From Potter's Field - Cornwell Patricia. Страница 52

I spent the weekend and the New Year at Quantico, and though there was considerable mail on Prodigy, verifying Jane's identity was not promising.

Her dentist had retired last year and her Panorex X-rays had been reclaimed for silver. The missing films, of course, were the biggest disappointment, for they might have shown old fractures, sinus configurations, bony anomalies, that could have effected a positive identification. As for her charts, when I touched upon that subject, her dentist, who was retired and now living in Los Angeles, got evasive.

'You do have them, don't you?' I asked him point-blank on Tuesday afternoon.

'I've got a million boxes in my garage.'

'I doubt you have a million.'

'I have a lot.'

'Please. We're talking about a woman we're unable to identify. All human beings have a right to be buried with their name.'

'I'm going to look, okay?'

Minutes later, I said to Marino on the phone, 'We're going to have to try for DNA or a visual ID.'

'Yo,' he said drolly. 'And just what are you going to do? Show Gault a photograph and ask if the woman he did this to looks like his sister?'

'I think her dentist took advantage of her. I've seen it before.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Occasionally, someone takes advantage. They chart work they didn't do so they can collect from Medicare or the insurance company.'

'But she had a hell of a lot of work done.'

'He could have charted a hell of a lot more. Trust me. Twice as many gold foil restorations, for example. That would have meant thousands of dollars. He says he did them when he didn't. She's mentally impaired, living with an elderly uncle. What do they know?'

'I hate assholes.'

'If I could get hold of his charts, I would report him. But he's not going to give them up. In fact, they probably no longer exist.'

'You got jury duty at eight in the morning,' Marino said. 'Rose called to let me know.'

'I guess that means I leave here very early tomorrow.'

'Go straight to your house and I'll pick you up.'

'I'll just go straight to the courthouse.'

'No you won't. You ain't driving downtown by yourself right now.'

'We know Gault's not in Richmond,' I said. 'He's back wherever he usually hides out, an apartment or room where he has a computer.'

'Chief Tucker hasn't rescinded his order for security for you.'

'He can't order anything for me. Not even lunch.'

'Oh yeah he can. All he does is assign certain cops to you. You either accept the situation or try to outrun them. If he wants to order your damn lunch, you'll get that, too.'

The next morning, I called the New York Medical Examiner's Office and left a message for Dr. Horowitz that suggested he begin DNA analysis on Jane's blood. Then Marino picked me up at my house while neighbors looked out windows and opened handsome front doors to collect their newspapers. Three cruisers were parked in front, Marino's unmarked Ford in the brick drive. Windsor Farms woke up, went to work and watched me squired away by cops. Perfect lawns were white with frost and the sky was almost blue.

When I arrived at the John Marshall Courthouse, it was as I had done so many times in the past. But the deputy at the scanner did not understand why I was here.

'Good morning, Dr. Scarpetta,' he said with a broad smile. 'How about that snow? Don't it just make you feel like you're living in the middle of a Hallmark card? And Captain, a nice day to you, sir,' he said to Marino.

I set off the X-ray machine. A female deputy appeared to search me while the deputy who enjoyed snow went through my bag. Marino and I walked downstairs to an orange-carpeted room filled with rows of sparsely populated orange chairs. We sat in the back, where we listened to people dozing, crackling paper, coughing and blowing their noses. A man in a leather jacket with shirt-tail hanging out prowled for magazines while a man in cashmere read a novel. Next door a vacuum cleaner roared. It butted into the orange room's door and quit.

Including Marino, I had three uniformed officers around me in this deadly dull room. Then at eight-fifty a.m. the jury officer walked in late and went to a podium to orient us.

'I have two changes,' she said, looking directly at me. 'The sheriff on the videotape you're about to see is no longer the sheriff.'

Marino whispered in my ear, 'That's because he's no longer alive.'.

'And,' the jury officer went on, 'the tape will tell you the fee for jury duty is thirty dollars, but it's still twenty dollars.'

'Nuts.' Marino was in my ear again. 'Do you need a loan?'

We watched the video and I learned much about my important civic duty and its privileges. I watched Sheriff Brown on tape as he thanked me again for performing this important service. He told me I had been called up to decide the fate of another person and then showed the computer he had used to select me.

'Names called are then drawn from a jury ballot box,' he recited with a smile. 'Our system of justice depends on our careful consideration of the evidence. Our system depends on us.'

He gave a phone number I could call and reminded all of us that coffee was twenty-five cents a cup and no change was available.

After the video, the jury officer, a handsome black woman, came over to me.

'Are you police?' she whispered.

