financed by tax dollars and that I’m reckless and inhumane and a bigot and possibly don’t like men.
One brushstroke at a time, she’s painting the portrait of a female scientific sociopath, someone despicable, so when she gets to what’s really important I won’t be credible. I won’t be liked. I might be hated.
“In what types of cases might an Armed Forces Medical Examiner, an AFME, have jurisdiction, Dr. Scarpetta?” she then asks, and I’ve never felt this unprotected.
It’s as if there is no prosecution, as if Dan Steward is watching me being marched up a hill to the gallows and has not the slightest protest.
“Any military death that occurs in theater,” I say.
“‘In theater’? Perhaps you could explain what you mean by theater?”
“A combat theater is an area of war operation, such as Afghanistan,” I reply to the jury. “Other types of cases that are the jurisdiction of the AFMEs, the Armed Forces Medical Examiners, would include deaths on military bases, the death of the president of the United States or the vice-president or members of cabinet, and also certain other individuals employed by the U.S. government, such as members of the CIA or our astronauts, should they die while on official duty.”
“Quite a daunting responsibility.” Donoghue sounds thoughtful.
One might even think she’s impressed, and I continue looking directly at the jury and refuse to look at her.
“I can certainly see why you might assume your job is more important than mine or the members of the jury’s or even the judge’s,” she says.
eighteen
SHE PAUSES DURING A SPATTER OF LAUGHTER FROM people who are seated inside the courtroom, but the jurors aren’t amused, not one of them.
“I don’t assume any such thing,” I answer.
“Well, you were an hour and fifteen minutes late today, Dr. Scarpetta. If you include the time it took for Judge Conry to reprimand you, an hour and a half, and this courtroom won’t be adjourning before dark because of you.”
“For which I continue to be apologetic, Ms. Donoghue. It was never my intention to disrespect the court. I was out in a boat at a death scene that demanded my attention.”
“Suggesting that the dead are more important to you than the living?”
“It would be incorrect to assume that. Life always takes precedence over death.”
“But you work with the dead, do you not? Your patients are dead people, are they not?”
“As a medical examiner,” I reply slowly, calmly, as I anticipate where this is headed, “it’s my job to investigate any sudden, unexpected, or violent death, and to determine the cause and manner of that death. In other words, what actually killed the person, and was it an accident, a suicide, a homicide, for example? So, yes, most people I examine are dead.”
“Well, hopefully all of them are.”
More laughter, but the jurors are somber and listening intently. A heavy woman in a purple pantsuit sitting in the middle of the front row leans forward in her chair. She hasn’t taken her eyes off me, and on her left an older man dressed tidily in slacks and a pullover sweater has his head cocked to one side, as if trying to figure me out.
Jill Donoghue hasn’t offered any surprises yet. She’s trying to show me to be a cold-blooded peculiar woman who doesn’t give a shit about living people. Meaning I wouldn’t give a shit about her client Channing Lott.
“Not everyone I examine is dead.” I’m speaking to the juror in purple, to the man next to her, and another juror in a blue suit. “At times I also examine living victims to determine if their injuries are consistent with information the police has been given.”
“And where did you get the training to examine dead bodies and also the occasional living one? Where did you go to school? Let’s start with college.”
“I went to Cornell University, and after graduation attended Johns Hopkins Medical School, then I attended Georgetown Law and after that returned to Hopkins to complete my residency in pathology. This was followed by a year’s forensic pathology fellowship at the Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office in Miami, Florida.”
It goes on. It is endless. For the better part of half an hour, Jill Donoghue interrogates me about every nuance of my education and training. Tedious questions about my time spent with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology are followed by what I did while stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., in the late eighties, before I was appointed chief medical examiner of Virginia