Port Mortuary (2010)

by Patricia Cornwell

  “… People who don’t understand Asperger’s assume those who have it are violent, are almost nonhuman, don’t feel the same things the rest of us do or don’t feel anything. People assume all sorts of things because of what I call unusualness, not sickness or derangement but unusual. That’s the disadvantage I mean.” Mrs. Donahue is talking rapidly and with no ordered sequence to her thoughts. “You point out behavior changes that are alarming and other people think it’s just him. Just Johnny because of his unusualness, which is a sad disadvantage, as if he needed yet one more disadvantage. Well, that’s not what this is, not about his unusualness. Something horrific got started when he did at that place, at Otwahl last May….”

  It also enters my mind what Benton mentioned hours earlier, that Mark Bishop’s death might be connected to others: the football player from BC, who was found in the Boston Harbor last November, and possibly the man who was murdered in Norton’s Woods. If Benton is right, then Johnny Donahue would have to be framed for all three of these homicides, and how could he be? He was an inpatient at McLean when the killing occurred in Norton’s Woods, for example. I know he couldn’t have committed that homicide, and I fail to see how he could be set up to take the blame for it unless he wasn’t on the hospital ward, unless he was on the loose and armed with an injection knife.

  Benton writes another note. We need to go. And he underlines it.

  “Mrs. Donahue, is your son on any medications?” I ask.

  “Not really.”

  “Prescription or perhaps over-the-counter medications?” I inquire without being pushy, and it requires effort on my part, because my patience is frayed. “Maybe you can tell me anything at all he might have been taking before he was hospitalized or any other medical problems he might have.”

  I almost say “might have had,” as if he is dead.

  “Well, a nasal spray. Especially of late.”

  Benton raises his hands palms up as if to say This isn’t news. He knows about Johnny’s medication. His patience is frayed, too, and signs of it are breaking through his imperviousness. He wants me to get off the phone and to go with him right now.

  “Why of late? Was he having respiratory problems? Allergies? Asthma?” I ask as I pull a pair of gloves out of the dispenser and hand them to Benton. Then I give him the manila envelope containing the ring.

  “Animal dander, pollens, dust, gluten, you name it, he’s allergic, has been treated by allergists most of his life. He was doing fine until late summer, and then nothing seemed to work very well anymore. It was a very bad season for pollens, and stress makes things worse, and he was increasingly stressed,” she says. “He did start using a spray again that has a type of cortisone in it. The name just fled from me….”

  “Corticosteroid?”

  “Yes. That’s it. And I’ve wondered about it in terms of it affecting his moods, his behavior. Things such as insomnia, ups and downs, and irritability, which, as you know, became extreme, culminating in him having blackouts and delusions, and ultimately our hospitalizing him.”

  “He started using it again? So he’s used the corticosteroid spray before?”

  “Certainly, over the years. But not since he started a new treatment, which meant he didn’t need shots anymore. For about a year it was like a magical cure; then he got bad again and resumed the nasal spray.”

  “Tell me about the new treatment.”

  “I’m sure you’re familiar with drops under the tongue.”

  I’m not aware that sublingual immunotherapy has yet to be approved by the FDA, and I ask, “Is your son part of a clinical trial?” I scribble another note to Benton.

  Spray and drops to the labs stat. And I underlined stat, which means statim, or immediately.

  “That’s right, through his allergist.”

  I look at Benton to see if he knows about this, and he glances at my note as he puts on the gloves, and next he glances at his watch. He’s going to look at the ring only because I asked him to. It’s as if he’s already seen it or already knows it isn’t important or has his mind made up. Something has ended. Something has happened.

  “… What’s called an off-label use that his doctor supervises, but no more trips to his office for shots every week,” Mrs. Donahue says, and she seems momentarily soothed as she talks about her son’s allergies instead of everything else, her pain in remission, but it won’t last.

