The Bone Bed

Jews.
    “That was before my time with the AFIP.” I keep my eyes on the jury.
    I’m talking to them, not to Jill Donoghue.
    “For a while the AFIP was studying autopsy specimens from Japanese people killed by the atomic bomb, correct?” She’s not going to relent.
    “That’s correct.”
    “And this place where you served the time you owed the military for paying for your medical school education—the AFIP—was forced to return those ancestral autopsy materials to the Japanese because it was deemed disrespectful for the U.S. military to be a repository of Japanese human remains. Especially since it was the U.S. military that killed these Japanese civilians by bombing the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
    You aren’t going to say a damn thing, are you, you coward?
    I resist glancing at Steward. I’m on my own.
    “World War Two was before I was born, Ms. Donoghue. It ended some forty years before I was on the staff of the AFIP. I wasn’t involved in any studies related to deaths caused by atomic bombs.”
    “Well, let me ask you this, Dr. Scarpetta. Were you ever a member of the American Society of Experimental Pathology?”
    “No.”
    “No? You’ve never attended a meeting?”
    “No.”
    “What about the American Society of Investigative Pathology? Have you ever attended one of their meetings?”
    “Yes.”
    “The same group, isn’t it?”
    “Essentially.”
    “I see. So if the name changes, then your answer changes?”
    “The American Society of Experimental Pathology no longer exists, and I never attended a meeting or was involved with it. It’s now the American Society of Investigative Pathology.”
    “Are you a member of the American Society of Investigative Pathology, the ASIP, Dr. Scarpetta?”
    “Yes.”
    “So whatever one might call this group, the fact is you’re involved in experimental medicine?”
    “The ASIP investigates the mechanisms of diseases.”
    Silence. I watch the faces of the jurors. They are alert but skeptical of me. An older man with short gray hair and a big belly looks intrigued but baffled. Jill Donoghue is squirting the ink of confusion into the water and lacing it with negativity, with insidious hints that I’m accustomed to getting a free ride that’s financed by tax dollars and that I’m reckless and inhumane and a bigot and possibly don’t like men.
    One brushstroke at a time, she’s painting the portrait of a female scientific sociopath, someone despicable, so when she gets to what’s really important I won’t be credible. I won’t be liked. I might be hated.
    “In what types of cases might an Armed Forces Medical Examiner, an AFME, have jurisdiction, Dr. Scarpetta?” she then asks, and I’ve never felt this unprotected.
    It’s as if there is no prosecution, as if Dan Steward is watching me being marched up a hill to the gallows and has not the slightest protest.
    “Any military death that occurs in theater,” I say.
    “‘In theater’? Perhaps you could explain what you mean by
theater
?”
    “A combat theater is an area of war operation, such as Afghanistan,” I reply to the jury. “Other types of cases that are the jurisdiction of the AFMEs, the Armed Forces Medical Examiners, would include deaths on military bases, the death of the president of the United States or the vice-president or members of cabinet, and also certain other individuals employed by the U.S. government, such as members of the CIA or our astronauts, should they die while on official duty.”
    “Quite a daunting responsibility.” Donoghue sounds thoughtful.
    One might even think she’s impressed, and I continue looking directly at the jury and refuse to look at her.
    “I can certainly see why you might assume your job is more important than mine or the members of the jury’s or even the judge’s,” she says.

eighteen
    SHE PAUSES DURING A SPATTER OF LAUGHTER FROM people who are seated inside the courtroom, but the jurors aren’t amused, not one of them.
    “I don’t assume any such thing,” I answer.
    “Well, you were an hour and fifteen minutes late today, Dr. Scarpetta. If you include the time it took for Judge Conry to reprimand you, an hour and a half, and this courtroom won’t be adjourning before dark because of you.”
    “For which I continue to be apologetic, Ms. Donoghue. It was never my intention to disrespect the court. I was out in a boat at a death scene that demanded my attention.”
    “Suggesting that the dead are more important to