Isle of Dogs (28 page)

She had always been an attractive woman who dressed smartly but tastefully, and certainly she believed deeply in skin care. Skin was God’s gift to women, she often told the female students who sought her advice and guidance. Clothes and accessories make no difference if your skin is bad, and everyone should visit the skin doctor regularly and use good cleansers and moisturizers and stay out of the sun.

Now, it was true that her skin looked especially nice this morning after the glycolic masque she vaguely remembered applying last night after too much to drink. But why were all these motorists staring at her? Some of them were even
honking their horns, and a moment ago a man with an earring zipped past in his Porsche and gave her a thumbs up. She slowed down at Hooter’s tollbooth and was pleased to see the rainbow bumper sticker proudly mounted on the sliding glass window.

“Why, you must work twenty-four hours a day,” Barbie greeted Hooter, who looked a bit under the weather. “We both have rainbows. Isn’t it fun?”

“I tell you, I had the strangest thing happen last night,” Hooter said as cars lined up behind the minivan.

She told Barbie all about the wild man in the alleyway who was sitting on a bag of guns out by the Dumpster and trying to shoot off his privates.

“Then, you know that big trooper I dated last night . . . ? Well,” Hooter interrupted her own story. “I guess you got no reason to know him. But I had to drive him back home to his mama, and he wanted a little loving but I wouldn’t give him none ’cause his mama right there in the next room, pro’bly with a glass up against the wall, listening to see what we was doin’.

“So I say to him, ‘Why you still living with your mama, and if I did what you wanted, what if she walked in?’ Can you imagine?” Hooter said to Barbie.
“Can you imagine
riding that big trooper’s horsie and right in the middle of it, there’s Mama in her nightie standing next to the couch. I think that’s sick. I’m telling you, that man’s a strange one.”

“What horsie?” Barbie was horrified and confused.

“Just his little pet name for what I’m telling you is the biggest . . .” Hooter’s comment was obliterated by honking horns. “. . . ever saw, girlfriend! Only, I ain’t ’zactly seen it in person yet. But based on the commotion it was making as it tried to bust out of its stall, you get what I’m saying? Uh-huh? That’s one big . . .” More horns blared.

“Well, you would think I’m causing a lot of commotion myself,” Barbie confided. “All these people are just staring at me and honking and nearly running me off the road,” she added as a huge pickup truck with mud flaps swerved to another line and Bubba Loving flipped a bird and yelled something at Barbie’s minivan. “How does he know my name?” she exclaimed to Hooter. “I’ve never seen that man before in
my life and he just yelled my name. I’m good at reading lips.”

“You don’t say,” Hooter remarked, staring after the pickup truck. “I sure do hate it when they got them ’Federate flags on their windshield and
Bubba
on the vanity plate. Good thing he went over to the Smart Tag line ’cause I don’t like ’Federate money whether I got gloves on or not! I won’t touch it if I got a choice, uh-uh! I don’t think he say your name, though.” Hooter was reluctant to tell her. “Fact is, I doubt he know your name.”

“I’m pretty sure he said
Fogg.”

“Nuh-uh. He say something else that wasn’t the least bit nice, girlfriend. I think that Bubba redneck call you a
fag.”

“Well now, if that doesn’t take the cake.” Barbie was mystified. “You positive he didn’t say
Fogg?”

“I ain’t gonna go ask him. He a mean redneck and probably got a hood in his closet, you know what I’m saying?”

Barbie didn’t know what she meant.

“You know, a white sheet,” Hooter explained. “He probably some cross-burning gran dragon for the Ku Klack Klan!”

“Anyone who burns a cross will go straight to hell,” Barbie said with pious indignation.

“I don’t care where people like him go after they’s dead. I just don’t want them stopping at my tollbooth and maybe trying to find out where I live so they can shoot out my windows and burn a cross in my yard. Except I don’t have a yard. I guess they could burn a cross in the parking lot, though.”

