“Now what do we do, Doc? Now what the hell do we do, huh?”
“He wanted us to have dinner together so we would fight and hate and cry like this,” I muttered, tears slipping down my face. “He knew we would turn on each other and blame each other because there was no other way for us to let it out and go on.”
“Yeah, I guess he profiled us;” Marino said. “I guess he did. Like he somehow knew it would happen, and how we’d act.”
“He knew me,” I muttered. “Oh, God, did he know me. He knew I would handle it worse than anybody. I’don’t cry. I don’t want to cry! I learned not to when my father was dying, because to cry was to feel, and it was too much to feel. It was as if I could make myself get dry inside like a dry pod that rattles, my feelings tiny, hard . . . rattling. I’m devastated, Marino. I don’t think I can get over it. Maybe it would be a good thing if I got fired, too. Or quit.”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” he said.
When I didn’t reply, he got up and lit a cigarette. He paced.
“You want some dinner or something?”
“I just need to sleep,” I said.
“Maybe getting out’of this room would be a good thing.”
“No, Marino.”
I knocked myself out with Benadryl and felt thickheaded and bleary when I forced myself out of bed the next morning. I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw exhausted, puffy eyes. I splashed cold water on my face and dressed and got a cab at seven-thirty, this time without any help from Interpol.
The Institut Médico-Légal, a three-story building of red brick and pitted limestone, was in the east section of the city. The Voie Expressway cut it off from the Seine, which this morning was the color of honey. The taxi driver dropped me off in front, where I walked through a small, lovely park with primroses, pansies, daisies and wild flowers, and old plantain trees. A young couple necking on a bench and an old man walking his dog seemed oblivious to the distinct stench of death seeping through the Institut’s barred windows and black iron front door.
Ruth Stvan was well known for the unusual system she ran. Visitors were received by hostesses, so when the bereft came through the door, they were immediately intercepted by someone kind who helped them find their way, and one of these hostesses reached out to me. She led me along a
tile corridor where investigators waited in blue chairs, and I understood enough of what they were saying to gather that someone had jumped out of a window the night before.
I followed my silent guide past a small chapel with stained glass where a couple was crying over a young boy inside an open white casket. Handling the dead here was different from what we did. In America, there simply wasn’t time or funding for hostesses, chapels and handholding in a society in which shootings came in every day and no one lobbied for the dead.
Dr. Stvan was working on a case in the Salle d’Autopsie, designated as such by a sign over automatically opening doors. When l walked in, I was overwhelmed by anxiety again. I shouldn’t have come here. I didn’t know what I would say. Ruth Stvan was placing a lung in a hanging scale, her green gown splashed with blood, glasses speckled with it. I knew her case was the man who had jumped. His face was smashed, feet split open, shin tones driven up into his thighs.
“Give me one minute, please,” Dr. Stvan said to me.
There were two other cases going on, those doctors wearing white. On chalkboards were names and case numbers. A Stryker saw was opening a skull while water ran loudly in sinks. Dr. Stvan was quick and energetic, fair and big-boned and older than me. I remembered that when we were in Geneva she had kept to herself.
Dr. Stvan covered her unfinished case with a sheet and pulled off her gloves. She began untying her gown in back as she walked over to me with sure, strong steps.