“Your Honor… ?”
“Seems to me she deals with this sort of thing every day…”
“Your Honor?”
“Mr. Coldwell,” the Raven thundered, his balding pate turning red, “if you interrupt me one more goddam time I’m going to hold you in contempt of court and let you spend a few nights in the goddam city jail! Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Lucy was craning her neck to see, and every juror was alert.
“I’m going to allow the record to reflect exactly what Dr. Scarpetta said,” the judge went on.
“No further questions,” Coldwell said tersely. Judge Poe concluded with a violent bang of the gavel that woke up an old woman toward the back who had been fast asleep beneath a black straw hat for most of the morning. Startled, she sat straight up and blurted, “Who is it?” Then she remembered where she was and began to cry.
“It’s all right. Mama,” I heard another woman say as we adjourned for lunch. Before leaving downtown, I stopped by the Health Department’s Division of Vital Records, where an old friend and colleague of mine was the state registrar. In Virginia, one could not legally be born or buried without Gloria Loving’s signature, and though she was as local as shad roe, she knew her counterpart in every state in the union. Over the years, I had relied on Gloria many times to verify that people had been on this planet or had not, that they had been married, divorced, or were adopted.
I was told she was on her lunch break in the Madison Building cafeteria. At quarter past one, I found Gloria alone at a table, eating vanilla yogurt and canned fruit cocktail. Mostly, she was reading a thick paperback thriller that was a New York Times bestseller, according to the cover.
“If I had to eat lunches like yours, I wouldn’t bother,” I said, pulling out a chair. She looked up at me, her blank expression followed by joy.
“Goodness gracious! Why, my Lord. What on earth are you doing here, Kay?”
“I work across the street, in case you’ve forgotten.” Delighted, she laughed.
“Can I get you a coffee? Honey, you look tired.” Gloria Loving’s name had defined her at birth, and she had grown up true to her calling. She was a big, generous woman of some fifty years who deeply cared about every certificate that crossed her desk. Records were more than paper and nosology codes to her, and she would hire, fire, or blast General Assembly in the name of one. It did not matter whose.
“No coffee, thanks,” I said.
“Well, I heard you didn’t work across the street anymore.”
“I love the way people resign me when I’ve not been here for a couple of weeks. I’m a consultant with the FBI now. I’m in and out a lot.”
“In and out of North Carolina, I guess, based on what I’ve been following in the news. Even Clan Rather was talking about the Steiner girl’s case the other night. It was on CNN, too. Lord, it’s cold in here.”
I looked around at the bleak state government cafeteria where few people seemed thrilled with their lives. Many were huddled over trays, jackets and sweaters buttoned to their chins.
“They’ve got all the thermostats reset to sixty degrees to conserve energy, if that isn’t the joke of all time,” Gloria went on.
“We have steam heat that comes out of the Medical College of Virginia, so cutting the thermostats doesn’t save one watt of electricity.”
“It feels colder in here than sixty degrees,” I commented.
“That’s because it’s fifty-three, which is about what it is outside.”
“You’re welcome to come across the street and use my office,” I said with a sly smile.
“Well, now, that’s got to be the warmest spot in town. What can I do to help you, Kay?”
“I need to track down a SIDS that allegedly occurred in California around twelve years ago. The infant’s name is Mary Jo Steiner, the parents’ names Denesa and Charles.”
She made the connection immediately but was too professional to probe.
“Do you know Denesa Steiner’s maiden name?”
“Where in California?”
“I don’t know that, either,” I said.