The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [140]
“Hey there, beautiful, you’ve got a case.”
Without waiting for an invitation, Brad Cummings strode into the office. Divorced, with a couple of kids, Cummings was the deputy chief medical examiner. He was athletic, urbane, and, in the eyes of perhaps every woman in the city except Nikki, handsome. She found him smug, self-absorbed, and way too pretty—quite possibly the absolute antithesis of what she was looking for in a man.
“Where’s Dr. Keller?” she asked.
“Away until one. That means I’m the boss until then, so I get to say who gets what case, and you get this tubber.”
“This what?”
“Sixty-six-year-old guy had a coronary getting into his Jacuzzi, smacked his head on the side, and went for the eternal swim. He’s just eight months post-bypass surgery. I spoke to his doctor, who said he was on mucho cardiac meds and undoubtedly had an MI. So he’s really just a “view.” You don’t have to cut on him at all. And that means we have time to go have lunch at that place on Newbury Street I’ve been telling you about.”
“Brad, I don’t want to go out with you.”
“But I thought you broke up with that drip you were dating.”
“Correction, that drip broke up with me. And I’m not interested in starting up with another one.”
“She digs me. I can tell.”
In the best of times Nikki had precious little patience for the man.
“Brad, you have more than enough scalps hanging on your lodgepole without mine. And I’m sure there are plenty more where those came from. We’ll keep getting along fine so long as you keep things on a business or collegial basis. But I promise you, Brad, call me beautiful again, or sweets, or honey, or babe, or anything other than Nikki or Dr. Solari, and I’ll write you up and hand it over to Dr. Keller. Clear?”
“Hey, easy does it.”
Nikki could tell that he stopped himself at the last possible instant from adding “Babe.”
“I’m going to get started on the new case,” she said.
“I told you, this is a straightforward view. No scalpel required, just eyeball him and sign off.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll make that decision after I’ve seen the guy.”
Nikki didn’t add that there wasn’t a chance in the world she would pass on this case regardless of how open and shut it was. Here was the perfect opportunity to get her mind off Kathy for a few hours without getting soaked on the streets of Boston.
“Suit yourself,” Cummings said. “Three days.”
“What?”
“Three days. That’s how long the dude’s been in the water. He’s a little, um, bloated. Sure you don’t want to just view and then skiddoo?”
“Have a good lunch, Brad.”
Nikki changed into scrubs and located the remains of Roger Belanger on the center of three stainless steel tables in Autopsy Suite 1. The daughter of an Italian and an Irishwoman, she could easily trace her thick, black hair and wide (some said sensuous) mouth to her father, and her fair skin, sea-green eyes, slender frame, and caustic wit to her mom. At her father’s urging, she had tried to follow his rather large footsteps into surgery. But after a year of residency, she switched to pathology, realizing that her desire to have a life outside of medicine was precluded by spending most of it in the OR or on rounds. Not once had she regretted her decision.
Belanger was hardly the most unsightly corpse Nikki had ever examined, but neither was he at all pleasant to look at. Overweight and nearly egg bald, he was extremely bloated and discolored, with purplish marbling of his skin. His flaccid limbs were well past rigor mortis. The white scar