“Okay, okay. You don’t have to get mad at me. I’m on your side.”
“Sorry,” Laurie said with a shake of her head.
Robert Harper, the head of security, passed by Laurie’s line of sight down near the walk-in cooler. After disappearing in the direction of the autopsy room, he did a double take and returned to view. He quickly approached.
“The media people are getting restless,” Robert reported. “They’ve heard about the headless corpse and now insist on getting details.”
“How did they hear about the new arrival?” Laurie demanded.
Robert made a questioning gesture with his hands. “I’ve no idea. Marlene just called me to come up there to calm them down.”
Laurie looked at Lou. Lou put up his hands. “I didn’t tell them.”
Laurie shook her head dejectedly. “This is a circus.”
“What should I tell them?” Robert asked.
“Tell them that I’m calling the deputy chief.”
“I doubt that will satisfy them.”
“It’s going to have to,” Laurie said. She pushed between both men and walked out of the storeroom on her way back to the autopsy room.
Robert and Lou exchanged a quick glance before Robert headed back upstairs. Lou went after Laurie. By quickening his step, he caught up with her. “Rousseau’s got to be posted,” he said.
“You don’t have to tell me what I already know,” Laurie said. She pushed open the autopsy door, leaned in, and told Marvin to take a break and that she would be back to him in a little while. She then headed for the back elevator. Lou followed.
As they rode up in the elevator cab, Lou looked at Laurie, who stared back. For the moment, her shock and sadness had turned to anger.
“Maybe this is the wake-up call,” Laurie said. “Maybe now all you naysayers will think a bit more seriously about this series of mine.”
“I beg to differ,” Lou corrected. “Rousseau’s death does not unequivocally validate that the deaths of the patients in your series are homicides. All it does is confirm that we have a killer at the Manhattan General who is targeting doctors and nurses. Maybe this individual is killing patients, maybe he’s not. Avoid jumping to conclusions.”
“I don’t care what you say, I think they are related.”
“Maybe so,” Lou said. “Did Rousseau leave any other name besides Dr. Najah?”
“No, that was the only one.”
“But you suspect he had more.”
“There’s no doubt he had more. He said as much.”
“Do you think he might have written the names down?”
“I do. He mentioned he had lists.”
“Well, thank the good Lord for small favors.”
They arrived at Laurie’s floor. Lou hurried after Laurie, who bolted out of the elevator and headed down to her office. When Laurie sat down at her desk and picked up her phone, Lou did the same at Riva’s desk. With some hesitation, Laurie dialed Jack’s number. She prayed he’d be in his apartment and not out playing basketball. To her relief, he picked up on the second ring.
“I hate to bother you,” Laurie began.
“Bother? It’s no bother. It’s good to hear from you.”
“I know I said I’d wait for your call, but something has come up. Jack, I need you here at the OCME.”
“Are the cases so uninteresting that you need comic relief?” Jack suggested. He started to say more, but Laurie cut him off.
“Please, hold the sarcastic humor! Roger Rousseau was brought in this morning as an unidentified homicide victim. He was shot last night at the Manhattan General Hospital.”
“I’ll be right there,” Jack said and hung up.
After slowly replacing the receiver, Laurie put her elbows on her desk, cradled her head with her hands, and rubbed her eyes. Ever since that fateful night in Jack’s apartment when she couldn’t sleep, it was as if her life had spun out of control. She seemed to be hurled from one upheaval to another. Behind her, she could hear Lou talking with some of his men over at the Manhattan General. He was telling them to seal Dr. Roger Rousseau’s office until he got over there and to run a background check on a doctor named Najah.
An involuntary moan escaped Laurie’s lips as she straightened herself up and took her hands away from her face. She would need to grieve for Roger, but it would have to be later. She picked up the phone and dialed Calvin’s number. After she spoke briefly with his wife, Calvin came on the line.
“What’s up?” Calvin asked in an impatient tone. He did not like to be bothered at home without good reason.
“I’m afraid a number of things. First things first, but I’m not sure how to say this.”
“I’m not in the mood for games, Laurie. Just tell me what you have to tell me.”
“All right. I’m ninety-nine percent sure that the chief of the medical staff at the Manhattan General, the doctor friend with whom I have been confiding about my series, is at this moment lying on a table in the autopsy room, waiting to be posted. He’d been shot last night in the hospital and found this morning in the anatomy cooler.”
For a moment, Calvin didn’t say anything. Laurie might have thought they’d been disconnected if she couldn’t hear his breathing.
“Why aren’t you one hundred percent sure?” Calvin finally asked.
“The corpse is headless and handless. Whoever did this to him didn’t want him identified.”
“So he was brought in as a John Doe?”
“That’s correct.”
“And how did you make the ninety-nine percent identification?”
“I recognized a rather unique tattoo.”
“So, I suppose it’s safe to say this individual was more than a friend.”
“He was a friend,” Laurie persisted. “A good friend.”
“Okay,” Calvin said, willing to change the subject. “Knowing you as I do, I assume you take this episode as further support to your serial-killer idea in regard to your series.”
