“Was there a suicide note?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t read the MLI report. Especially with the police expressing that kind of confusion, I knew it was a case that needed to be autopsied, so I just put it in the to-do stack.”
“Let me see it,” Jack said. He took the folder from her, leafed through the contents until he came across the MLI sheet, and pulled it free. He enjoyed doing cases that involved any type of controversy. The first thing he noticed was that the assigned MLI was Janice Jaeger, someone with whom he had worked on innumerable cases over the years and whose experience and acumen he truly admired. Often, she would anticipate the need for additional information or records and went ahead and ordered them before Jack even made a request.
Speed-reading through the investigative report, Jack learned that the victim was a twenty-eight-year-old Caucasian male who had been found hanged from a five-foot-high garden gate. He had been out drinking with friends but had gotten into a bar fight with someone who had been heard threatening that he was going to kill him. Later the victim had been escorted home by friends who’d described him as depressed and intoxicated. They said they had left him at the gate to the garden fronting his apartment. Hours later he’d been found by a passerby who’d called the police. At the very end of the report there was a finalsentence that Janice had added as a postscript. It read, “See diagram and photos.”
Surprised by this suggestion, he went back to the case folder, which was more like a paper pocket for all the autopsy forms and labels it had to contain, and quickly found the diagram that Janice had hastily sketched with a stick figure. Stapled to the diagram were several pictures taken with a digital camera. They showed the victim in a sitting position with his back to the gate, his legs splayed out in front of him, and with his collar caught on the gate latch.
Jack slipped the investigative report back into the case folder. “I’ll take it,” he said to Jennifer. “And, just so you know, I want to stay busy today. Translated, that means I want you to keep me in mind for more cases.”
“I always do,” Jennifer said. She was telling the truth. Whenever she was the on-call ME and was presented with a case that she didn’t quite know what to do with, she knew she could call Jack, and usually did.
“One other thing,” he said. “When Dr. Nichols deigns to show up, send her down.”
“Don’t tell me we have to work with her again,” Vinnie whined from behind his newspaper.
“I’m afraid so,” Jack called over to him. “I promised both my wife and Dr. McGovern.”
When Vinnie didn’t bother to respond, Jack walked over and snatched away his newspaper. Instead of causing Vinnie to flinch, which was what he hoped and expected, Vinnie merely rolled his eyes. “You don’t need me if you have that miserable bitch’s capable hands.”
“Let’s not be nasty, and watch your language,” Jack said, feeling mildly frustrated by Vinnie’s total lack of response to having his paper taken. “Come on, big guy!” With his free hand he offered to pull Vinnie to his feet. “Let’s get a move on. I’m hoping for a big day ahead of us.” How big, Jack had no idea.
—
Juliana Santos and her younger brother Luiz had managed to immigrate to the US from Belém, Brazil, six years ago. Initially it had been a struggle to get by in Miami, where they first arrived. But thanks to some help from a couple of distant relatives as well as the Miami Brazilian community in general, they’d succeeded. Following an economic opportunity offered by an uncle, they moved on to New York, where they’d started a domestic house-cleaning service called Very Clean. Known by word of mouth as being thorough and reliable, they had relatively prospered, hiring five young women and buying a used Subaru station wagon and three vacuum cleaners. Luiz would drive the women to their respective sites, where they would work in groups of two. The entire day would find Luiz keeping in touch by phone and ferrying each team from one apartment to another.
The first stop on May 11 was 45 West 70th Street, where Juliana and her current partner, Antônia, climbed out from the Subaru bursting with women, cleaning products, and vacuums. “Adeus, vejo você mais tarde,” Juliana said with a wave. She was carrying a vacuum cleaner with the hose over one shoulder, a plastic bag of rags, and a roll of paper towels. Antônia had the buckets, mops, and cleaning products. With some difficulty and a lot of clanking sounds they climbed the granite steps.
