Black Notice

17

At eight o'clock the next morning, Wednesday, I squeezed into a metered space. Across the street, the eighteenth-century capitol of the Commonwealth was pristine behind wrought iron and fountains in the fog.

Dr. Wagner, other cabinet members and the attorney general worked in the Ninth Street Executive Office Building, and security had gotten so extreme that I'd begun to feel like a criminal when I came here. Just inside the door was a table, where a capitol police officer checked my satchel.

"If you find anything in there," I said, "let me know, because I can't"

The smiling officer looked very familiar, a short, fleshy man I guessed to be in his mid-thirties. He had thinning brown hair and the face of one who had been boyishly cute before advancing years and added weight had begun to have their way with him.

I held out my credentials and he barely gave them a glance.

"Don't need those," he cheerfully said. "You remember me? I had to respond to your building a couple times when you used to be over there."

He pointed in the direction of my old building on Fourteenth Street, which was only five short blocks east.

"Rick Hodges," he said. "That time they had the uranium scare. 'Member that?"

"How could I not?" I said. "Not one of our finer moments."

"And me and Wingo used to hang out sometimes. During lunch I'd come down when nothing much was going on."

A shadow crossed his face. Wingo was the best, most sensitive morgue supervisor I'd ever had. Several years ago he died of smallpox. I squeezed Hodges's shoulder.

"I still miss him," I said. "You have no idea how much."

He looked around and leaned closer to me.

"You keep up with his family any?" he asked in a low voice.

"From time to time."

He knew from the way I said it that his family didn't want to talk about their gay son, nor did they want me calling. Certainly, they didn't want Hodges or any of Wingo's friends calling, either. Hodges nodded, pain dimming his eyes. He tried to smile it away.

"That boy sure was crazy about you, Doc," he said to me. "I've been wanting to tell you that for a long time."

"That means a lot," I said to him with feeling. "Thank you, Rick."

I passed through the scanner without incident, and he handed me my satchel.

"Don't stay away so long," he said.

"I. won't;" I said, meeting his young, blue eyes. "It makes me feel safer having you around."

"You know where you're going?"

"Think so;' I said.

"Well, just remember the elevator has a mind of its own."

I took worn, granite steps to the sixth floor, where Sinclair Wagner's office overlooked Capitol Square. On this dark, rainy morning, I could barely see the statue of George Washington astride his horse. The temperature had plummeted twenty degrees during the night, and rain was small and hard like shotgun pellets.

The waiting area of the Secretary of Health and Human Services was handsomely arranged with graceful colonial furniture and flags that were not Dr. Wagner's style. His office was cramped and cluttered. It bespoke a man who worked extremely hard and understated his power.

Dr. Wagner was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where his first name, Sinclair, was pronounced Sinkler He was a psychiatrist with a law degree, and oversaw person-service agencies such as mental health, substance abuse, social services and Medicare. He had been on the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia, or MCV, before his appointment to a cabinet-level position, and I'd always respected him enormously and knew he respected me, too.

"Kay." He rolled back his chair and got up from his desk. "How are you?"

He motioned for me to sit on the couch, and he closed the door and returned to the barrier of his desk, which was not a good sign.

"I'm pleased with how everything's going at the Institute, aren't you?" he asked.

"Very much so," I replied. "Daunting, but better than I ever hoped."

He picked up his pipe and pouch of tobacco from an ashtray.

"I've been wondering what's been going on with you," he said. "You seem to have vanished off the face of the earth `ЎI don't know why you'd say that," I answered him. "I'm doing as many cases as always, if not more."

"Oh, yes. Of course, I keep up with you through the news."

He began tamping tobacco into the pipe. There was no smoking of any sort in the building and Wagner tended to suck on a cold pipe when he was ill at ease. He knew I hadn't come here to talk about the Institute or tell him how busy I'd been.

"I certainly know how busy you are," he went on, "since you don't even have time to see me."

"I just found out today, Sinclair, that you tried to see me last week," I replied.

He held my gaze, sucking on the pipe. Dr. Wagner was in his sixties but looked older than that, as if bearing the painful secrets of patients for so many years had finally begun to erode him. He had kind eyes, and it was greatly to his advantage that people tended to forget he also had the shrewdness of a lawyer.

"If you didn't get my message that I wanted to see you, Kay," he said, "then it would seem to me you have a staffing problem."

His slow, low tone nudged words along, always taking the long way around a thought.

"I do, but not of the sort you might imagine."

"I'm listening."

"Someone's been getting into my e-mail," I flatly replied. "Apparently this person got into the file where our passwords are kept and got hold of mine."

"So much for security…"

I held up my hand to stop him.

"Sinclair, security's not the problem. I'm being hurt from within my own ranks. It's clear to me that someoneor perhaps more than one person-is trying to cause me trouble. Perhaps even get me fired. Your secretary e-mailed mine to let her know you wanted to see me. My secretary passed this along to me, and I allegedly replied that I was too busy to see you at that time."

