Black notice (17 page)

"Let's try Chatplanet" I said.

The only reason I was familiar with chat rooms was that on occasion colleagues of mine from around the world used them to meet and ask for help in particularly difficult cases or share information that we might find useful. 1 signed on and downloaded the program and selected a box that made it possible for me to be in the chat room withou~ anybody's seeing me.

I scanned the list of chat rooms and clicked on one called Dear Chief Kay Dr. Kay herself was in the midst o1 moderating a chat session with sixty-three people.

"Oh, shit. Give me a cigarette, Marino," I tensely said:

He shook one out of the pack and pulled up a chair, sitting next to me while we eavesdropped.

Dear Chief Kay, is it true Elvis died on the toilet and that many people die on the toilet? I'm a plumber, so you can see why I'm wondering. Thanks, Interested in Illinois Dear Interested in Illinois, yes, I'm sorry to say that Elvis did die on the toilet and that this isn't uncommon because people strain and strain and their heart can't take it. Elvis's many years of bad eating and pills, I'm sorry to say, finally caught up with him, and he died of cardiac arrest in his luxurious bathroom in Graceland. And this should be a lesson to all of us.

Dear Chief Kay, why did you decide you'd rather work with dead patients instead of living ones? Morbid in Montana Dear Morbid in Montana, I don't have much of a bedside manner and don't have M worry how my patient is feeling. I found out during my medical school days that living patients are a pain in the ass.

"Holy motherfucking shit," Marino said.

I was incensed and there was nothing I could do about it. "You know," Marino said with indignation, "I wish people would leave Elvis alone. I'm tired of hearing about him dying on tire toilet."

"Be quiet, Marino," I said. "Please. I'm trying to think." The session went on and on, all of it awful. I was tempted to butt into the conversations to tell everyone Dear Chief Kay wasn't me.

"Any way to find out who Dear Chief Kay really is?" Marino asked.

"If this person is the moderator of the chat room, the answer's no. He or she can know who everybody else is but not the other way around."

Dear Chief Kay, since you know everything there is about anatomy, does that make you more aware of pleasure points, if you know what I mean? My boyfriend seems bored in bed and sometimes he even falls asleep in the middle of itl Wanna Be Sexy Dear Wanna Be Sexy, is he on any kind of medications that might make him sleepy? If not, sexy lingerie's not a bad idea. Women don't do enough anymore to make their men feel important and in charge.

`That's it!" I announced. "I'm going to kill him . . . or her . . . whoever the hell this Chief Kay is!"

I jumped out of my chair, so frustrated I didn't know what to do.

"You don't fuck with my credibility!"

Fists clenched, I practically racewalked to the great room, where I suddenly stopped and looked around as if I were in some place that I'd never been before.

"Two can play this game," I said as I returned to my study.

"But how can two play when you don't even know who Chief Kay number two is?" Marino asked.

"Maybe I can't do anything about that goddamn chat room, but there's always e-mail."

"What kind of e-mail?" Marino warily asked.

"Itwo can play this game. Just wait and see. Now. How about we check on our suspicious car."

Marino slipped his portable radio off his belt and switched to the service channel.

"What'd you say it was again?" he asked.

"RGG-7112," I recited it from memory.

"Virginia tags?"

"Sorry," I replied. "I didn't get that good of a look."

"Well, we'll start there."

He relayed the tag number to the Virginia Criminal Information Network, or VCIN, and asked for a 10-29. By now it was after ten o'clock.

"Any way you could make me a sandwich or something before I leave?" Marino asked. "I'm about to die of hunger. VCIN's been a little slow tonight. I hate that."

He requested bacon, lettuce and tomato with Russian dressing and thick slices of onion, and I cooked the bacon well in the microwave instead of frying it.

"Ali gee, Doc, why'd you have to do that?" he said, holding up a crispy, non-greasy strip of bacon. "It ain't good unless it's chewy and got some flavor left that wasn't soaked up in all those paper towels."

"It will have plenty of flavor," I said. "And the rest is up to you. I'm not going to be blamed for clogging up your arteries any worse than they probably already are."

Marino toasted rye bread and slathered it with butter and Russian dressing he conjured up from Miracle Whip, ketchup and chopped butter pickles. He topped this with lettuce, tomato liberally dashed with salt and thick slices of raw sweet onion.

He made two of these healthy creations and wrapped them in aluminum foil as the radio got back to him. The car was not a Ford Taurus, but a 1998 Ford Contour. It was dark blue and registered to Avis Leasing Corporation.

"That's kinda interesting;" Marino said "Usually in Richmond all rental cars begin with an R, and you have to request a plate that doesn't. They started doing that so it wasn't so obvious to carjackers that someone was from out of town."

There were no outstanding warrants and the car wasn't listed as stolen.

At eight o'clock the next morning, Wednesday, I squeezed into a metered space. Across the street, the eighteenth-century capitol of the Commonwealth was pristine behind wrought iron and fountains in the fog.

Dr. Wagner, other cabinet members and the attorney general worked in the Ninth Street Executive Office Building, and security had gotten so extreme that I'd begun to feel like a criminal when I came here. Just inside the door was a table, where a capitol police officer checked my satchel.

"If you find anything in there," I said, "let me know, because I can't"

The smiling officer looked very familiar, a short, fleshy man I guessed to be in his mid-thirties. He had thinning brown hair and the face of one who had been boyishly cute before advancing years and added weight had begun to have their way with him.

I held out my credentials and he barely gave them a glance.

"Don't need those," he cheerfully said. "You remember me? I had to respond to your building a couple times when you used to be over there."

