Patricia Cornwell - Book of the Dead

“Mr. Meddick, Investigator Marino’s on his way to the morgue. I just called him.”

“Second of all, I’ve never delivered a body to you. So I had no idea where your office is until I looked it up.”

“I thought you said the coroner told you.”

“That’s not what he told me.”

“You really need to leave. I can’t have a hearse behind my house.”

“See, this Oriental lady’s family wants us to handle the funeral, so I told the coroner it may as well be me for transport. Anyway, I looked up your address.”

“Looked it up? Looked it up where? And why didn’t you call my death investigator?”

“I did, and he never bothered to call me back so I had to look up your location, like I said.” Lucious snaps the rubber band. “On the Internet. Listed with the Chamber of Commerce.” He cracks the sliver of Life Saver between his back teeth.

“This is an unlisted address and has never been on the Internet, nor has it ever been confused with my office — the morgue — and I’ve been here two years. You’re the first person to do this.”

“Now, don’t get huffy with me. I can’t help what’s on the Internet.” He snaps the rubber band. “But then if I’d been called earlier in the week when that little boy was found, I would have delivered his body and now we wouldn’t have this problem. You walked right past me at the scene and ignored me, and had you and me worked that one together, sure as shooting you would have given me the right address.” He snaps the rubber band, pissed off she’s not more respectful.

“Why were you at that scene if the coroner didn’t ask you to transport the body?” She’s getting very demanding, staring at him now like he’s a troublemaker.

“My motto is ‘Just Show Up.’ You know, like Nike’s ‘Just Do It.’ Well, mine’s ‘Just Show Up.’ Get it? Sometimes when you’re the first one to show up, that’s all it takes.”

He snaps the rubber band, and she stares pointedly at him doing it, then looks at the police scanner inside his hearse. He runs his tongue over the transparent plastic retainer he wears on his teeth to stop him from biting his nails. Snaps the rubber band around his wrist. Snaps it hard, like a whip, and it hurts like hell.

“Head to the morgue now, please.” She looks up at the neighbor looking down at them. “I’ll make sure Investigator Marino meets you.” She steps away from the hearse, suddenly noticing something at the back of it. She stoops to take a closer look. “The day just gets better,” she says, shaking her head.

He climbs out and can’t believe it. “Shit!” he exclaims. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Coastal Forensic Pathology Associates, on the fringes of the College of Charleston.

The two-story brick building antedates the Civil War, and it slants a little, having shifted on its foundation during the earthquake of 1886. Or this is what the Realtor told Scarpetta when she bought the place for reasons Pete Marino still doesn’t understand.

There were nicer buildings, brand-new ones she could have afforded. But for some reason, she, Lucy, and Rose decided on a place that demanded more work than Marino had in mind when he took the job here. For months, they stripped away layers of paint and varnish, knocked out walls, replaced windows and slate tiles on the roof. They scavenged for salvage, most of it from funeral homes, hospitals, and restaurants, eventually ending up with a more-than-adequate morgue that includes a special ventilation system, chemical hoods, a backup generator, a walk-in cooler and a walk-in freezer, a decomposition room, surgical carts, gurneys. The walls and floor are sealed with epoxy paint that can be hosed down, and Lucy installed a wireless security and computer system as mysterious to Marino as the da Vinci Code.

“I mean, who the hell would want to break into this joint?” he says to Shandy Snook as he punches in a code that deactivates the alarm for the door leading from the bay into the morgue.

“I bet a lot of people would,” she says. “Let’s roam around.”

“Nope. Not down here.” He steers her to another alarmed door.

“I want to see a dead body or two.”

“Nope.”

“What you afraid of? Amazing how scared you are of her,” Shandy says, one creaking step at a time. “It’s like you’re her slave.”

Shandy says that constantly, and each time it angers Marino more. “If I was afraid of her, I wouldn’t let you in here, now would I, no matter how much you’ve been driving me crazy about it. There’s cameras all the hell over the place, so why the hell would I do this if I’m scared of her?”

She looks up at a camera, smiles, and waves.

“Quit it,” he says.

“Like, who’s gonna see it? No one here but us chickens, and no reason for the Big Chief to look at the tapes, right? Otherwise, we wouldn’t be in here, right? You’re afraid of her as shit. It makes me sick, a big man like you. Only reason you let me in is because that numbnut funeral-home guy had a flat tire. And the Big Chief won’t be in for a while, and nobody’s ever going to look at the tapes.” She waves at a camera again. “You wouldn’t have the guts to give me a tour if anybody might find out and tell the Big Chief.” She smiles and waves at another camera. “I look good on camera. You ever been on TV? My daddy used to be on TV all the time, made his own commercials. I’ve been in some of them, could probably make a career of being on TV, but who wants people staring at them all the time?”

“Besides you?” He swats her ass.

The offices are on the first floor, Marino’s the classiest he’s ever had, with heart-of-pine floors, chair rails, and fancy molding. “See, back in the eighteen hundreds,” he tells Shandy as they walk in, “my office was probably the dining room.”

“Our dining room in Charlotte was ten times this big,” she says, looking around and chewing gum.

She’s never been in his office, never inside the building. Marino wouldn’t dare ask permission, and Scarpetta wouldn’t give it. But after a late decadent night with Shandy, she ripped into him again about being Scarpetta’s slave and his mood turned spiteful. Then Scarpetta called to tell him Lucious Meddick had a flat tire and would be late, and then Shandy had to rag on him about that, too, go on and on about Marino’s rushing around for nothing and he may as well give her a tour like she’s been asking him to do all week. After all, she’s his girlfriend and should at least see where he works. So he told her to follow him on her motorcycle north on Meeting Street.

“These are genuine antiques,” he brags. “From junk shops. The Doc refinished them herself. Something, huh? The first time in my life I ever sat at a desk older than me.”

Shandy settles in the leather chair behind his desk, starts opening the dovetailed drawers.

“Me and Rose have spent a lot of time wandering around, trying to figure out what’s what, and pretty much decided her office was once the master bedroom. And the biggest space, the Doc’s office, was what they called the sitting room .”

“Kinda stupid.” Shandy stares inside a desk drawer. “How can you find anything in here? Looks like you just cram shit in your drawers because you can’t be bothered filing.”

“I know exactly where everything is. Got my own filing system, stuff sorted according to drawers. Sort of like the Dewey decibel system.”

“Well, where’s your card catalogue then, big fella?”

“Up here.” He taps his shiny shaved head.

“Don’t you have any good murder cases in here? Maybe some pictures?”

“Nope.”

She gets up, readjusts her leather pants. “So the Big Chief’s got the sitting room. I want to see it.”