Patricia Cornwell - From Potter's Field

I walked back, avoiding slushy puddles on streets and the cars that drove through them heedlessly. I got splashed once. I returned to my office, where Janet was in the library watching a teaching videotape of an autopsy while Lucy worked in the computer room. I left them alone and went down to the morgue to check on my staff.

Fielding was at the first table, working on a young woman found dead in the snow below her bedroom window. I noted the pinkness of the body and could smell alcohol in the blood. On her right arm was a cast scribbled with messages and autographs.

'How are we doing?' I asked.

'She's got a STAT alcohol of.23,' he replied, examining a section of aorta. 'So that didn't get her. I think she's going to be an exposure death.'

'What are the circumstances?' I could not help but think of Jane.

'Apparently, she was out drinking with friends and by the time they took her home around eleven p.m. it was snowing pretty hard. They let her out and didn't wait to see her in. The police think her keys fell in the snow and she was too drunk to find them.'

He dropped the section of aorta into a jar of formalin. 'So she tried to get in a window by breaking it with her cast.'

He lifted the brain out of the scale. 'But that didn't work. The window was too high up, and with one arm she couldn't have climbed in it anyway. Eventually she passed out.'

'Nice friends,' I said, walking off.

Dr. Anderson, who was new, was photographing a ninety-one-year-old woman with a hip fracture. I collected paperwork from a nearby desk and quickly reviewed the case.

'Is this an autopsy?' I asked.

'Yes,' Dr. Anderson said.

'Why?'

She stopped what she was doing and looked at me through her face shield. I could see intimidation in her eyes. 'The fracture was two weeks ago. The medical examiner in Albemarle was concerned her death could be due to complications of that accident.'

'What are the circumstances of her death?'

'She presented with pleural effusion and shortness of breath.'

'I don't see any direct relationship between that and a hip fracture,' I said.

Dr. Anderson rested her gloved hands on the edge of the steel table.

'An act of God can take you at any time,' I said. 'You can release her. She's not a medical examiner's case.'

'Dr. Scarpetta,' Fielding spoke above the whining of the Stryker saw. 'Did you know that the Transplant Council meeting is Thursday?'

'I've got jury duty.' I turned to Dr. Anderson. 'Do you have court on Thursday?'

'Well, it's been continued. They keep sending me subpoenas even though they've stipulated my testimony.'

'Ask Rose to take care of it. If you're free and we don't have a full house on Thursday, you can go with Fielding to the council meeting.'

I checked carts and cupboards, wondering if any other boxes of gloves were gone. But it seemed Gault had taken only those that were in the van. I wondered what else he might find in my office, and my thoughts darkened.

I went directly to my office without speaking to anyone I passed and opened a cabinet door beneath my microscope. In back I had tucked a very fine set of dissecting knives Lucy had given to me for Christmas. German made, they were stainless steel with smooth light handles. They were expensive and incredibly sharp. I moved aside cardboard files of slides, journals, microscope lightbulbs and batteries and reams of printer paper. The knives were gone.

Rose was on the phone in her office adjoining mine, and I walked in and stood by her desk.

'But you've already stipulated her testimony,' she was saying. 'If you've stipulated her testimony, then you obviously don't need to subpoena her to appear so she can give you her testimony…'

She looked at me and rolled her eyes. Rose was getting on in years, but she was ever vigilant and forceful. Snow or shine she was always here, the headmistress of Les Miserables.

'Yes, yes. Now we're getting somewhere.' She scribbled something on a message pad. 'I can promise you Dr. Anderson will be very grateful. Of course. Good day.'

My secretary hung up and looked at me. 'You're gone entirely too much.'

'Tell me about it,' I said.

'You'd better watch out. One of these days you may find me with someone else.'

I was too worn out to joke. 'I wouldn't blame you,' I said.

She regarded me like a shrewd mother who knew I had been drinking or making out or sneaking cigarettes. 'What is it, Dr. Scarpetta?' she said.

'Have you seen my dissecting knives?'

She did not know what I was talking about.

'The ones Lucy gave me. A set of three in a hard plastic box. Three different sizes.'

Recognition registered on her face. 'Oh yes. I remember now. I thought you kept them in your cabinet.'

'They're not there.'

'Shoot. Not the cleaning crew, I hope. When was the last time you saw them?'

'Probably right after Lucy gave them to me, which was actually before Christmas because she didn't want to take them down to Miami. I showed the set to you, remember? And then I put them in my cabinet because I didn't want to keep them downstairs.'

Rose was grim. 'I know what you must be thinking. Uh.' She shivered. 'What a gruesome thought.'

I pulled up a chair and sat. 'The thought of him doing something like that with my-'

'You can't think about it,' she interrupted me. 'You have no control over what he does.'

I stared off.

'I'm worried about Jennifer,' my secretary then said.

Jennifer was one of the clerks in the front office. Her major responsibility was sorting photographs, answering the phones, and entering cases into our database.

'She's traumatized.'

'By what's just happened,' I assumed.

Rose nodded. 'She's been in the bathroom crying quite a lot today. Needless to say, what happened is awful and there are many tales circulating. But she's so much more upset than anyone else. I've tried to talk to her. I'm afraid she's going to quit.' She pointed the mouse at the WordPerfect icon and clicked a button. 'I'll print out the autopsy protocols for your review.'

'You've already typed both of them?'

'I came in early this morning. I've got four-wheel drive.'

'I'll talk to Jennifer,' I said.

I walked down the corridor and glanced into the computer room. Lucy was mesmerized by the monitor, and I did not bother her. Up front, Tamara was answering one line while two others rang and someone else was unhappily flashing on hold. Cleta made photocopies while Jo entered death certificates at a workstation.

I walked back down the hall and pushed open the door to the ladies' room. Jennifer was at one of the sinks, splashing cold water on her face.

'Oh!' she exclaimed when she saw me in the mirror. 'Hello, Dr. Scarpetta,' she said, unnerved and embarrassed.

She was a homely young woman who would forever struggle with calories and the clothes that might hide them. Her eyes were puffy and she had protruding teeth and flyaway hair. She wore too much makeup even at times like this when her appearance should not matter.

'Please sit down,' I said kindly, motioning to a red plastic chair near lockers.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I know I've not done right today.'

I pulled up another chair and sat so I would not tower over her.

'You're upset,' I said.

She bit her bottom lip to stop it from quivering as her eyes filled with tears.

'What can I do to help you?' I asked.

She shook her head and began to sob.

'I can't stop,' she said. 'I can't stop crying. And if someone even scrapes their chair across the floor I jump.' She wiped tears with a paper towel, hands shaking. 'I feel like I'm going crazy.'

'When did this all start?'

She blew her nose. 'Yesterday. After the sheriff and the policeman were found. I heard about the one downstairs. They said even his boots was on fire.'