Well, I thought, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
So whatever Marsha Helms wanted, I wasn’t it. In the few seconds I stood there staring blankly at her, before I was able to speak, about a gigabyte’s worth of thoughts raced through my head.
Where’d this come from?
How can I fix it?
She’s just having a bad day, she’ll calm down soon, be okay. Be the Marsha I know, not this …
“Marsha, I …” I stammered after a few seconds. “I mean, where’s this coming from? I mean, I can’t … This is so weird.”
She sighed, backed away from me, turned, and faced the other side of the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t have feelings for you. It’s just that, well, with the baby and all.”
The baby.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “The baby. Our baby.”
She turned back around quickly, flaring.
“Wait!” I held up a finger. “No matter what you say, that’s our baby. You and me, babe. No getting around it. My end of the gene pool may be a bit muddy, but you dipped into it and nothing’s going to change that.”
“And I wouldn’t want to change that, Harry! I’m glad that we made this together. Sometimes it’s the only thing keeping me going in the middle of … of—” She hesitated, struggling for words. “All this mess.”
I glared at her. “Is there somebody else?”
“Oh, yeah, right,” she said, shaking her head. “Like I’ve had time to even talk to another man. Like another man would be interested in me …” She held her hands out in front of her, around her belly, outlining the curves of her stomach. “Like this.”
I leaned against the counter, the edge against my hip. Suddenly exhausted, I wanted to go home, crawl back into bed, and never get out.
“So I guess I should go,” I said blankly.
“No, don’t.”
I looked up. “What do you mean, don’t? You just said it. You’re dumping me.”
She groaned loudly. “Oh, Harry, I’m not dumping you. I have feelings for you. I want you in my life. I just want you to understand where I’m coming from. I want you to listen to me, to really hear me.”
“Yeah, I really hear you,” I shot back. “I hear you say I’m not the guy you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.”
“Did you want to be that guy?” she asked. “Up until I wanted to get pregnant, you never said anything.”
“We never talked about it,” I said defensively. “I always figured we were serious. It’s not like I assumed anything, but jeez, it’s not like I didn’t want to either.”
She stood there silently, shifting her weight.
“I don’t know what to say, Harry.”
“Don’t say anything, please. You’ve said enough.”
“Maybe we can—”
“I need to go,” I said. “This conversation just hit a brick wall. There’s nothing either of us can do to fix anything right now. Maybe it can’t be fixed.”
“Will you call me?”
I made a sound that surprised even me, sort of an ugly snort. “Doesn’t sound like you want me to.”
She walked over to me, put her arms on my shoulders. “Of course I want you to. I didn’t want to hurt you. That was never my intention. But with everything coming down like it is, I’ve got to get some things straight in my life. I’ve got to plan, to think ahead, to think of the baby now.”
“What is it that’s coming down in your life?” I asked, exasperated. “What is it that’s got you feeling so scrambled?”
“Oh, Harry, I don’t know,” she said. “This is crazy. I can’t explain it to you. You just have to understand.”
“I swear,” I said, “I can’t figure you.” I put my arms around her and hugged her—loosely. Then I pulled away.
“Call me,” she said, as I walked to the front door. I turned, took one last look at her, then walked into the brisk night air.
What had happened?
I hit the freeway and headed around to I-65, then headed north and got off at the Ellington Parkway. I felt like taking the long way home, driving with the radio on without listening to it.
What had happened?
I got home around ten, stripped off my clothes, and took a long, hot shower. I was aware of a collage of smells coming from me: adrenaline-enriched sweat from the encounter at the Mexican restaurant, frying Mexican food, Chinese food, even a hint of old yogurt that for some reason or other kept coming back. I scrubbed until it was all off, then dried and settled into bed. Sleep was a long time coming, and when it did, it was restless and unsatisfying, filled with uneasy dreams and vague, unseen anxieties.
What had happened?
Next morning, I threw on enough clothes to pass for legal and stumbled down the steps to grab the morning paper while the coffee maker did its thing. There was no sign of light or activity in Mrs. Hawkins’s part of the house. I made a mental note to say hello to her later.
I poured a cup of coffee, sat down at the kitchen table, and pulled the newspaper out of its plastic sleeve. And there in front of me was the headline that went a long way toward explaining everything.
