Postmortem. Patricia Cornwell

Marino: “What kind of doctor was she studying to be?”

“A plastic surgeon.”

Becker: “Interesting. Why did she decide on that?”

“When she was ten, eleven, her mother got breast cancer, underwent two radical mastectomies. She survived but her self-esteem was destroyed. I think she felt deformed, worthless, untouchable. Lori talked about it sometimes. I think she wanted to help people. Help people who have been through things like that.”

Marino: “And she played the violin.”

“Yes.”

Marino: “Did she ever give concerts, play in the symphony, anything public like that?”

“She could have, I think. But she didn’t have time.”

Marino: “What else? For example, you’re big on acting, in a play right now. Was she interested in that kind of thing?”

“Very much so. That’s one of the things that fascinated me about her when we first met. We left the party, the party where we met, and walked the campus for hours. When I started telling her about some of the courses I was taking, I realized she knew a lot about the theater, and we started talking about plays and such. I was into Ibsen then. We got into that, got into reality and illusion, what’s genuine and what’s ugly in people and society. One of his strongest themes is the feeling of alienation from home. Uh, of separation. We talked about that.

“And she surprised me. I’ll never forget it. She laughed and said, ‘You artists think you’re the only ones who can relate to these things. Many of us have the same feelings, the same emptiness, the same loneliness. But we don’t have the tools to verbalize them. So we carry on, we struggle. Feelings are feelings. I think people’s feelings are pretty much the same all over the world.’

“We got into an argument, a friendly debate. I disagreed. Some people feel things more deeply than others, and some people feel things the rest of us don’t. This is what causes isolation, the sense of being apart, different . . .”

Marino: “This is something you relate to?”

“It is something I understand. I may not feel everything other people feel, but I understand the feelings. Nothing surprises me. If you study literature, drama, you get in touch with a vast spectrum of human emotions, needs and impulses, good and bad. It’s my nature to step into other characters, to feel what they feel, to act as they do, but it doesn’t mean these manifestations are genuinely my own. I think if anything makes me feel different from others, it’s my need to experience these things, my need to analyze and understand the vast spectrum of human emotions I just mentioned.”

Marino: “Can you understand the emotions of the person who did this to your wife?”

Silence.

Almost inaudibly, “Good God, no.”

Marino: “You sure about that?”

“No. I mean, yes, I’m sure! I don’t want to understand it!”

Marino: “I know it’s a hard thing for you to think about, Matt. But you could help us a lot if you had any ideas. For example, if you was designing the role for a killer like this, what would he be like-”

“I don’t know! The filthy son of a bitch!” His voice was breaking, exploding with rage. “I don’t know why you’re asking me! You’re the fucking cops! You’re supposed to be the ones figuring it out!”

He abruptly fell silent, as if a needle had been lifted off a record.

The tape played a long stretch in which nothing was heard except Marino clearing his throat and a chair scraping back.

Then Marino asked Becker, “You wouldn’t by chance have an extra tape in your car?”

It was Petersen who mumbled, and I think he was crying, “I’ve got a couple of them back in the bedroom.”

“Well, now,” Marino’s voice coolly drawled, “that’s mighty nice of you, Matt.”

Twenty minutes later, Matt Petersen got to the subject of finding his wife’s body.

It was awful to hear and not see. There were no distractions. I drifted on the current on his images and recollections. His words were taking me into dark areas where I did not want to go.

The tape played on.