The Finishing School

21

THE HULKING OCME BUILDING, at First Avenue and Thirtieth Street, loomed over the neighborhood like a haunted castle. By the time Melanie entered its depressing, institutional-looking lobby, Ray-Ray Wong was already seated in the reception area waiting for her. She needed an agent present to take chain of custody on the girls’ personal effects, and Dan and Bridget were busy setting up the heroin buy for later that night.

“Evening, ma’am,” Ray-Ray said, rising to his feet, nodding crisply.

They crossed a span of muddy brown carpet and signed in with the good-looking black guy behind the reception desk, who directed them to a freight elevator that would take them down to the morgue in the basement.

“So what were the autopsy results, ma’am?” Ray-Ray asked as he pressed the call button.

“Shavonne didn’t want to go into it over the phone, but apparently the deputy M.E. is waiting to give us a report.”

“Okay.”

“Any developments on your end?”

“Yes. Well, this might be nothing, but…”

“What?”

“I had Gidget run rap sheets on the faculty and staff at Holbrooke, like you said?”

“Yeah?”

“Not much. An English teacher with a couple of DWIs. The guidance counselor had a disorderly from fifteen years back, but no details in the record.”

“Probably some kind of political protest, knowing him.”

“Yeah, okay, but here’s the sort of creepy one. That lawyer?”

“Siebert?”

“Yeah. He’s in a sex-offender database.”

“Jesus, really?”

“Not because of an actual arrest. His name came up in an investigation. I contacted the NYPD guy whose case it is. He says Siebert was going on this Web site where a lot of teenage boys post profiles. It’s like a known site for older men looking to hook up with underage prostitutes.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I’m telling ya, this Siebert’s a fucking perv. He actually messaged a fifteen-year-old kid who’d posted a picture of himself wearing jeans and no shirt.”

“So why hasn’t Siebert been arrested?”

“Because. Apparently he never asked to meet the kid or anything. He just messaged him about baseball.”

“Baseball? You mean, like, how ’bout those Mets?”

“Right.”

“I’m not sure that’s a crime. How do we know he was even after sex?”

Ray looked at her like she was stupid. “It’s a known site. People don’t just wander into these things. Maybe he’s working up his nerve.”

“Huh. Well, but we have girls in this case. And so far there’s no known sex angle.”

“I know.”

“Ours looks like a drug thing.”

“Yes, I’m aware of that.”

The elevator came, and they got in.

“That’s weird,” Melanie said. “We should interview Siebert, find out what he’s up to. Who knows? Maybe there’s some connection, although it doesn’t leap out at me.”

“We can’t. I promised this detective I wouldn’t burn his investigation.”

“So we don’t specifically ask Siebert about the Web site.”

“Okay.”

“Anything else?”

“I examined the dead girls’ telephones with a guy from Tech.”

“And?”

“Brianna’s wasn’t very interesting, but Whitney’s phone was strange. First of all, you’ve got numerous saved photos of Carmen Reyes in Whitney’s apartment last night. It’s as if somebody decided to document Carmen’s presence there,” Ray-Ray said.

“Do we know when the pictures were taken?”

“Based on the time stamps, between seven-thirty and seven forty-eight P.M.”

“What’s Carmen doing?”

“Nothing really. Just standing around. But what really raised me up is, other than the photos and a couple of calls to a cell phone associated with Jay Esposito, the phone’s entire memory’s been erased. Including all records of calls dialed and received, phone numbers in the address book, everything. Some of that can be reconstructed using telephone records. But some of it can’t.”

“So somebody erased the memory purposely but left the photos of Carmen for us to find?” Melanie asked, thinking aloud.

“Looks that way.”

Melanie felt a tiny tingle of fear-not for herself but for Carmen. Somebody had been in Whitney Seward’s apartment last night, tampering with evidence, presumably at the same time Carmen was there. Whoever it was seemed to be trying to point the finger at Carmen. Why? Where was that person now? Wherever they were, Melanie had a bad feeling that Carmen was with them.

“Hey,” Melanie said. “Why would they leave the calls to Esposito?”

“I don’t know. Oversight?”

“Pretty stupid oversight. Do you think someone wanted us to find those calls? Like they’re setting Esposito up?”

“Is it called a setup when the victim is actually guilty?” Ray-Ray asked.

They reached the basement and got out. Brightly lit, spick-and-span, with cheerful green and white tiles, it nevertheless reeked of death.

“Yuck!” Melanie exclaimed, clapping her hand over her nose.

“Breathe through your mouth and you won’t smell it as much,” Ray-Ray suggested.

She tried it; it worked. “Huh. Thanks, I’ll remember that.”

“Learned that in the Gulf.”

They met up with Shavonne Washington at a booth near the back entrance. Shavonne stood guard over two white body bags that had been stacked on metal trays fixed to a wheeled gurney. Nodding hello to Melanie and Ray-Ray, she checked the bar codes on each body bag against a log, then wheeled the gurney carefully over to a narrow elevator. The elevator doors opened, and an orderly stepped out. Shavonne helped him maneuver the gurney carefully into the elevator.

“There go your girls,” Shavonne said, coming over to Melanie and nodding toward the closing doors. “They’re getting released to the families for burial now. Dr. Drucker’s in the autopsy room scrubbing up, waiting to explain his findings to you.”

