Port Mortuary
Inside the changing room for female staff, I toss soiled scrubs into a biohazard hamper and strip off the rest of my clothes and medical clogs. I wonder if Col. Scarpetta stenciled in black on my locker will be removed the minute I return to New England in the morning. The thought hadn't entered my mind before now, and it bothers me. A part of me doesn't want to leave this place.
Life at Dover Air Force Base has its comforts, despite six months of hard training and the bleakness of handling death daily on behalf of the US government. My stay here has been surprisingly uncomplicated. I can even say it's been pleasant. I'm going to miss getting up before dawn in my modest room, dressing in cargo pants, a polo shirt, and boots, and walking in the cold dark across the parking lot to the golf course clubhouse for coffee and something to eat before driving to Port Mortuary, where I'm not in charge. When I'm on duty for the armed forces medical examiner, the AFME, I'm no longer a chief. In fact, I'm outranked by quite a number of people, and critical decisions aren't mine to make, assuming I'm even asked. Not so when I return to Massachusetts, where I'm depended on by everyone.
It's Monday, February 8. The wall clock above the shiny white sinks reads 16:33 hours, lit up red like a warning. In less than ninety minutes I'm supposed to appear on CNN and explain what a forensic radiologic pathologist, or RadPath, is and why I've become one, and what Dover and the Department of Defense and the White House have to do with it. In other words, I'm not just a medical examiner anymore, I suppose I'll say, and not just a habeas reservist with the AFME, either. Since 9/11, since the United States invaded Iraq, and now the surge of troops in Afghanistan -- I rehearse points I should make -- the line between the military and civilian worlds has forever faded. An example I might give: This past November during a forty-eight-hour period, thirteen fallen warriors were flown here from the Middle East, and just as many casualties arrived from Fort Hood, Texas. Mass casualty isn't restricted to the battlefield, although I'm no longer sure what constitutes a battlefield. Maybe every place is one, I will say on TV. Our homes, our schools, our churches, commercial aircraft, and where we work, shop, and go on vacation.
I sort through toiletries as I sort through comments I need to make about 3-D imaging radiology, the use of computerized tomography, or CT, scans in the morgue, and I remind myself to emphasize that although my new headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is the first civilian facility in the United States to do virtual autopsies, Baltimore will be next, and eventually the trend will spread. The traditional postmortem examination of dissect as you go and take photographs after the fact and hope you don't miss something or introduce an artifact can be dramatically improved by technology and made more precise, and it should be.
I'm sorry I'm not doing World News tonight, because now that I think of it, I'd rather have this dialogue with Diane Sawyer. The problem with my being a regular on CNN is that familiarity often breeds contempt, and I should have thought about this before now. The interview could get personal, it occurs to me, and I should have mentioned the possibility to General Briggs. I should have told him what happened this morning when the irate mother of a dead soldier ripped into me over the phone, accusing me of hate crimes and threatening to take her complaints to the media.
Metal bangs like a gunshot as I shut my locker door. I pad over tan tile that always feels cool and smooth beneath my bare feet, carrying my plastic basket of olive-oil shampoo and conditioner, and an exfoliant scrub made of fossilized marine algae, a safety razor, a can of shaving gel for sensitive skin, liquid detergent, a washcloth, mouthwash, a toothbrush, a nail brush, and fragrant Neutrogena oil I'll use when I'm done. Inside an open stall, I neatly arrange my personal effects on the tile ledge and turn on the water as hot as I can stand it, hard spray blasting as I move around to get all of me, then lifting my face up, then looking down at the floor, at my own pale feet. I let water pound the back of my neck and head in hopes that stiff muscles will relax a little as I mentally enter the closet inside my base lodging and explore what to wear.
I picked his office, insisting on one as nice as mine, generously large, with a private shower. He has a river and city view, although his shades are down, which I find unnerving. He must have closed them when it was still light out, and I don't know why he would do that. Not for a good reason, I think. Whatever Jack Fielding has done, it all bodes badly.
I walk around and open each shade, and through expansive glass that is a reflective gray tint, I can make out the blurred lights of downtown Boston and billowing waves of freezing moisture, an icy snow that clicks and bites like teeth. The tops of high-rises, the Prudential and Hancock towers are obscured, and gusting wind moans in low tones around the dome over my head. Below, Memorial Drive is churned up by traffic, even at this hour, and the Charles is formless and black. I wonder how deep the snow is by now and how deep it will get before it moves off to the south. I wonder if Fielding will ever return to this room I designed and furnished for him, and somehow it feels that he won't, even though there is no evidence he's gone for good.
