“What-”
He went on, “How the investigation’s going and what we’re thinking, I’m saying. You’re not supposed to be told squat. Tanner’s orders are for us to get the medical info from you but not give you so much as the time of day. He said too much has been floating around and the only way to put a stop to it is not say a word to anyone except those of us who got to know in order to work the cases . .”
“That’s right,” I snapped. “And that includes me. These cases are within my jurisdiction – or has everyone suddenly forgotten that?”
“Hey,” he said quietly, staring at me. “We’re sitting here, right?”
“Yes,” I replied more calmly. “We are.”
“Me, I don’t give a shit what Tanner says. So maybe he’s just antsy because of your computer mess. Doesn’t want the cops blamed for giving out sensitive information to Dial-a-Leak at the ME’s office.”
“Please . . .”
“Maybe there’s another reason,” he muttered to himself.
Whatever it was, he had no intention of telling me.
He roughly shoved the car in gear and we were off toward the river, south to Berkley Downs.
For the next ten, fifteen, twenty minutes – I wasn’t really aware of the time -we didn’t say a word to each other. I was left sitting in a miserable silence, watching the roadside flash by my window. It was like being the butt of a cruel joke or a plot to which everyone was privy but me. My sense of isolation was becoming unbearable, my fears so acute I no longer was sure of my judgment, my acumen, my reason. I don’t think I was sure of anything.
All I could do was picture the debris of what just days ago was a desirable professional future. My office was being blamed for the leaks. My attempts at modernization had undermined my own rigid standards of confidentiality.
Even Bill was no longer sure of my credibility. Now the cops were no longer supposed to talk to me. It wouldn’t end until I had been turned into the scapegoat for all the atrocities caused by these murders. Amburgey probably would have no choice but to ease me out of office if he didn’t outright fire me.
Marino was glancing over at me.
I’d scarcely been aware of his pulling off the road and parking.
“How far is it?” I asked.
“From what?”
“From where we just were, from where Cecile lived?”
“Exactly seven-point-four miles,” he replied laconically, without a glance at the odometer.
In the light of day, I almost didn’t recognize Lori Petersen’s house.
It looked empty and unlived in, wearing the patina of neglect. The white clapboard siding was dingy in the shadows, the Wedgwood shutters seeming a dusky blue. The lilies beneath the front windows had been trampled, probably by investigators combing every inch of the property for evidence. A tatter of yellow crime-scene tape remained tacked to the door frame, and in the overgrown grass was a beer can that some thoughtless passerby had tossed out of his car.
Her house was the modest tidy house of middle-class America, the sort of place found in every small town and every small neighborhood. It was the place where people got started in life and migrated back to during their later years: young professionals, young couples and, finally, older people retired and with children grown and gone.
It was almost exactly like the Johnsons’ white clapboard house where I rented a room during my medical school years in Baltimore. Like Lori Petersen, I had existed in a grueling oblivion, out the door at dawn and often not returning until the following evening. Survival was limited to books, labs, examinations, rotations, and sustaining the physical and emotional energy to get through it all. It would never have occurred to me, just as it never occurred to Lori, that someone I did not know might decide to take my life.
“Hey . . .”
I suddenly realized Marino was talking to me.
His eyes were curious. “You all right, Doc?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch what you were saying.”
“I asked what you thought. You know, you got a map in your head. What do you think?”