Chapter 18
May 9th
7:40 A.M.
During most of her rotations as a pathology resident, Aria was already at the hospital complex by 7:30 in the morning. It was routine and expected. While on her forensic rotation, however, she was arriving progressively later, aware that things generally didn’t get under way at the OCME until 8:00 or even 8:30. This more relaxed schedule didn’t bother her in the slightest. In fact, it seemed to make more sense. She’d always wondered why American medicine felt obligated to start the day so early, particularly surgery, where scalpels were expected to make the first cut at 7:30 sharp, meaning all the other preparations had to be done by then. She also knew that in Europe things were different, particularly in the United Kingdom, where the gentlemanly time of 9:00 A.M. seemed appropriate. So, it wasn’t out of the question for Aria to be just climbing into a rideshare at twenty minutes to 8:00.
In keeping with her late start, she had gotten significantly less sleep than she was accustomed to having. The night before she’d stayed up until the wee hours engrossed in genetic genealogy. With her ability to concentrate, Aria was a fast and effective reader, a skill that had made getting through medical school significantly easier for her than for most other students. She had now read, or at least skimmed, which for her was just about the equivalent of reading, both books that Madison Bryant had loaned her. The highlighting and underlining that Madison had done had not hindered Aria in the slightest and had actually helped to a degree. The benefit of having digested the two books was that now she shared Madison’s belief that genetic genealogy might very well work in finding the unknown male whom Aria was now calling “Lover Boy.” The more she had thought about the affair combined with what she had been able to learn from Madison Bryant and Evelyn Mabry, the more convinced she’d become that Lover Boy had had some significant role in Kera’s death. Whether it was a homicide, even if inadvertent, she wasn’t prepared to contend, but she certainly intended to find out. What she hoped was that Madison would prove to be as helpful a resource as she had suggested she’d be when they had met at Nobu.
As per usual, the morning rush-hour traffic was horrendous, particularly along Central Park South, the road that bordered the park at its southern end. A bit nervously, she checked the time with her phone. Although she’d not been at all concerned about her time of arrival since she’d started the forensic rotation, now that she had found something that truly interested her, namely finding Lover Boy, she didn’t want to annoy anyone, particularly the chief, Laurie Montgomery. At least until she’d solved this current quest, Aria preferred to stay in the chief’s good graces.
Instead of fretting over what she couldn’t alter, she put her phone away and went back to her musing about Lover Boy. Her first thought had been that Lover Boy was probably married, and now that she had had time to think about it, she was convinced that had to be the case. It might also explain why the sudden conception was most likely not thought of as a blessing. Instead it could have made serious waves. It seemed to make sense, and as such further lowered Aria’s opinion of the male gender.
With a sudden feeling of restlessness and the need to do something, Aria struggled to get her phone back out from the pocket of her jeans. Thinking about Lover Boy prompted her to put in an early call to Madison, hoping to catch her before her first client. With the phone pressed against her ear, she listened to the simulated ringing. After the fourth ring, she sensed that Madison wasn’t going to answer, and she guessed why: It was a bit after eight, and Madison most likely was meeting with her first family of the day.
Aria was planning on leaving a voice message to request a call back as soon as it was convenient, but voice mail never picked up. With a shrug, she disconnected. Instead she typed a text message, asking for Madison to contact her as soon as possible. As a teaser, she added: I read both books and I’m psyched.
Once Aria managed to get to Second Avenue, the trip picked up speed. Although she had made the same trip in just over fifteen minutes without traffic, on this particular morning it ended up taking almost an hour. She was dropped off at 8:35, and despite reasonable expectations of being close to being on time, she was more than a half hour late.
Normally Aria first went to the so-called residents’ room on the second floor to leave her personal belongings like a coat and any books she’d brought. It was located just beyond the space euphemistically called the lunch room, thanks to its assortment of vending machines. Both were subpar in most every respect, although the lunch room at least had some high windows that let in a bit of outside light. Of course, there was no view as the neighboring building was a scant fifteen or twenty feet away. The residents’ room was more like a closet with two aged metal desks pressed up against each other and no windows. The redeeming part was that both desks supported monitors with Internet access and first-class microscopes.
Being late and having no coat other than her white resident’s jacket, she went directly to the ID, or identification, unit, where she had been told all the medical examiners gathered in the morning. She’d learned that one of the medical examiners on a weekly rotating basis made a final decision about which of the bodies that had come in during the night should be autopsied and dispersed them among his or her colleagues. By the time Aria walked in there were only two medical examiners still there, Dr. Chet McGovern and a woman of Indian extraction named Dr. Riva Mehta. Both were seated at what was generally called the scheduling desk. A small number of case charts littered the desktop. Everyone had already gotten their assignments and had left to descend to the pit.
“Well, well!” Chet said. “It’s so nice of you to grace us with your presence.”
Aria ignored his sarcasm and went to the communal coffee pot, which she had been pressured to contribute to monetarily. She poured herself a cup and mentally prepared to deal with McGovern, who had rubbed her the wrong way from the first moments she’d met him. It was the way he had looked at her that keyed off her sixth sense even before he’d said anything. Dr. Mehta she had also met and had observed doing a trauma victim. It had been a pedestrian hit and run over by a yellow cab and dragged a hundred yards or so. Aria had found the case mildly interesting although she’d not learned anything that wasn’t obvious. To her, so much of forensics was just common sense.