Port Mortuary

by Patricia Cornwell

  “I’m wondering if your family coat of arms is on anything else. Embroidered, engraved, besides being framed on the wall in your music room, anywhere else it might appear. If it’s known or published, if someone could have gotten hold of it.” No matter how I phrase it, it sounds like a peculiar thing to quiz her about.

  “Get hold of it to do what ultimately? What goal?”

  “Your stationery, for example. Let’s think about that and what the ultimate goal might be.”

  “Is what you have engraved or printed?” she then asks. “Can you tell the difference between engraved and printed by looking at what you have?”

  You don’t know who he is, I’m thinking. You don’t know that the man who died wearing that ring isn’t a member of her family, a relative, and I remember Benton saying Johnny Donahue has an older brother who works at Langley. What if he happened to be in Cambridge yesterday, staying at an apartment near Harvard, maybe a friend’s apartment that has an obsolete packbot in it, a friend with a greyhound, a friend who perhaps works in a robotics lab? What if the older brother or some other man significant to Mrs. Donahue had just been overseas, in the UK, and had flown back here unexpected and is dead and she doesn’t know, the Donahue family doesn’t know? What does Johnny’s brother look like?

  Don’t ask her.

  “The stationery is engraved,” I answer Mrs. Donahue’s question.

  What if her family is somehow connected with Liam Saltz or with someone who might have attended his daughter’s wedding on Sunday? Might the Donahues have a connection to a member of Parliament named Brown?

  Stay away from it.

  “Well, you can’t pull engraved stationery out of a hat, have it made in a minute,” Mrs. Donahue is saying.

  Now I’m looking at the envelope, at the duct tape on the back that I didn’t cut through, that I thought to preserve.

  “Especially if you don’t have the copperplates,” she adds.

  We use sticky-sided tape all the time in forensics, to collect trace evidence from carpet, from upholstery, to lift fibers, paint chips, glass fragments, gunshot residue, minerals, even DNA and fingerprints, from all types of surfaces, including human bodies. Anybody could know that. Just watch television. Just Google “crime scene investigative techniques and equipment.”

  “If someone got hold of my copperplates? But who? Who could have them?” she protests. “Without those, it would take weeks. And if you do press proofs, which of course I do, add several more weeks. This makes no sense.”

  She wouldn’t put duct tape on the back of her elegant envelope that took many weeks to engrave. Not this precise, proud woman who listens to Chopin etudes. If someone else did, then I might have an idea why. Especially if it was someone who knows me or knows the way I think.

  “And yes, the crest is on a number of things. It’s been in my family for centuries,” she adds, because she wants to talk. There is much pent up inside her, and she wants to let it out.

  Allow it.

  “Scottish, but you probably guessed that based on the name,” she then says. “Framed on the wall in the music room, as I mentioned, and engraved on some of my family silverware, and we did have some silver stolen years ago by a housekeeper who was fired but never charged with anything because we really couldn’t prove it to the satisfaction of the Boston police. I suppose my family silver could have ended up in a pawnshop around here. But I don’t see what that could have to do with my stationery. It sounds as if you’re implying someone might have made engraved stationery identical to mine with the goal of impersonating me. Or someone stole it. Are you suggesting identity theft?”

  What to say? How far do I go?

  “What about anything else that might have been stolen, anything else with your family crest on it?” I don’t want to directly ask her about the ring.

  “Why do you ask? Is there something else?”

  “I have a letter that is supposedly from you,” I reiterate instead of answering her questions. “It’s typed on a typewriter.”

  “I still use a typewriter,” she verifies, and sounds bewildered. “But usually I write letters by hand.”

  “Might I ask with what?”

  “Why, a pen, of course. A fountain pen.”

  “And the type style on your typewriter, which is what kind? But you might not know the typeface. Not everybody would.”

  “It’s just an Olivetti portable I’ve had forever. The typeface is cursive, like handwriting.”

  “A manual one that must be fairly old.” As I look at the letter, at the distressed cursive typeface made with metal typebars striking an inked ribbon.

  “It was my mother’s.”

  “Mrs. Donahue, do you know where your typewriter is?”

