Kay Scarpet - The Last Precinct Part 22

Silence.

"I wonder if they're going to subpoena me," Lucy says.["_Toc37098922"]

CHAPTER 20.

RIGHTER THINKS YOU'RE A NUT CASE, TOO," MA-rino tells my niece. "The only point we're in agreement on."

"Any chance Rocky's been involved with the Chandonne family?" McGovern looks at Marino. "In the past? You're serious when you say you wondered it?"

"Huh." Marino snorts. "Rocky's been involved with criminals most of his G.o.dd.a.m.n life. But do I know details about what he does with his f.u.c.king time, day to day, month to month? No. I can't honestly swear to that. I just know what he is. Sc.u.m. He was born bad. Bad seed. As far as I'm concerned, he ain't my son."

"Well, he is your son," I tell him.

"Not in my book. He took after the wrong side of my family," Marino insists. "In New Jersey, we had good Marines and bad Marines. I had an uncle who was with the mob, another uncle who was a cop. Two brothers different as night and day. And then when I turned fourteen, Uncle a.s.shole Louie had my other uncle whackedmy other uncle being the cop, also named Pete. I was named after Uncle Pete. Shot down when he was in his own front yard picking up his f.u.c.king newspaper. We never could prove Uncle Louie had it done, but everyone in the family believed it. I still believe it.

"Where's your Uncle Louie now?" Lucy asks as Anna returns with Marino's drink.

"I heard he died a couple years back. I didn't keep up with him. Never had nothing to do with him." He takes the gla.s.s from Anna. "But Rocky's his spittin' image. Even looked like him when he was growing up, and from day one was bent, warped, just a piece of living s.h.i.t. Why do you think he took the name Caggiano? Because that's my mother's maiden name, and Rocky knew it would really p.i.s.s me off if he c.r.a.pped on my mother's name. There's some people who can't be fixed. There's some just born bad. Don't ask me to explain it, because Doris and I did everything we could for that boy. Even tried sending him off to military school, which was a mistake. He ended up liking it, liked the hazing part, doing really c.r.a.ppy things to the other boys. n.o.body picked on him, not even on the first d.a.m.n day. He was big like me and just so G.o.dd.a.m.n mean the other kids didn't dare touch a hair on his head."

"This is not right," Anna mutters as she sits back down on the ottoman.

"What's Rocky's motive for taking this case?" I know what Berger said. But I want to hear Marino's slant. "To spite you?"

"He'll get off on the attention. A case like this will create a circus." Marino doesn't want to say the obvious, that just maybe Rocky wants to humiliate, to best his father.

"Does he hate you?" McGovern asks him.

Marino snorts again and his pager vibrates.

"What eventually happened to him?" I ask. "You sent him off to military school, then what?"

"I kicked his a.s.s out. Told him if he couldn't follow the rules of the house, he wasn't living under my roof. That was after his freshman year at the military school. So you know what the little psycho did?" Marino reads the display on his pager and gets up. "He moves up to Jersey, moves in with Uncle Louie, the f.u.c.king Mafia. Then has the b.a.l.l.s to come back here for school, including law school, William and Mary, so yeah, he's smart as s.h.i.t.

"He pa.s.sed the bar in Virginia?" I ask.

"Here, practices all the h.e.l.l over the place. I ain't seen Rocky in seventeen years. Anna, you mind if I make a call? Don't look like I want to be using the cell phone on this one." He glances at me as he walks out of the living room. "It's Stanfield."

"What about the ID he called you about earlier?" I ask.

"Hopefully what this is about," Marino says. "Another real strange one, if it's true."

While he is on the phone, Anna vanishes from her own living room. I supposed she was going to the bathroom, but she does not come back and I can only imagine how she feels. In many ways, I am more worried about her than about me. I now know enough about her life to appreciate her intense vulnerability and realize the terribly barren, scarred spots on her emotional landscape. "This isn't fair." I begin to lose my composure. "It's not fair to anyone." Everything that has piled up on me begins to unsettle and slide downhill. "Someone please tell me how this happened? Did I do something wrong in a former life? I don't deserve this. None of us do."

