“What about tomorrow, if I’m not being too bold to ask?”
“Sure, why not?” Jack said. “By then I should be immune.”
—
Aria couldn’t quite believe it. The moment she had started to think that her rotation through Forensic Pathology wasn’t that bad and wasn’t a total waste of time, someone tried to shame her into acting like a maidservant. She’d found the mortuary technicians hard to bear, as they all had gigantic chips on their shoulders. There was no way she was about to let them shame her into doing their job.
Pushing into the locker room, Aria first used the toilet. Then she went to get her phone. As soon as she opened it, she was encouraged. Vijay Srinivasan had sent her a text a little after eight. It wasn’t a newsy message because all it said was for her to call him. Although the phone signal wasn’t all that great in the locker room, she placed the call. It went through okay, but then she had to wait for Vijay to be found. Since the office was essentially one big room, she wondered why it took so long.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Vijay said when he finally came on the line and before even saying hello. “I was on the other phone, but I was working on your leukemia project, so I deserve a bit of leeway.”
“Are you making any headway?” Aria asked, eschewing small talk as usual.
“We are indeed,” Vijay said. “That was the reason I asked you to call. The kits were completed for the mother and the child overnight by keeping our lab open instead of closing by five, which is our usual time. By the way, we have given them the names Hansel and Gretel with the child being Hansel, of course, and the mother being Gretel, and the witch being leukemia. Don’t ask me how the names came about because it should be mother and son and not brother and sister, but I wasn’t consulted. It was a team decision. If I had to guess, I’d sayit was the product of one of our best programmers having been a literature major.”
“I’d much rather hear about your progress,” Aria said impatiently.
“As soon as the kits were available the team went to work,” Vijay said. “We created phased kits, including an evil twin, and uploaded all of it into our system. Our software automatically created a Lazarus kit for the missing father by phasing the child and the evil twin against the mother, but that’s probably more detailed than you want to hear. The long and short of it is that we got a match right off the bat that has proven to be one better in terms of a generation than what the people got with the first match associated with the Golden State Killer’s DNA. We have been able to find a paternal great-great-grandfather of Hansel with a family name of Thompson using Y-DNA testing, which, as you know, is inherited through the paternal line. And of particular significance it has already been confirmed as IBD, or identical-by-descent. Next we are going to upload the kits into GEDmatch, as well as check and see if Family Tree DNA has a Thompson surname project.”
“That’s encouraging,” she said. “At this stage do you have any guesstimate how long it might take to find the father?”
“No, and I don’t want to mislead you into the trap of that kind of thinking,” Vijay said. “Just because we’ve made significant progress, there is no guarantee of ultimate success. It all depends on how many of Hansel’s paternal relatives have joined the genetic genealogical craze, sent in the DNA sample, and constructed a genetic family tree.”
“But you are optimistic?” Aria questioned.
“Of course I’m optimistic,” Vijay said. “I wouldn’t be pushing my team as hard as I am if I wasn’t optimistic. We will be actively searching for more matches by using the databases of other genealogical companies through GEDmatch. And if we can find a close relative, I’ll start getting progressively more optimistic.”
“How close is close?” Aria asked.
“Anything closer than a third cousin of Hansel would be great,” Vijay said. “And if we come across first cousins or aunts and uncles then it is almost a given that we’ll be successful, provided there are some family trees available. Even if we get that close and there are no family trees, we can start constructing one for Hansel, but that would take time. Let’s hope there are some trees already in existence that Hansel can be added to.”
She remembered what Madison had told her in Nobu, and it was pretty close to what Vijay was saying now. “What if you find half-siblings of Hansel?” Aria asked. She thought that the existence of half-siblings was a definite possibility because of her belief that Lover Boy was married. If that was true, and children were involved, they would all be Hansel’s half-siblings.
“If half-siblings were found, the case would be solved as their father would be the person we are seeking. But I personally think the chances of that happening are statistically negligible. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Presently I’m hoping that GEDmatch will give us a number of new matches that we can use for triangulation.”
“I’ll be waiting for any news,” she said.
“I’m sure we’ll have information in the next few hours,” Vijay said. “Perhaps it would be best if you came by and we can show you what we have been able to do.”
“Why not?” Aria said. She was beginning to share Vijay’s optimism.
—
With Jack helping, Vinnie was able to get Madison Bryant’s cadaver back in the walk-in freezer, the table cleaned, specimens taken care of, and Jonathan Jefferson on the table. He also got all new specimen jars and clean instruments, while Jack quickly read theinvestigative report done by one of the evening shift’s MLIs, Steve Mariott. It was the story of a sixteen-year-old who’d been in Central Park playing baseball and hit in the chest by a pitch. CPR had been administered immediately by the coaches. When paramedics had arrived, ventricular fibrillation had been determined and defibrillation attempted without success. CPR was continued during the ambulance ride to the hospital, where defibrillation was attempted another eight times along with the administration of standard cardiac resuscitation drugs, all to no avail.
Taking a deep breath, Jack put the investigative report back in the autopsy folder. As a medical examiner he was accustomed to death to the point that for him it had become just another part of the cycle of life. But there were exceptions, and this case was one of them. Of course, it had a lot to do with the age of the victim. Jack always found dealing with children emotionally stressful, and the younger the child, the harder it was, like with the scalded infant two days ago. But this current victim, a mere teenager, likewise pulled hard on his heartstrings. It seemed so unreasonably cruel and senseless that such a child’s life could be so easily extinguished while in apparent good health, playing athletics. Thinking about the unfairness of it all made him feel embarrassed about his reaction earlier with Aria. In such a context it seemed so trivial that he cared about her use of vulgar language, lack of empathy, or refusal to lend a hand cleaning up after an autopsy. Certainly, it was his responsibility to act as the adult and control himself, especially since he had told Chet and Laurie he’d help out. After all, the only actual negative was that he hadn’t had the opportunity to go upstairs and find out about Laurie’s surgery.
“The X-ray is up on the view box,” Vinnie called out, interrupting Jack’s mild epiphany.
Jack walked over to it. As he imagined, the X-ray was completely normal, including the sternum, where he assumed the boy had beenhit by the baseball. Sudden death, mostly involving completely healthy young boys playing sports, was not unheard of. It mostly involved baseball, although softball, hockey, karate, and lacrosse were adding to the toll of about ten kids a year in the US alone. It came from being struck in the chest at a very specific, short interval of time during the normal heartbeat to throw the entire cardiac conduction system out of whack, resulting in ventricular fibrillation.
As Jack was still struggling with his emotions, he became aware of a presence next to him, and when he turned to look, he was surprised that Aria had joined him in looking at the child’s X-ray. While he stared at her profile, she continued to study the film.
“What happened to the kid?” Aria asked. “I don’t see any broken bones.”
“My guess is that it is a case of commotio cordis,” Jack said. “He was hit with a baseball and went into ventricular fibrillation. Is commotio cordis something you are familiar with?”
“Only through reading,” Aria said. “And you?”
