Cure

13

March 25, 2010

Thursday, 4:45 p.m.

Laurie had the taxi drop her off directly in front of OCME so she didn’t have to cross First Avenue, which was bumper-to-bumper with traffic. It was rush hour in full swing. It had taken her well over an hour to get from Midtown North Precinct back to OCME, which should have taken less than half that. New York City traffic was worse than ever.

She waved at Marlene as she entered, then headed for the third floor. Before reaching her office, she poked her head into Jack’s open doorway.

“Where the hell have you been?” Jack asked, pretending to be irritated. “I’ve stopped into your office several times, and I knew you weren’t in the pit.”

Laurie’s face assumed a mischievous smile as she dug in her shoulder bag and produced two computer disks. She held them up for Jack to see.

“What have you got?” Jack asked as he leaned back in his desk chair and stretched. In front of him was a mass of case files, books, journals, microscope slides, and lab reports, as well as a hair dryer with its cowling off, exposing its innards, suggesting he was doing twenty things at once. He was wearing latex surgical gloves.

“A couple of exciting movies,” Laurie said.

Jack made a face of exaggerated disbelief.

“Really,” Laurie persisted. “Thrillers, I’m sure.”

“Come on,” Jack said. He reached out and took one, which was labeled NYPD. “What in tarnation?”

“Video from each of the cameras at the A train platform at Columbus Circle.”

Jack allowed his shoulders to slump as he let out a deep breath. “Don’t tell me you are planning on watching all this. What’s it, ten hours of people getting on and off the subway?”

“More like seven.”

“And you’re planning on watching it all.”

“If I have to,” Laurie said proudly. “I know it’s going to lack something in plot and characterization, and it will probably be in grainy black and white, but I’m going to watch it just the same.”

“Laurie, if you don’t mind me saying this, I think you’re going overboard on your one and only case. Why on earth would you be willing to subject yourself to such torture? Just because you found no pathology on the case isn’t a healthy reason to beat yourself up. Tomorrow, when we come in, you can check the slides, as I’m sure you asked Maureen O’Conner to do them overnight, and you can check the toxicology screen, because I’m sure you asked John for a rush on that, too, and then be done with it. You don’t need to watch seven hours of video.”

“I’m counting on getting new cases in the morning.”

“Then all the better. So that means you check the histology and the toxicology in the afternoon, and I’m sure it is going to be negative, case closed, death certificate signed and delivered.”

“The security video might show me something I need to know.”

“Like what?”

“Like whether the victim had a seizure or not. The nine-one-one caller wasn’t certain. It was a fleeting image that he got while he was compressed in a surging crowd and being pushed onto the train.”

“Hmm,” Jack said. “I suppose that could be significant information. Anyway, I commend you for your thoroughness. I doubt that anyone else here would have thought of getting security tapes. Tell me! Are you just getting back now or have you already been to your office?”

“I’m just getting back now,” Laurie said. “Why do you ask?”

“Not for any particular reason,” Jack said distractedly.

Laurie looked askance at Jack. It seemed to her that he had a kind of mischievous smile on his face where the corners of his mouth were slightly curved upward.

“Really?” she questioned. “Why did you ask me if I’d been to my office?”

“Oh, it’s not a big thing,” Jack said. “The last time I was in there looking for you, I noticed a note from John with a normal blood alcohol level on your case. I guessed that you had managed somehow to get him to do it stat. I was wondering if you’d had a chance to see it?” He chuckled.

“No, I haven’t seen it yet,” Laurie said, somewhat confused. Sometimes Jack could act slightly weird, and this was one of those times. When it did happen, she tended to attribute it to his tendency to be thinking about a dozen issues all at the same time, as the mess on his desk suggested he was doing at that moment.

“What time do you want to head home?” Laurie questioned to change the subject. She was anxious to leave. She’d made it a point, with effort, not to call Leticia for Leticia’s benefit. And since Leticia had not called her, she’d been out of touch for longer than she felt comfortable with. She wanted to know when Jack was willing to leave so she could use it as an excuse to call to let Leticia know when they’d be home.

