“Wouldn’t expect you to,” he surprised me by saying. “Wouldn’t expect that at all because you’re focused as hell, Kay. Which is just one of several reasons I solidly backed your appointment. The good side is you don’t miss anything, are a damn good forensic pathologist in addition to being a fine administrator. The bad side is you tend to place yourself in jeopardy on occasion. Those strangling cases a year or so ago, for example. They might never have been solved and more women might have died were it not for you. But they almost cost you your life.
“Now this incident yesterday.”
He paused, then shook his head and laughed. “Though I have to admit I’m rather impressed.
‘Decked him,’ I believe I heard on the radio this morning. Did you really!”
“Not exactly,” I replied uncomfortably.
“Do you know who he is, what he was looking for?”
“We’re not sure,” I said. “But he went inside the morgue refrigerator and took photographs.
Photographs of Gary and Sterling Harper’s bodies. The files he was looking through when I walked in on him didn’t tell me anything.”
“Alphabetized?”
“He was in the M through N drawer,” I said.
“M as in Madison?”
“Possibly,” I replied. “But her case is locked up in the ,front office. Nothing about her is in my filing cabinets.”
After a long silence, he tapped the legal pad with his ‘index finger and said, “I’ve been writing out what I know, about these recent deaths. Beryl Madison, Gary Harper, Sterling Harper. Has all the trappings of a mystery novel, doesn’t it? And now this intrigue over a missing manuscript that allegedly involves the medical examiner’s office. What I have to say to you are a couple of things, Kay. First, if anybody else calls about the manuscript, I think it will make life easier if you refer the interested parties to my office. I fully expect some trumped-up lawsuit to follow. I’ll get my staff involved now, see if we can head off the posse at the pass. Second, and I’ve been giving this a lot of careful consideration, I want you to be like an iceberg.”
“What, exactly, is that supposed to mean?” I asked uneasily.
“What protrudes from the surface is but a fraction of what’s really below,” he answered. “This is not to be confused with keeping a low profile, even though you will be keeping a low profile for all practical purposes. Minimal statements to the press, making yourself as much a nonissue as possible.”
He began fingering his watch chain again. “Inversely proportional to your invisibility will be your level of activity, or involvement, if you will.”
“My involvement?”
I protested. “Is this your way of telling me to do my job, nothing but my job, and to keep the office out of the limelight?”
“Yes and no. Yes to doing your job. As for keeping the medical examiner’s office out of the limelight, I’m afraid that may be out of your control.”
He paused, folding his hands on top of his desk. “I’m quite familiar with Robert Sparacino.”
“You’ve met him?” I asked.
“I had the distinct misfortune of making his acquaintance in law school,” he said.
I looked at him in disbelief.
“Columbia, class of ‘fifty-one,” Ethridge went on. “An obese, arrogant young man with a serious character defect. He was also very bright and might have graduated top of the class and gone on to clerk for the chief justice had I not gotten compulsive.”
He paused. “I went to Washington and enjoyed the privilege of working for Hugo Black. Robert stayed in New York.”
“Has he ever forgiven you?” I asked, a cloud of suspicion gathering. “I’m assuming there must have been a lot of rivalry. Has he ever forgiven you for beating him out, graduating at the top?”
“He never fails to send me a Christmas card,” Ethridge said dryly. “Generated from a computer list, his signature stamped, my name misspelled. Just impersonal enough to be insulting.”
It was beginning to make more sense why Ethridge wanted all battles with Sparacino routed through the AG’s office. “You don’t think it’s possible he’s causing this trouble with me to get to you,” I offered hesitantly.