Chapter 32
WHILE WORKING AT THE OCME I WAS RIDING WITH THE DETECTIVES several times a week. I became friends with Ray and Glenn Williams, who weren’t related. They treated me like a partner, and sometimes I’d be on a homicide scene at night, and the next morning I’d present the case at the OCME staff meeting.
I carried a theme book everywhere I went, writing down what I saw and often what was said.
I noted that the victim was dressed in a pair of blue long underwear, a red-checked robe, and corduroy slippers. Apparently, he and his father had begun arguing in the kitchen.
“I ought to shoot you,” the father said.
“I dare you,” replied the son as he fixed a cup of coffee.
Police said that the night before the father had been drinking “Ten High Bourbon” and went after the son with “an iron pipe.” The responding officers encouraged the son to take out a warrant, but he refused.
His mother told police that the father “got the gun, took a few steps closer, still talking & then fired,” I wrote in my notes.
“They should have a place to check on the death certificate, was this death stupid, yes or no?” Marcella said this often.
“Victim on gurney / bloody white sheet, pack of Marlboros in robe breast pocket,” I jotted while watching her perform the postmortem. “Rigor makes it very hard to get clothing off. Lividity looks like a birthmark. Purple…”
A homicide, Marcella determined as she hung up the decedent’s bloody blue union suit to air dry.
That same day we had a suicide, an elderly man who shot himself in the mouth.
While we often see someone “eating his gun” on TV, in fact it rarely happens.
Marcella wanted to make sure the case wasn’t a homicide, mentioning one that had been.
“The man said his wife talked too much and stuck the gun in her mouth,” she told me while dropping damaged vertebrae into a jar of formalin.
Another case that morning was a woman found burned to death in a car pulled off on the side of a dead-end road. A gas can and matches were nearby, and the first thought was she’d committed suicide. That would be a brutal way to do it, Marcella told the frustrated detective. She wasn’t buying it.
As it turned out, the victim worked as a waitress and overheard two drug dealers discussing a killing.
When they realized that she was listening, the problem had to be dealt with.
She fled in her car with them in pursuit and, unfortunately, turned onto a dead-end road.
She had no way out, and they poured gasoline on her, lighting a match.
Every day it was one terrible event after another that brought bodies through the morgue’s vehicle bay door.
I didn’t realize how much it would change me.
Murder wasn’t an abstraction. It wasn’t entertaining.
When Ruth Graham and I talked on the phone, she’d voice her concern about what I was doing.
“Patsy, get out of the morgue,” she’d say first thing. “It’s not good for your mental health.”
“The dead won’t hurt you,” I’d remind her. “It’s everybody else,” and she’d laugh.
In later years when a Scarpetta novel would come out, I’d send Ruth an inscribed copy. Randomly scattered throughout the pages were tiny boxes I’d drawn.
“Check if you’re still reading,” I’d jot next to each one.
I don’t think she read anything I ever published, including her own biography.
The same was true of my mother. The only book of mine she read and cherished was the children’s story Life’s Little Fable that I dedicated to her.
Decades later when she was in a retirement home, she’d display my novels proudly, having never cracked a single one.
In 1985, the state health department mandated that all agencies were to be computerized, including the OCME.
A desktop computer, printer, and modem arrived.
They were installed inside a small office with cinderblock walls and a dark green tile floor.
The room behind it was a storage area with filing cabinets where old cases were stored.
Not long after the computer appeared, Dr. Wiecking said to me, “If you really want to help around here, do something with that thing.” He pointed at the computer.
I wasn’t an ideal choice. When I’d taken computer science at Davidson, I dropped it after three days.
Back then there were two things I refused to do.
One was work with computers. The other was attending funerals or having anything to do with dead bodies.
How was it possible I’d become a computer programmer in a medical examiner’s office?
Sometimes one learns things because there’s no choice.
If I wanted to immerse myself in the world of law enforcement and forensics, I needed to make myself useful.
Scribing during the autopsies, I’d write down weights, measurements, whatever the doctors dictated.
I’d help weigh organs, count the pills in prescription bottles, and hang up bloody clothing to dry.