I could tell Dr. Wagner found this confusing, if not ridiculous.

"There are other things," I went on, getting increasingly uncomfortable with the sound of my own voice spinning what seemed such a fantastic web. "E-mails asking calls to be rolled over to my deputy chief, and worst of all, this socalled chat room I'm doing on the Internet."

"I know about that;" he grimly said. "And you're telling me that whoever is doing this Dear Dr. Kay stuff is the same person using your password?"

"It's definitely someone using my password and posing as me."

He was silent, sucking his pipe.

"I'm very suspicious that my morgue supervisor is connected with all this," I added.

“Why?„ "Erratic behavior, hostility, disappearing acts. He's disgruntled and up to something. I could go on.".

Silence.

"When I can prove his involvement," I said, "I'll take care of the problem."

Dr. Wagner returned the pipe to the ashtray. He got up from his desk and came around to where I was sitting. He settled into a side chair. He leaned forward and looked intensely at me.

"I've known you for a long time, Kay," he said in a kind but no-nonsense voice. "I'm well aware of your reputation. You're a tribute to the Commonwealth. You've also been through a horrendous tragedy, and it wasn't that long ago."

"Are you trying to play the role of psychiatrist with me, Sinclair?" I wasn't joking.

"You aren't a machine."

"Nor am I given to wild thinking. What I'm telling you is real. Every brick of the case I'm building. There are just a lot of insidious activities going on, and while it may be true I've been more distracted than usual, what I'm telling you has nothing to do with that."

"How can you be so sure, Kay, if you've been distracted, as you put it? Most people wouldn't even have returned to work for a while-if ever-after what you've suffered. When did you go back to work?"

"Sinclair, we all have our ways of coping."

"Let me answer my own question for you;" he went on. "Ten days. And not a very happy environment to return to, I might add. Tragedy, death."

I didn't say anything as I fought for composure. I had been in a dark cave and scarcely remembered scattering Benton's ashes out to sea in Hilton Head, the place he loved most. I scarcely remembered clearing out his condo there, then attacking his drawers and closets at my house. At a maniacal speed, I removed everything right then that would have had to go eventually.

Had it not been for Dr. Anna Zenner, I couldn't have survived. She was an older woman, a psychiatrist who had been my friend for years. I had no idea what she did with Benton's fine suits and ties and polished leather shoes and colognes. I didn't want to know what happened to his BMW Most of all, I couldn't bear to know what had been done with the linens that had been in our bathroom and on our bed.

Anna had been wise enough to keep all belongings that mattered. She didn't touch his books or jewelry. She left his certificates and commendations hanging on the walls of his study, where nobody would see them, because he was so modest. She wouldn't let me remove the photographs arranged everywhere because she said it was important for me to live with them.

"You must live with the memory," she told me repeatedly in her heavy German accent. "It is still present, Kay. You cannot run away from it. Don't try."

"On a scale of ten, how depressed are you, Kay?" Dr. Wagner's voice sounded somewhere in the background.

I was still hurt and unable to accept that Lucy had never shown up once during all of this. Benton left me his condo in his will, and Lucy was furious with me for selling it, although she knew as well as I did that neither of us could ever pass through its rooms again. When I tried to give her his much-loved, scarred, scuffed bomber jacket he had worn in college, she said she didn't want it, that she would give it to someone else. I knew she never did. I knew she hid it somewhere.

"There's no shame in admitting it. I think it's hard for you to admit you're human," Dr. Wagner's voice surfaced.

My eyes cleared.

"Have you thought of going on an antidepressant?" Dr. Wagner asked me. "Something mild like Wellbutrin."

I paused before I said anything.

"In the first place, Sinclair," I said, "situational depression is normal. I don't need a pill to magically take away -my grief. I may be stoical. I may find it difficult to show my emotions around others, to show my deepest feelings, and yes, it's easier.for me to fight and get angry and overachieve than to feel pain. But I'm not wrapped tight in denial. I've got sense enough to know that grief has to run its course. And this isn't easy when those you trust begin to chip away at what little you have left in your life."

"You just switched from first person to second person," he pointed out. "I'm just wondering if you're aware..:' "Don't dissect me, Sinclair."

"Kay, let me paint for you the portrait of tragedy, of violence, that those untouched by it never see," he said. "It has a life of its own. It continues its rampage, although with more stealth and with less visible wounds as time moves on."

"I see the portrait of tragedy every day," I said.

"What about when you look in the mirror?" he asked.

"Sinclair, it's terrible enough to suffer loss, but to compound that with everyone looking askance at you and doubting your abilities to function anymore is to be kicked and degraded while you're supposedly down."

He held my gaze. I had just switched to second person again, to that safer place, and I saw it in his eyes.

"Cruelty thrives on what it perceives as weakness," I went on.

I knew what evil was. I could smell it and recognize its features when it was in my midst.

"Someone seized what happened to me as the longawaited-for opportunity to destroy me," I concluded.

"And you don't think this is perhaps a little paranoid?" he finally spoke.

