Black Notice

5

The air was filled with the static of greedy flies, their volume turned up high by warm weather and time. The removal service attendants had carried the stretcher into the warehouse and were waiting for me.

"Whooo," one of the attendants said, shaking his head, a bad expression on his face. "Lordy, lordy."

"I know, I know," I said as I pulled on clean gloves and booties. "I'll go in first. This won't take long. I promise."

"Fine by me, you want to go first."

I went back inside the container and they came after me, choosing their steps carefully, stretcher held tight at their waists like a sedan chair. Their breathing was labored behind their surgical masks. Both were old and overweight and should not have been lifting heavy bodies anymore.

"Get it by the lower legs and feet," I directed. "Real careful, because the skin's going to slip and come off. Let's get him by his clothing as best we can."

They set down the stretcher and bent over the dead man's feet.

"Lordy," one of them muttered again.

I hooked my arms under the armpits. They took hold of the ankles.

"Okay. Let's lift together on the count of three," I said. "One, two, three."

The men struggled to maintain their balance. They huffed and backed up. The body was limp because rigor mortis.had come and left, and we centered it onto the stretcher and wrapped it in the sheet. I zipped up the body bag and the attendants carried their client away. They would drive him to the morgue, and there I would do all I could to make him talk to me.

"Damn!" I heard one of them say. "They don't pay me enough for this."

"Tell me."

I followed them out of the warehouse into sunlight that was dazzling and air that was clean. Marino was still in his filthy undershirt, talking to Anderson and Bray on the dock. I gathered from the way he was gesturing that the presence of Bray had restrained him somewhat. Her eyes landed on me as I got close. She did not introduce herself, so I went first without offering my hand.

"I'm Dr. Scarpetta," I said to her.

She returned my greeting with vague regard, as if she had not a clue as to who I was or why I was there.

"I think it would be a good idea for the two of us to talk;" I added.

"Who did you say you are?" Bray asked.

"Oh, for Chrissake!" Marino erupted. "She knows damn well who you are."

"Captain." Bray's tone had the effect of a riding whip cracking.

Marino got quiet. Anderson, did, too.

"I'm the chief medical examiner." I told Bray what she already knew. "Kay Scarpetta."

Marino rolled his eyes. Anderson's expression puckered with resentment and jealousy when Bray motioned for me to step away from them. We moved to the edge of the dock, where the Sirius towered above us and barely stirred in the ruffled muddy-blue current.

"I'm so sorry I didn't recognize your name at first," she began.

I didn't say a word.

"That's very ungracious of me," she went on.

I remained silent.

"I should have gotten around to meeting you before now. I've been so busy. So here we are. And it's a good thing, really. Perfect timing, you might say"-she smiled-"that we should meet like this."

Diane Bray was a haughty beauty with black hair and perfect features. Her -figure was stunning. Dockworkers could not take their eyes off her.

"You see," she went on in her same cool tone, "I have this little problem. I supervise Captain Marino, yet he seems to think he works for you."

"Nonsense." I finally spoke.

She sighed.

"You have just robbed the city of the most experienced, decent homicide detective it's ever known, Chief Bray," I told her. "And I should know."

"I'm sure you should."

"Just what is it you're trying to accomplish?" I asked.

"It's time for young blood, for detectives who don't mind turning on a computer, using e-mail. Are you aware that Marino doesn't even know how to use word processing? Still hammers on a typewriter with two fingers?"

I couldn't believe she was saying this to me.

"Not to mention the very small problem that he's unteachable and insubordinate, his behavior a disgrace to the department," she went on.

Anderson had walked off, leaving Marino alone by the car, leaning against it, smoking. His arms and shoulders were thick and hairy, and his trousers, belted under his gut, were about to fall off. I knew he was humiliated because he refused to look our way.

"Why are there no crime-scene techs here?" I asked Bray.

One dockworker elbowed another and cupped his hands under his chest, fondling air as if it were Bray's big breasts.

"Why are you here?" I then asked her.

"Because I was alerted that Marino was," she replied. "He's been warned. I wanted to find out for myself if he was so blatantly disregarding my orders."

"He's here because someone had to be."

"He's here because he chose to be." She fixed her eyes on me. "And because you chose to be. That's really why, now isn't it, Dr. Scarpetta? Marino's your own personal detective. Has been for years.".

Her eyes bored into places even I couldn't see, and she seemed to wind her way through sacred parts of me and sense the meaning of my many walls. She took in my face and my body and I wasn't sure if she was comparing what I had to hers, or if she was assessing something she might decide she wanted.

"Leave him alone," I told her. "You're trying to kill his spirit. That's what this is all about. Because you can't control him."

"No one has ever been able to control him;' she replied. "That's why he was given to me."

"Given to you?"

"Detective Anderson is new blood. God knows, this department needs new blood."

"Detective Anderson is unskilled, unschooled and a coward," I replied.

"Certainly with your continents of experience, you can tolerate someone new and do a little mentoring, Kay?"

"There's no cure for someone who doesn't care."

"I suspect you've been listening to Marino. According to him, no one is skilled, schooled or cares enough to do what he does."

