“I told him the name of the child and that after the father’s will was probated I would possibly be the guardian. That is, of course, if the father is also dead, as feared. I’m really surprised there was such a lack of communication.”
“The emergency room is a busy place.”
I don’t need a lecture about life in the ER, Ben thought but didn’t say. He’d spent too much time in the ER as a surgical resident. To his assessment of Maria’s demeanor he added seemingly inappropriate animosity. Ben had begun to feel that he was being treated as a questionable character, trying to waltz in and steal an orphaned child.
“We’re sorry your communication to the EMT did not get properly relayed. Be that as it may, what is your relationship to the child?”
With a somewhat hardened tone, Ben said, “I was or still am, again depending on the status of the father, his employer.”
“Is there some question as to the status of the father? We were told the child’s parents were both murdered.”
“The mother was, but not the father. The father’s whereabouts is not yet known, although there are some who believe he, too, is dead.”
“Why do you believe you will be the guardian?”
For a moment Ben paused, wondering why he was bothering to answer all these questions. Maybe he should just go to the office and bring back Satoshi’s will. But then he remembered it needed to be probated.
“Did you hear my question?”
“I did, but I’m beginning to feel this is akin to an interrogation, which I find inappropriate.”
“Why didn’t you come in with the child rather than showing up later?”
“It wasn’t my choice. I was detained by the police after I had inadvertently stumbled on the murder victims. I found the child hidden in the house.”
“Well, let me inform you what has gone on here at the hospital in your absence. With no name and no information, I contacted a social worker at DYFS, the Division of Youth and Family Services, here in New Jersey, which is under the Department of Children and Families. She went immediately to one of the DYFS lawyers, who, in turn, went to family court and got DYFS appointed temporary guardian so we would be able to treat the child beyond emergency care. So far it hasn’t been needed. But DYFS is now the guardian. That’s a fact you’ll have to live with.”
“What if I produce the will and the DYFS lawyer can look at it.”
“It wouldn’t matter. The DYFS lawyer cannot change the ruling, only family court, and you couldn’t take the will to family court because it is not probated. And since you don’t know the father’s whereabouts or state of health, you can’t go to probate court. For now you are stuck with DYFS as the temporary guardian.”
Ben was mildly overwhelmed.
“Let me ask you another question,” Maria said when Ben failed to respond. “This child is obviously Japanese, or at least of Asian ancestry, and Sheila said he’d spoken when you arrived, but it wasn’t English. Is he an American citizen?”
“No, he’s Japanese,” Ben said.
“Well, that makes it even more difficult, at least in my experience. In a case like this you cannot take anything for granted. A probate judge will decide the issues, not necessarily on what any documents say but on what he believes is in the best interest of the child.”
“Oh,” Ben said simply as a new wave of concern spread over him. Up until that very moment he still thought the licensing-agreement situation was safe and shielded from change. But now, suddenly, he was learning from a woman with experience in the arena of family law and probate that the licensing agreement’s circumstance was not cast in stone but rather open to the interpretation of what was in the best interest of the child. Even Ben had to accept it would be difficult to justify his role as a trustee of the entity that owned the iPS patents when he was also CEO of iPS USA. It was a huge conflict of interest. And now Ben had to deal with the possibility of iPS USA losing its control of the Satoshi patents. Before visiting the hospital he’d been confident he was destined to be both guardian and trustee for Shigeru. Now there was the possibility he would be neither.
Ben exited FDR Drive at 34th Street and continued south on Second Avenue. The closer he got to OCME, the more unnerved he felt about everything: having to return for further questions from the Bergen County police detective, the chance that there might be changes in the key exclusive iPS licensing agreement, and that he was about to identify Satoshi’s body. For a few blocks he considered the idea of not identifying Satoshi even if it was him but abandoned the idea as it would just postpone the inevitable — and direct significant suspicion in his direction. Ben realized his only hope was to avoid any suspicion of involvement at all, and to do that he had to remain cooperative.
He parked on a side street just a short distance from the OCME building. He paused a moment before entering but not out of fear of the sights he might be forced to confront within the morgue. Unlike laypeople, he had seen enough dead people to accept it as part of life. He’d even watched several autopsies as a student. He paused because his intuition was telling him loudly that Satoshi’s death, even though he had had nothing to do with it, was going to have serious consequences.
To bolster his courage before entering, Ben reminded himself that there was a chance that the body he was about to see might not be Satoshi’s. He also reminded himself that even if it turned out to be Satoshi’s, there was no reason he couldn’t appropriately and sagely deal with the problems and dangers that might arise. Knowledge was always best. It was ignorance that invariably engendered mistakes. If Satoshi was in fact dead, it was best if he knew it before anyone else, and if it was a natural death, it might not have any consequence whatsoever.
With a bit more confidence than he had had a few moments earlier, Ben pulled open one side of a double door and entered OCME. He checked his watch. It was almost quarter to five in the afternoon. Whatever was to happen, he didn’t want it to take too long because of his commitment to stop either back at the scene or at the Bergen County police station and face Tom Janow for more questions before finally being allowed to head home.
The reception area was crowded with what seemed to be staff ready to leave after a long workday. He pushed through the people and approached the desk and asked for Rebecca Marshall, the clerk he’d spoken to earlier on the phone. He was told Rebecca would be down shortly.
Ben waited on an old vinyl couch, watching the people chatting in their dynamic little groups that formed and re-formed as people departed and new people joined. He wondered if they were aware of how unique their work was, and if they ever talked about it among themselves. They probably didn’t — a good example of the adaptability of the human organism.
“Mr. Corey,” a voice called out.
Ben looked up to his right. Somehow an African-American woman with a pleasant, kind face and tightly curled silver hair had managed to sneak right up to him. She clutched a manila case file and other papers to her chest. “I’m Rebecca Marshall. I believe we spoke earlier.”
Rebecca let Ben through a door to Ben’s right and closed it behind them. “This is called the family ID room,” she explained. It was a modest-size space with a blue couch and a large round wooden table with eight wooden chairs. There were several framed posters with images involving the destruction that occurred on 9/11. Each had the caption NEVER FORGET in bold letters across the bottom. “Please,” Rebecca said, gesturing toward one of the chairs at the table. Ben sat, and Rebecca did as well.
“As I mentioned on the phone, I am an identification clerk. As you can well imagine, identification of any body that is brought here is an extremely important part of our job. Usually we have family members who make the identification. If we have no family members, we rely on friends or coworkers. In other words, anyone who knows the victim. You understand, I assume?”