Port Mortuary

by Patricia Cornwell

  Benton drives toward Cambridge, and the snow is a blizzard of flakes that are getting smaller. The wind is beating the SUV, gusting and shoving, the night volatile and treacherous.

  “Except the driver thought you were me,” I add. “I could tell by the way he was dealing with you. He thinks you’re Dr. Scarpetta, and Johnny Donahue’s mother certainly must know I’m not a man.”

  “Hard to say what she knows,” Benton answers. “Fielding’s the medical examiner in this case, not you. As you said, technically, you have nothing to do with it. Technically, you’re not responsible.”

  “I’m the chief and ultimately responsible. At the end of the day, all ME cases in Massachusetts are mine. I do have something to do with it.”

  “It’s not what I meant, but I’m glad to hear you say it.”

  Of course it’s not what he meant. I don’t want to think about what he meant. I’ve been gone. Somehow I was supposed to be at Dover and at the same time get the CFC up and running without me. Maybe it was too much to ask. Maybe I’ve been deliberately set up for failure.

  “I’m saying that since the CFC opened, you’ve been invisible,” Benton says. “Lost in a news blackout.”

  “By design,” I reply. “The AFME doesn’t court publicity.”

  “Of course it’s by design. I’m not blaming you.”

  “Briggs’s design.” I give voice to what I suspect Benton is getting at.

  He doesn’t trust Briggs. He never has. I’ve always chalked it up to jealousy. Briggs is a very powerful and threatening man, and Benton hasn’t felt powerful or threatening since he left the FBI, and then there is a past Briggs and I share. He is one of very few people still in my life who predates Benton. It feels as if I was barely grown up when I first met John Briggs.

  “The AFME didn’t want you giving interviews about the CFC or publicly talking about anything relating to Dover until the CFC was set up and you were finished with your training,” Benton goes on. “That’s kept you out of the limelight for quite a while. I’m trying to remember the last time you were on CNN. At least a year ago.”

  “And coincidentally, I was supposed to step back into the lime-light tonight. And coincidentally, CNN was canceled. The third time it’s been canceled, as my return here was delayed and delayed.”

  “Yes. Coincidentally. A lot of coincidences,” Benton says.

  Maybe Briggs has compromised me and done so intentionally. How brilliant it would be to groom me for a bigger job, the biggest job so far, while systematically making me less visible. To silence me. Ultimately, to get rid of me. The idea of it is shocking. I don’t believe it.

  “Whose coincidences, that’s what you would need to know,” Benton then says. “And I’m not stating as fact that Briggs did anything Machiavellian. He’s not the entire Pentagon. He’s just one gear in a very big machine.”

  “I know how much you dislike him.”

  “It’s the machine I don’t like. It’s always going to be there. Just make sure you understand it so you don’t get chewed up by it.”

  Snow clicks and bounces against glass as we pass stretches of open fields and dense woods, and a creek runs hard against the guardrail to our right as we pass over a bridge. The air must be colder here, the snow small and icy as we drive in and out of pockets of changing weather that I find unsettling.

  “Mrs. Donahue knows that the chief medical examiner and director of the CFC, someone named Dr. Scarpetta, is Jack’s boss,” Benton then says. “She had to know that if she went to the trouble to have something delivered to you. But maybe that’s all she knows,” he summarizes, offering an explanation for what just happened at the airport.

  “Let’s look at whatever it is.” I want the envelope.

  “It should go to the labs.”

  “She knows I’m Jack’s boss but doesn’t know I’m a woman.” It seems preposterous, but it’s possible. “Even though all she had to do was Google me.”

  “Not everybody Googles.”

  I’m reminded of how easy it is for me to forget that there are still technically unsophisticated people in the world, including someone who might have a chauffeur and a Bentley. Its taillights are far ahead of us now on the narrow two-lane road, getting smaller and more distant as the car drives too fast for the conditions.

  “Did you show the driver your identification?” I ask.

  “What do you think?”

  Of course Benton wouldn’t. “So he didn’t realize you’re not me.”

