Jack picked up one of the cadaver’s arms and reached it across to Vinnie. “Give me a hand. Let’s show her the back.”
With Vinnie pulling on the arm and Jack lifting the edge of the torso, the cadaver was rotated onto its left side. “Here you can see two entrance wounds. The one on the upper back is circular and defined. See it?”
“Obviously,” Aria said. After looking at the wound, her eyes rose up to take in the institutional clock on the wall. It had been only a little more than a half hour since she’d checked for messages from Madison Bryant, and she wondered if there was one now waiting for her when she was able to break free from her current bondage with this would-be professor. To her it was amazing how he could carry on with so little feedback. For the last five minutes or so Aria had been back to mulling over the ins and outs of genetic genealogy.
“So, what do you think?” Jack suddenly said, interrupting her chain of thought.
“About what?” Aria asked.
“About this type of linear entrance wound,” Jack said. He was pointing toward the victim’s lower back, which bore a splayed-out wound that resembled a leafless tree a child might draw. The base pointed caudally, the branches pointing toward the victim’s head.
“I’d say the bullet had to strike at an acute angle,” Aria answered.
“Give the lady a prize,” Jack said. Despite what he knew about her, he was impressed. He had planned on mounting an extensive explanation of the shearing forces of the bullet creating the tiny skin tags that pointed toward the point of initial contact, but he scrapped it. Jumping ahead, he said: “Since you were able to figure that out so quickly, what does it say to you that might be important in the forensic report?”
“I’d say that the victim had to be either falling or already prone on the ground when the bullet struck him.”
Jack straightened up and gently clapped with his gloved hands. “You are a quick study when it comes to forensics,” he said. “And I suppose you have a sense of how this information might be received by the police and the district attorney.”
“It would throw a cloud over the justifiable-homicide claim, especially when added to any bodycam footage, if it exists.”
“Okay,” Jack said to Vinnie. “Let Mr. Karpas roll back so we can continue our photographic documentation of the pathways of all the bullets.” He picked up the dowel he had been holding when Aria had first arrived and turned to her and said: “Let’s show you the tracks of all the bullets, including this last apparent coup de grâce.”
It was another half hour before the case was over. Jack was finishing his elaborate diagram of all the gunshot markings while Vinnie went to get a gurney. Vinnie had already finished labeling all the envelopes with the bullet fragments that had been painstakingly found, their locations described and documented. For a moment no one was paying the slightest attention to Aria, so she merely turned around and made her way back to the entrance. She hoped that the director of education, Dr. McGovern, wasn’t involved in any of the autopsies she passed for fear he would try to assign her yet another case. As if it might help, she kept her vision concentrated on the exit, looking neither to the right nor the left. A moment later, with a sense of relief, she pushed through the autopsy room doors and emerged into the deserted main hallway.
Inside the locker room, the first thing she did was get out her phone. She fully expected by this time to have a text from Madison, hopefully saying where and when they could get together. To her utter dismay after what she’d had to endure in the autopsy room, there was no message from Madison. Nothing. No emails, texts, or voice mail. Cursing under her breath, she changed into her clothes.
When she was almost finished, she heard her phone indicate she was getting a text. With a sense of excitement and expectation, she struggled to get the phone out of her back pocket. When she finally managed to do so, she was disappointed. The text wasn’t from Madison. It was from Dr. Montgomery, and it was terse. It merely said: I need to talk with you. Please come to my office.
Chapter 19
May 9th
10:35 A.M.
So that’s the long and short of it,” Laurie said to Dr. George Fontworth, who had been appointed two years ago to serve as the deputy chief medical examiner under Laurie, replacing Paul Plodget. At first she had been disappointed with the selection because she and Jack had never believed George lived up to his potential. He had stellar credentials, perhaps the best of the OCME, having been trained by some of the forensic greats, but he had been content seemingly to do mediocre work over the years as one of the staff MEs. But to Laurie’s pleasant surprise, the appointment as deputy chief had lit a fire under the man to the point that she had to give the Selection Committee credit for seeing his potential. Particularly over the past year, he turned out to be a huge asset to her on multiple fronts. Jack had labeled the transition astounding.
“Any questions, George?” she asked. They were in Laurie’s office, she behind her huge desk and George seated across from her. The desk was a partner’s desk, so for meetings such as this one, the seating arrangement was natural. For meetings involving more people, Laurie preferred to use the large library table she had at the other end of her office that had adequate space for up to ten people. For meetings of that size, they had to raid other offices for chairs.
“I can only think of one question,” George said. His expression was appropriately serious in respect to what Laurie had just told him. “How long do you think you will be hospitalized?”
“That’s hard to say,” she said. “Of course, I’d like it to be the minimum possible, but it all depends on what is found.”
“I understand,” George said solemnly.
Laurie had just finished telling George that she had made plans within the hour to undergo semi-emergency surgery. As soon as she’d got to the OCME that morning, she’d put in a call to Dr. Claudine Cartier, one of the NYU Langone Medical Center’s busiest surgeons, who specialized in breast surgery. She had been highly recommended by the oncologist Dr. Wayne Herbert, who had in turn been recommended several years ago by Dr. Sue Passero, Laurie’s internist and old college chum. She had already briefly spoken with Claudine Cartier the previous day after getting the bad news from the screening and had been told she had to make the decision as to how to approach the biopsy dilemma. When Dr. Cartier had returned the call that morning, Laurie had told her she had decided to deal with the suspicious lump with the “Angelina Jolie approach,” namely with bilateral mastectomies and an oophorectomy. Laurie had already had one ovary and one fallopian tube removed years earlier when she’d had an ectopic pregnancy. Her only other wish was to do the procedure as soon as possible. Dr. Cartier said she understood, would check her schedule, and get back to Laurie, probably that afternoon, about when it could be done. Optimistically she’d added that the chances of scheduling the operation within the next few days were very good because she’d had several cancellations due to patients having influenza.
“I’ll be letting everyone know as soon as the operation is scheduled,” Laurie said. “I wanted to tell you first since you’ll be the one shouldering most of the burden. There is nothing key scheduled except for the need to finalize the plans for the new Forensic Pathology center so it can be sent out to bid. But even that can wait. Thank goodness I got the City Council Health Committee meeting out of the way yesterday. I wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer through that.”