  If someone has tampered with Johnny’s medications, it might explain why his allergies got bad again. What he was placing under his tongue or spraying up his nose might have been sufficiently altered chemically to render the medications ineffective, not to mention extremely harmful. I look at Benton as he examines the signet ring. He has no expression on his face. I hold up a sheet of stationery so he can see the watermark. He has no visible reaction, and I notice a cobweb in his hair. I reach over and remove it, and he returns the ring to the envelope. He meets my eyes and widens them the way he does at parties and dinners when he’s telegraphing Let’s go now.

  “… Johnny takes several drops under his tongue daily, and for a while had excellent results. Then it stopped working as well, and he’s been miserable at times. This past August he resumed the spray but only seemed to get worse, and along with it were these very disturbing changes in his personality. They were noted by others, and he did get in trouble for acting out, was kicked out of that class, as you know, but he wouldn’t have harmed that child. I don’t think Johnny was even aware of him, much less would do something….”

  Benton takes off the gloves and drops them in the trash. I point at the envelope, and he shakes his head. Don’t ask Mrs. Donahue about the ring. He doesn’t want me to mention it, or maybe it isn’t necessary for me to bring it up to her because of what Benton knows that I don’t, and then I notice his black tactical boots. They are covered with gray dust that wasn’t there earlier when we were talking in Fielding’s office. The legs of his black tactical pants also are quite dusty, and the sleeves of his shearling coat are dirty, as if he brushed up against something.

  “… It was the main thing I wanted to ask, more of a personal matter directed at him as a man who teaches martial arts and is supposed to abide by a code of honor,” Mrs. Donahue says, grabbing my attention back, and I wonder if I’ve misunderstood her. I can’t possibly have heard what I just did. “It was that more than the other, not at all what you assumed or what he told you. Lying, I’m sure, because as I’ve said, if he claims I called him to ask for details about what was done to that poor child, then he was lying. I promise I didn’t ask about Mark Bishop, who wasn’t known to us personally, by the way. We only saw him there sometimes. I didn’t ask for information about him….”

  “Mrs. Donahue, I’m sorry. You’re cutting in and out.” It’s not really true, but I need her to repeat what she said and to clarify.

  “These portable phones. Is this better? I’m sorry. I’m pacing as I talk, pacing all over the house.”

  “Thank you. Could you please repeat the last few things you said? What about martial arts?”

  I listen with another jolt of disbelief as she reminds me of what she assumes I know, that her son Johnny is acquainted with Jack Fielding through tae kwon do. When she called this office several times to talk to Fielding and eventually to complain to me, it is because of this relationship. Fielding was Johnny’s instructor at the Cambridge Tae Kwon Do Club. Fielding was Mark Bishop’s instructor, taught a class of Tiny Tigers, but Johnny didn’t know Mark, and certainly they weren’t in the same class, weren’t taught together, Mrs. Donahue is adamant about that, and I ask her when Johnny started taking lessons. I tell her I’m not sure about the details and must have an accurate account if I’m to deal appropriately and fairly with her complaint about my deputy chief.

  “He’s been taking lessons since last May,” Mrs. Donahue says while my thoughts scatter and bounce like caroms. “You can understand why my son, who’s never really had friends, would be easily influenced by someone he adores and respect
s….”

  “Adores and respects? Do you mean Dr. Fielding?”

  “No, not hardly,” she says acidly, as if she truly hates the man. “His friend was involved in it first, has been for quite some time. Apparently, a number of women are quite serious about tae kwon do, and when she began working with Johnny and they became friends, she encouraged him, and I wish he hadn’t listened. That and, of course, Otwahl, that place and whatever goes on there, and look what’s happened. But you can certainly imagine why Johnny would want to be powerful and able to protect himself, to feel less picked on and alone when the irony, of course, is that those days for him really were gone. He wasn’t bullied at Harvard….”

  She goes on, rambling and less crisp and commanding now, and her despair is palpable. I can feel it in the air inside my office as I get up from my desk.