Lucy and McGovern listen to me ventilate. They seem to have their own ideas and plans but are not inclined to offer them right away.

"Well, say something," I tell them. "Go ahead and let it out." Mostly, I say this for my niece's benefit. "My life is wrecked. I haven't handled anything the way I should. I'm sorry." Tears threaten. "Right now I want a cigarette. Does anybody have a cigarette?" Marino does, but he is in the kitchen on the phone, and I'll be d.a.m.ned if I am going to creep in there and interrupt him for a cigarette, as if I need one to begin with. "You know, what hurts me most is to be accused of the very thing I'm so against. I don't abuse power, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. I would never murder somebody in cold blood." I talk on and on. "I hate death. I hate killing. I hate every G.o.dd.a.m.n thing I see every G.o.dd.a.m.n day. And now the world thinks I did something like this? A special grand jury thinks maybe I might have?" I let the questions hang. Neither Lucy nor McGovern responds.

Marino is loud. His voice is muscular and big like he is and tends to shove rather than guide, confront rather than fall in stride. "You sure she's his girlfriend?" he is saying over the telephone. I presume he is speaking to Detective Stanfield. "Versus just friends. Tell me how you know that for a fact. Yeah, yeah. Uh huh. What? Do I get it? h.e.l.l no, I don't get it. It don't make a s.h.i.t's worth of sense, Stanfield." Marino is walking around the kitchen as he talks. He is on the verge of snapping Stanfield's head off. "You know what I tell people like you, Stanfield?" Marino snaps. "I tell them to get out of my f.u.c.king way. I don't give a rat's a.s.s who your f.u.c.king brother-in-law is, got it? He can kiss my b.u.t.t and tuck it in bed, tell it a beddy-bye story." Stanfield is obviously trying to get in a word or two, but Marino won't let him.

"Oh boy," McGovern mutters, returning my attention to the living room, to my own mess. "He's the investigator for these two men who were probably tortured and killed? Whoever Marino's talking to?" McGovern inquires.

I give her a strange look as an even stranger sensation ripples through me. "How do you know about the two men who were killed?" I grope for an answer that I must be missing. McGovern has been in New York. I haven't even autopsied the second John Doe yet. Why does everybody seem to be omniscient all of a sudden? I think of Jaime Berger. I think of Governor Mitch.e.l.l and Representative Dinwiddie and Anna. A strong breath of fear seems to foul the air like Chandonne's body odor, and I imagine 1 smell him again and my central nervous system has an involuntary reaction. I begin to tremble as if I have drunk a pot of strong coffee or half a dozen of those heavily sugared Cuban espressos called coladas. I realize I am more afraid than I have ever been in my life and begin to entertain the unthinkable: Maybe Chandonne was offering a hint of truth when he persisted in his seemingly absurd claim that he is the victim of some huge political conspiracy. I am paranoid, justifiably. 1 try to reason with myself. I am, after all, being investigated for the murder of a corrupt policewoman who probably was involved with organized crime. I realize Lucy is talking to me. She has gotten up from her spot before the fire and is pulling a chair close to me. She sits and leans over, touching my good arm, as if trying to wake me up. "Aunt Kay?" she says. "You with us, Aunt Kay? Are you listening?"

I focus on her. Marino is telling Stanfield over the phone that they will meet in the morning. It sounds like a threat. "He and I rendezvoused at Phil's for a beer." She glances toward the kitchen and I remember Marino telling me late this morning that he and Lucy were getting together this afternoon because she had news for him. "We know about the guy from the motel." Now she refers to McGovern, who sits very still by the fire, looking at me, waiting to see how I will react when Lucy tells me the rest. "Teun's been here since Sat.u.r.day," Lucy then says. "When I called you from the Jefferson, remember? Teun was with me. I asked her to get here right away."

