The Bone Bed

body or dead bodies, as opposed to actually working the crash itself. You wouldn’t examine the crashed jet or helicopter.”
    Jill Donoghue is one of the few defense attorneys I know who dares to ask questions she doesn’t know the answer to because she’s that smart and sure of herself. But it’s not without risks.
    “It would not be my job to examine a crashed plane or helicopter for the purpose of determining mechanical or computer failure or pilot error,” I reply. “Although I might be shown the wreckage and reports to see if the findings of the National Transportation Safety Board, for example, are consistent with what the body tells me.”
    “Do dead bodies speak to you, Dr. Scarpetta?”
    “They don’t literally speak to me.”
    “They don’t speak the way you and I are talking.”
    “Not audibly,” I answer. “No.”
    Check box two. Make me eccentric. Make me crazy.
    “But inaudibly they speak to you?”
    “In the language of diseases and wounds and many other nuances, they tell me their story.”
    A woman on the jury, African American, in a dark red suit, nods her head as if we’re in church.
    “And your area of expertise is the human body. Specifically, the dead human body,” Jill Donoghue asks, and I can tell by her tone she doesn’t like what I just said.
    “Examining the dead is one area of my expertise.” I will make it worse for her. “I examine every detail in order to reconstruct how someone died and how they lived, and offer everything I possibly can to those left behind who find the loss profoundly life-altering.”
    The juror in dark red nods deeply, as if I’m preaching salvation, and Donoghue changes the subject. “Dr. Scarpetta, what is your rank as an Air Force Reservist?”
    “I’m a colonel,” I answer, and a young male juror in a blue polo shirt scowls as if he doesn’t approve or is confused.
    “But you never actively served in the military.”
    “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
    “It wasn’t a question, Dr. Scarpetta.” She’s not happy with me. “I’m stating that you were never active in the Air Force, didn’t enlist, weren’t deployed to Iraq, for example.”
    “When I was actively serving time in the military, we weren’t at war with Iraq,” I reply.
    “You’re saying no Air Force Reservists were deployed to Iraq?”
    “I’m not saying that.”
    “Good, because that wouldn’t be true, now, would it?” she says.
    Check box three. Imply I have to be encouraged to tell the truth.
    “It wouldn’t be correct to say no Air Force Reservists were deployed to Iraq,” I agree.
    “I was using a deployment to Iraq as an example of what someone active in the military might be involved in.” She winds up for her next spitball. “As opposed to someone who signs on with a branch of service simply to get his or her medical school education paid for by the government. Which is what you did, isn’t it?”
    Check box four. I’m entitled. I’m an elitist.
    “After medical school I served on the staff of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and my medical school tuition eventually was forgiven.”
    “So when you served your time you weren’t actually deployed anywhere at all. You served as a forensic pathologist, mostly doing paperwork.”
    “Forensic pathologists do a lot of paperwork.” I smile at the jurors, and several of them smile back.
    “The AFME is part of the AFIP, correct?”
    “It was,” I answer. “The AFIP was disestablished several years ago.”
    “While it still existed and you were on its staff, were you involved in the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission?”
    “I was not.”
    Jesus Christ
. Why the hell isn’t Steward objecting? I resist looking back at him
.
    Don’t look at anything or anyone but the jury.
    “Well, some of your colleagues were on the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, were they not?”
    “I believe a few of them had been involved in that,” I reply. “A few of the senior forensic pathologists who were still at the AFIP when I was.”
    “Why weren’t you involved with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission?” she asks.
    Goddammit.
    Why the hell is Steward letting her get away with this? I can’t imagine the judge wouldn’t sustain an objection that this line of questioning has nothing to do with this case or me. She’s trying to inflame the Asian jurors, to prejudice them against me.
    Like implying I might have had something to do with the holocaust in front of a jury of