  “… How dare him. That certainly constitutes a violation of his medical oath if anything does. How dare him continue to be in charge of the Mark Bishop case in light of what we all know the truth is,” she says.

  “Can you be specific about what truth you’re referring to?” I look out my windows at the blindingly bright morning. The sun and the glare are so intense, my eyes water.

  “His bias.” Her voice sounds behind me, on speakerphone. “He’s never been fond of Johnny or particularly nice to him, would make tactless comments to him in front of the others. Things such as ‘You need to look at me when I’m talking to you instead of at the goddamn light switch.’ Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, because of Johnny’s unusualness, his attention gets caught up on things that don’t make sense to others. He has poor eye contact and can be offensive because people don’t understand it’s just the way his brain works. Do you know much about Asperger’s, or has your husband…”

  “I don’t know much.” I don’t intend to get into what Benton has or hasn’t told me.

  “Well, Johnny gets fixated on a detail of no significance to anyone else and will stare at it while you’re talking to him. I’ll be telling him something important and he’s looking at a brooch or a bracelet I’m wearing, or he makes a comment or laughs when he shouldn’t. And Dr. Fielding berated him about laughing inappropriately. He belittled him in front of everyone, and that’s when Johnny tried to kick him. Here this man has however many degrees of a black belt someone can have, and my son, who weighs all of a hundred and forty pounds, tried to kick him, and that was when he was forced to leave the class for good. Dr. Fielding forbade him from ever coming back and threatened to blackball him if he tried to take lessons anywhere else.”

  “When was this?” I hear myself as if I’m someone else speaking. “The second week of December. I have the exact date. I have everything written down.”

  Six weeks before Mark Bishop was murdered, I think, dazed, as if I’m the one who has been kicked. “And you suggested to Dr. Fielding—” I start to say to the phone on my desk as if I’m looking at Mrs. Donahue and she can see me.

  “I certainly did!” she says excitedly, defiantly. “When Johnny started babbling his nonsense about having killed that boy during a blackout and that their tae kwon do instructor did the autopsy! Can you imagine my reaction?”

  Their tae kwon do instructor. Who else is she referring to? Johnny’s MIT friend, or are there others? Who else might Fielding have been teaching, and what could have caused Johnny Donahue to confess to a murder Benton believes he didn’t commit? Why would Johnny think he did something so horrific during a so-called blackout? Who influenced him to the extent he would admit to it and offer details such as the weapon being a nail gun when I know for a fact that isn’t true? But I’m not going to ask Mrs. Donahue anything else. I’ve gone too far; everything has gone too far. I’ve asked her more than I should, and Benton already knows the answers to anything I might think of. I can tell by the way he’s sitting in his chair, staring down at the floor, his face as hard and dark as my building’s metal skin.

  18

  I hang up the phone and stand before my curved wall of glass, looking out at a patchwork of slate tiles and snow punctuated by church steeples stretching out before me in the kingdom of CFC.

  I wait for my heart to slow and my emotions to settle, swallowing hard to push the pain and anger back down my throat, distracting myself with the view of MIT, and beyond it, Harvard and beyond. As I stand inside my empire of many windows and look out at what I’m supposed to manage if the worst happens to people, I understand. I understand why Benton is acting the way he is. I understand what has ended. Jack Fielding has.

  I vaguely remember him mentioning not long after he moved here from Chicago that he had volunteered at some tae kwon do club and couldn’t always be available to do cases on weekends or after hours because of his dedication to teaching what he referred to as his art, his passion. On occasion he would be gone to tournaments, he told me, and he assumed he would be granted “flexibility.” As acting chief during my long absences, he expected flexibility, he reiterated, almost lecturing me. The same flexibility I would have if I were here, he stated, as if it was a known fact that I have flexibility when I’m home.