He pointed in the direction of my old building on Fourteenth Street, which was only five short blocks east.

"Rick Hodges," he said. "That time they had the uranium scare. 'Member that?"

"How could I not?" I said. "Not one of our finer moments."

"And me and Wingo used to hang out sometimes. During lunch I'd come down when nothing much was going on."

A shadow crossed his face. Wingo was the best, most sensitive morgue supervisor I'd ever had. Several years ago he died of smallpox. I squeezed Hodges's shoulder.

"I still miss him," I said. "You have no idea how much."

He looked around and leaned closer to me.

"You keep up with his family any?" he asked in a low voice.

"From time to time."

He knew from the way I said it that his family didn't want to talk about their gay son, nor did they want me calling. Certainly, they didn't want Hodges or any of Wingo's friends calling, either. Hodges nodded, pain dimming his eyes. He tried to smile it away.

"That boy sure was crazy about you, Doc," he said to me. "I've been wanting to tell you that for a long time."

"That means a lot," I said to him with feeling. "Thank you, Rick."

I passed through the scanner without incident, and he handed me my satchel.

"Don't stay away so long," he said.

"I . won't;" I said, meeting his young, blue eyes. "It makes me feel safer having you around."

"You know where you're going?"

"Think so;' I said.

"Well, just remember the elevator has a mind of its own."

I took worn, granite steps to the sixth floor, where Sinclair Wagner's office overlooked Capitol Square. On this dark, rainy morning, I could barely see the statue of George Washington astride his horse. The temperature had plummeted twenty degrees during the night, and rain was small and hard like shotgun pellets.

The waiting area of the Secretary of Health and Human Services was handsomely arranged with graceful colonial furniture and flags that were not Dr. Wagner's style. His office was cramped and cluttered. It bespoke a man who worked extremely hard and understated his power.

Dr. Wagner was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where his first name, Sinclair, was pronounced Sinkler He was a psychiatrist with a law degree, and oversaw person-service agencies such as mental health, substance abuse, social services and Medicare. He had been on the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia, or MCV, before his appointment to a cabinet-level position, and I'd always respected him enormously and knew he respected me, too.

"Kay." He rolled back his chair and got up from his desk. "How are you?"

He motioned for me to sit on the couch, and he closed the door and returned to the barrier of his desk, which was not a good sign.

"I'm pleased with how everything's going at the Institute, aren't you?" he asked.

"Very much so," I replied. "Daunting, but better than I ever hoped."

He picked up his pipe and pouch of tobacco from an ashtray.

"I've been wondering what's been going on with you," he said. "You seem to have vanished off the face of the earth `!I don't know why you'd say that," I answered him. "I'm doing as many cases as always, if not more."

"Oh, yes. Of course, I keep up with you through the news."

He began tamping tobacco into the pipe. There was no smoking of any sort in the building and Wagner tended to suck on a cold pipe when he was ill at ease. He knew I hadn't come here to talk about the Institute or tell him how busy I'd been.

"I certainly know how busy you are," he went on, "since you don't even have time to see me."

"I just found out today, Sinclair, that you tried to see me last week," I replied.

He held my gaze, sucking on the pipe. Dr. Wagner was in his sixties but looked older than that, as if bearing the painful secrets of patients for so many years had finally begun to erode him. He had kind eyes, and it was greatly to his advantage that people tended to forget he also had the shrewdness of a lawyer.

"If you didn't get my message that I wanted to see you, Kay," he said, "then it would seem to me you have a staffing problem."

His slow, low tone nudged words along, always taking the long way around a thought.

"I do, but not of the sort you might imagine."

"I'm listening."

"Someone's been getting into my e-mail," I flatly replied. "Apparently this person got into the file where our passwords are kept and got hold of mine."

"So much for security. . ."

I held up my hand to stop him.

"Sinclair, security's not the problem. I'm being hurt from within my own ranks. It's clear to me that someoneor perhaps more than one person-is trying to cause me trouble. Perhaps even get me fired. Your secretary e-mailed mine to let her know you wanted to see me. My secretary passed this along to me, and I allegedly replied that I was too busy to see you at that time."

I could tell Dr. Wagner found this confusing, if not ridiculous.

"There are other things," I went on, getting increasingly uncomfortable with the sound of my own voice spinning what seemed such a fantastic web. "E-mails asking calls to be rolled over to my deputy chief, and worst of all, this socalled chat room I'm doing on the Internet."

"I know about that;" he grimly said. "And you're telling me that whoever is doing this Dear Dr. Kay stuff is the same person using your password?"

"It's definitely someone using my password and posing as me."

He was silent, sucking his pipe.

"I'm very suspicious that my morgue supervisor is connected with all this," I added.

"Why?,,

"Erratic behavior, hostility, disappearing acts. He's disgruntled and up to something. I could go on." .

Silence.

"When I can prove his involvement," I said, "I'll take care of the problem."

Dr. Wagner returned the pipe to the ashtray. He got up from his desk and came around to where I was sitting. He settled into a side chair. He leaned forward and looked intensely at me.

"I've known you for a long time, Kay," he said in a kind but no-nonsense voice. "I'm well aware of your reputation. You're a tribute to the Commonwealth. You've also been through a horrendous tragedy, and it wasn't that long ago."

"Are you trying to play the role of psychiatrist with me, Sinclair?" I wasn't joking.

"You aren't a machine."

"Nor am I given to wild thinking. What I'm telling you is real. Every brick of the case I'm building. There are just a lot of insidious activities going on, and while it may be true I've been more distracted than usual, what I'm telling you has nothing to do with that."