Book of the Dead ks-15

by Patricia Cornwell

  Inside her lab of old brick walls and fir-wood flooring is her computer domain, which is secured from the outside world by bullet-and hurricane-proof windows, the shades always drawn. Lucy sits before a work station that is connected to a sixty-four-gigabyte server with a chassis built of six U mountable racks. The kernel — or operating system interfacing the software with the hardware — is of her own design, built with the lowest assembly language so she could talk to the motherboard herself when she was creating her cyberworld — or what she calls the Infinity of Inner Space (IIS), pronounced IS, the prototype of which she sold for a staggering sum that’s indecent to mention. Lucy doesn’t talk about money.

  Along the top of the walls are flat video screens constantly displaying every angle and sound captured by a wireless system of cameras and embedded microphones, and what she’s witnessing is unbelievable.

  “You stupid son of a bitch,” she says loudly to the flat screen in front of her.

  Marino is giving Shandy Snook a tour of the morgue, different angles of them on the screens, their voices as clear as if Lucy is with them.

  Boston, the fifth floor of a mid-nineteenth-century brownstone on Beacon Street. Benton Wesley sits at his desk gazing out his window at a hot-air balloon drifting above the common, above Scotch elms as old as America. The white balloon slowly rises like a huge moon against the downtown skyline.

  His cell phone rings. He puts on his wireless earpiece, says, “Wesley,” and hopes like hell it’s not some emergency that has to do with Dr. Self, the current hospital scourge, perhaps the most dangerous one ever.

  “It’s me,” Lucy says in his ear. “Log on now. I’m conferencing you.”

  Benton doesn’t ask why. He logs on to Lucy’s wireless network, which transfers video, audio, and data in real time. Her face fills the video screen of the laptop on his desk. She looks fresh and dynamically pretty, as usual, but her eyes are sparking with fury.

  “Trying something different,” she says. “Connecting you to security access so you can see what I’m seeing right now. Okay? Your screen should split into four quadrants to pick up four angles or locations. Depending on what I choose. That should be enough for you to see what our so-called friend Marino is doing.”

  “Got it,” Benton says as his screen splits, allowing him to view, simultaneously, four areas of Scarpetta’s building scanned by cameras.

  The buzzer in the morgue bay.

  In the upper-left corner of the screen, Marino and some young, sexy but cheap-looking woman in motorcycle leather are in the upstairs hallway of Scarpetta’s office, and he’s saying to her, “You stay right here until she gets signed in.”

  “Why can’t I go with you? I’m not afraid.” Her voice — husky, a heavy southern accent — is transmitted clearly through the speakers on Benton’s desk.

  “What the hell?” Benton says to Lucy over the phone.

  “Just watch,” she comes back. “His latest girl wonder.”

  “Since when?”

  “Oh, let’s see. I think they started sleeping together this past Monday night. The same night they met and got drunk together.”

  Marino and Shandy board the elevator, and another camera picks them up as he says to her, “Okay. But if he tells the Doc, I’m cooked.”

  “Hickory-dick-or-y-Doc, she’s got you by the cock,” she says in a mocking singsong.

  “We’ll get a gown to hide all your leather, but keep your mouth shut and don’t do nothing. Don’t freak out or do nothing, and I mean it.”

  “It’s not like I’ve never seen a dead body before,” she says.

  The elevator doors open and they step out.

  “My father choked on a piece of steak right in front of me and my family,” Shandy says.

  “The locker room’s back there. The one on the left.” Marino points.

  “Left? Like when I’m facing which way?”

  “The first one when you go around the corner. Grab a gown and do it quick!”

  Shandy runs. In one section of the screen, Benton can see her inside the locker room — Scarpetta’s locker room — grabbing a blue gown out of a locker — Scarpetta’s gown and locker — and hastily putting the gown on — backward. Marino waits down the hall. She runs back to him, the gown untied and flapping.

  Another door. This leading into the bay where Marino’s and Shandy’s motorcycles are parked in a corner, barricaded by traffic cones. A hearse is inside, the engine’s rumbling echoing off old brick walls. A funeral home attendant climbs out, lanky and gawky in a suit and tie as black and shiny as his hearse. He unfolds his skinny self like a stretcher, as if he’s turning into what he does for a living. Benton notices something weird about his hands, the way they’re clenched like claws.

