PATRICIA CORNWELL. Unnatural Exposure

Turning on the Seventh Street exit, I wound around Shockoe Slip, with its wet cobblestones and trendy restaurants that were dark at this hour. I passed parking lots barely beginning to fill, and turned into the one behind my four-story stucco building. I couldn’t believe it when I found a television news van waiting in my parking place, which was clearly designated by a sign that read CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER. The crew knew that if they waited there long enough, they would be rewarded with me.

I pulled up close and motioned for them to move as the van’s doors slid open. A cameraman in a rain suit jumped out, coming my way, a reporter in tow with a microphone. I rolled my window down several inches.

‘Move,’ I said, and I wasn’t nice about it. ‘You’re in my parking place.’

They did not care as someone else got out with lights. For a moment I sat staring, anger turning me hard like amber. The reporter was blocking my door, her microphone shoved through the opening in the window.

‘Dr Scarpetta, can you verify that the Butcher has struck again?’ she asked, loudly, as the camera rolled and lights burned.

‘Move your van,’ I said with iron calm as I stared right at her and the camera.

‘Is it in fact a torso that was found?’ Rain was running off her hood as she pushed the microphone in farther.

‘I’m going to ask you one last time to move your van out of my parking place,’ I said like a judge about to cite contempt of court. ‘You are trespassing.’

The cameraman found a new angle, zooming in, harsh lights in my eyes.

‘Was it dismembered like the others . . . ?’

She jerked the microphone away just in time as my window went up. I shoved the car in gear and began backing, the crew scrambling out of the way as I made a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn. Tires spun and skidded as I parked right behind the van, pinning it between my Mercedes and the building.

‘Wait a minute!’

‘Hey! You can’t do that!’

Their faces were disbelieving as I got out. Not bothering with an umbrella, I ran for the door and unlocked it.

‘Hey!’ the protests continued. ‘We can’t get out!’

Inside the bay, water was beaded on the oversized maroon station wagon and dripping to the concrete floor. I opened another door and walked into the corridor, looking around to see who else was here. White tile was spotless, the air heavy with industrial strength deodorizer, and as I walked to the morgue office, the massive stainless steel refrigerator door sucked open.

‘Good morning!’ Wingo said with a surprised grin. ‘You’re early.’

‘Thanks for bringing the wagon in out of the rain,’ I said.

‘No more cases coming in that I know of, so I didn’t think it would hurt to stick it in the bay.’

‘Did you see anybody out there when you drove it?’ I asked.

He looked puzzled. ‘No. But that was about an hour ago.’

Wingo was the only member of my staff who routinely got to the office earlier than I did. He was lithe and attractive, with pretty features and shaggy dark hair. An obsessive-compulsive, he ironed his scrubs, washed the wagon and anatomical vans several times a week, and was forever polishing stainless steel until it shone like mirrors. His job was to run the morgue, and he did so with the precision and pride of a military leader. Carelessness and callousness were not allowed down here by either one of us, and no one dared dispose of hazardous waste or make sophomoric jokes about the dead.

‘The landfill case is still in the fridge,’ Wingo said to me. ‘Do you want me to bring it out?’

‘Let’s wait until after staff meeting.’ I said. ‘The longer she’s refrigerated, the better, and I don’t want anybody wandering in here to look.’

‘That won’t happen,’ he said as if I had just implied he might be delinquent in his duties.

‘I don’t even want anybody on the staff wandering in out of curiosity.’

‘Oh.’ Anger flashed in his eyes. ‘I just don’t understand people.’

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