The Bone Bed

He would have qualified you as an expert instead of her doing it, and you wouldn’t have been put through the mill with all these personal questions that sure as hell didn’t make you look good.”
    “No matter who ordered me to court, I was going to end up there, and Donoghue would have asked whatever she wanted.”
    “You’re
her
witness and on
her
side, and still she does that to you?” he persists, and I can’t stand it when he gets this way, defending me after it’s too late, when he couldn’t have changed anything to begin with.
    “It’s not about taking sides.” My patience is almost shot.
    “Oh, yeah, it is. Everything’s about taking sides.” Marino leans on the horn and yells, “Move, butt munch!” He honks again at the taxi in front of us, and the rude noise goes through my brain like a spike. “Like, whose side is Steward really on? You were the last defense witness, and he didn’t bother to cross-examine you, just let that damn news clip hang in the air?”
    “There really wasn’t anything to ask me. I don’t know the identity of the body we recovered from the bay, and that was made clear.”
    “Huh. Well, the way he handled you makes me wonder if maybe he’s secretly in league with Donoghue, maybe getting paid under the table or has a promise of it if Channing Lott gets off. How do you know his billions of dollars aren’t what’s tipping the scales of justice in this case? Jesus! The asshole’s tapping his brakes on purpose, wanting me to rear-end him! Move it, fuckwad!” Marino opens his window and gives the taxi driver the finger. “Yeah, go ahead and stop and come over here, see what I do to you, piece of dog shit!”
    “For God’s sake, can we do without the road rage?” I ask. “Let’s just get there in one piece, please.”
    We’re only halfway across the bridge, going ten miles an hour, the Boston skyline smudges of blurry light. Beacons on top of the Prudential Building are completely blotted out by heavy rain and dense low clouds that moil and churn.
    “Why the hell didn’t he object more?” Marino rolls up his window and wipes his rain-spattered hand on his pants. “The one who got away with murder is Jill Donoghue.”
    “Maybe he’s just a lousy lawyer.” The high-speed dull thudding of the wipers is almost unbearable. “I don’t guess you could turn those down?”
    “As long as you don’t care if I can’t see.”
    “Never mind.” I can’t remember what I ate today, and then I realize the answer is nothing.
    Cuban coffee and an empty stomach. No wonder my head hurts and I can barely think.
    “Steward didn’t try hard enough to get that Fox segment excluded, hardly tried at all.”
    I never got around to the granola and Greek yogurt that are still in my refrigerator.
    “You ask me, he threw you and the case under the bus, and did it on purpose.”
    “Let’s hope that wasn’t his intention,” I say, and what bothers me most isn’t that a television news segment was ruled admissible and shown to the jury but that the video was filmed at all.
    For several seconds the dead woman’s gaunt leathery face was clearly visible as I was pulling her into the pouch-lined Stokes basket, and while it’s possible she’s no longer visually identifiable because of her severely dehydrated condition, I can’t be sure of that. Someone who knew her well, perhaps family or close friends, might have realized who she is, and that’s a terrible way to find out about a death. It should never happen.
    “He’ll get acquitted,” Marino decides.
    The wipers swipe and beat the glass, the hard, chilly rain drumming the roof and flooding the windshield as if we’re inside a car wash, and Channing Lott might be acquitted, and maybe he should be. I have no idea. But if jurors witnessed what I did barely an hour ago, they must have been given a different picture of the formidable industrialist who seemed genuinely caught off guard by the video he watched in open court. He struck me as tragic and terrified, sincerely grief-stricken, as he seemed to anticipate what he was about to see. Afterward he shut his eyes, almost collapsing in his chair with what appeared to be immense relief.
    If he realized the dead woman isn’t his missing wife, then he shouldn’t have felt he was just granted a reprieve, not if he’s to blame for whatever’s happened to her. Finding his wife’s body right now would be the best thing for his case. It doesn’t matter what I might