It was that very passion that had first drawn her to him. They had met at a San Francisco conference on third world medicine. She had presented a paper on overseas autopsy rates; he had delivered the keynote address about the many human tragedies encountered by One Earth’s medical teams abroad. Standing before the smartly dressed audience, Victor had looked more like a tired and unshaven backpacker than a physician. He had, in fact, just stepped off the plane from Guatemala City, and had not even had the chance to iron his shirt. He’d walked into the room carrying only a box of slides. He’d brought no written speech, no notes, just that precious collection of images, which played across the screen in tragic progression. The young Ethiopian mother, dying of tetanus. The Peruvian baby with the cleft palate, abandoned at the roadside. The Kazakh girl, dead of pneumonia, wrapped in her burial shroud. Every one of them was a preventable death, he’d emphasized. These were the innocent victims of war and poverty and ignorance that his organization, One Earth, could have saved. But there would never be enough money, or enough volunteers, to meet the needs of every humanitarian crisis.
Even halfway back in that dark room, Maura had been moved by his words, by how passionately he spoke of tent clinics and feeding stations, of the forgotten poor who died unnoticed every day.
When the lights came up, she no longer saw just a rumpled doctor standing behind the podium. She saw a man whose sense of purpose made him larger than life. She, who insisted on order and reason in her own life, found herself attracted to this man of almost frightening intensity, whose job took him to the most chaotic places on earth.
And what had he seen in her? Certainly not a sister crusader. Instead, she’d brought stability and calm to his life. She was the one who balanced their checkbook and organized the household, the one who waited at home while he traveled from crisis to crisis, continent to continent. His life was lived out of a suitcase, and was rich with adrenaline.
Has that life been so much happier without me? she wondered. He did not look particularly happy, sitting here at her kitchen table, sipping coffee. In many ways, he was still the same Victor. His hair was a little shaggy, his shirt in need of a good pressing, and the edges of the collar were frayed—all evidence of his disdain for the superficial. But in other ways he was different. An older, wearier Victor who seemed quiet, even sad, his fire dampened by maturity.
She sat down with her own cup of coffee and they looked at each other across the table.
“We should have had this talk three years ago,” he said.
“Three years ago, you wouldn’t have listened to me.”
“Did you try? Did you ever once come out and tell me that you were sick of being the activist’s wife?”
She looked down at her coffee. No, she had not told him. She had held it in, the way she held in emotions that disturbed her. Anger, resentment, despair—they all made her feel out of control, and that she could not abide. When she’d finally signed the divorce papers, she’d felt eerily detached.
“I never knew how hard it was for you,” he said.
“Would it have changed anything if I’d told you?”
“You could have tried.”
“And what would you have done? Resigned from One Earth? There was no way to compromise. You get too much of a thrill from playing Saint Victor. All the awards, all the praise. No one gets on the cover of People just for being a good husband.”
“You think that’s why I do it? For the attention, the publicity? Jesus, Maura. You know how important this is! Give me some credit, at least.”
She sighed. “You’re right, that wasn’t fair of me. But we both know you’d miss it.”
“Yes, I would,” he admitted. Then added, quietly: “But I didn’t know how much I’d miss you.”
She let those last words slip past without a response. Let the silence hang between them. In truth, she didn’t know what to say, his admission had so taken her aback.
“You look great,” he said. “And you seem content. Are you?”
“Yes.” Her answer was too quick, too automatic. She felt herself flush.
“The new job’s working out?” he asked.
“It keeps me challenged.”
“More fun than terrorizing medical students at U.C.?”
She gave a laugh. “I did not terrorize medical students.”
“They might beg to differ.”
“I held them to higher standards, that’s all. And they almost always met them.”
“You were a good teacher, Maura. I’m sure the university would love to have you back.”
“Well, we all move on, don’t we?” She could feel his gaze on her face, and she purposefully kept her expression unreadable.
“I saw you on TV yesterday,” he said. “The evening news. About the attack on those nuns.”
“I was hoping the cameras would miss me.”
“I spotted you right away. They showed you walking out the gate.”
“It’s one of the job hazards. You’re always in the public eye.”
“Especially that particular case, I imagine. It was on every TV station.”
“What are they saying about it?”
“That the police have no suspects. That the motive remains unknown.” He shook his head. “It does sound completely irrational, attacking nuns. Unless there was some kind of sexual assault.”
“That makes it rational?”
“You know what I mean.”
Yes, she did know, and she knew Victor well enough not to be offended by his comment. There was indeed a difference between the coldly calculating sexual predator and the psychotic who had no grip on reality.
“I did the autopsy this morning,” she said. “Multiple skull fractures. Torn middle meningeal artery. He hit her again and again, probably with a hammer. I’m not sure you could classify this attack as rational.”
He shook his head. “How do you deal with it, Maura? You went from performing autopsies on nice, neat hospital deaths to something like this.”
“Hospital deaths aren’t exactly nice and neat.”