  “I’m Lucious Meddick.” He opens the tailgate. “We met the other day when they fished that dead little boy out of the marsh.” He pulls on a pair of latex gloves, and Lucy zooms in on him. Benton notices a plastic orthodontic retainer on his teeth, and a rubber band around his right wrist.

  “Closer on his hands,” Benton tells Lucy.

  She zooms in more as Marino says, as if he can’t stand the man, “Yeah, I remember.”

  Benton notices Lucious Meddick’s raw fingertips, says to Lucy, “Severe nail biting. A form of self-mutilation.”

  “Anything new on that one?” Lucious is asking about the murdered little boy who Benton knows is still unidentified in the morgue.

  “None of your business,” Marino says. “If it was for public semination, it would be in the news.”

  “Jesus,” Lucy says in Benton’s ear. “He sounds like Tony Soprano.”

  “Looks like you lost a hubcap.” Marino points to the back left tire of the hearse.

  “It’s a spare.” Lucious is snippy about it.

  “Kinda ruins the effect, don’t it,” Marino says. “Tricked out with all that shine, then a wheel with ugly lug nuts.”

  Lucious huffily opens the tailgate and slides the stretcher over rollers in back of the hearse. Collapsible aluminum legs clack open and lock in place. Marino doesn’t offer assistance as Lucious rolls the stretcher and its black-pouched body up the ramp, bangs it against the door frame, cusses.

  Marino winks at Shandy, who looks bizarre in her open surgical gown and black leather motorcycle boots. Lucious impatiently abandons the pouched body in the middle of the hall, snaps the rubber band on his wrist, and says in an irritable raised voice, “Got to take care of her paperwork.”

  “Keep it down,” Marino says. “You might wake somebody up.”

  “I don’t got time for your comedy club.” Lucious starts to walk off.

  “You ain’t going nowhere until you help me transfer her from your stretcher to one of our state-of-the-art gurneys.”

  “Showing off.” Lucy’s voice sounds in Benton’s earpiece. “Trying to impress his potato-chip tramp.”

  Marino rolls a gurney out of the cooler, scratched up and rather bandy-legged, one of the wheels slightly cockeyed like a bedraggled grocery store buggy. He and an angry Lucious lift the pouched body from the stretcher, place it on the gurney.

  “That lady boss of yours is a piece of work,” Lucious says. “The b-word comes to mind.”

  “Nobody asked your opinion. You hear anybody ask his opinion?” To Shandy.

  She stares at the pouch, as if she didn’t hear him.

  “It’s not my fault she’s got her addresses mixed up on the Internet. She acted like it was my problem showing up, trying to do my job. Not that I can’t get along with anybody. You got a particular funeral home you recommend to your clients?”

  “Get a fucking ad in the Yellow Pages.”

  Lucious heads to the small morgue office, walking fast, hardly bending his knees, reminding Benton of a pair of scissors.

  One quadrant of the screen shows Lucious inside the morgue office, fussing with paperwork, opening drawers, rummaging, finding a pen.

  Another quadrant of the screen shows Marino saying to Shandy,
“Didn’t anyone know the Hinelick maneuver?”

  “I’ll learn anything, baby,” she says. “Any maneuver you want to show me.”

  “Seriously. When your father was choking on—” Marino starts to explain.

  “We thought he was having a heart attack or a stroke or a seizure,” she interrupts him. “It was so awful, grabbing himself, falling to the floor and cracking his head, his face turning blue. No one knew what to do, had no idea he was choking. Even if we had, we couldn’t have done anything except what we did, call nine-one-one.” She suddenly looks as if she might start crying.

  “Sorry to tell you, but you could have done something,” Marino says. “I’m gonna show you. Here, turn around.”

  Done with his paperwork, Lucious hurries out of the morgue office, walks right past Marino and Shandy. They pay him no mind as he enters the autopsy suite unattended. Marino wraps his huge arms around her waist, makes a fist, his thumb against her upper abdomen, just above her navel. He grasps his fist with his other hand and gives a gentle upward thrust, just enough to show her. He slides his hands up and fondles her.