Jack shrugged. “How about after I write up what I’ve found here. It’s pretty interesting — at least to me.”

“Are you talking about the hair dryer?” Laurie asked.

“I am indeed,” Jack said as he picked up the appliance. “Remember the case I was just beginning when you’d finished your case.”

“The Delta cabin attendant. What did you find?”

“I found what you found: nothing. Well, it was nothing, if you discount the insignificant uterine fibroids. So I called down to Bart Arnold and asked if he could send one of the MLIs back to the woman’s apartment and gather up all the handheld appliances from the bathroom, which he did. I got the hair dryer and that dental contraption. What’s it called?”

“Waterpik.”

“Anyway, the Waterpik was fine, but look at this hair dryer!” Jack picked up the apparatus and applied the contacts of a voltmeter to one of the prongs of the plug and the remaining casing. He then leaned back so Laurie could read the gauge.

“Zero ohms!” she said, reminding her that she’d had a similar case the first year at OCME. “Low-voltage electrocution.”

“Which is why the boyfriend saw her walk out of the bathroom before collapsing and dying.”

“But it looks like a new hair dryer!”

“I agree, which makes the case doubly interesting. Take a peek inside at that black wire.” Jack pointed with a screwdriver.

“It looks like it’s been stripped, going over that metallic edge of the dryer’s chassis.”

“My opinion exactly. When the young woman got out of the shower, maybe even standing on a damp floor, and turned on the hair dryer, she got zapped.”

“It was a homicide, then, for certain,” Laurie said. “Good pickup. Did she have any burns, like on the soles of her feet?”

“Nothing,” Jack said. “But that’s not too surprising, since one-third of low-voltage electrocutions don’t have any burns.”

“How did you remember that?”

“I didn’t,” Jack admitted. “I just read it before you popped in.”

“Do you think the boyfriend did it, maybe while the victim was on her trip?”

“It would be my guess, but it might be hard to prove. One way would be to find the boyfriend’s fingerprints somewhere inside the hair dryer, which is why I’m wearing gloves. Whose ever prints are in there is guilty of murder.”

“Good pickup,” Laurie repeated wistfully. It was just the kind of case she wished she’d come back to. It required experience, knowledge, and a certain creativity to put it all together, and in return it provided a true feeling of accomplishment that justice might be served.

“So how long will you need to write up the report about the hair dryer?”

“About a half-hour.”

“Okay. As soon as you finish, come down to my office and we’ll head home.”

“Has everything been okay with Leticia and JJ?”

“Apparently I’m not quite as indispensable as I thought. Everything’s gone smoothly. Leticia even told me not to call so often.”

“In so many words.”

“In so many words.”

“I have to say, such a comment seems mildly inappropriate.”

“I have to agree with you.”

“See you in thirty minutes.”

Laurie pulled out her cell phone as she walked the quiet third-floor hallway. With Jack’s comment as encouragement, she dialed Leticia. She waved as she passed the deputy chief’s door, but Calvin Washington was too busy to notice. As she approached her office, Leticia still had not picked up. As she entered, she began to count the rings. By the time she’d put down her bag and the two computer disks, she’d reached ten. By the time she’d hung up her coat, she was nearing fifteen. Finally, on the seventeenth ring, the phone was picked up. By that time, Laurie’s heart rate had reached approximately one hundred and fifty.

“Hello,” Leticia said calmly, to the point of suggesting boredom.

“Is everything all right?” Laurie blurted, although she was already reassured that everything was fine by Leticia’s forced serenity.

“We’re doing just fine,” Leticia said.

“The phone rang so long.”

“Well, that was because we were having a little bath here after a particularly dirty diaper.”

Once again Laurie felt mildly embarrassed at her overreaction. “I just wanted to let you know that we’ll be home in an hour or so.”

“We’ll be here,” Leticia said.

“How about dinner?”

“That’s next on the agenda.”

“Tell the little guy we miss him.”