  I remember being put off by his demands, since he’s the one who called me asking for a job at the CFC, and the position I foolishly agreed to give him far surpasses any he’s ever had. In Chicago he wasn’t afforded much status, was one of six medical examiners and not in line for a promotion of any kind, his chief confided in me when we spoke of my hiring Fielding away from there. It would be a tremendous professional opportunity and good for him personally to be around family, the chief said, and I was deeply moved that Fielding thought of me as family. I was pleased that he had missed me and wanted to come back to Massachusetts, to work for me like in the old days.

  And the irony that should have infuriated me, and one I certainly should have pointed out to Fielding instead of indulging him as usual, was this notion of flexibility, as if I come and go as I please, as if I take vacations and run off to tournaments and disappear several weekends each month because of some art or passion I have beyond what I do in my profession, beyond what I do every damn day. My passion is what I live every damn day, and the deaths I take care of every damn day and the people the deaths leave behind and how they pick up and go on, and how I help them somehow do that. I hear myself and realize I’ve been saying these things out loud, and I feel Benton’s hands on my shoulders as he stands behind me while I wipe tears from my eyes. He rests his chin on top of my head and wraps his arms around me.

  “What have I done?” I say to him.

  “You’ve put up with a lot from him, with way too much, but it’s not you who’s done anything. Whatever he was on, was taking and probably dealing… Well. You had a brush with it earlier, so you can imagine.” He means whatever drugs Fielding might have used to saturate his pain-relieving patches, and whatever drugs he might have been selling.

  “Have you found him?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s in custody? He’s been arrested? Or you’re just questioning him?”

  “We have him, Kay.”

  “I suppose it’s best.” I don’t know what else to ask except how Fielding is doing, which Benton doesn’t answer.

  I wonder if Fielding had to be placed in a four-point restraint or maybe in a padded room, and I can’t imagine him in captivity. I can’t imagine him in prison. He won’t last. He will bat himself to death against bars like a panicked moth if someone doesn’t kill him first. It also crosses my mind that he is dead. Then it feels he is. The feeling settles numbly, heavily, as if I’ve been given a nerve block.

  “We need to head out. I’ll explain as best I can, as best we know. It’s complicated; it’s a lot,” I hear Benton say.

  He moves away, no longer touching me, and it is as if there is nothing holding me here and I will float out the window, and at the same time, there is the heaviness. I feel I’ve turned into metal or stone, into something no longer alive or human.

  “I couldn’t let you know earlier as
it became clear, not that all of it is clear yet,” Benton says. “I’m sorry when I have to keep things from you, Kay.”

  “Why would he, why would anyone…?” I start to ask questions that can never be answered satisfactorily, the same questions I’ve always asked. Why are people cruel? Why do they kill? Why do they take pleasure in ruining others?

  “Because he could.” Benton says what he always does.

  “But why would he?” Fielding isn’t like that. He’s never been diabolical. Immature and selfish and dysfunctional, yes. But not evil. He wouldn’t kill a six-year-old boy for fun and then enjoy pinning the crime on a teenager with Asperger’s. Fielding’s not equipped to orchestrate a cold-blooded game like that.

  “Money. Control. His addictions. Righting wrongs that go back to the beginning of his time. And decompensating. Ultimately destroying himself because that’s who he was really destroying when he destroyed others.” Benton has it all figured out. Everybody has it figured out except me.

  “I don’t know,” I mutter, and I tell myself to be strong. I have to take care of this. I can’t help Fielding, I can’t help anyone, if I’m not strong.

  “He didn’t hide things well,” Benton then says as I move away from the window. “Once we figured out where to look, it’s become increasingly obvious.”

  Someone setting people up, setting up everything. That’s why it’s not hidden well. That’s why it’s obvious. It’s supposed to be obvious, to make us think certain things are true when maybe they aren’t. I won’t accept that the person behind all this is Fielding until I see it for myself. Be strong. You must take care of it. Don’t cry over him or anyone. You can’t.