Genesis

Chapter 18

May 9th

7:40 A.M.

During most of her rotations as a pathology resident, Aria was already at the hospital complex by 7:30 in the morning. It was routine and expected. While on her forensic rotation, however, she was arriving progressively later, aware that things generally didn’t get under way at the OCME until 8:00 or even 8:30. This more relaxed schedule didn’t bother her in the slightest. In fact, it seemed to make more sense. She’d always wondered why American medicine felt obligated to start the day so early, particularly surgery, where scalpels were expected to make the first cut at 7:30 sharp, meaning all the other preparations had to be done by then. She also knew that in Europe things were different, particularly in the United Kingdom, where the gentlemanly time of 9:00 A.M. seemed appropriate. So, it wasn’t out of the question for Aria to be just climbing into a rideshare at twenty minutes to 8:00.

In keeping with her late start, she had gotten significantly less sleep than she was accustomed to having. The night before she’d stayed up until the wee hours engrossed in genetic genealogy. With her ability to concentrate, Aria was a fast and effective reader, a skill that had made getting through medical school significantly easier for her than for most other students. She had now read, or at least skimmed, which for her was just about the equivalent of reading, both books that Madison Bryant had loaned her. The highlighting and underlining that Madison had done had not hindered Aria in the slightest and had actually helped to a degree. The benefit of having digested the two books was that now she shared Madison’s belief that genetic genealogy might very well work in finding the unknown male whom Aria was now calling “Lover Boy.” The more she had thought about the affair combined with what she had been able to learn from Madison Bryant and Evelyn Mabry, the more convinced she’d become that Lover Boy had had some significant role in Kera’s death. Whether it was a homicide, even if inadvertent, she wasn’t prepared to contend, but she certainly intended to find out. What she hoped was that Madison would prove to be as helpful a resource as she had suggested she’d be when they had met at Nobu.

As per usual, the morning rush-hour traffic was horrendous, particularly along Central Park South, the road that bordered the park at its southern end. A bit nervously, she checked the time with her phone. Although she’d not been at all concerned about her time of arrival since she’d started the forensic rotation, now that she had found something that truly interested her, namely finding Lover Boy, she didn’t want to annoy anyone, particularly the chief, Laurie Montgomery. At least until she’d solved this current quest, Aria preferred to stay in the chief’s good graces.

Instead of fretting over what she couldn’t alter, she put her phone away and went back to her musing about Lover Boy. Her first thought had been that Lover Boy was probably married, and now that she had had time to think about it, she was convinced that had to be the case. It might also explain why the sudden conception was most likely not thought of as a blessing. Instead it could have made serious waves. It seemed to make sense, and as such further lowered Aria’s opinion of the male gender.

With a sudden feeling of restlessness and the need to do something, Aria struggled to get her phone back out from the pocket of her jeans. Thinking about Lover Boy prompted her to put in an early call to Madison, hoping to catch her before her first client. With the phone pressed against her ear, she listened to the simulated ringing. After the fourth ring, she sensed that Madison wasn’t going to answer, and she guessed why: It was a bit after eight, and Madison most likely was meeting with her first family of the day.

Aria was planning on leaving a voice message to request a call back as soon as it was convenient, but voice mail never picked up. With a shrug, she disconnected. Instead she typed a text message, asking for Madison to contact her as soon as possible. As a teaser, she added: I read both books and I’m psyched.

Once Aria managed to get to Second Avenue, the trip picked up speed. Although she had made the same trip in just over fifteen minutes without traffic, on this particular morning it ended up taking almost an hour. She was dropped off at 8:35, and despite reasonable expectations of being close to being on time, she was more than a half hour late.

