“Come on and tell me. No bullshit. Any chance that’s Mildred Lott you just pulled out of the bay?” he says somberly, quietly, his narrow face tense, his gray eyes flat behind his glasses.
“I can’t know anything with certainty at this time.” I watch Donoghue head into the courtroom, and maybe it’s my imagination, but she seems to be smiling.
“You can’t say it’s not her?” Steward asks. “It sure would be good if you could.”
“I’ve barely looked at the body. I haven’t autopsied it. At this time I have no idea who she is, but preliminarily and at a glance I didn’t see scars from cosmetic procedures such as breast implants, liposuction, a face-lift, that we know she’d undergone. No physical similarities I saw so far under the circumstances.” I stop short of saying what condition the body is in.
“What circumstances, exactly?” he asks.
“The circumstances of my having time only for a cursory exam before I rushed here.”
“What about age, hair color?”
“Her hair isn’t dyed platinum blond. It’s naturally white,” I answer.
“Are we sure Mildred Lott’s hair was dyed?”
“I’m not sure of anything.”
“The way she’s dressed, any personal effects, such as wedding and engagement rings, an antique locket necklace Mildred Lott was known to wear and was believed to have on when she disappeared, that sort of thing?”
“I found nothing consistent with any of that.”
“Any idea when this newest case, this lady, may have died and how?”
“I’m certainly not going to be compelled to testify about a dead body I’ve not even autopsied yet, Dan,” I reply, with a trace of resistance that I can’t seem to keep out of my voice.
“Hey. It’s all about what Jill’s buddy Judge Conry permits.”
“Her buddy?”
“You know. Rumors. Not me who’s going to repeat them.” Steward glances at his watch. “I’d best get back in there.”
I wait until everyone has gone inside, and I stand alone between inner and outer wooden doors, listening to the strong timbered voice of the clerk as he instructs everyone to rise for the judge. The sounds of people standing and resettling, and the gavel cracks, and court is back in session. Then a commanding woman’s voice, what I call a radio voice, Jill Donoghue’s voice, announces into a microphone that she’s calling me as her next witness.
The door I face opens onto a vaulted arched ceiling hung with alabaster chandeliers, and tables occupied by attorneys and rows of crowded public seating leading to Judge Joseph Conry, robed in black and perched up high on a bench that’s elevated like a throne before a backdrop of leather-bound law reviews. I feel his gravity from the far end of his courtroom as I follow gray carpet toward the witness stand, directly across from the jury box.
“Dr. Scarpetta.” The judge halts me from what feels like miles away. “You were supposed to be here an hour and fifteen minutes ago.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” I reply, with appropriate humility, looking directly at him and avoiding Jill Donoghue standing at a lectern to my left. “And I deeply apologize.”
“Why are you late?”
I know he knows why, but I reply, “I was at a scene several miles south of the city in the Massachusetts Bay, Your Honor. Where a woman’s body was found.”
“So you were working?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” I feel eyes fastened to me like darts, the courtroom as still as an empty cathedral.
“Well, Dr. Scarpetta, I was here by nine o’clock this morning, as is required of me so I can do my job in this case.” He is hard and unforgiving, not at all the man I know from swearing-ins and retirements, from the unveilings of judicial portraits and the countless Federal Bar Association receptions I’ve attended.
Joseph Conry, whose name is frequently confused with the English novelist Joseph Conrad, is strikingly handsome, tall, with jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes, the black Irish judge with a heart of darkness, as he has been described, a no-nonsense brilliant jurist who always has treated me kindly and with respect. I wouldn’t call us personal friends. But I would say we are warmly acquainted, Conry always going out of his way to get me a drink and to chat about the latest in forensics or to ask my advice about his daughter in medical school.
“All of the lawyers and jurors were here by nine o’clock this morning, as required of them, so they can do their jobs in this case,” he is saying in the same severe voice, as I listen with growing dismay. “And because you decided to put your job first, we’ve been forced to wait for you, implying you’re obviously the most important person in this trial.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I never meant to imply that.”
“You’ve wasted the court’s precious time. Yes, I said wasted,” he stuns me by saying. “Time wasted not just by you but also by Mr. Steward, because he doesn’t fool me when he malingers with a witness to buy you time to get here because you’re too busy or too important to obey an order of this court.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I hadn’t thought of it as my intentionally defying anything. I’ve been consumed with . . .”
“Dr. Scarpetta, you were subpoenaed by the defense to testify in this courtroom at two p.m. today, right?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” I can’t believe he’s doing this while the jury is seated.
“You’re a doctor and a lawyer, are you not?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” He should have asked the jury to leave before he started ripping into me.
“I assume you know what the term subpoena means.”
“I do, Your Honor.”
“Please tell the court what your understanding of a subpoena is.”
“It’s a writ by a government agency, Your Honor, that has the authority to compel someone to testify under a penalty for failure to do so.”
“A court order.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” I answer in disbelief I don’t show.
He’s going to make an example out of me, and I can feel Jill Donoghue’s stare and can only imagine her immense satisfaction as she watches one of the most eminent judges in Boston dismantle me one piece at a time in front of the jury, in front of her client, Channing Lott.
“And you violated that court order because you put your work ahead of the court’s, didn’t you?” the judge asks in the same demanding tone.
“I guess that’s right, Your Honor. I apologize.” I meet his cold blue gaze from our impossible distance.
“Well, you’re going to have to do more than apologize, Dr. Scarpetta. I’m going to fine you in an amount that will cover the hourly costs of everyone whose time you’ve wasted for the past hour and fifteen minutes. Actually, an hour and a half, if we include the time it’s taking for me to handle this unnecessary and unfortunate matter. And more time will be added, because now we’re going to run late, run past five and into the night. I’m going to guesstimate what you’ve cost the court is twenty-five hundred dollars. Now please take the witness stand so we can move forward.”
The courtroom is deathly still as I climb wooden steps and settle into a black leather chair, and the clerk asks me to raise my right hand. I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as Jill Donoghue waits patiently at a lectern with a laptop and microphone in the midst of a vast space filled with wooden tables and Windsor benches, and so many flat video screens I’m reminded of a satellite’s silvery solar panels.
I glance at the prosecution, three of them seated side by side and flipping through notes or writing them, and I can tell by the dazed expression on Dan Steward’s face he wasn’t expecting the blistering admonishment I just got. He’s rapidly calculating the damage that’s been done.