'No,' I said, explaining who I was as she looked at Marino and the other two officers.

'We need to excuse you now,' she whispered. 'You shouldn't be here. You should have called and told us. I don't know why you're here at all.'

The other draftees were staring. They had been, staring since we walked in, and the reason crystallized. They were ignorant of the judicial system, and I was surrounded by police. Now the jury officer was over here, too. I was the defendant. They probably did not know that defendants don't read magazines in the same room with the jury pool.

By lunchtime I was gone and wondering if I would ever be allowed to serve on a jury even once in my life. Marino let me out at the front door of my building and I went into my office. I called New York again and Dr. Horowitz got on the phone.

'She was buried yesterday,' he said of Jane.

I felt a great sadness. 'I thought you usually wait a little longer than that,' I said.

'Ten days. It's been about that, Kay. You know the problem we have with storage space.'

'We can identify her with DNA,' I said.

'Why not dental records?'

I explained the problem.

'That's a real shame.' Dr. Horowitz paused and was reluctant when he spoke next. 'I'm very sorry to tell you that we've had a terrible snafu here.' He paused again. 'Frankly, I wish we hadn't buried her. But we have.'

'What happened?'

'No one seems to know. We saved a blood sample on filter paper for DNA purposes, just like we typically do. And of course we kept a stock jar with sections of all major organs, et cetera. The blood sample seems to have been misplaced, and it appears the stock jar was accidentally thrown out.'

'That can't have happened,' I said.

Dr. Horowitz was quiet.

'What about tissue in paraffin blocks for histology?' I then asked, for fixed tissue could also be tested for DNA, if all else failed.

'We don't take tissue for micros when the cause of death is clear,' he said.

I did not know what to say. Either Dr. Horowitz ran a frighteningly inept office, or these mistakes were not mistakes. I had always believed the chief was an impeccably scrupulous man. Maybe I had been wrong. I knew how it was in New York City. The politicians could not stay out of the morgue.

'She needs to be brought back up,' I said to him. 'I see no other way. Was she embalmed?'

'We rarely embalm bodies destined for Hart Island,' he said of the island in the East River where Potter's Field was located. 'Her identification number needs to be located and then she'll be dug up and brought back by ferry. We can do that. That's all we can do, really. It might take a few days.'

'Dr. Horowitz?' I carefully said. 'What is going on here?'

His voice was steady but disappointed when he answered, 'I have no earthly idea.'

I sat at my desk for a while, trying to figure out what to do. The more I thought, the less sense anything made. Why would the army care if Jane was identified? If she was General Gault's niece and the army knew she was dead, one would think they would want her identified and buried in a proper grave.

'Dr. Scarpetta.' Rose was in the doorway adjoining her office to mine. 'It's Brent from the Amex.'

She transferred the call.

'I've got another charge,' Brent said.

'Okay.' I tensed.

'Yesterday. A place called Fino in New York. I checked it out. It's on East Thirty-sixth Street. The amount is $104.13.'

Fino had wonderful northern Italian food. My ancestors were from northern Italy, and Gault had posed as a northern Italian named Benelli. I tried Wesley, but he was not in. Then I tried Lucy, and she was not at ERF, nor was she in her room. Marino was the only person I could tell that Gault was in New York again.

'He's just playing more games,' Marino said in disgust. 'He knows you're monitoring his charges, Doc. He's not doing anything he doesn't want you to know about.'

'I realize that.'

'We're not going to catch him through American Express. You ought to just cancel your card.'

But I couldn't. My card was like the modem Lucy knew was under the floor. Both were tenuous lines leading to Gault. He was playing games, but one day he might overstep himself. He might get too reckless and high on cocaine and make a mistake.

'Doc,' Marino went on, 'you're getting too wound up with this. You need to chill out.'

Gault might want me to find him, I thought. Every time he used my card he was sending a message to me. He was telling me more about himself. I knew what he liked to eat and that he did not drink red wine. I knew about the cigarettes he smoked, the clothes he wore, and I thought of his boots.

'Are you listening to me?' Marino was asking.

We had always assumed that the jungle boots were Gault's.

'The boots belonged to his sister,' I thought out loud.

'What are you talking about?' Marino said impatiently.

'She must have gotten them from her uncle years ago, and then Gault took them from her.'

'When? He didn't do it at Cherry Hill in the snow.'

'I don't know when. It may have been shortly before she died. It could have been inside the Museum of Natural History. They basically wore the same shoe size. They could have traded boots. It could be anything. But I doubt she gave them up willingly.

For one thing, the jungle boots would be very good in snow. She would have been better off with them than the ones we found in Benny's hobo camp.'