“I’d say that the victim had to be either falling or already prone on the ground when the bullet struck him.”
Jack straightened up and gently clapped with his gloved hands. “You are a quick study when it comes to forensics,” he said. “And I suppose you have a sense of how this information might be received by the police and the district attorney.”
“It would throw a cloud over the justifiable-homicide claim, especially when added to any bodycam footage, if it exists.”
“Okay,” Jack said to Vinnie. “Let Mr. Karpas roll back so we can continue our photographic documentation of the pathways of all the bullets.” He picked up the dowel he had been holding when Aria had first arrived and turned to her and said: “Let’s show you the tracks of all the bullets, including this last apparent coup de grâce.”
It was another half hour before the case was over. Jack was finishing his elaborate diagram of all the gunshot markings while Vinnie went to get a gurney. Vinnie had already finished labeling all the envelopes with the bullet fragments that had been painstakingly found, their locations described and documented. For a moment no one was paying the slightest attention to Aria, so she merely turned around and made her way back to the entrance. She hoped that the director of education, Dr. McGovern, wasn’t involved in any of the autopsies she passed for fear he would try to assign her yet another case. As if it might help, she kept her vision concentrated on the exit, looking neither to the right nor the left. A moment later, with a sense of relief, she pushed through the autopsy room doors and emerged into the deserted main hallway.
Inside the locker room, the first thing she did was get out her phone. She fully expected by this time to have a text from Madison, hopefully saying where and when they could get together. To her utter dismay after what she’d had to endure in the autopsy room, there was no message from Madison. Nothing. No emails, texts, or voice mail. Cursing under her breath, she changed into her clothes.
When she was almost finished, she heard her phone indicate she was getting a text. With a sense of excitement and expectation, she struggled to get the phone out of her back pocket. When she finally managed to do so, she was disappointed. The text wasn’t from Madison. It was from Dr. Montgomery, and it was terse. It merely said:I need to talk with you. Please come to my office.
CHAPTER 19
May 9th
10:35A.M.
So that’s the long and short of it,” Laurie said to Dr. George Fontworth, who had been appointed two years ago to serve as the deputy chief medical examiner under Laurie, replacing Paul Plodget. At first she had been disappointed with the selection because she and Jack had never believed George lived up to his potential. He had stellar credentials, perhaps the best of the OCME, having been trained by some of the forensic greats, but he had been content seemingly to do mediocre work over the years as one of the staff MEs. But to Laurie’s pleasant surprise, the appointment as deputy chief had lit a fire under the man to the point that she had to give the Selection Committee credit for seeing his potential. Particularly over the past year, he turned out to be a huge asset to her on multiple fronts. Jack had labeled the transitionastounding.
“Any questions, George?” she asked. They were in Laurie’s office, she behind her huge desk and George seated across from her. The desk was a partner’s desk, so for meetings such as this one, the seatingarrangement was natural. For meetings involving more people, Laurie preferred to use the large library table she had at the other end of her office that had adequate space for up to ten people. For meetings of that size, they had to raid other offices for chairs.
“I can only think of one question,” George said. His expression was appropriately serious in respect to what Laurie had just told him. “How long do you think you will be hospitalized?”
“That’s hard to say,” she said. “Of course, I’d like it to be the minimum possible, but it all depends on what is found.”
“I understand,” George said solemnly.
Laurie had just finished telling George that she had made plans within the hour to undergo semi-emergency surgery. As soon as she’d got to the OCME that morning, she’d put in a call to Dr. Claudine Cartier, one of the NYU Langone Medical Center’s busiest surgeons, who specialized in breast surgery. She had been highly recommended by the oncologist Dr. Wayne Herbert, who had in turn been recommended several years ago by Dr. Sue Passero, Laurie’s internist and old college chum. She had already briefly spoken with Claudine Cartier the previous day after getting the bad news from the screening and had been told she had to make the decision as to how to approach the biopsy dilemma. When Dr. Cartier had returned the call that morning, Laurie had told her she had decided to deal with the suspicious lump with the “Angelina Jolie approach,” namely with bilateral mastectomies and an oophorectomy. Laurie had already had one ovary and one fallopian tube removed years earlier when she’d had an ectopic pregnancy. Her only other wish was to do the procedure as soon as possible. Dr. Cartier said she understood, would check her schedule, and get back to Laurie, probably that afternoon, about when it could be done. Optimistically she’d added that the chances of scheduling the operation within the next few days were very good because she’d had several cancellations due to patients having influenza.
