Chapter 39
I DEDICATED THE BODY FARM TO ORRIN HATCH “FOR HIS TIRELESS fight against crime.” President Bill Clinton found out and asked him about it. Then the president said he wanted to meet me.
I was directed to an antique chair upholstered in pale yellow silk where I waited nervously.
Momentarily, a door opened, and President Clinton walked in wearing a dark blue suit and blue-and-gold-patterned tie.
He had an imposing presence and seemed to make the room small as he sat in a chair close to me beneath a portrait of George Washington.
This was three months after Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered in Los Angeles.
The trial would start in January, and I had no doubt that O.
J. Simpson did it. I remembered having dinner at Santa Monica’s Ivy at the Shore several years earlier.
O.J. and Nicole were there at a corner table, and I was alarmed by how aggressive he seemed.
She was against the wall as he leaned over the table, his arms folded on top of it while they had an intense conversation. I sensed she was intimidated, and thought about that a lot when I heard she’d been murdered. Not long after it I was at the Grahams’ one night and the subject came up.
I asked Billy what he thought, and he said that O.J. had wanted to talk to him from jail. They got on the phone, and of course Billy wasn’t going to tell me the details. But he did mention this much.
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “If people knew what he told me, there would be no trial.”
When President Clinton sat down next to me in the Oval Office, I wanted to talk about crime-busting.
I started my spiel about the importance of forensic science and medicine, and hoped the president would be supportive.
That’s about as far as I got before he interrupted.
He launched into his theory about why O.J.
had murdered his former wife and her friend Ron Goldman.
It was because O.J. had a huge emptiness in him that nothing can fill, the president said to my astonishment.
He went on and on about this as I wondered if he was talking about himself.
It flashed in my mind as I was looking at him that maybe his personal life was empty.
Maybe he understood why O.J. had been driven to commit such a brutal crime.
I would have loved to share that story as I set out on my book tour.
I imagined the headline: PRESIDENT CLINTON SAYS O.J.
DID IT. I haven’t gone public about it before now.
Or mentioned the way the president shook my hand at the end of the visit, trailing his fingers along my palm and not letting go.
All the while, Orrin was watching from the back wall.
He didn’t roll his eyes, but I could tell he felt like it.
He was no fan of the Clintons and often told me that Democrats were “sneaky” and full of “mean tricks.” He’d introduce me as a Democrat to his colleagues, and quip that he was working on me.
That and sending the Mormon missionaries after me, he’d add.
The Body Farm went straight to number one, and I held another signing in Richmond at the Barnes & Noble at Willow Lawn.
People began lining up at eight in the morning for the late afternoon event.
When I arrived, the line was around the entire shopping center, possibly ten thousand people waiting. I couldn’t believe it.
As I climbed out of the limousine and walked past the crowd, it was all I could do not to cry, I was so touched and overwhelmed.
I signed forty-eight hundred books without getting up from my table.
Not long after this, I learned that Cruel and Unusual had won the British Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger for best crime novel.
One of the judges was Agatha Christie’s daughter, Rosalind Hicks.
The award was presented by Rosalind’s son, Matthew Pritchard.
As I listened to his spiel about his famous grandmother, I felt as if I knew her.
I could relate to what he said about her shyness.
When headed to a public event she’d become the public Agatha as if she were a fictional character.
I do something similar when I make appearances, becoming an extraverted version of myself.
I thought about the strange dream I’d had about Agatha Christie while I was struggling to write my first mystery in 1984.
I remembered my first trip to Paris in 1991 when I was presented the French Prix du roman d’adventures.
The display cases in the publisher’s lobby were filled with Agatha’s books and copies of Postmortem.
After winning the Gold Dagger, I walked into an antiquarian bookstore in Manhattan one day. I asked the dealer if he had anything signed by Agatha Christie.
“Well, one thing, but it’s rather odd,” he said.
I followed him upstairs to his overwhelmed office where he pulled out a clothbound copy of a book about Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture. It was signed by Agatha in pencil that’s now so faded it’s difficult to read:
“To Lucy Boo, Merry Christmas. I hope you enjoy the beauty of this book—as much as I enjoy your beauty. Always love, Agatha Christie. Dec. 1967.”
I wondered who Lucy Boo was. I found it eerie that my father used to call me Patsy Boo, and Lucy is the name of Scarpetta’s niece.
