CHAPTER 41
“I need to pick your brain,” Angie said as she slid into a booth opposite forensic pathologist Dr.Barb O’Hagan. She placed the coroner’s preliminary report on Jasmine Gulati’s death on the table between them. “Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.” She raised her hand, summoning the server.
Angie had phoned the crusty old pathologist from her car, right after Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum had dropped the pregnancy bombshell. Barb O’Hagan was more than a law enforcement colleague to Angie. She was an old friend and confidante and had jumped at the opportunity to meet with Angie over dinner at Farrier John’s, a Tudor-style pub downtown.
“And there I was thinking you just wanted to see my smiling face.”
Angie laughed. The server arrived. “What’re you having, Barb, the usual?”
“Why not. Keep the old stomach stable.”
“No surprises when they open your tough old corpse on the morgue table one day, eh.”
“Got that right.”
Angie turned to the server “One Lagavulin sixteen, a double. And ... what the hell, make that two. Mine with a block of ice. And two Guinness pies with fries and peas.” She crooked her brow at Barb to make sure. The morgue doc nodded. The server departed to fetch their drinks.
Angie pulled a face. “My mom used to force me to eat peas, and now I’m ordering them voluntarily?”
“And mushy ones at that.”
“Better be good.”
“Trust me, best meal you’ll have had in a long while. So how you doing, Ange? I heard you scored big on that Gulati investigation for old Jukebox Jilly. Who’d have thought—a fourteen-year-old female? Fascinating pathology there. That’s going to be one for the psych students. Then again, I’ve been in this business long enough that nothing should surprise me.”
“Who’d you hear this from? Leo?”
O’Hagan cackled, showing the gap between her front teeth. “No, in this case, Holgersen. He came by to speak to me today about some cold cases Maddocks had assigned him and Leo. They’re working in some new unit formed under the iMIT umbrella. Includes the Annelise Janssen missing persons file. Such an oddball, that Holgersen. He said the department was all abuzz with the fact you’d dug a possible serial out of that Nahamish body case and that filmmaker Rachel Hart was giving a full confession to the RCMP, exposing her own kid as Gulati’s killer. Well done.”
“I don’t think it’s done, Barb.”
The doc’s smiled faded at the tone in Angie’s voice. Drinks arrived. They fell silent as the server set their glasses on coasters.
“Food will be up shortly,” the server said.
Angie reached for her glass. “Cheers.” She took a sip. The hot burn that branched into her chest gave an immediate punch of relaxation. She inhaled deeply, relishing it for a moment. A scalding shower and a visit to Maddocks would have to wait, but this drink and some hot food would suffice in the interim. She put down her glass and opened the folder.
“I just received some additional information from an old friend of Gulati’s, and it doesn’t add up. I need your opinion. Nothing formal, just need to brainstorm some possibilities.” She opened to the page with the images of the post parturition scars on Jasmine Gulati’s pelvis. She slid the file over to the doc and tapped on an image. “In your opinion, how reliable is this parturition scarring as evidence of a pregnancy?”
“Nice ring,” O’Hagan said, noting the solitaire on Angie’s hand. “You and Maddocks making it official, then?”
Angie glanced up as her stomach tightened with a sudden burst of both nerves and anticipation. She hadn’t taken it off, and she wondered if she should before she went to see Maddocks. Or whether he’d see it as a sign of her will to make this happen if she showed up at his yacht wearing it. Conflict twisted through her chest. There should be a manual for this stuff because it was way out of her realm of experience. “Uh, yeah, maybe. I ... I’ll come back to that.”
Barb raised her brows. An odd little smile tugged at her lips. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you two.” She drew the report closer, took a sip of whiskey, and set her tumbler down. She fished her small reading glasses out of her breast pocket and perched them atop her nose. O’Hagan fell silent as she studied the pathologist’s report, peering closely at the pics.
“Definitely pits, cavities, some depressions located on the dorsal surface of the pubic symphysis,” O’Hagan said, leaning in even closer. “Historically, this kind of scarring has indeed been attributed to the trauma of parturition, especially when coupled with reliable information on the decedent’s obstetrical history.” She glanced up. “But without the individual’s particular obstetric history—” She shook her head. “The jury is still out on whether these can be a reliable indicator of childbirth.”
“But theycouldbe an indication of pregnancy—”
“Not of pregnancy per se, but of having carried a child to term and given a natural vaginal birth. Pregnancy alone does not modify a woman’s bones. However, during childbirth, the pubic bones separate to allow an infant to pass through the birth canal. The ligaments connecting the pubic bones must stretch, and they can tear and cause bleeding where they attach to bone. Later, bone remodeling at these sites can leave these small circular or linear grooves on the inside surface of the pubic bones.”
She tapped the images of Jasmine Gulati’s pelvis. “These parturition pits show that a femalemayhave given birth vaginally. But in more recent studies, medium to large ‘birth scarring’ has also been demonstrated on male pelvic bones and on the pelvises of females known to have not had children.” She took another sip of her drink. “Bottom line, these bony changes are being reexamined as an indicator of childbirth, and this is what the pathologist has noted in his report here.”
Angie stared at the doc, Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum’s words looping around and around in her brain.
She couldn’t go through with it that day. Jasmine never had the abortion.
“Do you perhaps have access to this decedent’s obstetric history?” O’Hagan said.