  “I’m going to walk over there, to the cabinet in the library where it’s kept while I’m not using it.”

  I hear her moving into another area of the house, and it sounds as if she sets what must be a portable phone down on a hard surface. Then a series of doors shut, perhaps cabinet doors, and a moment later she is back on with me and almost breathless as she says, “Well, it’s gone. It’s not here.”

  “Do you remember when you saw it last?”

  “I don’t know. Weeks ago. Probably around Christmas. I don’t know.”

  “And it wouldn’t be someplace else. Perhaps you moved it or someone borrowed it?”

  “No. This is terrible. Someone took it and probably took my stationery, too. The same one who wrote to you as if it was me. And I didn’t. I most assuredly didn’t.”

  The first person to come to mind is her own son Johnny. But he is at McLean. He couldn’t possibly have borrowed her typewriter, her pen, her stationery, and then hired a man and a Bentley to deliver a letter to me. Assuming he could have known when I was flying in last night on Lucy’s helicopter, and I’m not going to ask his mother about that, either. The more I ask her, the more information I give.

  “What’s in the letter?” she persists. “What did someone write as if it’s from me? Who could have taken my typewriter? Should we call the police? What am I saying? You are the police.”

  “I’m a medical examiner,” I correct her matter-of-factly as Chopin’s tempo quickens, a different etude. “I’m not the police.”

  “But you are, really. Doctors like you investigate like the police and act like the police and have powers they can abuse like the police. I talked to your assistant, Dr. Fielding, about what’s being blamed on my son, as I know you’re very well aware. You must know I’ve called your office about it and why. You must know why and how wrong it is. You sound like a fair-minded woman. I know you haven’t been here, but I must say I don’t understand what’s been condoned, even from a distance.”

  I swivel around in my chair, facing the curved wall behind me that is nothing but glass, my office shaped exactly like the building if you laid it on its side, cylindrical and rounded at one end. The morning sky is bright blue, what Lucy calls severe clear, and I notice something moving in the security display, a black SUV parking in back.

  “I was told you called to speak to him,” I reply, because I can’t say what is about to boil out of me. What isn’t fair? What have I condoned? How did she know I haven’t been here? “I can understand your concern, but—”

  “I’m not ignorant,” Mrs. Donahue cuts me off. “I’m not ignorant about these things, even if I’ve never been involved in anything so awful ever before, but there was no reason for him to be so rude to me. I was within my rights to ask what I did. I fail to understand how you can condone it, and maybe you really haven’t. Maybe you aren’t aware of the entire sordid mess, but how could you not be? You’re in charge, and now that I have you on the phone, perhaps you can explain how it’s fair or appropriate or even legal for someone in his position to be involved in this and have so much power.”

  The word careful flashes in my mind, as if there is a warning light in my head flashing neon-red.

  “I’m sorry if you feel he was rude or unh
elpful.” I abide by my own warning and am careful. “You understand we can’t discuss cases with…”

  “Dr. Scarpetta.” Sharp piano notes sound as if responding to her or the other way around. “I would never and I most assuredly did not,” she says emotionally. “Will you excuse me while I turn this down? You probably don’t know Valentina Lisitsa. If only I could just listen and not have all these other dreadful things banging in my head, like pots and pans banging in my head! My stationery, my typewriter. My son! Oh, God, oh, God.” As the music stops. “I didn’t ask Dr. Fielding prying questions about someone who was murdered, much less a child. If that’s what he’s told you I called about, it’s absolutely untrue. Well, I’ll just say it. A lie. A damn lie. I’m not surprised.”

  “You called wanting to speak to me,” I say, because that’s all I really know other than her claims to Bryce about Johnny and his innocence and allergies. She obviously has no idea I’ve not talked to Fielding, that no one has, it seems. And the more I downplay what she’s saying or outright ignore it, the louder she’ll get and the more she’ll volunteer.