“I’ll let him know,” Leticia said apathetically.

Laurie hung up the phone feeling some ambivalence. It was obvious Leticia was annoyed at the call, but so was Laurie, at Leticia’s inability to cut her a little slack on the first day. Laurie recognized that a dozen or so calls over the course of the day was over the top without there being any problems. At the same time, Laurie realized she should be giving Leticia a little slack as well, since calls could be distracting with the amount of attention a one-and-a-half-year-old child required.

Sitting down at her desk, Laurie picked up the lab slip that Jack had mentioned. It indicated the BAC, or blood alcohol level, was 0.03 percent, meaning it was well under the legal limit, but not zero, suggesting the man had had a drink or two within a couple of hours of his death, a fact that Laurie confidently felt had nothing to do with his demise.

Adding the lab slip to the victim’s case file, Laurie caught sight of a plain white envelope on her keyboard with her complete name typed out: Dr. Laurie Montgomery-Stapleton. Stuck to the front was a Post-it note from Marlene saying the envelope had been found in the foyer, having been slipped under the front door. Taking out the single sheet of white paper it contained, Laurie unfolded it and saw it was a short typed message addressed to her simply as “Doctor.”

Although having caught her breath on the first reading, as Laurie read it again a slight smile formed at the corners of her mouth. When she read it a third time, the smile turned into a suppressed giggle. When Laurie asked herself who could have been responsible for writing such a note, she immediately thought it had to have been Jack. Childishly inappropriate, it was his type of humor, and he did want her to stop obsessing about the case. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more sure she was that it had been Jack. The strange way he’d asked her if she’d been in her office before visiting his was a dead giveaway. It was also an indication that he expected her to run to him and be all out of sorts, having gotten such a scary letter. She then read it for the fourth time, and again laughed. It was so improbable. If someone was concerned about her investigation and wanted her to stop, the last thing they’d want to do was call attention to it, as it would undoubtedly solidify her interest in investigating it more intensely.

As soon as Laurie realized who was responsible for the note, she started to think how she could turn the tables — namely, get back at Jack, as it was inappropriate at best. Rather than overreact, she thought she’d play it cool. It would be more fun to ignore it and see how long Jack could tolerate her lack of response and not knowing whether she’d found it or not. Laurie slipped the refolded note back into its envelope and placed it in her center desk drawer. She was confident her total lack of response to this childish prank was going to drive Jack bananas.

She turned to her case file, a yellow pocket-like affair made of heavy, stiff paper. It contained all the paperwork associated with the case: a case worksheet, a partially filled-out death certificate, an inventory of medicolegal case records, two sheets for autopsy notes that she’d already filled out, a telephone notice of death as received by communications, an identification sheet, an investigative report by the MLI, a sheet for the autopsy report, and a sheet to show the body had been x-rayed, fingerprinted, and photographed. The photographs were also in the files, and these Laurie removed. There was a full frontal photo, and ones of the back and profile of the body. Laurie put them in her bag, as she planned to refer to them that evening when she got around to watching at least some of the subway disks. Then she had another idea. Since Jack was right about how long it would take to watch the whole thing, she thought she’d narrow down the footage, if possible. Also in the case file were the phone numbers for the 911 operator and the 911 caller, Robert Delacroix. Laurie dialed Delacroix’s number, and this time the man answered. Laurie identified herself and apologized for bothering him again.

“No bother whatsoever,” Robert responded. “Anything I can do that makes me feel less guilty is good.”

“Can you tell me where you were on the platform when you saw the Asian man get into trouble?”

“Gosh,” Robert said, pausing to think. “It was so crowded, I never got too far from the staircase.”

“Could you see the end of the platform in either direction?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“So you were somewhere in the middle? I guess that would be the only choice.”

“I’d say that’s a safe assumption.”

She thanked Delacroix and hung up, then decided to wait for Jack to finish writing up the autopsy on the hair dryer in his office. It was her thought that lingering around him would spur him to wrap it up more quickly. Now that she was ready to leave, she wanted to get home as soon as possible.