Blood rose to Cleta’s cheeks, and with eyes cast down she said, “Sometimes.”
“Pony?” I asked.
She stopped typing and also blushed.
“Not all the time;” she replied.
I nodded.
“It’s not me,” I told them. “Someone is impersonating me. I wish I’d known about it before now.”
Both of my clerks looked confused. I wasn’t sure they believed me.
“I can certainly understand why you didn’t want to say anything to me when you became aware of these so-called chat sessions,” i went on. “I probably wouldn’t have either if the roles were reversed. But I need your help. ü you have any ideas about who might be doing this, will you tell me?”
They looked relieved.
`That’s awful;’ Cleta said with feeling. “Whoever’s doing that ought to.go to jail.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything,” Polly contritely added. “I don’t have any idea about who would do something like that:”
“I mean it sort of sounds like you when you read it. That’s the problem,” Cleta added.
“Sort of sounds like me?” I said, frowning.
“You know, it gives advice about accident prevention, security, how to deal with grief and all sorts of medical things.”
“You’re saying it sounds like a doctor is writing it, or someone trained in health care?” I asked as my incredulity grew.
“Well, whoever it is seems to know what he’s talking about,” Cleta replied. “But it’s more conversational. Not like reading an autopsy report or anything like that.”
“I don’t think it sounds much like her,” Polly said. “Now that I think about it.”
I noticed a case file on her desk that was open to color computer-generated autopsy photographs of a man whose shotgun-blasted head looked like a gory eggcup. I recognized him as the murder victim whose wife had been writing me from prison, accusing me of everything from incompetence to racketeering.
“What’s this?” I asked her.
“Apparently, the Times-Dispatch and the A.G.’s office have heard from that crazy woman, and Ira Herbert called here a little while ago, asking about it,” she told me.
Herbert was the police reporter for the local newspaper. If he was calling, that probably meant I was being sued.
“And then Harriet Cummins called Rose to get a copy of his records,” Cleta explained. “It appears his psycho wife’s latest story is he put the shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger with his toe.”
“The poor man was wearing army boots,” I replied. “He couldn’t possibly have pulled the trigger with his toe, and he was shot at close range in the back of the head.”
“I don’t know what it is with people anymore,” Polly said with a sigh. “All they do is lie and cheat, and if they get locked up, they just sit around and stir up trouble and file lawsuits. It makes me sick.”
“Me, too,” Cleta agreed.
“Do you know where Dr. Fielding is?” I asked both of them.
“I saw him wandering around a little while ago,” Polly said.
I found him in the medical library thumbing through Nutrition in Exercise and Sport. He smiled when he saw me, but looked tired and a little out of sorts.
“Not eating enough carbos,” he said, tapping a page with his index finger. “I keep telling myself if I don’t get fiftyfive to seventy percent of my diet in carbos, I get glycogen depletion. I haven’t had much energy lately . . .”
“Jack.” My tone cut him off. “I need you to be as honest as you’ve ever been with me.”
I shut the library door. I told him what Ruffin had said, and a glint of painful recognition showed in my deputy chief’s face. He pulled out a chair and sat down at a table. He closed his book. I sat next to him and we turned our chairs facing each other.
“Something’s been going around about Secretary Wagner getting rid of you,” he said. “I think it’s bullshit and I’m sorry you even heard about it. Chuck’s an idiot.”
Sinclair Wagner was the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and only he or the governor could appoint or fire the chief medical examiner.
“When did you start hearing these rumors?” I asked.