  “Late last week,” she says with energy. “Because you’re in charge and I’ve gotten nowhere with Dr. Fielding, and of course you understand my concern, and this really is unacceptable if not criminal. So I wanted to complain, and I’m sorry about your coming home to that. When I realized who you are, that it wasn’t some crank call, my first thought was it’s about my filing a complaint with your office, not anything as official as I’m making it sound, at least not yet, although our lawyer certainly knows and the CFC’s legal counsel certainly knows. And now maybe I won’t need to file anything. It depends on what you and I agree upon.”

  Agree upon about what? I think but I don’t ask. She knew I was coming home, and that doesn’t fit with what she supposedly wrote to me, either. But it fits with a driver meeting me at Hans-com Field.

  “What is in the letter? Can you read it to me? Why can’t you?” she says again.

  “Is it possible someone else in your family might have written to me on your stationery and borrowed your typewriter?” I suggest.

  “And signed my name?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I’m assuming I supposedly signed whatever you got or you’d have no reason to think it’s from me other than an engraved address, which could be my husband, who unavoidably is in Japan on business, has been since Friday, although it is the most inopportune time to be away. He wouldn’t write such a thing, anyway. Of course he wouldn’t.”

  “The letter purports to be from you,” I reply, and I don’t tell her it is signed “Erica” above her name typed in cursive and that the envelope is addressed in an ornate script in the black ink of a fountain pen.

  “This is very upsetting. I don’t know why you won’t read it to me. I have a right to know what someone said as if they’re me. I suppose our attorney will have to deal with you after all, the attorney representing Johnny, and I assume it’s about him, this letter that’s a lie, a fraud. Probably the dirty trick of the same ones who are behind all this. He was perfectly fine until he went there, and then he became Mr. Hyde, which is a harsh thing to say about your own child. But that’s the only way I can think to say it so you understand how dramatically he was altered. Drugs. It must be, although the tests are negative, according to our lawyer, and Johnny would never take them. He knows better. He knows what thin ice he already skates on because of his unusualness. I don’t know what else it could be except drugs, that somebody introduced him to something that changed him, that had a terrible effect, to deliberately destroy his life, to set him up….”

  She continues to talk without pause, getting increasingly upset, as a knock sounds on my outer door and someone tries the knob, then at the same time Bryce opens our adjoining door and I shake my head no at him. Not now. Then he whispers that Benton is at my door, and can he let him in? And I nod, and he shuts one door and another opens.

  I put Mrs. Donahue’s call on speakerphone.

  Benton closes the door behind him as I hold up the letter to indicate whom it is I’m talking to. He moves a chair close to me while Mrs. Donahue continues to speak, and I jot a note on a call sheet.

  Says didn’t write it—not her driver or Bentley.

  “… at that place,” Mrs. Donahue’s voice sounds inside my office as if she is in it.

  Benton sits and has no reaction, and his face is pale, drained, and exhausted. He doesn’t look well and smells of wood smoke.

  “I’ve never been there because they don’t allow visitors unless they have some special event for staff….” her voice continues.

  Benton picks up a pen and writes on the same call sheet Otwahl? But it seems perfunctory when he does it. He doesn’t seem particularly curious.

  “And then you have to go through security on a par with the White House, or maybe more extreme than that,” Mrs. Donahue says, “not that I know it for a fact, but according to my son, who was frightened and a wreck the last few months he was there. Certainly since summer.”

  “What place are you talking about?” I ask her as I write another note to Benton.

  Typewriter missing from her house.

  He looks at the note and nods as if he already knew that Erica Donahue’s old Olivetti manual typewriter is gone, possibly stolen, assuming what she’s just told me is true. Or maybe he somehow knows she’s told me this, and then it intrudes upon my thoughts that my office probably is bugged. Lucy’s saying she has swept my office for covert surveillance devices likely means she planted them, and my attention wanders around the room, as if I might find tiny cameras or microphones hidden in books or pens or paperweights or the phone I’m talking on. It’s ridiculous. If Lucy has bugged my office, I’m not going to know. More to the point, Fielding wouldn’t know. I hope I catch him saying things to Captain Avallone, not realizing the two of them were being recorded secretly. I hope I catch both of them in the act of conspiring to ruin me, to run me out of the CFC.

  “… where he had his internship. That technology company that makes robots and things nobody is supposed to know about…” Mrs. Donahue is saying.

