Black Notice - Cornwell Patricia (читать книги онлайн без TXT) 📗

I looked at my watch. Lucy would be boarding her flight in less than an hour. I considered calling USAir and having her paged. I was shocked and humiliated by the way I had behaved. I felt powerless because I couldn't apologize to someone named Terry Davis who didn't have an aunt Kay or an accessible phone number and lived somewhere in South Beach.

I looked pretty rough when I walked into the glass-block and terrazzo lobby. Jake, who worked the security desk, noticed right away.

"Good morning, Dr. Scarpetta," he said with his usual nervous eyes and hands. "You don't look like you're feeling so hot."

"Good morning, Jake," I replied. "How are you?"

"Same-o, same-o. Except the weather's supposed to start turning real fast and get nasty, and I could do without that."

He was clicking a pen open and shut.

"Can't seem to get rid of this pain in my back, Dr. Scarpetta. It's right between my shoulder blades."

He rolled his shoulders and neck.

"Sort of pinches like something's caught back there. Happened after I was lifting weights the other day. What do you think I should do? Or do I need to write you?"

I thought he was trying to be funny, but he wasn't smiling.

"Moist heat. Lay off the weights for a while;" I said.

"Hey, thanks. How much you charge?"

"You can't afford me, Jake."

He grinned. I swiped my computer card over the electronic lock on the door outside my office door and the lock clicked free. I could hear my clerks, Cleta and Polly, talking and 'typing. The phones were already ringing and it wasn't even seven-thirty yet.

"… It's really, really bad."

"You think people from other countries smell different when they decompose?"

"Come on, Polly. How stupid is that?"

They were tucked inside their gray cubicles, sifting through autopsy photographs and entering data into computers, cursors jumping field to field.

"Better get some coffee while you can," Cleta greeted me with a judgmental look on her face.

"If that ain't the truth." Polly smacked the return key.

"I heard," I said:

"Well, I'm keeping my mouth shut:'.said Polly, who couldn't if she tried.

Cleta made a zipping motion across her lips without missing a keystroke.

"Where is everyone?"

"In the morgue," Cleta told me. "We've got eight cases today."

"You've lost a lot of weight, Cleta," I said, collecting death certificates from my inner-office mailbox.

"Twelve and a half pounds;" she exclaimed as she dealt gory photographs like playing cards, arranging them by case numbers. "Thank you for noticing. I'm glad somebody 'round here does."

"Damn," I said, glancing at the death certificate on top of my stack. "You think we might ever convince Dr. Carmichael that `cardiac arrest' is not a cause of death? Everyone's heart stops when he dies. The question is why did it stop. Well, that one gets amended."

I flipped through more certificates as I followed the long teal- and plum-carpeted hallway to my corner office. Rose worked in an open space with plenty of windows, and it wasn't possible to reach my door without entering her airspace. She was standing before an open filing cabinet drawer, fingers impatiently fluttering through labeled tabs.

"How are you?" she asked around a pen clamped in her mouth. "Marino's looking for you:' "Rose, we need to get Dr. Carmichael on the line."

"AgainT»

"'Fraid so."

"He rinds to retire."

My secretary had been saying this for years. She pushed the drawer shut and pulled open another one.

"Why is Marino looking for me? Did he call me from home?"

She took the pen out of her mouth.

"He's here. Or was. Dr: Scarpetta, do you remember that letter you got last month from that hateful woman?"

"Which hateful woman?" I asked, looking up and down the hallway for Marino and seeing no sign of him. - `"The one in prison for murdering her husband right after she took out a million-dollar fife insurance policy on him."

"Oh, that one," I said.

I slipped off my suit jacket as I walked into my office _ and set my briefcase on the floor.

"Why is Marino looking for me?" I asked again.

Rose didn't answer. I had noticed she was getting hard of hearing, and every reminder of her encroaching frailties frightened me. Lput the death certificates on top of a stack of about a hundred others I hadn't gotten around to reviewing yet and draped my suit jacket over my chair.

"Point is," Rose loudly said, "she's since sent you another letter. This time accusing you of racketeering."

I retrieved my lab coat from the back of the door.

"She claims you conspired with the insurance company and changed her husband's manner of death from accident to homicide so they wouldn't have to pay out the money. And for this you got quite a large kickback, which is-according to her-how you can afford your Mercedes and expensive suits."

I threw my lab coat over my shoulders and pushed my arms through the sleeves.

"You know, I can't keep up with the crazies anymore, Dr. Scarpetta. Some of them really frighten me, and I think the Internet is making all of it worse."

Rose peeked around the doorway.

"You aren't listening to a word I'm saying," she said.

"I get suits on sale," I replied. "And you blame everything on the Internet."

I probably wouldn't bother shopping for clothes at all if Rose didn't force me out the door every now and then when stores were clearing out last season's styles. I hated shopping, unless it was for good wine or food. I hated crowds. I hated malls. Rose hated the Internet and believed the world would end one day because of it. I'd had to force her to use e-mail.

"If Lucy calls, will you make sure I get it no matter where I am?" I said as Marino walked into Rose's office. "And try her field office, too. You can patch her through."

The thought of Lucy knotted my stomach. I'd lost my temper and hurled words at her I didn't mean. Rose glanced at me. Somehow she knew.

"Captain," she said to Marino, "you look mighty spiffy this morning."

Marino grunted. Glass rattled as he opened a jar of lemon drops on her desk and helped himself.

"What do you want me to do with this crazy lady's letter?" Rose peered through the open doorway at me, reading glasses perched on her nose as she dug through another drawer.

"I think it's time we forward the lady's file-if you ever find it to the A.G.'s office," I said. "In case she sues. Which will probably lie next. Good morning, Marino."

"You still talking about that nutcake I locked up?" he asked, sucking candy.

"That's right," I remembered. "That nutcake was one of your cases."

"So I guess I'll get sued, too."

"Probably," I muttered as I stood at my desk, shuffling through yesterday's telephone messages. "Why does everybody call when I'm not here?"

"I'm kinda getting into being sued," Marino said. "Makes me feel special."

"I just can't get used to you in uniform, Captain Marino," Rose said. "Should I salute?"

"Don't turn me on, Rose:' "I thought your shift didn't start until three," I said.

"Nice thing about me being sued is the city's gotta pay. Ha. Ha. Screw 'em."

"We'll see how Ha Ha it is when you end up paying one of these days and lose your truck and aboveground swimming pool. Or all those Christmas decorations and extra fuse boxes, God forbid," Rose told him as I opened and shut my desk drawers.

"Has anybody seen my pens?" I asked. "I don't have a single goddamn pen. Rose? Those Pilot rolling ball pens. I had at least a box of them on Friday. I know I did because I bought them myself last time I was at Ukrops. And I don't believe it. My Waterman's missing, too!"

"Don't say I didn't warn you about leaving anything valuable around here," Rose told me.

"I gotta smoke," Marino said to me. "I've had it with these damn smoke-free buildings. All these dead people in your joint and the state's worried about smoking. What about all those formalin fumes? A few good whiffs of that will drop a horse."