"Oh," is all I can think to say. "Well, that's good. It bothered me to think of you alone in a hotel." Tears flood my eyes. I am embarra.s.sed and look away from Lucy and McGovern. I am supposed to be strong. I am the one who has always rescued my niece from trouble, most of it of her own making. I have always been the torchbearer who guided her along the right path. I put her through college. I bought her books, her first computer, sent her to any special course she wanted to attend anywhere in the country. I took her to London with me one summer. I have stood up to anyone who tried to interfere with Lucy, including her mother, who has rewarded my efforts with nothing but abuse. "You're supposed to respect me," I say to my niece as I wipe tears with my palm. "How can you anymore?"

She stands up again and looks down at me. "That's total bulls.h.i.t," she says with feeling, and now Marino is returning to the living room, another bourbon in hand. "This isn't about my not respecting you," Lucy says. "Jesus Christ. n.o.body in the room has any less respect for you, Aunt Kay. But you need help. For once, you've got to let other people help you. You sure as h.e.l.l can't deal with this all by yourself, and maybe you need to sit on your pride a little and let us help, you know? It's not like I'm still ten years old. I'm twenty-eight, okay? I'm not a virgin. I've been an FBI agent, an ATF agent and am f.u.c.king rich. I could be any kind of f.u.c.king agent I want." Her wounds inflame before my eyes. She does care about being put on administrative leave; of course she cares. "And now I'm being my own agent, doing things my own way," she goes on.

"I resigned tonight," I tell her. A stunned silence follows.

"What did you say?" Marino asks me, standing in front of the fire, drinking. "You did what?"

"I told the governor," I reply, and an inexplicable calm begins to settle over me. It feels good to consider that I did something instead of everything being done to me. Maybe quitting my job makes me less a victim, if I am willing to finally admit that I am a victim. I suppose I am one, and the only comeback is to finish what Chandonne started: end my life as I have known it and start all over. What a weird and stunning thought. I tell Marino, McGovern and Lucy all about my conversation with Mike Mitch.e.l.l.

"Hold on." Marino is sitting on the hearth. It is getting close to midnight and Anna is so quiet I forgot for a moment that she was in the house. Maybe she has gone to bed. "This mean you can't work cases no more?" Marino says to me.

"Not at all," I reply. "I'll be acting chief until the governor decides otherwise." No one asks me what I plan to do with the rest of my life. It really doesn't make sense to worry about some distant future when the present is shot. I am grateful not to be asked and probably am sending out my usual signals that I don't want to be asked. People sense when to remain silent, or if nothing else, I deflect their interest and they don't even realize I have just manipulated them into not probing for information that I prefer to keep to myself. I became an expert at this maneuver at a very young age when I didn't want my cla.s.smates asking me about my father and if he was still sick or would ever get better or what it is like to have your father die. I was conditioned not to tell, and I was conditioned not to ask, either. The last three years of my father's life were spent in absolute avoidance by my entire family, including him, especially him. He was a lot like Marino, both of them macho Italian men who seem to a.s.sume their bodies will never part company with them, no matter how ill or out of shape. I envision my father as Lucy, Marino and McGovern talk about all they plan to do and are already doing to help me, including background checks already in the works and all sorts of things The Last Precinct has to offer me.

I really am not listening. Their voices may as well be the chatter of crows as I remember the thick Miami gra.s.s of my childhood, and dried-out chinch bug husks and the key lime tree in my small backyard. My father taught me how to crack coconuts on the driveway with a hammer and a screwdriver, and I would spend an inordinate amount of time prying the fleshy, sweet white meat from the hard, hairy sh.e.l.l, and he got a lot of amus.e.m.e.nt from observing my obsessive labors. The coconut meat would go in the squat white refrigerator, and no one, including me, ever ate it. During blistering summer Sat.u.r.days, my father would surprise Dorothy and me now and then by bringing home two big blocks of ice from his neighborhood grocery store. We had a small, inflatable pool we filled with the hose, and my sister and I would sit on the ice, getting scorched by the sun while we froze our a.s.ses off. We would jump in and out of the pool to thaw, then perch on our frigid, slick thrones again like princesses while my father laughed at us through the living room window, laughed hilariously and tapped on the gla.s.s, playing Fats Waller full blast on the hi-fi.