I'd had it with her. I adjusted my position to take full advantage of the shift in the wind. I stepped closer to her because I was going to rub her nose in a little dose of reality.

"Don't you ever do this to me again, Chief Bray," I said. "Don't you ever call me or anyone in my office to a scene and then saddle us with some fuckup who can't be bothered collecting evidence. And don't call me Kay."

She stepped away from my stinking presence, but not before I caught her flinch.

"We'll do lunch sometime," she said, dismissing me as she summoned her driver.

"Simmons? What time is my next appointment?" she asked, staring up at the ship and clearly enjoying all the attention.

She had a seductive way of massaging her lower lumbar spine or wedging her hands in the back pockets of her uniform pants, shoulders thrown back, or absently smoothing her tie over the steep slope of her chest.

Simmons was handsome and had a fine body, and when he slipped out a folded sheet of paper, it shook as he looked at it. She moved closer to him, and he cleared his throat.

"Two-fifteen, Chief," he said.

"Let me see." She leaned closer, brushing against his arm, taking her time as she looked at her itinerary and complained, "Oh, God! Not that school board idiot again!"

Officer Simmons shifted his position, and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple. He looked terrified.

"Call him and cancel," Bray said.

"Yes, Chief."

"Well, I don't know. Maybe I should just reschedule."

She took the itinerary from him, brushing against him again like a languid cat, and I was startled by the rage that flashed across Anderson's face. Marino caught up with me on my way to my car.

"You see the way she flaunts herself around?" he asked. "It wasn't lost on me."

"Don't think that ain't a topic of conversation. I'm telling you, that bitch's poison."

"What's her story?"

Marino shrugged. "Never been married, no one's good enough. Screws around with powerful, married types, supposedly. She's all abopt power, Doc. The rumor is that she wants to be the next Secretary of Public Safety so every cop in the Commonwealth will have to kiss her pretty ass:' "It will never happen."

"Don't be so sure. I hear she's got friends in high places, Virginia connections, which is one of the reasons we got stuck with her. She's got a plan, no doubt about that. Snakes like her always got a plan."

I opened the,trunk, exhausted and depressed as the earlier trauma of the day returned to me so hard it seemed to slam me against the car.

"You aren't gonna do him tonight, are you?" Marino asked.

"No way," I muttered. "It wouldn't be fair to him."

Marino gave me a questioning look. I felt him watching me as I stripped off my jumpsuit and shoes and doublebagged them.

"Marino, give me one of your cigarettes, please."

"I can't believe you're doing that again."

"There're about fifty million tons of tobacco in that warehouse. The smell put me in the mood:' "That ain't what I was smelling."

"Tell me what's going on;' I said as he held out his lighter.

"You just saw what's going on. I'm sure she explained it."

"Yes, she did. And I don't understand it. She's in charge of the uniformed division, not investigations. She says no one can control you, so she's elected to take care of the problem herself. Why? When she got here, you weren't even in her division. Why should you matter to her?"

"Maybe she thinks I'm cute."

"That must be it," I said.

He exhaled smoke as if he were putting out birthday candles, and looked down at his T-shirt as if he had forgotten it was there. His big, thick hands were still dusted with talc from the surgical gloves, and he at first looked lonely and defeated, then turned cynical and indifferent again.

"You know;" he said, "I could retire if I wanted to and draw about forty grand a year pension."

"Come over for dinner, Marino."

"Add that to what I could get doing some security consulting or whatever, and I could live pretty good. Wouldn't have to shovel this shit no more day after day with all these little maggots crawling out from everywhere thinking they know it all."

"I've been asked to invite you."

"By who?" he asked suspiciously.

"You'll find out when you get there."

"What the hell does that mean?" he asked, scowling.

"For God's sake, go take a shower and put on something that won't clear out the city. Then come over. Around six-thirty."

"Well, in case you haven't noticed, Doc, I'm working. Three-to-eleven shift this week. Eleven-to-seven shift week after next. I'm the new hot-shit watch commander for the entire friggin' city, and the only hours they need a friggin' watch commander is when all the other commanders ain't on duty, which is evening shift and midnight shift and weekends, meaning the only dinner I'm gonna get the rest of my life is in my car."

"You've got a radio," I told him. "I live in the city, so it's not out of your jurisdiction. Come over, and if you get called out, you get called out."

I got inside my car and started the engine.

"I don't know," he said.

"I was asked to…" I started to say as tears threatened again. "I was about to call you when you called me."

"Huh? This isn't making any sense. Who asked you? What? Is Lucy in town?"

He seemed pleased she would think of him, if that's what my hospitality was all about.

"I wish she were. See you at six-thirty?"

He hesitated some more, swatting flies and smelling awful.

"Marino, I really need you to come over," I told him, clearing my throat. "It's very important to me. It's personal and very important."

It was so hard to say that to him. I didn't think I'd ever told him I needed him in a personal way.. I couldn't remember the last time I'd said words like this to anyone but Benton.

"I mean it," I added.

Marino crushed the cigarette beneath his foot until it was a tobacco smear and pulverized paper. He lit up again, eyes wandering around.

"You know, Doc, I really got to quit these things. And Wild Turkey. I've been going through that stuff like buttered popcorn. Depends on what you're cooking;' he said.