She has confused details that may very well hurt her son, possibly damaging an alibi that potentially is his strongest. Claiming he left The Biscuit in Cambridge at one p.m. instead of at two, as Johnny maintains, she has made it far more believable that he could have found transportation and gotten to Salem in time to kill Mark Bishop around four that afternoon. Then there is her reference to her son reading horror novels and enjoying horror films and violent entertainment, and finally what she said about Jack Fielding and a nail gun and a Satanic cult, none of that correct or proven.
Where did she get those dangerous details—where, really? I suppose Fielding could have put such ideas in her head when he talked to her on the phone, if it’s true he’s the one now spreading these rumors, that he’s lying, which is what Benton seems to think. Regardless of what Fielding did or didn’t do or his truths or untruths or his reasons for anything that is happening, my questions come back to the mother of Johnny Donahue. I make myself bring all of it back to her, because what I fail to see is motivation that is logical. Her delivering this letter to me really doesn’t sit well at all. It feels off. It feels wrong.
For one so meticulous about typos and sentence construction, not to mention the attention she must pay to her music, it strikes me that she doesn’t seem to care nearly as much as she should about the facts of her son’s confession to one of the most heinous acts of violence in recent memory. Every detail counts in a case like this, and how could an intelligent, sophisticated woman with expensive lawyers not know that? Why would she take the chance of divulging anything to someone like me, a complete stranger, especially in writing, when her son faces being locked up for the rest of his life in a forensic psychiatric facility like Bridgewater or, worse, in a prison, where a convicted child-killer with Asperger’s, a so-called savant who can work the most difficult math problems in his head but is impaired when it comes to everyday social cues, isn’t likely to survive very long?
I refresh myself on all these facts and relevant points at the same time I realize I’m feeling and behaving as if they matter to me. And they shouldn’t. I’m supposed to be objective. You don’t take sides, and it’s not your job to care, I tell myself. You don’t care about Johnny Donahue or his mother one way or other, and you’re not a detective or the FBI, I think sternly. You’re not Johnny’s defense attorney or his therapist, and there’s nothing for you to get involved in, I then say to myself severely, because I don’t feel convinced. I’m struggling with impulses that have become impossibly strong, and I’m not sure how to turn them off or if I can or should. I do know I don’t want to.
Some of what I’ve grown accustomed to not only at Dover but on non-combat-related matters that are the jurisdiction of the AFME or what basically is the federal medical examiner is far too compatible with my true nature, and I don’t want to go back to the staid old way of doing things. I’m military and I’m not. I’m civilian and I’m not. I’ve been in and out of Washington and lived on an air force base and routinely been sent on recovery missions of air crashes and accidents during training exercises and deaths on military installations or fatalities involving special forces, the Secret Service, a federal judge, even an astronaut in recent months, handling a multitude of sensitive situations I can’t talk about. What I’m feeling is the not part of the equation. I’m not any one thing, and I’m not feeling at all inclined to surrender to limitations, to sit on my hands because something isn’t my department.
As an officer involved in medical intelligence, I’m expected to investigate certain aspects of life and death that go far beyond the usual clinical determinations. Materials I remove from bodies, the types of injuries and wound ballistics, the strengths and failures of armor, and infections, diseases, lesions, whether from parasites or sand fleas, and extreme heat, dehydration, and boredom, depression, and drugs are all matters of national defense and security. The data I gather aren’t just for the sake of families and usually aren’t destined for criminal court but can have a bearing on the strategies of war and what keeps us safe domestically. I’m expected to ask questions. I’m expected to follow leads. I’m expected to pass along information to the surgeon general, the Department of Defense, to be intensely industrious and proactive.
You’re home now. You don’t want to come across as a colonel or a commander, certainly not as a prima donna. You don’t want to get a case null prossed or thrown out of court. You don’t want to cause trouble. Isn’t there enough already? Why would you encourage more? Briggs doesn’t want you here. Be careful you don’t justify his position. Your own staff doesn’t seem to want you here or know you’re here. Don’t make it easy for you not to be. Your only legitimate purpose in contacting Erica Donahue is to ask her kindly not to contact you or your office again, for her own good, for her own protection. I decide to use those exact words, and I almost believe my motivation as I call the home phone number typed at the end of her letter.
17
The person who answers doesn’t seem to understand what I’m saying, and I have to repeat myself twice, explaining that I’m Dr. Kay Scarpetta and I’m responding to a letter I just received from Erica Donahue, and is she available, please?
“I beg your pardon,” the well-modulated voice says. “Who is this?” A woman’s voice, I’m fairly sure, although it is low, almost in the tenor range, and could belong to a young man. In the background a piano plays, unaccompanied, a solo.
“Is this Mrs. Donahue?” I’m already getting an uncomfortable feeling.
“Who is this, and why are you calling?” The voice hardens and enunciates crisply.
I repeat what I said as I recognize a Chopin etude, and I remember a concert at Carnegie Hall. Mikhail Pletnev, who was stunning in his technical mastering of a composition that is very hard to play. The music of someone detailed and meticulous who likes everything just so. Someone who isn’t careless and doesn’t make mistakes. Someone who wouldn’t mar a fine engraved envelope by slapping on duct tape. Someone who isn’t impulsive but very studied.
“Well, I don’t know who this really is,” says the voice, what I now believe is Mrs. Donahue’s voice, stony and edged with distrust and pain. “And I don’t know how you got this number, since it’s unlisted and unpublished. If this is some sort of crank call, it’s absolutely outrageous, and whoever you are, you should be ashamed of yourself—”
“I assure you this is not a crank call,” I interrupt before she can hang up on me as I think about her listening to Chopin, Beethoven, Schumann, worrying her life away, agonizing over a son who probably has caused her anguish since she gave birth to him. “I’m the director of the Cambridge Forensic Center, the chief medical examiner of Massachusetts,” I explain authoritatively but calmly, the same voice I use with families who are on the verge of losing control, as if she is Julia Gabriel and about to shriek at me. “I’ve been out of town, and when I arrived at the airport last night, your driver was there with your letter, which I’ve carefully read.”