“Papa can fire her, ” Regina pointed out.
“She’ll eat your papa for breakfast, ” Andy said.
He handed Regina a small notebook and a pen as electronic locks clicked free and they entered the chief medical examiner’s office.
“Take notes, ” he instructed her. “Write down everything the doctors say and keep your mouth shut. ”
Regina was not accustomed to taking orders, but the instant she noticed graphic autopsy photographs on desks in the front office, she began to lose her usual bravado and self-absorption. The clerks knew Andy very well, it seemed, and were very friendly and flirtatious with him. Regina was stunned and thrilled when Andy introduced her as his intern.
“Lucky you, ” one of the clerks said, giving Regina a sly wink.
“Why can’t I be your intern?” another one coyly asked him.
“Whoa, baby. I’d be happy to let you teach me a thing or two. ”
“We’re here on the fisherman’s case. ” Andy was all business. “Is Doctor Sawamatsu doing the case?”
“No. He hasn’t come in yet. ”
“What about the chief?” Andy was relieved that Dr. Sawamatsu wasn’t in and hoped he wouldn’t show up at all.
In the first place, Dr. Sawamatsu’s English was poor, and Andy had a very difficult time understanding him, especially when he started throwing around medical terms. Dr. Sawamatsu was also clinical and came across as rather cold-blooded and cynical, and Andy took great exception to anyone who was callous around victims, alive or dead. Worst of all, Sawamatsu had repeatedly bragged to Andy about a secret collection of souvenirs that included artificial joints, breast and penile implants, a glass eye, pieces and parts from plane crashes and other disasters, and Andy doubted that the chief knew about her assistant’s unseemly hobby, because the collection was at his home and not at the office.
“Maybe I’ll just tell her, ” Andy thought out loud as he followed a long carpeted corridor to Dr. Scarpetta’s office suite.
“Tell who what?” Regina looked around in wonder, pausing to stare inside offices where microscopes were perched on desks and X-rays were clipped to light boxes.
“Don’t ask questions, and as we say in bomb investigations, don’t touch or move anything in any way, ” Andy warned her. “And everything you hear and see can never be divulged to anyone, including your family. ”
“I’ll try, ” she replied. “But I’ve never kept a secret before. ”
Barbie Fogg routinely listened to secrets and had a few of her own. Worried that Lennie might have secrets, too, she decided to take the next exit and loop around so she could return to the Exact Change tollbooth and confide to Hooter that Barbie was worried about her marriage.
“Lennie’s leaving town and came right out and said he wants a girlfriend! You don’t think he’s having affairs on the road because I won’t have sex anymore, do you?” Barbie poured out her heart to Hooter. “Well, anyway, Lennie sells real estate, meaning he’s often at home with nothing much to do, so he usually watches the twins and certainly has plenty of time for affairs. And to make matters worse, he’s heading out to Charlotte for an important meeting and I’ll pretty much be stuck at the house. Meaning it’s possible I won’t be seeing you for a whole week. ”
Both Barbie and Hooter were disappointed. It seemed they had been friends forever.
“Oh dear, I didn’t realize how much I’m going to miss you, ” Barbie confessed.
“Lord, Lord, I gonna have separate anxiety without you coming through my booth! Who I gonna talk to anymore? Why he gotta go to Charlotte? You know, I get so sick and tired of people going to North Carolina. Like it some kind of promise land or something. You know, I never even been to North Carolina. What so special about it, huh?”
“You got any vacation time with the city?” Barbie asked as more cars piled up behind her and blared their horns. “Why don’t you come to the NASCAR race with me tomorrow night? I would just love it and you could see all those handsome drivers. But you’d need to take the afternoon off because I like to get there early and hang around the pits and wait for the drivers to come out and climb into their cars. Sometimes they let you get your picture taken with them. Oh, if only you knew what that was like! Standing arm in arm with a handsome stock-car driver in his tight, colorful fireproof jumpsuit!”