Chaos

CHAPTER 39

THE FIRST STOP WHEN I enter my building from the bay is the brightly lit receiving area with its walls of stainless-steel coolers and freezers monitored by green digital readouts that turn yellow and red when they aren’t happy.

The air is cool and pleasantly deodorized, and I’m greeted by bickering just inside the door, where Harold and Rusty have parked the stretcher on the platform floor scale. They’ve put on shoe covers, aprons, gloves and surgical caps, and I catch them in medias res, softly pecking at each other and oblivious to anyone who might be listening.

“Well what is it then?” Harold clicks open a pen and he has his notebook open.

“It’s really annoying when you do this.”

“Do what? I’m just asking for verification of what weight you said we should deduct.”

“I didn’t say because I don’t need to.” Rusty holds the long wooden measuring rod in one hand like a shepherd’s crook as he unzips the pouch.

“Then what is it?”

“Why would it be different this time, Harold?”

“It’s always smart to ask.”

“And you always do. It’s eighty-six pounds just like last time we weighed it.”

“But you didn’t check first when it was empty, did you. So we don’t know that for a fact.”

“No, I don’t every single time because it’s stupid,” as Rusty measures the body from the top of the bag over Elisa Vandersteel’s head to the bottom of the bags on her feet.

“What happens if we get asked in court whether we weighed the stretcher?”

“I’ve never heard anybody ask that or even bring it up except you.”

“But they could and depending on the circumstances maybe they should. You never know when the tiniest detail can make all the difference. Let’s see… if we subtract eighty-six from two-sixteen?” Harold does the math in his pocket-size notebook because he can’t do it in his head. “We get a weight of one-thirty.” He writes it down as I walk across the recycled-glass floor that’s a shade of tan called truffle. “And the length?”

“Sixty-five inches.”

I stop at the glass-enclosed security desk, what people here call the Fish Tank. On the outer ledge of the closed window is the big black leather-bound log, our Book of the Dead. It’s anchored by a thin steel chain, and all case entries must be made in black ink with the ballpoint pen tethered by a length of the same white cotton twine we use for sutures.

I open the acid-free ledger pages, lightly rapping a knuckle on the glass to get my favorite security officer’s attention. Georgia has her back to me as she collects a yellow RFID wristband from the 3-D printer. She returns to her desk and slides open her window.

“You look like you’ve lost more weight.” I notice her dark blue uniform with its yellow trouser stripes seems a bit baggy as she sits back down at her computer, placing her hands on the keyboard, the mouse.

“Oh, now you’re just being nice.” She peers at me over her reading glasses as her peach acrylic nails begin clicking over keys. “Seriously, though?” Her brown eyes are pleased. “You can tell?”

“I certainly can.”

“Almost ten pounds.”

“I thought so.”

“You’ve made my day and the sun’s not even up yet.”

“The most important question is what Weight Watchers has to say about pizza this morning. Is it legal?” I review entries about bodies delivered and picked up, catching up on what’s happened since I was here last.

“That depends on what kind and whose it is. Now if it’s your pizza, Doctor Scarpetta? I don’t care if it’s a thousand points because I’m eating it.”

I watch her go through paperwork on her desk, accessioning the Elisa Vandersteel case, giving it a unique number.

16-MA2037

“But you might want to tell me what sort of party we’re suddenly having,” Georgia says, “and who I should be watching for in the cameras and worrying about. Am I right that we’re battening down the hatches? Because you just say the word.”

“It looks like we’re having company, and we’ll be as hospitable as we can muster.” I’m careful what I say so nothing comes back to haunt me, and I turn another page in the log. “But no one’s getting in the way of the work. We won’t allow that.”

“Well I sure knew something was going on with Anne showing up at this hour. And then Bryce wandering in, and after him Paula from histology? And now you and Doctor Zenner, and rumor has it Ernie Koppel’s on his way. Damn.” She glances up at me. “So who’s the company we didn’t invite?”

I tell her, and she blows out a loud breath and rolls her eyes.

“I could use some overtime help if you’re interested,” I add, scanning names, ages, addresses, suspected causes of death, and whether our patients are still with us or have been dispatched to a funeral home or cemetery.

“Starting when?” she asks.

“Starting when your shift ends six hours from now.”

“O’Riley will be in then. At eight.”

“Yes, and I’d like you to stay and help him, if you’re willing. As long as you’re not too tired.” I want Georgia around because she’s fearless and she’s loyal. “Let’s get as many backups here as we can.”

“I’ll get on the phone. It’s better if I do it.” She means instead of Bryce. “You know how he can get on people’s last nerve.”

“As many of our officers who are available. I want at least one on every floor if possible.”

“To protect us from them.” She means from the FBI, and I don’t nod or answer.

I look her in the eye, and that’s enough.

“You just let me know what you want me to do,” Georgia folds her thick arms across her formidable chest, and I don’t know how effective she’d be in a fight but I wouldn’t want to challenge her.

“That will be largely decided by our guests,” as I turn back several pages in the log, wondering if there’s been a mistake.

“Well I can already tell you what they’ll do,” Georgia is getting worked up by the thought of her turf being overrun. “They’re going to snoop into every damn thing they can while they have the chance.”

“We won’t give it to them,” I reply as I continue to peruse the log, and I didn’t expect Molly Hinders’s body to still be here.

