Black notice (10 page)

The thought of Lucy knotted my stomach. I'd lost my temper and hurled words at her I didn't mean. Rose glanced at me. Somehow she knew.

"Captain," she said to Marino, "you look mighty spiffy this morning."

Marino grunted. Glass rattled as he opened a jar of lemon drops on her desk and helped himself.

"What do you want me to do with this crazy lady's letter?" Rose peered through the open doorway at me, reading glasses perched on her nose as she dug through another drawer.

"I think it's time we forward the lady's file-if you ever find it to the A. G.'s office," I said. "In case she sues. Which will probably lie next. Good morning, Marino."

"You still talking about that nutcake I locked up?" he asked, sucking candy.

"That's right," I remembered. "That nutcake was one of your cases."

"So I guess I'll get sued, too."

"Probably," I muttered as I stood at my desk, shuffling through yesterday's telephone messages. "Why does everybody call when I'm not here?"

"I'm kinda getting into being sued," Marino said. "Makes me feel special."

"I just can't get used to you in uniform, Captain Marino," Rose said. "Should I salute?"

"Don't turn me on, Rose:'

"I thought your shift didn't start until three," I said.

"Nice thing about me being sued is the city's gotta pay. Ha. Ha. Screw 'em."

"We'll see how Ha Ha it is when you end up paying one of these days and lose your truck and aboveground swimming pool. Or all those Christmas decorations and extra fuse boxes, God forbid," Rose told him as I opened and shut my desk drawers.

"Has anybody seen my pens?" I asked. "I don't have a single goddamn pen. Rose? Those Pilot rolling ball pens. I had at least a box of them on Friday. I know I did because I bought them myself last time I was at Ukrops. And I don't believe it. My Waterman's missing, too!"

"Don't say I didn't warn you about leaving anything valuable around here," Rose told me.

"I gotta smoke," Marino said to me. "I've had it with these damn smoke-free buildings. All these dead people in your joint and the state's worried about smoking. What about all those formalin fumes? A few good whiffs of that will drop a horse."

"Damn!" I shoved one drawer shut and yanked open another. "And guess what else? No Advil, no BC powders -and no Sudafed. Now I'm really getting angry."

"Coffee money, Cleta's portable phone, lunches, and now your pens and aspirin. I've gotten to where I take my pocketbook everywhere I go. The office's started calling whoever it is `The Body Snatcher,' " Rose angrily said. "Which I don't think is funny in the least."

Marino walked over and put his arm around her.

"Sweetheart, you can't blame a guy for wanting to snatch your body," he sweetly said in her ear. "I've been wanting to ever since I first laid eyes on you way back when I had to teach the doc everything she knows."

Rose demurely pecked his cheek and leaned her head against his shoulder. She looked defeated and suddenly very old.

"I'm tired, Captain," Rose muttered.

"Me too, sweetheart. Me, too."

I looked at my watch.

"Rose, please tell everyone staff conference's going to be a few minutes late. Marino, let's talk."

The smoking room was a corner in the bay where there were two chairs, a Coke machine and a dirty, dented ashcan that Marino and I put between us. Both of us lit up, and I felt the same old bite of shame.

"Why are you here?" I asked. "Didn't you cause enough problems for yourself yesterday?"

"I was thinking about what Lucy said last night," Marino said. "About my current situation, you know. How it's like I'm hitting the bricks, out of service, finished, Doc. I can't take it, if you want to know the truth. I'm a detective. I've been one almost all my life. I can't do this uniform shit. I can't work for assholes like Diane `Donkey' Bray."

"That's why you took the field investigation exam last year," I reminded him. "You don't have to stay with the police department, Marino. Not with any police department. You've got more than enough years in to retire. You can make your own rules."

"No offense, Doc, but I don't want to work for you, either," he said. "Not part-time or on a case basis or whatever."

The state had given me two slots for field investigators, and I had not filled either one of them yet.

"The point is, you have options," I replied, touched by hurt I would not show.

He was silent. Benton walked into my mind and I saw his feelings in his eyes, and then he was gone. I felt the cooling shadow of Rose and feared the loss of Lucy. I thought of getting old and people vanishing from my life.

"Don't quit on me, Marino," I told him.

He didn't answer me right away, and when he did, his eyes blazed.

"Fuck 'em all, Doc," he said. "No one's telling me what to do. If I want to work a case, I'll goddamn work it."

He tapped an ash and seemed very pleased with himself.

"I don't want you fired or demoted," I said.

"They can't demote me no lower than I am," he said with another lightning bolt of anger. "They can't make me less than a captain, and there's no assignment worse than I got. And let 'em fire me. But guess what? They won't. And you want to know why? Because I could go to Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, you name it. You don't know how many times I've been asked to take over investigations in other departments."

I remembered the unlit cigarette in my hand.

"A few of 'em have even wanted me to be chief." He hobbled further along his Pollyanna path.

"Don't fool yourself," I said as menthol made its hit. "Oh, God, I can't believe I'm doing this again"

"I'm not trying to fool anyone," he said, and I could feel his depression moving in like a low-pressure front. "It's like I'm on the wrong planet. I don't know the Brays and Andersons of the world. Who are these women?"

"Power gluttons."

"You're powerful. You're a hell of a lot more powerful than them or anybody I ever met, including most men, and you aren't like that."

"I don't feel very powerful these days. I couldn't even control my temper this morning on my own driveway in front of my niece and her girlfriend and probably a few neighbors:" I blew out smoke. "And I feel sick about it:"

Marino leaned forward in his chair. "You and me are the only two people who give a flying fuck about that rotting body in there."

