“No. The hospital is not obliged to keep records after sixteen years, and it’s been far longer than that. But the decedent’s closest friends at the time and her only remaining family all said there was no way Jasmine Gulati could have had a baby.” Angie reached for her glass and sipped, thinking.
“But hell knows, all families have secrets. Maybe a past pregnancy was just very well concealed. But the thing is—” She set her glass down. “Jasmine Gulatiwaspregnant when she drowned, according to her friend. Yet there was no sign of a fetus found with her remains. If there had been a fetus, there would be evidence, right?”
Barb O’Hagan’s eyes gleamed with interest. The doc loved a good puzzle as much as Angie did. “After almost two decades? Part of that time spent underwater, the rest of the time buried in shallow earth?” The doc shook her head. “It’s a long period and so many variables. The remains could have become scattered over an incredibly wide area, both in the river and on land. Animal predation could account for missing body parts. The soft parts of the stomach are the first—”
“Look here.” Angie turned the page, showing Barb O’Hagan the image of Jasmine Gulati’s remains in situ, her skeleton inside the waders exposed by careful excavation of the top layer of soil. “She was fully intact. All her bones accounted for. She was still inside the chest-high neoprene waders that she was wearing when she went over the falls that day. Her engagement ring was still on the bones of her ring finger. So was a cuff bracelet.”
The doc whistled softly. “That is ... indeed interesting. It would be unusual, then, not to find evidence of a fetus if she was in this kind of condition.” She looked up. “You’re certain she was pregnant?”
“Her friends said she was. She’d scheduled an abortion but apparently chickened out at the last minute before going on the river trip. She’d also written in her journal that she was carrying Dr.Hart’s child. But it’s all circumstantial, no unequivocal proof. Plus, there is indication that the decedent could have had pathological issues herself—shecouldhave been fabricating the whole pregnancy thing. However, she did have the ring, and Doug Hart has confessed to buying it for her—” Angie stilled as she caught sight of two familiar figures entering the dimly lit Tudor pub.
“Oh great,” she whispered. “Look who’s just come in the door. It’s Holgersen and that young female officer Maddocks hired recently.”
Doc O’Hagan turned to see. She grinned. “Hardly surprising. This pub is just down the block from the station—you don’t expect him to take his date to the Pig, do you? It’s Saturday night. Of course the guy is going out for a drink.”
“You kidding me? Holgersen doesn’t date.” Angie watched the pair disappearing into the cluster of patrons gathered around the bar counter. “He’s been celibate for I don’t know how long.”
“Or so he claims.” Barb chuckled. “Everyone falls off the wagon now and then, no matter the vice.”
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “My concern, my question, is why would Holgersen feel that sex for him is a vice?”
O’Hagan watched Angie’s face, then tapped the file with her fingers. “Hey, don’t leave me in suspense, Pallorino. Talk to me. The case.”
“Yeah,” she said again, thinking as her gaze lingered a moment longer on Holgersen’s head sticking above the crowd. She returned her attention to O’Hagan. “I went back and reread the entries in the decedent’s journal. Gulati made a notation of the abortion date but never mentioned anything about the termination after that entry. There was a period around the termination date where she went silent in her journal, but she picked up again with entries about the river trip. No mention of the pregnancy. At first I’d assumed the silence was because it might have been too raw, the termination too recent, and she’d needed time to process. On top of that, Jasmine drank heavily on the trip, and she was promiscuous—slept with her guide. To my mind these were not markers of someone engaged to be married or someone who might still be carrying her husband-to-be’s baby. So I assumed there was no fetus.”
Angie took another sip of her scotch and gave a rueful grin. “Never assume, huh? I should know better. Because Jasmine’s other college confidante, Sophie Sinovich Rosenblum, now tells me that while she went with Jasmine to have the abortion, Jasmine backed out at the very last moment. So where is the fetus?”
O’Hagan paged carefully through the pathologist’s report. “If the decedent was indeed pregnant, plus the fact she’s exhibiting these scars—”
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking, aren’t you? You’re wondering now if she gave birth to that baby.” Angie leaned forward, her blood beating faster. “Buthowwould that be possible? Gulati went over the falls in her waders, was never seen again, then is found wearing the gear she drowned in, lying in this shallow grave near the river, which has seen two major flooding events over the past twenty-four years.”
The food arrived. O’Hagan quickly closed the file, and the two women fell quiet while the server set steaming plates on the table. As soon as the server left, the doc opened the file again and studied it more deeply. She tapped a photo. “This antemortem scarring at the decedent’s left shoulder joint. It’s consistent with chronic dislocation of the shoulder. The scarring indicates healing had commenced on the shoulder but in a way that would appear to indicate the dislocation had not been properly reduced.”
“Can you tell how long before death?”
The doc pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’d want to see the original radiographs or, better, the skeleton itself. And I’d want an expert forensic anthropologist’s input on that.”
“But it could have been recently prior to her death, as in not an old childhood injury, for example?”
The doc nodded, reached for her fork, and broke into the crust of her pie. Steam rose from the hole she’d made in the pastry, releasing a fragrance that made Angie’s hunger acute. She picked up her own fork, pointed it at the report.
“What about that spiral fracture on her left arm? The pathologist notes it’s typical of wrenching force.”
The doc nodded. “But that injury is perimortem. It occurred at or around the time of her death—no sign of healing.”
“Something that could have happened while going over the falls?”
“It would be consistent, yes, if her arm had gotten caught in rocks or something while the rest of her body was torqued away by currents or by the force of falling water.”
Angie tucked into her Guinness pie and delivered a forkful to her mouth, almost burning her tongue in the process. “This is good,” she said around her mouthful. “You were right.”
“Told you.” The doc grinned.
Angie began to wolf down the entire meal as O’Hagan picked at her own plate while combing more carefully through the report, a frown furrowing deeper and deeper into her already lined brow.
Angie reached for her drink. “Is it possible, Barb?” She leaned forward. “Is it remotely possible that Jasmine Gulati did not die going over those falls? But she was injured, and she lived long enough to start healing from injuries sustained going over the waterfall. Injuries for which she never received medical treatment—like a shoulder dislocation. She lived long enough to give birth to the child she was carrying.”
O’Hagan bit her lip. “There’s nothing here that would be inconsistent with that scenario, Ange.”
