right? You come home from the war a hero with a hundred and eighty kills and some loser takes you out on the firing range. Sort of like Spider-Man dying from a spider bite.” It’s Hyde who’s saying this as he and the other two cops hover near the staircase at the edge of the foyer, not coming any closer to me or the stench that holds them back like a wall of foul hot air. “Doctor Scarpetta? Like I was saying? We’re making a coffee run. Anything for you?” Hyde has widely spaced yellowish eyes that remind me of a cat.
“I’m fine.” But I’m not.
I’m not even close to fine despite my demeanor as I hear more gunshots and see the firing ranges in my mind. I hear the dull clank of lead slamming into steel pop-up targets. The bright chink of ejected metal cartridge cases bouncing off concrete shooting pads and benches. I feel the southern sun heavy on my head and the sweat drying beneath my field clothes during an era when everything was the best and worst it’s ever been in my life.
“What about a bottle of water, ma’am? Or maybe a soda?” It’s the trooper talking to me between coughs, and I don’t know him but we won’t get along if he insists on calling me ma’am.
I went to Cornell, to Georgetown Law and Johns Hopkins medical school. I’m a special reservist colonel in the Air Force. I’ve testified before Senate subcommittees and have been a guest at the White House. I’m the chief medical examiner of Massachusetts and director of the crime labs among other things. I didn’t get this far in life to be called ma’am.
“Nothing for me thank you,” I reply politely.
“We should just get a couple gallons of coffee in those cartons. Then there will be plenty and it will stay hot.”
“A hell of a day for hot coffee. How ’bout iced?”
“Good idea since it’s still hot yoga in here. I can’t imagine what it was like earlier.”
“An oven. That’s what.” More dreadful coughing.
“Well I think I’ve sweated a couple quarts.”
“We should be wrapping it up pretty soon. An open-and-shut accident, right Doc? The tox will be interesting. You wait and see. She was stoned and when people are high they think they know what they’re doing but they don’t.”
“High” and “stoned” are two different psychoactive states, and I don’t believe weed is an explanation for what happened here. But I won’t give voice to what’s passing through my thoughts as the trooper and Hyde continue their ping-ponging quips and cranks. Back and forth. Back and forth monotonously, tediously. What I really want is to be left alone. To watch my phone and figure out what the hell is happening to me and who’s responsible and why. Back and forth. The cops won’t shut up.
“Since when are you such an expert, Hyde?”
“I’m just stating the facts of life.”
“Look. With Amanda Gilbert on her way here? We’d better answer everything even if there’s not a question. She probably knows all kinds of important people in high places who can cause us heartburn. For sure the media will be all over this if they don’t already know about it.”
“Wonder if she had life insurance, if Mama took out a policy on her unemployed druggie daughter.”
“Like she needs the money? You got any idea what Amanda Gilbert is worth? According to Google about two hundred million.”
“I don’t like that the air-conditioning was turned off. That’s not normal.”
“Yeah and I make my case. That’s exactly the sort of thing people do when they’re stoners. They pour orange juice on their cereal and carry snowshoes to the tennis courts.”
“What do snowshoes have to do with anything?”
“I’m just saying it’s different from being drunk.”
They talk to each other as if I’m not here, and I continue looking at the video playing on my phone. I continue waiting for something to happen.
I’m more than four minutes into it and can’t pause or save it. Every key I touch, every icon and menu is nonfunctional and the recording rolls on but nothing changes. The only movement I’ve detected so far are the subtle shifts of light from the edges of the closed slatted blinds.
It was a sunny day but there must have been clouds or the light would be steady. It’s as if the dorm room is on a dimmer switch, bright then not as bright. Clouds moving across the sun I deduce as Hyde and the trooper hover near the mahogany staircase, loudly voicing opinions, making comments and gossiping as if they think I’m obtuse or as dead as the woman on the floor.
“If she asks I don’t think we tell her.” Hyde has stayed on the subject of Amanda Gilbert’s anticipated arrival in Boston. “The air being turned off is a detail we want to keep away from her and for sure keep out of the media.”
“It’s the only thing weird about this. You know that gives me a bad feeling.”
It’s certainly not the only thing weird about this, I think but don’t verbalize.
“That’s right and it starts a shit storm of rumors and conspiracy theories that end up all over the Internet.”
“Except sometimes perps turn off the air-conditioning, turn on the heat, do whatever to make a place hot so they can speed up decomp. To disguise the correct time of death so they can create an alibi and screw up evidence, isn’t that true, Doc?” The state trooper with his Massachusetts accent addresses me directly, his r’s sounding like w’s when he’s not coughing.
“Heat escalates decomposition,” I reply without looking up. “Cold slows it down,” I add as I realize what it means that the dorm room walls in the video are eggshell white.
When Lucy first started staying at Washington Dorm the walls in her room were beige. Later they were repainted. I recalculate my timeline. The video was taken in 1996. Maybe 1997.
“Dunkin’s got pretty good breakfast sandwiches. Would you like something to eat, ma’am?” The trooper in his blue and gray is talking to me again, sixtyish with a belly and he doesn’t look well, his face wasted with dark circles under his eyes.
I have no idea what he’s doing at the scene, what useful purpose he might possibly serve. Besides that he sounds quite ill. But it wasn’t up to me who to invite, and I glance down at Chanel Gilbert’s battered dead face, at her bloody nude body with its greenish discoloration and bloating in the abdominal area from bacteria and gases proliferating in her gut due to putrefaction.
The housekeeper told the police she didn’t touch the body or even get close, and I don’t doubt that Chanel Gilbert is exactly as she was found, her black silk bathrobe open, her breasts and genitals exposed. I’ve long since lost the impulse to cover a dead person’s nudity unless the scene is in a public place. I won’t change anything about the position of the body until I’m certain everyone is done with photographs and it’s time to pouch it and transport it to the CFC. That will be soon enough. Very soon as a matter of fact.
I’m
