interns to handle the final cleanup and the disposition of the body. Jessica dug her left thumb into her right palm to remove her right surgical glove, and then followed up with the left. The pair of medical examiners stripped their surgical garb as they walked, dumping their green hair nets and aprons into a hamper. Going to their respective locker rooms, Jessica called out, “Question for you, JT.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you really think I may have… might be… may've gotten involved with Richard Sharpe because he's… you know, at a distance?”
“Good God, Jess, you're not paying any attention to all that bullswallop going around about you, now, are you?”
“Bull swallop? Going around about me?”
“Usual crap out of the usual mouths, about how you like to keep your friends and lovers at safe arm's length. I mean, it's nobody's damn business but your own.”
“I hadn't heard anything to that effect,” she confessed.
“Oh, sorry. I wouldn't've repeated it had I known you hadn't… I mean, I don't do that silly gossip thing. I mean… sorry.”
“You think there's any truth to it?”
“Not the least.”
“Come on. You do, don't you?” He hemmed and said, “You just happen to fall for the wrong guys, and they're always out of reach, one way or another.” He saw the flame of hurt flash and die along her face. “I mean… first Otto Boutine, both married and your superior. I know… I know all about his wife's debilitating disease, that he was a romantic figure as a result of the wife's inability to… Well, all the same, the man was out of reach, or should've been.”
“Otto was different from all the rest. You can't compare-”
“Then that guy Alan Rhychman in New York who stands you up in Hawaii just so he can run for police commissioner. What a hoot.”
“Alan saw a chance to make a difference in New York, and he has, from what I've heard.”
“Still, out of reach. And then came Jim Parry, not only Mr. FBI but Mr. Hawaii as well.”
“James and I had a fulfilling, long-lasting relationship that beat the odds for a long time. You've got to admit that.”
“Still, out of reach, Jess.”
“It isn't like I've had a lot of choice, given my commitments and lifestyle.”
Rubbing stiffness from his neck, JT continued: “Love makes fools of fools.”
“All of us, I know.”
“Nay, nay! Not an ounce of truth to it, my dear friend,” he facetiously added. “And so now we are moving on, a healthy thing. Now it's Inspector Richard Sharpe, Scotland Yard. Nay! Pay no heed. Love must remain blind and stumbling. If Cupid should see too clearly, can it be called love at all? If love is measured and controlled, Jessica, it's no fun. So relax, enjoy, and stop worrying about controlling your every step and your every relationship. Remember the centipede who was asked, 'How in God's name do you walk with all those feet at once?' The moment he considered the question, he stumbled over himself. So, does that answer your question, just a bit?”
“Donna Lemonte always says that I put up barriers around me.”
“Just because you've switched from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic? At least Scotland Yard's closer to Virginia than Hawaii-”
“New Scotland Yard,” she corrected him. “And it's not the Atlantic to us; to us, it's the Pond.”
“Whatever you call it, your shrink friend is going to see it as a big barrier. You must always consider the source.”
“Thanks for being your usual candid but sensitive self, JT. It's what I love most about you.”
“A friend should be candid and sensitive, however much the truth hurts.”
“So, when are you going to hang out your shingle and start charging for all this psychoanalysis, Dr. Thorpe?”
“Honestly, I'm only an amateur at love, psychology, and relationships myself, a novice. So any advice I may have for the lovelorn you may want to drop in the hamper along with the dirty linen.”
“I'll take that advice, John,” she replied dully, dropping her shoulders and turning to the door marked ladies' locker room.
“G'night,” he said, and suddenly feeling the weight of the day and the long autopsy, JT trundled off through the door marked gentlemen's locker room.
As the door was closing on JT's tired form, she shouted, “I ought to arrange to have your brain dissected, JT. No one would believe it! It'd make The New England Journal of Medicine]”
“I can see the screaming title: 'Thorpe's Brain Found Befuddled over Relationship Issues!' “ He had turned and now held the door open with his right foot.
“Likely a defect in the DNA strand, the relationship gene,” she added.
“Not every problem has a genetic excuse, Dr. Coran, or are you now grasping at self-justifying straws?” He allowed the door to close on his half grin.
“Touched,” she said to the door, turned, and went to her locker. She desperately wanted to shower and change out of the uniform of the death investigator.
TWO
All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.
After a shower, Jessica emerged in a powder-blue business suit, and feeling an urge to be alone, she found the elevator and rode it to the building's roof. She often went there after an autopsy, to fill her lungs with fresh air and to clear her head. In the back of her mind, the tune “Up on the Roof' softly played.
The roof remained her secret hideaway, and she stood now looking down over the edge to the very spot where, years before, she'd taken a shot at a man escaping her lab after attempting to kill her. She'd been injured, but her FBI weapons training stood her in good stead. Jessica had sent a bullet down the length of the building. Some saw it as a lucky shot, but she knew better. In either case, the cannibal who'd been known as the Claw died as he deserved-slowly, made a vegetable by her single “lucky” shot.
She looked out over the Quantico, Virginia, compound of the FBI, a collection of Jefferson-style Colonial buildings nestled into the back side of the Virginia hills. Springtime filled the trees with blossoms, and the hills around sported dogwood in bloom, while the grass had turned from brownish ochre to pale green, which would soon become an opulent black green in the shadow of the dense forest surrounding the hills. Birds chased each other amid the trees, their songs reaching up to where Jessica stood, a breeze playing about her hair and cheeks.
One thing appeared certain. She felt a fierce, dry, desert like void in her life; she missed Richard Sharpe, and she could hardly wait for his retirement from Scotland Yard. He'd promised to join her here in Quantico; they had spoken of making a life together. She daydreamed about their coming reunion, and how they would mold their future. Perhaps this time would be the charm; perhaps this time she had gathered in the golden prize, that of complete and whole companionship of the sort she had sought all her adult life.
She dared not think it true. She feared to hope.
Too many rugs-hell, whole carpets-had been pulled out from under her before; she had had to endure too many disappointments with men. And Sharpe, for all his gallantry, his compassion and goodwill, his promises and kisses, remained a man. She had never before known a man who had not in one way or another disappointed or left her. Why should Richard be any different?
“Ah, there you are, Dr. Coran! Jessica!” shouted her immediate supervisor, Eriq Santiva, a dark-skinned