My father was a good man. When he felt halfway decent he was generous, thoughtful and full of humor and fun. He was handsome, of medium height, blond and broad-shouldered when he wasn't wasted by cancer. His full name was Kay Marcellus Scarpetta III, and he insisted that his firstborn take this name, which has been in the family since Verona. It didn't matter that I happened to arrive first, a girl. Kay is one of those names that can be a.s.signed to either gen-der, but my mother has always called me Katie. In part, according to her, it was confusing to have two Kays in the house. Later, when that was no longer an issue because I was the only Kay left, she still called me Katie, refusing to accept my father's death, to get over it, and she still isn't over it. She won't let him go. My father died more than thirty years ago, when I was twelve, and my mother has never gone out with another man. She still wears her wedding band. She still calls me Katie.

LUCY AND MCGOVERN GO OVER PLANS UNTIL PAST.

midnight. They have given up trying to include me in their conversations and no longer even seem to notice that I have slipped away to the Old Country in my mind, staring into the fire, absently ma.s.saging my stiff left hand and worming a finger under plaster to scratch my miserable, air-starved flesh. Finally, Marino yawns like a bear and pulls himself to his feet. He is made slightly unsteady by bourbon and smells like stale cigarettes, and regards me with a softness in his eyes that I might call sad love if I were willing to accept his true feelings for me. "Come on," he says to me. "Walk me out to my truck, Doc." This is his way of calling for a treaty between us. Marino is not a brute. He is feeling bad about the way he has been treating me since I was almost murdered, and he has never seen me so distant and strangely quiet.

The night is cold and still, and stars are shy behind vague clouds. From Anna's driveway, I take in the glow of her many candles in the windows and am reminded that tomorrow is Christmas Eve, the last Christmas Eve of the twentieth century. Keys disturb the peace as Marino unlocks his truck and hesitates awkwardly before opening the driver's door. "We got a lot to do. I'll meet you at the morgue early." This is not what he really wants to say. He stares up at the dark sky and sighs.

"s.h.i.t, Doc, Look, I've known for a while, okay? By now you've figured that out. I've known what that son of a b.i.t.c.h Righter was up to and I had to let it run its course.

"When were you going to tell me?" I don't ask this accusingly, simply curiously.

He shrugs. "I'm glad Anna brought it up first. I know you didn't kill Diane Bray, for G.o.d's sake. But I wouldn't blame you if you had, truth be told. She was the biggest f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h ever born. In my book, if you'd done her in, it would have been d.a.m.n self-defense."

"Well, it wouldn't have been." I address the possibility seriously. "It wouldn't have been, Marino. And I didn't kill her." I look closely at his hulking shape in the castoffs of carriage lamps and holiday lights in trees. "You've never really thought... ?" I don't finish the question. Maybe I really don't want to know his answer.

"h.e.l.l, I'm not sure what I've been thinking lately," he says. "That's the truth. But what am I going to do, Doc?"

"Do? About what?" I don't know what he means.

He shrugs and gets choked up. I can't believe it. Marino is about to cry. "If you quit." His voice rises and he clears his throat and fumbles for his Lucky Strikes. He cups his huge hands around my hand and lights a cigarette for me, his skin rough against mine, the hairs on the back of his wrists whispering against my chin. He smokes, staring off, heartbroken. "Then what? I'm supposed to go down to the f.u.c.king morgue and you ain't there anymore? h.e.l.l, I wouldn't go down to that stink-hole half as much as I do if it wasn't for you being there, Doc. You're the only d.a.m.n thing that gives any life to that joint, no kidding."