Melanie and Ray-Ray followed Shavonne down the hall. All around them high-tech refrigerators gave off an eerily soothing hum. Shavonne pushed open a wide swinging door, and they trailed her into the large room, which held eight stainless-steel autopsy slabs, each with its own sink, scale, and array of scary-looking cutting shears and electric saws. A short, slight doctor wearing surgical greens, face mask, and shoe covers was just finishing drying his hands at one of the sinks. Shavonne made the introductions.

“As we expected, preliminary tox on both bodies was positive for the presence of heroin in the bloodstream,” Dr. Drucker explained. “I’m prepared to certify acute heroin poisoning as cause of death on both victims.”

“You refer to preliminary tox. Meaning…”

“We just do a preliminary screen that tests for the presence of particular substances of interest. In this case we tested for the presence of heroin and got a positive result,” Dr. Drucker replied.

“So if the girls had something else in their bloodstreams…?”

“Unless we expose the blood sample to the specific reagent for that particular substance, we won’t detect it. So you’d have to notify us exactly what you want us to test for. Is there some other substance you have reason to believe they might have ingested?”

“No, not really,” Melanie said, shaking her head. “You can’t just do a generalized sort of test for narcotics and poisons?”

“No, it doesn’t work that way. A full tox would test for a wider range of narcotic and nonnarcotic controlled substances, but still, it’s limited. I can order up a test for common poisons, but we like to have some basis before we do that, so we’re not wasting our time,” Dr. Drucker said.

“There’s a basis here. Their deaths might’ve been plain old-fashioned ODs, but they might’ve been something else. We believe that these girls were transporting drugs, not just using.”

“Yes, exactly, that’s why we called you in. You believe right, and now we can prove it.”

“What? You found evidence?”

“Yes. The Meyers girl had heroin balloons in her stomach.”

Melanie’s insides did a horrible somersault. “Is…is that what killed her?” Melanie asked, her mouth suddenly dry. That poor, wrongheaded kid. Doing this to herself so she’d fit in with Whitney, so she could afford a Fendi bag.

“You bet. The balloons ruptured and just poured heroin into her bloodstream. Much more than what could be ingested nasally or even intravenously through intentional use. I’m afraid it’s a very painful way to die. Here, come look,” Dr. Drucker said, leading them over to one of the autopsy slabs.

An array of sample containers holding gruesome collections of organs and fluids was spread out on a small stainless-steel table at the end of the slab. Dr. Drucker picked up a clear plastic vial bearing a small label with Brianna’s name and a bar code. Melanie took it and held it up to her eye. Inside were three small, round, orange pellets, coated in a fine slime of tissue and blood. She held up the vial for Ray-Ray, who examined it also.

“What you see are typical balloons of heroin used by drug couriers for internal smuggling,” Dr. Drucker explained. “These were recovered from Brianna’s stomach. Literally, they’re balloons, like you could purchase in any toy store. We know that from the orange color. The other product commonly used by smugglers to wrap drugs for internal smuggling, as I’m sure you’re aware, is the latex condom, which tends to be flesh-colored. Those are actually even more likely to leak, especially the…uh, ultrathin varieties.”

“How do you know these balloons leaked?” Melanie asked.

“Under the microscope we saw small lesions on two of the balloons. The lesions occur when stomach acids compromise the latex. Extremely unfortunate for the victim,” he said, shaking his head.

Melanie was silent for a moment, staring at the tiny orange pellets that had ended a young girl’s life. There was no question in her mind that Jay Esposito was behind this. But she still had to prove it.

“What about Whitney?” she asked. “Did you find balloons in her stomach, too?”

“No. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She could’ve excreted them all prior to her death.”

“Is there any other way to tell whether she OD’d from leaking balloons as opposed to snorting the heroin voluntarily?” Melanie asked.

“Not based on the toxicology results, no,” Dr. Drucker said. “But we can look to other indicators. In this case Whitney had fresh track marks between her toes, so I’d say she probably ingested voluntarily. But not by snorting, by shooting up.”

Melanie and Ray-Ray looked at each other in confusion. “That’s weird,” Melanie said. “We found empty glassines but no works. And the glassines were right beside the bodies. To shoot up they’d have to cook the stuff first, right? There was no indication of that at all.”

Dr. Drucker shrugged. “I can only tell you what I observed in the autopsy.”

“Is it possible Whitney died from leaking balloons, and that the track marks are unrelated?”

“Anything’s possible, Ms. Vargas,” the doctor said. “But how likely is it?”

“Still, I’d like to run those other toxicology tests. Who knows what Whitney was taking? I need the complete picture.”

“Seems unnecessary, frankly, but I won’t say no. I’ll order up a generalized toxicology for common poisons and controlled substances. Given that it’s Christmastime and we’re understaffed, though, I have to warn you, it could take up to a month.”

“A month? Isn’t there some way to get it done faster?” Melanie asked.

“I can put a rush on it and see what we get.”

“Thank you, I would appreciate that. The sooner the better.”

Melanie and Ray-Ray took their leave and made their way to the elevator.

“Very fucking weird,” Ray-Ray commented as they waited. “Girls like that swallowing.”

“I agree, but it’s a relief to finally have some solid evidence. It’s looking pretty clear that Jay Esposito is responsible for these girls’ deaths. And he probably knows where Carmen Reyes is, too.”