“Suggesting that the dead are more important to you than the living?”
“It would be incorrect to assume that. Life always takes precedence over death.”
“But you work with the dead, do you not? Your patients are dead people, are they not?”
“As a medical examiner,” I reply slowly, calmly, as I anticipate where this is headed, “it’s my job to investigate any sudden, unexpected, or violent death, and to determine the cause and manner of that death. In other words, what actually killed the person, and was it an accident, a suicide, a homicide, for example? So, yes, most people I examine are dead.”
“Well, hopefully all of them are.”
More laughter, but the jurors are somber and listening intently. A heavy woman in a purple pantsuit sitting in the middle of the front row leans forward in her chair. She hasn’t taken her eyes off me, and on her left an older man dressed tidily in slacks and a pullover sweater has his head cocked to one side, as if trying to figure me out.
Jill Donoghue hasn’t offered any surprises yet. She’s trying to show me to be a cold-blooded peculiar woman who doesn’t give a shit about living people. Meaning I wouldn’t give a shit about her client Channing Lott.
“Not everyone I examine is dead.” I’m speaking to the juror in purple, to the man next to her, and another juror in a blue suit. “At times I also examine living victims to determine if their injuries are consistent with information the police has been given.”
“And where did you get the training to examine dead bodies and also the occasional living one? Where did you go to school? Let’s start with college.”
“I went to Cornell University, and after graduation attended Johns Hopkins Medical School, then I attended Georgetown Law and after that returned to Hopkins to complete my residency in pathology. This was followed by a year’s forensic pathology fellowship at the Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office in Miami, Florida.”
It goes on. It is endless. For the better part of half an hour, Jill Donoghue interrogates me about every nuance of my education and training. Tedious questions about my time spent with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology are followed by what I did while stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in the late eighties, before I was appointed chief medical examiner of Virginia and moved to Richmond. Then she digs into my more active involvement with the Department of Defense after 9-11, which ultimately led to my spending six months at Dover Air Force Base, where I learned computer tomography, or CT scans, to assist in autopsies.
Dan Steward doesn’t stir until she brings up Benton in a confrontational way, wanting to know if it’s true we met when I was the new chief medical examiner of Virginia and he was the chief of what then was called the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico. She asks if it’s true that I was divorced at the time while he was married with three children.
“I object,” Steward finally says.
I can’t help myself. I turn to look. He’s on his feet, his chair shoved back from the prosecution’s table, directly to the right of the lectern, where I see Donoghue leaning quite comfortably, quite casually, quite confidently.
“Details about Dr. Scarpetta’s personal life are beyond the scope of what qualifies her as an expert medical examiner,” says Dan Steward, perhaps one of the most pathetic attorneys I’ve ever worked with, I decide.
“Your Honor,” Donoghue addresses Judge Conry. “I respectfully offer that if it can be shown to the court that a witness has engaged in criminal or immoral or deceitful behavior, it absolutely is within the scope of what qualifies him or her to testify to alleged facts that could result in a defendant going to prison.”
“Overruled. Ms. Donoghue, you may proceed.”
It’s now I know for a fact that this god who is judge has decided to consign me to his personal hell.
They’re having an affair, or want to.
I refrain from looking in his direction.
“Isn’t it true, Dr. Scarpetta, that you started an intimate relationship with Benton Wesley while he was still married to someone else?” Jill Donoghue asks, and I have no choice but to answer.
I am alone.
I look at the faces of the men and women on the jury and say, “If by intimate you mean we fell in love with each other. Yes, we did. We’ve been together the better part of twenty years now, and are married.”
The woman juror in dark red nods, and Donoghue says, “So it would be fair to say that truth is whatever you decide it is.”
“It would not be fair to say that.”
“It would be fair to say that if someone is married, so what.”
“That’s your opinion, not mine,” I reply, because Steward isn’t going to do a damn thing.
“It would be fair to say you don’t honor the law but do as you please.”
“It most assuredly would not be fair to say that,” I reply.
“But Benton Wesley was married.”
“He was.”
“And you took him from his wife and three daughters.”
“He divorced his wife. I did not take him from her or anyone.”
“Dr. Scarpetta? Would it be accurate to say that truth is what you decide it is?” She tries again.
“It would not be accurate to say that,” I repeat.
“Was it accurate when you stated in an e-mail to Dan Steward that Channing Lott’s wife has turned into a bar of soap?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I’m sorry. Then what did you say?”
“On which occasion?”
“Well, let me produce the e-mail,” she replies.
It appears on the flat screens around the room, the e-mail addresses in it blacked out, redacted, and she asks me if I recognize what I’m seeing, and I do, and then she reads it out loud:
Dan—
To answer your question in general and by no means specifically about Mildred Lott. If a body were dumped in the ocean near Gloucester in March and remained submerged in cold water for months, hydrolysis and hydrogenation of the fatty cells that compose subcutaneous fat tissues would result in the formation of bacterial-resistant adipocere, a postmortem artifact that basically turns a body into soap.
“Do you remember e-mailing that to Dan Steward, Dr. Scarpetta?”
“I don’t remember those exact words.”
“What do you remember, then?”
“I remember telling Mr. Steward that if a body remains submerged in cold water for a period of weeks or months, the result would be a process of decomposition known as saponification.”
“Turning into soap,” she emphasizes.
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Not in a manner of speaking, Dr. Scarpetta. That’s what you said in this e-mail, correct?”
“I believe I said ‘basically turns into soap.’”
“Just to clarify, can a dead human body literally turn into soap under any circumstances?” she asks.
“Hydrolysis of fats and oils in the human body can indeed yield a crude soap. Also known as grave wax because of the way it looks.”
“And the formation of this soap, or grave wax or adipocere, doesn’t happen overnight, correct?” she asks.
“That’s correct. It can take weeks or months, depending on the temperature and other conditions.”
“Which leads me to what’s been all over the news today.” Of course she was going to get to that. “The body you recovered from the water almost in view of where we are sitting? Indeed, if you walk outside this courtroom and look through those huge windows you can almost see where you were on the Coast Guard boat but a few hours ago, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“Do you know the identity of this dead woman whose body you pulled out of the water several hours ago?”