“Did you talk to him?” This is what I really want to know.
“It wasn’t my show,” he oddly replies, staring off across the bay, clenching his jaw muscles. “They’re saying they might have to do cornea transplants. Fuck. Here we got all these people in the world who can’t even afford glasses, and this piece of furry shit’s gonna get new corneas. And I guess the taxpayers will bankroll his corrective surgery, just like we’re paying all these doctors and nurses and God knows who to take care of his ass.” He crushes out the cigarette in the ash can. “Guess I’d better get cracking.” He reluctantly gets up. He wants to talk to me but for some reason won’t. “The Luce and I are grabbing a beer later on. Says she’s got some big news for me.”
“I’ll let her tell you herself,” I reply.
He gives me a sidelong glance. “So you’re gonna just leave me hanging, huh?”
I start to say that he is one to talk.
“Not even a hint? I mean, is it good news or bad? Don’t tell me she’s pregnant,” he adds ironically as he holds the door for me and we leave the bay.
Inside the autopsy suite, Turk is hosing off my workstation, water slapping and steel grates clanking loudly as she sponges off the table. When she spots me, she shouts above the clamor that -Rose is trying to reach me. I go to the phone. “Courts are closed,” Rose tells me. “But Righter’s office says he plans to stipulate your testimony anyway. So not to worry.”
“What a shock.” What was it Anna called him? Ein Mann something. No backbone.
“And your bank called. A man named Greenwood wants you to call.” My secretary gives me a number.
Whenever my bank tries to reach me, I am paranoid. Either investments have taken a dive or I am overdrawn because the computer is screwed up or there is a problem of one sort or another. I get hold of Mr. Greenwood in the private banking division. “I’m very sorry,” he says coolly. “The message was a mistake. A misunderstanding, Dr. Scarpetta. I’m very sorry you were bothered.”
“So no one needs to talk to me. No problems?” I am perplexed. I have dealt with Greenwood for years and he is acting as if he has never met me.
“It was a mistake,” he repeats in the same distant tone. “Again, I apologize. Have a good day.”[“_Toc37098911”]
CHAPTER 9
I SPEND THE NEXT FEW HOURS AT MY DESK, DICTAT-ing the autopsy report of John Doe and returning phone calls and initialing paperwork, and leave the office late afternoon, heading west.
Sunlight filters through broken clouds and gusts of wind send brown leaves fluttering to the earth like lazy birds. It has stopped snowing and the temperature is rising, the world dripping and sizzling with the wet sounds of traffic.
I drive Anna’s silver Lincoln Navigator toward Three Chopt Road while news on the radio endlessly goes on about Jean-Baptiste Chandonne’s transport out of the city. There is much made over his bandaged eyes and chemical burns. The story of my maiming him to save my life has taken on an energy. Reporters have found their angle. Justice is blind. Dr. Scarpetta has rendered the classic corporeal punishment. “Blinding somebody, hey take that,” a host says on the air. “Who was the guy in Shakespeare? Remember, they gouged his eyes out? King Lear? You see that movie? The old king had to put raw eggs in his eye sockets or something so it wouldn’t hurt so much. Really gross.”
The sidewalk leading to St. Bridget’s brown double front doors is slushy with salt and melted snow, and there are at most twenty cars in the parking lot. It is as Marino predicted: The police are not out in force, nor is the press. The weather may be what has kept the crowds away from the old Gothic brick church, or more likely it is the deceased herself. I, for one, am not here out of respect or affection or even a sense of loss. I unbutton my coat and step inside the narthex as I try to evade the uncomfortable truth: I could not stand Diane Bray and have come here only out of duty. She was a police official. I was acquainted with her. She was my patient.