There is a large photograph of her on a table, just inside the narthex, and I am startled to see her haughty self-absorbed beauty, the icy cruel glint in her eyes that no camera could disguise, no matter the angle, the lighting or skills of the photographer. Diane Bray hated me for reasons I still fail to completely grasp. By all accounts, she was obsessed with me and my power and focused on my every dimension in ways I never have. I suppose I do not see myself the way she did, and I was slow to catch on when she began her aggressions, her unbelievably intense war against me which culminated in her aspiring to be appointed to a cabinet position in the commonwealth.
Bray had it all figured out. She would help mastermind transferring the medical examiner’s division from the health department to public safety so she could then, if all went according to plan, somehow maneuver the governor into appointing her secretary of public safety. That done, I would politically answer to her, and she could even have the pleasure of firing me. Why? I continue to search for reasonable motivations and fail to find any that completely satisfy me. I had never even heard of her before she signed on with the Richmond P.D. last year. But she certainly knew about me and moved to my fair city with plots and schemes in the works to undo me sadistically, slowly, through a series of shocking disruptions, slanders and professional obstructions and humiliations before she ultimately ruined my career, my life. I suppose in her fantasies, the climax to her cold-blooded machinations would have been for me to give up my position in disgrace, commit suicide and leave a note saying it was her fault. Instead, I am still here. She is not. That I should have been the one who tended to her brutalized remains is an irony beyond description.
A cluster of police officers in dress uniform are talking to each other, and near the sanctuary door, Chief Rodney Harris is with Father O’Connor. There are civilians, too, people in fine clothes who don’t look familiar, and I sense from the lost, vacant way they are casting about that they aren’t local. I pick up a service bulletin and wait to speak to Chief Harris and my priest. “Yes, yes, I understand,” Father O’Connor is saying. He is serene in a long, creamy robe, his fingers laced at his waist. I realize with a twinge of guilt that I have not seen him since Easter.
“Well, Father, I just can’t. That’s the part I can’t accept,” Harris replies, his thinning red hair plastered back from his flabby, unattractive face. He is a short man with a soft body that is genetically coded to be fat, a Pillsbury Dough Boy in dress blues. Harris is not a nice man and he resents powerful women. I have never understood why he hired Diane Bray and can only assume it wasn’t for the right reasons.
“God’s will is not always for us to understand,” says Father O’Connor, and then he sees me. “Dr. Scarpetta.” He smiles and takes my hand in both of his. “So good of you to come. You’ve been in my thoughts and prayers.” The pressure of his fingers and the light in his eyes convey that he understands what has happened to me and cares. “How’s your arm? I wish you would come by to see me sometime.”
“Thank you, Father.” I offer my hand to Chief Harris. “I know this is a difficult time for your department,” I tell him. “And for you personally.”
“Very, very sad,” he says, staring off at other people as he gives me a perfunctory, brusque handshake.
The last time I saw Harris was at Bray’s house when he walked in and was confronted by the appalling sight of her body. That moment will forever lodge between him and me. He should never have come to the scene. There was no good reason for him to see his deputy chief so completely degraded, and I will always resent him for it. I have a special distaste for people who treat crime scenes callously and with disrespect, and Harris’s showing up at Bray’s scene was a power play and an indulgence in voyeurism, and he knows I know it. I move on into the sanctuary and feel his eyes on my back. “Amazing Grace” swells from the organ, and people are finding pews midway up the aisle. Saints and crucifixion scenes glow in rich stained glass, and marble and brass crosses gleam. I sit on the aisle, and moments later the processional begins, and the smartly dressed strangers I noticed earlier walk in with the priest. A young crucifer carries the cross, while a man in a black suit bears the gold-and-red enamel urn containing Diane Bray’s cremated remains. An elderly couple holds hands, dabbing tears.