"No:' "Why would someone do that, besides being petty and jealous?" he inquired.

"Power. To steal my fire."

"An interesting analogy," he said. "Tell me what you mean by that."

"I use my power for good," I explained. "And whoever is trying to hurt me wants to appropriate my power for his own selfish use, and you don't want power in the hands of people like that."

"I agree;" he thoughtfully said.

His phone buzzed. He got up and answered it.

"Not now," he said over the line. "I know. He's just going to have to wait"

He returned to his chair and blew out a long breath, took his glasses off and set them on the coffee table.

"I think the best thing to do is send out a press release informing people that someone is impersonating you on the Internet, to do what we can to clear this up as much as possible," he said. "We'll put an end to it, even if it requires a court order."

"That would make me very happy," I said.

He got up and I did, too.

' "Thank you, Sinclair. Thank God I have a shield like you:' "We'll just hope the new secretary will be the same," he remarked as if I knew what he was talking about.

"What new secretary?" I asked as anxiety hummed again, this time more loudly.

A strange expression passed over his face. Then he looked angry.

"I've sent you several memos marked private and confidential. Goddamn it! Now this is going too far."

"I've gotten nothing from you," I said.

He pressed his lips together, his cheeks turning red. It was one thing to tamper with e-mail; it was another to intercept the secretary's scaled, classified memorandums. Not even Rose opened anything like that.

"Apparently the Governor's Crime Commission's gotten stuck on the notion that we should transfer your office out of Health and into Public Safety," he told me.

"For God's sake, Sinclair," I exclaimed.

"I know, I know." He raised his hand to quiet me.

This same ignorant proposal had come up shortly after I'd been hired. The police and forensic labs were under Public Safety, meaning, among other things, that if my office fell under Public Safety, too, there would be no checks and balances anymore. The police department, in essence, would have a say-so in how I worked my cases.

"I've written position papers on this before," I told Dr. Wagner. "Years ago, I fought it off by preaching to prosecutors and police chiefs. I even went to the defense attorneys' bar. We can't let this happen."

Dr. Wagner said nothing.

"Why now?" I persisted. "Why has this just come up now? The issue's been dormant for more than ten years."

"I think Representative Connors is pushing it because some of the higher-ups in law enforcement are pushing him," he said. "Who the hell knows."

I did, and as I drove toward my office, I got energized. I thrived on unanswered questions, on excavating for what wasn't plain to see, on getting to the truth. What detractors like Chuck Ruffin and Diane Bray had not factored into their machinations was that they'd served to wake me up.

A scenario was materializing in my mind. It was very simple. Someone wanted me shot out of the air so my office would be vulnerable to a takeover by Public Safety. I had heard rumblings that the current secretary, whom I liked very much, was reti 'fit. Wouldn't it be a coincidence if Bray just happened to take his place.

When I reached my office, I smiled at Rose and bid her a cheery good morning.

"Aren't we in a good mood today!" she said, enormously pleased.

"It's your vegetable soup," I commented. "I have it to look forward to. Where's Chuck?" lust his name gave Rose a sour look.

"Off delivering several brains to MCV," she replied.

Now and then when cases were neurologically suspicious and complicated, I would fix the brain in formalin and have it delivered to the neuropathology lab for special studies.

"Let me know when he comes back;" I told her. "We need to set up the Luma-Lite in the decomposed room."

She placed her elbow on her desk, chin in her hand and shook her head, eyes on me.

"I hate to be the one who tells you this;" she said.

"Oh God, now what? Just when I thought it might be a good day."

"The Institute's doing a mock crime scene and it appears their Luma-Lite is in for repairs."

"Don't tell me."

"Well, all I know is someone called here and Chuck took our Luma-Lite to them before he left for MCV"

"Then I'll just go get it back."

"It's at an outdoor mock scene some ten miles away."

"Who gave Chuck the authority to lend it to anyone?" I asked.

"Just be glad it isn't stolen like half of everything else around here," she said.

"I guess I'll just have to go upstairs and do the examination in Vander's lab," I said.

I walked into my office and sat down at my desk. I took my glasses off and massaged the bridge of my nose. I decided the time had come to set up a rendezvous between Bray and Chuck. I signed on to Ruffin's address and e-mailed a note to Bray.

Chief Bray

Have some information you must know. Please meet me at Beverly Hills Shopping Center at 5:30. Park on back row near Buckhead's. We can talk in your car so nobody sees us. If you can't meet me, page me. Otherwise I'll see you then.

Chuck

Then I sent him a text message page, purportedly from Bray, inviting him to the meeting.

"Done," I said, yielding to self-congratulation just as the phone rang.

"Yo," Marino said. "Your personal investigator here. What'cha doing after work?"

"More work. Remember I said two can play this game? You're taking me to Buckhead's. We wouldn't want to miss a little rendezvous between two people near and dear to our hearts, would we? So I thought it might be nice if you took me out to dinner and we just happened to run into them," I said.