Patricia Cornwell - Postmortem

It was coming to me. I dully asked, "What night?"

She looked confused, as if she couldn't remember. "Wednesday," she said. "Wednesday night."

"You drove to my house late that night and then quickly drove off? Why?"

She stammered, "You… you had company."

Bill. I remembered we stood in the glare of the front porch light. We were in plain view and his car was parked in my drive. It was her. Abby was the one who drove up that night, and she saw me with Bill, but this didn't explain her reaction. Why did she panic? It seemed a frightened visceral reflex when she extinguished her headlights and slammed the car into reverse.

She was saying, "These investigations. I've heard things. Rumors. Cops can't talk to you. Nobody's supposed to talk to you. Something's screwed up and that's why all calls are being referred to Amburgey. I had to ask you! And now they're saying you screwed up the serology in the surgeon… Lori Petersen's case. That the entire investigation's screwed up because of your office and if it wasn't for that the cops might have caught the killer by now…"

She was angry and uncertain, staring wildly at me. "I have to know if it's true. I have to know! I have to know what's going to happen to my sister!"

How did she know about the mislabeled PERK? Surely Betty wouldn't tell her. But Betty had concluded her serology tests on the slides, and copies - all copies of all lab reports - were being sent straight to Amburgey. Did he tell Abby? Did someone in his office tell her? Did he tell Tanner? Did he tell Bill?

"Where did you hear this?"

"I hear a lot of things." Her voice trembled.

I looked at her miserable face, at her body drawn in by grief, by horror. "Abby," I said very calmly, "I'm quite sure you hear a lot of things. I'm also quite sure a lot of them aren't true. Or even if there is a grain of truth, the interpretation is misleading, and perhaps you might ask yourself why someone would tell you these things, what this person's real motive is."

She wavered. "I just want to know if it's true, what I've heard. If your office is at fault."

I couldn't think how to respond.

"I'm going to find out anyway, I'll tell you that right now. Don't underestimate me, Dr. Scarpetta. The cops have screwed up big time. Don't think I don't know. They screwed up with me when that damn redneck followed me home. And they screwed up with Lori Petersen when she dialed 911 and no one responded until almost an hour later. When she was already dead!"

My surprise was visible.

"When this breaks," she went on, her eyes bright with tears, with rage, "the city's going to rue the day I was ever born! People are going to pay! I'll make sure certain people pay, and you want to know why?"

I was staring dumbly at her.

"Because nobody who counts gives a damn when women are raped and murdered! The same bastards who work the cases go out on the town and watch movies about women being raped, strangled, slashed. To them it's sexy. They like to look at it in magazines. They fantasize. They probably get their rocks off by looking at the scene photographs. The cops. They make jokes about it. I hear it. I hear them laughing at scenes, hear them laughing inside the ER!"

"They don't really mean it like that." My mouth was dry. "It's one of the ways they cope."

Footsteps were coming up the stairs.

Glancing furtively toward the door, she went into her tote bag and clumsily got out a business card and scribbled a number on it. "Please. If there's anything you can tell me after it's - it's done…" She took a deep breath. "Will you call me?"

She handed me the card. "It's got my pager number. I don't know where I'll be. Not in this house. Not for a while. Maybe never."

Marino was back.

Abby's eyes fixed angrily on him. "I know what you're going to ask," she said as he shut the door. "And the answer's no. There weren't any men in Henna's life, nobody here in Richmond. She wasn't seeing anyone, she wasn't sleeping with anyone."

Wordlessly, he clicked in a new tape and depressed the Record button.

He slowly looked up at her. "What about you, Miss Turnbull?"

Her breath caught in her throat. Stammering, "I have a close relationship, am close to someone in New York. Nobody here. just a lot of business associations."

"I see. And just what exactly's your definition of a business association?"

"What do you mean?"

Her eyes got wide with fear.

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then casually said, "What I'm wondering is if you're aware that this 'redneck' who followed you home the other night, has, in fact, been keeping an eye on you for several weeks now. The guy in the black Cougar. Well, he's a cop. Plainclothes, works out of Vice."

She stared at him in disbelief.

"See," Marino laconically went on, "that's why nobody got real upset when you called in the complaint, Miss Turnbull. Well, strike that. It would've upset me, if I'd known about it at the time - because the guy's supposed to be better than that. If he's following you, you're not supposed to know it, is what I'm saying.

He was getting chillier by the second, his words beginning to bite.

"But this particular cop don't like you none too well. Fact is, when I went out to the car a minute ago, I raised him on the radio, got the straight skinny from him. He admits he was hassling you deliberately, lost his cool a little bit when he was tailing you that night."

"What is this?" she cried in a spasm of panic. "He was harassing me because I'm a reporter?"

"Well, it's a little more personal than that, Miss Turnbull."

Marino casually lit a cigarette. "You remember a couple years back you did that big expose on the Vice cop who was dipping into the contraband and got himself hooked on coke? Sure, you remember that. He ended up eating his service revolver, blew his damn brains out. You gotta remember that clear as a bell. That particular Vice cop was the partner of the guy following you. Thought his interest in you would motivate him to do a good job. Looks like he went a little overboard…"

"You!"

she cried incredulously. "You asked him to follow me? Why?"

"I'll tell you. Since it appears my friend overplayed his hand, the gig's up. You would have found out eventually he's a cop. May as well put all of it out on the table, right here in front of the doc, since, in a way, it concerns her, too."

Abby glanced frantically at me. Marino took his time tapping an ash.

He took another drag and said, "Just so happens the ME's office is taking a lot of heat right now because of these alleged leaks to the press, which translates directly into leaks to you, Miss Turnbull. Someone's been breaking into the doc's computer. Amburgey's twisting the blade in the doc, here, causing a lot of problems and making a lot of accusations. Me, I'm of a different opinion. I think the leaks got nothing to do with the computer. I think someone's breaking into the computer to make it look like that's where the information's coming from in order to disguise the fact that the only data base being violated is the one between Bill Boltz's ears."

"That's insane!"

Marino smoked, his eyes fixed on her. He was enjoying watching her squirm.

"I absolutely had nothing to do with any computer violations!" she exploded. "Even if I knew how to do such a thing, I would never, never, do it! I can't believe this! My sister's dead… Jesus Christ…"

Her eyes were wild and swimming in tears. "Oh, God! What does any of this have to do with Henna?"

Marino coldly said, "I'm to the point of not having any idea who or what's got to do with anything. I do know some of the stuff you've been printing ain't common knowledge. Someone in the know's singing, singing to you. Someone's screwing up the investigation behind the scenes. I'm curious why anybody would be doing that unless he's got something to hide or something to gain."