Patricia Cornwell - Point of Origin

It was as if Marino had been transfused with the wrong blood type. No matter how well his meaning or brilliant his work, he was in terrible conflict with his environment. And slowly it was killing him.

'Just do me one favor,' I said with my hand on the door.

He wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and got out his cigarettes.

'Don't encourage Lucy to jump to conclusions,' I said. 'You know as well as I do that the problem is local law enforcement, local politics. Marino, I don't believe we've even come close to what this is all about, so let's not crucify anyone just yet.'

'I'm amazed,' he said. 'After all that son of a bitch did to run you out of office. And now suddenly he's this saint?'

'I didn't say he was a saint. Frankly, I don't know any saints.'

'Sparkes-the-ladies' man,' Marino went on. 'If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if you were getting sweet on him.'

'I won't dignify that with a response.'

I walked out onto the porch, halfway tempted to slam the door in his face.

'Yeah. Same thing everyone says when they're guilty.'

He stepped out after me.

'Don't think I don't know it when you and Wesley aren't getting along…'

I turned to face him and pointed my finger like a gun.

'Not one more word,' I warned him. 'You stay out of my business, and don't you dare question my professionalism, Marino. You know better than that, goddamn it.'

I went down the front steps and got inside my car. I backed out slowly and with deliberate skill. I did not look at him as I drove off.

MONDAY MORNING WAS carried in on a storm that thrashed the city with violent winds and pelting rains. I drove to work with windshield wipers going fast and air conditioning on to defog the glass. When I opened my window to toss a token into the toll bin, my suit sleeve got drenched, and then of all days for this to happen, two funeral homes had parked inside the bay, and I had to leave my car outside. The fifteen seconds it took me to dash through the parking lot and unlock the back door of my building concluded my punishment. I was soaked. Water dripped from my hair and my shoes squished as I walked through the bay.

I checked the log in the morning office to see what had come in during the night. An infant had died in his parents' bed. An elderly woman appeared to be a suicidal overdose, and, of course, there was a drug-related shooting from one of the housing projects on the fringes of what had become a more civilized and healthy downtown. In the last several years, the city had been ranked as one of the most violent in the United States, with as many as one hundred and sixty homicides in one year for a population of less than a quarter of a million people.

Police were blamed. Even I was if the statistics compiled by my office didn't suit the politicians or if convictions were slow to come in court. The irrationality of it all never ceased to appall me, for it did not seem to occur to those in power that there is such a thing as preventive medicine, and it is, after all, the only way to halt a lethal disease. It truly is better to vaccinate against polio, for example, than to deal with it after the fact. I closed the log and walked out of the office, my shoes carrying me wetly along the empty corridor.

I turned into the locker room because I was already getting chilled. I hurried out of my sticky suit and blouse and struggled into scrubs, which were always more unwilling the more I rushed. I put on my lab coat, and dried my hair with a towel, running my fingers through it to push it out of my way. The face staring back at me in the mirror looked anxious and tired. I had been neither eating nor sleeping well, and was less disciplined with coffee and alcohol. All of it showed around my eyes. A good deal of it was due to my underlying helpless anger and fear brought about by Carrie. We had no idea where she was, but in my mind she was everywhere.

I went into the break room, where Fielding, who avoided caffeine, was making herb tea. His healthy obsessions did not make me feel any better. I had not exercised in over a week.

'Good morning, Dr Scarpetta,' he said cheerfully.

'Let's hope so,' I replied, reaching for the coffeepot. 'Looks like our caseload is fairly light so far. I'm leaving it up to you, and you can run staff conference. I've got a lot to do.'

Fielding was crisp and fresh in a yellow shirt with French cuffs, and vivid tie and creased black slacks. He was cleanly shaven and smelled good. Even his shoes were shined, because unlike me, he never let life's circumstances interfere with how he took care of himself.

'I don't see how you do it,' I said, looking him up and down. 'Jack, don't you ever suffer from normal things, like depression, stress, cravings for chocolate, cigarettes, Scotch?'

'I tend to overcondition when I get whacked out,' he said, sipping his tea and eyeing me through steam. 'That's when I get injured.'

He thought for a moment.

'I guess the worst thing I do, now that you have me thinking about it, is I shut out my wife and kids. Find excuses not to be home. I'm an insensitive bastard and they hate me for a while. So yes, I'm self destructive, too. But I promise,' he said to me, 'if you would just find time to fast-walk, ride a bike, do a few push-ups, maybe crunches, I swear you'd be amazed.'

He walked off, adding, 'The body's natural morphines, right?'

'Thanks,' I called after him, sorry I asked.

I had barely settled behind my desk when Rose appeared, her hair pinned up, fit for a CEO in her smart, navy blue suit.

'I didn't know you were here,' she said, setting dictated protocols on top of a stack. 'ATF just called. McGovern.'

'Yes?' I asked with interest. 'Do you know about what?'

'She said she was in D.C. over the weekend and needs to see you.'

'When and about what?'

I began signing letters.

'She should be here soon,' Rose said.

I glanced up in surprise.

'She called from her car and told me to let you know that she was almost to Kings Dominion and should be here in twenty or thirty minutes,' Rose went on.

'Then it must be important,' I muttered, opening a cardboard file of slides.

I swung around and removed the plastic cover from my microscope and turned on the illuminator.

'Don't feel you have to drop everything,' said the ever protective Rose. 'It's not as if she made an appointment or even asked if you could fit her in.'

I set a slide on the stage and peered through the eyepiece lens at a tissue section of pancreas, at pink and shrunken cells that looked hyalinized, or scarred.

'His tox came back as zip,' I said to Rose as I put another slide on the stage. 'Except for acetone,' I added. 'The byproduct of inadequate metabolism of glucose. And kidneys show hyperosmolar vacuolization of the proximal convoluted tubular lining cells. Meaning, instead of cuboidal and pink, they're clear, bulging and enlarged.'

'Sonny Quinn again,' Rose said dismally.

'Plus we've got a clinical history of fruity-smelling breath, weight loss, thirst, frequent urination. Nothing that insulin wouldn't have cured. Not that I don't believe in prayer, contrary to what the family has told reporters.'

Sonny Quinn was the eleven-year-old son of Christian Science parents. He had died eight weeks ago, and although there had never been any question as to his cause of death, at least not in my mind, I had finalized nothing until further studies and tests had been completed. In short, the boy had died because he had not received proper medical treatment. His parents had violently protested the autopsy. They had gone on television and accused me of religious persecution and of mutilating their child's body.

Rose had endured my feelings about this many times by now, and she asked, 'Do you want to call them?'