Afternoons were spent working with an IT expert from the health department.
Whenever Gail Sauvager showed up at the office, I’d sit next to her learning the relational database Oracle.
She was long-suffering and helpful, never treating me condescendingly.
Had it not been for her, I wouldn’t have learned enough to create the OCME’s computer programs.
I began compiling our statistics statewide.
Soon enough, I was taking care of the computers for our other district offices in Roanoke, Norfolk, and Fairfax.
When anyone had a problem or new software needed to be loaded, I was the one in charge.
I’d drive the maroon station wagon that we used for hauling bodies.
The back was covered with plyboard, the morgue wagon, as I called it, a biohazard. But nobody thought about that in those days. We’d smoke in the morgue. We’d set our coffee on the counter. Often, we touched bodies with our bare hands. There was no such thing as wearing Tyvek.
My PPE was a teal surgical gown made of cotton, and over that a disposable plastic apron.
I’d wear latex gloves and a surgical mask, never showering before I headed home.
I didn’t realize the stench followed me until I stopped at the seminary post office one day after work.
I was picking up the mail and noticed a student giving me a startled, disgusted look as he hurried away.
I learned not to stop on my way home, and the first thing I’d do when arriving was shower.
I made sure Charlie detected nothing offensive when he’d amble in after class or his job at the downtown Second Presbyterian Church.
We talked a lot about his courses, and I helped him write sermons.
But I rarely said much about what I was doing. Most people didn’t want to hear it.
My first few years of research wouldn’t have been possible had he not cashed in his stocks.
For a while, I had very little income, only what I got for book sales when giving talks and an occasional royalty check that wasn’t much.
The pittance I earned at the OCME covered my gas, food, professional meetings, and infrequent research trips involving overnight stays somewhere, usually with Marcella.
She and her husband, Bob, became extended family.
When schedules allowed, Charlie and I would have dinner with them, and I’d make pizza.
Charlie didn’t cook. All those years as a bachelor, and suddenly he forgot how to do anything in the kitchen beyond opening a can of tuna fish.
I didn’t mind. I loved putting meals together.
My specialty was homemade onion bagels that I’d make from high-gluten flour I’d buy from the O’Brianstein’s restaurant at the Regency Mall.
I’d boil the bagels in water before baking.
Charlie and I would eat them fresh out of the oven with plenty of butter.
He loved it when I’d broil them with three types of cheese and slather on mustard.
That would be our lunch when we had outings in Washington, D.C.
We’d take in exhibits like El Greco’s paintings or the sculptures of Rodin or a performance by the actor Joel Grey.
Afterwards it was dinner at Bottoms Up and I began experimenting with deep-dish pizzas.
Another favorite meal was London broil, and I’d perfected my own special marinade that included red wine, Worcestershire, olive oil, fresh garlic.
Charlie’s and my first few years in Richmond were arduous and relentless.
He was overwhelmed by seminary while I struggled as a novelist. Returning to graduate school in his midforties was daunting.
On top of that he was unaccustomed to dealing with parishioners.
They weren’t the same as college students, and he’d come home exhausted after visiting people at their homes or in the hospital.
A life in the church wasn’t for him, but he would finish what he’d started.
A master’s degree, a Ph.D. in literature, and now he was on track for his doctorate of divinity.
All we did was work. Neither of us wanted children, and I was terrified of being a bad parent.
Soon after we’d moved to Richmond, I decided to have my tubes tied, and Charlie had agreed.
When I’d have a hysterectomy at the age of forty, Richmond’s Dr. Erika Blanton said I probably couldn’t have had children anyway.
My uterus was abnormal, likely because I’m a DES baby.
While my mother was pregnant with me her doctor prescribed diethylstilbestrol to prevent a miscarriage.
DES is now known to cause significant birth defects.
Our early Richmond years together, Charlie and I were committed to finding careers that were viable.
Both of us were running scared and discouraged much of the time.
But we had fun. It didn’t take much. Friday nights were always the same.
We’d indulge in watching The Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas, and Falcon Crest.