  “Not from anything I did or said.”

  “I guess Mrs. Donahue will continue to think Jack works for a man. Strange that Jack would tell her how to find me and not indicate how her driver might recognize me, at least indicate I’m not a man. Not even use pronouns that might indicate it. Strange. I don’t know.” I’m not convinced of what we’re conjecturing. It doesn’t feel right.

  “I wasn’t aware you were having so many doubts about Jack. Not that they aren’t warranted.” Benton is trying to draw me out. The FBI agent in him. I’ve not seen it in a while.

  “Just don’t say I’m twice bitten or thrice bitten or whatever. Please,” I say with feeling. “I’ve heard it enough today.”

  “I’m saying I wasn’t aware.”

  “And all I’ve been aware of is my usual misgivings and denials about him,” I reply. “I’ve not had sufficient information to be more concerned than usual.” My way of asking Benton to give me sufficient information if he has it, to not act like a cop or a mental-health practitioner. Don’t hold back, I’m telling him.

  But he does hold back. He doesn’t say a word. His attention is fixed straight ahead, his profile sharp in the low illumination of the dashboard lights. This is the way it’s always been with us. We step around confidential and privileged information. We dance around secrets. At times we lie. In the beginning, we cheated, because Benton was married to someone else. Both of us know how to deceive. It isn’t something I’m proud of, and I wish it didn’t continue to be necessary professionally. Especially right this minute. Benton is dancing around secrets, and I want the truth. I need it.

  “Look, we both know what he’s like, and yes, I’ve been invisible since the CFC opened,” I continue. “I’ve been in a vacuum, doing the best I can to handle things long distance while working eighteen-hour days, not even time to talk to my staff by phone. Everything’s been electronic, mostly e-mails and PDFs. I’ve hardly seen anyone. I should never have placed Jack in charge under the circumstances. When I hired him yet again and rode out of town, I set everyone up for exactly what’s happened. And you did tell me so, and you aren’t the only one.”

  “You’ve never wanted to believe you’ve got a serious problem with him,” Benton says in a way that unsteadies me further. “Even if you’ve had plenty of them. Sometimes there’s simply no sufficient evidence that will make us accept a truth we can’t bear to believe. You can’t be objective when it comes to him, Kay. I’m not sure I’ve ever understood the reason.”

  “You’re right, and I hate it.” I clear my throat and calm my voice. “And I’m sorry.”

  “I just don’t know if I’ll ever figure it out.” He glances over at me, both hands on the wheel, and we’re alone on a snow-blown road that is poorly lit, driving through a snowy darkness. The Bentley is no longer visible up ahead. “I’m not judging you.”

  “He wrecks his life and needs me again.”

  “It’s not your fault he wrecks his life unless you haven’t told me something. Actually, no matter what, it wouldn’t be your fault. People wreck their own lives. They don’t need others to do it.”

  “That’s not entirely true. He didn’t choose what happened to him as a child.”

  “And that’s not your fault, either,” Benton says, as if he knows more about Fielding’s past than I’ve ever told him, what few details I have. I’ve always been careful not to probe my staff, especially not to probe Fielding. I know enough about his early tragedies to be mindful of what he might not want to talk
about.

  “Of course it sounds stupid,” I add.

  “Not stupid. Just a drama that will always end the same way. I’ve never completely understood why you feel the need to act it out with him. I feel like something happened. Something you’ve not told me.”

  “I tell you everything.”

  “We both know that’s not true about either of us.”

  “Maybe I should just stick with dead people.” I hear the bitterness in my tone, the resentment seeping through barriers I’ve carefully constructed most of my life. Maybe I don’t know how to live without them anymore. “I know how to handle dead people just fine.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Benton says quietly.

  It’s because I’m tired, I tell myself. It’s because of what happened this morning when the black mother of a dead black soldier disparaged me over the phone and called me names, referred to my following not the Golden Rule but the White Rule. Then Briggs tried to override my authority. It’s possible I’ve been set up by him. It’s possible he wants me to fail.