I hug him. I barely come up to his chest, and his belly separates the beat of our hearts. He has raised his own barriers in this life and I am overwhelmed by an immeasurable compa.s.sion and need for him. I pat his broad chest and let him know, "We've been together for a long time, Marino. You're not rid of me yet."["_Toc37098923"]

CHAPTER 21.

TEETH HAVE THEIR OWN STORIES. YOUR DENTAL habits often reveal more about you than jewelry or designer clothes and can identify you to the exclusion of all others, providing you have premortem records for comparison. Teeth tell me about your hygiene. They whisper secrets about drug abuse, early childhood antibiotics, disease, injury and how important your appearance was to you. They confess if your dentist was a crook and billed your insurance company for work that was never done. They tell me, for that matter, if your dentist was competent.

Marino meets me at the morgue before daylight the next morning. He has in hand the dental records of a twenty-two-year-old James City County man who went out jogging yesterday near the campus of William & Mary and never returned home. His name is Mitch Barbosa. William & Mary is but a few miles from The Fort James Motel, and when Marino talked to Stanfield last night and was given this latest information, my first thought was, "How odd." Marino's shifty attorney son, Rocky Caggiano, went to William & Mary. Life offers up yet one more eerie coincidence.

It is six-forty-five when I roll the body out of the X-ray room and over to my station inside the autopsy suite. Again, it is quiet. It is Christmas Eve and all state offices are closed. Marino is suited up to a.s.sist me, and I don't expect another living personexcept the forensic dentistto show up here right now. Marino's part will be to help me undress the stiff, unwilling body and lift it to and from the autopsy table. I would never allow him to a.s.sist in any medical procedure not that he has ever volunteered. I have never asked him to scribe and won't because his slaughter of Latin medical words and terms is remarkable.

"Hold him on either side," I direct Marino. "Good. Just like that."

Marino grips either side of the dead man's head, trying to hold it still as I work a thin chisel into the side of the mouth, sliding it between molars to pry open the jaws. Steel sc.r.a.pes against enamel. I am careful not to cut the lips, but it is inevitable that I chip the surfaces of the back teeth.

"It's just a d.a.m.n good thing people are dead when you do s.h.i.t like this to them," Marino says. "Bet you'll be glad when you got two hands again."

"Don't remind me." I am so sick of my cast, I have had thoughts of cutting it off myself with a Stryker saw.

The dead man's jaws give up and open, and I turn on the surgical lamp and fill the inside of his mouth with white light. There are fibers on his tongue, and I collect them. Marino helps me break the rigor mortis in the arms so we can get the jacket and shirt off, and then I take off shoes and socks, and finally the warm-up pants and running shorts. I PERK him and find no evidence of injury to his a.n.u.s, nothing so far to suggest h.o.m.os.e.xual activity. Marino's pager goes off. It is Stanfield again. Marino has not said a word about Rocky this morning, but the specter of him hovers. Rocky is in the air, and the effect this has on his father is subtle but profound. A heavy, helpless anguish radiates from Marino like body heat. I should be worried about what Rocky has in store for me, but all I can think about is what will happen to Marino.

Now that my patient is naked before me, I take in the full picture of who he was physically. He is five-foot-seven and a lean one hundred and thirty-eight pounds. He has muscular legs but little muscle development in his upper body, which is consistent with a runner. He has no tattoos, is circ.u.mcised and clearly cared about his grooming, based on his neatly manicured fingernails and toenails and clean-shaven face. So far, I find no evidence of injury externally, and X rays reveal no projectiles, no fractures. He has old scars on his knees and left elbow, but nothing fresh except the abrasions from being bound and gagged. What happened to you? Why did you die? He remains silent. Only Marino is talking in a blunt, loud way to disguise how unsettled he is. He thinks Stanfield is a dolt and treats him as such. Marino is more impatient, more insulting than usual.

