horrible mistake and that her daughter was just fine.
“This is Dr. Jack Stapleton. I’m calling from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.”
“Hello, Dr. Stapleton,” Mrs. Abelard said in a lilting but questioning tone, as if there was no reason for someone to be calling from the New York City morgue. “Can I help you?”
“You can,” Jack said, debating how to begin. “But first I want to express my deepest sympathies.”
Mrs. Abelard was quiet. Jack worried she might explode into a tirade with tears, heralding the second stage of grief, the anger stage. But there was only silence, interspersed by the woman’s intermittent breathing. Jack was afraid to say anything, lest he make a bad situation worse.
“I hope I’m not bothering you too much,” Jack said at length, but only after it had become obvious Mrs. Abelard was not about to respond. “I’m sorry to have to call.
“I know you were here at the morgue last night,” Jack continued. “And I’m sure it was difficult. I don’t mean to disturb you in this time of grief, but I wanted to let you know that I have carefully examined your daughter, Keara, this morning, and I can assure you she is resting peacefully.”
Jack grimaced at what sounded to him like a mawkish attempt at empathy. He wished he could hang up, collect himself, and call back. The idea that an eviscerated corpse was resting peacefully was so absurdly sappy that he was embarrassed it had come out of his mouth. It made him feel guilty that he’d stooped so low in his manipulating.
Nonetheless, he forged on as he’d done with the reluctant Robert Farrell. “What I’m trying to do is speak for your daughter, Mrs. Abelard. I’m certain she has something to say to help others, but I need more information. Can you help me?”
“You say she is resting comfortably?” Mrs. Abelard asked, breaking her silence. It was as if she believed her daughter had had some minor mishap.
“She’s at peace. But I’m wondering, did she experience any kind of neck injury recently?”
“Neck injury? Like what?”
“Any kind of injury at all,” Jack said. He felt like a trial lawyer trying to avoid leading the witness.
“Not a specific neck injury that I can recall, although she did fall from a swing when she was eleven and was bruised all over, including her neck.”
“I’m talking about an injury that might have occurred over the last few days,” Jack said,
“maybe in the last week.”
“Heavens, no.”
“Is she a yoga enthusiast?” Jack was trying to cover all the bases.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What about an automobile accident? Anything like that happen recently?”
“Heavens, no,” Mrs. Abelard repeated more forcefully.
“So she’d been completely well up until yesterday. No neck aches or headaches.”
“Well, now that you mention it, she did complain of some recent headaches. She’s been under stress because of a new job.”
“What kind of work?”
“Advertising. She’s a copywriter for one of the up-and-coming ad agencies in the city.
It’s a new position, and a bit of a stressful situation. She’d been laid off recently, so she was feeling pressure to do her best in her new position.”
“Did she say where the headaches were centered, like in the front or back of her head?”
“She said they were behind her eyes.”
“Did she do anything about them?”
“She took ibuprofen.”
“And . . . did it help?”
“Not very much, so she asked one of her friends, and the friend recommended a chiropractor.”
Jack sat up in his chair. In the far reaches of his mind, he recalled a case he’d read about in an issue of the
“Did Keara go to this chiropractor?” Jack asked, while trying to recall the details of the published case. He remembered it dealt with the vertebral artery dissection, just as he’d found that morning in Keara.
“She did. As I recall, it was this past Thursday or Friday.”
“Did the visit help her headaches?”
“It did, at least initially.”
“Why did you say ‘at least initially’?”
“Because the headache located behind her eyes went away, but then she got a different one in the back of her head.”
“You mean like the back of her neck?”
“She said the back of her head. Now that I’m remembering the discussion, she also said she had a bad case of hiccups she couldn’t get over, and they were driving her crazy.”
“Do you happen to know the name of this chiropractor?” Jack asked, as he supported the phone receiver in the crook of his neck. With his hands free, he went on the Internet and Googled “dissection, vertebral artery.”
“I don’t. But I do know the name of the friend who recommended the doctor.”
“You mean the chiropractor,” Jack said reflexively, then regretted it. He didn’t want to take any chances of upsetting Keara’s mother. While the man may well have been a doctor of chiropractic, Jack knew many people thought they were medical doctors. Jack was leery of chiropractors, although he admitted he didn’t know too much about them.
“Her name is Nichelle Barlow,” Mrs. Abelard said, indifferent to Jack’s comment.
“Thanks for your cooperation,” he said, writing down the number. “You’ve been so generous, especially under such trying circumstances.” Replacing the receiver, Jack stared blankly at the wall. Seventeen years ago when his first wife and children died, he remembered how long he had been in denial as friends and family had called. Shaking his head to free himself from such morbid thoughts, he forced himself to turn his attention to his computer screen, but he couldn’t concentrate.
Instead he recalled the scene a couple of nights previous, of John Junior sobbing with what he and Laurie worried was bone pain from the tumor in the marrow cavities of his long bones. His tiny, perfectly formed infant hands seemed to gesture toward his legs as if hoping his parents could provide relief, but of course they couldn’t.
“Shit!” Jack yelled at the ceiling in hopes of shocking himself out of his downward-spiraling self-pity. At that point, a head poked in through the open doorway. It was Dr.
Chet McGovern, Jack’s former office mate.
“Is that a reflection of your personal state of mind,” Chet joked, “or a general assessment of the current stock-market trend?”
“All of the above,” Jack said. “Come on in and take a load off.” Despite being preoccupied, Jack welcomed the diversion.
“Can’t do,” Chet said, with a lilt to his voice. “I met somebody Saturday night, and we’re meeting for lunch. She might be the one, my friend! She is hot.” Jack waved him off. He’d become convinced Chet was never going to, find “the one.” Chet loved the chase too much to settle down.
“Hey, Chet,” Jack called to his retreating friend. “Have you ever had a vertebral artery dissection?”
“Yeah, one,” Chet said, returning to lean back into Jack’s office. “It was during my forensic pathology fellowship in L.A. Why?”
“I had one this morning. It stumped me until we opened the skull. There wasn’t much of a history, and there was no apparent trauma.”
“How old?”
“Young. Twenty-seven.”
“Check out if she’d seen a chiropractor in the last three days or so.”
“I think she did,” Jack said, impressed by Chet’s suggestion. “I think she might have seen one last Thursday or Friday. She died last night.”
“It could be significant,” Chet replied. “In my case, the association was easy to make, since the symptoms began moments after the cervical manipulation. But when I looked into the issue in general, I learned the symptoms