He jerked his thumb toward the door leading into the morgue.

"I bet Anderson don't even show up this morning," he went on. "One thing's for damn sure, she ain't gonna hang around watching you post him."

The look on his face sent my heart out of rhythm. Marino was desperate. What he had done all his life was really all he had left, except for an ex-wife and an estranged son named Rocky. Marino was trapped in an abused body that most assuredly was going to pay him back one of these days. He had no money and awful taste in women. He was politically incorrect, slovenly and foul-mouthed.

"Well, you're right about one thing," I said. "You shouldn't be in uniform. In fact, you're rather much a disgrace to the department. What's that on your shirt anyway? Mustard again? Your tie's too short. Let me see your socks."

I bent over and peeked under the cuffs of his uniform pants.

"They don't match. One black, one navy," I said.

"Don't let me get you into trouble, Doc:'

"I'm already in trouble, Marino," I said.

0ne of the more heartless aspects of my work was that unknown remains became "I'he Torso" or "The Trunk Lady" or "The Superman Man:' They were appellations that robbed the person of his identity and all he'd been or done on earth as surely as his death had.

I considered it a painful personal defeat when I could not bring about the identification of someone who came under my care. I packed bones in bankers' boxes and stored them in the skeleton closet, in hopes they might tell me who they were someday. I kept intact bodies or their parts in freezers for months and years, and would not give them up to a pauper's grave until there was no more hope or space. We didn't have room enough to keep anyone forever.

This morning's case had been christened "The Container Man." He was in very grim shape, and I hoped I would not have to hold him long. When decomposition was this advanced, even refrigeration couldn't stop it.

"Sometimes I don't know how you stand it," Marino grumbled.

We were in the changing room next to the morgue, and no locked door or concrete wall could completely block the smell.

"You don't have to be here," I reminded him.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."

We suited up in double gowns, gloves, sleeve. protectors, shoe covers, surgical caps and masks with shields. We didn't hhve air packs because I didn't believe in them, and I'd better never catch one of my doctors sneaking Vicks up his nose, although cops did it all the time. If a medical examiner can't handle the unpleasantries of the job, he should do something else.

More to the point, odors are important. They have their own story to tell. A sweet smell might point at ethchlorvynol, while chloral hydrate smells like pears. Both might make me wonder about an overdose of hypnotics, while a hint of garlic might point at arsenic. Phenols and nitrobenzene bring to mind ether and shoe polish respectively, and ethylene glycol smells exactly like antifreeze because that's exactly what it is. Isolating potentially significant smells from the awful stench of dirty bodies and rotting flesh is rather much like archaeology. You focus on what you are there to find and not on the miserable conditions around it.

The decomposed room, as we called it, was a miniature version of the autopsy suite. It had its own cooler and ventilation system and a single table I could roll up and attach to a big sink. Everything, including cabinets and doors, was stainless steel. Walls and the floors were coated with a non-absorbent acrylic that could withstand the most brutal washes with disinfectants and bleach. Automatic doors were opened by steel buttons that were big enough to push with elbows instead of hands.

When the doors slid shut behind Marino and me, I was startled to find Anderson leaning against a countertop, the gurney bearing the pouched body parked in the middle of the floor. The body is evidence. I never left an investigator alone with an unexamined body, certainly not since the badly botched O. J. Simpson trial, when it became the vogue for everyone except the defendant to be impeached in court.

"What are you doing here and where's Chuck?" I asked Anderson.

Chuck Ruffin was my morgue supervisor and should have been here some time ago inspecting surgical instruments, labeling test tubes and making sure I had all of the necessary paperwork.

"He let me in and went off somewhere."

"He let you in here and just left you? How long ago was that?"

"Maybe twenty minutes ago," Anderson replied.

Her eyes were warily on Marino.

"Do I detect a little Vicks up the nose?" Marino sweetly inquired.

The petroleum jelly shone on Anderson's upper lip.

"See that industrial-size deodorizer up there?" Marino nodded his head to the special ventilation system- in the ceiling. "Guess what, Anderson? It ain't gonna do a goddamn bit of good when this bag's unzipped."

"I'm not planning on staying;" she replied.

That was obvious. She hadn't even put on a pair of surgical gloves.

"You shouldn't be in here at all without protective wear," I said to her.

"I just wanted to let you know I'll be out talking to witnesses and want you to page me when you have information on what happened to him," she said.

"What witnesses? Bray sending you over to Belgium?" Marino asked, his breath fogging up his shield.

I didn't believe for a minute that she had come into this unpleasant place to tell me anything. Anderson had shown up with some agenda other than this case. I looked at the dark red body pouch to see if it might have been disturbed in any way, as cool fingers of paranoia touched my brain. I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine.

"Call me," Anderson said to me as if it were an order.

The doors sucked shut in her wake. I picked up the intercom phone and buzzed Rose.

"Where the hell's Chuck?" I asked.

"God only knows," Rose said, making no attempt to hide the disdain she felt for the young man.

"Please find him and tell him to get here now," I said. "He's making me crazy. And make a note of this phone call, as usual. Document everything."

"I always do:"

"I'm going to fire him one of these days," I said to Marino when I hung up. "As soon as I get enough on him. He's lazy and completely irresponsible, and he didn't used to be."

"He's more lazy and irresponsible than he used to be," Marino replied. "That guy ain't connecting the dots right, Doc. He's up to something, and just so you know, he's been trying to get on with the police department."

"Good," I said. "You guys can have him:"