Night Shift

Chapter 7

Tuesday, December 7, 10:57 a.m.

Hefting his bike up onto his shoulder, Jack climbed the short flight of stairs next to the unloading bay at the OCME high-rise building on 26th Street just four blocks south of the outdated old building. Before ducking inside, he paused for a moment to look out over the expansive parking area where Laurie was hoping to build the new morgue building. Currently it was where many of the refrigerated trucks were parked that had been dispersed to the city’s hospitals during the Covid pandemic to store the rapid increase in citywide deaths. Like everyone at the OCME, Jack was eager for the new morgue to be built. It was going to make it easier for everyone. Traveling back and forth was a major inconvenience, as Jack was currently demonstrating, although using the bike at least made it quick. What he was eager to do was get Sue Passero’s tissue samples to the Forensic Biology lab to analyze the DNA for any cardiac channelopathy mutations. He could have had a junior staffer take them over, but for hopes of speeding up the process he knew it was best to deliver the samples personally, like he’d done with Maureen in Histology and John in Toxicology. The adage the squeaky wheel gets the grease was alive and well at the OCME, as Jack had proved to himself time and time again.

Samples for DNA analysis were received on the fifth floor, and to get there he used one of the many elevators. As he rocketed skyward, he couldn’t help but compare the experience with the ancient equipment at the 520 building, particularly the painfully slow back elevator. In seconds, he was where he needed to be. The fifth floor was also home to the MLI Department, as well as the neighboring Communication Department, both of which operated on a 24/7/365 basis. With floor-to-ceiling interior glass dividers, Jack glanced into both areas as he passed down the hallway, heading east.

Because the chain-of-custody concerns were particularly important for DNA work, there was a complicated procedure for all samples to be signed in, and Jack followed the rules to the letter. He knew that on the fifth floor, the DNA would be extracted from the samples. When that was completed, the samples would go up to the sixth floor for amplification. Following that, the samples would be moved to the seventh floor for post-amplification and sequencing. He couldn’t help but feel proud that the NYC Department of Forensic Biology was the largest public DNA crime laboratory in the world, occupying three floors.

After Sue Passero’s samples were on their way, Jack took the time to go into the office of the Forensic Biology Lab’s department head, Naomi Grossman. As busy as she was, he had to first deal with her secretary, Melanie Stack. Since the secretary was particularly outgoing and friendly, it was hardly a burden. Besides, she knew Jack from some of his previous visits when he’d been championing other cases he’d deemed emergencies.

“She’s available,” Melanie said cheerfully, gesturing toward the open door into the inner office.

Naomi Grossman, whose defining physical characteristic was a nimbus of remarkably curly hair surrounding a wide oval face, wasn’t quite as outgoing as her secretary but was similarly friendly. “Okay, Dr. Stapleton,” she said with an equally broad smile. “What is it you need ASAP on this occasion?”

“Am I that pushy?” he questioned in a self-mocking fashion.

“Infamously so,” Naomi answered.

“Well, now that you mention it, there is something.”

Jack explained what he needed and why. Naomi listened and then said, “It’s interesting that your request involves channelopathies, because there has been increased interest in them of late in the literature, genetically speaking. Why is there an issue of speed for the results? Something I should know?”

“The individual is a very close friend of the chief’s,” Jack explained. “Laurie has already been in touch with the husband and their two children, who happen to be doctors in training. She’s very eager to have an explanation for the woman’s death besides her history of diabetes. I did the autopsy, but it was clean, although I have yet to look at the microscopic.”

“The heart was grossly normal?”

“Completely.”

“Any history of cardiac arrhythmias with the patient?”

“None.”

“How about with the family?” Naomi asked, furrowing her brow.

“Not that we know of.”

“I guess you know that the chances of finding a channelopathy under those conditions are extremely unlikely. Most are autosomal dominant, and even if they exhibit variable penetrance, there is usually a positive history.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s grasping at straws, but I’m going to need something for the death certificate.”

“Okay, fine,” Naomi said. “Are the samples already here?”

“I just signed them in two minutes ago.”

“I’ll see that it gets done,” Naomi said.

“Great,” Jack said. “Laurie will be appreciative.”

Even though it was only four blocks back to the 520 building, Jack enjoyed the ride. A relatively new bike lane on First Avenue made it easy to avoid wayward taxis and rideshare cars, whose drivers often behaved as if they despised bicyclists. To get the most out of the moment, he put some muscle in the effort like he’d done that morning when he challenged the expensively outfitted riders. Keeping up with the traffic, he completed the journey in seconds. It helped that he hit all four green lights.

After storing his bike and helmet, he used the back elevator to get up to the third floor. Once in his office, he pulled off his corduroy jacket, hung it over the back of his desk chair, and sat down, fully intending to get some serious paperwork done. As usual, the main part of his desk with his computer terminal was stacked high with autopsy folders waiting to be completed and death certificates to be signed. On the L portion of the desk, where his microscope stood, there were equivalent piles of microscope slide trays whose contents were waiting to be studied. As the medical examiner who did the most autopsies, he was always behind, which was a standing joke since he was always badgering colleagues like Maureen and John to work faster.