“But a postmortem on a homicide victim? And she was young, wasn’t she?”
“Only twenty.” She paused, on the verge of telling him what else she’d found at autopsy. When they were married, they’d always shared medical gossip, trusting each other to keep such information confidential. But this subject was too grim, and she didn’t want to invite Death any deeper into the conversation.
She rose to refill their cups. When she returned to the table with the coffeepot, she said: “Now tell me about you. What’s Saint Victor been up to?”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“You used to think it was funny.”
“Now I think it’s ominous. When the press starts calling you a saint, you know they’re just waiting for the chance to knock you off the pedestal.”
“I’ve noticed you and One Earth have been popping up quite a bit in the news.”
He sighed. “Unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“It’s been a bad year for international charities. So many new conflicts, so many refugees on the move now. That’s the only reason we’re in the news. Because we’re the ones who have to step in. We’re just lucky we got a huge grant this year.”
“A result of all that good press?”
He shrugged. “Every so often, some big corporation develops a conscience and decides to write a check.”
“I’m sure the tax deduction doesn’t hurt them, either.”
“But that money goes so fast. All it takes is some new maniac launching a war, and suddenly we’re dealing with a million more refugees. A hundred thousand more kids dying of typhoid or cholera. That’s what keeps me up at night, Maura. Thinking about the kids.” He took a sip of coffee, then put it down, as though he could no longer stomach its taste.
She watched him sitting so quietly, and noticed the new threads of gray in his tawny hair. He might be getting older, she thought, but he’d
lost none of his idealism. It was that very idealism that had first drawn her to him—and what had eventually driven them apart. She could not compete with the world’s needs for Victor’s attention, and she never should have tried. His affair with the French nurse had not, in the end, been surprising. It was his act of defiance, his way of asserting his independence from her.
They were silent, their gazes not meeting, two people who had once loved each other, and now could think of nothing to say. She heard him rise to his feet, and watched as he stood at the sink to rinse out his cup.
“So how is Dominique these days?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Does she still work for One Earth?”
“No. She left. It wasn’t comfortable for either one of us, after …” He shrugged.
“You two don’t keep in touch?”
“She wasn’t important to me, Maura. You know that.”
“Funny. But she became very important to me.”
He turned to face her. “Do you think you’ll ever get over being angry about her?”
“It’s been three years. I suppose I should.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
She looked down. “You had an affair. I needed to be angry. It was the only way.”
“The only way?”
“That I could leave you. That I could get over you.”
He walked toward her. Placed his hands on her shoulders, his touch warm and intimate. “I don’t want you to get over me,” he said. “Even if it means you hate me. At least you’d feel something. That’s what bothered me the most, that you could just walk away. That you seemed so cold about it all.”
It’s the only way I know how to cope, she thought, as his arms slipped around her. As his breath warmed her hair. She had learned long ago how to box up all those messy emotions. They were so poorly matched, the two of them. Exuberant Victor, married to the Queen of the Dead. Why did they ever think it would work?
Because I wanted his heat, his passion. I wanted what I myself can never be.
The ringing telephone made Victor’s hands go still on her shoulders. He stepped away, and left her longing for his warmth. She rose and went to the kitchen phone. One glance at the caller I.D., and she knew that this call would send her back into the night, into the snow. As she spoke to the detective and jotted down directions, she saw Victor give a resigned shake of his head. Tonight, she was the one called to duty, and he was the one left behind.
She hung up. “I’m sorry, I have to leave.”
“The Grim Reaper calls?”
“A death scene in Roxbury. They’re waiting for me.”
He followed her down the hallway, toward the front door. “Would you like me to come with you?”
“Why?”
“To keep you company.”
“Believe me, there’s plenty of company at a death scene.”
He glanced out the living room window, at the thickly falling snow. “It’s not a good night to be driving.”
“For either of us.” She bent down to pull on boots. She was glad he couldn’t see her face as she said, “There’s no need for you to drive back to the hotel. Why don’t you just stay here?”
“Spend the night, you mean?”
“It might be more convenient for you. You can make up the bed in the guest room. I’ll probably be gone for a few hours.”
His silence made her flush. Still not looking at him, she buttoned her coat. Suddenly anxious to escape, she opened the front door.
And heard him say, “I’ll wait up for you.”
Blue lights flashed through the gauze of falling snow. She pulled up right behind one of the cruisers and a patrolman approached, his face half hidden behind his raised collar, like a turtle retracted into its shell. She rolled down her window and squinted against the glare of his flashlight. Snow blew in, skittering across her dashboard.
“Dr. Isles, M.E.’s office,” she said.
“Okay, you can park right where you are, ma’am.”
“Where’s the body?”
“Inside.” He waved his flashlight toward a building across the street. “Front door’s padlocked—gotta go in the alley entrance. Electricity’s off, so watch your step. You’ll need your flashlight. All kinds of boxes and shit piled up in that alley.”
