“Your silence tells me you don’t understand,” Laurie said. “Let me give you an example. In the court of law, evidence must have a clear chain of custody that cannot be challenged. Commercial DNA laboratories accept saliva DNA samples with absolutely no chain of custody. All they have is the consumer’s word of the origin of any given sample. Same with how the sample is treated in their laboratories. Obviously, we here at the OCME have to do it in a completely different fashion. Also, our laboratory has to adhere to specific rules about training and mechanisms to uncover negligence or misconduct. The commercial labs have none of that. We’re two different worlds that cannot work together or interact.”
“I think this sucks,” Aria said. “It’s bureaucratic bullshit. Here’s an opportunity for a major witness to be discovered, and it has to be abandoned. That doesn’t make sense to me. No way!”
“You are entitled to your opinion,” Laurie said. “But that’s the way it has to be. Perhaps we can find another forensic case for you to become interested in pursuing.”
Aria stood up. “I’m not going to give up on this one even if I can’t get the Molecular Genetics lab involved. As you said yesterday, I’m still listening to Kera Jacobsen.”
“Suit yourself,” Laurie said. “But I’d like you to keep me informed of what progress you make and don’t make, and you cannot involve our Molecular Genetics Department. In the meantime, I’d like you to dictate the autopsy report.”
“Okay,” Aria said simply. She stood and walked out without saying goodbye or looking back.
For a few minutes Laurie stared at the open door, replaying some parts of the conversation and marveling anew at Aria’s personality. For a moment, she entertained the idea of giving Jack a call to find out what had transpired during the autopsy he’d done with the woman. She still couldn’t believe there had been no fireworks, knowing what she did about both people. But she didn’t have time for such a personal indulgence, when she was imminently expecting a call from the architects about the new Pathology building.
Chapter 20
May 9th
11:25 A.M.
Disconnecting from the dictation service after finishing Kera’s autopsy report, Aria removed her feet from the corner of the beat-up metal desk that she’d been assigned and let them fall to the floor. That way she was able to tilt forward enough to get her phone out of her back pocket. She’d not felt any buzz of incoming messages, but she was still hopeful. But there were no emails, texts, or voice mail, which confused and aggravated her. She’d left Madison a text to contact her almost four hours ago. As an added inducement she’d added that she was psyched to connect with her. Yet there had been no communication whatsoever. It never failed to amaze her how people were generally unreliable.
With sudden resolve, Aria decided to pay Social Services at the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital a visit. After Madison’s apparent enthusiasm last night at Nobu for finding Lover Boy, Aria was shocked she’d not gotten in touch that morning even if she was ridiculously busy, which was probably the case. Although Aria knew she could call the Hassenfeld Social Services line, she decided that wasn’t all that different from leaving a message on Madison’s mobile, which had gotten no response. The solution, simply enough, was to walk over there, barge in on whatever she was doing, and talk to her directly. It was only the equivalent of four city blocks away, and having been an NYU pathology resident for almost four years, she knew exactly where the Social Services Department was in the pediatric outpatient clinic.
The weather was again stellar, with a transparent blue sky and bright sunshine that seemed a world away from the windowless OCME autopsy room. Walking north up First Avenue, Aria passed the busy front of the NYU Langone Medical Center with taxis and a few ambulances lined up in the turnout. She continued on, passing the Emergency Services entrance until she arrived at the driveway for the Kimmel Pavilion. Turning right again on 34th Street, she passed the huge, whimsical sculpture of the Dalmatian balancing a full-size yellow cab on its nose and entered the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital. With her resident white coat and ID card, she wasn’t challenged by the security personnel.
The clinic was packed with children of all ages and their parents. She skirted the reception desk and went directly to the tiny Social Services scheduling office. Inside were two secretaries manning two desks pushed together to face each other. They wore headsets, as they were almost constantly on the phone scheduling visits. Aria had to wait until one of the women looked up and beckoned to her to indicate she was momentarily free. “Can I help you, Doctor?” she asked.
“I’m looking for Madison Bryant,” Aria said. “Can you direct me to her office?”
Instead of answering directly, the secretary looked over at her colleague as if she needed help. The other secretary had heard Aria’s request and in what was clearly a nonverbal exchange between the coworkers, merely shrugged her shoulders.
“Her office is the third door heading down the main hall,” the secretary said. “But she’s not there. She’s in intensive care in Bellevue Hospital.”
“What?” Aria was sure she’d misheard. “Why? What happened?”
“An awful accident from what we have heard,” the woman said. “The poor woman was hit by a train.”
Taken by surprise and without verbally responding, Aria abruptly turned around and walked out into the busy clinic. She knew that subway accidents were not unheard of in New York City. In point of fact they were relatively common, on average of two or three a month with people jumping in front of trains or even being pushed.
Just beyond earshot, she stopped and cursed under her breath: “Damn, fucking, shit!” She had become progressively irritated when Madison hadn’t contacted her all morning. Now she was even more pissed because she had been counting on this woman’s help. Madison had talked her into the idea of using genetic genealogy to find the missing father, and now she’d gone and gotten herself hit by a train. Aria couldn’t believe how inconvenient this was, putting the burden of dealing with these commercial ancestral DNA companies on her shoulders. But then she had another thought, remembering instances when people who’d ended up on the subway tracks managed to hunker down between the rails to allow the train to pass over them with minimal damage, maybe just a broken leg or a few broken ribs. The reality was that Madison wasn’t at the OCME waiting to be autopsied but rather was in critical care in Bellevue, a familiar hospital to Aria because NYU residents were part of the staff just as they were in the NYU hospitals that made up the NYU Langone Medical Center. All that meant that Madison had to be alive. How alive, was the question.
Quickly getting her phone out of her pocket, Aria checked for news of a subway accident by looking at the websites for the Daily News and the New York Post, which loved such stories. As expected, there was reference to a woman having been pushed in front of a Lexington Avenue train at Grand Central Station, but it was a bare-bones piece with no word about the woman’s condition other than that she’d been taken to Bellevue Hospital. With that meager information, Aria decided to do a bit of her own reporting. If Madison wasn’t hurt too badly and could talk, there was still a chance she could contribute to the Lover Boy effort since her experience of dealing with the commercial DNA companies could be critical. After all, there was a mild time restraint for her as she was only scheduled to be on her forensic rotation for another couple of weeks. Once she transitioned back to being a regular pathology resident, she knew she wouldn’t have the time to pursue a paternity investigation regardless of her current emotional motivation.