Death Benefit

48.

CORNER OF FIRST AVENUE AND THIRTIETH STREET NEW YORK CITY MARCH 25, 2011, 4:40 P.M.

As the last of the daylight threatened to fade away completely thanks to the low clouds and rain, Pia paused outside the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, gazing at the front of the half-century-old building. It wasn’t inviting in the least, with its weird facade of blue glazed tiles that reminded her of the Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon. She’d seen pictures of the latter in an almost equally ancient Encyclop?dia Britannica at the academy. She glanced at the tile and then at the outdated 1960s-style aluminum-framed windows. World-class ugly.

Pia had been worried about making it in time, but she’d been lucky with the trains. Now that she was there, she wasn’t as confident as she had been about going in cold like this. She had no contacts there, no one she knew she could trust, no one she knew on any level, and this wasn’t a feeling she liked. She was very aware that this was the New York City OCME and she’d had a lot of bad experiences with various city agencies as a child. The state may have provided her with food and shelter, but it had also fed and sheltered her enemies and abused her. There was not a lot of reason not to worry that this city agency wouldn’t be equally as nasty.

Pia had another thought. What would happen if she went in there and actually succeeded in her mission? What if she asked to see Rothman’s body and somehow got permission and then found that he had in fact been irradiated, proving that he and Yamamoto were murdered? Her mind raced. There’d be a huge police action, and she’d be at the center. It would be a media circus. She and George would be questioned, she’d have to voice her myriad suspicions and assist with inquiries and make statements and possibly appear in court. But then she touched her tender jaw and remembered the beating and the warning she’d gotten the night before. She had no choice. The answers to her questions lay in this building, or they were nowhere at all.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Pia tucked her umbrella under her arm and went in the front door.

The reception area showed every bit of its fifty years. It was dark and somewhat dingy with a worn dark brown leather couch and a few other worn, mismatched chairs. The linoleum floor was cracked and scarred. On a low coffee table were some dog-eared magazines with the address labels torn off the covers. There was a crowd of people sprinkled on the furniture and some leaning against the wall. Soon it became apparent they were all together, members of a grieving African-American family with at least three generations represented. Two teenaged girls were hugging in a corner, crying softly.

“Excuse me,” Pia said, approaching the receptionist. A security guard sat at another table off to the side next to a set of glass doors. The receptionist, carefully dressed and pleasantly plump, was wearing a name tag that read “Marlene.” She looked up. She had a friendly smile.

“Yes, honey.”

“Hi. I’m a medical student and I’d very much like to talk to one of the medical examiners.”

“Are you here to find out about teaching opportunities at the OCME, like the elective for medical students?”

“Maybe,” Pia said, wanting to keep her options open.

“Maybe?” Marlene questioned, with a smile. “What is it exactly you want to talk to the medical examiner about?”

Pia hesitated.

“Actually, I’d like to discuss a specific case. Two cases, to be more precise.”

“Are they relatives of yours?”

“No.”

“Perhaps it’s best if you talk to the department of public relations if it’s information about a specific case you want, seeing as you’re not a relative.”

Pia saw she was losing ground. The last thing she wanted was to be shunted off to the public relations department, where she surely wouldn’t get access to Rothman’s corpse. Fearing she might be turned away, Pia studied the receptionist’s face, trying to think of an approach. Marlene seemed to be a congenial person and for a brief moment Pia toyed with the idea of telling at least a partial truth. Quickly she decided against it. Any way she explained the reason she was there that approached the truth would sound too bizarre.

“Actually, I also want to talk about the teaching opportunities here. The two cases I mentioned are teaching cases that I’ve heard about. I’ve come all the way down from Columbia.” Pia smiled to try to cover up any potential inconsistencies. “I’ve become interested in forensics. Very interested.”

Marlene was confused-what did this girl really want? She was also impressed that she had come all the way from Columbia Medical Center way up in Washington Heights. That took some effort, especially late on a Friday afternoon. Marlene didn’t have the heart to send her away without talking to someone. Besides, she was a pretty thing, and Marlene knew exactly who would be more than happy to speak with her.

“Okay then. I’ll call Dr. McGovern.”

“Is he a medical examiner?”

“He’s a medical examiner and he also happens to be the coordinator for teaching at OCME.”

“Thank you.” Pia was delighted.

Marlene put in a call to Chet McGovern and motioned for Pia to take a seat. Pia stepped away from the receptionist’s desk. She didn’t sit down as there were no chairs available. It was close to five o’clock, so she had to make a quick impression on this McGovern guy. A moment later the glass doors opened and a heavyset woman in a lab coat appeared, holding a clipboard. She introduced herself to the grieving family as Rebecca Marshall, an ID coordinator, and asked them to follow her. Dutifully the entire clan disappeared through a door marked ID ROOM.