Normally Aria first went to the so-called residents’ room on the second floor to leave her personal belongings like a coat and any books she’d brought. It was located just beyond the space euphemistically called the lunch room, thanks to its assortment of vending machines. Both were subpar in most every respect, although the lunch room at least had some high windows that let in a bit of outside light. Of course, there was no view as the neighboring building was a scant fifteen or twenty feet away. The residents’ room was more like a closet with two aged metal desks pressed up against each other and no windows. The redeeming part was that both desks supported monitors with Internet access and first-class microscopes.

Being late and having no coat other than her white resident’s jacket, she went directly to the ID, or identification, unit, where she had been told all the medical examiners gathered in the morning. She’d learned that one of the medical examiners on a weekly rotating basis made a final decision about which of the bodies that had come in during the night should be autopsied and dispersed them among his or her colleagues. By the time Aria walked in there were only two medical examiners still there, Dr. Chet McGovern and a woman of Indian extraction named Dr. Riva Mehta. Both were seated at what was generally called the scheduling desk. A small number of case charts littered the desktop. Everyone had already gotten their assignments and had left to descend to the pit.

“Well, well!” Chet said. “It’s so nice of you to grace us with your presence.”

Aria ignored his sarcasm and went to the communal coffee pot, which she had been pressured to contribute to monetarily. She poured herself a cup and mentally prepared to deal with McGovern, who had rubbed her the wrong way from the first moments she’d met him. It was the way he had looked at her that keyed off her sixth sense even before he’d said anything. Dr. Mehta she had also met and had observed doing a trauma victim. It had been a pedestrian hit and run over by a yellow cab and dragged a hundred yards or so. Aria had found the case mildly interesting although she’d not learned anything that wasn’t obvious. To her, so much of forensics was just common sense.

“There was more traffic than usual,” Aria said after walking back to the scheduling desk.

“How come your colleague, Dr. Muller, manages to get here on time every day?” Chet said more as a statement than a question. He had an accusatory smirk on his face that irked Aria to no end.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said with disinterest. And then, not being able to control herself, added, “Maybe he mistakenly thinks he is learning something valuable.” The reality was that she had little respect for Tad Muller. The ass-kisser was still acting like he was trying to get into medical school rather than someone who was almost within a year of finishing his residency. Aria was almost embarrassed to be on the rotation with him.

“Well, let me tell you something, young lady,” Chet said. “I went out of my way to talk Dr. Stapleton into allowing you to work with him on an interesting gunshot case this morning. The problem is that Dr. Stapleton is a dynamo and has been down in the pit since seven thirty. For all I know he could be nearly finished. My advice is to get your butt down there ASAP. When you’re done, find me, and I’ll assign you another case. We’ve got a full schedule today.”

Irritated anew by the patronizing “young lady” appellation and without bothering to respond, Aria broke off staring at Chet and walked out of the ID area. She was carrying her coffee mug even though on her first day McGovern had told her to avoid doing it. She considered it was one of those pointless hazing rules that only residents were supposed to honor. Once at the rear elevator, she had to wait for it to arrive. She could have used the stairs as it would have been quicker, but she felt a passive-aggressive urge not to make any effort. Once downstairs, she passed the mortuary office and went into the women’s locker room to get into scrubs. Five minutes later she was pushing into the autopsy room. The odor immediately reminded her of yesterday’s autopsy of Kera Jacobsen, making her wish she could just skip the autopsy room altogether and work on the case she was actually interested in.

As she expected, Dr. Jack Stapleton and his favorite technician, Vinnie Amendola, were using table #1 at the far end. She had learned that since he started before everyone else, he got to choose which table he wanted. With her apron, gloves, and face shield already in place, she was prepared to participate. How much she did depended on the whim of the individual medical examiner, and it ranged from her essentially doing the case as with Dr. Montgomery the previous afternoon, to doing next to nothing as had happened with the deputy chief, Dr. George Fontworth, two days before that. Since she had yet to be slotted to work with Dr. Stapleton, she had no idea of what to expect. Word had it that he was fast as Dr. McGovern had just suggested, which under the circumstances Aria appreciated. What she really wanted to do was get back to Kera’s case. Before she left the locker room, she’d checked her messages in hopes of having some response from Madison, but there wasn’t any.