The biggest difference between our work spaces is his is crowded with reminders of the occupant, his various degrees, certificates, and commendations, his collectibles on shelves, autographed baseballs and bats, tae kwon do trophies and plaques, and models of fighter planes and a piece from a real one that crashed. I go over to his desk and survey Civil War relics: a belt buckle, a mess kit, a powder horn, a few minie balls that I remember him collecting during our early days in Virginia. But there are no photo graphs, and that makes me sad. In some places I can see what's gone in blank spaces of wall where he's not bothered to fill in the tiny holes left from hanging hooks he removed.
It stings that he no longer displays familiar pictures taken when he was my forensic pathology fellow, candid shots of us in the morgue or the two of us out at death scenes with Marino, the lead homicide detective for Richmond PD in the late eighties, the early nineties, when both Fielding and I were just getting started, although in completely different ways. He was the good-looking doctor beginning his career, while I was shifting mine into the private sector, transitioning into civilian life and the role of chief, doing my best not to look back. Maybe Fielding isn't looking back, although I don't know why. His old days were good days compared to mine. He didn't help cover up a crime. He's never had anything on par with that to hide from. Not that I know of, but I have to wonder. What do I know anymore?
Not much, except I sense he's gotten rid of me, maybe gotten rid of all of us. I sense he's gotten rid of more than he ever has before. It is something I'm convinced of without knowing exactly why. Certainly his personal property is still here, his Gore-Tex rain suit on a hanger, and his neoprene hip waders, his dive bag of scuba gear and scene case stowed in a closet, and his collection of police patches and police and military challenge coins. I remember helping him move into this office. I even helped him arrange his furniture, both of us complaining and laughing and then griping some more as we moved the desk, then his conference table, then moved them again and again.
"What is this, Laurel and Hardy?" he said. "You going to push a mule up the stairs next?"
"You don't have stairs."
"I'm thinking of getting a horse," he said as we moved the same chairs we'd just moved earlier. "There's a horse farm about a mile from the house. I could board the horse there, maybe ride it to work, to crime scenes."
"I'll add that to the employee handbook. No horses."
"It must have been huge on her and practically dragged on the ground," Marino says, getting up from the bed. "I'm not saying she was trying to look like a man, but with her short hair and the big coat, and a hat and glasses on or whatever? As long as you don't see her rack. She's got quite a rack. Has that in common with her dad, right?"
"I've never known Jack to have large breasts."
"I mean both of them built."
"So she returned when she assumed it was safe to do so, and even though the flybot was badly damaged, it responded to radio frequency signals sent by the data gloves?" I turn off the iPad and hand it to him.
"I think she just saw it on the ground, think it was shiny in the flashlight and she found it that way. Lucy says the bug is DOA. Squashed."
"Do we know exactly what it does or was supposed to do?"
Marino shrugs, towering over me again, still in his parka, which he hasn't bothered to unbutton, as if he didn't intend to stay long. "This isn't my area of expertise, you know. I didn't understand half of what they were talking about, Lucy and the general. I just know the potential for whatever this thing is supposed to do is something to be concerned about, and DoD intends to do some sort of inspection of Otwahl to see what the hell is really going on over there. But I'm not sure we don't already know exactly what the hell is going on over there."
"Meaning what?"
He returns the iPad to its case and says, "Meaning I worry there's R-and-D going on that the government damn well knows about but just doesn't want anyone else to know, and then you get kids out of control and the shit hits the fan. I think you get my drift. When are you coming back to work?"
"Probably not today," I tell him.
"Well, we got a shitload of things to do and undo," he says.
"Thanks for the warning."
"Buzz me if you need something. I'll call the hospital and let you know how the psycho's doing."
"Thanks for stopping by."
I wait until the sound of his heavy footsteps stops at the front door, and then the door shuts again, and then a pause, and Benton resets the alarm. I hear his footsteps, which are much lighter than Marino's, as he walks past the stairs, toward the back of the house where he has his office.
"Come on, let's get up," I say to Sock, and he opens his eyes and looks at me and yawns. "Do you know what bye-bye means? I guess not.
They didn't teach you that at the prison. You just want to sleep, don't you? Well, I've got things to do, so come on. You're really quite lazy, you know.
Are you sure you ever won a race or even ran in one? I don't think I believe it."
I move his head and put my feet on the floor, deciding there must be a pet shop around here that has everything a skinny, lazy old greyhound might need for this kind of weather.