Black notice Read Free Page B

used to assume my being a woman was the reason, and in earlier days this was probably true-at least some of the time. Now I believed the threats of terrorism, crime and lawsuits were the explanation. The guard wrote down a description of my car arid the plate number. He handed me a clipboard so I could sign in and gave me a visitor's pass, which I didn't clip on.
    "See that pine tree down there?" he said, pointing.
    "I see quite a few pine trees."
    "The little bent one. Take a left at it and just head on towards the water, ma'am;" he said. "Have a nice day."
    I moved on, passing huge tires parked here and there and several red brick buildings with signs out front to identify the U. S. Customs Service and Federal Marine Terminal. The port itself was rows of huge warehouses with orange containers lined up at loading docks like animals feeding from troughs.
    Moored off the wharf in the James River were two container ships, the Euroclip and the Sirius, each almost twice as long as a football field. Cranes hundreds of feet high were poised above open hatches the size of swimming pools.
    Yellow crime-scene tape anchtired by traffic cones circled a container that was mounted on a chassis. No one was nearby. In fact, I saw no sign of police except for an unmarked blue Caprice at the edge of the dock apron, the driver, apparently, behind the wheel talking through the window to a man in a white shirt and a tie. Work had stopped. Stevedores in hard hats and reflective vests looked bored as they drank sodas or bottled water or smoked.
    I dialed my office and got Fielding on the phone.
    "When were we notified about this body?" I asked him.
    "Hold on. Let me check the sheet:" Paper rustled. "At exactly ten fifty-three."
    "And when was it found?"
    "Uh, Anderson didn't seem to know that."
    "How the hell could she not know something like that?"
    "Like I .said, I think she's new."
    "Fielding, there's not a cop in sight except for her, or at least I guess that's her. What exactly did she say to you when she called in the case?"
    "DOA, decomposed, asked for you to come to the scene."
    "She specifically requested me?" I asked.
    "Well, hell. You're always everybody's first choice. That's noticing new. But she said Marino told her to get you to the scene."
    "Marino?" I asked, surprised. "He told her to tell me to respond?"
    "Yeah, I thought it was a little ballsy of him."
    I remembered Marino's telling me he would drop by the scene, and I got angrier. He gets some rookie to basically give me an order, and then if Marino can fit, it in, he might swing by and see howwe're doing?"Fielding, when's the last time you talked to him?" I asked.
    "Weeks. Pissy mood, too."
    "Not half as pissy as mine's going to be if and when he finally decides to show up," I promised.
    Dockworkers watched me climb out of my car and pop open the trunk. I retrieved my scene case, jumpsuit and shoes, and felt eyes crawl all over me as I walked toward the unmarked car and got more annoyed with each labored step, the heavy case bumping against my leg.
    The man in the shirt and tie looked hot and unhappy as he shielded his eyes to gaze up at two television news helicopters slowly circling the port at about four hundred feet.
    "Darn reporters," he muttered, turning his eyes to me.
    "I'm looking for whoever's- in charge of this crime scene," I said.
    "That would be me," came a female voice from inside the Caprice.
    I bent over and peered through the window at the young woman sitting behind the wheel. She was darkly tanned, her brown hair cut short and slicked back, her nose and jaw strong. Her eyes were hard, and she was dressed in relaxed-leg faded jeans, lace-up black - leather boots and white T-shirt. She wore her gun on leer hip, her badge on a ball chain tucked into her collar. Air-conditioning was blasting, light rock on the radio surfing over the cop talk on the scanner.
    "Detective Anderson, I presume," I said.
    "Rene Anderson. The one and only. And you must be the doc I've