The Bone Bed

promised. Do you want short sleeves or long?”
    He peers at me from my closet.
    “I’m voting for long, because it’s going to be nippy out there with the wind blowing,” he says, before I can even think of answering. “So let’s see, your down jacket’s a good idea, your rescue-orange one, so you show up a mile away. Always a good idea on the water. I see Marino doesn’t have a jacket, but I’m not in charge of his wardrobe.”
    Bryce carries clothing over to me as Marino continues talking to someone who obviously is out in a boat.
    “We don’t want anybody cutting through knots or nothing, and any ropes would have to be cleated down,” he is saying, as Bryce drapes my CFC uniform across my desk and then returns to the closet for boots. “I’m going to hang up and call you on a landline and maybe have a better connection and you can talk to the Doc yourself,” Marino adds.
    He comes over to my side of the desk as I hear the elevator in the corridor and more voices. Lucy is on her way to her helicopter, and other staff members are arriving. It’s a few minutes past eight.
    “Some huge prehistoric turtle entangled in the south channel,” Marino tells me, as he reaches for my desk phone.
    “Prehistoric?”
Bryce exclaims. “I don’t think so.”
    “A leatherback. They’re almost extinct, have been around since Jurassic Park.” Marino ignores him.
    “I don’t believe there was a
park
back then,” Bryce chimes in louder.
    “Could weigh as much as a ton.” Marino keeps talking to me as he enters a number on my phone, a pair of over-the-counter reading glasses perched on his strong nose. “A waterman checking his lobster pots discovered it at sunrise and called the aquarium’s rescue team, which has an arrangement with the fire department marine unit. When the fireboat got there and they started to pull the turtle in, turns out there’s an unfortunate attachment on the vertical line . . . Pamela?” he says to whoever answers. “I’m handing you over to Dr. Scarpetta.”
    He gives me the receiver, folding the glasses with his thick fingers and tucking them into the breast pocket of his shirt as he explains, “Pamela Quick. She’s out in the fireboat, so the connection might not be real good.”
    The woman on the phone introduces herself as a marine biologist with the New England Aquarium, and she sounds urgent and slightly hostile. She just this minute e-mailed a photograph, she says.
    “You can see for yourself we’re out of time,” she insists. “We need to get him on board
now.
”
    “‘
Him’?”
I ask.
    “A critically endangered species of sea turtle that’s been dragging tackle and other gear and what’s obviously a dead person for who knows how long. Turtles have to breathe, and he barely can keep his nares above water anymore. We need to get him out
right now
so he doesn’t drown.”
    Marino holds his cell phone close to me so I can see the e-mailed photograph he just opened of a young woman, blond and tan, in khaki pants and a green Windbreaker, leaning over the side of the fireboat. She’s using a long-handled grappling hook to pull in a line that is entangled with a shockingly massive sea creature, leathery and dark, with a wingspan nearly as wide as the boat. Several yards away from its protruding huge head, and barely visible at the surface of the rolling blue water, are pale hands with painted nails and a splay of long white hair.
    Bryce sets down a pair of lightweight ankle-high black tactical boots with polished leather toes and nylon uppers. He complains that he can’t find socks.
    “Try my locker downstairs,” I tell him, as I bend over to slip off my pumps, and I say to Pamela Quick, “What we don’t want is to lose the body or cause any damage to it. So normally I wouldn’t permit—”
    “We can save this animal,” she cuts me off, and it’s patently clear she’s not interested in my permission. “But we have to do it now.” The way she says it, I have no doubt she’s not going to wait for me or anyone, and I really can’t blame her.
    “Do what you need to do, of course. But if someone can document it with video or photographs, that would be helpful,” I tell her, as I get out of my chair, feeling the carpet under my stocking feet and reminded I never know what to expect in life, not from one minute to the next. “Disturb any lines and gear as little as possible, and make sure they’re secured so we don’t lose anything,” I