Pia took one of the newly vacated seats and tried to be patient. While she waited she tried to decide what approach to take with the medical examiner. Should she be aggressive or coy? Eventually she decided she’d have to wait and see what kind of man Dr. McGovern turned out to be. She was hoping for someone on the youngish side, someone she could flirt with to a degree. Over the years she’d learned she had an effect on most men, and she thought that this was one of those situations where it could work to her advantage. Usually it was the opposite.

A few minutes later her prayers were answered when a youngish man came through the inner doors in a long white lab coat with the confident air of a doctor. When he took one look at Pia, who was the only person in the waiting room, his face lit up. Pia recognized the reaction. She’d seen it too many times not to. He appeared to be in his forties, early fifties at most. He was blond and good-looking in a masculine, all-American way, somewhat like George, and Pia could tell he was in good shape.

He came right over to Pia like a bee to honey and introduced himself. Pia did the same, avoiding his stare. She recognized the type immediately: an irrepressible Lothario who undoubtedly saw every attractive single woman younger than him as a challenge. She was encouraged.

After the introductions, which included him repeating proudly that he was indeed the current coordinator for teaching at the OCME, he said, “Let’s go up to my office and see if we can’t help you out. Thanks, Marlene.”

McGovern winked at Marlene behind Pia’s back, and Marlene rolled her eyes.

As McGovern escorted Pia to his third-floor office he peppered her with questions about where she was at medical school, what year, and what she thought she might like to specialize in. He mentioned how interesting medical forensics was and offered up his credentials.

Pia played along, answering McGovern’s questions, acting as if she were interested in his life story and achievements. They entered McGovern’s small office and sat on either side of McGovern’s untidy desk.

“Sorry about the mess. So what can I do for you, Miss, er . . .” McGovern’s eyes shone with the struggle he was having remembering her name.

“Grazdani. Thank you for seeing me with so little warning.”

“My pleasure, I’m sure.”

“I want to know about autopsies that were performed here on Dr. Tobias Rothman and Dr. Junichi Yamamoto from Columbia University Medical Center. They died the morning of March twenty-fourth-yesterday-of typhoid fever.” Pia was all business, taking McGovern aback. “I’m assuming autopsies have already been done,” she said.

“Er, well, er, I wasn’t involved in either one, and I haven’t heard much scuttlebutt around the office other than one of them was the famous Nobel-winning researcher. All I heard was that he died of an extremely aggressive infection. But let me check what we have.”

McGovern keenly wanted to be helpful. He looked at Pia, and she half smiled back at him. Using the computer on his desk, McGovern looked up the names to get the OCME accession numbers and then brought up the individual cases.

“Here we are. Yes, it says the autopsies were performed the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, so that was, er, yesterday. The day they died.” McGovern scrolled through one file, then the other.

“They certainly were both serious infectious cases with severe erosion of the gut, both small intestine and large. Wow! Anyway they’re considered OSHA cases, which was the main reason they were autopsied.”

“OSHA cases?” Pia questioned. She’d heard the acronym but couldn’t remember what it was for.

McGovern looked up. “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It’s a government agency that gets involved when there are deaths in the workplace involving public safety issues. The autopsy results will be reported to OSHA as the OCME is required to do by law.”

McGovern looked back at his screen.

“Okay. Both cases were done by Dr. Jack Stapleton. He’s our super-doc who does more cases than anyone else. He’s never satisfied, always pushing for more, works hard like he doesn’t have a life.

“Let’s see. The cause of death for both cases is listed as infectious disease-typhoid fever-and the manner of death is accidental. Let me ask you, do you know why the manner of death is considered accidental?”

Pia said that she didn’t, not adding that she might be challenging that official verdict.

“If the two researchers had come down with typhoid after eating at a restaurant, like the hospital cafeteria, then their deaths would have been labeled natural, since typhoid is a food-borne pathogen. But since they contracted the disease in a laboratory, or in a workplace setting, then it’s accidental because it certainly couldn’t be considered a natural process.”

McGovern was trying his best to sound authoritative.

“And if for some reason the researchers infected themselves on purpose, then the manner of death would be suicide. And last but not least, if someone purposely infected them, then it would be homicide.”

McGovern laughed and held his hands out wide as if to say, “See what a good teacher I am.”

Pia didn’t laugh with him or even smile. For her he was acting stereotypically transparent. He’s talking to me like I’m a college coed, she thought.

After a slightly awkward beat because of Pia’s lack of response, McGovern said, “Do you have any specific questions about the autopsies? If you do, I can call Jack and ask him directly. I know he’s still here.”

Chet McGovern would have liked nothing better than to have Pia indebted to him for his help. An hour earlier he’d learned his Friday-night plans had fallen through, and he hated spending the best night of the week on his own. He was about to ask her if she was free and if she might like to have a bite of dinner when he noticed she was lifting her bag up onto the desk. She then reached into it and pulled out a yellow instrument, a lead, and mike-like device attached. It took McGovern a minute but he recognized it as a Geiger counter.

