Patricia Cornwell - Depraved Heart

How awful that discovery must have been, and I imagine the housekeeper letting herself in through the kitchen door just like she did every morning, she told the police. Instantly she would have noticed the extreme heat. She would have noticed the stench and followed it to the foyer where the woman she worked for is decomposing on the floor, her face discolored and distorted as if she’s enraged by us.

What Hyde said is almost true. Allegedly Chanel Gilbert fell off a ladder while changing lightbulbs in the entryway chandelier. It sounds like a bad joke but it’s anything but funny to see her once slender body in the early stages of putrefaction, bloated with areas of her skin slipping. She survived her head injuries long enough to have bruising and swelling, her eyes slitted and bulging like a bullfrog’s, her brown hair a sticky bloody mass that reminds me of a rusting Brillo pad. I estimate that after she sustained her injuries, she was lying on the floor unconscious and bleeding as her brain swelled, compressing her upper spinal cord and eventually shutting down her heart and lungs.

The cops aren’t suspicious of her death, not sincerely no matter what they discuss or claim. What they really are is voyeuristic. In their own unseemly way they’re enjoying the drama and it’s one of their favorites. Blame the victim . It must be her fault. She did something to cause her own untimely death, a death that was stupid . I’ve heard that word several times too and I’m not at all happy when people close their minds to other possibilities. I’m not convinced this is an accident. There are too many oddities and inconsistencies. If she died at some point late last night or early this morning as the cops suspect then why is decomposition this advanced? As I attempt to figure out time of death what keeps coming to mind is a Marino turn of phrase.

Cluster fuck. That’s what this is and my intuition is picking up on something else. I sense a presence inside this house. A presence beyond the cops. Beyond the dead woman. Beyond the housekeeper who showed up at quarter of eight this morning and made a shocking discovery that ruined her day to put it tritely. I sense something that unsettles me and I have no empirical explanation for it and don’t intend to say a word.

I usually don’t share my so-called gut feelings, my intuitive flashes, not with cops, not even with Marino. I’m not expected to have any impression that isn’t provable. In fact it’s worse than that if you’re me. I’m not supposed to have feelings and at the same time I’m accused of not having them. In other words a catch-22. In other words I can’t win. But that’s nothing new. I’m used to it.

“Ma’am?” An unfamiliar man’s voice but I don’t look up as I stand in the foyer, covered in white Tyvek from head to toe, my phone in my bare hands, the body of the dead woman several feet away near the upright ladder.

Profession unknown. Kept to herself. Attractive in a sharp off-putting way, brown hair, blue eyes based on the driver’s license photo I’ve been shown. The daughter of a juggernaut Hollywood producer named Amanda Gilbert, the owner of this expensive property and on her way to Boston from Los Angeles. That much I know and it explains plenty. Two Cambridge cops and one Massachusetts state police trooper are now passing through the dining room talking loudly about movies Amanda Gilbert has or hasn’t made.

“I didn’t see it. But I saw the other one with Ethan Hawke.”

“The movie that took twelve years to make? Where you watch the kid grow up …?”

“That was kinda cool.”

“I can’t wait to see American Sniper .”

“What happened to Chris Kyle? Unbelievable right? You come home from the war a hero with a hundred and eighty kills and some loser takes you out on the firing range. Sort of like Spider-Man dying from a spider bite.” It’s Hyde who’s saying this as he and the other two cops hover near the staircase at the edge of the foyer, not coming any closer to me or the stench that holds them back like a wall of foul hot air. “Doctor Scarpetta? Like I was saying? We’re making a coffee run. Anything for you?” Hyde has widely spaced yellowish eyes that remind me of a cat.

“I’m fine.” But I’m not.

I’m not even close to fine despite my demeanor as I hear more gunshots and see the firing ranges in my mind. I hear the dull clank of lead slamming into steel pop-up targets. The bright chink of ejected metal cartridge cases bouncing off concrete shooting pads and benches. I feel the southern sun heavy on my head and the sweat drying beneath my field clothes during an era when everything was the best and worst it’s ever been in my life.

“What about a bottle of water, ma’am? Or maybe a soda?” It’s the trooper talking to me between coughs, and I don’t know him but we won’t get along if he insists on calling me ma’am.

I went to Cornell, to Georgetown Law and Johns Hopkins medical school. I’m a special reservist colonel in the Air Force. I’ve testified before Senate subcommittees and have been a guest at the White House. I’m the chief medical examiner of Massachusetts and director of the crime labs among other things. I didn’t get this far in life to be called ma’am.

“Nothing for me thank you,” I reply politely.

“We should just get a couple gallons of coffee in those cartons. Then there will be plenty and it will stay hot.”

“A hell of a day for hot coffee. How ’bout iced?”

“Good idea since it’s still hot yoga in here. I can’t imagine what it was like earlier.”

“An oven. That’s what.” More dreadful coughing.

“Well I think I’ve sweated a couple quarts.”

“We should be wrapping it up pretty soon. An open-and-shut accident, right Doc? The tox will be interesting. You wait and see. She was stoned and when people are high they think they know what they’re doing but they don’t.”

“High” and “stoned” are two different psychoactive states, and I don’t believe weed is an explanation for what happened here. But I won’t give voice to what’s passing through my thoughts as the trooper and Hyde continue their ping-ponging quips and cranks. Back and forth. Back and forth monotonously, tediously. What I really want is to be left alone. To watch my phone and figure out what the hell is happening to me and who’s responsible and why. Back and forth. The cops won’t shut up.

“Since when are you such an expert, Hyde?”

“I’m just stating the facts of life.”

“Look. With Amanda Gilbert on her way here? We’d better answer everything even if there’s not a question. She probably knows all kinds of important people in high places who can cause us heartburn. For sure the media will be all over this if they don’t already know about it.”

“Wonder if she had life insurance, if Mama took out a policy on her unemployed druggie daughter.”

“Like she needs the money? You got any idea what Amanda Gilbert is worth? According to Google about two hundred million.”

“I don’t like that the air-conditioning was turned off. That’s not normal.”

“Yeah and I make my case. That’s exactly the sort of thing people do when they’re stoners. They pour orange juice on their cereal and carry snowshoes to the tennis courts.”

“What do snowshoes have to do with anything?”

“I’m just saying it’s different from being drunk.”

They talk to each other as if I’m not here, and I continue looking at the video playing on my phone. I continue waiting for something to happen.

I’m more than four minutes into it and can’t pause or save it. Every key I touch, every icon and menu is nonfunctional and the recording rolls on but nothing changes. The only movement I’ve detected so far are the subtle shifts of light from the edges of the closed slatted blinds.