Cure

10

March 25, 2010

Thursday, 2:30 p.m.

Laurie took off her coat and hung it on the back of her office door, then pushed the door closed. At least for a while she wanted to be out of contact with the rest of the world. She’d just returned from a rather rowdy lunch in her honor at a nearby restaurant called the Waterfront Ale House. Feeling as she did, she would have preferred not to have gone, but she couldn’t refuse, since the lunch was celebrating her return to work, and Jack had been the organizer. Most of the MEs had shown up, filled with good cheer and laughter. For Laurie it had been exhausting to act as happy as everyone else. The day was not going nearly as well as she’d hoped, with only one case with no identity and no cause or manner of death. And she couldn’t stop thinking about JJ and Leticia. Laurie had stopped calling when Leticia asked, saying Laurie was interfering with her ability to pay adequate attention to JJ. “If there’s the slightest problem, I’ll call you,” Leticia had insisted earlier. “Please relax and do your work. Everything is going to be fine.”

Laurie sat down at her spotlessly clean desk. She stared at the phone for a moment. “Screw it!” she said abruptly, then angrily punched in Leticia’s number. “Nobody’s going to tell me I can’t call about my child!”

The phone rang more times than Laurie expected and caused instant alarm, compounded by Leticia being out of breath when she finally answered. “Sorry,” Leticia said. “I was pushing JJ up a steep hill when the phone began to ring. I wanted to make it to the top.”

“Sounds like you two are in the park,” Laurie said with a combination of guilt and relief.

“You got that right. He loves it, and it couldn’t be a nicer day.”

“Sorry to be a bother,” Laurie said.

Leticia didn’t respond.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything is just fine,” Leticia answered.

“Did he have his lunch?”

“No, I’m denying him food and water,” Leticia said, then laughed. “Just kidding. He ate a big lunch and now he’s sleeping. He couldn’t be better. Now get back to work.”

“Aye, aye, madam,” Laurie said.

After a few more parting comments, Laurie hung up the handset.

Then she looked at her desk and noted again the lack of reminders about pending cases. All there was was the single case file of her unidentified patient. She pondered how little she knew of the man and how sad it was that he was all alone in the cooler downstairs. She wondered where his wife was, and if she missed him. Laurie chewed her cheek and tried to think if there was some way to learn anything more, anything at all about her lonely, unidentified corpse.

Suddenly she snatched up the case folder and dumped out its contents to find Cheryl’s note. What she was suddenly interested in was the time of the 911 call. After she found it, five-thirty-seven p.m., she turned on her monitor and searched through her address book for the 911 call center out in Brooklyn. With a mind-set of excitement, which she tried to suppress, she dialed and asked to be connected to her old contact, Cynthia Bellows.

When she got Cynthia’s voicemail, she left a message, then gave Detective Ron Steadman another try. If he was still resistant, she’d go to Lou Soldano. She imagined that Lou, having recently made captain, could certainly light a fire under the man.

To Laurie’s surprise, he answered after a couple of rings and sounded like a different man — maybe not much friendlier but significantly more awake. Laurie reintroduced herself and asked if he remembered her from her call that morning.

“Vaguely,” Ron said. “What was it about?”

“An unidentified Asian corpse from the Fifty-ninth Street station that came in last evening.”

“Now I remember! You were giving me a hard time about not rushing out and single-handedly solving the identity crisis. What’s up? Did someone suddenly show up and make the ID?”

“I wish,” Laurie said. “No ID yet, so I thought I’d view the tapes from the subway platform cameras.”

Ron did not respond immediately. Then, with some exasperation, he said, “Why would you want me to have to call around for tapes on a natural-death case, especially one that’s not yet twenty-four hours old? That’s a lot of work for nothing if a family member shows up in the next couple of hours.”

“How do I get copies of the tapes, or whatever form they come in?” Laurie persisted. She heard Ron take in a deep breath.

“You really want to go through with this?”

“I do. The nine-one-one caller said the victim might have had a seizure, but he wasn’t certain. It would be important to confirm it. It would point toward a neurological cause of death rather than a circulatory cause, meaning we’d look harder at the brain even though on gross there was nothing.”

“Jesus, lady...” Ron began.

“The name is Laurie Stapleton,” Laurie interrupted.

“I got a hundred-plus cases here on my desk that are all unsolved and that need my attention. This really isn’t the best use of my time — the case isn’t even a day old.”

“How much work effort does it take?” Laurie questioned, hoping not to be denied.

“I got to get in touch with officers at the Brooklyn Special Investigation Unit and tell them what I need.”

“Okay,” Laurie said. “Is that it?”

“I suppose,” Ron said, a bit embarrassed at how simple Laurie’s request really was.

“How do you get the information?”

“As an e-mail. I’ll burn a disk or two for you. It’s a lot of data.”

“Could you just forward it as an e-mail attachment to me?”

“I know it sounds funny, but I’m not permitted to do that. But I can give you a disk if you’re who you say you are.”

“When could you do it?”

“Now, if I reach the right people. What period of time at the subway station are you looking for?”

“I guess about a half-hour centered on the nine-one-one call at five-thirty-seven p.m., so let’s say five-ten to five-fifty-five.”

“Okay,” Ron said. “All nine cameras?”

“Might as well be thorough.”

“That’s over six hours of watching time. Are you up to it?”

“Funny you should ask. I happen to have a lot of time on my hands. How soon would you have it in hand?”

“Let me make the call to the Transit Bureau Special Investigation Unit. I’ll knock it right out as soon as they send it to me. Maybe within the hour.”

“My goodness,” Laurie commented. She’d found over the years that city servants were never quite so accommodating. Ron had gone from one extreme to the other.