“It stands to reason. It was just yesterday morning that I told the victim about the Queens cases and suggested he look into employees who had transferred from Saint Francis to the General. He left me a voice message during the night, saying that he’d come up with some potential suspects, whom he was going to approach.”
“Are the police actively involved?”
“Most definitely. Detective Lou Soldano is here right at this moment, talking to his people over at the hospital.”
“I think it would be inappropriate for you to do the post.”
“It never crossed my mind. Jack is on his way in.”
“Jack’s not on second call.”
“I know. I thought that not only could he do the autopsy, but he could lend me some needed moral support.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Calvin said. “Are you sure you want to stay? I could have someone take your place for the weekend. I imagine this is rather a shock.”
“It’s a shock, but I prefer to stay.”
“That’s your call, Laurie, and I won’t force the issue. At the same time, I have to be clear about the stand of the OCME in regard to your series. As I said before, we are not in the speculation business. There’s no proof any of these patients of yours are homicides. Are we on the same page, Laurie? I have to be sure, because I don’t want you going to the media. There’s too much at stake here.”
“There was another case for my series this morning,” Laurie said. “A healthy thirty-seven-year-old woman. That makes eight at the Manhattan General alone.”
“Numbers are not going to sway me, Laurie, and they shouldn’t sway you. What would sway me is if John came up with something toxicological. I’ll see if I can put some pressure on him on Monday to redouble his efforts.”
A lot of good that is going to do, Laurie thought dejectedly, knowing how much effort had already been expended.
“What else is going on?” Calvin asked. “You implied there was something more.”
“There is,”
Laurie admitted. “I wouldn’t have bothered you about it, but since I have you on the line, I might as well inform you.” Laurie went on to tell the story about the two teenage boys. When she got to the end, she mentioned the media people in the lobby and then added, “I would like permission to inform them about my findings on these two cases. I believe it is in the public interest for this information to get out sooner rather than later, in hopes of discouraging kids from doing it again in the future.”
“Are the media people aware of the headless corpse?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“If you talk with them, will you be able to restrain yourself from talking about the headless corpse or your series? They’ll undoubtedly ask you.”
“I believe so.”
“Laurie, it’s either yes or no.”
“Okay, yes!” Laurie voiced with some impatience.
“Don’t get testy with me, Laurie, or I’m not going to allow you to talk with any media.”
“Sorry! I’m a little stressed.”
“You can talk to the media about the subway incident, provided you emphasize your findings are a preliminary impression pending further study. I want you to say that specifically.”
“Yes, fine, okay,” Laurie said, eager to get off the line. Suddenly, she was tired of talking with Calvin, as he was a constant reminder of the political side of being a medical examiner.
When Laurie finally hung up, she turned around to face Lou, who’d also completed his calls. She inwardly winced with a sudden sharp pain in her lower right abdomen. Luckily, it was a far cry from what she had experienced in the taxi the evening before, but it got her attention nonetheless.
“Jack’s coming in,” Laurie said. She changed her position to relieve the pain. It did to some degree, but not completely. “He’ll do the post on the headless corpse.”
Lou nodded. “I overheard. It’s a good call, because there’s no way you should do it. I also overheard about your plan to talk to the newsmen downstairs. I can help you out by talking to them about the headless corpse while you stick to the subway accident. That way, you’ll stay out of trouble with Calvin.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” Laurie said. She stood up, and the pain lessened.
“And I have to tell you that I already found out something very interesting. This Dr. Najah has a sheet. He was arrested four years ago trying to board a plane to Florida with a pistol in his briefcase. Of course, he claimed it was an accident and that he had forgotten it was in there, and he did have a license for it.”
“Was it a nine-millimeter?”
“It was.”
“Interesting!” Laurie placed her hand on her hip so that she could use her fingers to surreptitiously massage her abdomen. Similar to that morning, the maneuver was almost immediately curative.
“And something else,” Lou said. “Before he retrained as an anesthesiologist, he’d been a surgeon.”
“My word,” Laurie said while picturing the neatly cut ends on the corpse where the head and hands had been removed.
“We’re going to pull him in for a few days and have a couple of our more experienced interrogators have a crack at him. We’re also going to get a search warrant and see if we can’t come up with that nine-millimeter he was trying to take to Florida.”
“Sounds like a very good idea to me,” Laurie agreed.
eighteen
IT WASN’T LONG AFTER LAURIE and Lou had gone down to face the media that Jack arrived, much to Laurie’s surprise. She had suspected he had taken a cab, but Jack had corrected her. He had explained that at that hour of morning, his bike was the vehicle of choice for any crosstown travel when time was of the essence.
For Laurie and Lou, dealing with the journalists had been taxing from the start. Just getting them to quiet down had been difficult, since they had worked themselves into a minor frenzy. The story possibilities of a nameless, headless, handless corpse discovered by accident in the anatomy cooler of a major hospital were in some respects better than those of the two male teenagers getting run over by the A train. With characteristic imagination, some truly lurid scenarios had been envisioned.