Her line was busy, so I threw on the rest of my clothes, ran a comb through my hair, then jumped in the car and headed back across town. It was one of those times when I was oblivious to time passing and to the other cars around me. The Saturday-morning traffic at Hillsboro Road and Woodmont Boulevard moved at its usual sludgelike pace, but I was still in a stunned state where commonplace things didn’t bother me.
I held up traffic for a couple of minutes while attempting a left turn into the parking lot of Marsha’s condo development. Finally, some kind soul stopped and let me through. I pulled into the parking lot and around to Marsha’s building, then parked in an empty slot directly across the pavement from her Porsche. I sat there for a few moments, unfolding the newspaper, reading the headline and the first few paragraphs one last time.
“Jeez,” I whispered.
I looked up as her front door opened. Marsha stepped out, overcoat buttoned tightly in the wind. I opened the door of my nearly thirty-year-old Mustang, its characteristic door squeal alerting her to my presence. She stopped halfway down the walk, alarmed when she saw my expression.
“Harry, what are you—”
“When were you going to tell me about this?” I demanded as I strode up the walk to her.
“About what?” she asked, concerned. I unfolded the newspaper, with the headline:
GRAND JURY PROBE
OF M.E.’S OFFICE WIDENS
splashed across the front page in bold sixty-point black type.
Her face paled and for a moment I thought she was going to faint, but I pressed on anyway.
“ ‘The Davidson County Grand Jury’s probe,’ ” I read, “ ‘of irregularities in the medical examiner’s office has widened to cover accusations of sexual misconduct, improper handling of bodies, misuse of funds, and potentially criminal misconduct.’ ”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“ ‘Sources inside the grand jury,’ ” I continued, “ ‘reveal that among other allegations reported are claims of sexual harassment of female employees by Nashville Medical Examiner Dr. Henry Krohlmeyer. One unidentified female ex-employee testified that Dr. Krohlmeyer routinely orders female employees to accompany him on out-of-town trips for purposes of inappropriate sexual conduct.…’ ”
I looked up at Marsha, recalling those trips she and Dr. Henry had taken over the years to conferences and seminars and professional-association meetings, and how they always seemed to be in exotic, romantic places like Lake Tahoe or Barbados.
“Harry, that’s Joyce Hamilton. You can’t believe—”
“Here’s a good one, Marsh,” I said, turning back to the paper. “ ‘Allegations of misappropriation of funds include claims that Dr. Krohlmeyer and his staff may have forged purchase orders and invoices in order to claim payment for equipment never received and for reimbursement of expenses never incurred.’ ”
“Harry, can we go inside and do this? I can’t stand out here. I’m a little dizzy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m feeling wobbly myself.”
“Well, come inside, damn it.”
I followed her up the steps into the apartment. She took off her coat, then stopped in the hallway to raise the thermostat. She stepped down into the living room and settled uncomfortably into the sofa, and I sat across from her.
“I know that whatever the hell is going on with this, you didn’t do anything wrong. I believe that with every part of me.”
She looked up. “Thanks for that much, anyway.”
“But why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
She wrung her hands, then cleared her throat awkwardly. “I kept hoping it would all go away. I certainly never thought it would get into the papers. Besides, what good would it have done to dump on you? You were absent and unaccounted for.”
“It was naïve of you to think the papers wouldn’t pick up on this,” I said, a coldness in my voice that I hadn’t intended. “How bad is it?”
She looked at me a moment, then said, “I’ve retained counsel.”
“That bad?”
“Possibly. I’ve been subpoenaed.”
My mouth dropped. “When?”
“Tuesday morning.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“What can I do? Answer the subpoena.”
“Do you know what they’re going to ask you?”
She sighed. “I have some ideas.”
“Do you know what you’re going to say?”
“Not yet. My attorney has advised me to take the Fifth.”
I leaned over, put my elbows on my knees, and cradled my head in my hands. “What can you tell me about all this?” I asked, looking back up at her. “It won’t go any further than this room.”
“Dr. Henry’s a brilliant pathologist and physician,” she said, her voice strained. “I’ve got the greatest respect for his skills and his integrity. But he’s a lousy administrator and he doesn’t have the most refined people skills in the world.”
“That’s a very diplomatic redefinition of sexual harassment,” I offered.
“Dr. Henry’s never sexually harassed anyone,” she said. “At least not that I’ve noticed. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, though. When Louise left him in ’94, he kind of went off the deep end. I think some of his actions were subject to misinterpretation.”
