Obstruction of Justice by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page B

for the inexplicable from their doctors, or told their lawyers to find somebody to blame. Nina sometimes wondered if the idea of accidental death was going to disappear from law altogether. An elderly person who slipped on the pavement, a man who set his bed on fire while smoking, a hiker who fell down a cliff — these accidents were often transmuted in American law into wrongful deaths attributable to somebody else’s negligence.
    The lawsuits that followed accidents and illnesses weren’t about money in many cases. Americans who had lost the comfort of religious faith had to have some way of dealing with the mystery of death.
    "If the coroner had seen any evidence of that, he would have performed a full autopsy," Nina said as considerately as she could. "It was an act of God, Mr. de Beers."
    De Beers spread his hands on her desk, leaning in to her again, and she got a glimpse of the anger in his red face and red-veined eyes, hints as to how hard he was exerting himself to maintain control. "How could he find any evidence?" he shouted. "He didn’t do the goddamn autopsy!"
    "Keep your voice down," Nina said. "I understand your worry. You want to be absolutely sure. But if you think someone climbed several thousand feet to kill your son, and lightning conveniently covered traces of the murder, you’re ... Listen, I think you’d better go."
    "Hang on a second here. Wait." He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing as though the situation hurt him physically. "So you don’t think we could get the coroner to do that, what did you call it ..."
    "Disinterment," Nina said. "The word exhumation isn’t used in California law." She stood up. Usually clients took the cue and stood up with her. De Beers didn’t budge.
    "All right," he said. "Do just one more thing for me, and I promise to shut up or take my wacky suspicions elsewhere. Deal?"
    "Mr. de Beers ..."
    "Please." It was an order.
    She heard Sandy’s chair scrape in the room beyond, and the squeak of rubber-soled shoes halting at her doorway.
    Too inept to get de Beers out of her office through sheer force of personality, too small to deal with him physically, and unnerved by the image that popped into her mind of Sandy rushing to the rescue, tennies squeaking, her hands itching to heave the obstinate old man out the door, Nina sat back down at the still-open connection on her computer, saying loudly, "Okay. Five minutes."
    The footsteps retreated.
    "Look up the statute on grave robbing. No doubt they have some gobbledygook word for that too."
    "Why?" Nina said.
    "I’ll tell you in a minute. Please."
    Shaking her head, Nina entered the search words grave and robbing into the California Codes database. When that didn’t work, she scratched her head and tried using free association: graves, coffins, interment, theft. She was about to give up and send de Beers on his way when she finally pulled up the obscure Health & Safety Code section she had been looking for.
    "Okay," she said. "Disinterring or otherwise disturbing human remains in their place of interment could get you a year in jail. Also, Penal Code section 642 deals directly with the theft of articles of value from a dead human body. It’s petty theft or grand theft, a felony, depending on the value of the items stolen. Another Code section makes it a crime to steal a body for the purpose of sale or dissection. And now, may I ask—why am I performing this morbid exercise?"
    "Wait. So, is it a crime to dig up a body if the purpose is other than to rob it or steal it or harm it in some way?"
    "Yep," Nina said. "It’s a crime to dig up a body in a cemetery, period."
    "Hmm. How about if the body is legally already aboveground? What’s the penalty for borrowing it for an ... some other reason?"
    "I couldn’t say for certain," Nina said. "Now we’ve entered Alfred Hitchcock country. You can’t just keep your mother and stuff her after she dies and sit her in her rocker to keep you company. There are public health