“I’ll call you right back. Is it a deal?”

“Absolutely,” Laurie said, but before hanging up, she added, “I hope you don’t take offense, but you’re a different person than you were this morning, and it’s meant as a compliment.”

“This morning you caught me before coffee and my Red Bull.”

No sooner had Laurie disconnected when the phone rang. Picking it back up, she found herself talking with Cynthia Bellows out at the 911 call center. After some small talk, Laurie described the details of the case and said she’d like to contact the 911 caller.

“Do you have the time of the call?” Cynthia asked. “That makes it a lot easier.”

Laurie gave the time.

“Okay, I got it here on the screen,” Cynthia said, “and let’s see what we have. Actually, we have three calls, though I suppose you want only the first. The other two callers were told that the incident had already been reported and that police and the EMT had been dispatched.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Laurie said. As Laurie reached for a pen and paper, she heard the click of her call-waiting. Excusing herself and asking Cynthia to hold on for a moment, Laurie changed lines, and as she had expected, it was Ron.

“Good news, my friend,” Ron said. “I got right through to the guys at the Special Investigation Unit. Apparently, there are two more cameras besides the nine of the new security system. For the old system, that includes the two nonrecording cameras used for the train’s engineer and conductor to make sure all doors are clear, plus two more recording cameras at the fare booth and at the elevator.”

Feeling anxious about Cynthia hanging on the other line, Laurie interrupted Ron and asked if she could call him right back.

“No need,” Ron said. “I just wanted to let you know there’d be two additional feeds. I should have the material in a few minutes, and I’ll have the disks burned so you can come get them any time you want.”

“Terrific,” Laurie said. “Your precinct is on West Fifty-fourth Street?”

“Three-oh-six West Fifty-fourth. I’ll see you when I see you. I’ll be here until five.”

Laurie thanked Ron profusely, then switched back to Cynthia, feeling guilty. “I’m sorry,” Laurie began.

“No problem,” Cynthia said graciously. “Do you have something to write on?”

The caller’s name was Robert Delacroix. After thanking Cynthia and disconnecting, Laurie dialed Robert Delacroix immediately. While waiting for the call to go through, she wrote the number on a three-by-five card and added it to the case file. When she got his outgoing message, she left her cell phone number with the request that he call her back as soon as possible. She explained that she was a medical examiner but was leaving her mobile number, not her office number, as she was on her way to the police station.

With that taken care of, Laurie headed outside to catch a cab for the Midtown North to meet up with Ron. While she sat in traffic, Laurie’s mind turned to JJ and how well he was apparently doing in Leticia’s care. Suddenly her mobile phone rang. It was Robert Delacroix.

Laurie thanked the man for calling and thanked him also for acting as a responsible citizen and making the 911 call in the first place. “Too many New Yorkers are capable of just walking past someone in distress,” Laurie continued.

“At first I assumed someone had already called, like I guess a lot of people generally think. But then I said, Hell, there’s no reason why not to call even if I’m not the first.”

“As I mentioned on your voicemail, I’m a medical examiner,” Laurie said.

“I guess the man on the subway platform died.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“That’s too bad. He looked young.”

“Can I ask you exactly what you saw?”

“Well, it wasn’t much. I mean, it all happened so quickly. The train had been delayed, and the platform was really crowded. When the doors opened, there was a surge forward, making it difficult for the people trying to get off the train.”

“So there was a little pushing and shoving.”

“I’d say a lot of pushing and shoving. Anyway, out of the corner of my eye, no more than three or four feet away, I saw this Asian man, he was kinda bucking, like his head was going back and forth.”

“You thought he was having a seizure or something — at least that’s what you said.”

“That’s how I described it to the operator. I said to myself, It’s so damn crowded the man is having a seizure and he can’t even fall down. I mean, we were all packed together and pushing forward because everyone was afraid they weren’t going to get on the train.”

“I get the picture,” Laurie said. “Did you try to help?”

“Not really. He was to my left at that point. I’m not even sure I could have gotten to him if I’d tried. I was being pushed ahead by the people behind me. And to be truthful, I thought the people right next to him were attempting to help. In fact, when I got to the train’s door, I tried to look back. At first I couldn’t even see him because he wasn’t all that tall.”

“We’re here, lady,” the cabdriver said, looking at Laurie in the rearview mirror.

“Can you hold on?” Laurie asked Robert, a little flustered at her predicament. “I’m in a taxi and have to pay and get out.”

“I can wait,” Robert assured her.

Laurie paid the driver and climbed from the cab to stand in front of the Midtown North Precinct, its flag snapping in the breeze and a bevy of cop cars parked every which way.

“I’m back,” Laurie said. “You were saying...”

“I was saying that as I was boarding, I got a fleeting look at the man lying on the platform. Standing by him were two other Asians. But it was truly fleeting, because I was looking through a bunch of other riders pushing to get on the train, some of whom didn’t make it. I was also getting my cell phone out.”

“At that time, did it look like the man was still seizing?”

“It happened so fast, with such a limited view, but if I had to guess, I’d say no. I was also dialing the nine-one-one operator to get the call in before the doors closed, and I lost the little signal I had.”

“Look,” Laurie said. “I really appreciate your being willing to talk with me. You have my number if anything else comes to mind, anything at all.”

“I will,” Robert said. “Actually, now that you’ve made me relive the moment, I feel guilty at having boarded the train. Maybe I should have tried a little harder to see if I could have helped.”

“Don’t torture yourself,” Laurie said. “You made a nine-one-one call so medical help could arrive.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

Laurie disconnected her call and then climbed the steps into the busy precinct.