Chromosome 6

CHAPTER 7

MARCH 5, 1997

7:25 A.M.

NEW YORK CITY

THE combination of cheap red wine and little sleep slowed Jack’s pace on his morning bicycle commute. His customary time of arrival in the ID room of the medical examiner’s office was seven-fifteen. But as he got off the elevator on the first floor of the morgue en route to the ID room, he noticed it was already seven twenty-five, and it bothered him. It wasn’t as if he were late, it was just that Jack liked to keep to a schedule. Discipline in relation to his work was one of the ways he’d learned to avoid depression.

His first order of business was to pour himself a cup of coffee from the communal pot. Even the aroma seemed to have a beneficial effect, which Jack attributed to Pavlovian conditioning. He took his first sip. It was a heavenly experience. Though he doubted the caffeine could work quite so quickly, he felt like his mild hangover headache was already on the mend.

He stepped over to Vinnie Amendola, the mortuary tech whose day shift overlapped the night shift. He was ensconced as usual at one of the office’s government-issued metal desks. His feet were parked on the corner, and his face hidden behind his morning newspaper.

Jack pulled the edge of the paper down to expose Vinnie’s Italianate features to the world. He was in his late twenties, in sorry physical shape, but handsome. His dark, thick hair was something Jack envied. Jack had been noticing over the previous year a decided thinning of his gray-streaked brown hair on the crown of his head.

“Hey, Einstein, what’s the paper say about the Franconi body incident?” Jack asked. Jack and Vinnie worked together on a frequent basis, both appreciating the other’s flippancy, quick wit, and black humor.

“I don’t know,” Vinnie said. He tried to pull his beloved paper from Jack’s grasp. He was embroiled in the Knicks stats from the previous night’s basketball game.

Jack’s forehead furrowed. Vinnie might not have been an academic genius, but about current news items, he was something of a resident authority. He read the newspapers cover to cover every day and had impressive recall.

“There’s nothing about it in the paper?” Jack questioned. He was shocked. He’d imagined the media would have had a field day with the embarrassment of the body disappearing from the morgue. Bureaucratic mismanagement was a favorite journalistic theme.

“I didn’t notice it,” Vinnie said. He yanked harder, freed the paper, and reburied his face.

Jack shook his head. He was truly surprised and wondered how Harold Bingham, the chief medical examiner, had managed such a media coverup. Just as Jack was about to turn away, he caught the headlines. It said: Mob Thumbs Nose at Authority. The subhead read: “Vaccarro crime family kills one of its own then steals the body out from under the noses of city officials.”

Jack snatched the entire paper from the surprised Vinnie’s grasp. Vinnie’s legs fell to the floor with a thump. “Hey, come on!” he complained.

Jack folded the paper then held it so that Vinnie was forced to stare at the front page.

“I thought you said the story wasn’t in the paper,” Jack said.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t in there,” Vinnie said. “I said I didn’t see it.”

“It’s the headlines, for crissake!” Jack said. He pointed at them with his coffee cup for emphasis.

Vinnie lunged out to grab his paper. Jack pulled it away from his grasp.

“Come on!” Vinnie whined. “Get your own freakin’ paper.”

“You’ve got me curious,” Jack said. “As methodical as you are, you’d have read this front-page story on your subway ride into town. What’s up, Vinnie?”

“Nothing!” Vinnie said. “I just went directly to the sports page.”

Jack studied Vinnie’s face for a moment. Vinnie looked away to avoid eye contact.

“Are you sick?” Jack asked facetiously.

“No!” Vinnie snapped. “Just give me the paper.”

Jack slipped out the sports pages and handed them over. Then he went over to the scheduling desk and started the article. It began on the front page and concluded on the third. As Jack anticipated, it was written from a sarcastic, mocking point of view. It cast equal aspersion on the police department and the medical examiner’s office. It said the whole sordid affair was just another glowing example of the gross incompetence of both organizations.

Laurie breezed into the room and interrupted Jack. As she removed her coat, she told him that she hoped he felt better than she.

“Probably not,” Jack admitted. “It was that cheap wine I brought over. I’m sorry.”

“It was also the five hours of sleep,” Laurie said. “I had a terrible time hauling myself out of bed.” She put her coat down on a chair. “Good morning, Vinnie,” she called out.

Vinnie stayed silent behind his sports page.

“He’s pouting because I violated his paper,” Jack said. Jack got up so Laurie could sit down at the scheduling desk. It was Laurie’s week to divvy up the cases for autopsy among the staff. “The headlines and cover story are about the Franconi incident.”

