The Bone Bed

myself. Black or shark gray, but not white with red and blue stripes festooning the tail boom, and I don’t recognize the tail number on this one, either. I wonder if Marino has seen her new helicopter, but he seems oblivious, is busy with Sullivan and not paying any attention to what’s thudding overhead.
    “Well, it’s disgusting and shouldn’t be permitted.” I’m back to being upset about the turtle, about the ugliness of human nature, as I watch rubberneckers motoring after the fireboat. “People have no respect or common sense. If some goddamn idiot runs over that leatherback after all he’s been through . . .”
    “It’s illegal to hunt, harass, or injure sea turtles.” Labella gets up, a drysuit folded under his arm. “How about a hundred-thousand-dollar fine.”
    “How about jail.”
    “I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of you.”
    “Not today.”
    “What we’re going to do is start up the engines so we can get within reach of the buoy line,” he tells me, while Kletty attaches an aluminum dive ladder to the transom and Marino opens the scene cases again, talking loudly with Sullivan about motorcycles and how bad the roads are up here in the Northeast. “But obviously we can’t be running while you’re in the water.”
    “Thank you. I’m not fond of close encounters with props,” I reply.
    “Yes, ma’am. Roger that.” Labella smiles, and I try to forget what he looks like and how it makes me feel.
    Orange-and-black nylon rustles as he unfolds the drysuit and hands it to me, asking if I need help getting into it. I tell him no, thank you, and sit down on a bench to take off my wet boots and socks, tempted to remove my wet cargo pants and long-sleeved shirt. What would make the most sense is to strip to my underwear and put on a liner, but no way I’m going to do that on a boat that has no head and is full of men, and I’m aware of how self-conscious I suddenly am. Modesty is a luxury in a profession where one works in the worst conditions imaginable, including outdoor scenes with no toilet and encounters with putrid body fluids and maggots. I’ve cleaned up in gas-station sinks before and dressed in the back of a car or van, not caring who was around.
    I’m conditioned to be stoical. I know how to be indifferent and impervious. I’m damned accustomed to male colleagues looking at me and thinking tits and ass, and it doesn’t bother me or it didn’t used to because I was able to be oblivious, to be single-minded about my mission.
    It’s not like me to be so damned focused on myself, and I don’t like it one damn bit as I think of things that have nothing to do with my responsibility or legal jurisdiction or what unpleasantness might await me underwater. I’m aware of the recent comments Benton made, aware of Marino’s irritating bluster as he talks loudly with Kletty and Sullivan, about boats now, and what a good idea it would be for the CFC to have one, and what an experienced captain he is.
    Insecurity, or maybe it’s hurt and anger, have thinned my skin, and I mentally run through what needs to be done and how it should be done. I map out strategies precisely while anticipating what could be both useful and harmful in court because I must always assume everything ends there.
    “What about a liner?” I decide.
    “I was going to suggest it.” Labella doesn’t add what I can tell he’s thinking, which is there is no place on board to change in private.
    “Let’s do it.” I get up from the bench.
    Inside the cabin he opens a diamond steel–plated locker and starts pulling out gray Polartec liners, checking the sizes until he finds the smallest.
    “Are you sure you don’t want one of us to go in with you?” He pauses in the doorway, his dark eyes on me. “I’m happy to suit up. Any of us are. Living people can stink just as bad as the dead.”
    “They probably can’t.”
    “Trust me. We can handle it.”
    I close the lid of the storage locker and sit on top of it and tell him no. It’s not a good idea legally. I explain that the death obviously is suspicious and I’m working it like a homicide, and every exposure alters the case, complicates and compromises and potentially ruins it. It doesn’t take much for a jury to let the guilty go free these days, and he says he couldn’t agree more. He’s followed plenty of such travesties on the news and hears complaints all the time about crime scenes destroyed by TV drama–addicted citizens who