"Yeah, well, it sure would be nice if we knew that," Marino blasts sarcasm into the wallphone. "Death don't take no holiday," he adds a moment later. "You tell whoever I'm coming and they will let me in." Then, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Pis the season. And Stanfield? Keep your mouth shut, okay? You got that? I read about this in the G.o.dd.a.m.n paper one more time ... Oh really, well, maybe you didn't see the Richmond paper yet. I'll make sure and tear out this morning's article for you. All this Jamestown s.h.i.t, hate crime s.h.i.t. One more peep and I'm gonna get tear-a.s.s. You never seen me tear-a.s.s and you don't want to."

Marino pulls on fresh gloves as he returns to the gurney, his gown flapping around his legs. "Well, it just gets more squirrelly. Doc. a.s.suming this guy here's our disappeared jogger, it appears we're dealing with a garden-variety truck driver. No record. No trouble. Lived in a condo with a girlfriend who's ID'ed him by photo. That's who Stanfield talked to late last night, apparently, but she ain't answering the phone so far this morning." He gets a lost look on his face, not certain how much he has already told me.

"Let's get him on the table," I say.

I parallel-park the gurney next to the autopsy table. Marino gets the feet, I grab an arm, and we pull. The body bangs against steel and blood trickles from the nose. I turn on water and it drums into the steel sink, the dead man's X rays glowing from light boxes on the wall, revealing perfectly pristine bones, and the skull from different angles, and the zipper of the warm-up jacket snaking down each side of gracefully bowed ribs. The buzzer sounds out in the bay as I run a scalpel from shoulder to shoulder, then down to the pelvis, making a small detour around the navel. I observe Dr. Sam Terry's image on closed-circuit TV and hit a b.u.t.ton with my elbow to open the bay door. He is one of our odontologists, or forensic dentists, whose bad luck it is to be on call Christmas Eve.

"I'm thinking we need to drop by and pay her a visit while we're in the area," Marino goes on. "I got her address, the girlfriend. The condo where they live." He glances down at the body. "Lived, I guess."

"And you think Stanfield can keep his mouth shut?" I reflect back tissue with staccato cuts of the scalpel, awkwardly gripping forceps in the gloved fingertips of my plaster-bound left hand.

"Yeah. Says he'll meet us at the motel, which ain't being real friendly, moaning and groaning it's Christmas Eve and they don't want any more attention because it's already hurt their business. Something like ten cancellations because of people hearing about it on the news. Yeah, like bulls.h.i.t, is what I say. Most the people who stay in that dump probably don't know s.h.i.t about what's happened around here or care."

Dr. Terry walks in, his scuffed black doctor's bag in hand, a fresh surgical gown untied in back and billowing as he heads to the counter. He is our youngest and newest odontologist and is almost seven feet tall. Legend has it that he could have had a career with the NBA but wanted to continue his education. The truth, and he'll tell you if you ask, is he was a mediocre guard at Virginia Commonwealth University, that the only good shooting he has ever done is with guns, the only good rebounding is with women and he only went into dentistry because he couldn't get into medical school. Terry desperately wanted to be a forensic pathologist. What he's doing as basically a volunteer is as close as he Will ever get.

"Thank you, thank you," I tell him as he begins arranging his paperwork on a clipboard. "You are a good man to come help us out this morning, Sam.

He grins, then jerks his head at Marino and says in his most exaggerated New Jersey accent, "How'ya doin', Marino?"

"You ever seen the Grinch steal Christmas? 'Cause if you haven't, just hang out with me for a while. I'm in a mood to take back little kids' toys and pat their mamas on the a.s.s on my way up the chimney."

"Don't you be trying to go up no chimneys. You'll get stuck for sure."

"h.e.l.l, you could look out the top of a chimney and still have your feet in the fireplace. You still growing?"

"Not as much as you are, man. What you weighing in these days?" Terry thumbs through the dental charts Marino brought in. "Well, this won't take long. He's got a rotated right maxillary second premolar, the distal surface lingual. Annnndddd ... lots of restorations. Saying this guy"he holds up the charts"and your guy are one and the same."