Pausing at the building’s front door, Juliana put down everything she was carrying to get out her sizable key ring. After finding the appropriate key, she opened the front door only to discover it hadn’t been completely closed and latched and she would have been able to use her hip to push right in. “Merda!” she mumbled as she gathered up her belongings and stumbled into the building. It was the struggle with the vacuum cleaner that made it difficult. Once inside, she held open the door for Antônia. After walking down a short, narrowhallway by bypassing the contrasting rather grand staircase that swooped up and curved out of sight to her right, Juliana again put down everything to repeat the key process. With the door for the first-floor apartment, she knew she needed the key. In contrast with the door to the street, which was frequently not shut all the way, the apartment door was always latched.
Juliana had met this client on only one occasion several years earlier. She knew the woman was a doctor and hadn’t been all that friendly. On the positive side, she paid on time and never complained. Juliana marveled at the differences in the way various clients treated her and whomever she happened to be working with. Some people were openly condescending, others remarkably friendly, and others indifferent. Luckily the nature of the clientele was such that she didn’t have to interact all that often.
Once she got the door unlocked, she opened it and then gave it a shove out of the way. Picking up the vacuum cleaner once again, she stepped into the room. The moment she did, she noticed a stale odor that she couldn’t place. As Antônia followed her into the room, Juliana put her head back and sniffed the air. As someone perceptive to the ins and outs of cleaning, she sensed that there had to be something that needed attention but had no idea what it was. She was about to ask Antônia if she smelled an odd odor, when she realized that the client was home, seated in the chair directly in front of her but facing away so that she couldn’t see the woman’s face.
“Hello!” Juliana called out. She immediately regretted she’d not rung the bell or even knocked on the apartment door. Never before had this client been home. “Hello!” she called out again, only slightly louder. When there still was no response, she put down the vacuum cleaner and stepped around the chair. The second she caught sight of the woman’s face, she screamed, causing Antônia to do the same by reflex. A moment later Juliana had recovered enough to get out her phone and call 911.
—
Okay,” Jack said to Vinnie. “Armed with all the information we have from this masterfully done autopsy and the superb MLI investigative report, what do you think the OCME can tell the police about this case?”
It was now well after nine and the autopsy room was full, meaning all eight tables were in operation. Chet had appeared a little after eight and had come over to Jack’s table to ask if Aria Nichols had shown up as she was scheduled. When Jack had said no, he’d merely rolled his eyes before moving off to do his own case.
“I assume you’re asking about the manner of death,” Vinnie said in response to Jack’s question. He straightened up to stretch his back. He and Jack had been involved in a rather lengthy and tedious dissection of the victim’s neck, which was only done on cases like the present one, where neck trauma was expected. The main part of the autopsy, including the contents of the chest and the abdomen, had shown the victim to be free of disease, congenital malformations, or signs of trauma. The only abnormal finding had been some partially dissolved capsules in the stomach, suggesting the victim had taken some kind of medication or drugs along with his reputed alcohol. What the capsules were would have to wait for Toxicology, same with the ethanol content in his bloodstream.
“Well, it’s definitely not homicide,” Vinnie said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“With all the hemorrhage in the neck muscles, he wasn’t dead before he was suspended by his shirt collar,” Vinnie said. Vinnie enjoyed these sessions he had with Jack and felt that he’d learned an enormous amount about forensics over the years. “And I’ve never heard of a homicide done with a shirt collar.”
What he and Jack had found with their careful neck dissection was that the hyoid bone and the thyroid cartilage were both intact,both of which were often damaged in hanging situations. Besides the hemorrhage in the neck muscles, the only other pathology they found was the occlusion of the left carotid artery and left jugular vein, which coincided with a deep furrow or groove on the left exterior aspect of the victim’s neck that angled upward toward his right ear.
“I agree with you that the chances of this being a homicide are negligible,” Jack said. “So, what are we going to tell the police?”
“I don’t know,” Vinnie said. “The investigative report mentioned that his friend thought he was depressed. I suppose it could be suicide.”
“With no note?” he asked.