  I watch Benton fold his hands in his lap, lacing his fingers as if he is placid when he’s anything but low-key and relaxed. I know the language of how he sits or moves his eyes and can read his restiveness in what seems the utter stillness of his body and mood. He is stressed-out and worn-out, but there is something else. Something has happened.

  “… Johnny had to sign contracts and all these legal agreements promising he wouldn’t talk about Otwahl, not even what its name means. Can you imagine that? Not even something like that, what Otwahl means. But no wonder! What these damn people are up to. Huge secret contracts with the government, and greed. Enormous greed. So are you surprised things might be missing or people are being impersonated, their identities stolen?”

  I have no idea what Otwahl means. I assumed it was the name of a person, the one who founded the company. Somebody Otwahl. I look at Benton. He is staring vacantly across the room, listening to Mrs. Donahue.

  “… Not about anything, certainly not what goes on, and anything he did there belongs to them and stays there.” She is talking fast, and her voice no longer sounds as though it is coming from her diaphragm but from high up in her throat. “I’m terrified. Who are these people, and what have they done to my son?”

  “What makes you think they’ve done something to Johnny?” I ask her as Benton quietly, calmly writes a note on the call sheet, his mouth set in a firm, thin line, the way he looks when he gets like this.

  “Because it can’t be coincidental,” she replies, and her voice reminds me of the cursive typeface of her old Olivetti. Something elegant that is deteriorating, fading, less distinct and slightly bleary. “He was fine and then he wasn’t, and now he’s locked up at a psychiatric hospital and confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. And now this,” she says hoarsely, clearing her throat. “A letter on my stationery or what looks like my statio
nery, and of course it’s not from me and I have no idea who delivered it to you. And my typewriter is gone….”

  Benton slides the call sheet to me, and I read what he wrote in his legible hand.

  We know about it.

  I look at him and frown. I don’t understand.

  “… Why would they want him accused of something he didn’t do, and how have they managed to brainwash him into thinking he murdered that child?” Mrs. Donahue then says yet again, “Drugs. I can only assume drugs. Maybe one of them killed that little boy and they need someone as a scapegoat. And there was my poor Johnny, who is gullible, who doesn’t read situations the way others do. What better person to pick on than a teenager with Asperger’s….”

  I am staring at Benton’s note. We know about it. As though if I read it more than once I’ll comprehend what it is he knows about or what it is that he and his invisible others, these entities he refers to as “we,” know about. But as I sit here, concentrating on Mrs. Donahue and trying to decipher what she is truly conveying while I cautiously extract information from her, I have the feeling Benton isn’t really listening. He seems barely interested, isn’t his typically keen self. What I detect is he wants me to end the call and leave with him, as if something is over with and it’s just a matter of finishing what has already ended, just a matter of tying up loose ends, of cleaning up. It is the way he used to act when a case had wrung him out for months or years and finally was solved or dropped or the jury reached a verdict, and suddenly everything stopped and he was left harried but spent and depressed.

  “You started noticing the difference in your son when?” I’m not going to quit now, no matter what Benton knows or how spent he is.

  “July, August. Then by September for sure. He started his internship with Otwahl last May.”

  “Mark Bishop was killed January thirtieth.” It is as close as I dare come to pointing out the obvious, that what she continues to claim about her son being framed doesn’t make sense, the timing doesn’t.

  If his personality began changing last summer when he was working at Otwahl and yet Mark Bishop wasn’t murdered until January 30, what she’s suggesting would mean someone programmed Johnny to take the blame for a murder that hadn’t happened yet and wouldn’t happen for many months. The Mark Bishop case doesn’t fit with something meticulously planned but as a senseless and sadistic violent attack on a little boy who was at home, playing in his yard, on a weekend late afternoon as it was getting dark and no one was looking. It strikes me as a crime of opportunity, a thrill kill, the evil game of a predator, possibly one with pedophilic proclivities. It wasn’t an assassination. It wasn’t the black-ops takeout of a terrorist. I don’t believe his death was premeditated and executed with a very certain goal in mind, such as national security or political power or money.