  “It’s such a goddamn stereotype,” Benton then says.

  “Funny thing about stereotypes. They’re usually based on something.”

  “Don’t say things like that.”

  “There won’t be any more problems with Jack. The drama will end, I promise. Assuming he hasn’t already ended it, hasn’t walked off the job. He’s certainly done that before. He has to be fired.”

  “He’s not you, never was or could be, and he’s not your damn child.” Benton thinks it is as simple as that, but it isn’t.

  “He has to be let go,” I answer.

  “He’s a forty-six-year-old forensic pathologist who’s never earned the trust you show him or anything the hell you do for him.”

  “I’m done with him.”

  “You are done with him. I’m afraid that’s true and you’re going to have to let him go,” Benton says, as if a decision was made already, as if it isn’t up to me. “What is it you feel so guilty about?” There’s something in his tone, something about his demeanor. I can’t put my finger on what it is. “Way back in your Richmond days when you were just getting started with him. Why the guilt?”

  “I’m sorry I’ve caused so many problems.” I evade his question. “I feel I’m the one who’s let everybody down. I’m sorry I’ve not been here. I can’t begin to express how sorry I am. I take responsibility for Jack, but I won’t allow it anymore.”

  “Some things you can’t take responsibility for. Some things aren’t your fault, and I’m going to keep reminding you of that, and you’ll probably keep believing it’s your fault, anyway,” my husband the psychologist says.

  I’m not going to discuss what is my fault and what isn’t, because I can’t talk about why I’ve always been irrationally loyal to Jack Fielding. I came back from South Africa, and my penance was Fielding. He was my public service, what I sentenced myself to as punishment. I was desperate to do right by him because I was convinced I’d wronged everyone else.

  “I’m taking a look.” I mean at what is in Benton’s coat pocket. “I know how to look at a letter without compromising it, and I need to see what Mrs. Donahue wrote to me.”

  I slide the envelope out, holding it lightly by its edges, and discover the flap is sealed with gray duct tape that partially covers an address engraved in an old-style serif typeface. I recognize the street as one in Boston’s Beacon Hill, near the Public Garden, very close to where Benton used to own a brownstone that was in his family for generations. On the front of the envelope is Dr. Kay Scarpetta: Confidential written elaborately with a fountain pen, and I’m careful about touching anything else with bare hands, especially the tape. It is a good source for fingerprints, for DNA and microscopic materials. Latent prints can be developed on porous surfaces such as paper by using a reagent such as ninhydrin, I calculate.

  “Maybe you’ve got a knife handy.” I place the envelope in my lap. “And I need to borrow your gloves.”

  Benton reaches across me and opens the glove box, and inside is a Leatherman multi-tool knife, a flashlight, a stack of napkins. He pulls a pair of deerskin gloves out of his coat pockets, and my hands are lost in them, but I don’t want to leave my fingerprints or eradicate those of someone else. I don’t turn on the map reading light, because the visibility is bad and getting worse. Illuminating what I’m doing with the flashlight, I slip a small blade into a corner of the envelope.

  I slit it along the top and slide out two folded sheets of creamy stationery that are of heavy stock with a watermark I can’t make out clearly, what looks like some type of emblazonment or family crest. The letterhead is the same Beacon Hill address, and the two pages are typed with a typewriter that has a cursive typeface, which is something I haven’t seen in many years, maybe a decade at least. I read out loud:

  Dear Dr. Scarpetta,

  I hope you will excuse what I’m sure must seem an inappropriate and presumptuous gesture on my part. But I am a mother as desperate as a mother could possibly be.

  My son Johnny has confessed to a crime I know he did not commit and could not have committed. Certainly he’s had difficulties of late that resulted in our seeking treatment for him, but even so, he’s never demonstrated any serious behavior problems, not even when he began Harvard as a withdrawn and bullied fifteen-year-old. If he was going to have a breakdown, I should think it would have been then, having left home for the first time and not possessing the normal skills for interacting with others and making friends. He did remarkably well until this past fall semester of his senior year, when his personality became alarmingly altered. But he did not kill anyone!

