Patricia Cornwell: The Bone Bed

“While we’re on the subject, I’m wondering why you went on Twitter to begin with, or why Lucy supposedly might encourage such a thing,” I say to him. “I’m not trying to pry into your personal life, Marino, but I’m not in favor of social networking unless it’s primarily for news feeds, which is the only thing I follow on Twitter. Certainly we aren’t in the business of marketing what we do here or sharing details about it or making friends with the great outdoors.”

“I’m not on Twitter as me, don’t use anything that can be identified to me. In other words, you don’t see my name, just the handle The Dude . . .”

“‘ The Dude’?”

“As in the Big Lebowski character played by Jeff Bridges, whose avatar I use. Point being, no way you’d know what I do for a living unless you literally do a search for Peter Rocco Marino, and who’s going to bother? At least I don’t use some generic egg avatar like you do, which is retarded.”

“So you represent yourself on Twitter with a photo of a movie star who played in a movie about bowling . . . ?”

“Only the best bowling movie ever made,” he says defensively, as the elevator settles to a stop and the doors open.

Marino doesn’t wait for me or offer anything further as he grabs up the scene cases, one in each hand, and steps out, his baseball cap pulled low over his tan bald head, his eyes masked by the Ray-Bans. All these years I’ve known him, more than two decades now, and there’s never been a question when he feels slighted or stung, although I can’t imagine what I might have done this time, beyond what I just attempted to discuss with him. But he was already out of sorts when he appeared in my office a little while ago. Something else is going on. I wonder what the hell I’ve done. What exactly this time?

He was gone all last week at the meeting in Florida, and so there wasn’t anything I might have done during his time away. Before that Benton and I were in Austria, and it occurs to me that’s more likely the root of Marino’s displeasure. Well, of course it would be, dammit. Benton and I were with my assistant chief medical examiner, Luke Zenner, in Vienna, at his aunt’s funeral, and I feel frustrated and next I feel annoyed. More of the damn same. Marino and his jealousy, and Benton, too. The men in my life are going to be the end of me.

I’m careful what I say to Marino, because there are other people around. Forensic scientists, clerical and investigative staff are entering the building from the parking lot in back and moving along the wide windowless corridor. Marino and I say little to each other as we walk past the telecom closet and the locked metal door that leads into the vast mechanical room, and then the odontology lab, everything in the CFC’s round building flowing in a perfect circle, which I still find tricky at times, especially if I’m trying to give directions. There is no first or last office on the right or left, and nothing in the middle, either.

We wind around to the autopsy and x-ray rooms, our rubber-soled booted feet making muffled sounds, and then we are in the receiving area, where there are walls of stainless-steel intake and discharge refrigerators and decomp freezers with digital displays at the tops of their heavy doors. I greet staff we encounter but don’t pause to chat, and I notify the security guard, a former military policeman, that we’ve got a potentially sensitive case coming in.

“Something that involves what appears to be unusual circumstances,” I tell Ron, who is powerfully built and dark-skinned and never particularly animated behind his glass window. “Just be aware in the event the media or who knows what shows up. I can’t predict how much of a circus this might be.”

“Yes, ma’am, Chief,” he says.

“We’ll let you know when we get an idea of what might be headed this way,” I add.

“Yes, ma’am, Chief. That would be good,” he replies, and I’m always ma’am and Chief to him, and I think he likes me well enough even if he doesn’t show it.

I check the sign-in log, a big black ledger, and one of the few documents I won’t permit to be electronic. Looking over what I recognize as Marino’s small snarled handwritten entries for bodies that have arrived since I checked when I first got here around five, I’m reminded that what Lucy reported is only partially true. While there was no need for an investigator to respond to any scenes after hours, there are cases, four of them, that require autopsies. The person who would have decided to have the bodies sent in for postmortem examinations was the investigator on call, who I now know was Toby for the suspected blunt-force trauma from a fall and Marino for the rest of them.

The ones he handled occurred in local hospitals or were DOAs, two motor-vehicle fatalities and a possible drug overdose suicide, and responding to the scenes of the fatal events or actual deaths wouldn’t have been necessary unless the police requested it. Marino must have got the information over the phone, and I turn around to ask him about the cases we have so far this day, but the person I sense nearby isn’t him after all. I’m startled to find Luke Zenner inches from me as if he traded places with Marino or materialized out of nowhere.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He’s carrying his briefcase and wearing a white shirt with the sleeves folded up to his slender elbows and a narrow red-and-black striped tie, sneakers, and jeans.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were Marino.”

“I just saw him in the parking lot scouting out one SUV or van and then another, whatever looks the best and has the biggest engine. But thanks for thinking I was him.” He gives me an ironic smile, his eyes warm, his British accent belying his Austrian roots. “I’ll accept you meant it as a compliment,” he adds wryly, and I’m not sure if he dislikes Marino as much as Marino dislikes him, but I suspect their feelings are mutual.

Dr. Luke Zenner is new in more ways than one, recently board-certified, not even three years ago, and I hired him this past June, much against Marino’s wishes, I should add. A talented forensic pathologist, Luke also is the nephew of a friend of mine whose funeral we just attended, Dr. Anna Zenner, a psychiatrist I became close to more than a decade ago, during my Richmond days. That connection is the source of Marino’s objection, or at least this is what he claims, although resentment likely is the more accurate reason for why he is blatantly unkind and unhelpful to a very nice-looking young blond-haired blue-eyed doctor who is a citizen of the world with a personal tie to me.

“You heading off? A scene? A SWAT situation? The firing range? A reality show?” Luke notices the way I’m dressed, taking in every inch of me. “No court after all?”

“We’ve got a case in Boston, a body in the harbor. It may be a difficult recovery because of fishing gear and whatever else it’s tethered to,” I reply. “I don’t know about court, but I’ll probably have to be there. There’s not much choice these days.”

“Tell me about it.” He watches a group of forensic scientists heading to the elevator, young women who greet us shyly and can scarcely take their eyes off him. “You so much as initial something and get summoned to appear.” His attention lingers on the women, reminding me of what Marino accuses, that Luke takes what he wants, doesn’t matter who she is or her marital status. “Much of it is harassment.”

“Some of it is,” I agree.

“I can go with you if you need some help. What kind of case? A drowning?” His vivid blue eyes are fastened to me. “I remind you I’m a certified scuba diver, too. We can buddy dive. The visibility in the harbor is bound to be quite bad, the water cold as hell. You shouldn’t be alone. Marino doesn’t dive. I’m happy to go.”