medicolegal investigation report, there’d been no mention of any auto accident. I think I might be in for a bit of investigative work myself. There has to be an explanation.”
“What now?”
“More photos,” Jack said, reaching for the digital camera. “Then we’re going to remove both arteries and check the interiors.”
Ten minutes later Jack had the vessels on the cutting board with the brain. They looked like two small headless red snakes who’d swallowed something blue. The discoloration was more apparent than when the arteries had been in situ.
“Here goes nothing,” Jack said. Steadying each blood vessel between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, he used his right to make a careful incision through one side of each artery’s wall. He then opened both of them lengthwise, spreading them out on the cutting board inside out.
“Would you look at that?” he said, still holding the scalpel.
“What am I looking at?” Vinnie questioned.
“It is called a dissection,” Jack said. “A bilateral dissection of the vertebral arteries. I’ve actually never seen it.”
Using the handle of the scalpel, Jack pointed to a spot just before the arteries’ S-curve where they looped up and over the first cervical vertebra. “Can you see this tear in the intima, or the inside lining of the blood vessel? In both arteries there is a tear at the point between the atlas, or first vertebra, and the axis, or second cervical vertebra. In such a situation, what happens is that arterial pressure forces blood into the tear and balloons the lining of the arteries away from the vessel’s fibrous wall, eventually blocking the vessel’s lumen. The brain is then deprived of a major portion of its blood supply and bingo, lights out.”
“Meaning curtains for the victim.”
“I’m afraid so,” Jack agreed.
With the pathology determined, the rest of the autopsy continued apace. Twenty minutes later, Jack exited the autopsy room to learn that Dr. Besserman had assigned him a second autopsy, the private-school meningitis case. While he waited for Vinnie to set it up, Jack ditched his soiled Tyvek suit and took Keara Abelard’s chart into the locker room.
Making himself comfortable, Jack carefully reread Janice Jaeger’s medicolegal investigation report. As he had noted earlier when he’d skimmed the record, the woman had been brought into the emergency room by her drinking buddies with the sudden onset of confusion and spasticity, leading to unconsciousness. From Janice’s choice of syntax, Jack could tell that she had not spoken with the friends directly but rather had gotten her information from a combination of the Saint Luke’s ER record, one of the ER
nurses, and one of the ER docs. Typical of Janice, the report was complete, with no mention of an auto accident.
Switching to the ID sheet, Jack saw that it had been Keara’s mother who’d made the identification. The woman lived in Engle wood, New Jersey, and Jack glanced at her phone number with its 201 area code.
Impulsively, Jack got to his feet. It was clear he needed more information than what he had. With the OCME record in hand, he used the back stairs to get up to the first floor, and, passing though the SIDS investigation area, he walked into the expanded medicolegal space. He found Bart Arnold, the chief of forensic investigation, at his desk in cubbyhole number one. He and Jack had an excellent working relationship, as Jack was one of the few medical examiners willing to give the investigators the credit they deserved by letting them know he couldn’t do his job without their help.
“Morning, Dr. Stapleton. Is there a problem?” Bart asked, seeing the case file under Jack’s arm.
“Hey, Bart, I was wondering if during your shift-change report session this morning Janice happened to mention anything memorable about Keara Abelard?” Bart looked at his list of the night’s cases. “Nope, not that I can remember. It seemed routine to her, but definitely a case that fell under OCME jurisdiction.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Jack said. “But there’s so little history.”
“She mentioned that the ER docs felt the same, which is why they left word with Janice to get a callback. They want to know what’s found.”
“I didn’t see a note to that effect in the record.”
“I believe Janice knows the doc in question and was going to do it herself rather than obligating you.”
“Do you know if she spoke to the mother when the mother came in to make the identification?”
“That I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say no, because Janice is so thorough—if she’d spoken with the mother, she would have written it down. But why don’t you call her and ask? What’s the problem, not enough info?”
Jack nodded. “It’s a curious case. The woman died from occlusion of both her vertebral arteries. Unless she had had some connective-tissue disease like Marfan syndrome, which I seriously doubt, she had to have suffered serious trauma. Her vessels dissected, meaning the lining came off, blocking them up. Vinnie suggested whiplash injury from an auto accident, and he might be right. I think her friends or her mom might have some information. It could be extremely important. If someone ran into the back of her, he or she would now be looking at possible manslaughter, even murder, if the parties knew each other and there was some kind of conflict or controversy between them. I’d give the mother a call myself, but I’d hate to bother her if Janice has already spoken with her.”
“As I said, why not give Janice a call?”
With his left hand, Jack twisted up the bezel of his watch tied with the cincture of his scrub pants. “It’s a quarter to ten. Isn’t that too late?”
“She’s a perfectionist. She’ll want to help you out,” Bart said, handing him Janice’s home number. “Call her! Trust me!”
Using the front stairs, Jack hurried up to his office. After propping open his office door, he placed Janice’s card in the center of his blotter and pulled over his phone. Before he dialed the woman, he called down to Vinnie.
“I’m bringing in the body of the kid as we speak,” Vinnie said. “Five minutes and we’ll be ready to go. Calvin, our lovable deputy chief, wants us to do it in the decomposed room.” The decomposed room was a separate, small autopsy room with a single table. It was used mostly for putrid bodies.
“Make sure we have plenty of culture tubes,” Jack said. “See you in five.” He disconnected.
He was about to dial Janice’s number when the photo he had on his desk of Laurie and John Junior caught his eye. It had been taken at a happier time, the day Laurie and the baby were leaving the hospital after the delivery. At the moment there had been no symptoms or signs of the disaster that was to come.
Impulsively, Jack reached out, grabbed the photo, and tossed it into his bottom drawer, pushing it closed with his foot. “God!” he murmured. It was embarrassing how quickly he could be yanked back into a depressing thought, especially since Laurie was the one bearing ninety-nine percent of the burden. He wondered how she’d been able to do it. At least he’d been able to go to work to take his mind off the reality of the disaster.
For a moment Jack rubbed his eyes, causing a squishy sound from both sockets. With his elbows on the desk, he then roughly massaged his scalp. He was back to realizing how much he needed to find something professional to occupy his mind to rein in his fragile emotions.
Opening his eyes, Jack snatched up the telephone receiver and angrily poked the sequence of buttons corresponding to Janice’s phone number. When she answered, he snapped back with his name in such a way that he knew he sounded angry. Before Janice could even respond, he excused himself. “That didn’t come out right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Is something the matter?” Janice questioned. As conscientious as she was, her first concern was that she’d done something terribly wrong.
“No! No!” Jack assured her. “My mind was elsewhere for a second. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Not at all. I can’t sleep for three or four hours after getting off shift.”
“I’m looking for more information on Keara Abelard.”
“I’m not surprised. There was so little available. Such a sad case, so young, attractive, and seemingly healthy.”
“Did you speak to any of the woman’s friends who brought her into the ER?”
“I didn’t have a chance. They had already left by the time I got there. I was able to get a name and number of one of them, Robert Farrell. I put it down at the bottom of the page.”
