‘Was the body in the tub?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Makes my hair stand on end.’
‘It should. What kind of shape is she in?’ I asked the most important question as McGovern held our speed ten miles over the limit in her government Ford Explorer.
‘Not so burned that the medical examiner couldn’t tell her throat was cut.’
‘Then she’s already been autopsied,’ I assumed.
‘To be honest, I really don’t know how much has been done. But she’s not going anywhere. That’s your turf. Mine’s to see what the hell else we can find at the fire scene.’
‘So you’re not going to use me to shovel out debris?’ I asked.
McGovern laughed and turned on the CD player. I was not expecting Amadeus.
‘You can dig all you want,’ she said with a smile that relieved a lot of tension. ‘You’re not bad at it, by the way, for someone who probably doesn’t run unless she’s being chased. Or work out anything except intellectual problems.’
‘You do enough autopsies and move enough bodies, and you don’t need to lift weights,’ I distorted the truth, badly.
‘Hold out your hands.’
I did, and she glanced over at them, changing lanes at the same time.
‘Damn. I guess it didn’t occur to me what saws and scalpels and hedge pruners will do for muscle tone,’ she commented.
‘Hedge pruners?’
‘You know, what you use to open the chest.’
‘Rib shears, please.’
‘Well, I’ve seen hedge pruners in some morgues, and knitting needles used to track bullet wounds.’
‘Not in my morgue. At least not in the one I have now. Although I will admit that in the early days one learned to improvise,’ I felt compelled to say as Mozart played.
‘One of those little trade secrets you don’t want to ever come out in court,’ McGovern confessed. ‘Sort of like stashing the best jar of confiscated moonshine in a secret desk drawer. Or cops keeping souvenirs from scenes, like marijuana pipes and whacko weapons. Or medical examiners hanging on to artificial hips and parts of fractured skulls that in truth should be buried with the bodies.’
‘I won’t deny that some of my colleagues aren’t always appropriate,’ I said. ‘But keeping body parts without permission is not in the same category as pinching a jar of moonshine, if you ask me.’
‘You’re awfully straight and narrow, aren’t you, Kay?’ McGovern stated. ‘Unlike the rest of us, you never seem to use poor judgment or do anything wrong. You probably never overeat or get drunk. And to be honest, it makes the rest of us schleps afraid to be around you, afraid you’ll look at us and disapprove.’
‘Good Lord, what an awful image,’ I exclaimed. ‘I hope that’s not how I’m perceived.’
She said nothing.
‘Certainly I don’t see myself that way,’ I said. ‘Quite to the contrary, Teun. Maybe I’m just more reserved because I have to be. Maybe I’m more self-contained because I always have been, and no, it’s not my tendency to publicly confess my sins. But I don’t look around and judge. And I can promise I’m much harder on myself than I’d ever be on you.’
‘That’s not been my impression. I think you size me up and down and inside out to make sure I’m suitable to train Lucy and won’t be a pernicious influence.’
I could not answer that charge, because it was true.
‘I don’t even know where she is,’ I suddenly realized.
‘Well, I can tell you. She’s in Philly. Bouncing back and forth between the field office and her new apartment.’
For a while, music was our only conversation, and as the beltway carried us around Baltimore, I could not help but think of a medical student who also had died in a suspicious fire.
‘Teun,’ I said. ‘How many children do you have?’
‘One. A son.’
I could tell this was not a happy subject.
‘How old is he?’ I asked.
‘Joe is twenty-six.’
‘He lives nearby?’
I stared out the window at reflective signs flowing by, announcing exits to Baltimore streets I used to know very well when I studied medicine at Johns Hopkins.
‘I don’t know where he lives, to tell you the truth,’ she said. ‘We were never close. I’m not sure anyone has ever been close to Joe. I’m not sure anyone would want to be.’