“I wouldn’t wonder,” Laurie said. “It was all over the local news, and I heard it announced that Bingham will be on Good Morning America to attempt damage control.”

“He’s got his hands full,” Jack said.

“Have you looked at today’s cases?” Laurie asked, as she started glancing through the twenty or so folders.

“I just got here myself,” Jack admitted. He continued reading the article.

“Oh, this is good!” Jack commented after a moment’s silence. “They’re alleging that there is some kind of conspiracy between us and the police department. They suggest we might have deliberately disposed of the body for their benefit. Can you imagine! These media people are so paranoid that they see conspiracy in everything!”

“It’s the public who is paranoid,” Laurie said. “The media likes to give them what they want. But that kind of wild theory is exactly why I’m going to find out how that body disappeared. The public has to know we are impartial.”

“I was hoping you’d have a change of heart and given up on that quest after a night’s sleep,” Jack mumbled while continuing to read.

“Not a chance,” Laurie said.

“This is crazy!” Jack said, slapping the page of newsprint. “First they suggest we here at the ME office were responsible for the body disappearing, and now they say the mob undoubtedly buried the remains in the wilds of Westchester so they will never be found.”

“The last part is probably correct,” Laurie said. “Unless the body turns up in the spring thaw. With the frost it’s hard to dig more than a foot below the surface.”

“Gads, what trash!” Jack commented as he finished the article. “Here, you want to read it?” He offered the front pages of the paper to Laurie.

Laurie waved them off. “Thanks, but I already read the version in the Times,” she said. “It was caustic enough. I don’t need the New York Post’s point of view.”

Jack went back over to Vinnie and quipped that he was willing to return his paper to its virginal state. Vinnie took the pages without comment.

“You are awfully sensitive today,” Jack said to the tech.

“Just leave me alone,” Vinnie snapped.

“Whoa, watch out, Laurie!” Jack said. “I think Vinnie has pre-mental tension. He’s probably planning on doing some thinking and it’s got his hormones all out of whack.”

“Uh-oh!” Laurie called out. “Here’s that floater that Mike Passano mentioned last night. Who should I assign it to? Trouble is I don’t think I’m mad at anyone and to forestall guilt I’ll probably end up doing it myself.”

“Give it to me,” Jack said.

“You don’t care?” Laurie asked. She hated floaters, especially those which had been in the water for a long time. Such autopsies were unpleasant and often difficult jobs.

“Nah,” Jack said. “Once you get past the smell, you got it licked.”

“Please!” Laurie murmured. “That’s disgusting.”

“Seriously,” Jack said. “They can be a challenge. I like them better than gunshot wounds.”

“This one is both,” Laurie commented, as she put Jack down for the floater.

“How delightful!” Jack commented. He walked back to the scheduling desk and looked over Laurie’s shoulder.

“There’s a presumptive, close range shotgun blast to the upper-right quadrant,” Laurie said.

“It’s sounding better and better,” Jack said. “What’s the victim’s name?”

“No name,” Laurie said. “In fact, that will be part of your challenge. The head and the hands are missing.”

Laurie handed Jack the folder. He leaned on the edge of the desk and slid out the contents. There wasn’t much information. What there was came from the forensic investigator, Janice Jaeger.

Janice wrote that the body had been discovered in the Atlantic Ocean way out off Coney Island. It had been inadvertently found by a Coast Guard cutter which had been lying in wait under the cover of night for some suspected drug runners. The Coast Guard had acted on an anonymous tip, and, at the time of the discovery, had been essentially dead in the water with their lights out and radar on. The cutter had literally bumped up against the body. The presumption was that it was the remains of the drug runner/informer.

“Not a lot to go on,” Jack said.

“All the more challenge,” Laurie teased.

Jack slipped off the desk and headed for the communications room en route to the elevator. “Come on, grouchy!” he called to Vinnie. He gave Vinnie’s paper a slap and his arm a tug as he passed. “Time’s a wasting.” But at the door he literally bumped into Lou Soldano. The detective lieutenant had his mind on his goal: the coffee machine.

“Jeez,” Jack commented. “You should try out for the New York Giants.” Some of his coffee had sloshed out onto the floor.

“Sorry,” Lou said. “I’m in sorry need of some Java.”

Both men went to the coffeepot. Jack used some paper towels to dab at the spill down the front of his corduroy jacket. Lou filled a Styrofoam cup to the brim with a shaky hand, then sipped enough to allow for plenty of cream and sugar.