“I’ll be letting everyone know as soon as the operation isscheduled,” Laurie said. “I wanted to tell you first since you’ll be the one shouldering most of the burden. There is nothing key scheduled except for the need to finalize the plans for the new Forensic Pathology center so it can be sent out to bid. But even that can wait. Thank goodness I got the City Council Health Committee meeting out of the way yesterday. I wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer through that.”
“I still might have to, after what happened last night,” George said.
“I certainly hope not,” she said, although she knew there was a slight chance. That morning when Laurie got to the OCME, intending to call the surgeon immediately, she had to deal with another mild calamity first by having a lengthy and unpleasant meeting with the director of the Mortuary/Transportation Department. Even though at the City Council Health Committee meeting the day before she’d testified that the problem of bodies being misdirected had been solved with the changes that she’d instigated to the case management system, it had happened again, just last night. Similar to the previous episode, the deceased shared the same family name. This time it was Cooper. However, they did not share the first name as had been the case with the two Nortons, so the incident highlighted pure, unadulterated mismanagement on the part of the responsible mortuary technician. On this occasion it was an Arlene Cooper and an Alan Cooper, meaning they didn’t even share the same gender. Luckily the mix-up was immediately discovered by the first funeral home, so the involved families remained in the dark about their loved ones taking one extra final ride before their funerals.
George pushed back from the desk and stood; Laurie did the same.
“I want to thank you in advance for what you’ll be doing,” Laurie said. She was genuinely grateful, and it was going to be one thing less to worry about with George at the helm while she was in the hospital and convalescing at home if that was necessary.
“I’m here to help you, Laurie. We will all want you to be back as soon as you can. I hope all goes smoothly.”
“I appreciate your thoughts and well-wishes,” she said as she accompanied George to the door. “I’ll keep you up to speed as things develop. Until I make an announcement, I would prefer that you keep what I’ve said to yourself.”
“It goes without saying,” George said. “Will you be at this afternoon’s conference?”
“I certainly plan to,” Laurie said.
After George walked across the outer office and into his own, Laurie called out to Cheryl that she was expecting Dr. Nichols and to send her right in. In anticipation, she left her door ajar.
Returning behind her desk, she sat down. She needed a little breathing time as it had been nonstop activity since she’d arrived. But it wasn’t to be. Almost the moment she sank into her desk chair Aria walked through the open door. Curious whether their time together the day before doing the autopsy would influence Aria’s haughty, almost aggressively hostile attitude, Laurie watched her from the moment she appeared. Most people were mildly intimidated by the size of the office in conjunction with Laurie’s lofty title. But not Aria. She didn’t so much as glance at her, nor did she seem to survey the scene. Instead she just marched in and plopped herself down into the seat that George had just vacated as if it were her office, not Laurie’s. Only then did she look across the desk at Laurie with an expression of contemptuous boredom. With some effort Laurie controlled her irritation.
The two women eyed each other for a moment, each expecting the other to break the silence. Laurie was the first to respond. “After working together yesterday, don’t I deserve at least a ‘Hello, Dr. Montgomery’?”
“You’re the one who asked me to come here, not the other way around.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Laurie said, inwardly smiling at her own behavior. It wasn’t like her to have such petty thoughts. She reminded herself she was dealing with an individual with obviouspsychological problems, which was one of the reasons she had requested to see her. That morning, like almost every morning, Laurie made what she calledautopsy chief rounds. Just after nine she’d gone down to the pit despite how busy she was and went from table to table to hear extemporaneous presentations by each medical examiner of the case they were doing. The overt justification for the exercise was the idea of her possibly adding some bit of knowledge or experience to the case. For the newer MEs and the Forensic Pathology fellows, this often was helpful and educational, less so for the more experienced. But for Laurie, it was a pleasure as well as an acknowledgment of how much she missed participating in the nitty-gritty of forensic pathology these days. Around 9:15 as she was nearing table #1, the table that Jack invariably used, she became aware of Aria’s presence. Although it sounded as if things were going okay with Jack lecturing and Aria seemingly listening, which surprised her, she didn’t want to be the spark that might set off a major conflagration between two potentially flammable personalities. So she deliberately avoided table #1 or even advertising her presence by saying hello. Yet her curiosity had been aroused. When she got back to her office a few minutes later, she sent Aria a text that she wanted to see her. Finding out why she and Jack had not been at each other’s throats was just one of the reasons why.
