Patricia Cornwell - Postmortem

There was one feature of this bit of automated enlightenment that had always made me nervous. Inevitably there were leftover labels because one didn't, as a rule, collect every possible sample, especially when labs were overworked and understaffed. I wasn't going to send fingernail clippings to trace evidence, for example, if the decedent was an eighty year-old man who died of a myocardial infarct while cutting his grass.

What to do with leftover labels? You certainly didn't want to leave them lying around where they might find their way onto the wrong test tubes. Most of the pathologists tore them up. It was my habit to file them with the person's case folder. It was a quick way to know what was tested for, what wasn't, and how many tubes of this or that I'd actually sent upstairs.

Wingo had trotted across the suite and was running a finger down the pages of the morgue log. I could feel Marino staring across the suite at me as he waited to collect the bullets from his homicide case. He wandered my way just as Wingo got back.

"We had six cases that day," Wingo reminded me as if Marino were not there. "Saturday. I remember. There were a lot of labels on the counter over there. Maybe one of them-"

"No," I said loudly. "I don't see how. I didn't leave any leftover labels from her case lying around. They were with my paperwork, clipped to my clipboard-"

"Shit," Marino said in surprise. He was looking over my shoulder. "That what I think it is?"

Frantically pulling off my gloves, I took the folder from Wingo and slit the tape with a thumbnail. Inside were four slides, three of which were definitely smeared with something, but they were not hand-marked with the standard "O," "A," or "V," designating which samples they were. They weren't marked at all, except by the computer label on the outside of the folder.

"So, maybe you labeled this thinking you were going to use it, changed your mind or something?" Wingo suggested.

I didn't reply right away. I couldn't remember! "When was the last time you went inside the refrigerator?"

I asked him.

A shrug. "Last week, maybe a week ago Monday when I got out the stuff so the doctors could take it up. I wasn't in this past Monday. This is the first time I've looked in the fridge this week."

I slowly recalled that Wingo had taken comp time on Monday. I myself had gotten Lori Petersen's evidence out of the refrigerator before making evidence rounds. Was it possible I overlooked this cardboard folder? Was it possible I was so fatigued, so distracted, I got her evidence mixed up with evidence from one of the five other cases we had that day? If so, which cardboard folder of slides was really from her case-the one I receipted upstairs, or this one? I couldn't believe this was happening. I was always so careful! I rarely wore my scrubs out of the morgue. Almost never. Not even when there was a fire drill. Several minutes later, lab workers glanced curiously at me as I walked briskly down the third-floor hall in my blood-spattered greens. Betty was inside her cramped office taking a coffee break. She took one look at me and her eyes froze.

"We've got a problem," I said right off.

She stared at the cardboard folder, at the label on it.

"Wingo was cleaning out the evidence refrigerator. He found it a few minutes ago."

"Oh, God," was all she said.

As I followed her into the serology lab, I was explaining I had no recollection of labeling two folders from PERKS in Lori's case. I was clueless.

Working her hands into a pair of gloves, she reached for bottles inside a cabinet as she attempted to reassure me. "I think the ones you sent me, Kay, have to be right. The slides were consistent with the swabs, with everything else you receipted. Everything came up as nonsecreter, was consistent. This must be an extra you don't remember taking."

Another tremor of doubt. I had taken only one folder of slides, or had I? Could I swear to it? Last Saturday seemed a blur. I couldn't retrace my every step with certainty.

"No swabs with this, I take it?" she asked.

"None," I replied. "Just this folder of slides. That's all Wingo found."

"Hmm." She was thinking. "Let's see what we have here."

She placed each slide under the phase microscope, and after a long silence, said, "We've got big squamous cells, meaning these could be oral or vaginal, but not anal. And "she looked up - "I'm not seeing any sperm."

"Lord," I groaned.

"We'll try again," she answered.

Tearing open a packet of sterilized swabs, she moistened them with water and began gently rolling one at a time over a portion of each smear on each slide-three in all. Next she smeared the swabs over small circles of white filter paper.

Getting out the medicine droppers, she began deftly dripping naphthyl acid phosphate over the filter paper. Then came the fast-blue B salt. We stared, waiting for the first hint of purple.

The smears didn't react. They sat there in tiny wet stains tormenting me. I continued to stare beyond the brief period of time the smears needed to react as if I could somehow will them into testing positive for seminal fluid. I wanted to believe this was an extra file of slides. I wanted to believe I had taken two PERKs in Lori's case and just didn't remember. I wanted to believe anything except what was becoming patently clear.

The slides Wingo had found were not from Lori's case. They couldn't be.

Betty's impassive face told me she was worried, too, and doing her best not to let it show.

I shook my head.

She was forced to conclude, "Then it doesn't seem likely these are from Lori's case."

A pause. "I'll do what I can to group them, of course. See if there are any Barr bodies present, that sort of thing."

"Please."

I took a deep breath.

She went on, trying to make me feel better, "The fluids I separated out from the killer's fluids are consistent with Lori's blood samples. I don't think you have a worry. There's no doubt in my mind about the first file sent in…"

"The question has been raised," I said, miserable.

Lawyers would love it. Good God, would they love it. They'd have a jury doubting any of the samples were Lori's, including the tubes of blood. They'd have a jury wondering if the samples sent to New York for DNA testing were the right ones. Who was to say that they weren't from some other dead body? My voice was on the verge of trembling when I told her, "We had six cases that day, Betty. Three of them merited PERKs, were potential sexual assaults."

"All female?"

"Yes," I muttered. "All of them women."

What Bill said Wednesday night when he was stressed, his tongue lubricated by liquor, was branded in my mind. What would happen to these cases should my credibility be compromised? Not only would Lori's case come into question, all of them would. I was cornered, absolutely and with no way out. I couldn't pretend this file didn't exist. It did exist and what it meant was I couldn't honestly swear in court the chain of evidence was intact.

There was no second chance. I couldn't collect the samples again, start from scratch. Lori's samples had already been handdelivered to the New York lab. Her embalmed body had been buried Tuesday. An exhumation, forget it. It wouldn't be profitable. It would be, however, a sensational event sparking enormous public curiosity. Everyone would want to know why.

Betty and I both glanced toward the door at the same time as Marino casually walked in.

"I just had a freaky little thought, Doc."

He paused, his face hard as his eyes wandered to the slides and filter paper on the countertop.

I stared numbly at him.

"Me, I'd take this PERK here over to Vander. Maybe you left it in the fridge. Then again, maybe you didn't."

A sense of alarm fluttered through my blood before the jolt of comprehension.