“I remember you telling me about the divorce.”
“It was awful,” she continued. “They’d been married almost twenty years. After the divorce, he was so depressed half the time he couldn’t get anything done—and the other half he was dating all these bizarre women.”
“Middle-aged crazies,” I said.
She nodded her head. “Paperwork went to hell. Books got scrambled. We started having trouble in court cases because Dr. Henry’d go to testify and he’d have forgotten to take the files with him. Or couldn’t remember. Stuff like that.”
“Marsha, could there be any truth to this … these sexual harassment charges?”
“He never hit on me,” Marsha said, “if that’s what you’re asking. But when Joyce came on board, he was … Well, maybe he was a little too friendly. She’s just in her early thirties, barely out of medical school. Young, pretty. She didn’t understand the way the office worked, didn’t fit in. It’s like a fortress down there, Harry, and there’s a certain siege mentality, a kind of camaraderie taken to extremes.”
The Nashville morgue—technically known as the T. E. Simpkins Forensic Science Center—was, in fact, built like a fortress: thick walls, armor-plated doors, thin slit windows of bulletproof glass. Fortress was an apt description, and sometimes fortresses were subject to siege.
I stood up, crossed over, and sat next to her on the sofa. “And then …” Marsha leaned against me, resting her head. I put my arms around her, ran my fingers through her hair. She felt like deadweight leaning against me, as if she would fall at any moment. “We were processing more bodies than ever before, but the budget got cut. We couldn’t hire help. Kay got overwhelmed; she couldn’t handle everything. Purchase orders and invoices got all screwed up, bills didn’t get paid. Dr. Henry dumped more and more of the day-to-day operation on me, but I was so overwhelmed I know it didn’t get done right. Hell, I’m a pathologist, not an administrator.
“We got complaints from suppliers, who then went to the city budget office. Suddenly we’re getting calls from the comptroller, and then, when they got wind of what was going on, they scheduled an audit.”
She pulled her head up, leaned back, looked into my eyes. “That was two months ago.”
“That’s when it hit the fan?”
“Dr. Henry went nuts one day, started yelling at the auditors, essentially threw them out of the place. About that time Joyce quit With no notice. All at once we’re getting calls from the EEOC, the National Labor Relations Board, the mayor’s office.”
“And then the grand jury,” I said.
She nodded again. “That started about a month ago. Dr. Henry was subpoenaed last week. Mine came a couple days later.”
We sat silently for a bit. I fell back on reporter-think, trying to figure out which way a good digger would go next. I know what I’d do in a story like this; I’d be looking around for a source, a mole in the ME’s office who could dish me the straight dirt.
“You had anybody from the media call you?”
“Tons of them. But Dr. Henry’s issued dead-on instructions. Nobody talks.”
“Moron,” I said. “Stonewalling’s the worst. Just about assures that somebody—probably some lower-level drone who’s pissed about his raise last year—will do a Deep Throat number.”
“Oh, perfect,” Marsha said. “Autopsygate.”
I smiled. “Stiffgate.”
She smiled, too, for the first time in a long time.
“Marsha, I don’t believe anywhere inside me that you’d consciously or intentionally do anything wrong. But is there anything that could be … well, let’s say subject to misinterpretation?”
She lowered her eyes, her eyelids settling down like hoods, as if she were dropping off to sleep. “Maybe in the chaos I cut some corners,” she whispered. “I don’t know what they’re after. They’re fishing and I don’t know what they’ll find.”
“What do you think’s going to happen?”
Marsha wrapped her arms around herself, pulling in on her shoulders, trying to squeeze the tension out.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We’re in a lot of trouble. Expensive trouble. The lawyers demanded a ten-thousand-dollar retainer from me. That’s just to get started.”
I eyed her, trying to get a feel for just how freaked she was by all this. If her lawyers took that much up front, they must anticipate a long, dragged-out affair. As a reporter, I’d seen this process before. Once the course is set and the agony begins, it erodes your life, eats away at your energies, until—even if you’re vindicated—there’s nothing left.
“Just answer this,” I said. “Is there any chance they’re going to take you away?”
I half expected her to look at me like I’d lost my mind, but she didn’t. She took it calmly, as if the same question had been preying on her mind.
“I don’t know, Harry,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know.”