“So many crazy people.” Barbie was getting discouraged. “The world just gets worse every day.”

“Ever since the new milminimum, everything’s worse. Don’t see how they could get worser.” Hooter could not have agreed with Barbie Fogg more.

A
NDY
didn’t see how things could get much worse, either, as he turned off Ninth Street, bound for the morgue with Regina sitting in the passenger’s seat smacking gum and playing with the scanner.

“How do you turn on the lights and siren in this thing?” she asked.

“We’re not turning on the lights and siren,” he told her.

“Why not? You’re responding to a murder, aren’t you? Seems to me you could turn them on if you wanted to.”

“No, I couldn’t. We’re not pursuing anyone or in a hurry.” He worked hard to keep his irritation to himself.

“Well, aren’t we in a pissy mood today?” Regina commented as she stared out the window at people aimlessly searching for parking places and waiting in the cold to cross the street.

She did not have to subject herself to common inconveniences, and for the first time in years, she was happy. She could not believe she had escaped the EPU at last and was inside a brand-new state police car, on her way to the morgue with Andy.

“I will make a very good partner for you,” she went on. “I know a lot of things you don’t and probably more things than that medical examiner woman does, for that matter. I bet you don’t know what to do if you get stuck in quicksand, now do you?”

“I don’t intend to ever get stuck in quicksand,” Andy replied. “I would avoid it.”

“Huh. That’s easy to say. If it was a simple thing to avoid quicksand, then people wouldn’t get stuck in it and sink to death. So what you do is spread your arms and legs and try to float.” She showed him. “Then you put your walking stick under your back to keep your hips from sinking, and you pull your legs out and escape. And if you want to break down a door, you kick the lock, and you can pick a car lock with an Allen wrench and a bobby pin. I also know how to survive python, alligator, and killer-bee attacks,” she bragged. “And I could deliver a baby in a taxicab or save myself if my parachute doesn’t open.”

“Only because you’ve obviously read
The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook,”
Andy replied, to her annoyance and surprise. “And just because you read about a dire situation while you’re safely sitting in the mansion doesn’t mean you could really save yourself if the worst really happened.”

“Papa gave it to me for my birthday,” Regina smugly said. “And he’s never given that book to my sisters because they don’t care about adventure and are cowards. I can just imagine
Faith trying to land a plane after the pilot has a heart attack, and Constance would panic to death if she were lost in the desert or adrift at sea.”

She rummaged in her knapsack and pulled out the bright yellow little handbook.

“So, what would
you
do if your parachute didn’t open?” She tested him as she smoothed open a dog-eared page that was stained with what looked like chocolate.

“I would check my chute before I jumped,” Andy replied as his patience tightened like a guitar string about to snap.

“What about if lightning struck?”

“I would avoid it.”

“Would you stand under a tall tree?” Regina was determined to evoke a wrong answer from him.

“Of course not.”

“What if you were diving a hundred feet down and ran out of air?” Regina asked in a confrontational manner.

“I wouldn’t.”

Regina smacked the handbook shut and shoved it back into her knapsack.

“When do you think I can get a uniform?” she asked with mounting anger.

“After you attend the academy and graduate. We’re talking the better part of a year, assuming the academy accepts you.”

“They have to accept me.”

“Just because your father’s the governor doesn’t mean anybody has to accept you,” Andy replied a bit sharply. “I don’t intend to tell anybody who you are beyond saying that you’re an intern who’s riding along with me.”

“Then I’ll tell them,” she countered, opening the window and flicking out the gum.

“That would be very unwise. Don’t you think it’s time you let people like you for yourself instead of for who you are? And don’t throw anything out the window.”

“What if they don’t?” Her mood wilted. “And you know they won’t. Nobody has ever liked me even when they know who Papa is. So why would they like me if they didn’t know who he is?”

“I guess you’re just going to have to see what happens and
face reality for once,” Andy said as he turned off on Clay Street. “And if people don’t like you, you have only yourself to blame.”

