'Normally, we require an access to information request to disclose the results of a post-mortem exam,' he said. 'But I spoke to the mother of the girl just now. And I understand a homicide detective called as well.'
'Will that suffice?'
'I asked Mrs. Cantor to fax a signed request. Meantime, come on back and we'll see what we can do.'
He led me through a quiet, carpeted hallway to an office that was too small and too hot for comfort. The bookshelves were packed so tightly with binders and books that he probably couldn't have squeezed one more sheet of paper into them. Piles of papers were stacked knee-high around the perimeter of the room. A human skeleton hung from a planter's hook in the ceiling, twisting ever so slowly in the current of air coming from the HVAC system.
Dr. Morrison opened a file cabinet and thumbed through files beginning with the letter C. 'One day,' he said, 'this will all be computerized. Until then, the floors shall groan under the weight of all this paper. Ah, here we are. Cantor, Maya Arielle. Lovely name. Lovely young woman, as I recall. Or was before the fall. So unfortunate. So young to have taken her own life. You have to wonder what goes through their minds these days. One would think they'd find the world as exciting a place as we did in our twenties.'
Personally, my world had been too exciting at that age. I was twenty-three, just a year older than Maya, when Dalia was killed by a Hezbollah rocket. Twenty-three when I enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in a misguided search for revenge.
'What was your question, Mr. Geller?'
'Was there anything to suggest a finding other than suicide?'
He frowned. 'Well, we discounted accidental death from the start. Her tox results showed the presence of alcohol, but she was well below the legal limit of impairment. And given the height of the balcony wall, it didn't seem possible that she could have fallen over. So the question then became suicide or homicide.'
'How do you make that determination?'
'We look at several things. The injury pattern, of course. Placement of the body in relation to the takeoff point. Presence of a note or other communications at the scene.'
'You examined her apartment?'
'The Coroner's Act gives us that authority. There was no note found in this case. No signs that violence or any sort of struggle took place.'
'What about her injuries?'
'You have to understand, when a body falls from that height, the trauma of the impact is so severe, so widespread, that it's almost impossible to determine whether there were ante-mortem injuries. But there has been some notable research in the field of kinetic motion analysis of late.'
'In what?'
'In layman's terms, how variables such as height and velocity at takeoff determine where a body ought to land in relation to a building, bridge or what have you. If you give me a moment or two to call it up, we can review things from that point of view.'
He tapped away at his keyboard for a few minutes then said, 'Ah.'
'Ah?'
He swivelled his monitor toward me. The screen showed a number of parabolas and bell-shaped curves. I looked hard at them-I really did-but they meant nothing to me. That's what I get for sleeping through high school math, when the only bell-shaped curves that interested me were the ones under Sandy Braverman's sweater.
'Rather ingenious, this study,' Dr. Morrison said. 'They employed trained gymnasts, divers and athletes to establish the values we use to determine whether a victim simply stepped off into thin air, jumped from a standing position, took a running jump or executed a swan dive, as it were.'
'And?'
'In Ms. Cantor's case, given the distance from the building and the position of her body, we know she didn't step off and she didn't jump feet first.'
'She dove.'
'Yes. Not with a running jump, of course. The waist-high balcony would have precluded that. But she did land a considerable distance from the building.'
'So she could have been thrown off?'
'No one could say that with any certainty. A lot of this research-and perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier-was done with divers landing in water. They tended to hit the surface head first or feet first. With actual jumpers, another part of the body may hit the ground first, which influences the distance from the building itself. In Ms. Cantor's case, the distance wasn't conclusive either way.'
'Hypothetically, then.'
'You have to understand, Mr. Geller, that this office has been through a very difficult time since the revelations of the Pappas Commission. We're rather loath to speculate on anything that can't be proved.'
Just a few months ago, Justice James Pappas had been asked to investigate how one rogue pathologist with an agenda of his own had been responsible for dozens of people being accused of killing children in their care, when in fact the deaths had been of natural causes. Some had lost custody of their children while under investigation; some had been convicted of homicide and served hard time before their cases were reopened.
'Let me rephrase it then,' I said. 'Is it possible, given the position of her body and the distance from the building, that she could have been thrown or pushed off her balcony?'
'I think I can grant you that much.'
CHAPTER 18
Technically speaking, I still had an appointment with Rob Cantor that afternoon. But I saw no point in keeping it. He'd have nothing to say to me, and I needed more proof-something, anything-before confronting him further. Maybe once I'd spoken to Will Sterling, I'd have what I needed.
I stopped at the New Yorker Deli on Bay Street and picked up sandwiches, potato salad and coleslaw and drove back to the office. I figured Jenn would be hungry and I certainly was, since Hollinger had commandeered my cupcake.
I parked in back of our building and took the stairs up, carrying two bags of food. The front door of our office was locked and I wondered if Jenn had gone out. I gripped the bags in one hand and unlocked the door. There was no one in the front room.
'Jenn?'
There was a pause before she said, 'Back here.'
'I've got lunch,' I said. 'And news.'
I went into the back office and saw Jenn sitting stiffly in her chair. A thirtyish man in a hoodie and jeans too tight for his thick build was standing behind her, his fist curled in her hair. His other hand held the edge of a hunting knife against her throat. The door closed behind me and I saw another man, older, more my age, in a leather coat pointing a gun at me. His jet-black hair was greased back from a widow's peak halfway down his forehead and he wore a thick gold cross on a chain that hung down to his sternum.
'What's for lunch?' he said.
Eidan Feingold had taught me ways to take a gun away from a man. But the lessons had never included a scenario where your partner was being held at knifepoint.
'Put the bags down,' he said. 'On the desk.'
I set them down. 'There's roast beef,' I said, 'or tuna salad. Take your pick.'
'Shut up,' the gunman said. 'We're all going to go out that door now. Down the hall to the stairs, quiet as mice. Out into the parking lot and into the car on a drive. You got that, lunch boy?'
'Crystal clear.'
'You act nice, you won't get hurt. We'll go somewhere, we'll talk to some people, then we'll let you go.'
Sure they would. And a fairy godmother would pave the way back with candy.
'You do anything stupid,' he said, 'and Blondie's gonna get sliced.'
'I'll cut her fucking tits off one at a time,' his buddy said. He had angry red blotches on his face and bad teeth
