Half expecting he’d have to leave a number for a callback, Jack was pleased when he found himself on the line with the woman directly. He explained who he was, and, most important, that he was Dr. Laurie Montgomery’s husband, and then told the woman that Laurie had been promoted to be the chief medical examiner of New York City. Cynthia had not heard and was thrilled.
“I’m calling for a favor,” Jack said after the pleasantries. “I remember you did this for Laurie on at least one occasion. What I need is the name and mobile number of a nine-one-one caller. It happened just yesterday, and it came in from an R subway train. The call was to report a sick passenger.”
“Do you have the time of the call?” Cynthia asked. “We average around one hundred eighty EMS calls per hour.”
“I don’t have the exact time,” Jack admitted. “But I could find out the exact time the transit police were notified. Would that help?”
“Do you have an approximate time?”
“Yes. It was around tenA.M.”
“That might be good enough,” Cynthia said. “I’ll see what I can do. Give me a number and I’ll get back to you.”
After giving Cynthia Bellows his mobile number, Jack hung up his office phone. As soon as he did so, he chided himself for not asking Cynthia when approximately he might hear back from her. Probably due to his dislike of talking on the phone, he wasn’t good at it. Like a typicalLuddite, he much preferred face-to-face interaction, although emails were becoming a close second and he was learning to appreciate texting.
Looking at Dominic Golacki’s mobile number, Jack thought about him being his next call. But he hesitated. Laurie had benefited greatly from the help of the transit police’s Special Investigation Unit, as they had provided her with the videotapes of the 59th Street IND subway station. It was from the videotapes that she had determined her case’s death had been a homicide, which broke open the case. Jack knew that subways now had continuous video recordings inside the trains, and, remembering Laurie’s successes, he thought about getting them. His idea was to watch the tapes and determine who had stolen the subway death’s phone and purse, which she undoubtedly had, in hopes of apprehending the individual and making an ID. But the more Jack thought about the idea, the less reasonable it seemed. Even if he got an image of the thief or thieves, the chances of finding them were slim at best. Besides, it would all take too much time, and time was of the essence.
In a minor fit of exasperation, Jack balled up the paper with Golacki’s number, and then shot it like a basketball into his wastebasket, which he’d placed on top of his file cabinet for exactly that purpose. Jack was tired of the telephone and tired of the subway death case thwarting him at every turn. Then, as if to mock him, his mobile rang with the fire-truck alarm that he had again forgotten to change.
“I found it,” Cynthia Bellows said without preamble when Jack answered. “You were very close on the time. The first call came in at 10:02A.M.There were two others, but those people were informed that EMS had already been alerted. I have the caller’s name and mobile number if you are still interested.”
“Absolutely,” Jack said. It seemed like a minor success. The name was Tess Eggan. “Thank you muchly.”
“You are most welcome,” Cynthia said. “And give my best to Laurie and congratulate her for me on her promotion.”
“Will do, and thanks,” Jack said, even though he knew he was lying.He wasn’t going to tell Laurie that he’d been speaking with Cynthia. It would raise too many questions. Jack knew he was being at least partially childish, but he didn’t care.
As soon as he had disconnected from Cynthia, Jack put in a call to Ms. Eggan. As he expected, assuming the woman would be working, he had to leave a voice message. In it he carefully described himself as a senior medical examiner at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner who wanted to talk with her briefly about her 911 call the previous day. He then left his mobile number. Just to be absolutely sure she got the number, he also texted it along with the main OCME number, in case she wanted to check if he was who he said he was.
With that done, Jack again rocked back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He wished there was more he could do, but for the moment he couldn’t think of anything. At the same time, he knew he shouldn’t be spending so much effort on the ID issue, since it was other people’s job, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed the diversion, as evidenced by his mind switching back almost immediately to Emma and, ultimately, to Dorothy. Was Emma’s diagnosis for certain or was it going to remain up in the air? Autism was not an easy diagnosis because it wasn’t a single disease with a telltale biomarker that could be confirmed in a medical laboratory. It was an impression, and via her pediatrician, Emma was still being evaluated. As far as Dorothy was concerned, Jack wondered if Laurie was going to have the strength to deal with the issue before Caitlin was driven to distraction and abandoned them.
“Hello! Dr. Stapleton!” a voice called out simultaneously with a knock on Jack’s partially open office door.
Jack rocked forward with a thump and found himself looking up into the face of a woman who looked more like a teenager than a college graduate. He vaguely recognized her as one of the newest medical-legal investigators. With the OCME physically split between two buildings, there wasn’t the familiarity that had previously existed among the departments, something Jack missed.
“Mr. Bart Arnold wanted me to run these slides over and give them to you in person,” the MLI said. She extended a microscope slide tray toward Jack, and then, with a toss of her head and its attached ponytail, she was gone.
Jack blinked. It had all happened so quickly, and had he not been holding the slide tray, he might have thought the brief encounter had been more in his mind than in reality. Looking at the slides themselves, Jack immediately understood why Bart had had them hand-delivered. They were the Jane Doe slides. Apparently, Bart had managed to motivate the Histology Department to exceptional efficiency. In Jack’s mind, getting mounted and stained histology slides in less than twenty-four hours might qualify forGuinness World Records. Jack knew that he had been a bit hard on the MLI supervisor, but maybe it was paying off.
Using the wheels on his desk chair, Jack moved over to his microscope and turned on the light source. The first slides he looked at were of the lungs. Even using low power, the amount of inflammation of the lung tissue was obvious. It was also apparent there was no real consolidation, as death had intervened before it could occur. Going to higher magnification, Jack could appreciate the hyperacute inflammatory cell infiltration of macrophages, granulocytes, immune dendritic cells, and natural killer cells that filled the lung’s alveolar spaces and septa. There was significant destruction. From Jack’s perspective, it was like looking at the aftermath of a horrendous microscopic battle that characterized a cytokine storm. If it was a virus, it was an impressively lethal one that made the immune system go into hyperdrive.
Next, Jack picked out the slides of the heart and was about to place the first under the microscope’s objective when his mobile phone scared him yet again, as he still hadn’t changed the ringtone back to something reasonable. Snapping up the phone, he answered curtly.
“Is this Dr. Stapleton?” a high, nasal-sounding voice asked.
“It is,” Jack said as he adjusted the ringtone.
“My name is Tess Eggan,” the woman said. “You left a voice message for me to call you back about my nine-one-one call yesterday.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Jack said, mildly flustered. He’d been so entranced by the microscopic inflammatory carnage that he’d forgotten.
“Since you’re a medical examiner, I suppose that doesn’t bode well for the woman I called about.”
“It doesn’t,” Jack agreed. “Unfortunately, the woman was moribund by the time she was taken from the train and was essentially dead on arrival at the Bellevue Hospital emergency.”
“What a tragedy,” Tess said. “She was young. She looked about my age and very attractive. She even had a hairstyle somewhat similar to mine. Early on, I almost spoke with her. I was tempted.”
“Are you saying you were on the train with her for a while?”
