The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [141]
Good-bye for now, Kath, she thought as she began to focus in on the details of the body. I’ll let you back in in two hours.
“No matter how obvious a case is,” Joe Keller had reminded her on more than one occasion, “no matter how apparently open and shut, you must make no assumptions. Process is everything. If you stick to process, step by step, you will seldom have to explain having missed something.”
Step one: Read over as much information as you can lay your hands on about the subject. Step two: Inspect every millimeter of the skin.
Nikki used the foot-activated dictation system as she went.
“There is a well-healed three-inch scar in the right lower abdominal quadrant, possibly from an appendectomy; a ten-inch scar less than a year old down the mid-anterior chest; a ten-inch scar of about the same age on the inner right thigh, probably from harvesting a vein for his bypass; and a well-healed two-inch scar just below the left patella, probably from the repair of a laceration many years ago.
“There is a single contusion just above and behind the right ear, with discoloration and some swelling but no depression of the bone beneath. There is a nickel-size abrasion just beneath the right mandible that—”
Nikki peered at the innocent-looking scrape. It was the only place on Belanger’s waterlogged body where skin was actually scraped off. She put on a pair of magnifying goggles and illuminated the area with a gooseneck lamp. The abrasion was actually a perfect hexagon. And in the center of the shape were ten tiny bruises perfectly forming the letter H. She photographed the area, then proceeded with her meticulous examination.
Process is everything.
An hour later she had accomplished two major things. She had in fact managed temporarily to drive her concerns for Kathy Wilson from her mind, and she had come within one final step of proving that Roger Belanger had been murdered. She stripped off her gloves, grabbed the Boston Yellow Pages, and made a call. Minutes later she paged Brad Cummings.
“Jesus,” he said, the dishes clinking in the background, “this pager goes off so infrequently it scared the heck out of me.”
“You almost done?”
“We were just waiting for our flans.”
Nikki didn’t want to go anywhere near who “we” was.
“I need you to pick something up for me and come back to the office, Brad.”
“But—”
“No buts, no flans. Just go to Mulvaney’s Pool and Patio on Route nine, right after the mall. You know where that is?”
“Yes.”
“They’ll have a package waiting in your name. Eleven ninety-five plus tax. I’ll pay you back. Hurry.”
For the next forty-five minutes Nikki finished collecting her specimens and waited. Inexorably her concerns for her friend reemerged. The two of them had met almost three years ago at a folk club in Cambridge. Nikki had been a classical violinist from age three, when her father enrolled her in a Suzuki method class. She played in chamber music groups right through college and medical school when time allowed, and was reasonably satisfied with what she got from her music—that was, until she heard Kathy Wilson and the Lost Bluegrass Ramblers play. Kathy sang lead and played strings—mandolin, guitar, and bass—with astounding deftness and heart.
Nikki had heard bluegrass before, but in truth she had never paid much attention to it. That night the Ramblers, and Kathy in particular, brought her an exhilaration that had long ago vanished from the music she played and listened to. After the performance she waited by the dressing room door.
“I don’t collect autographs,” she said once Kathy had emerged, “but I wanted to tell you that I love your voice and your energy.”
“Jes’ doin’ what comes naturally. You play the fiddle professionally?”
“Hardly. How did you—”
“You’ve got a fiddler’s mark right there under your jaw.”
Nikki knew the reddish-brown mark and the small lump beneath it caused by long-term pressure from her violin’s chin rest.
“It became permanent sometime during college,” she said. “I play mostly chamber music.”
“Eyes and necks,