All the tables were in operation, making it necessary for Aria to walk the length of the room. The corpses on each table were in varying stages of dissection, with some intact and others gutted. Dr. Stapleton’s was one of the ones that appeared to be near the end of the autopsy. The corpse was that of a mildly overweight Caucasian male, who Aria guessed was in his twenties or early thirties. The right side of his scalp had been shaved to expose a grazing bullet wound. A second entrance wound was on the right thigh. She couldn’t tell if there were any wounds to the chest or abdomen because the body was flayed open with the margins folded back.

“Speak of the devil,” Dr. Stapleton said loud enough for Aria to hear, when he caught sight of her approaching. “Vinnie, check this out! Our prayers have been answered. It seems that Dr. Nichols has deigned to join us after all.” He was holding a wooden dowel about three feet long. One of the OCME photographers was standing nearby, obviously taking pictures as Dr. Stapleton would position the dowel. It was Aria’s immediate impression they were most likely documenting the tracks of bullets.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Nichols,” Dr. Stapleton added when she reached the table. “Did you have a nice lunch?”

Tad Muller had already warned Aria several days earlier that Dr. Stapleton thought of himself as being sarcastically humorous and clever at double entendre. She wondered if anyone had warned Stapleton that she was immune to such barbs.

“Traffic was heavier than usual,” Aria said simply.

For a minute Jack stared at this resident as he recalled most everything that Laurie had said about her, including her having an unappealing, possibly sociopathic personality and a negative appreciation of the male gender. Although blaming traffic for being that late seemed almost comical to him, he held back from calling her on what he imagined was a passive-aggressive stunt. What was the point, especially since Laurie was making a considerable effort on her behalf? It was Laurie who he was worried about, not this apparently damaged individual. Besides, she was supposedly smart, particularly with surgical pathology, and could contribute without having to deal directly with patients. Uncharacteristically, Jack forwent the grand opportunity to do verbal battle with someone he guessed might be a reasonably worthy opponent. With those thoughts in mind, he cleared his throat and said: “Sorry about the traffic, and now that you are here, let us fill you in on this rather interesting case.”

Vinnie’s head popped up and he stared at Jack with disbelief. Although he personally had not had any interaction with Aria, he’d heard the rumors about her uppity and privileged attitude from the mortuary techs who’d had to deal with her. When Jack had told him that morning that she would be joining them on the gunshot case, Vinnie had been secretly pleased. He’d fully expected to witness the woman’s deserved comeuppance, which Jack would surely supply.

“How many forensic gunshot cases have you observed?” Jack asked in a normal tone of voice.

“This is my first,” Aria admitted, almost afraid of what might be coming. She didn’t want a lecture. All she wanted was to get an idea of the forensic approach to a victim of gun violence and then get the hell out of the autopsy room. She had far better things to do that were going to be far more intellectually stimulating and emotionally rewarding. With her reading speed and retention ability, she could read an entire forensic textbook chapter on gunshot wounds in thirty minutes without having to put up with the autopsy room odor or the need to stand around on a concrete floor for several hours with people she couldn’t have cared less about.

Unfortunately, from her perspective Jack did launch into lecture mode. He started by giving the background on the case they were doing. The victim was a reputed burglary suspect who had resisted arrest by drawing a gun and shooting at the arresting officers. The officers returned fire and killed the individual, striking him six times. What the police were looking for was “justifiable homicide.”

“After the full-body X-ray to see all the retained projectiles,” Jack said, “it is important to examine the body with all the clothes on. The reason is to see if there is any powder residue on the clothes since one of the main objectives of the forensic autopsy is to determine the range of fire, or how far away the gun was from the victim.”