Lou sighed. “It’s been a grueling couple of days.”

“Have you been partying all night again?” Jack said.

Lou’s face was stubbled with a heavy growth of whiskers. He had on a wrinkled blue shirt with the top button undone and his tie loosened and askew. His Colombo-style trench coat looked like something a homeless person would wear.

“I wish,” Lou grunted. “I’ve seen about three hours of sleep in the last two nights.” He walked over, said hello to Laurie, and sat down heavily in a chair next to the scheduling desk.

“Any progress on the Franconi case?” Laurie asked.

“Nothing that pleases the captain, the area commander, or the police commissioner,” Lou said dejectedly. “What a mess. The worry is, some heads are going to roll. We in Homicide are starting to worry we might be set up as scapegoats unless we can come up with a break in the case.”

“It wasn’t your fault Franconi was murdered,” Laurie said indignantly.

“Tell that to the commissioner,” Lou commented. He took a loud sip from his coffee. “Mind if I smoke?” He looked at Laurie and Jack. “Forget it,” he said the moment he saw their expressions. “I don’t know why I asked. Must have been a moment of temporary insanity.”

“What have you learned?” Laurie asked. Laurie knew that prior to being assigned to Homicide, Lou had been with the Organized Crime unit. With his experience, there was no one more qualified to investigate the case.

“It was definitely a Vaccarro hit,” Lou said. “We learned that from our informers. But since Franconi was about to testify, we’d already assumed as much. The only real lead is that we have the murder weapon.”

“That should help,” Laurie said.

“Not as much as you’d think,” Lou said. “It’s not so unusual during a mob hit that the weapon is left behind. We found it on a rooftop across from the Positano Restaurant. It was a scoped 30-30 Remington with two rounds missing from its magazine. The two casings were on the roof.”

“Fingerprints?” Laurie asked.

“Wiped clean,” Lou said, “but the crime boys are still going over it.”

“Traceable?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” Lou said with a sigh. “We did that. The rifle belonged to a hunting freak out in Menlo Park. But it was the expected dead end. The guy’s place had been robbed the day before. The only thing missing was the rifle.”

“So what’s next?” Laurie asked.

“We’re still following up leads,” Lou said. “Plus there are more informers that we’ve not been able to contact. But mostly we’re just keeping our fingers crossed for some sort of break. What about you guys? Any idea how the body walked out of here?”

“Not yet, but I’m looking into it personally,” Laurie said.

“Hey, don’t encourage her,” Jack said. “That’s for Bingham and Washington to do.”

“He’s got a point, Laurie,” Lou said.

“Damn straight I got a point,” Jack said. “Last time Laurie got involved with the mob she got carried out of here nailed in a coffin. At least that’s what you told me.”

“That was then and this is now,” Laurie said. “I’m not involved in this case the way I was in that one. I think it is important to find out how the body disappeared for the sake of this office, and frankly I’m not convinced either Bingham or Washington will make the effort. From their point of view, it is better to let the episode just fade.”

“I can understand that,” Lou said. “In fact, if the goddamned media would only let up, the commissioner might even want us to ease up. Who knows?”

“I’m going to find out how it happened,” Laurie repeated with conviction.

“Well, knowing the who and the how could help my investigation,” Lou said. “It was most likely the same people from the Vaccarro organization. It just stands to reason.”

Jack threw up his hands. “I’m getting out of here,” he said. “I can tell neither of you will listen to reason.” He again tugged on Vinnie’s shirt on the way out the door.

Jack poked his head into Janice’s office. “Anything I should know about this floater that’s not in the folder?” he asked the investigator.

“The little there is, is all there,” Janice said. “Except for the coordinates where the Coast Guard picked up the body. They told me that someone would have to call today to make sure it wasn’t classified or something. But I can’t imagine that information will matter. It’s not like anyone could go out there and find the head and the hands.”

“I agree,” Jack said. “But have someone call anyway. Just for the record.”

“I’ll leave a note for Bart,” Janice said. Bart Arnold was the chief forensic investigator.

“Thanks, Janice,” Jack said. “Now get out of here and get some sleep.” Janice was so committed to her job that she always worked overtime.

“Wait a second,” Janice called out. “There was one other thing that I forgot to note in my report. When the body was picked up, it was naked. Not a stitch of clothing.”