But it must be. Had it been released there would be a handwritten record of it, and as I read the entry made Monday, September 5, I’m reminded of the address.

Granite Street.

Bryce and Ethan live on Granite Street here in Cambridge very close to Magazine Park on the river. They moved there last spring, and I’m startled and not quite sure why.

“It appears Molly Hinders wasn’t released after I left yesterday.” I return the log to its spot on the ledge. “I thought she was being picked up by the funeral home. Did Doctor Wier run into some sort of problem?”

Lee Wier is one of my forensic pathologists, and she knows what she’s doing because I trained her.

“Well that’s turned into quite the cluster F.”

I have a bad feeling Georgia’s right about that. Molly Hinders is Investigator Barclay’s case, and Marino needs to intervene.

“That poor lady couldn’t have worse luck. Now everybody’s drunk and fighting while she’s all by her lonesome in a damn cooler,” Georgia is telling me as I keep thinking about what Dr. Wier said as she was going over the case during staff meeting several mornings ago.

When Molly Hinders’s body was found it was near a plugged-in stereo speaker that had fallen from its mount and was on the wet grass. It was the only explanation for how she could have been electrocuted in her backyard as she watered her plants with a hose. But it’s really never made sense to me that a speaker circuit could kill anyone.

HER SCALP AND HAIR were burned from coming into contact with the electrical source that killed her.

This was the early evening of the Labor Day holiday, and she’d returned home from kayaking on the Charles River. She removed her kayak from her car’s rooftop rack, dragged it into the backyard, then entered the house and poured herself a glass of wine. Still in her bathing suit, she went out to water the backyard, where there’s a stereo system, a wrought-iron table and chairs, and a barbecue under a partially covered pergola overgrown with vines.

When the police arrived the stereo system had no power because the ground-fault circuit interrupter-similar to a breaker-had been tripped. That alone should have prevented her from being shocked, much less killed. For some reason it didn’t, and I’ve found this puzzling from the start. But the case didn’t grab my attention then the way it does now. Molly Hinders is reminding me too much of Elisa Vandersteel and General Briggs.

“Please explain why Molly Hinders is still here,” I ask again.

“From what I gather,” Georgia says, “her family has money, and she and her estranged husband weren’t divorced yet. So he’s fighting over who’s claiming the body. They’re fighting over everything because she was real young and there’s no will, no nothing, and then the kicker? They fired the first funeral home they picked, so we can’t exactly be releasing her to anyone yet anyway.”

“It’s just as well, fortuitous in fact, because there may be other problems,” I reply as I hear the sound of the elevator doors opening. “I don’t want her released until I say. I want to check on a few things,” I add as Bryce appears, and he’s changed his clothes since we talked by phone in the trailer what seems an eternity ago.

“Who aren’t we releasing?” my chief of staff says, and his blue eyes look a little bleary, maybe from hard cider.

He has on tight stovepipe jeans, a T-shirt and lots of Goth jewelry, spunking himself up for the Feds. Bryce loves to flirt, and the more it’s not appreciated the better.

“Molly Hinders,” I inform him. “Her manner of death will be undetermined pending further investigation. I need you to let Doctor Wier know.” Then I ask Bryce if there’s anything new on his marijuana-tattoo mystery. “I don’t suppose we’ve figured out how that detail ended up in a nine-one-one call.” I put it to him bluntly.

“Sure. Ethan and me got to the bottom of it,” he says too flippantly as his boyish face turns red. “The weirdo next door? You know our jerk-off neighbor? It had to be him paying me back.”

“How’d he know what’s going on inside your own house?” Georgia pipes up, and obviously she’s familiar with the tattoo story.

Bryce probably couldn’t wait to tell her.

“Paying you back for what?” I ask him.

“Well…”

“Bryce? Your face is beet red. Obviously you know. Tell me how your neighbor found out about your fake tattoo.”

“Well it seems I got a little drunker than I thought on margaritas made with that to-die-for tequila your sister gave us? And apparently after our friends left I went to take the trash out, and I heard this same really weird noise and saw a strange light again. So of course I tripped on something and fell down, and then there he was trying to help me up. Only in that crazy moment it wasn’t a he. It was this thing, and I really thought it had happened this time.”

“What the hell?” Georgia has stopped typing, staring bug-eyed at him. “What are you talking about?”

“I really thought I was being abducted by aliens for some research project they must be doing.”

“Jeeees-us.” She starts shaking her head. “You sure do waste my time.”

“I’m dead serious. I’ve been seeing weird lights in the sky at night.”

“They’re called stars and airplanes.” Georgia just keeps shaking her head.

“Am I to assume it was your neighbor who showed up while you were out with the trash?” I ask.

“Donald the Nasty. I don’t remember what happened but Ethan does because I guess he came out to look for me and heard the ugly things I apparently said. Ethan was upset, telling me to thank Donald for coming to my aid, can you imagine? And of course in my confusion I yelled, How the frick do we know he’s not the one who pushed me down?”

“And he knew about your tattoo how?” I again ask.

“Because of his flashlight, and I had on shorts and was barefoot. So he saw it and made some crack about us being potheads, and that it figured. But I don’t remember any of it.”

“Marino needs to know every word,” I reply. “Please call right away. Find him, and tell him we need to talk.”