“No ma’am. I’m simply looking for anything to corroborate your claims. You say you are concerned with protecting others, and I’m inquiring as to who these others might be. Certainly not patients. Your patients are deceased.
“I dog not feel that you are being fair or impartial,” I said and I knew I sounded cold. “Nothing about this meeing was fair from the outset. I’m given twenty minutes notice to be here and am not told the agenda –“
He interrupted. “Why, Doctor, I should think you might have guessed the agenda-”
“Just as l should have guessed that our meeting was a public event.”
“I understand the press came out in force.” His expression did not change.
“I’d like to know how this occurred,” I said heatedly.
“If you’re asking if this office notified the press of ma meeting, I’m telling you that we did not.”
I did not respond.
“Doctor, I’m not certain you understand that as public servants we must operate by a different set of rules. In a sense, we are not allowed private lives. Or perhaps it would be better to say that if our ethics or judgment are questioned, the public has a right to examine, in some instances, the most private aspects of our existences. Whenever I am about to undertake a certain activity or even write a check, I have to ask myself if what I am doing will holdup under the most intense scrutiny.”
I noticed that he scarcely used his hands when he talked, and that the fabric and design of his suit and tie were a lesson in understated extravagance. My attention darted here and there as he continued his admonition, and I knew that nothing I might do or say would save me in the end. Though I had been appointed by the health commissioner, I would not have been offered the job, nor could I last long in it without the support of the governor. The quickest way to lose that was to cause him embarrassment or conflict, which I had already accomplished. He had the power to force my resignation. I had the power to buy myself a little time by threatening to embarrass him more.
“Doctor, perhaps you would like to tell me what you would do if you were in my position?”
Beyond the window rain was mixed with sleet, and buildings in the banking district were bleak against a dreary, pewter sky. I stared at Norring in silence, then quietly spoke.
“Governor Norring, I would like to think that I would not summon the chief medical examiner to my office to gratuitously insult her, both professionally and personally, and then demand of her that she surrender the rights guaranteed to every person by the Constitution. Further, I would like to think that I would accept this person’s innocence until she had been proven guilty, and would not compromise her ethics and the Hippocratic oath she had sworn to uphold by demanding that she open confidential files to public scrutiny when doing so might do harm to herself and to others. I would like to think Governor Norring, that I would not give an individual who has served the Commonwealth faithfully no choice but to resign for cause.”
The governor absently picked up a silver fountain pen as he considered my words: For me to resign for cause after meeting with him would imply to all of the reporters waiting beyond his office door that I had quit because Norring had asked me to do something that I considered unethical.
“I have no interest in your resigning at this moment,” he said coldly. “In fact, I would not accept your resignation. I am a fair man, Dr. Scarpetta, and, I hope, a wise one. And wisdom dictates that I cannot have someone performing legal autopsies on the victims of homicide when this individual, herself, is being implicated in homicide or as an accessory to it. Therefore, I think it best to relieve you with pay until this matter is resolved.”
He reached for the phone. “John, would you be so kind as to show the chief medical examiner out?”
Almost instantly, the smiling press secretary appeared.