With every intention of getting to work, Jack positioned the top slide tray next to his microscope and turned on the objective light. He had even slipped the contents of the associated autopsy folder onto the desk when his mind took a U-turn that left him staring ahead with unseeing eyes. What had hijacked his attention was the irony of how the morning’s two cases turned out to be the opposite of what he had expected. Thinking that the only clue to questioning whether the suicide case was truly a suicide might be the MLI’s noting the deceased’s nakedness, he was prepared to use every trick in the forensic book to try to discover the truth, whatever it might be. Instead, the case turned out to be a slam-dunk as a homicide thanks to the startling ineptitude of the husband. As a detective, even a green detective, he should have known better than to shoot his wife in the left temple since he had to know she was right-handed, which Janice Jaeger had determined during her investigation. And he should have made sure the gun was held at a right angle to the long axis of the body and not aimed anteriorly.

Equally surprising was Sue Passero’s case, but in the opposite direction. He’d been even more certain it was destined to be boringly routine from a forensic point of view, yet it was turning out to be nothing of the kind.

Jack ran a couple of nervous hands through his hair and ended up supporting his bowed head with his elbows on the desk. He could hear Lou’s mocking comments accusing him of watching too many TV crime dramas and knew he was right in that he was jumping to conclusions by even entertaining a manner of death other than natural. At the same time, he had to recognize that the chances of a channelopathy mutation was very unlikely, as Naomi Grossman had reminded him. On top of that he was acutely aware that Laurie was going to be pressing him for a death certificate.

Suddenly he stood up quickly enough that his desk chair skidded across the room on its casters to thump against his bookcase. “Okay,” he said with determination as he switched off the lamp on his microscope. “I was looking for a challenge, and, as Laurie said, I’ve found it. Or, more accurately, it found me!”

With an infusion of energy and direction, Jack leafed through the contents of Sue Passero’s autopsy folder, pulling out Kevin Strauss’s investigative report. After pocketing it, he grabbed his jacket and left his office. He had made a snap decision. Although it was strict NYC OCME policy that the medical examiners were not to go out in the field for scene investigation, since that was the role the MLIs were trained to do, Jack was going to do it anyway. He understood that if he had questions or needed other specific case-related information, he was supposed to call the involved MLI and have them do it, but the problem was that he was caught in the Socratic conundrum of not knowing what he didn’t know, so it was impossible to ask Kevin Strauss for help. From Jack’s perspective, it was a simple decision, and it didn’t particularly bother him that he was disobeying the rules the OCME chief, his wife, was committed to enforcing.

As he rode down to the basement, using the slow back elevator because it reduced the chance of running into anyone who might question where he was headed, he seriously considered the rather unique situation in which he found himself. Never had he been involved in a case where he was as acquainted with the deceased as he was with Sue Passero, particularly knowing her as a happy, engaged, proud mother and wife as well as an accomplished, well-trained, and knowledgeable internist. Given that such an individual had to be inordinately capable of handling her type 1 diabetes, the idea that her passing could have been accidental, meaning giving herself the wrong dose of insulin or something along those lines, was a nonstarter. Same situation existed for suicide with no history of depression, no note, and no obvious method. What that left was homicide, which seemed equally unlikely because there was no apparent method of murder and there had been no robbery involved. Kevin Strauss had noted in his report that her personal belongings, including a certain amount of cash, were found untouched in her BMW.

He found himself guiltily smiling as he got out on the basement level. He had no idea if a site visit was going to help but was determined to do it. What he did know was that if Laurie found out about it, she’d be fit to be tied. On numerous occasions during Thursday afternoon department-wide staff conferences, she reminded the entire medical examiner team that off-site investigating by the MEs was verboten even though when she was an ME and not the chief, she had chafed under the rule and had violated it almost as often as Jack. Her rationale for her current stance was that the MEs had more than enough work to keep them in-house; most of them — including Jack — were behind on signing out their cases; and, more important, the MLIs were far better at scene investigation since that was what they were trained to do. The MLIs also got along better with the police because they saw each other more as workaday equals. And in contrast to Jack they tended not to ruffle feathers of various influential people like hospital presidents, CEOs, or police brass, which Laurie was well aware that he had a particular proclivity to do since, as she explained it, he didn’t suffer fools.

Another reason for her strong feelings was the need to keep the medical legal investigators happy, which wasn’t easy, as they were overworked, prideful about the role they played, and resentful about having their autonomy and expertise challenged. When Laurie became chief, she’d had a rude awakening about the difficulty of keeping the number of MLIs needed to handle some forty thousand deaths a year on staff. To qualify for forensic training, an MLI had to become a physician assistant first, which required a lot of training and investment. Since PAs often could get jobs that paid more than what the NYC civil service had to offer, recruiting and retaining them was no easy task, especially since dealing exclusively with death didn’t appeal to everyone.

As Jack unlocked his bike, he promised himself that he’d make his site visit as short as possible and also that he’d make an effort to be as diplomatic as he was capable. He wanted to keep his activity a secret, and unless Laurie specifically asked, he wasn’t going to volunteer. It seemed opportune that it was nearly lunchtime, so his absence wasn’t likely to be noticed. His plan was to be quick about his inquiries, and as soon as he had some sense about what he needed to know, he’d beat it back to the OCME. He would then ask Kevin Strauss or even Bart Arnold, the MLI department head, to follow up and get what was needed.