“Bullshit. None of it’s my fault.” Regina’s voice got louder and more strident. “I can’t help the way I was born!”

“It’s your choice to be rude and selfish,” Andy said. “And I’m not hard of hearing—yet. Lower your voice. Maybe for once you might think about others instead of yourself. How about the poor person back there who steps on that gum you just threw out? How would you like it if you stepped on someone’s gum when you were dressed for work, in a hurry, couldn’t afford new shoes, and had a sick baby at home?”

This had never occurred to Regina.

“The only reason no one likes you is because you don’t like anybody, either. People sense that,” Andy went on as he pulled in behind the modern brick building called Biotech II that housed the chief medical examiner’s office and the forensic laboratories.

“I don’t know how,” Regina confessed. “You can’t know how to do something if no one has ever shown you. And all my life, everyone has treated me special because of who I am, so I’ve never had a chance to think about anybody else.”

“Well, now you’ve got your chance.” Andy parked in a visitor’s space and got out of the car. “Because I’m going to treat you like shit if you treat me like shit. Maybe it’s good you’re at the morgue. You can practice being nice to dead people and they won’t care if you can’t pull it off.”

“That’s a great idea!” Regina enthusiastically followed Andy along the sidewalk and inside the lobby. “Except how do you worry about someone’s feelings if they can’t feel anything anymore?”

“It’s called sympathy, it’s called having compassion. Words foreign to you, no doubt.” Andy stopped at the information desk and signed in. “Try to think about what the poor people down here have been through and how sad their friends and loved ones are, and for once don’t focus on yourself. And if you’re obnoxious, that’s the end of your internship because I’m not going to put up with it, and I know the chief won’t put up with it. She’ll throw you out on your ass in a nanosecond.”

“Papa can fire her,” Regina pointed out.

“She’ll eat your papa for breakfast,” Andy said.

He handed Regina a small notebook and a pen as electronic locks clicked free and they entered the chief medical examiner’s office.

“Take notes,” he instructed her. “Write down everything the doctors say and keep your mouth shut.”

Regina was not accustomed to taking orders, but the instant she noticed graphic autopsy photographs on desks in the front office, she began to lose her usual bravado and self-absorption. The clerks knew Andy very well, it seemed, and were very friendly and flirtatious with him. Regina was stunned and thrilled when Andy introduced her as his intern.

“Lucky you,” one of the clerks said, giving Regina a sly wink.

“Why can’t I be your intern?” another one coyly asked him.

“Whoa, baby. I’d be happy to let you teach me a thing or two.”

“We’re here on the fisherman’s case.” Andy was all business. “Is Doctor Sawamatsu doing the case?”

“No. He hasn’t come in yet.”

“What about the chief?” Andy was relieved that Dr. Sawamatsu wasn’t in and hoped he wouldn’t show up at all.

In the first place, Dr. Sawamatsu’s English was poor, and Andy had a very difficult time understanding him, especially when he started throwing around medical terms. Dr. Sawamatsu was also clinical and came across as rather cold-blooded and cynical, and Andy took great exception to anyone who was callous around victims, alive or dead. Worst of all, Sawamatsu had repeatedly bragged to Andy about a secret collection of souvenirs that included artificial joints, breast and penile implants, a glass eye, pieces and parts from plane crashes and other disasters, and Andy doubted that the chief knew about her assistant’s unseemly hobby, because the collection was at his home and not at the office.

“Maybe I’ll just tell her,” Andy thought out loud as he followed a long carpeted corridor to Dr. Scarpetta’s office suite.

“Tell who what?” Regina looked around in wonder, pausing to stare inside offices where microscopes were perched on desks and X rays were clipped to light boxes.

“Don’t ask questions, and as we say in bomb investigations,
don’t touch or move anything in any way,
” Andy warned her. “And everything you hear and see can never be divulged to anyone, including your family.”