The Bone Bed

my imagination, but she seems to be smiling.
    “You can’t say it’s not her?” Steward asks. “It sure would be good if you could.”
    “I’ve barely looked at the body. I haven’t autopsied it. At this time I have no idea who she is, but preliminarily and at a glance I didn’t see scars from cosmetic procedures such as breast implants, liposuction, a face-lift, that we know she’d undergone. No physical similarities I saw so far under the circumstances.” I stop short of saying what condition the body is in.
    “What circumstances, exactly?” he asks.
    “The circumstances of my having time only for a cursory exam before I rushed here.”
    “What about age, hair color?”
    “Her hair isn’t dyed platinum blond. It’s naturally white,” I answer.
    “Are we sure Mildred Lott’s hair was dyed?”
    “I’m not sure of anything.”
    “The way she’s dressed, any personal effects, such as wedding and engagement rings, an antique locket necklace Mildred Lott was known to wear and was believed to have on when she disappeared, that sort of thing?”
    “I found nothing consistent with any of that.”
    “Any idea when this newest case, this lady, may have died and how?”
    “I’m certainly not going to be compelled to testify about a dead body I’ve not even autopsied yet, Dan,” I reply, with a trace of resistance that I can’t seem to keep out of my voice.
    “Hey. It’s all about what Jill’s buddy Judge Conry permits.”
    “Her
buddy
?”
    “You know. Rumors. Not me who’s going to repeat them.” Steward glances at his watch. “I’d best get back in there.”
    I wait until everyone has gone inside, and I stand alone between inner and outer wooden doors, listening to the strong timbered voice of the clerk as he instructs everyone to rise for the judge. The sounds of people standing and resettling, and the gavel cracks, and court is back in session. Then a commanding woman’s voice, what I call a radio voice, Jill Donoghue’s voice, announces into a microphone that she’s calling me as her next witness.
    The door I face opens onto a vaulted arched ceiling hung with alabaster chandeliers, and tables occupied by attorneys and rows of crowded public seating leading to Judge Joseph Conry, robed in black and perched up high on a bench that’s elevated like a throne before a backdrop of leather-bound law reviews. I feel his gravity from the far end of his courtroom as I follow gray carpet toward the witness stand, directly across from the jury box.
    “Dr. Scarpetta.” The judge halts me from what feels like miles away. “You were supposed to be here an hour and fifteen minutes ago.”
    “Yes, Your Honor,” I reply, with appropriate humility, looking directly at him and avoiding Jill Donoghue standing at a lectern to my left. “And I deeply apologize.”
    “Why are you late?”
    I know he knows why, but I reply, “I was at a scene several miles south of the city in the Massachusetts Bay, Your Honor. Where a woman’s body was found.”
    “So you were working?”
    “Yes, Your Honor.” I feel eyes fastened to me like darts, the courtroom as still as an empty cathedral.
    “Well, Dr. Scarpetta, I was here by nine o’clock this morning, as is required of me so I can do my job in this case.” He is hard and unforgiving, not at all the man I know from swearing-ins and retirements, from the unveilings of judicial portraits and the countless Federal Bar Association receptions I’ve attended.
    Joseph Conry, whose name is frequently confused with the English novelist Joseph Conrad, is strikingly handsome, tall, with jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes,
the black Irish judge with a heart of darkness
, as he has been described, a no-nonsense brilliant jurist who always has treated me kindly and with respect. I wouldn’t call us personal friends. But I would say we are warmly acquainted, Conry always going out of his way to get me a drink and to chat about the latest in forensics or to ask my advice about his daughter in medical school.
    “All of the lawyers and jurors were here by nine o’clock this morning, as required of them, so they can do their jobs in this case,” he is saying in the same severe voice, as I listen with growing dismay. “And because you decided to put your job first, we’ve been forced to wait for you, implying you’re obviously the most important person in this trial.”
    “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I never meant to imply that.”
    “You’ve wasted the