Hours later the same day, Laurie endured the worst confrontation of her life. Inches from her nose was her father’s angry face with his bulging eyes and purpled skin. He was beside himself with rage. His thumbs were digging into her skin where he held her upper arms. A few feet away her mother was sobbing into a tissue.
“Did you know your brother was using drugs?” her father demanded. “Did you? Answer me.” His grip tightened.
“Yes,” Laurie blurted. “Yes, yes!”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” her father shouted. “If you’d told us, he’d be alive.”
“I couldn’t,” Laurie sobbed.
“Why?” her father shouted. “Tell me why!”
“Because…” Laurie cried. She paused, then said: “Because he told me not to. He made me promise.”
“Well, that promise killed him,” her father hissed. “It killed him just as much as the damn drug.”
Laurie felt a hand grip her arm and she jumped. The shock brought her back to the present. She blinked a few times as if waking from a trance.
“Are you all right?” Lou asked. He’d gotten up and was holding Laurie’s arm.
“I’m fine,” Laurie said, slightly embarrassed. She extracted herself from Lou’s grip. “Let’s see, where were we?” Her breathing had quickened. Perspiration dotted her forehead. She looked over the paperwork in front of her, trying to remember what had dredged up such old, painful memories. As if it had been yesterday, she could recall the anguish of the conflict of responsibility, sibling or filial, and the terrible guilt and burden of having chosen the former.
“What were you thinking about?” Lou asked. “You seemed a long way off.”
“The fact that the victim had been discovered by his girlfriend,” Laurie said as her eyes stumbled again onto Sara Wetherbee’s name. She wasn’t about to share her past with this lieutenant. To this day she had trouble talking about that tragic episode with friends, much less a stranger. “It must have been very hard for the poor woman.”
“Unfortunately, homicide victims are often found by those closest to them,” Lou said.
“Must have been a terrible shock,” Laurie said. Her heart went out to Sara Wetherbee. “I must say, this Duncan Andrews case is certainly not the usual overdose.”
Lou shrugged. “With cocaine, I’m not sure there is a usual case. When the drug went upscale in the seventies, deaths have been seen in all levels of society, from athletes and entertainers to executives to college kids to inner city hoodlums. It’s a pretty democratic blight. A great leveler, if you will.”
“Here at the medical examiner’s office, we mostly see the lower end of the abuser spectrum,” Laurie said. “But you’re right in general.” Laurie smiled. She was impressed by Lou. “What was your background before joining the police?”
“What do you mean?” Lou asked.
“Did you go to college?” Laurie asked.
“Of course I went to college!” Lou snapped. “What kind of question is that?”
“Sorry,” Laurie said. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“And I don’t mean to be testy,” Lou said. “Sometimes I’m a bit self-conscious about where I went to school. I only got to go to a community college on the Island, not some Ivy League ivory tower. Where’d you go?”
“Wesleyan University, up in Connecticut,” Laurie said. “Ever heard of it?”
“Of course I’ve heard of it,” Lou said. “What do you think, all police officers are ignoramuses? Wesleyan University. I might have known. As Billy Joel says, you uptown girls live in an uptown world.”
“How did you know I was from New York?”
“Your accent, Doctor,” Lou said. “It’s as indelible as my Long Island Rego Park accent.”
“I see,” Laurie said. She didn’t like to think she was such an open book. She wondered what else this man could tell about her from his years as an investigator.
Laurie changed the subject. “Where you go to school matters less than what you do while you’re there,” she said. “You shouldn’t be sensitive about your college. Obviously you got a good education.”
“Easy for you to say,” said Lou. “But thanks for the compliment.”
Laurie looked down at the papers on her desk. Suddenly she felt a little guilty about her privileged background of a private secondary school, Wesleyan University, Columbia Medical School. She hoped she hadn’t sounded patronizing.
“Let me take a quick look at the third case,” Laurie said. She opened the third folder. “Louis Herrera, age twenty-eight, unemployed, found in a dumpster behind a grocery store.” Laurie looked up at Lou. “Probably died in a crack house and was literally dumped. That’s the usual overdose we see. Another sad, wasted life.”
“In some respects maybe more tragic than the rich guy,” Lou said. “I’d guess he had a lot fewer choices in life.”
Laurie nodded. Lou’s perspective was refreshing. She reached for the phone and dialed Cheryl Myers down in the medical investigator’s department. She asked Cheryl to get all the medical records she could on Duncan Andrews. She told her that she hoped to find some medical problem that she might be able to relate to his pathology.
Hanging up the phone, Laurie glanced over at Lou. “I can’t help it, but I feel like I’m cheating.” She stood up and gathered all the paperwork.
“You’re not cheating,” Lou assured her. “Besides, why not wait until you have all the information, including the autopsy? Then you can worry about it. Who knows, maybe everything will work out.”
“Good advice,” Laurie said. “Let’s get downstairs and get to work.”
Normally Laurie changed into her scrub clothes in her office, but with Lou there, she opted to use the locker room. When they got off the elevator on the basement level, Laurie directed Lou into the men’s side while she went into the women’s. Five minutes later they met up in the hall. Laurie had on a layer of normal scrub clothes, then another impermeable layer, then a large apron. On her head she wore a hood. A face mask dangled from around her neck. Lou had on a single layer of scrubs, a hood, and he carried his face mask.
“You look like one of the doctors,” Laurie said, eyeing Lou to make sure he’d put on the right clothing.
“I feel like I’m going into surgery instead of to see an autopsy,” Lou said. “I didn’t wear all this the last time. You sure I have to wear this mask?”
“Everyone in the autopsy room wears a mask,” Laurie said. “Because of AIDS and other infectious problems, rules have become much stricter. If you don’t wear it, Calvin will bodily throw you out.”
They walked down the main corridor of the morgue, passing the stainless steel door to the walk-in cooler and past the long bank of individual refrigerated compartments. The refrigerator compartments formed a large U in the middle of the morgue.
“This place is certainly grisly,” Lou commented.
“I suppose,” Laurie said. “It’s less so when you’re used to it.”
“It looks like a Hollywood set for a horror movie,” Lou said. “Whoever picked out these blue tiles for the walls? And what about the cement floor? Why isn’t there any covering? Look at all the stains.”
Laurie stopped and gazed at the floor. Although the surface was swept clean, the stains were unspeakable. “It was supposed to be tiled long ago,” she said. “Somehow it got fouled up in New York City bureaucratic red tape. At least that’s what I’ve been told.”