Patricia Cornwell - Cause Of Death

Maybe Lucy'?"

"I seriously doubt she would say she was me. Was this person who called a woman'?"

He hesitated. "Good question. But you probably should ask Lucy, just to make sure she didn't call."

Firefighters were emerging from the building, and I knew that soon we would be allowed to return to our offices. We Would spend the rest of the day checking everything, speculating and complaining as we hoped that no more cases came in.

"The arm-no's the thing that's really eating at me," Marino then said.

"Frost should be back in his lab within the hour," I said, but Marino did not seem to care.

"I'll call him. I'm not going up there in all this mess."

I could tell he did not want to leave me and his mind was on more than this case, "Something's troubling you," I said.

"Yeah, Doc. Something always is."

"What this time?"

He got out his pack of Marlboros again, and I thought of my mother, whose constant companion now was an oxygen tank, because she once had been as bad as him.

"Don't look at me like that," he warned as he fished for his lighter again.

"I don't want you to kill yourself. And today you seem to be really trying."

"We're all going to die."

"Attention," blared a fire truck's P.A. system. "This is the Richmond Fire Department. The emergency has ended.

You may reenter the building," sounded the mechanical broadcast with its jarring repetitive beeps and monotonous tones. "Attention… "The emergency has ended. You may reenter the building.

"Mc." Marino went on, unmindful of the commotion, "I want to croak while I'm drinking beet-, eating nachos with chili and sour cream, sniokino, downing shots of lack Black and watching the game."

"You may as well have sex while you're at it." I did not smile, for I found nothing amusim' about his health risks.

"Doris cured me of sex." Marino was serious, too, as He referred to the woman he'd been married to most of his life.

"When did you hear from her last" I asked, as I realized she was probably the explanation for his mood.

The buildings and homes were thick with shadows, and anyone could wait in them and not be seen.

I looked across at my new car, and the small yard beyond it where the dog lay in wait. He was silent just now, and I walked north on the sidewalk for several yards to see what he might do. But he did not seem interested until I neared his yard. Then I heard the low, evil growling that raised the hair on the back of my neck. By the time I was unlocking my car door, he was on his hind legs, barking and shaking the fence.

"You're just guarding your turf, aren't you, boy?" I said. "I wish you could tell me what you saw last night."

I looked at the small house as an upstairs window suddenly slid up.

"Bozo, shut up!" yelled a fat man with tousled hair.

"Shut up, you stupid mutt!" The window slammed shut.

"All right, Bozo," I said to the dog who was not really called Outlaw, unfortunately for him. "I'm leaving you alone now." I looked around one last time and got into my car.

The drive from Daigo's restaurant to the restored area on Franklin where police had found my former car took less than three minutes if one were driving the posted speed. I turned around at the hill leading to Sugar Bottom, for to drive down there, especially in a Mercedes, was out of the question. That thought led to another.

I wondered why the assailant would have chosen to remain on foot in a restored area with a Neighborhood Watch program as widely publicized as the one here. Church Hill published its own newsletter, and residents looked out their windows and did not hesitate to call the cops, especially after shots had been tired. It seemed it might have been safer to have casually returned to my car and driven a safe distance away.

Yet the killer did not do this, and I wondered if he knew this area's landmarks but not the culture because he really was not from here. I wondered if he had not taken my car because his own was parked nearby and mine was of no interest. He didn't need it for money or to get away. That theory made sense if Danny had been followed instead of happened upon. While he was eating dinner, his assailant could have parked, then returned to the cafe on foot and waited in the dark near the Mercedes while the dog barked.

I was passing my building on Franklin when my pager vibrated against my side. I slipped it off and turned on its light so I could see. I had neither radio nor phone yet, and made a quick decision to turn into the OCME back parking lot. Letting myself in through a side door, I entered our security code, walked into the morgue and took the elevator upstairs. Traces of the day's false alarm had vanished, but Rose's death certificates suspended in air were an eerie display. Sitting behind my desk, I returned Marino's page.

"Where the hell are you?" he said right off.

"The office," I said, staring up at the clock.

"Well, I think that's the last place you ought to be right now. And I bet you're alone. You eaten yet?"

"What do you mean, this is the last place I should be right now?"

"Let's meet and I'll explain."

We agreed to go to the Linden Row Inn, which was downtown and private. I took my time because Marino lived on the other side of the river, but he was quick. When I arrived, he was sitting at a table before the fire in the parlor. Off duty, he was drinking a beer. The bartender was a quaint older man in a black bow tie, and he was carrying in a big bucket of ice while Pachelbel played.

"What is it?" I said to Marino as I sat. "What's happened now?"

He was dressed in a black golf shirt, and his belly strained against the knitted fabric and flowed roundly over the waistband of his jeans. The ashtray was already littered with cigarette butts, and I suspected the beer he was drinking wasn't his first or last.

"Would you like to hear the story of your false alarm this afternoon, or has someone gotten to you first?" He lifted the mug to his lips.

"No one has gotten to me about much of anything. Although I've heard a rumor about some radioactivity scare," I said as the bartender appeared with fruit and cheese. "Pellegrino with lemon, please," I ordered.

"Apparently, it's more than a rumor," Marino said.

"What?" I gave him a frown. "And why would you know more about what's going on inside my building than I do?"

"Because this radioactive situation has to do with evidence in a city homicide case." He took another swallow of beer. "Danny Webster's homicide, to be exact."

He allowed me a moment to grasp what he had just said, but my limits were unwilling to stretch.

"Are you implying that Danny's body was radioactive?" I asked as if he were crazy.

"No. But the debris we vacuumed from the inside of your car apparently is. And I'm telling you, the guys that did the processing are scared shitless, and I'm not happy about it either because I poked around inside your ride, too.

That's one thing I got a big damn problem with like some people do with spiders and snakes. It's like these guys who got exposed to Agent Orange in Nam, and now they're dying of cancer."

The expression on my face now was incredulous.

"You're talking about the front seat passenger's side of my black Mercedes?"

Yeah, and if I were you, I wouldn't drive it anymore.

How do you know that shit won't get to you over a long time?"

"I won't be driving that car anymore," I said. "Don't worry. But who told you the vacuumings were radioactive?"

"The lady who runs that SEM thing."

"The scanning electron microscope."

"Yeah. It picked up uranium, which set the Geiger counter off. Which I'm told has never happened before."

"I'm sure it hasn't."

"So next we have a panic on the part of security, which are right down the hall, as you know," he went on. "And this one guard makes the executive decision to evacuate the building. Only problem is, he forgets that when he breaks the glass on the little red box and yanks the handle, he's also going to set off the deluge system."