"I can hardly hear you," his scratchy voice sounds in one ear, my hand covering the other. In the background, one of his children is crying.
"I'm not in a good place to talk," I tell him.
"Me, either. My ex is here. Joy to the world."
"What's up?" I say to him.
"Some New York prosecutor just called me."
Jolted, I will myself to sound calm, almost indifferent, when I ask him this person's name. He tells me Jaime Berger reached him at home several hours ago. She wanted to know if he assisted in the autopsies I performed on Kim Luong and Diane Bray. "That's interesting," I comment. "Isn't your number unlisted?"
"Righter gave it to her," he informs me.
Paranoia heats up. The wound of betrayal flares. Righter gave her Jack's number and not mine? "Why didn't he tell her to call me?" I ask.
Jack pauses as another child adds to the upset chorus in his house. "I don't know. I told her I didn't officially assist. You did the posts. I'm not listed on the protocols as a witness. Said she really needs to speak to you."
"What was her response when you told her that?" I ask.
"Started asking me questions, obviously has copies of the reports."
Righter again. Copies of the medical examiner's initial report of investigation and the autopsy protocols go to the commonwealth's attorney's office. I feel dizzy. It now seems that two prosecutors have spurned me, and fear and bewilderment gather like an army of fiery ants, teeming over my interior world, stinging my very psyche. What is happening is uncanny and cruel. It is beyond anything I have ever imagined in my most unsettled moments. Jack's voice sounds distant through static that seems a projection of the chaos in my mind. I make out that Berger was a very cool customer and sounded as if she was on a car phone, and then something about special prosecutors. "I thought they were only brought in for the president or Waco or whatever," he says as the cell suddenly clears and he yells_to his ex-wife, I assume_"Can you take them in the other room? I'm on the phone! Jesus," he blurts out to me, "don't ever have kids."
"What do you mean, special prosecutor!" I inquire. "What special prosecutor?"
Jack pauses. "I guess I'm assuming they're bringing her here to try the case because Fighter Righter doesn't want to," he replies with sudden nervousness. In fact, he sounds evasive.
"It appears they had a case in New York." I am careful what I say. "That's why she's involved, or so I'm told."
"You mean a case like ours?"
"Two years ago."
"No shit? News to me. Okay. She didn't say anything about that. Just wants to know about the ones here," Jack tells me.
"How many for the morning, so far?" I inquire about our case load for tomorrow.
"Five so far. Including a weirdo one that's going to be a pain in the butt. Young white male_maybe Hispanic_found inside a motel room. Looks like the room was torched. No ID. A needle stuck in his arm, so we don't know if he's a drug OD or smoke inhalation."
"Let's not talk about it over a cell phone," I cut him off, looking around me. "We'll talk about it in the morning. I'll take care of him."
A long, surprised pause is followed by, "You sure? Because I…"
"I'm sure, Jack." I have not been to the office at all this week. "See you then."
I am supposed to meet Lucy in front of Waldenbooks at seven-thirty, and I venture back out into the churning herd. I have no sooner parked myself at the appointed spot when I notice a familiar, big, sour-looking man riding up the escalator. Marino bites into a soft pretzel and licks his fingers as he stares at the teenage girl one step above him. Her tight jeans and sweater leave no mysteries about her curves, dips and elevations, and even from this distance, I can tell Marino is mapping her routes and imagining what it would be like to travel them.
I watch him carried along crowded steps of steel, heavily involved with the pretzel, chewing with his mouth open, lusting. Faded, baggy blue jeans ride below his swollen gut, and his big hands look like baseball mitts protruding from the sleeves of a red NASCAR windbreaker. A NASCAR cap covers his balding head and he wears ridiculous Elvis-size wire-rim glasses. His fleshy face is furrowed by discontent and has the slack, flushed look of chronic dissipation, and I am startled by an awareness of how miserable he is in his own body, of how much he wars against flesh that by now fails him with a vengeance. Marino reminds me of someone who has taken terrible care of his car, driving it hard, letting it rust and fall apart, and then violently hating it. I imagine Marino slamming down the hood and kicking the tires.
We worked our first case together shortly after I moved here from Miami, and he was surly and condescending and positively boorish from the start. I was certain that by accepting the chief medical examiner's position in Virginia I had made the biggest mistake of my life. In Miami, I had earned the respect of law enforcement and the medical and scientific community. The press treated me reasonably well and I enjoyed a rise to minor stardom that gave me confidence and reassurance. Gender did not seem an issue until I met Peter Rocco Marino, begotten of hardworking Italian stock in New Jersey, a former New York cop, now divorced from his childhood sweetheart, father of a son he never talks about.
He is like the harsh lighting in dressing rooms. I was relatively comfortable with myself until I saw my reflection in him. This minute, I am unsettled enough to accept that the flaws he holds up to me are probably true. He notices me against the glass storefront, tucking my phone back into my satchel, shopping bags at my feet, and I wave at him. He takes his time maneuvering his bulk through prepossessed people who right now aren't thinking about murderers or trials or New York prosecutors.
"What are you doing here?" he asks me as if I am trespassing.
"Buying your Christmas present," I say. He takes another bite of pretzel. It appears he has purchased nothing but the pretzel. "And you?" I inquire.
"Came to sit on Santa's lap and get my picture took."
"Don't let me stop you."
"I paged Lucy. She told me where in this zoo you was probably at. I thought you might need someone to carry your bags, being that you're a little shorthanded at the moment. How you gonna do autopsies with that thing on?" He indicates my cast.
I know why he is here. I detect the distant roar of information headed my way like an avalanche. I sigh. Slowly but surely I am surrendering to the fact that my life is only going to get worse. "Okay, Marino, now what?" I ask him. "What's happened now?"
"Doc, it's going to be in the paper tomorrow." He bends over to pick up my bags. "Righter called me a little while ago. The DNA matches. Looks like Wolfman whacked that weather lady in New York two years ago, and apparently the asshole's decided he's feeling up to leaving MCV and ain't fighting extradition to the Big Apple_just happy as a clam to get the hell out of Virginia. Kind of a weird coincidence the son of a bitch decides to leave town the same day as Bray's memorial service."
"What memorial service?" Thoughts crash into each other from all directions.
"At Saint Bridget's."
I also didn't know Bray was Catholic and just happened to attend the church where I am a member. An eerie feeling tickles up my spine. No matter what world I occupy, it seemed her mission was to break into it and eclipse me. That she might even have attempted this at my own unassuming church reminds me of how utterly ruthless and arrogant she was.
"So Chandonne is transported out of Richmond on the same day we're supposed to say good-bye to the last woman he snuffed," Marino talks on, scanning every shopper bobbing past. "Don't think for a minute the timing's a coincidence. Every move he makes, the press will be there in droves. So he'll outshine Bray, steal her thunder, 'cause the media's gonna be a hell of a lot more interested in what he's doing than in who shows up to pay their respects to one of his victims. If anybody shows up to pay respects. I know I ain't, not after all the shit she did to make my life happy. And oh yeah, Berger's on her way here even as we speak. I guess with a name like that she probably ain't into Christmas," he adds.