“How come you left out the part about my being poisoned?” Regina blurted out. Obviously, she had eavesdropped through the shut door and heard at least some of the private conversation.
“We’re not going to talk about that right now, ” Andy warned her, knowing full well that if she divulged too much, it would become clear that she was not an intern but the pampered youngest daughter of the governor.
“It was awful!” Regina said to Dr. Scarpetta. “I ate these cookies and all of a sudden, I was doubled over with the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. Well, it wasn’t really all of a sudden. I didn’t feel too bad until I was hiding behind the boxwood in the garden, and then I got cramps and gas.
“Next thing I know, an EPU trooper’s rushing me to the hospital where I was subjected to terrible indignities, like peeing in a little plastic cup and then watching a nurse put a little stick in it. They wanted number two also, but I had nothing left in me after that terrible attack. My pee turned pink and it scared me to death! I thought I was peeing blood, but the nurse said it was a chemical test that made it turn pink, but it meant the worst. Someone put Ex-Lax in my cookies and tried to kill me in cold blood!
“Or maybe someone was trying to kill someone else, but I was the innocent one who ate the cookies, ” she continued, clearly enjoying her own story. “The nurse said that pee usually has a pH of four or six, and the Ex-Lax makes pee turn pink if the pH exceeds seven. ”
Regina had no clue as to what all this meant, but she reckoned that pH was spelled pee-h, and whatever the h-part was, it must be devastatingly affected by Ex-Lax. She was fairly certain her h-factor was still off, since she had been weak and pale when she’d pried herself out of bed earlier.
“I’m just lucky I’m not one of your cases this morning!” Regina said with great drama.
“Yes, you are, ” Dr. Scarpetta agreed. “We’re all lucky we aren’t cases this morning or any morning. Trooper
Brazil, we’ve X-rayed the fisherman’s body already, and there is no bullet. ”
“Then what else might have caused him to burn up?”
“Of course, we’ll test for accelerants and other chemicals, ” she said, slipping off her suit jacket and hanging it behind the door. “This is one of those cases when the external examination tells us quite a lot. ” She put on a lab coat. “For example, there is a great deal of charring that is more pronounced posteriorly, which is consistent with whatever burned him entering the body at about the midline of the chest. A little left of the midline, in the area of the heart, to be precise. ”
Andy and Regina followed Dr. Scarpetta out into the corridor.
“Then he didn’t just burn up for no reason–not if something entered his chest, ” Andy said as Regina faithfully took notes.
“No weapon found at the scene?” the chief inquired.
“No, ma’am. ”
“How do you spell accelerant?” Regina was struggling, and the chief had not even gotten to the really big words yet.
“This suspicious individual who witnessed the death, did he mention to you what color the flames were or their intensity?” Dr. Scarpetta asked. “If they were an intense white, or blue, or red, for example?”
“Is midline one or two words?” Regina’s voice was getting strained and petulant.
“No. I also wouldn’t expect him to be reliable, ” Andy answered the chief.
“One word, ” she said to Regina.
“How do you spell posteriorly?”
“We’ll worry about that later, ” Andy said in a tone that suggested Regina should not butt in again to volunteer indiscretions or to question spellings.
“Most significant is a whitish-gray lumpy residue inside the chest cavity, which is certainly consistent with some incendiary device or other material burning inside the body. ” Dr. Scarpetta stopped before the ladies’ locker-room door. “You’ll have to go in through the men’s room, ” she instructed Andy. “Officer Reggie and I will meet you in the changing room and we’ll get started. “