Doors slammed and a metal stretcher clanked.
'Marino, there's nothing more I can do here.' I wanted to shut him up before he talked himself into deeper trouble. 'And I need to get to the office.'
'What? You're posting him tonight?' Marino looked deflated.
I think it's a good idea in light of the circumstances,' I said seriously. 'And I'm leaving town in the morning.'
'Christmas with the family?' said Chief Tucker, who was young to be ranked so high.
'Yes.'
'That's nice,' he said without smiling. 'Come with me, Dr. Scarpetta, I'll give you a lift to the morgue.'
Marino eyed me as he lit a cigarette. 'I'll stop by as soon as I clear up here,' he said.
'Marino needs to learn discipline and respect.' He was staring ahead again.
'He has both in his own way.'
'He needs to have both in the proper way.'
'You will not change him, Colonel,' I said. 'He's difficult, aggravating, ill-mannered, and the best homicide detective I've ever worked with.'
Tucker was silent until we got to the outer limits of the Medical College of Virginia and turned right on Fourteenth Street.
'Tell me, Dr. Scarpetta,' he said. 'Do you think your friend Marino is a good precinct commander?'
The question startled me. I had been surprised when Marino had advanced to lieutenant and was stunned when he had become a captain. He had always hated the brass, and then he had become the thing he hated, and he still hated them as if he were not them.
'I think Marino is an excellent police officer. He's unimpeachably honest and has a good heart,' I said.
'Do you intend to answer my question or not?' Tucker's tone hinted of amusement.
'He is not a politician.'
'Clearly.'
The clock tower of Main Street Station announced the time from its lofty position high above the old domed train station with its terra-cotta roof and network of railroad tracks. Behind the Consolidated Laboratory building, we parked in a slot designated Chief Medical Examiner, an unimpressive slip of blacktop where my car spent most of its life.
'He gives too much time to the FBI,' Tucker then said.
'He gives an invaluable service,' I said.
'Yes, yes, I know, and you do, too. But in his case, it poses a serious difficulty. He is supposed to be commanding First Precinct, not working other cities' crimes, and I am trying to run a police department.'
'When violence occurs anywhere, it is everybody's problem,' I said.
'
'When violence occurs anywhere, it is everybody's problem,' I said. 'No matter where your precinct or department is.'
Tucker stared thoughtfully ahead at the shut steel bay door. He said, 'I sure as hell couldn't do what you do when it's this late at night and there's nobody around except the people in the refrigerator.'
'It isn't them I fear,' I matter-of-factly stated.
'Irrational as it may be, I would fear them a great deal.'
Headlights bored into dingy stucco and steel all painted the same insipid beige. A red sign on a side door announced to visitors that whatever was inside was considered a biological hazard and went on to give instruction about the handling of dead bodies.
'I've got to ask you something,' Colonel Tucker said.
The wool fabric of his uniform whispered against upholstery as he shifted positions, leaning closer to me. I smelled Hermes cologne. He was handsome, with high cheekbones and strong white teeth, his body powerful beneath his skin as if its darkness were the markings of a leopard or a tiger.
'Why do you do it?' he asked.
'Why do I do what, Colonel?'
He leaned back in the seat. 'Look,' he said as lights danced across the scanner. 'You're a lawyer. You're a doctor. You're a chief and I'm a chief. That's why I'm asking. I don't mean disrespect.'
I could tell he didn't. 'I don't know why,' I confessed.
He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke again. 'My father was a yardman and my mother cleaned houses for rich people in Baltimore.' He paused. 'When I go to Baltimore now I stay in fine hotels and eat in restaurants at the harbor. I am saluted. I am addressed "The Honorable" in some mail I get. I have a house in Windsor Farms.
'I command more than six hundred people who wear guns in this violent town of yours. I know why I do what I do, Dr. Scarpetta. I do it because I had no power when I was a boy. I lived with people who had no power and learned that all the evil I heard preached about in church was rooted in the abuse of this one thing I did not have.'
The tempo and choreography of the snow had not changed. I watched it slowly cover the hood of his car.
'Colonel Tucker,' I said, 'it is Christmas Eve and Sheriff Santa has allegedly just shot someone to death in Whitcomb Court. The media must be going crazy. What do you advise?'
'I will be up all night at headquarters. I will make sure your building is patrolled. Would you like an escort home?'
'I would imagine that Marino will give me a ride, but certainly I will call if I think an additional escort is necessary. You should be aware that this predicament is further complicated by the fact that Brown hates me, and now I will be an expert witness in his case.'
'If only all of us could be so lucky.'
'I do not feel lucky.'
'You're right.' He sighed. 'You shouldn't feel lucky, for luck has nothing to do with it.'
'My case is here,' I said as the ambulance pulled into the lot, lights and sirens silent, for there is no need to rush when transporting the dead.
'Merry Christmas, Chief Scarpetta,' Tucker said as I got out of his car.
I entered through a side door and pressed a button on the wall. The bay door slowly screeched open, and the ambulance rumbled inside. Paramedics flung open the tailgate. They lifted the stretcher and wheeled the body up a ramp as I unlocked a door that led inside the morgue.
Fluorescent lighting, pale cinder block and floors gave the corridor an antiseptic ambience that was deceptive. Nothing was sterile in this place. By normal medical standards, nothing was even clean.
'Do you want him in the fridge?' one of the squad members said to me.