  “Good God,” Lucy says in Benton’s ear. “He’s got a hard-on in the fucking morgue.”

  In the autopsy suite, the camera picks up Lucious walking to the large black log on a countertop, the Book of the Dead, as Rose politely calls it. He starts signing in the body with the pen he took from the morgue office desk.

  “He’s not supposed to do that.” Lucy’s voice in Benton’s ear. “Only Aunt Kay is supposed to touch that log. It’s a legal document.”

  Shandy says to Marino, “See, it’s not hard being in here. Well, maybe it is.” Reaching back, grabbing him. “You sure know how to cheer a girl up. And I do mean up. Whoa!”

  Benton says to Lucy, “This is unbelievable.”

  Shandy turns around in Marino’s arms and kisses him — kissing him on the mouth right there in the morgue — and for an instant, Benton thinks they might have sex in the hallway.

  Then, “Here, you try it on me,” Marino says.

  In another quadrant of his screen, Benton watches Lucious thumbing through the morgue log.

  When Marino turns around, his arousal is apparent. Shandy can barely get her arms all the way around him, starts to laugh. He puts his huge hands over hers, helps her push, says, “No kidding. You ever see me choking, you push just like this. Hard!” He shows her. “Point is to force the air out so whatever’s caught in there flies out, too.” She slides her hands down and grabs him again, and he pushes her away and turns his back to Lucious as he emerges from the autopsy suite.

  “She figured out anything about that dead little boy?” Lucious snaps the rubber band around his wrist. “Well, I guess not, since he’s entered in the Dead Log as ‘undetermined.’”

  “He was undetermined when he was brought in. What you been doing, snooping through the book?” Marino looks ridiculous, his back to Lucious.

  “Obviously, she can’t handle such a complicated case. Too bad I didn’t bring him in here. I could have been of assistance. I know more about the human body than any doctor.” Lucious moves to one side and stares down in the direction of Marino’s crotch. “Well, hello,” he says.

  “You don’t know shit and can shut up about that dead boy,” Marino says nastily. “And you can shut up about the Doc. And you can get the hell out of here.”

  “You mean that little boy from the other day?” Shandy says.

  Lucious rattles off with his stretcher, leaving the body he just delivered on the gurney in the middle of the hall, in front of the stainless-steel cooler door. Marino opens it and pushes the uncooperative gurney inside, his arousal still obvious.

  “Christ,” Benton says to Lucy.

  “He on Viagra or something?” Her voice in his ear.

  “Why the hell don’t you get a new cart or whatever you call that thing?” Shandy says.

  “The Doc don’t waste money.”

  “So she’s cheap, too. Bet she doesn’t pay you shit.”

  “If we need something, she gets it, but she don’t waste money. Not like Lucy, who could buy China.”

  “You always stick up for the Big Chief, don’t you? But not like you stick up for me, baby.” Shandy fondles him.

  “I think I’m going to throw up.” Lucy’s voice.

  And Shandy walks inside the cooler to get a good look at what’s inside. The cold air blowing is audible through Benton’s speakers.

  And a camera in the bay picks up Lucious sliding behind the wheel of his hearse.

  “She a murder?” Shandy asks about the latest delivery, then looks at another pouched body in a corner. “I want to know about the kid.”

  Lucious rumbles away in his hearse, the bay door loudly clanking shut behind him, sounding like a car wreck.

  “Natural causes,” Marino says. “Old Oriental woman. Eighty-five or something.”

  “How come she got sent here if she died of natural causes?”

  “Because the coroner wanted to send her in. Why? Hell if I know. The Doc just said for me to be here. Hell if I know. Sounds like a cut-and-dried heart attack to me. I’m getting a whiff of something.” He makes a face.

  “Let’s look,” Shandy says. “Come on. Just a quick peek.”

  Benton watches them on-screen, watches Marino unzip the pouch and Shandy recoil in disgust, jump back, cover her nose and mouth.

  “What you deserve.” Lucy’s voice as she zooms in on the body: decomposing, bloated by gases, the abdomen turning green. Benton knows that odor all too well, a putrid stench unlike any other that clings to the air and the roof of your mouth.

