“I’ll see if I can rustle up some confusing homicides to tax your skills,” Lou suggested, chuckling. “Like the floater that ended up taking you to Africa.”
“There you go,” Jack said with a smile. “That would be perfect.” He remembered the case very well, along with the trip to Equatorial Guinea. It seemed like yesterday, even though it was going on twenty years ago.
The sudden ringing of Jack’s mobile phone startled both men. Jackhad his ringtone onAlarmto make sure he’d hear it when he’d ridden his bike to work that morning and hadn’t returned it to its usual setting. It sounded like a fire truck racing through traffic and was particularly loud as it echoed off the snack room’s cinder-block walls. Jack snapped the phone up, stopped the racket, and looked at the caller ID. It was Dr. Jennifer Hernandez, this week’s on-call medical examiner.
The on-call role rotated among the more junior doctors and included backing up the pathology residents on night call, coming in to the OCME earlier than everyone else to schedule the autopsies involving the cases that had landed during the night, and handling any queries during the day that required a response from a medical examiner. It was busywork for the most part, and Jack had been glad when his seniority exempted him. When calls did come in, they usually were from the in-house MLIs, or medical-legal investigators, whose job was to get the details of all cases referred to the medical examiner. These were all deaths that occurred in an unusual, unexpected, or suspicious manner, including suicide, accident, criminal violence, in custody (like the cases Jack had processed that morning), or merely suddenly when the victim was in apparent good health. The MLIs were very experienced and rarely contacted the on-call medical examiner.
“Do you mind if I take this?” Jack asked, gesturing with his mobile phone in his hand.
“Be my guest,” Lou said graciously. “You’re working. I’m just a freeloader.”
Guessing it probably related to an MLI question and therefore might be a harbinger of an interesting case, Jack was eager. “Maybe this is what the doctor ordered,” he said.
2
MONDAY, 11:45 A.M.
“I’m up on the second floor in the formal dining room, Dr. Hernandez,” Jack said into the phone. “I’m here with a group of visiting nuns. Come on up!” He was using the speakerphone while he adjusted the ringtone to a more normal setting.
Lou chuckled. That kind of impious exaggeration sounded more like the irreverent Jack Stapleton he knew and loved. Maybe Jack wasn’t as bad off as he’d been suggesting.
A minute later a youthful-looking woman approached who reminded Lou of Laurie, with the care she obviously expended on her general appearance. She was wearing a fresh, highly starched white doctor’s coat, which was the opposite of the rumpled and soiled ones the veteran MEs generally wore. Beneath it was a bright red dress that, in Lou’s estimation, wouldn’t have been out of place at a cocktail party. Her features, coloring, and tightly gathered hair suggested a Hispanic genealogy.
Jack performed the introductions, describing Lou as a dear old friend of both his and Laurie’s. Then Jack explained that Jennifer was the granddaughter of the woman who’d been Laurie’s nanny from when Laurie was pint-size all the way up to her teenage years.
“Jennifer even came to the OCME under Laurie’s tutelage and spent a week here as a high school student,” Jack said. “I was told she was quite a pistol back then and needed some direction, which Laurie supplied.”
“I’m afraid I was on the wild side,” Jennifer agreed. “My poor grandmother Maria, who raised me, didn’t know what to do with me and turned to Laurie in desperation. But my coming here ended up being a life-changing experience. It got me so interested in academics and forensics that I went to medical school and did the whole nine yards. And here I am.”
“And there’s even more to the story,” Jack said. “It was because of Jennifer that Laurie and I ended up taking that trip to India about ten years ago. So she has expanded our lives as well.”
“I remember that trip,” Lou said. “It was about medical tourism.”
“That it was,” Jennifer agreed. “Unfortunately for my grandmother.”
“It was a disaster for Maria,” Jack said in agreement. “So, Jennifer. What’s up? How come you’re looking for me?”
“I got a call from Bart Arnold, the MLI supervisor,” Jennifer said. “A problematic case is on its way in to the OCME from the Bellevue emergency room. He’d heard about the call-in and was concerned enough to head over there himself. He called me from the ER to say that he thinks it might be a contagious case, and he specifically asked me to ask if you would get involved. He told me something I didn’t know. You are known around here as the ‘contagion guru.’”
“What the hell does that mean?” Lou asked. He visibly cringed. He was a world-class germaphobe, and anything to do with pestilence gave him the creeps.
“During my first year here at the OCME I made a couple surprisingly accurate diagnostic calls on a number of fatal contagious cases that were being artificially spread.”
“You mean someone was doing it on purpose?” Lou questioned. “Like bioterrorism?”
“You got it,” Jack said. “But we nipped it in the bud. It could have been bad.”
“Bart wants to know if you’ll give him a call,” Jennifer told him.
“Sounds like my kind of case,” Jack said. “I’ll do better than call him. I’ll run down to 421 and see him in person.” 421 was how everyone at the OCME referred to the new high-rise building on 26th Street. The old building that still housed the morgue and the medical examiners was referred to as 520, its First Avenue address.
“Then I’ll let him know you’re coming,” Jennifer said. She nodded to Jack, told Lou it had been a pleasure to meet him, and then left.
“Doctors are getting younger and prettier all the time,” Lou said once she’d gone. “Makes me feel like an old fart. But be that as it may, I’m outta here. Thanks for the morning entertainment, and let me know the final dispensation on the three cases we did ASAP.”
“It goes without saying.” Jack stood. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your car on my way down to 421.”
—
