Port Mortuary (2010)

lift fibers, paint chips, glass fragments, gunshot residue, minerals, even DNA and fingerprints, from all types of surfaces, including human bodies. Anybody could know that. Just watch television. Just Google “crime scene investigative techniques and equipment.”

“If someone got hold of my copperplates? But who? Who could have them?” she protests. “Without those, it would take weeks. And if you do press proofs, which of course I do, add several more weeks. This makes no sense.”

She wouldn’t put duct tape on the back of her elegant envelope that took many weeks to engrave. Not this precise, proud woman who listens to Chopin etudes. If someone else did, then I might have an idea why. Especially if it was someone who knows me or knows the way I think.

“And yes, the crest is on a number of things. It’s been in my family for centuries,” she adds, because she wants to talk. There is much pent up inside her, and she wants to let it out.

Allow it.

“Scottish, but you probably guessed that based on the name,” she then says. “Framed on the wall in the music room, as I mentioned, and engraved on some of my family silverware, and we did have some silver stolen years ago by a housekeeper who was fired but never charged with anything because we really couldn’t prove it to the satisfaction of the Boston police. I suppose my family silver could have ended up in a pawnshop around here. But I don’t see what that could have to do with my stationery. It sounds as if you’re implying someone might have made engraved stationery identical to mine with the goal of impersonating me. Or someone stole it. Are you suggesting identity theft?”

What to say? How far do I go?

“What about anything else that might have been stolen, anything else with your family crest on it?” I don’t want to directly ask her about the ring.

“Why do you ask? Is there something else?”

“I have a letter that is supposedly from you,” I reiterate instead of answering her questions. “It’s typed on a typewriter.”

“I still use a typewriter,” she verifies, and sounds bewildered. “But usually I write letters by hand.”

“Might I ask with what?”

“Why, a pen, of course. A fountain pen.”

“And the type style on your typewriter, which is what kind? But you might not know the typeface. Not everybody would.”

“It’s just an Olivetti portable I’ve had forever. The typeface is cursive, like handwriting.”

“A manual one that must be fairly old.” As I look at the letter, at the distressed cursive typeface made with metal typebars striking an inked ribbon.

“It was my mother’s.”

“Mrs. Donahue, do you know where your typewriter is?”

“I’m going to walk over there, to the cabinet in the library where it’s kept while I’m not using it.”

I hear her moving into another area of the house, and it sounds as if she sets what must be a portable phone down on a hard surface. Then a series of doors shut, perhaps cabinet doors, and a moment later she is back on with me and almost breathless as she says, “Well, it’s gone. It’s not here.”

“Do you remember when you saw it last?”

“I don’t know. Weeks ago. Probably around Christmas. I don’t know.”

“And it wouldn’t be someplace else. Perhaps you moved it or someone borrowed it?”

“No. This is terrible. Someone took it and probably took my stationery, too. The same one who wrote to you as if it was me. And I didn’t. I most assuredly didn’t.”

The first person to come to mind is her own son Johnny. But he is at McLean. He couldn’t possibly have borrowed her typewriter, her pen, her stationery, and then hired a man and a Bentley to deliver a letter to me. Assuming he could have known when I was flying in last night on Lucy’s helicopter, and I’m not going to ask his mother about that, either. The more I ask her, the more information I give.

“What’s in the letter?” she persists. “What did someone write as if it’s from me? Who could have taken my typewriter? Should we call the police? What am I saying? You are the police.”

“I’m a medical examiner,” I correct her matter-of-factly as Chopin’s tempo quickens, a different etude. “I’m not the police.”

“But you are, really. Doctors like you investigate like the police and act like the police and have powers they can abuse like the police. I talked to your assistant, Dr. Fielding, about what’s being blamed on my son, as I know you’re very well aware. You must know I’ve called your office about it and why. You must know why and how wrong it is. You sound like a fair-minded woman. I know you haven’t been here, but I must say I don’t understand what’s been condoned, even from a distance.”

I swivel around in my chair, facing the curved wall behind me that is nothing but glass, my office shaped exactly like the building if you laid it on its side, cylindrical and rounded at one end. The morning sky is bright blue, what Lucy calls severe clear, and I notice something moving in the security display, a black SUV parking in back.

“I was told you called to speak to him,” I reply, because I can’t say what is about to boil out of me. What isn’t fair? What have I condoned? How did she know I haven’t been here? “I can understand your concern, but —”

“I’m not ignorant,” Mrs. Donahue cuts me off. “I’m not ignorant about these things, even if I’ve never been involved in anything so awful ever before, but there was no reason for him to be so rude to me. I was within my rights to ask what I did. I fail to understand how you can condone it, and maybe you really haven’t. Maybe you aren’t aware of the entire sordid mess, but how could you not be? You’re in charge, and now that I have you on the phone, perhaps you can explain how it’s fair or appropriate or even legal for someone in his position to be involved in this and have so much power.”

The word careful flashes in my mind, as if there is a warning light in my head flashing neon-red.

“I’m sorry if you feel he was rude or unhelpful.” I abide by my own warning and am careful. “You understand we can’t discuss cases with…”

“Dr. Scarpetta.” Sharp piano notes sound as if responding to her or the other way around. “I would never and I most assuredly did not,” she says emotionally. “Will you excuse me while I turn this down? You probably don’t know Valentina Lisitsa. If only I could just listen and not have all these other dreadful things banging in my head, like pots and pans banging in my head! My stationery, my typewriter. My son! Oh, God, oh, God.” As the music stops. “I didn’t ask Dr. Fielding prying questions about someone who was murdered, much less a child. If that’s what he’s told you I called about, it’s absolutely untrue. Well, I’ll just say it. A lie. A damn lie. I’m not surprised.”

“You called wanting to speak to me,” I say, because that’s all I really know other than her claims to Bryce about Johnny and his innocence and allergies. She obviously has no idea I’ve not talked to Fielding, that no one has, it seems. And the more I downplay what she’s saying or outright ignore it, the louder she’ll get and the more she’ll volunteer.

“Late last week,” she says with energy. “Because you’re in charge and I’ve gotten nowhere with Dr. Fielding, and of course you understand my concern, and this really is unacceptable if not criminal. So I wanted to complain, and I’m sorry about your coming home to that. When I realized who you are, that it wasn’t some crank call, my first thought was it’s about my filing a complaint with your office, not anything as official as I’m making it sound, at least not yet, although our lawyer certainly knows and the CFC’s legal counsel certainly knows. And now maybe I won’t need to file anything. It depends on what you and I agree upon.”

Agree upon about what? I think but I don’t ask. She knew I was coming home, and that doesn’t fit with what she supposedly wrote to me, either. But it fits with a driver meeting me at Hans-com Field.

“What is in the letter? Can you read it to me? Why can’t you?” she says again.

“Is it possible someone else in your family might have written to me on your stationery and borrowed your typewriter?” I suggest.

“And signed my name?”

I don’t answer.