Page 75 of Unnatural Death

“I’m afraid he might. Possibly it’s why he chirps,” I reply. “I’m sure he would have been better off staying put out there in the woods with all the other crickets.”

“Clearly, he didn’t think so. Let’s see if we can make Jiminy a wee bit more at home.”

She helps herself to a bottle of water on my desk. Removing the cap, she fills it while walking back to the fiddle fig tree.

“There we go. Now he has a proper bowl.” She removes the container’s lid, setting the cap of water inside. “I’m noticing a few peanuts and raisins. Probably not ideal, but we’ll leave them where they are for now.” She returns the lid, making sure it’s sealed.

“I hope he’ll be all right here,” I say to her. “I can’t take him home with Merlin around.”

Lucy’s cat is what I call a mouser. He’d consider a cricket great entertainment.

“Most assuredly not.” Shannon’s been in Merlin’s company often enough to know. “I think it best to leave him right where he is. Give him a chance to adjust.”

“You do realize we sound a little crazy.”

“Not at all,” she says. “If something ends up in our care, it’s the universe testing us to see if we do the right thing. Like Mickey inside the on-call room several months ago.”

We captured that mouse and several others in a Havahart humane trap. Marino let them go in a field as we do the occasional squirrel or chipmunk that ends up inside the building. Not so long ago it was a bat inside the anatomical division. This goes on when doors are left open too long at all hours as bodies are dropped off and picked up, especially when the weather is nice.

Critters end up in the morgue the same way they do every other place. We take rescue missions seriously on the infrequent occasion something might be saved at our hospital for the dead. I’m sure Benton could give a psychological explanation for why we declare an emergency when a bird can’t find its way out. Or baby raccoons wander into our parking lot as they did last spring. Or a lost dog does.

* * *

I begin walking window to window inside my office, closing the blinds, and it’s begun snowing. The large flakes are illuminated by streetlights. Cars and pavement are frosted white, the parking lot unmarred by tire tracks. The view from my third-floor corner office looks like a Christmas card, as if all is peaceful on Earth. As if people have goodwill toward one another and all creatures big and small.

“What else have you got for me before we head out?” Ducking inside my bathroom, I open the closet as I continue to talk. “Both of us need to do that sooner rather than later, Shannon. But especially you. I have all-wheel drive and you don’t.” Sliding clothes along the rod, I find a tactical jacket with a zip-in winter lining.

“Blaise Fruge has called several times, and you know how insistent she can be. She has information she’s not sharing with anyone but you. That’s what she told me,” Shannon says.

“Information related to what?”

“That poor dentist found dead in her office yesterday morning. I have to agree that there’s something peculiar about it.”

“Is that what Fruge said? She thinks the death is suspicious?”

“I sensed she does.”

“The person she needs to talk to is Doctor Schlaefer. It’s his case.” I put on my jacket.

“She insists on speaking to you. Just like she always does.” Shannon says this as I walk out of the bathroom. “If you ask me, it’s time she stops acting as if she has a special claim on you that other investigators don’t.”

“She feels that way because long ago and far away in my Richmond days I used to work with her toxicologist mother.”

“Tox Doc. I remember her very well. Quite the showboat.”

“Still is. Back in the day, we worked some big cases together. Blaise would have heard a lot of stories while she was growing up. She feels like she’s always known me.” I collect the files Fabian left on my desk as my office extension starts ringing.

“Should I get that?” Shannon asks.

“If you don’t mind.”

“Doctor Scarpetta’s office …,” she answers my phone. “Oh, hello there, dear, you’re working long hours. I’m so glad you called, because I haven’t had a chance to thank you yet for the generous wedge of Halloween cake you dropped by yesterday. And I do meanwedge, as opposed to a normal slice. So unusual, orange marmalade icing with white chocolate ghosts, and a licorice witch flying on a butterscotch candy broom. Positively divine …”

I’m standing by my desk, looking through the files Fabian left for me. He’s transcribed his conversation with Wally Jonas, and that’s impressive. Except I notice right away that the police investigator mentions he’s also been talking to the FBI. Early in his phone conversation with Fabian, the Prince William County detective mentions that Patty Mullet is sniffing around.

“… Of course, I shared it with the chief. Otherwise, I’m afraid I would have inhaled every crumb …,” my secretary is saying over the phone, and I suspect she’s talking to firearms and tool marks examiner Faye Hanaday.

Probably because the dairy farm is right next to where the Mansons lived. Wally is quoted in the transcript.If what I’m hearing on the news is true, they were wanted by the feds for being traitors, working with the Russians …

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