sun. I was slowing at the Lombardy Toll Plaza when my car phone rang. It was Marino.
Thought I’d let you know I’m going to drop by,” he said.
A horn blared when I changed lanes and almost clipped a silver Toyota in my blind spot. The driver swooped around me, yelling obscenities I couldn’t hear.
“Go to hell,” I angrily said in his wake.
“What?” Marino said loudly in my ear.
“Some goddamn idiot driver.”
“Oh, good. You ever heard of road rage, Doc?”
“Yes, and I’ve come down with it”
I took the Ninth Street exit, heading to my office, and let Rose know I was two minutes away. When I pulled into the parking lot, Fielding was waiting with the hard case and extension cord.
“I don’t guess the Suburban’s back yet,” I said.
“Nope,” he replied, loading the equipment in my trunk. “Gonna be something when you show up in this thing. I can just see all those dockworkers staring at this goodlooking blond woman in a black Mercedes. Maybe you should borrow my car.”
My bodybuilding deputy chief had just finalized a divorce and celebrated by trading in his Mustang for a red Corvette.
“Actually, that’s a good idea;” I dryly said. “If you don’t mind. As long as it’s a V-eight”
Yeah, yeah. I hear ya. Call me if you need me. You know the way, right?”
“I do.”
His directions led me south, and I was almost to Petersburg when I turned off and drove past the back of the Philip Morris manufacturing plant and over railroad tracks. The narrow road led me through a vacant land of weeds and woods that ended abruptly at a security checkpoint. I felt as if I were crossing the border into an unfriendly country.Beyond was a train yard and hundreds of boxcar-size orange containers stacked three and four high. A guard who took his job very seriously stepped outside his booth. I rolled down my window.
“May I help you, ma’am?” he asked in a flat military tone.
“I’m Dr. Kay Scarpetta,” I replied.
“And who are you here to see?”
“I’m here because there’s been a death,” I explained. “I’m the medical examiner.”
I showed him my credentials. He took them from me and studied them carefully. I had a feeling he didn’t know what a medical examiner was and wasn’t about to ask.
“So you’re the chief,” he said, handing the worn black wallet back to me. “The chief of what?”
“I’m the chief medical examiner of Virginia,” I replied. “The police are waiting for me.”
He stepped back inside his booth and got on the phone as my impatience grew. It seemed every time I needed to enter a secured area, I went through this. I used to assume my being a woman was the reason, and in earlier days this was probably true-at least some of the time. Now I believed the threats of terrorism, crime and lawsuits were the explanation. The guard wrote down a description of my car arid the plate number. He handed me a clipboard so I could sign in and gave me a visitor’s pass, which I didn’t clip on.
“See that pine tree down there?” he said, pointing.
“I see quite a few pine trees.”
“The little bent one. Take a left at it and just head on towards the water, ma’am;” he said. “Have a nice day.”
I moved on, passing huge tires parked here and there and several red brick buildings with signs out front to identify the U.S. Customs Service and Federal Marine Terminal. The port itself was rows of huge warehouses with orange containers lined up at loading docks like animals feeding from troughs.
Moored off the wharf in the James River were two container ships, the Euroclip and the Sirius, each almost twice as long as a football field. Cranes hundreds of feet high were poised above open hatches the size of swimming pools.
Yellow crime-scene tape anchtired by traffic cones circled a container that was mounted on a chassis. No one was nearby. In fact, I saw no sign of police except for an unmarked blue Caprice at the edge of the dock apron, the driver, apparently, behind the wheel talking through the window to a man in a white shirt and a tie. Work had stopped. Stevedores in hard hats and reflective vests looked bored as they drank sodas or bottled water or smoked.