He drapes my clothes over the conference table.
“I absolutely know Indy wasn’t exposed to onions. Ethan was so happy I was finally back from being in Florida forever, and he made my favorite. His chili’s really amazing, and of course Marino and everyone’s blaming us as if we’re irresponsible and don’t care if we kill our cat.” He looks at me and looks exhausted, fear crouched at the back of his eyes. “She’s only ten weeks old, Dr. Scarpetta, and I’ve had cats before and know when something’s really wrong.”
“I’m sorry, Bryce.” I set the file on the table and shut the door that leads into the corridor. “We’ll talk about it when I’m back.”
“I know it happened at the groomer,” he continues from inside my closet, where he’s now looking for something on the floor. “Well, your shoes are here but still no pantyhose. Just a week ago Saturday, her very first visit to get her claws clipped, and there she was with about twenty other animals, including a parrot that was making these strangling, hacking sounds like it had kennel cough. I realize it might have been imitating it, but what if it wasn’t . . . ?”
“Bryce, I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but I’ve got to get cleaned up.”
He hands me my shoes.
“Do you have any idea how careful we are?” He’s on the verge of tears.
“I promise we’ll chat about this later. . . .”
“We’re so paranoid about onions and poisonous things, like poinsettias, which we refuse to have in the house, and I don’t eat raw onions anyway. . . .”
“I’ve got to get ready and can’t with you standing here. . . .”
“So we always use onion powder, which is better all the way round, because there’s no chance of the ittiest, bittiest piece escaping the counter and ending up on the floor.” His eyes well up.
“You put onion powder in your chili?” I carry my suit and blouse into the bathroom and hang them on the shower door.
“Now’s not the time to criticize our cooking.” His voice shakes.
“I had a cat when I was in law school, and sometimes he refused to eat. . . .”
“They can be very sensitive. He was probably angry with you.”
“A vet suggested I give him meat baby food, and apparently it had onion powder in it, which can cause toxicity, the same as raw onions, by oxidizing hemoglobin. . . .”
“Oh my God! Did he die?”
“No. It’s just something to think about and mention to the vet. And you need to leave so I can change. Please.”
“It’s just terribly upsetting.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just change in here.” I set my shoes on the toilet lid.
“You need to be aware the media’s been ringing the phone off the hook.”
His voice sounds loudly, tragically from the doorway that adjoins my office with his, and I unzip the gray liner and hurry out of it, leaving it in a pile on my bathroom floor.
“Calling my cell phone, too, at least those reporters who have my number. There’s huge speculation that the old lady you just pulled out of the bay is Mildred Lott. . . .”
“No evidence of it.” I run a washcloth under hot water and clean up as best I can, and of course a shower right now is impossible.
“You know? That someone obviously was holding her hostage all this time, or maybe her disappearance was faked back in the spring or how she’s been hiding and finally drowned herself? You should hear the theories.”
“There’s nothing to make me think it’s her.” I pull on a new pair of pantyhose I retrieve from a cabinet.
“Meaning her husband, Channing Lott, couldn’t have had anything to do with her death, since he’s considered a flight risk and has been in jail without bond since April?” Bryce has the remarkable ability of talking nonstop without seeming to take a breath. “So how could he possibly have killed her or paid someone else to some six months after she supposedly vanished?”
I step into my pin-striped skirt and yank up the zipper in back. “I don’t want you releasing any information at all, not one word about this case, please.” I hurry into my blouse, fumbling with the buttons and tucking it in, disgusted by how quickly rumors can start and how difficult it is to disarm them. “Not even a hint of an opinion about whether the dead lady might be Mildred Lott or Emma Shubert or anyone. Understood?”
“Well, of course. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I know what the press does with the slightest nothing.”
I turn on the vanity light, dismayed by my reflection in the mirror over the sink. Pale. Completely washed out. Hair flat from wearing a neoprene dive hood and submerging my head in cold salt water. I drip Visine into my eyes.
“I’m just warning you I’ve got no idea what might come up when you get in the stand, because they can ask you anything they want.” Bryce is still talking.
I rub a dab of gel in my hair and muss it up to give it a little lift, and it still looks awful.
sixteen
TRAFFIC IS BAD IN BOSTON, AND AVAILABLE PARKING IS nowhere to be seen at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse, an architectural marvel of dark red brick and glass that embraces the harbor like graceful arms. I tell Marino to let me out.
“Park where you can or drive around and wait for me. I’ll call you when I’m on my way down.” I have my hand on the door.
“Hell, no.”
“Right here is fine.”
“No way. No telling what scumbag friends he’s got hanging around.” Marino means what scumbag friends Channing Lott might have.
“I’m perfectly safe.”
Marino scouts the parking lot, where there’s scarcely room for a bicycle, let alone a large SUV; then he stalks a Prius and curses when the driver gets out instead of pulling away.
“Piece-of-shit green-machine crap,” he says, creeping off. “They should have reserved parking for expert witnesses.”
“Please stop. Right here is perfect.”
He targets the Barking Crab, with its yellow-and-red awning across the old iron swing bridge that spans Fort Point Channel.
“I can probably find something over there, since it’s past lunchtime and too early for dinner.” He heads in that direction.
“Stop.” I mean it. “I’m getting out.” I open my door. “Park anywhere you want. I’m so late I don’t care.”
“How about staying put if I’m not there before you’re done? Don’t wander off, assuming it’s quick.”
I hurry along the brick Harbor Walk, past The Daily Catch, to the waterfront, where there’s a park with wooden benches and thick hedges of flowering Justicia, an evergreen shrub that can’t have been selected by accident for a courthouse. Taking off my suit jacket, I push through a glass door that leads into a screening station where I’m greeted by court security officers, CSOs I know by name, retired cops now with the U.S. Marshals Service.
“There she is.”
“We’ve been wondering when you’re gonna turn up like a bad penny.”
“On every TV channel. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, YouTube.”
“I got a cousin in England who saw it on BBC, said the turtle you were working on was the size of a whale.”
“Gentlemen? How are you?” I hand over my driver’s license even though they are used to me.
“Couldn’t be better if we lied.”
“Last time I was this good I forgot about it.”
Typical men of the dark blue cloth, they fire off quips that make less sense the more one thinks about them, and I smile despite it all. I surrender my iPhone, because no electronic devices are allowed inside, doesn’t matter who you are, and my suit jacket is x-rayed as I walk through the scanner, everything by the book, doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been here.
“I saw the fireboat go by earlier, Doc. Then the Coast Guard and choppers,” says the CSO named Nate, solid gristle, with the flattened nose of a prizefighter. “That lady you pulled out of the water this morning. Somebody’s mother.”