  Dr. Benton Wesley, a consultant for the FBI and a member of the McLean Hospital staff, knows quite a lot about my son’s background and developmental obstacles, and perhaps he is at liberty to discuss these details with you, since he hasn’t seemed inclined to discuss them with your assistant, Dr. Fielding. Johnny’s is a long, complex story, and I need you to hear it. Suffice it to say that when he was admitted at McLean last Monday, it was because he was deemed to be a danger to himself. He had not harmed anybody else or so much as intimated that he might. Then suddenly out of the blue he confessed to such a vicious and horrible crime, and in short order was transferred to a locked ward for the criminally insane. I ask you, how is it possible the authorities have been so quick to believe his ludicrous and deluded tales?

  I must talk to you, Dr. Scarpetta. I know your office performed the autopsy on the little boy who died in Salem, and I believe it is reasonable to request a second opinion. Of course you know Dr. Fielding’s conclusion—that the murder was premeditated, carefully planned, a cold-blooded execution that was an initiation for a satanic cult. Something as monstrous as that is absolutely inconsistent with anything my son could do to anyone, and he has never had anything to do with cults of any description. It is outrageous to assume that his fondness of books and films with a horror or supernatural or violent theme might have influenced him to “act out.”

  Johnny suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. He is spectacularly gifted in some areas and completely incompetent in others. He has very rigid habits and routines that he is obsessive about, and on January 30, he was eating brunch at The Biscuit with the person he is closest to, a supremely gifted graduate student named Dawn Kincaid, just as they do every Saturday morning from ten a.m. until one p.m. He could not, therefore, have been in Salem when the little boy was killed mid-afternoon.

  Johnny has the remarkable ability to remember and parrot the most obscure details, and it is clear to me that what he has said to the authorities has come straight from what he’s been told about the case and what’s been in the news. He truly does seem to believe he is guilty (for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend), and even claims that a “puncture wound” to his left hand was from the nail gun misfiring when he used it on the boy, which is fabricated. The wound is self-inflicted, a stab wound from a steak knife, and one of the many reasons we took him to McLea
n to begin with. My son seems determined to be severely punished for a crime he didn’t commit, and the way things are going, he will get his wish.

  Below are numbers to contact me. I hope you will have compassion and that I hear from you soon.

  Sincerely,

  Erica

  Erica Donahue

  6

  I return the sheets of heavy, stiff stationery to their envelope, then wrap the letter in napkins from the glove box to protect it as much as possible inside the zip-up compartment of my shoulder bag. If I have learned nothing else, it is that you can’t go back. Once potential evidence has been cut through, contaminated, or lost, it’s like an archaeologist’s trowel shattering an ancient treasure.

  “She doesn’t seem to know you and I are married,” I comment as trees thrash in the wind along the roadside, snow swirling whitely.

  “She might not,” Benton replies.

  “Does her son know?”

  “I don’t discuss you or my personal life with patients.”

  “Then she may not know much about me.”

  I try to work out how it might be possible that Erica Donahue wouldn’t tell her driver that the person he was to deliver the letter to is a small blonde woman, not a tall man with silver hair.

  “She uses a typewriter, assuming she typed this herself,” I continue to deduce. “And anyone who would go to so much trouble taping up the envelope to ensure confidentiality probably isn’t going to let someone else type the letter. If she still uses a typewriter, it’s unlikely she goes on the Internet and Googles. The watermarked engraved stationery, the fountain pen, the cursive typeface, possibly a purist, someone very precise, who has a very certain and set way of doing things.”

  “She’s an artist,” Benton says. “A classical pianist who doesn’t share the same high-tech interests as the rest of her family. Husband’s a nuclear physicist. Older son’s an engineer at Langley. And Johnny, as she pointed out, is incredibly gifted. In math, science. Writing that letter won’t help him. I wish she hadn’t.”