Chapters (48)
- also by patricia cornwell
- title page
- copyright
- dedication
- contents
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- two nights later
- credits
I’m conditioned to be stoical. I know how to be indifferent and impervious. I’m damned accustomed to male colleagues looking at me and thinking tits and ass, and it doesn’t bother me or it didn’t used to because I was able to be oblivious, to be single-minded about my mission.
It’s not like me to be so damned focused on myself, and I don’t like it one damn bit as I think of things that have nothing to do with my responsibility or legal jurisdiction or what unpleasantness might await me underwater. I’m aware of the recent comments Benton made, aware of Marino’s irritating bluster as he talks loudly with Kletty and Sullivan, about boats now, and what a good idea it would be for the CFC to have one, and what an experienced captain he is.
Insecurity, or maybe it’s hurt and anger, have thinned my skin, and I mentally run through what needs to be done and how it should be done. I map out strategies precisely while anticipating what could be both useful and harmful in court because I must always assume everything ends there.
“What about a liner?” I decide.
“I was going to suggest it.” Labella doesn’t add what I can tell he’s thinking, which is there is no place on board to change in private.
“Let’s do it.” I get up from the bench.
Inside the cabin he opens a diamond steel–plated locker and starts pulling out gray Polartec liners, checking the sizes until he finds the smallest.
“Are you sure you don’t want one of us to go in with you?” He pauses in the doorway, his dark eyes on me. “I’m happy to suit up. Any of us are. Living people can stink just as bad as the dead.”
“They probably can’t.”
“Trust me. We can handle it.”
I close the lid of the storage locker and sit on top of it and tell him no. It’s not a good idea legally. I explain that the death obviously is suspicious and I’m working it like a homicide, and every exposure alters the case, complicates and compromises and potentially ruins it. It doesn’t take much for a jury to let the guilty go free these days, and he says he couldn’t agree more. He’s followed plenty of such travesties on the news and hears complaints all the time about crime scenes destroyed by TV drama–addicted citizens who collect the evidence and investigate on their own, saving the cops the trouble. The CSI effect, he says. Everyone’s an expert.