, bloated. Sure you don't want to just View and then skidoo?"
"Have a good lunch, Brad."
Nikki changed into scrubs and located the remains of Roger Belanger on the center of three stainless-steel tables in Autopsy Suite 1. The daughter of an Italian and an Irishwoman, she could easily trace her thick, black hair and wide (some said sensuous) mouth to her father, and her fair skin, sea-green eyes, slender frame, and caustic wit to her mom. At her father's urging, she had tried to follow his rather large footsteps into surgery. But after a year of residency, she switched to pathology, realizing that her desire to have a life outside of medicine was precluded by spending most of it in the OR or on rounds. Not once had she regretted her decision.
Belanger was hardly the most unsightly corpse Nikki had ever examined, but neither was he at all pleasant to look at. Overweight and nearly egg-bald, he was extremely bloated and discolored, with purplish marbling of his skin. His flaccid limbs were well past rigor mortis. The white scar from his bypass ran the length of his breastbone.
Good-bye for now, Kath, she thought as she began to focus in on the details of the body. I'll let you back in in two hours.