“It’s been assigned to a missing-persons case detective out of Midtown North Precinct as an unidentified body. It’s being worked.”
“Do you have the detective’s name?”
“I do. It’s right here someplace.” Murphy pulled out the center drawer of the desk, requiring him to suck in his stomach. There was barely enough room to open the drawer. He fumbled through the contents for a moment before producing a crumbled single sheet. “Detective Ron Steadman, who also occasionally works out of Precinct Twenty.” He jotted the numbers on a piece of scrap paper and gave it to her. “If you try to call him, use the Midtown North Precinct, because that’s where he is ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“I’ll do that,” Laurie said. “In the meantime, if you hear anything, please let me know.”
“Will do!” Murphy said cheerfully.
Next Laurie climbed the stairs to the anthropology department, which had expanded significantly after 9/11, when identification had become an operational nightmare. She knocked on the closed glazed door of Hank Monroe, the director of identification. Originally, identification had been solely the purview of Sergeant Murphy as the liaison with NYPD Missing Persons Squad, but following 9/11 the job became much larger, and an in-house department had been created.
“Come in!” a voice called out. Hank Monroe was a medium-size individual with a face full of sharp angles.
“My name is Laurie Stapleton,” Laurie said, introducing herself. Hank was relatively new to OCME staff, and he and Laurie had never met. After some pleasant chitchat, Laurie asked if he’d heard about the unidentified case that had come in late the previous afternoon.
“Not yet,” Hank confessed. “There’s usually a note from one of the night mortuary techs, but not this time. The body probably came in around shift change, but it’s no problem. What’s the story?”
Laurie gave a rapid synopsis of her John Doe case.
“Not much to go on,” Hank said. He’d grabbed a pad and pencil to write down the critical details, which were limited to
“Unfortunately not.”
“Any help from Missing Persons?”
“Nothing—at least not yet.”
“It’s early. I guess you realize that?”
“I do, but this case is important to me for personal reasons.”
Hank stared at Laurie, confused as to how the identification of an unidentified corpse could be a personal concern for a medical examiner, but he chose not to question. At the same time, he wanted his colleague to be realistic.
“I’ll try to help,” he said, “but cases like this are very difficult if someone like a wife, a coworker, a friend, or a child doesn’t come forward. But the critical period is this first twenty-four hours. If someone doesn’t appear, the chance of ever making an ID begins to fall precipitously. Most people don’t realize this, not in this era of DNA technology, but it’s the reality.”
“That doesn’t sound encouraging,” Laurie said.
“Well, let’s try to be positive. We’re still within the first twenty-four-hour period.”
Feeling progressively depressed, Laurie thanked Hank after he offered to keep his eyes and ears peeled, including calling his contacts with the Missing Persons Squad at the NYPD at One Police Plaza. Slowly she mounted the stairs, sensing that her first day back to work was going to end on a down note.
For a while she sat at her desk, staring with unseeing eyes at her computer screen, wondering if she should give up being a medical examiner and fully embrace motherhood, which she now knew was much more demanding than she’d ever considered. Of course, the first issue such thinking brought to mind was what Jack would think if she suggested such a thing, and could they live on one salary? As close as everything was every month financially, she knew it would not be easy without her salary, and they’d probably have to sell the newly renovated house that they so enjoyed.
Thinking in such a vein made her even more depressed, to the point that she suddenly shook her head, took a deep breath, and straightened up in her chair. She remembered some of what she’d thought were normal changes after giving birth, and wondered if she was still experiencing such effects now. The stress of leaving JJ in the hands of someone else, no matter how capable, combined with the stress of worrying about her job skills, was enough to depress her. At the same time, she thought she should give herself some slack and not give up so soon.
Laurie picked up her phone and called Detective Ron Steadman at the Midtown North Precinct. If anyone was going to learn anything about her corpse, it was going to be the detective, as it was his job as part of the police department’s Missing Persons Squad to actually actively investigate the case. How that was specifically done, Laurie didn’t know, as she’d never been inclined to look into the process. Now she felt differently and hoped to find out.
After ten rings, which she’d actually counted, Laurie began to become discouraged anew. Her experiences calling police precincts for information were always a difficult affair, where all too often the phone would ring interminably. Forcing herself to be patient, Laurie let it ring. Finally, on the twenty-third ring, and just when she was about to try the other number, someone answered, and to her shock it was Ron Steadman. Usually with the NYPD she had to leave a name and hope for a callback, which she’d get about fifty percent of the time.
Any hope for a dynamic individual faded the moment she heard the man’s voice. He sounded as if he was exhausted by merely breathing. Laurie explained who she was and why she was calling, and when she finished, there was a silence on the other end of the line that seemingly was to extend indefinitely.
“Hello!” Laurie said, thinking the connection had surely broken. Instead, it seemed the man had fallen asleep. At least, that was Laurie’s guess.
“What was that again?” Ron said without apology.
Laurie told herself to take the situation in stride, and she took her own advice. Speaking more slowly and more clearly, she repeated the message.
“We have the case,” Ron responded. His voice was flat.
“Good!” Laurie said. “What’s happened so far?”
“What do you mean what’s happened? I copied it to your guy, what’s his name?”
“Sergeant Murphy.”
“Yeah, that’s the one. I copied it to him while I sent it down to One Police Plaza to Missing Persons, along with the responding officers’ description.”
“And what has Missing Persons done?”
“Not much would be my guess. I suppose they’ve added it to the list.”
“The list of missing persons, I suppose?” Laurie responded sarcastically. Somehow she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The man sounded totally disinterested.
“No. We got a list of people wanting to be extras in TV cop shows. Of course the case was added to the missing-persons list.”
“And as the assigned detective to the case,” Laurie said with more sarcasm, “what have you done during this critical period?”
There was another short silence until Ron said, “Look, lady, I don’t know why you are busting my balls. I send the info where I’m supposed to send it and then sit back and wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“I wait for you to send us some prints, photos, and whatever you get from the autopsy, including DNA info, so that we can improve on the description. The prints we’ll run locally. If no hits, we run on the state level on up to the federal. But I gotta warn you, we don’t get many hits in this kind of case. It’s up to the family to come to you guys or us. Now, if there had been criminality involved, things would be done differently.”
“How do you know there was no criminality?”
There was another short period of silence. “Are you trying to tell me something by wandering all around the block or what? Did you find something at autopsy that suggests this was a homicide? If you are, please come right out with it.”
“Nothing was found at autopsy that suggested criminality,” Laurie admitted.
“Well, there you go. If anything changes let me know, and vice versa. Meanwhile, I’ll let it sit here with my
