than Nikki or Dr. Solari, and I'll write you up and hand it over to Dr. Keller. Clear?'
'Hey, easy does it.'
Nikki could tell that he stopped himself at the last possible instant from adding 'babe.'
'I'm going to get started on the new case,' she said.
'I told you, this is a straightforward View. No scalpel required, just eyeball him and sign off.'
'If it's all the same to you, I'll make that decision after I've seen the guy.'
Nikki didn't add that there wasn't a chance in the world she would pass on this case regardless of how open-and-shut it was. Here was the perfect opportunity to get her mind off of Kathy for a few hours without getting soaked on the streets of Boston.
'Suit yourself,' Cummings said. 'Three days.'
'What?'
'Three days. That's how long the dude's been in the water. He's a little, um, bloated. Sure you don't want to just View and then skidoo?'
'Have a good lunch, Brad.'
Nikki changed into scrubs and located the remains of Roger Belanger on the center of three stainless-steel tables in Autopsy Suite 1. The daughter of an Italian and an Irishwoman, she could easily trace her thick, black hair and wide (some said sensuous) mouth to her father, and her fair skin, sea-green eyes, slender frame, and caustic wit to her mom. At her father's urging, she had tried to follow his rather large footsteps into surgery. But after a year of residency, she switched to pathology, realizing that her desire to have a life outside of medicine was precluded by spending most of it in the OR or on rounds. Not once had she regretted her decision.
Belanger was hardly the most unsightly corpse Nikki had ever examined, but neither was he at all pleasant to look at. Overweight and nearly egg-bald, he was extremely bloated and discolored, with purplish marbling of his skin. His flaccid limbs were well past rigor mortis. The white scar from his bypass ran the length of his breastbone.
Good-bye for now, Kath, she thought as she began to focus in on the details of the body. I'll let you back in in two hours.
'No matter how obvious a case is,' Joe Keller had reminded her on more than one occasion, 'no matter how apparently open-and-shut, you must make no assumptions. Process is everything. If you stick to process, step by step, you will seldom have to explain having missed something.'
Step one: Read over as much information as you can lay your hands on about the subject. Step two: Inspect every millimeter of the skin.
Nikki used the foot-activated dictation system as she went.
'… There is a well-healed three-inch scar in the right lower abdominal quadrant, possibly from an appendectomy; a ten-inch scar less than a year old down the mid-anterior chest; a ten-inch scar of about the same age on the inner right thigh, probably from harvesting a vein for his bypass; and a well-healed two-inch scar just below the left patella, probably from the repair of a laceration many years ago.
'There is a single contusion just above and behind the right ear, with discoloration and some swelling, but no depression of the bone beneath. There is a nickel-sized abrasion just beneath the right mandible that — '
Nikki peered at the innocent-looking scrape. It was the only place on Belanger's waterlogged body where skin was actually scraped off. She put on a pair of magnifying goggles and illuminated the area with a gooseneck lamp. The abrasion was actually a perfect hexagon. And in the center of the shape were ten tiny bruises perfectly forming the letter 'H.' She photographed the area, then proceeded with her meticulous examination.
Process is everything.
An hour later, she had accomplished two major things. She had in fact managed temporarily to drive her concerns for Kathy Wilson from her mind, and she had come within one final step of proving that Roger Belanger had been murdered. She stripped off her gloves, grabbed the Boston Yellow Pages, and made a call. Minutes later she paged Brad Cummings.
'Jesus,' he said, the dishes clinking in the background, 'this pager goes off so infrequently, it scared the heck out of me.'
'You almost done?'
'We were just waiting for our flans.'
Nikki didn't want to go anywhere near who 'we' was.
'I need you to pick something up for me and come back to the office, Brad.'
'But — '
'No buts, no flans. Just go to Mulvaney's Pool and Patio on Route 9, right after the mall. You know where that is?'
'Yes.'
'They'll have a package waiting in your name. Eleven ninety-five plus tax. I'll pay you back. Hurry.'
For the next forty-five minutes, Nikki finished collecting her specimens and waited. Inexorably, her concerns for her friend reemerged. The two of them met almost three years ago at a folk club in Cambridge. Nikki had been a classical violinist from age three when her father enrolled her in a Suzuki method class. She played in chamber- music groups right through college and medical school when time allowed, and was reasonably satisfied with what she got from her music — that is, until she heard Kathy Wilson and the Lost Bluegrass Ramblers play. Kathy sang lead and played strings — mandolin, guitar, and bass — with astounding deftness and heart.
Nikki had heard bluegrass before, but in truth she had never paid much attention to it. That night, the Ramblers, and Kathy in particular, brought her an exhilaration that had long ago vanished from the music she played and listened to. After the performance, she waited by the dressing room door.
'I don't collect autographs,' she said once Kathy had emerged, 'but I wanted to tell you that I love your voice and your energy.'
'Jes doin' what comes naturally. You play the fiddle professionally?'
'Hardly. How did you — '
'You've got a fiddler's mark right there under your jaw.'
Nikki knew the reddish-brown mark and the small lump beneath it, caused by long-term pressure from her violin's chin rest.
'It became permanent sometime during college,' she said. 'I play mostly chamber music.'
'Eyes and necks, that's how I judge a person. Eyes and necks. An' yours tell me you care a lot about people an' about music.'
Half an hour later, Nikki was drinking beer with the band and sharing intimate details with Kathy about her laughable lack of judgment when it came to choosing men. A week after that, Kathy gave her a lesson in bluegrass. Over the two years that followed, Nikki developed into a reasonably proficient bluegrass musician, good enough to sit in with the group when they weren't touring.
'Girl, you're capable of hittin' on all cylinders when you put your mind and soul to it,' Kathy said. 'But you gotta learn how to shut out the extraneous — especially all them folks who want a piece of you. Do that an' you'll feel your feet start floatin' off the ground when you play.'
From day one, being around Kathy was an adventure in spontaneity. Nikki had friends — close, good friends — from college and before, and two from medical school. But from their earliest times together, often talking and giggling from the end of a show until breakfast, Kathy and she were sisters.
'I've had it with men,' Kathy moaned after she and her bassist boyfriend had broken up for the third and last time. 'Pass the beer nuts is all they're about.'
'That and apologizing for leaving the toilet seat up again.'
'But only after you've gone for another unexpected dip.'
The night of that conversation, a year ago, they decided Kathy would move into Nikki's second-floor flat in South Boston. The deal was one-quarter rent and utilities for Kathy plus weekly lessons for Nikki. Kathy had been religious about giving them, too, when she and the band weren't on tour. She was a treasure, absolutely irrepressible and in love with life in general and her music in particular. Not at all shy about grading every man Nikki dated, she once told a lawyer he simply wasn't interested enough in anything but himself and his BMW to have designs on her friend. They were in a gritty club, one of Kathy's and Nikki's favorites, and the man was fidgeting uncomfortably as if battling the desire to wash down the furniture and probably some of the patrons as well. Often outspoken when she was sober, Kathy had consumed, perhaps, a beer or so too many.