Aria nodded. She wanted to tell Jack that he needn’t bother telling her stuff that was intuitive, but she didn’t. She felt she had to grin and bear it as Jack droned on, talking about the need to try to determine the sequence of injuries when there were multiple gunshot wounds, as was the situation with the current case. Next Jack began to talk about differentiating entrance wounds from exit wounds and why such a determination was key. “On this case, two of the entrance wounds were in the back, which doesn’t bode well for what the police are hoping we will be reporting, especially when you take into consideration the angle of entrance. Let me show you what I mean.”

Jack picked up one of the cadaver’s arms and reached it across to Vinnie. “Give me a hand. Let’s show her the back.”

With Vinnie pulling on the arm and Jack lifting the edge of the torso, the cadaver was rotated onto its left side. “Here you can see two entrance wounds. The one on the upper back is circular and defined. See it?”

“Obviously,” Aria said. After looking at the wound, her eyes rose up to take in the institutional clock on the wall. It had been only a little more than a half hour since she’d checked for messages from Madison Bryant, and she wondered if there was one now waiting for her when she was able to break free from her current bondage with this would-be professor. To her it was amazing how he could carry on with so little feedback. For the last five minutes or so Aria had been back to mulling over the ins and outs of genetic genealogy.

“So, what do you think?” Jack suddenly said, interrupting her chain of thought.

“About what?” Aria asked.

“About this type of linear entrance wound,” Jack said. He was pointing toward the victim’s lower back, which bore a splayed-out wound that resembled a leafless tree a child might draw. The base pointed caudally, the branches pointing toward the victim’s head.

“I’d say the bullet had to strike at an acute angle,” Aria answered.

“Give the lady a prize,” Jack said. Despite what he knew about her, he was impressed. He had planned on mounting an extensive explanation of the shearing forces of the bullet creating the tiny skin tags that pointed toward the point of initial contact, but he scrapped it. Jumping ahead, he said: “Since you were able to figure that out so quickly, what does it say to you that might be important in the forensic report?”

“I’d say that the victim had to be either falling or already prone on the ground when the bullet struck him.”

Jack straightened up and gently clapped with his gloved hands. “You are a quick study when it comes to forensics,” he said. “And I suppose you have a sense of how this information might be received by the police and the district attorney.”

“It would throw a cloud over the justifiable-homicide claim, especially when added to any bodycam footage, if it exists.”

“Okay,” Jack said to Vinnie. “Let Mr. Karpas roll back so we can continue our photographic documentation of the pathways of all the bullets.” He picked up the dowel he had been holding when Aria had first arrived and turned to her and said: “Let’s show you the tracks of all the bullets, including this last apparent coup de grâce.”

It was another half hour before the case was over. Jack was finishing his elaborate diagram of all the gunshot markings while Vinnie went to get a gurney. Vinnie had already finished labeling all the envelopes with the bullet fragments that had been painstakingly found, their locations described and documented. For a moment no one was paying the slightest attention to Aria, so she merely turned around and made her way back to the entrance. She hoped that the director of education, Dr. McGovern, wasn’t involved in any of the autopsies she passed for fear he would try to assign her yet another case. As if it might help, she kept her vision concentrated on the exit, looking neither to the right nor the left. A moment later, with a sense of relief, she pushed through the autopsy room doors and emerged into the deserted main hallway.

Inside the locker room, the first thing she did was get out her phone. She fully expected by this time to have a text from Madison, hopefully saying where and when they could get together. To her utter dismay after what she’d had to endure in the autopsy room, there was no message from Madison. Nothing. No emails, texts, or voice mail. Cursing under her breath, she changed into her clothes.

When she was almost finished, she heard her phone indicate she was getting a text. With a sense of excitement and expectation, she struggled to get the phone out of her back pocket. When she finally managed to do so, she was disappointed. The text wasn’t from Madison. It was from Dr. Montgomery, and it was terse. It merely said: I need to talk with you. Please come to my office.