The Bone Bed Read Online Free PDF Page B

I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, as we slowly descend through the center of the building.
    “Who is?” I puzzle.
    “The twat I was tweeting, and that’s all I have to say about it. And you really think people don’t sleep when they’re on call? I didn’t miss nothing last night. Every time the phone rang, I answered it and handled it. The only real scene to respond to was the guy who fell down the stairs, and Toby took care of it, a cut-and-dried accident. Then I sent him home. No point in both of us being there. And besides, he gets on my nerves. I can never find him where he’s supposed to be, either that or he’s on top of me.”
    “I’m just trying to understand what’s going on. That’s all. I’m making sure you’re okay.”
    “Why wouldn’t I be?” He stares straight ahead at smooth shiny steel, at the illuminated
LL
on the digital panel. “I’ve had things not work out before.”
    I have no idea what things or who he’s talking about, and now is not the time to press him about some woman he met on the Internet, or at least this is what I suspect he’s alluding to. But I do need to talk to him about what I worry could be a breach of professional discretion and confidentiality.
    “While we’re on the subject, I’m wondering why you went on Twitter to begin with, or why Lucy supposedly might encourage such a thing,” I say to him. “I’m not trying to pry into your personal life, Marino, but I’m not in favor of social networking unless it’s primarily for news feeds, which is the only thing I follow on Twitter. Certainly we aren’t in the business of marketing what we do here or sharing details about it or making friends with the great outdoors.”
    “I’m not on Twitter as me, don’t use anything that can be identified to me. In other words, you don’t see my name, just the handle
The Dude . . .”
    “‘
The Dude’?”
    “As in the
Big Lebowski
character played by Jeff Bridges, whose avatar I use. Point being, no way you’d know what I do for a living unless you literally do a search for Peter Rocco Marino, and who’s going to bother? At least I don’t use some generic egg avatar like you do, which is retarded.”
    “So you represent yourself on Twitter with a photo of a movie star who played in a movie about bowling . . . ?”
    “Only the best bowling movie ever made,” he says defensively, as the elevator settles to a stop and the doors open.
    Marino doesn’t wait for me or offer anything further as he grabs up the scene cases, one in each hand, and steps out, his baseball cap pulled low over his tan bald head, his eyes masked by the Ray-Bans. All these years I’ve known him, more than two decades now, and there’s never been a question when he feels slighted or stung, although I can’t imagine what I might have done this time, beyond what I just attempted to discuss with him. But he was already out of sorts when he appeared in my office a little while ago. Something else is going on. I wonder what the hell I’ve done. What exactly this time?
    He was gone all last week at the meeting in Florida, and so there wasn’t anything I might have done during his time away. Before that Benton and I were in Austria, and it occurs to me that’s more likely the root of Marino’s displeasure. Well, of course it would be, dammit. Benton and I were with my assistant chief medical examiner, Luke Zenner, in Vienna, at his aunt’s funeral, and I feel frustrated and next I feel annoyed. More of the damn same. Marino and his jealousy, and Benton, too. The men in my life are going to be the end of me.
    I’m careful what I say to Marino, because there are other people around. Forensic scientists, clerical and investigative staff are entering the building from the parking lot in back and moving along the wide windowless corridor. Marino and I say little to each other as we walk past the telecom closet and the locked metal door that leads into the vast mechanical room,