I realize I am obsessing. I am sitting at my desk, angrily going through stacks of backed-up work as I anguish over how much trouble I went to preparing Righter for yet another case, promising I would be there for him, just as I always have been. It is a shame he does not seem inclined to return the favor. I am a free lunch. All of Chandonne’s Virginia victims are free lunches. I just can’t accept it and am beginning to resent the hell out of Jaime Berger, too. “Well, check with the courts,” I say to Rose. “And by the way, he’s being released from MCV this morning.” I resist saying Jean-Baptiste Chandonne’s name. “Expect the usual phone calls from the media.”
“I heard on the news this New York prosecutor’s in town.” Rose flips through my date book. She doesn’t look up at me. “Wouldn’t that be something if she gets snowed in?”
I get up from my desk, take off my lab coat and hang it on the back of my chair. “I don’t guess we’ve heard from her.”
“She hasn’t called here, not for you.” My secretary hints she knows that Berger did track down Jack or at least someone besides me.
I am very skilled at becoming prepossessed with business and deflecting any effort on another person’s part to probe an area I choose to avoid. “To expedite things,” I say before Rose can give me one of her pregnant looks, “we’ll skip the staff meeting. We need to get these bodies out of here before the weather gets any worse.”
Rose has been my secretary for ten years. She is my office mother. She knows me better than anyone but doesn’t abuse her position by pushing me in directions I don’t want to go in. Curiosity about Jaime Berger fizzes on the surface of Rose’s thoughts. I can see questions rising in her eyes. But she won’t ask. She knows damn well how I feel about trying the case in New York instead of here, and that I don’t want to talk about it. “I think Dr. Chong and Dr. Fielding are already in the morgue,” she is saying. “I haven’t seen Dr. Forbes yet.”
It occurs to me that even if the Mayo Brown case goes forward todayeven if the courts don’t close because of snowRighter isn’t going to call me. He will stipulate my report and resort to putting the toxicologist on the stand, at best. There is no way in hell Righter is going to face me after I called him a coward, especially since the accusation is true and a part of him must know it. He will probably figure out a way to avoid me the rest of his life, and that unpleasant thought leads to another one as I cross the hallway. What does all this bode for me?
I push through the ladies’ room door and make the transition from civilized paneling and carpeting, through a series of changing rooms, into a world of biological hazards, starkness and violent attacks on the senses. Along the way, one sheds shoes and outer clothing, stowing them safely in teal-green lockers. I keep a special pair of Nikes parked near the door that leads inside the autopsy suite. The shoes are not destined to walk through the land of the living ever again, and when it is time to get rid of them, I will burn them. I clumsily arrange my suit jacket, slacks and white silk blouse on hangers, my left elbow throbbing. I straggle into a full-length Mega Shield gown that has viral-resistant front panels and sleeves, sealed seams and a gripper neck, which is a snug stand-up collar. I pull on shoe covers, then an O.R. cap and surgical mask. The final touch of my fluid-proofing is a face shield to protect my eyes from splashes that might carry such frights as hepatitis or HIV.
Stainless steel doors automatically open, and my feet make paper sounds over the tan vinyl floor of the biohazard epoxy-finished autopsy suite. Doctors in blue hover over five shiny stainless steel tables fastened to steel sinks, water running, hoses sucking, X rays on light boxes a black-and-white gallery of organ-shaped shadows and opaque bones and tiny, bright bullet fragments that, like loose metal chips in flying machines, break things and cause leaks and vital gears to seize. Hanging from clips inside safety cabinets are DNA specimen cards that have been stained with blood. They look oddly like a bunting of tiny Japanese flags as they air-dry beneath a hood. From closed-circuit television monitors mounted in corners a car engine rumbles loudly in the bay, a funeral home here to deliver or take away. This is my theater. It is where I perform. As unwelcome as the average person might find the morbid odors, sights and sounds that rush to greet me, I am suddenly and immensely relieved. My heart lifts as doctors glance up at me and nod good morning. I am in my element. I am home.