Criminal

“We’ve already photographed and X-rayed her. Sent her clothes to the lab. Do you know we used to just cut them off and throw them in a bag? And rape cases.” He laughed. “My God, the science was flawed from the beginning. There was no taking the victim’s word for it. If we didn’t find semen in the suspected attacker’s underwear, then we couldn’t legally sign off on a charge of rape.”
    Sara didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine how awful things used to be. Thankfully, she didn’t have to.
    Pete looped his braid on top of his head and pulled on an Atlanta Braves baseball hat. He was in his element inside the morgue, visibly more animated. “I remember the first time I talked to an odontologist about bite marks. I was certain we were looking at the future of crime solving. Hair fibers. Carpet fibers.” He chuckled. “If I have one regret about my impending doom, it’s that I won’t live to see the day when we’ve got everyone’s DNA on an iPad, and all we have to do is scan some blood or a piece of tissue and up pops a current location for our bad guy. It’ll end crime as we know it.”
    Sara didn’t want to talk about Pete’s impending doom. She busied herself with her hair, tightening the band, tucking it into a surgeon’s cap so she wouldn’t contaminate anything. “How long have you known Amanda?”
    “Since dinosaurs walked among us,” he joked. Then, in a more serious tone, he said, “I met her when she started working with Evelyn. They were both a couple of pistols.”
    The description struck Sara as odd, as if Amanda and Evelyn had run around Atlanta like two Calamity Janes. “What was she like?”
    “She was interesting,” Pete said, which was one of his highest compliments. He looked at Sara’s reflection in the mirror over the sink as he washed his hands. “I know it wasn’t great when you came up in medical school—what were there, a handful of women?”
    “If that,” Sara answered. “But this last class was over sixty percent.” She didn’t mention that the ones who weren’t taking time off to have children were mostly funneling themselves into pediatrics or gynecology, the same as they had when Sara was an intern. “How many women were on the force when Amanda joined?”
    He squinted as he thought about it. “Less than two hundred out of over a thousand?” Pete stepped back so Sara could wash her hands. “No one thought women should be on the job. It was considered man’s work. There was all kinds of grumbling about how they couldn’t protect themselves, didn’t have the cojones to pull the trigger. The truth was that everyone was secretly terrified they’d be better. Can’t blame ’em.” Pete winked at her. “The last time women were in charge, they outlawed alcohol.”
    Sara smiled back at him. “I think we should be forgiven one mistake in almost a hundred years.”
    “Perhaps,” he allowed. “You know, you listen to my generation these days, we were all free-loving hippies, but the truth is there were more Amanda Wagners than there were Timothy Learys, especially in this part of the country.” He gave her a twinkling smile. “Not to say it entirely passed us by. I lived in a glorious singles complex off the Chattahoochee. Riverbend. Ever hear of it?”
    Sara shook her head. She was enjoying Pete’s reminiscing. His cancer was obviously compelling him to put his life in perspective.
    “A lot of airline pilots lived there. Stewardesses. Lawyers and doctors and nurses, oh my.” His eyes lit up at the memory. “I had a nice side business selling penicillin to many of the fine Republican men and women currently running our state government.”
    Sara used her elbow to turn off the faucet. “Sounds like crazy times.” She had come of age during the AIDS epidemic, when free love started exacting its price.
    “Crazy indeed.” Pete handed her some paper towels. “When was Brown v. the Board of Education ?”
    “The desegregation case?” Sara shrugged. Her high school history class was some time ago. “Fifty-four? Fifty-five?”
    Pete said, “It was around that time that the state required white teachers to sign a pledge disavowing integration. They would lose their jobs if they refused.”
    Sara had never heard of the pledge, but she wasn’t surprised.
    “Duke, Amanda’s father, was away when the pledge was circulating.” Pete blew into a pair of powdered surgical gloves before putting them on. “Miriam, Amanda’s