“That tray there?” an attendant asks as he and his partner lift the body bag off the stretcher. The bag bends freely as they carry it, the body inside it as flexible as in life. “Shit, he’s dripping. Dammit. He’d better not have AIDS or something. On my pants, my damn shoes.”
“The lower one.” Janelle directs them to a tray inside the cooler, stepping out of the way and not interested that blood is dripping from the body bag and spotting the gray floor. She doesn’t seem to notice.
“Janelle the magnificent,” Lucy comments as the video recording ends abruptly.
“Do you have the MLI log?” I want to see what time the medicolegal investigator—in other words, Janelle— came and went yesterday. “Obviously, she was on call during the evening?”
“She worked a double shift on Sunday, worker bee that she is,” Lucy says. “Filled in for Randy, who was scheduled for evenings over the weekend but called in sick. Meaning he stayed home to watch the Super Bowl.”
“I hope not.”
“And Dandy Randy’s not here now because of the weather. Supposedly on call at home. Must be nice to have a take-home SUV and get paid for staying home,” Lucy says, and I hear the contempt in her flinty tone and see it in the hardness of her face. “I guess you can tell you got your work cut out for you. Assuming you ever quit making excuses for people.”
“I don’t make them for you.”
“That’s because there aren’t any.”
I look at the log Janelle kept yesterday, a template on my video display that has very few fields filled in.
“I don’t mean to state what’s as plain as the nose on my face, but there’s not much you really know about what goes on,” Lucy says. “You don’t know the finer points of the day-to-day in this place. How could you?” She returns to her side of the desk and picks up her coffee, but she doesn’t sit back down. “You haven’t been here. You’ve sort of never been here since we opened for business.”
“This is it? This is the entire log for yesterday?”
“Yup. Janelle came in at four. If what she entered into the log is to be believed.” Lucy stands and drinks her coffee, eyeing me. “And she runs with quite a pack, by the way. Forensic fuck buddies. Most of them cops, a few of them data-entry and clerical. Whoever she can be a hero to. You know she’s on a dodgeball team? What kind of person plays dodgeball? Someone with finesse.”
“If she came in at four, why is she dressed in scene clothes, including her jacket? As if she just came in from the cold?”
“Like I said, if what she entered in the log is to be believed.”
“And David was on before that and didn’t respond to anything, either?” I ask. “Jack could have sent him to Norton’s Woods. David was sitting right here, so why didn’t Jack tell him to go to the scene? It’s maybe fifteen minutes from here.”
“And you don’t know that, either.” Lucy walks into the bathroom and rinses her mug. “You don’t know if David was sitting right here,” she says as she walks back out and hovers near my closed office door. “I don’t want to be the one to tell you….”
“It would seem you are the only one to tell me. No one else is telling me a damn thing,” I reply. “What the hell is happening around here? People just show up when they feel like it?”
“Pretty much. The other MEs, the MLIs, in and out, marching to their own drummer. It trickles down from the top.”
“It trickles down from Jack.”
“At least on your side of things. The labs are another story, because he’s not interested in them. Except firearms.” She leans against the closed door, slipping her hands into the pockets of her lab coat.
“He’s supposed to be in charge in my absence. Jack’s the co-director of the entire CFC-Port Mortuary.” I can’t keep the protest out of my tone, the note of outrage.
“Not interested in the labs, and scientists don’t pay any attention to him, anyway. Except firearms, like I said. You know Fielding and guns, knives, crossbows, hunting bows. Never met a weapon he didn’t love. So he messes with the firearms and tool-mark lab and has managed to fuck them up, too. Piss off Morrow until he’s on the verge of quitting. I do know he’s actively looking for another job, and there’s no good reason his lab didn’t finish with the Glock the dead guy had on him. The eradicated serial number. Shit. He bolted out of here this morning and didn’t bother.”
“He bolted out of here?”
“He was driving off when I was returning from Norton’s Woods. This was about ten-thirty.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“No. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well. I don’t know, but I don’t understand why he didn’t make sure someone took care of the Glock. Using acid on a drilled-off serial number? How long does that take to at least try? He must have known it was important.”
“He might not have,” I answer. “If the Cambridge detective is the only one who talked to him, why would he think the Glock was important? At that time, no one had a clue the man from Norton’s Woods is a homicide.”
“Well, I guess that’s a relevant point. Morrow probably doesn’t even know we went to get you, that you’re back from Dover. Fielding vanished, too, when he knew damn well there was a major problem that most people with a brain in their head would decide was his fault. He’s the one who took the call about the guy in Norton’s Woods. He’s the one who didn’t go to the scene or make sure somebody did. The reason Janelle is dressed for the great outdoors, in my opinion? She didn’t get here at four, the time she entered into the log. She got here just in time to let in the attendants and sign in the body and then turned right around and left. I can find out. There will be an entry for when she disabled the alarm to enter the building. Depends on whether you want to make a federal case out of it.”
“I’m surprised Marino hasn’t made sure I know the extent of the problems.” It’s all I can think to say. The inside of my head has gone dark.
“Like the boy crying wolf,” Lucy says, and it’s true.
Marino complains so much about so many people, I scarcely hear him. Now we’re back to my failures. I haven’t paid attention. I haven’t listened. Maybe I wouldn’t have listened no matter who told me.
“I’ve got a few things to take care of. You know how to find me,” Lucy says, and she opens my door and leaves it open after she walks out.
I pick up the phone and try Fielding’s numbers again. I don’t leave any messages this time, and it crosses my mind that his wife isn’t answering their home phone, either. She would see my office name and number on caller ID. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t pick up, because she knows it’s me. Or maybe his family has gone somewhere, is out of town. On a Monday night in the middle of a snowstorm, when he knows damn well I’ve rushed home from Dover to take care of an emergency case?
I walk out and scan my thumb to unlock the door to the right of mine. I stand inside my deputy chief’s office and slowly scan it as if it is a crime scene.
11
I picked his office, insisting on one as nice as mine, generously large, with a private shower. He has a river and city view, although his shades are down, which I find unnerving. He must have closed them when it was still light out, and I don’t know why he would do that. Not for a good reason, I think. Whatever Jack Fielding has done, it all bodes badly.
I walk around and open each shade, and through expansive glass that is a reflective gray tint, I can make out the blurred lights of downtown Boston and billowing waves of freezing moisture, an icy snow that clicks and bites like teeth. The tops of high-rises, the Prudential and Hancock towers are obscured, and gusting wind moans in low tones around the dome over my head. Below, Memorial Drive is churned up by traffic, even at this hour, and the Charles is formless and black. I wonder how deep the snow is by now and how deep it will get before it moves off to the south. I wonder if Fielding will ever return to this room I designed and furnished for him, and somehow it feels that he won’t, even though there is no evidence he’s gone for good.
The biggest difference between our work spaces is his is crowded with reminders of the occupant, his various degrees, certificates, and commendations, his collectibles on shelves, autographed baseballs and bats, tae kwon do trophies and plaques, and models of fighter planes and a piece from a real one that crashed. I go over to his desk