In early 1994, I began work on From Potter’s Field, some of the story set in New York City, where I prowled the subways with the Transit Police.
Whit Baldwin and I flew a Jet Ranger there, and I visited the New York medical examiner’s office, where I met the legendary death investigator Barbara Butcher.
I heard hammering as staff constructed pine boxes for burials in Potter’s Field on Hart Island, accessible only by boat.
Officers took me to the Second Avenue subway station in the Bowery.
I was led through a catacomb of concrete and steel in complete darkness, flashlights probing like long bright fingers.
The next day Whit and I flew along the Hudson River in a strong crosswind, the choppy water the color of patinated copper.
Along the East River we passed Rikers Island and its white bubbles used as temporary shelters for inmates.
Soaring cliffs on our left, and then directly ahead was Hart Island, a single brick smokestack rising above trees.
Below my feet was Potter’s Field with its shells of old brick buildings, the grave markers reminding me of teeth.
It was our good fortune that we’d timed it just right.
Inmates from Rikers were burying pine boxes while guards stood by with shotguns.
I’m often asked about being afraid of helicopters, and I never have been. But scuba diving was another story.
When I began researching Cause of Death, I thought it would be interesting to have Scarpetta work an underwater crime scene.
I happened to be in San Francisco when I had this revelation, and it wasn’t the best place to learn how to scuba dive.
During my training, my open-water dives took place in the cold, murky San Francisco Bay.
I had to make shore entries with a fifty-pound tank on my back and a twenty-pound weight belt.
All of this was preparation for the dive I needed to do in Virginia’s Elizabeth River at the Navy Inactive Maintenance Facility.
I wanted a body found near the mothballed military ships called the Dead Fleet.
I thought that would make for a creepy scene and got permission from the Navy to make the dive.
When I made my giant stride off a floating platform the visibility was no more than a few inches in front of my face.
The ships were tethered by rusty cables that suddenly were in front of me, and I’d have to duck under them.
One hit my tank, knocking it loose, and it started sliding down my back.
By now I’d moved into Richmond’s gated neighborhood Lockgreen. It wasn’t possible for me to stay in my Windsor Farms home. I was tired of curious people parking along the street. I craved privacy while worrying about my safety.
“It’s all so weird, really. I’m so much in my interior world that I just don’t see this fame stuff like most people apparently do,” I noted in my journal.
Being famous was something I’d dreamed of since I was a kid. Now that I had it, I remembered what my eighth-grade teacher Mr. Pollard warned me.
“One day you’re going to get what you want and be sorry,” he said.
Throughout my life I’ve replayed his words, realizing there’s a lot of truth in them.
Eventually, I’d get many things I wanted.
Or thought I wanted. But it was like those heatwaves I never caught up with in Miami.
There’s always the next thing, nothing within reach good enough.
It took me a while to figure out that fame and adulation are imposed by others. They’re real and they’re not.
While growing up I imagined one day driving an expensive convertible sports car. I’d roar up to my father’s house unannounced to see the look on his face when he opened the door. In my scripted scenario I’d won Wimbledon or was a big star like Donny Osmond or David Cassidy.
The obvious price of giving up my anonymity was the loss of privacy and often my dignity.
Not to mention how it feels when people say dreadful things about me or what I’ve written.
There have been times when I didn’t want to leave the house after especially bad publicity.
If it was scandalous enough, I’d call Ruth and say we needed to talk face-to-face.
“What did you do this time?” she’d ask.
To this day I rarely read anything written about me, most of all book reviews.
Something jolting can send me off course.
I’m careful what I expose myself to, aware of how I’ll react.
When I want to know the current star rating on or Goodreads, I ask my partner, Staci, to look and give me the upshot.
I don’t want so much as a glimpse at the comments.
Staci has a steady, kind, and reassuring disposition, which is one of many reasons we’re together.
Things don’t bother her the way they do me.
If an important article has just come out, she’ll go through it first. Maybe I’ll read it, maybe I won’t, but not while I’m writing. Distractions are my mortal enemy.
I can relate to Charles Dickens paying street musicians to stop playing in front of his house. I don’t listen to anything while I write, my office in Boston soundproofed. When I work in hotels or other places, I always carry a pair of noise-canceling headphones.