She stepped out of the car, into a curtain of lacy white. Tonight she was fully prepared for the weather, and grateful that her feet were warm and dry inside Thinsulate boots. At least six inches of new snow layered the road, but the flakes were soft and feathery and offered not even a whisper of resistance as her boots cut a trough through the drifts.
At the alley entrance, she turned on the flashlight, and saw a strand of sagging police tape, the yellow almost obscured by a coating of white. She stepped over it and dislodged a shower of flakes. The alley was obstructed by several amorphous piles obscured by snow. Her boot connected with something solid, and she heard the clatter of bottles. The alley had been used as a trash dump, and she wondered what distasteful items were hidden beneath this white blanket.
She knocked on the door and called out: “Hello? Medical Examiner.”
The door swung open, and a flashlight glared in her eyes. She could not see the man holding it, but she recognized Detective Darren Crowe’s voice.
“Hey, Doc. Welcome to roach city.”
“Would you mind shining that light somewhere else?”
The flashlight beam dropped from her face and she saw his silhouette, broad-shouldered and vaguely threatening. He was one of the younger detectives in the Homicide Unit, and every time she worked a case with him, she felt she was walking onto the set of a TV show, and Crowe was the series star, a movie-star cop with blow-dried hair and the attitude to match, cocky and self-assured. The only thing that men like Crowe respected in a woman was icy professionalism, and that’s what she showed him. While the male M.E.s might banter with Crowe, she could not; the barriers had to be maintained, the lines drawn, or he would find a way to chip at her authority.
She pulled on gloves and shoe-covers and stepped into the building. Shining her flashlight around the room, she saw metallic surfaces reflect back at her. A huge refrigerator and metal countertops. A commercial stove top and ovens.
“This used to be Mama Cortina’s Italian restaurant,” said Crowe. “Until Mama went out of business and filed for bankruptcy. Building got condemned two years ago, and the entrances were both padlocked. Alley door looks like it was broken open some time ago. All this kitchen equipment’s up for auction, but I don’t know who’d want it. It’s filthy.” He shone his flashlight at the gas burners, where years of accumulated grease had thickened to a black crust. Roaches scurried away from the light. “The place is crawling with ’em. All this yummy grease to feed on.”
“Who found the body?”
“One of our boys from the narcotics division. They had a drug bust going down, about a block from here. The suspect bolted, and they thought he came down this alley. They noticed the door had been pried open. Came inside looking for their perp, and got quite a surprise.” He pointed his flashlight at the floor. “Some scrape marks across the dust here. Like the perp dragged the victim across this room.” He waved the light toward the other end of the kitchen. “Body’s that way. We gotta go through the dining room.”
“You’ve already videotaped in here?”
“Yeah. Had to lug in two battery packs to get enough light. Already ran’em both down. So it’s gonna be a little dim in there.”
She followed him toward the kitchen doorway, holding her arms close to her body, a reminder not to touch any surface—as if she would want to. She heard rustling all around her in the shadows, and thought of thousands of insect legs skittering across the walls and clinging to the ceiling above her head. She might be stoic about the gory and grotesque, but scavenging insects truly repelled her.
Stepping into the dining area, she smelled the tired bouquet of scents that always clings to alleys behin
d old restaurants: the smell of garbage and stale beer. But here, there was also something else, an ominously familiar odor that made her pulse quicken. It was the object of her visit here, and it stirred in her both curiosity and dread.
“Looks like bums have been crashing in here,” said Crowe, aiming his flashlight at the floor, where she saw an old blanket and bundles of newspapers. “And there are some candles over there. Lucky they didn’t burn the place down, with all this trash.” His flashlight moved across a mound of food wrappers and empty tin cans. Two yellow eyes stared at them from the top of the pile—a rat, unafraid, even cocky, daring them to advance on it.
Rats and roaches. With all these scavengers, what would be left of the body? she wondered.
“It’s around that corner.” Crowe picked his way with athletic confidence past tables and stacked chairs. “Stay to this side. There are some footprints we’re trying to preserve. Someone tracked blood away from the body. They fade out right about there.”
He led her into a short hallway. Faint light spilled out a doorway at the end. It came from the men’s restroom.
“Doc’s here,” Crowe called out.
Another flashlight beam appeared in the doorway. Crowe’s partner, Ed Sleeper, stepped out of the restroom and gave Maura a tired wave of his gloved hand. Sleeper was the oldest detective in the Homicide Unit, and every time she saw him, his shoulders seemed to be sagging a little deeper. She wondered how much of his dispiritedness had to do with being paired with Crowe. Neither wisdom nor experience could trump youthful aggression, and Sleeper had long since ceded control to his overbearing partner.
“It’s not a pretty sight,” said Sleeper. “Just be glad it’s not July. I don’t want to think about what it’d smell like if it wasn’t so damn cold in here.”
Crowe laughed. “Sounds like someone’s ready for Florida.”
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