Jack nodded. That was a curious piece of information. Undressing a corpse was added effort on the part of the murderer. Jack pondered for a moment, and when he did, he decided it was consistent with the murderer’s wish to hide the victim’s identity, a fact made obvious by the missing head and hands. Jack waved goodbye to Janice.

“Don’t tell me we’re doing a floater,” Vinnie whined as he and Jack headed for the elevator.

“You sure do tune out when you read the sports page,” Jack said. “Laurie and I discussed it for ten minutes.”

They boarded the elevator and started down to the autopsy room floor. Vinnie refused to make eye contact with Jack.

“You are in a weird mood,” Jack said. “Don’t tell me you’re taking this Franconi disappearance personally.”

“Lay off,” Vinnie said.

While Vinnie went off to don his moon suit, lay out all the paraphernalia necessary to do the autopsy, and then get the body into the morgue and onto the table, Jack went through the rest of the folder to make absolutely certain he’d not missed anything. Then he went and found the X rays that had been taken when the body had arrived.

Jack put on his own moon suit, unplugged the power source that had been charging over night, and hooked himself up. He hated the suit in general, but to work on a decomposing floater he hated it less. As he’d teased with Laurie earlier, the smell was the worst part.

At that time in the morning, Jack and Vinnie were the only ones in the autopsy room. To Vinnie’s chagrin, Jack invariably insisted on getting a jump on the day. Frequently, Jack was finishing his first case when his colleagues were just starting theirs.

The first order of business was to look at the X rays, and Jack snapped them up on the viewer. With his hands on his hips, Jack took a step back and gazed at the anterioposterior full-body shot. With no head and no hands, the image was decidedly abnormal, like the X ray of some primitive, nonhuman creature. The other abnormality was a bright, dense blob of shotgun pellets in the area of the right upper quadrant. Jack’s immediate impression was that there had been multiple shotgun blasts, not just one. There were too many beebee-like pellets.

The pellets were opaque to the X rays and obscured any detail they covered. On the light box they appeared white.

Jack was about to switch his attention to the lateral X ray when something about the opacity caught his attention. At two locations the periphery appeared strange, more lumpy than the usual beebee contour.

Jack looked at the lateral film and saw the same phenomena. His first impression was that the shotgun blasts might have carried some radio-opaque material into the wound. Perhaps it had been some part of the victim’s clothing.

“Whenever you’re ready, Maestro,” Vinnie called out. He had everything prepared.

Jack turned from the X-ray view box and approached the autopsy table. The floater was ghastly pale in the raw fluorescent light. Whoever the victim had been, he’d been relatively obese and had not made any recent trips to the Caribbean.

“To use one of your favorite quotes,” Vinnie said. “It doesn’t look like he’s going to make it to the prom.”

Jack smiled at Vinnie’s black humor. It was much more in keeping with his personality, suggesting that he had recovered from his early-morning pique.

The body was in sad shape although bobbing around in the water had washed it clean. The good news was that it had obviously been in the water for only a short time. The trauma went far beyond the multiple shotgun blasts to the upper abdomen. Not only were the head and the hands hacked off, but there was a series of wide, deep gashes in the torso and thighs that exposed swaths of greasy adipose tissue. The edges of all the wounds were ragged.

“Looks like the fish have been having a banquet,” Jack said.

“Oh, gross!” Vinnie commented.

The shotgun blasts had bared and damaged many of the internal abdominal organs. Some strands of intestines were visible as was one dangling kidney.

Jack picked up one of the arms and looked at the exposed bones. “A hacksaw would be my guess,” he said.

“What are all these huge cuts?” Vinnie asked. “Somebody try to slice him up like a holiday turkey?”

“Nah, I’d guess he’d been run over with a boat,” Jack said. “They look like propeller injuries.”

Jack then began a careful examination of the exterior of the corpse. With so much obvious trauma, he knew it was easy to miss more subtle findings. He worked slowly, frequently stopping to photograph lesions. His meticulousness paid off. At the ragged base of the neck just anterior to the collarbone he found a small circular lesion. He found another similar one on the left side below the rib cage.

“What are they?” Vinnie asked.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “Puncture wounds of some sort.”

“How many times do you suppose they shot him in the abdomen?” Vinnie asked.

“Hard to say,” Jack said.

“Boy, they weren’t taking any chances,” Vinnie said. “They sure as hell wanted him dead.”

A half hour later, when Jack was about to commence the internal part of the autopsy, the door opened and Laurie walked in. She was gowned and held a mask to her face, but she didn’t have on her moon suit. Since she was a stickler for rules and since moon suits were now required in the “pit,” Jack was immediately suspicious.

