The Bone Bed

distinction of being the most hated human being on his planet.
    “What is there to make of anything if I haven’t caused a delay?”
    “I’m sure you’re aware of what’s all over the news, Kay.”
    “The body I just recovered has nothing to do with this, and I certainly can’t get into it, and I won’t.” I don’t mean to sound impatient or entitled, but I’m weary of courtroom antics and what I’ve come to call magic tricks.
    Maybe total disillusionment better describes what I feel, because it’s simply stunning what defense attorneys manage to pull out of their hats these days. The more unbelievable and illogical the tactic, the more they seem to get away with it, and I’m not far from being entirely cynical about a process I used to believe in, at times unsure the jury system works anymore.
    “Well, she just blasted a hole the size of the Grand Canyon in the Gloucester investigator, not Kefe, thank God, because he’s dumb as dirt, but Lorey, who went away very unhappy. I feel kind of bad leaving him up there as long as I did during cross, but as a result technically nothing has been delayed,” Steward says to my chest. “But what happens next isn’t my call. And the judge happens to have a bit of a hard-on for her.”
    “I’m really sorry, Dan. But not even two hours ago I had on a drysuit and dive mask and was recovering a dead body that I’m in a very big hurry to get back to.” I look out at the harbor, at a plane taking off from Logan and a red oil tanker gliding out to sea, and I can barely make out the Boston lighthouse jutting up in a volatile dark sky that threatens rain. “It was either be late for what truly is frivolous testimony or possibly lose evidence in what I’m fairly certain is a homicide.”
    “That’s what I suspect Jill the cobra fully intends to spit into your eyes.” Steward shuffles through a folder filled with notes he’s made on sheets of yellow legal paper, and he seems rankled by my reference to frivolous testimony. “She hammered Lorey to a damn pulp about the obvious problem of there being no body in this case and the lack of scientific evidence, planting the usual doubts in the minds of the jurors, because no one seems to believe in circumstantial evidence anymore.”
    “As we’ve discussed, these types of cases are extremely difficult. . . .”
    “I mean, come on. His wife is recorded on the security camera going out of the house at night because she hears something, is obviously talking to someone she knows outside in the pitch dark, and vanishes. Never to be seen again.” He talks over me in his irritating reedy voice. “Evidence on her husband’s laptop shows he’d been shopping around for someone to murder her for a hundred grand, and that’s not enough to send him away for the rest of his life?”
    “It’s not my case, for the very reasons you’re citing,” I remind him. “Her body hasn’t been found, and I’ve had nothing to do with the investigation beyond looking over medical records and your asking my opinion.” I refrain from adding that I’m here right now against my will because of him, and he of all people should have known that if he asked me anything in writing and I replied in writing, it would be discoverable.
    Especially if the opposing counsel is Jill Donoghue, who at this moment is heading in our direction, carrying a to-go cup of coffee, stunning in a fitted olive-green suit with wide lapels and a slim skirt, her long, dark hair softly curled with bangs. One of the most feared defense attorneys in Massachusetts, it doesn’t help that she’s quite beautiful, a graduate of Harvard Law School who last year was the president of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
    She participates in workshops and seminars at the Federal Judicial Center, where I’ve run into her on a number of occasions, her expertise electronic discovery, which of course includes e-mails. I can’t help but suspect that Steward deliberately set me up for exactly what I’m getting because he wants to sic me on his nemesis, as if I’m his pet pit bull when in fact what he’s manipulated more likely has given Donoghue an advantage.
    “Come on and tell me. No bullshit. Any chance that’s Mildred Lott you just pulled out of the bay?” he says somberly, quietly, his narrow face tense, his gray eyes flat behind his glasses.
    “I can’t know anything with certainty at this time.” I watch Donoghue head into the courtroom, and maybe it’s