Trace by Patricia Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

female," he begins, "seven weeks pregnant. Her boyfriend kicks her in the belly. She calls the police and goes to the hospital. Hours later she passes the fetus and placenta. The police notify me. What do I do?"
         No one answers him. It's obvious that they aren't accustomed to his mental stretches and just stare at him.
         "Come on, come on," he says with a smile. "Let's say I just got such a phone call, Dr. Ramie."
         "Sir?" She turns red again.
         "Come, come. Tell me how to handle it, Dr. Ramie."
         "Process it like a surgical?" she guesses as if some alien force has just sucked away her long years of medical training, her very intelligence.
         "Anybody else?" Dr. Marcus asks. "Dr. Scarpetta?" He says her name slowly, making sure she notices that he didn't call her Kay. "Ever had a case like this?"
         "I'm afraid so," she replies.
         "Tell us. What's the legal impact?" he asks quite pleasantly.
         "Obviously, if you beat up a pregnant woman, it's a crime," she answers. "On the CME-1, I'm going to call the fetal death a homicide."
         "Interesting." Dr. Marcus looks around the table as he takes aim at her again. "So your initial report of investigation would say homicide. Perhaps a bit bold of you? Intent is for the police to determine, not us, correct?"
         The sniping son of a bitch, she thinks. "Our job as mandated by code is to determine cause and manner of death," she says. "As you may recall, in the late nineties the statute changed after a man shot a woman through the belly and she lived but her unborn child died. In the scenario you've put before us, Dr. Marcus, I suggest you have the fetus brought in. Autopsy it and give it a case number. There's no place on a yellow-bordered death certificate for manner of death, so you include that with cause, an intrauterine fetal demise due to an assault on the mother. Use a yellow-bordered death certificate since the fetus wasn't born alive. Keep a copy with the case file because a year from now that certificate won't exist anymore, after the Bureau of Vital Records compiles its statistics."
         "And what do we do with the fetus?" Dr. Marcus asks, not quite so pleasantly.
         "Up to the family."
         "It's not even ten centimeters," he says, his voice getting tight again. "There's nothing left for the funeral home to bury."
         "Then fix it in formalin. Give it to the family, whatever they want."
         "And call it a homicide," he says coldly.
         "The new statute," she reminds him. "In Virginia, an assault with the intent of killing family members, born or unborn, is a capital crime. Even if you can't prove intent and the charge is malicious wounding of the mother, that carries the same penalty as murder. From there it tracks down through the system as manslaughter and so on. The point is, there doesn't have to be intent. The fetus doesn't even have to be viable. A violent crime has occurred."
         "Any debate?" Dr. Marcus asks his staff. "No comments?"
         No one responds, not even Fielding.
         "Then we'll try another one," Dr. Marcus says with an angry smile.
         Go ahead, Scarpetta thinks. Go ahead, you insufferable bastard.
         "A young male in a hospice program," Dr. Marcus begins. "He's dying of AIDS. He tells the doctor to pull the plug. If the doctor withdraws life support and the patient dies, is it an ME case or not? Is it a homicide? How about our guest expert again? Did the doctor commit homicide?"
         "It's a natural death unless the doctor put a bullet through the patient's head," Scarpetta answers.
         "Ah. Then you're an advocate of euthanasia."
         "Informed consent is murky." She doesn't answer his ridiculous charge. "The patient is often dealing with depression, and when people are depressed, they can't make informed decisions. This is really a societal question."
         "Let me clarify what you're