“At the moment we know the following,” I said, and I repeated all that I knew. “It appeared at the scene last night that he had at least one gunshot wound to the back of the head,” I concluded.
“What about cartridge cases?” Fielding asked.
“Police recovered one in woods not too far from the street.”
“So he was shot there at Sugar Bottom versus in or near the car.”
“It does not appear he was shot inside or near the car,” I said.
“Inside whose car?” asked the fellow, who had gone to medical school late in life and was far too serious.
“Inside my car. The Mercedes.”
The fellow seemed very confused until I explained the scenario again. Then she made a rather salient comment.
“Is there any possibility you were the intended victim?”
“Jesus.” Fielding irritably set down the yogurt cup.
“You shouldn’t even say something like that.”
“Reality isn’t always pleasant,” said the fellow, who was very smart and just as tedious. “I’m simply suggesting that if Dr. Scarpetta’s car was parked outside a restaurant she has gone to numerous times before, maybe someone was waiting for her and got surprised. Or maybe someone was following and didn’t know it wasn’t her inside, since it was dark by the time Danny was on the road heading here.”
“Let’s move on to this morning’s other cases,” I said, as I took a sip of Rose’s saccharine coffee whitened with nondairy creamer.
Fielding moved the call sheet in front of him and in his usual impatient northern tone went down the list. In addition to Danny, there were three autopsies. One was a fire death, another a prisoner with a history of heart disease, and a seventy-year-old woman with a defibrillator and pacemaker.
“She has a history of depression, mostly over her heart problems,” Fielding was saying, “and this morning at about three o’clock her husband heard her get out of bed.
Apparently she went into the den and shot herself in the chest.”
Possible views were of other poor souls who during the night had died from myocardial infarcts and wrecks in cars.
I turned down an elderly woman who clearly was a victim of cancer, and an indi-ent man who had succumbed to his t, coronary disease. Finally, we pushed back chairs and I went downstairs. My staff was respectful of my space and did not question what I was going through. No one spoke on the elevator as I stared straight ahead at shut doors, and in the locker room we put on gowns and washed our hands in silence. I was pulling on shoe covers and gloves when Fielding got close to me and spoke in my ear, “Why don’t you let me take care of him?” His eyes were earnest on mine.
“I’ll handle it,” I said. “But thank you.”
“Dr. Scarpetta, don’t put yourself through it, you know’?
I wasn’t here the week he came in. I never met him.”
“It’s okay, Jack.” I walked away.
This was not the first time I had autopsied people I knew, and most police and even the other doctors did not always understand. They argued that the findings were more objective if someone else did the case, and this simply wasn’t true as long as there were witnesses. Certainly, I had not known Danny intimately or for long, but he had worked for me, and in a way had died for me. I would give him the best that I had.
He was on a gurney parked next to table one, where I usually did my cases, and the sight of him this morning was worse and hit me with staggering force. He was cold and in full rigor, as if what had been human in him had given up during the night, after I had left him. Dried blood smeared his face, and his lips were parted as if he had tried to speak when life had fled from him. His eyes stared the slitted dull stare of the dead, and I saw his red brace and remembered him mopping the floor. I remembered his t, cheerfulness, and the sad look on his face when he talked about Ted Eddings and other young people suddenly gone.