  “Shit,” Marino complains, zipping up the pouch. “She’s probably been lying around for days and the damn Beaufort County coroner didn’t want to fool with her. Got a noseful, did you?” He laughs at Shandy. “And you thought my job was a piece of cake.”

  Shandy moves closer to the small black pouched body parked in a corner all by itself. She stands very still, staring down at it.

  “Don’t do it.” Lucy sounds in Benton’s ear, but she’s talking to Marino’s image on the screen.

  “Bet I knows what’s in this little bag,” Shandy says, and it’s hard to hear her.

  Marino steps outside the cooler. “Out, Shandy. Now.”

  “Whatcha gonna do? Lock me in here? Come on, Pete. Open up this little bag. I know it’s that dead boy you and that funeral creep were just talking about. I heard all about that boy on the news. So he’s still here. How come? Poor little thing all alone and cold in a refrigerator.”

  “He’s lost it,” Benton says. “Completely lost it.”

  “You don’t want to see that,” Marino says to her, walking back inside the cooler.

  “Why not? That little boy found at Hilton Head. The one all over the news,” she repeats herself. “I knew it. Why’s he still here? They know who did it?” She holds her position by the little black pouch on its gurney.

  “We don’t know a damn thing. That’s why he’s still here. Come on.” He motions to her, and it’s difficult to hear both of them.

  “Let me see him.”

  “Don’t do it.” Lucy’s voice, talking to Marino’s image on the screen. “Don’t fuck yourself, Marino.”

  “You don’t want to,” he says to Shandy.

  “I can handle it. I got a right to see him, because you’re not supposed to have secrets. That’s our rule. So prove right now you don’t keep secrets from me.” She can’t take her eyes off the pouch.

  “Nope. With stuff like this, the secret rule don’t count.”

  “Oh, yes it does. Better hurry, I’m turning as cold as a dead body in here.”

  “Because if the Doc ever found out…”

  “There you go again. Scared of her like she fucking owns you. What’s so bad you don’t think I can handle it?” Shandy says furiously, almost screaming as she holds herself because of the cold. “I bet he doesn’t stink as bad as that old lady.”

  “He’s been skinn
ed and his eyeballs are gone,” Marino tells her.

  “Oh, no,” Benton says, rubbing his face.

  Shandy exclaims, “Don’t mess with me! Don’t you dare joke with me! You let me see him right now! I’m sick and tired of you always turning into a damn wimp when she tells you something!”

  “Nothing funny about it, you got that right. What goes on in this place ain’t no joke. I keep trying to tell you that. You got no idea what I deal with.”

  “Well, isn’t that something. To think your Big Chief would do something like that. Skinning a little kid and cutting out his eyes. You always said she treats the dead real nice.” Hatefully. “Sounds like a Nazi to me. They used to skin people and make lampshades.”

  “Sometimes the only way you can tell if darkish or reddish areas are really bruises is to look at the underside of the skin so you can make sure what you’re looking at is broken blood vessels — in other words, bruises or what we call contusions — instead of it being from livor mortis,” Marino pontificates.

  “This is unreal.” Lucy sounds in Benton’s ear. “So now he’s the chief medical examiner.”

  “Not unreal,” Benton says. “Massively insecure. Threatened. Resentful. Overcompensating and decompensating. I don’t know what’s going on with him.”

  “You and Aunt Kay are what’s going on with him.”

  “From what?” Shandy stares at the little black pouch.

  “From when your circulation stops, and the blood settles and can make your skin look red in places. Can look a whole lot like fresh bruises. And there can be other reasons for things that look like injuries, what we call postmortem artifacts. It’s complicated,” Marino says with self-importance. “So to make sure, you peel back the skin, you know, with a scalpel”—he makes swift cutting motions in the air—“to see the underside of it, and in this case, they were bruises, all right. The little guy’s covered with them from head to toe.”

  “But why would you take out his eyeballs?”

  “Further study, looking for more hemorrhages like you find in shaking baby syndrome, things like that. Same with his brain. It’s fixed in formalin in a bucket, not here but at a medical school where they do special studies.”