"How about them Rams beating Louisville?" Marino calls out above the drumming of running water.

"Were you there?"

"Nope, and you wasn't either, Terry, which is why they won."

"Probably true."

I pluck a surgical knife off the cart as the phone rings.

"Sam, you mind getting that?" I ask.

He trots to the corner, snaps up the phone and announces, "Morgue." I cut through the costochondral cartilage junctions, removing a triangle of sternum and parasternal ribs. "Hold on," Terry says to whoever has him on the line. "Dr. Scarpetta? Can you talk to Benton Wesley?"

The room becomes a vacuum that sucks out all light and sound. I freeze, staring, stunned, the steel surgical knife poised in my b.l.o.o.d.y, gloved right hand.

"What the f.u.c.k?" Marino blurts out. He strides over to Terry and s.n.a.t.c.hes the phone from him. "Who the h.e.l.l is this?" he yells into the mouthpiece. "s.h.i.t." He tosses the receiver back into the cradle on the wall. Obviously, the person hung up. Terry looks stricken. He has no idea what just happened. He hasn't known me long. There is no reason for him to know about Benton unless someone else told him, and apparently no one has.

"What exactly did the person say to you?" Marino asks Terry.

"I hope I didn't do something wrong."

"No, no." I find my voice. "You didn't," I rea.s.sure him.

"Some man," he replies. "All he said is he wanted to speak to you and he said his name was Benton Wesley."

Marino picks up the phone again and swears and fumes because there is no Caller ID. We have never had occasion to need Caller ID in the morgue. He hits several b.u.t.tons and listens. He writes down a number and dials it. "Yeah. Who's this?" he demands over the line to whoever has picked up. "Where? Okay. You see someone else using this phone just a minute ago? The one you're talking on. Uh huh. Yeah, well, I don't believe you, a.s.shole." He slams down the receiver.

"You think it's the same one who just called?" Terry asks him in confusion. "What'd you do, hit star sixty-nine?"

"A pay phone. At the Texaco on Midlothian Turnpike. Supposedly. I don't know if it's the same person who called. What was his voice like?" Marino pins Terry with a stare.

"He sort of sounded young. I think. I don't know. Who's Benton Wesley?"

"He's dead." I reach for the scalpel, pushing the point down on a cutting board, snapping in a new blade and dropping the old in a bright red biohazard plastic container. "He was a friend, a close friend."

"Some squirrel playing a sick joke. How would anybody know the number down here?" Marino is upset. He is furious. He wants to find the caller and pound him. And he is considering that his malevolent son may be behind this. I can read it in Marino's eyes. He is thinking about Rocky.

"Under state government listings in the phone book." I begin cutting blood vessels, severing the carotids very low at the apex, moving down to the iliac arteries and veins of the pelvis. "Don't tell me it says morgue in the G.o.dd.a.m.n phone book." Marino starts up his old routine again. He is blaming me.

"I think it's listed under funeral information." I cut through the thin flat muscle of the diaphragm, loosening the bloc of organs, freeing it from the vertebral column. Lungs, liver, heart, kidneys, and spleen shimmer different hues of red as I lay the bloc on the cutting board and wash off blood with a gentle hosing of cold water. I notice petechial hemorrhages, dark areas of bleeding no bigger than pin p.r.i.c.ks scattered over the heart and lungs. I a.s.sociate this with persons who had difficulty breathing at or about the time of death.

Terry carries his black bag over to my station and sets it on the surgical cart. He gets out a dental mirror and goes inside the dead man's mouth. We work in silence, the weight of what has just occurred pressing down hard. I reach for a bigger knife and cut sections of organs, slicing through the heart. Tue coronary arteries are open and clear, the left ventricle one centimeter wide, the valves normal. Other than a few fatty streaks in the aorta, the heart and vessels are healthy. The only thing wrong with it is the obvious: It quit. For some reason, this man's heart stopped. I find no explanation anywhere I look.