Trace - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 12

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"With you, I hope." She helps him remove Mr. Whitby's muddy leather work boots, untying the filthy laces and pulling out the dirty cowhide tongues. Rigor mortis is in the very early stages, and he is still limber and warm.

"How the hell do these guys run over themselves, can you tell me that?" Fielding says. "I never can figure it out. Good. My house at seven. I still live in the same place."

"I'll tell you how they often do it," she says as she remembers Mr. Whitby standing in front of the tractor tire, doing something to the engine. "They're having some sort of mechanical problem and get off the seat and stand right in front of that huge back tire and fool with the starter, possibly trying to jump it with a screwdriver, forgetting the tractor's in gear. It's their bad luck it starts. In his case, running him over midsection." She points at the dirty tire tread pattern on Mr. Whitby's olive work pants and his black vinyl jacket that is embroidered with his name, The. Whitby, in thick red thread. "When I saw him, he was standing in front of the tire."

"Yeah. Our old building. Welcome back to town."

"Was he found under the tire?"

"Went ririhr over him rmd kept «:oin«:." Fielding pulls off mud-stained socks that have left the impression of their weave on the man's large white feet. "Remember that big yellow painted metal pole sticking up from the pavement near the back door? The tractor ran into it and that's what stopped it, otherwise it might have busted right through the bay door. I guess it wouldn't matter since they're tearing the place down."

"Then he's not likely to be an asphyxia. A diffuse crush injury the width of that tire," she says, looking at the body. "Exsanguination. Expect an abdominal cavity full of blood, ruptured spleen, liver, bladder, bowels, crushed pelvis, my guess. Seven o'clock it is."

"What about your sidekick?"

"Don't call him that. You know better."

"He's invited. He looks pretty goofy in that LAPD cap."

"I warned him."

"What do you think cut his face? Something underneath or in back of the tractor?" Fielding asks, and blood trickles down the side of Mr. Whitby's stubbly face as Fielding touches the partially severed nose.

"It may not be a cut. As the tire progressed over his body, it pulled his skin with it. This injury," she points at the deep, jagged wound over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, "may be a tear, not a cut. If it's really an issue, you should be able to see rust or grease under the scope, and significant tissue bridging from the shearing effect as opposed to cutting. One thing I would do if I were you, is answer all questions."

"Oh yeah." Fielding glances up from his clipboard, from the clothing and personal effects form he is filling out with a ballpoint pen tied to the steel clamp.

"A very good chance this man's family is going to want relief for their suffering," she says. "Death at the workplace, a notorious workplace."

"Oh yeah. Of all places to die."

Fielding's latex-gloved fingers are stained red as he touches the wound on the man's face, and warm blood drips freely as he manipulates the nearly severed nose. He flips up a page on the clipboard and begins to draw the injury on a body diagram. He leans close to the face, peering intensely through plastic safety glasses. "Don't see any rust or grease," he says. "But that doesn't mean it's not there."

"Good idea." She agrees with the direction of his thoughts. "I'd swab it, get the labs to check it out, check everything. I wouldn't be surprised if someone says this man was run over or pushed off the tractor or in front of it, or was slammed in the face with a shovel first. You never know."

"Oh yeah. Money, money, money."

"Not just money," she replies. "Lawyers make it all about money. But at first, it's all about shock, pain, loss, about its being somebody else's fault. No family member wants to believe this was a stupid death, that it was preventable, that any experienced tractor driver knows better than to stand in front of a back tire and fool with the starter, bypassing the default safety of a normal ignition, which allows the tractor to start only in neutral, not in gear. But what do people do? They get too comfortable, are in a hurry and don't think. And it's human nature to deny the probability that someone we care about caused his or her own death, intentionally or inadvertently. But you've heard my lectures before."

When Fielding was starting out, he was one of her forensic fellows. She taught him forensic pathology. She taught him how to perform not just competent but meticulous and aggressive medico-legal scene investigations and autopsies, and it saddens her to remember how unabashedly eager he was to work across the table from her and take it all in, to go with her to court when time allowed and listen to her testify, to sit down in her office and go over his reports, to learn. Now he is worn out and has a skin condition and she is fired and both of them are here.

"I should have called you," she says, and she unbuckles Mr. Whitby's cheap leather belt and unbuttons and un/ips his torn olive pants. "We'll work on Gilly Paulsson and figure her out."

"Oh yeah," Fielding says, and he didn't used to say "Oh yeah" so often, either.

Henri Walden wears fleece-lined suede slippers that make no sound on the carpet as she drifts like a black apparition toward the tan leather wing chair across from the couch.

"I took my shower," she says, perching on the chair and drawing her slender legs under her.

Benton catches the deliberate flash of young flesh, the pale recesses of high inner thighs. He does not look or react the way most men would.

"Why do you care?" she asks him, and she has asked him this every morning since she got here.

"It makes you feel better, doesn't it, Henri?"

She nods, staring at him like a cobra.

"Little things are important. Eating, sleeping, being clean, exercise. Regaining control."

"I heard you talking to someone," she says.

"That's a problem," he replies, his eyes steady on hers over the rim of his glasses, the legal pad in his lap as before, but there are more words on it, the words "Black Ferrari" and "without permission" and "was followed from the camp, likely" and "point of contact, the black Ferrari."

He says, "Private conversations are supposed to be just that. Private. So we need to go back to our original agreement, Henri. Do you remember what it was?"

She pulls off her slippers and drops them on the carpet. Her delicate bare feet are on the chair cushion, and when she bends over to study them, the red robe falls open slightly. "No." Her voice is barely audible and she shakes her head.

"I know you remember, Henri." Benton repeats her name often to remind her who she is, to personalize what has been depersonalized and, in some regards, irrevocably damaged. "Our agreement was respect, remember?"

She bends more deeply and picks at an unpainted toenail, her stare fixed on what she is doing, her nakedness beneath her robe offered to him.

"Part of having respect is allowing each other privacy. And modesty," he says, quietly. "We've talked about boundaries a lot. Violating modesty is a violation of boundaries."

Her free hand crawls up to her chest and gathers the robe together while she continues to study and manipulate her toes. "I just woke up," she says, as if this explains her exhibitionism.

"Thank you, Henri." It is important for her to believe that Benton does not want her sexually, not even in his fantasies. "But you didn't just get up. You got up, came in, and we talked, and then you took a shower."

"My name isn't Henri," she says.

"What would you like me to call you?"

"Nothing."

"You have two names," he says. "You have the name you were christened at birth and the name you used in your acting career and still use."

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