“How many times has this happened?” I asked him. “How many times have you taken my calls?”
“A lot lately,” he reluctantly told me.
“How many is a lot?”
“Probably almost every other case you’ve done in the last couple months:’
“That can’t be right,” I retorted.
He was silent, and as I thought about it, doubts crowded my mind again. Families hadn’t seemed to be calling me as much as they used to, but I hadn’t paid much attention because there was never a pattern, never a way to predict. Some relatives wanted every detail. Others called to vent their rage. Some people went into denial and wanted to know nothing.
“Then I can assume there have been complaints about me,” I said. “Grieving, upset people thinking I’m arrogant and cold-blooded. And I don’t blame them.”
“Some have complained.”
I could tell by his face that there had been more than just a few complaints. I had no doubt that letters had been written to the governor, too.
“Who’s been rolling these calls over to you?” I asked matter-of-factly and quietly because I was afraid I might roar like a tornado down the hall and swear at everyone once I left this room.
“Dr. Scarpetta, it didn’t seem unusual that you wouldn’t want to talk about some things to traumatized people right now,” he tried to make me understand. “Some painful things that might remind you . . . it made sense to me. Most of these people just want a voice, a doctor, and if I’ve not been around, either Jill or Bennett has,” he said, referring to two of my resident doctors. “I guess the only big problem is when none of us has been available and somehow Dan or Amy have ended up with the calls.”
Dan Chong and Amy Forbes were rotating medical students here to learn and observe. Never in a million years should they have been put in a position to talk to families.
“Oh, no,” I said, closing my eyes at the nightmarish thought.
“Mainly after hours. That damn answering service,” he said.
“Who’s been rolling the telephone calls over to you?” I asked him again, this time more firmly.
He sighed. Fielding looked as grim and as worried as he’d ever been.
“Tell me;’ I insisted.
“Rose,” he said.
15
Rose was buttoning her coat and wrapping a long silk scarf around her neck when I walked into her office a few minutes before six o’clock. She had been working late as usual. Sometimes I had to make her go home at the end of the day, and although that had impressed and touched me in the past, now it made me uneasy.
“I’ll walk you to your car;” I offered.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, you certainly don’t have to do that.”
Her face got tight, her fingers suddenly fumbling with kid leather gloves. She knew I had something on my mind she didn’t want to hear, and I suspected she knew exactly what it was. We said little to each other as we followed the hallway to the front office, our feet quiet on the carpet, the awkwardness between us palpable.
My heart was heavy. I wasn’t sure if I was angry or crushed, and I began to wonder all sorts of things. What else had Rose kept from me and how long had it been going on? Was her fierce loyalty a possessiveness I hadn’t recognized? Did she feel I belonged to her?
“I don’t guess Lucy ever called,” I said as we emerged into the empty marble lobby.
“No,” Rose replied. “I tried her office several times, too.
“She got the flowers?”
“Oh, yes.”
The night guard waved at us.
“It’s cold out there! Where’s your coat?” he said to me.
“I’ll be all right,” I answered him with a smile, and then to Rose I said, “We know that Lucy actually saw them?”
She looked confused.
“The flowers,” I said. “Do we know if Lucy saw them?”
“Oh, yes,” my secretary said again. “Her supervisor said she came in and saw them, read the card and everybody was teasing her, asking who’d sent them.”
“I don’t guess you know if she took them home with her.”