Laurie had addressed the journalists first. The idea that the kids had been electrocuted while peeing on the third rail had raised a few eyebrows but no abiding interest. The group had been much more attentive, as well as rowdy, when Lou talked about the unidentified corpse, despite his cleverly not saying anything of substance.
Jack autopsied Rousseau a little while later, working with Marvin while Lou observed. Laurie made it a point not to even watch. Instead, she teamed up with Sal to post the college student found in the park. The cases were finished at about the same time.
Up in the lunchroom, over vending-machine sandwiches and drinks, Jack gave a thumbnail sketch of the findings on Rousseau. He explained that the first bullet had severed the man’s spinal cord so that the victim would have been a paraplegic, had it not been for the second bullet. Jack described the second projectile as the coup de grâce, since it pierced the heart after grazing a rib, ending up in the left ventricular wall.
During the short monologue, Laurie struggled to maintain a calm exterior, actively suppressing that the details of what she was hearing concerned someone who was dear to her. To maintain the charade, she actually asked a few technical questions, which Jack was happy to answer. He said there was absolutely no doubt in his mind that the hands and the head had been removed well after the heart had stopped beating. It was also his opinion that the man had not suffered, as death had been almost instantaneous. As far as the bullets were concerned, they were definitely nine-millimeter.
After Lou had called his captain to fill him in on the details of the autopsy, he suggested that Laurie come over to the Manhattan General Hospital with him to help locate and identify whatever kind of lists could be found in Rousseau’s office. Laurie agreed immediately. Not to be left out, Jack had asked to tag along. He said he wouldn’t miss an opportunity to participate in AmeriCare’s deserved comeuppance, certain the media was going to have a field day once they got a whiff of what was going on behind the scenes. Particularly after hearing about Patricia Pruit, he was now firmly in Laurie’s camp.
Before leaving the OCME, Laurie took a detour into the communications room behind the ID office to let the operator know she was leaving. She made sure the operator had her cell phone number on hand. As the medical examiner on call, Laurie had to keep in touch.
To get over to the Manhattan General, they all climbed into Lou’s Chevrolet Caprice. Laurie got in the front while Jack sat in the back. The morning drizzle had slowed to more of a mist. Still, both Jack and Laurie preferred to have their respective windows open and deal with the moisture rather than breathe the car’s interior air. While they rode, Laurie brought Jack up to speed on the phone message Roger had left for her.
“This Najah sounds like a good candidate,” Jack said. “Maybe too good. Having an anesthesiologist behind this mystery would go a long way to explain why toxicology has failed to come up with anything. There could be some kind of extremely volatile gas involved.”
Lou told Jack what he’d already learned about Najah, specifically regarding his nine-millimeter handgun. He added that the handgun would be tested by ballistics, if they were lucky enough to get their hands on it.
Except for a rather obviously increased uniformed police presence, the hospital appeared to be functioning in its normal, bustling fashion, with people coming and going, and patients in wheelchairs being discharged. A long line of visitors snaked from the information booth, and doctors in white coats and nurses in scrubs crisscrossed the lobby.
Lou excused himself for a moment to talk to one of the policemen. Laurie and Jack stepped to the side.
“How are you holding up?” Jack asked.
“Better than I would have expected,” Laurie responded.
“I’m impressed,” Jack admitted. “I don’t know how you can concentrate with everything that’s on your mind.
”
“Actually, trying to figure out what is going on over here is helpful,” Laurie said. “It keeps me from dwelling on my own problems.” At the moment, Laurie was referring to the abdominal discomfort she’d been experiencing. It seemed that the jarring she’d experienced in the ride over in Lou’s car had aggravated it to a degree. It wasn’t as sharp as it had been in the cab the night before, but it was pain nonetheless, and Laurie started thinking seriously about it being appendicitis. The location was correct, even if the presentation was irregular. Just when she was thinking about mentioning it to Jack, Lou returned.
“Let’s head down to the crime scene before we hit Rousseau’s office,” Lou said. “Apparently, the CSI boys have made some headway.”
They took the elevator down to the basement level and followed the arrows to the old autopsy amphitheater. The aged leather double doors were propped open with their stops, and a length of yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the entrance. A uniformed police officer stood to the side. Lou ducked under the tape, but when Laurie tried to follow, the policeman blocked her way.
“That’s okay,” Lou said, coming back to Laurie’s aid. “They’re with me.”
Heavy-duty droplights illuminated the semicircular amphitheater’s interior, reaching even the top row of the tiered seats. Several crime-scene investigators were still working.
“Word is you’ve made some progress,” Lou said to the lead tech, Phil.
“I think so,” Phil said modestly. He waved for them to follow over to the far wall of the pit. He pointed to markings in chalk on the floor. “We’ve determined that the body initially ended up here, with the victim’s head in contact with the baseboard. Even though the area had been superficially cleaned, we were able to clearly delineate blood spatter, which gave us an idea where the victim had been when he’d been shot.”
Phil then took the group back toward the ampitheater’s entrance and pointed to two neighboring chalk circles. “This is where we found the two nine-millimeter shell casings, which leads us to believe the killer was about twenty feet from the victim at the time of the shooting.”