“Well,” Pia said, “to be honest, what I’d really like to do is check if Rothman and Yamamoto might be emitting a small amount of radioactivity. I mean, if that would be all right.”

“I suppose,” McGovern said, not wanting to say “no” but confused by the strange request. There was obviously something she wasn’t telling him, but he decided to play along. “Why do you think they might be emitting radioactivity?”

Here was the thousand-dollar question. She still hadn’t decided how she was going to respond, even though she had been reasonably certain it would come up. She could go for broke and voice her suspicions or be more prudent and try to be obtuse about it. On the spot she decided on the latter.

“I’m involved in a project for a thesis involving radioisotopes used for research,” she said. Pia decided this wasn’t the time to raise suspicion about why she was really there at the OCME. She didn’t want to show her hand just yet. She didn’t want the OCME calling up the medical center and talking about her visit because it would reveal to whoever was involved in the conspiracy that she hadn’t stopped her meddling.

“I worked in Dr. Rothman’s lab for more than three years, and I know that certain isotopes were used in that period for various experiments. I just want to be sure there hasn’t been any contamination to the personnel. I checked Rothman’s lab and there was a very small amount of what we want to believe was rogue radiation in the office by his coffeemaker. I hope you can help. It’s for everyone’s peace of mind.”

Pia stopped. She knew what she had just said didn’t make total sense, but it sounded good. She smiled as pleasantly as she could. She hoped her smile didn’t look as fake as it felt. She could tell that McGovern was suspicious and hesitant, but that he hadn’t ruled out granting her request.

“Is that what you told Marlene downstairs?” he asked.

“I told her I was interested in a couple of particular cases.”

“Oh, okay. She said you wanted to know about the OCME electives. Never mind. Listen, we have radiation detectors down in the mortuary area just in case, and nothing has sounded recently, especially not yesterday. I know that for a fact.”

“Well, that’s not surprising because the isotopes we’ve been using in the lab were all alpha emitters for targeted alpha therapy such as bismuth-213 and lead-212, which wouldn’t be picked up by general radiation detectors made for beta and gamma radiation.”

Pia smiled again and McGovern nodded knowingly, even though he had no idea what she was talking about. The last time he read much about radioisotopes was over a decade earlier when he was studying for his boards. McGovern looked pensive. Pia thought he was thinking about alpha particles. In fact McGovern was running a mental checklist. At first he’d questioned himself, but no, he was certain. He’d never seen a better-looking medical student, which was saying something as they were, in his opinion, getting better-looking every year, at least at NYU, which was where most of the medical students he met in his position as OCME teaching coordinator were from. He should spend more time at Columbia, he thought.

“So you just want to make sure Rothman’s and Yamamoto’s bodies are not emitting alpha radiation?” McGovern asked, just to be certain he understood.

“That’s right. That’s why I brought this Geiger counter. It’s specially programmed for detecting alpha particles.”

McGovern went back to his monitor.

“Let’s see. There might just be a problem. The bodies of infectious cases like these don’t stay around here very long, for obvious reasons…. Yup!” he said suddenly, tapping the screen with a forefinger. “Just as I thought. There’s a problem. As I said, in serious infectious cases like typhoid fever and a few other communicable diseases, the bodies aren’t held here in the OCME. After the autopsies are completed and the cause and manner of death corroborated, the bodies are released to the families and the respective funeral homes and cleared for cremation. In other words,” McGovern said, “the researchers’ bodies are no longer here. You’re about twenty hours too late.”

Pia mouthed a repressed “shit,” which McGovern caught and appreciated. He associated colorful language with feistiness, and he loved feistiness in a woman. It was his hope that now that he’d ascertained the bodies were no longer at the OCME, perhaps they could move on to more interesting topics, like Friday-night plans. Meanwhile, Pia stared into the middle distance, thinking. She could hardly reproach herself; twenty-four hours ago, when the bodies left, she’d never even heard of polonium-210.

Watching Pia’s expression, Chet suddenly was afraid that after hearing the news she might get up and leave. She was clearly disappointed. In his mind, her leaving at that point would be a major tragedy because so far he’d not gotten either cell phone number or an e-mail address from her.

“The guy who did both autopsies is just down the hall,” Chet reminded Pia. “And he’s a friend. So if you have a specific question about what he found, I’m happy to go ask him.”

Pia was disappointed. It had never occurred to her that Rothman’s and Yamamoto’s bodies would have already been sent to funeral homes. She thought briefly about trying to find out the names of the funeral homes, but she didn’t know how she would do that without raising a lot of suspicion. As for talking to the ME down the hall, what would possibly be the point?