Patricia Cornwell: The Bone Bed

He comes over to my side of the desk as I hear the elevator in the corridor and more voices. Lucy is on her way to her helicopter, and other staff members are arriving. It’s a few minutes past eight.

“Some huge prehistoric turtle entangled in the south channel,” Marino tells me, as he reaches for my desk phone.

“Prehistoric?” Bryce exclaims. “I don’t think so.”

“A leatherback. They’re almost extinct, have been around since Jurassic Park.” Marino ignores him.

“I don’t believe there was a park back then,” Bryce chimes in louder.

“Could weigh as much as a ton.” Marino keeps talking to me as he enters a number on my phone, a pair of over-the-counter reading glasses perched on his strong nose. “A waterman checking his lobster pots discovered it at sunrise and called the aquarium’s rescue team, which has an arrangement with the fire department marine unit. When the fireboat got there and they started to pull the turtle in, turns out there’s an unfortunate attachment on the vertical line . . . Pamela?” he says to whoever answers. “I’m handing you over to Dr. Scarpetta.”

He gives me the receiver, folding the glasses with his thick fingers and tucking them into the breast pocket of his shirt as he explains, “Pamela Quick. She’s out in the fireboat, so the connection might not be real good.”

The woman on the phone introduces herself as a marine biologist with the New England Aquarium, and she sounds urgent and slightly hostile. She just this minute e-mailed a photograph, she says.

“You can see for yourself we’re out of time,” she insists. “We need to get him on board now. ”

“‘ Him’?” I ask.

“A critically endangered species of sea turtle that’s been dragging tackle and other gear and what’s obviously a dead person for who knows how long. Turtles have to breathe, and he barely can keep his nares above water anymore. We need to get him out right now so he doesn’t drown.”

Marino holds his cell phone close to me so I can see the e-mailed photograph he just opened of a young woman, blond and tan, in khaki pants and a green Windbreaker, leaning over the side of the fireboat. She’s using a long-handled grappling hook to pull in a line that is entangled with a shockingly massive sea creature, leathery and dark, with a wingspan nearly as wide as the boat. Several yards away from its protruding huge head, and barely visible at the surface of the rolling blue water, are pale hands with painted nails and a splay of long white hair.

Bryce sets down a pair of lightweight ankle-high black tactical boots with polished leather toes and nylon uppers. He complains that he can’t find socks.

“Try my locker downstairs,” I tell him, as I bend over to slip off my pumps, and I say to Pamela Quick, “What we don’t want is to lose the body or cause any damage to it. So normally I wouldn’t permit—”

“We can save this animal,” she cuts me off, and it’s patently clear she’s not interested in my permission. “But we have to do it now.” The way she says it, I have no doubt she’s not going to wait for me or anyone, and I really can’t blame her.

“Do what you need to do, of course. But if someone can document it with video or photographs, that would be helpful,” I tell her, as I get out of my chair, feeling the carpet under my stocking feet and reminded I never know what to expect in life, not from one minute to the next. “Disturb any lines and gear as little as possible, and make sure they’re secured so we don’t lose anything,” I add.

five

DRESSED IN COTTON FIELD CLOTHES NOW, DARK BLUE, with the CFC crest embroidered on my shirt and on the bright orange jacket draped over my arm, I board the elevator beyond the break room, and for a moment we are alone. Marino sets down two black plastic Pelican cases and stabs the button for the lower level.

“I understand you were here all night,” I comment, as he impatiently taps the button again, a habit of his that serves no useful purpose.

“Caught up on some paperwork and stuff. Was just easier to stay over.”

He shoves his big hands into the side pockets of his cargo pants, the slope of his belly swelling noticeably over his canvas belt. He’s gained weight, but his shoulders are formidable and I can tell by the thickness of his neck, biceps, and legs that he’s still pumping iron in that gym he belongs to in Central Square, a fight sports club or whatever he calls it, that is frequented by cops, most of them SWAT.

“Easier than what?” I detect the stale odor of sweat beneath a patina of Brut aftershave, and maybe he drank the night away, went through a carton of Crystal Head vodka mini skull ornaments or whatever. I don’t know. “Yesterday was Sunday,” I continue in a mild voice. “Since you weren’t scheduled to work this weekend and were just getting back from a trip, what exactly was easier? And while we’re on the subject, I’ve not been getting updated on-call schedules for quite some time, so I wasn’t aware you were taking calls yourself and apparently have been—”

“The electronic calendar is bullshit,” he interrupts. “All this automated instant bullshit. I just wish Lucy would give it a rest. You know what you need to know, that someone’s doing what they’re supposed to. That someone being me.”

“I’m not aware that the head of investigations is on call. That’s never been our policy, unless there’s an emergency. And it’s also not our policy to be a firehouse, to sleep over on an inflatable bed while waiting for an alarm to clang, so to speak.”

“I see someone’s been narking. It’s her fault, anyway.” He puts his sunglasses on, wire-frame Ray-Bans he’s worn for as long as I’ve known him—what Bryce calls Marino’s Smokey and the Bandit shades.

“The investigator on call is supposed to be awake at his or her work station, ready to answer the phone.” I say this evenly and with no invitation for the argument he is giving me. “And what is whose fault?”

“Fucking Lucy got me on Twitter, and that’s what started it.”

When he says “fucking Lucy” I know he doesn’t mean it. The two of them are close.

“I don’t think it’s fair to blame her for Twitter if you’re the one tweeting, and I understand you have been,” I reply in the same bland tone. “And she didn’t exactly nark on you, or some things I would have known before now. Anything she’s said, it’s because she cares about you, Marino.”

“She’s out of the picture and has been for weeks, and I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, as we slowly descend through the center of the building.

“Who is?” I puzzle.

“The twat I was tweeting, and that’s all I have to say about it. And you really think people don’t sleep when they’re on call? I didn’t miss nothing last night. Every time the phone rang, I answered it and handled it. The only real scene to respond to was the guy who fell down the stairs, and Toby took care of it, a cut-and-dried accident. Then I sent him home. No point in both of us being there. And besides, he gets on my nerves. I can never find him where he’s supposed to be, either that or he’s on top of me.”

“I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. That’s all. I’m making sure you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He stares straight ahead at smooth shiny steel, at the illuminated LL on the digital panel. “I’ve had things not work out before.”

I have no idea what things or who he’s talking about, and now is not the time to press him about some woman he met on the Internet, or at least this is what I suspect he’s alluding to. But I do need to talk to him about what I worry could be a breach of professional discretion and confidentiality.