Doe,” she’d begun calling the corpse Kenji, given his genealogical resemblance to a medical-school classmate. And giving the man a name seemed to narrow her focus ever further.
The typical starting point when reviewing slides was where there was pathology, but in Kenji’s case there hadn’t been any. Instead, she started with the organ most closely associated with seizures, the brain. Knowing seizures could arise from very small lesions, or even from areas with no lesions at all, Laurie reviewed each slide methodically. Trusting Maureen and her careful supervision of the histology technicians, Laurie was confident she had representative sections from all sections of the brain. Beginning with the frontal cortex, Laurie worked backward into the temporal and parietal lobes. With each slide she’d start with low power, scan the entire slide, then move on to higher power. This took time and attention, so she was surprised when her phone rang, and further surprised it was Vinnie instead of Marvin, and that forty minutes had passed.
“You can come down now,” Vinnie said. “The corpse is on the table.” He spoke in the same perfunctory, emotionless tone that had irritated her earlier.
“Fine!” Laurie responded without sincerity. She was about to hang up when her curiosity got the better of her. “I was looking forward to Marvin calling. Why the change?”
“Marvin is busy on another case with the deputy chief,” Vinnie said. “Besides, Twyla Robinson told me I couldn’t leave until I was finished with you.”
His response had caught her off guard. When the deputy chief was doing a case, it usually meant something interesting was going on; he rarely did autopsies unless there was a political aspect involved. She was also surprised that Twyla Robinson’s name had come up. Twyla Robinson was a petite African-American woman as lithe as a fashion model with high cheekbones and glorious raven hair. As the chief of staff of OCME she was also a woman of steel. Laurie had always been impressed with her ability to run such a tight ship with such a varying mix of personalities.
“Need I ask why Twyla was involved in your helping me repeat an external exam?” Laurie questioned harshly. It was definitely not usual. “And what do you mean by you’re leaving?”
“I’m going on leave for a family emergency,” Vinnie said, now with some emotion.
“I’m so sorry,” Laurie said after a pause. She suddenly felt guilty she’d been selfish in her response to Vinnie’s unusual mood.
“Can I ask you to come down quickly? I really need to leave, and Marvin’s tied up with an added case after the one he’s doing.”
“I’ll be right down,” Laurie said. “Why don’t you just leave? I’m only going to repeat the external exam. I really don’t need any help. I’ll find someone to help me get the corpse on a gurney when I’m done. Really, it’s okay—you should just go.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Laurie said. She was tempted to ask what the family emergency was about, but she didn’t. Vinnie hadn’t given her an in to ask such a question.
“What about Twyla?”
“Don’t worry about her,” Laurie said. “I’ll talk to her if need be. You go and attend to your family emergency.”
“Thanks, doctor,” Vinnie said finally.
“You’re welcome, Vinnie,” Laurie said. For a moment she held the line open, hoping that Vinnie would be more forthcoming, but all she heard was a click. She hung up as well.
Laurie paused with her microscope in front of her, its light source still on. She shook her head. She knew it was human to view the world somewhat selfishly, but she was disappointed in herself for not having given Vinnie a bit of slack rather than immediately taking his behavior personally.
She clicked off her microscope light, leaped to her feet, grabbed a Tyvek coverall suit from the bottom drawer of her file cabinet, pulled it on, and was out the door.
As the aged elevator descended and she watched the numbers reducing, seemingly slower than usual, she banged lightly against the door as if it would speed it up. If she thought she was excited earlier, she was now a quantum leap more excited. The case was suddenly blossoming in unusual complexity, for which she could take credit, credit for persevering even in the face of Jack’s attempt to quell her determination. Of course, she was not going to be critical of Jack, as she knew his motivation was her well-being.
Once on the basement level, Laurie ran, not walked, around to the locker room, quickly got herself appropriately attired, and pushed into the pit, which was in full swing.
Pausing just inside the door, she surveyed the scene. All tables were occupied with corpses surrounded by the personnel doing the cases, save for one, which Laurie presumed was her Kenji. Next she picked out Calvin Washington, mostly because of his intimidating size and because there were four people at his table rather than the customary two. The only other person Laurie could pick out from where she was standing was Jack, simply by the way he moved and laughed. Few other people found much to laugh about in the autopsy room, but Jack always seemed to find a way, particularly when he and Vinnie were on a case together.
Rather than going directly to Kenji, Laurie stepped over to Jack’s table. He was working on a relatively young man, in his thirties or forties. Laurie could see that one leg was broken with a compound fracture. There was also a severe head wound and abrasions on his chest. It was clearly an accident of some sort.
“Quick, Eddie!” Jack called out, seeing Laurie approach. “Cover up Henry. Here comes my wife.”
Laurie, with her gloved hands clasped in front of her like a surgeon maintaining sterility, said, “Hurry, Eddie, before I see anything.” Eddie Prince was a relatively new mortuary tech whom she hadn’t met before yesterday. “Well, well,” Laurie continued. “It looks to me like a severe accident. Would it be appropriate to presume this was a bicyclist who’d had a disagreement with a taxicab?”
“Bus,” Jack added.
All Laurie could do was nod. In point of fact, she did not like to joke about the issue. When she and Jack had first met, she’d thought there was something boyishly charming about Jack’s insistence on riding his bike back and forth to work, but now, especially with a child, she thought it was selfishly foolish.
“How are things going?” Jack asked. “I see your case from yesterday is back. Is that a clue?”
“Could be,” Laurie said, recognizing that Jack had immediately steered the conversation away from the bike- bus issue. Even doing cases like the one he was working on or having knowledge of the statistics, about thirty to forty bicycling deaths per year in New York City, did nothing to discourage Jack’s behavior.
“Are we going to have a press conference this afternoon?” Jack inquired.
“It’s not going to be that much of a revelation,” Laurie said with a chuckle. “Although if it turns out to be what I suspect, I’m going to be pleased with myself, and you and Lou are going to be surprised at the very least.”
“Then let’s hope it is what you suspect.”
Laurie moved on to Kenji. She put the papers that she’d brought from her office down on the writing surface. They were copies of outline drawings of the human body from both dorsal and ventral perspectives, where she could indicate any external findings of note. Then she went to get the only equipment she thought she would need: a scalpel, a digital camera, a handheld dissecting microscope, and a stainless-steel probe, which was nothing more than a thin metal stylus with a slightly nodular end used to probe puncture wounds, such as the tracks of bullets or pellets.
With the body supine, Laurie started with the head and face, poring over the scalp, the ears, the face, even the inside of Kenji’s mouth, his ears, and his nose. Having recognized she’d done such a poor job on the external exam the day before, she meant to do an A-plus one today.
Moving on to the upper extremities, Laurie noted every irregularity, including cuts, bruises, moles, hemangiomas, and even calluses. Next were the chest, abdomen, and lower extremities. When she was finished with the ventral surface, she went to find someone to help her turn the corpse over. Jack had finished his case, and Eddie was available. He was happy to give Laurie a hand.
Laurie repeated herself on the dorsal surface. As she worked down the back, her pulse quickened. If there were to be a suspicious break in the skin, she assumed she would find it somewhere on the buttocks or the back or side of the legs. Just because she hadn’t seen anything suspicious with her initial overall glance, Laurie maintained her careful, methodical scrutiny, and her systematic approach paid off. Within the gluteal fold where the buttocks join the leg, Laurie felt she’d found what she was looking for: a possible tiny puncture wound. It was a circular reddened area that required flattening the skin to truly appreciate. She took a digital photograph of the area,