“At least your case wasn’t in the water for long,” Laurie said, looking down at the corpse. “It’s not decomposed at all.”

“Just a refreshing dip,” Jack quipped.

“What a shotgun wound!” Laurie marveled, gazing at the fearsome wound. Then looking at the multiple gashes, she added, “These look like they were done by a propeller.”

Jack straightened up. “Laurie, what’s on your mind? You didn’t come down here just to help us, did you?”

“No,” Laurie admitted. Her voice wavered behind her mask. “I guess I wanted a little moral support.”

“About what?” Jack questioned.

“Calvin just reamed me out,” Laurie said. “Apparently the night tech, Mike Passano, complained that I had been in last night accusing him of being involved in the theft of Franconi’s body. Can you imagine? Anyway, Calvin was really angry, and you know how I hate confrontation. I ended up crying, which made me furious at myself.”

Jack blew out through pursed lips. He tried to think of something to say other than “I told you so,” but nothing came to mind.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said limply.

“Thanks,” Laurie said.

“So you shed a few tears,” Jack said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“But I hate it,” Laurie complained. “It’s so unprofessional.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Jack said. “Sometimes I wish I could shed tears. Maybe if we could do some kind of partial trade, we’d both be better off.”

“Anytime!” Laurie said with conviction. This was the closest Jack had come to an admission of what Laurie had long suspected: his bottled-up grief was the major stumbling block for his own happiness.

“So, at least now you’ll drop your minicrusade,” Jack said.

“Heavens, no!” Laurie said. “If anything, it makes me more committed because it suggests just what I feared. Calvin and Bingham are going to try to sweep the episode under the carpet. It’s not right.”

“Oh, Laurie!” Jack moaned. “Please! This little run-in with Calvin will only be the beginning. You’re going to bring yourself nothing but grief.”

“It’s the principle,” Laurie said. “So don’t lecture me. I came to you for support.”

Jack sighed, fogging up his plastic face mask for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing in particular,” Laurie said. “Just be there for me.”

Fifteen minutes later, Laurie left the autopsy room. Jack had showed her all the external findings on his case, including the two puncture wounds. She’d listened with half an ear, obviously preoccupied with the Franconi business. Jack had had to restrain himself to keep from telling her again how he felt.

“Enough of this external stuff,” Jack said to Vinnie. “Let’s move on to the internal part of the autopsy.”

“It’s about time,” Vinnie complained. It was now after eight and bodies were coming in along with their assigned techs and medical examiners. Despite the early start, he and Jack were not significantly ahead of the others.

Jack ignored the friendly banter evoked by his hapless corpse. With all the obvious trauma, Jack had to vary the traditional autopsy technique and that took concentration. In contrast to Vinnie, Jack was oblivious to the passage of time. But again his meticulousness paid off. Although the liver had essentially been obliterated by the shotgun blasts, Jack discovered something extraordinary that might have been missed by someone doing a more haphazard, cursory job. He found the tiny remains of surgical sutures in the vena cava and in the ragged end of the hepatic artery. Sutures in such an area were uncommon. The hepatic artery brought blood to the liver, whereas the vena cava was the largest vein in the abdomen. Jack didn’t find any sutures in the portal vein, because that vessel was almost entirely obliterated.

“Chet, get over here,” Jack called. Chet McGovern was Jack’s office mate. He was busy at a neighboring table.

Chet put down his scalpel and stepped over to Jack’s table. Vinnie moved to the head to give him space.

“What’cha got?” Chet asked. “Something interesting?” He peered into the hole where Jack was working.

“I sure do,” Jack said. “I got a bunch of shotgun pellets, but I also have some vascular sutures.”

“Where?” Chet asked. He couldn’t make out any anatomical landmarks.

“Here,” Jack said. He pointed with the handle of a scalpel.

“Okay, I see them,” Chet said with admiration. “Nice pickup. There’s not a lot of endothelialization. I’d say they weren’t that old.”

“That’s my thought,” Jack said. “Probably within a month or two. Six months at the extreme.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I think the chances of me making an identification just went up a thousand percent,” Jack said. He straightened up and stretched.

“So the victim had abdominal surgery,” Chet said. “Lots of people have had abdominal surgery.”

“Not the kind of surgery this guy apparently had,” Jack said. “With sutures in the vena cava and the hepatic artery, I’m betting he’s in a pretty distinguished group. My guess is that he’d had a liver transplant not too long ago.”