Patricia Cornwell - Postmortem

He reigned across the street on the twenty-fourth floor of the Monroe Building. No one was above him except an occasional pigeon roosting on the roof. Most of his minions were located below on floor after floor of HHSD agencies. I'd never seen his office. I'd never been invited.

The elevator slid open onto a large lobby where his receptionist was ensconced within a U-shaped desk rising from a great field of wheat-colored carpet. She was a bosomy redhead barely out of her teens, and when she looked up from her computer and greeted me with a practiced, perky smile, I almost expected her to ask if I had reservations and needed a bellhop to manage my bags.

I told her who I was, which didn't seem to fan the smallest spark of recognition.

"I have a four o'clock appointment with the commissioner," I added.

She checked his electronic calendar and cheerily said, "Please make yourself comfortable, Mrs. Scarpetta. Dr. Amburgey will be with you shortly."

As I settled myself on a beige leather couch, I searched the sparkling glass coffee and end tables bearing magazines and arrangements of silk flowers. There wasn't an ashtray, not a single one, and at two different locations were "Thank You for Not Smoking" signs.

The minutes crept by.

The redheaded receptionist was sipping Perrier through a straw and preoccupied with her typing. At one point she thought to offer me something to drink. I smiled a "no, thank you," and her fingers flew again, keys rapidly clicked, and the computer complained with a loud beep. She sighed as if she'd just gotten grave news from her accountant.

My cigarettes were a hard lump in my pocket and I was tempted to find a ladies' room and light up.

At four-thirty her telephone buzzed. Hanging up-that cheery, vacant smile again-she announced, "You may go in, Mrs. Scarpetta."

Defrocked and decidedly out of sorts, "Mrs." Scarpetta took her at her word.

The commissioner's door opened with a soft click of its rotating brass knob and instantly on their feet were three men-only one of whom I was expecting to see. With Amburgey were Norman Tanner and Bill Boltz, and when it came Boltz's turn to offer his hand, I looked him straight in the eye until he glanced away uncomfortably.

I was hurt and a little angry. Why hadn't he told me he was going to be here? Why hadn't I heard a word from him since our paths had crossed briefly at Lori Petersen's home? Amburgey granted me a nod that seemed more a dismissal, and added "Appreciate your coming" with the enthusiasm of a bored traffic court judge.

He was a shifty-eyed little man whose last post had been in Sacramento, where he picked up enough West Coast ways to disguise his North Carolina origins; he was the son of a farmer, and not proud of the fact. He had a penchant for string ties with silver slides, which he wore almost religiously with a pin-striped suit, and on his right ring finger was a hunk of silver set with turquoise. His eyes were hazy gray, like ice, the bones of his skull sharply pronounced through his thin skin. He was almost bald.

An ivory wing chair had been pulled out from the wall and seemed to be there for me. Leather creaked, and Amburgey stationed himself behind his desk, which I had heard of but never seen. It was a huge, ornately carved masterpiece of rosewood, very old and very Chinese.

Behind his head was an expansive window affording him a vista of the city, the James River a glinting ribbon in the distance and Southside a patchwork. With a loud snap he opened a black ostrich-skin briefcase before him and produced a yellow legal pad filled with his tight, snarled scrawl. He had outlined what he was going to say. He never did anything without his cue cards.

"I'm sure you're aware of the public distress over these recent stranglings," he said to me.

"I'm very aware of it."

"Bill, Norm and I had an emergency summit meeting, so to speak, yesterday afternoon. This was apropos of several things, not the least of which was what was in the Saturday evening and Sunday morning papers, Dr. Scarpetta. As you may know, because of this fourth tragic death, the murder of the young surgeon, the news has gone out over the wire."

I didn't know. But I wasn't surprised.

"No doubt you've been getting inquiries," Amburgey blandly went on. "We've got to nip this in the bud or we're going to have sheer pandemonium on our hands. That's one of the things the three of us have been discussing."

"If you can nip the murders in the bud," I said just as blandly, "you'll deserve a Nobel Prize."

"Naturally, that's our top priority," said Boltz, who had unbuttoned his dark suit jacket and was leaning back in his chair. "We've got the cops working overtime on them, Kay. But we're all in agreement there's one thing we must control for the time being-these leaks to the press. The news stories are scaring the hell out of the public and letting the killer know everything we're up to."

"I couldn't agree more."

My defenses were going up like a drawbridge, and I instantly regretted what I said next: "You can rest assured I have issued no statements from my office other than the obligatory information of cause and manner."

I'd answered a charge not yet made, and my legal instincts were bridling at my foolishness. If I were here to be accused of indiscretion, I should have forced them-forced Amburgey, anyway-to introduce such an outrageous subject. Instead, I'd sent up the flare I was. on the run and it gave them justification to pursue.

"Well, now," Amburgey commented, his pale, unfriendly eyes resting briefly on me, "you've just laid something on the table I think we need to examine closely."

"I haven't laid anything on the table," I unemphatically replied. "I'm just stating a fact, for the record."

With a light knock, the redheaded receptionist came in with coffee, and the room abruptly froze into a mute tableau. The heavy silence seemed completely lost on her as she went to considerable lengths to make sure we had everything we needed, her attention hovering about Boltz like a mist. He may not have been the best Commonwealth's attorney the city had ever known, but he was by far the best looking-one of those rare blond men to whom the passing years were generous. He was losing neither his hair nor his physique, and the fine lines at the corners of his eyes were the only indication he was creeping close to forty.

When she was gone, Boltz said to no one in particular, "We all know the cops occasionally have a problem with kiss and tell. Norm and I have had a few words with the brass. No one seems to know exactly where the leaks are coming from."

I restrained myself. What did they expect? One of the majors is in tight with Abby Turnbull or whoever and this guy's going to confess, "Yeah, sorry about that. I squawked"? Amburgey flipped a page in his legal pad. "So far a leak cited as 'a medical source' has been quoted seventeen times in the papers since the first murder, Dr. Scarpetta. This makes me a little uneasy. Clearly, the most sensational details, such as the ligatures, the evidence of sexual assault, how the killer got in, where the bodies were found, and the fact DNA testing is in the works have been attributed to this medical source."

He glanced up at me. "Am I to assume the details are accurate?"

"Not entirely. There were a few minor discrepancies."

"Such as?"

I didn't want to tell him. I didn't want to talk about these cases at all with him. But he had the right to the furniture inside my office if he wanted it. I reported to him. He reported to no one but the governor.

"For example," I replied, "in the first case, the news reported there was a tan cloth belt tied around Brenda Steppe's neck. The ligature was actually a pair of pantyhose."

Amburgey was writing this down. "What else?"

"In Cecile Tyler's case, it was reported her face was bleeding, that the bedspread was covered with blood. An exaggeration, at best. She had no lacerations, no injuries of this nature. There was a little bloody fluid coming out of her nose and mouth. A postmortem artifact."