Few other people found much to laugh about in the autopsy room, but Jack always seemed to find a way, particularly when he and Vinnie were on a case together.
Rather than going directly to Kenji, Laurie stepped over to Jack’s table. He was working on a relatively young man, in his thirties or forties. Laurie could see that one leg was broken with a compound fracture. There was also a severe head wound and abrasions on his chest. It was clearly an accident of some sort.
“Quick, Eddie!” Jack called out, seeing Laurie approach. “Cover up Henry. Here comes my wife.”
Laurie, with her gloved hands clasped in front of her like a surgeon maintaining sterility, said, “Hurry, Eddie, before I see anything.” Eddie Prince was a relatively new mortuary tech whom she hadn’t met before yesterday. “Well, well,” Laurie continued. “It looks to me like a severe accident. Would it be appropriate to presume this was a bicyclist who’d had a disagreement with a taxicab?”
“Bus,” Jack added.
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All Laurie could do was nod. In point of fact, she did not like to joke about the issue. When she and Jack had first met, she’d thought there was something boyishly charming about Jack’s insistence on riding his bike back and forth to work, but now, especially with a child, she thought it was selfishly foolish.
“How are things going?” Jack asked. “I see your case from yesterday is back. Is that a clue?”
“Could be,” Laurie said, recognizing that Jack had immediately steered the conversation away from the bike-bus issue. Even doing cases like the one he was working on or having knowledge of the statistics, about thirty to forty bicycling deaths per year in New York City, did nothing to discourage Jack’s behavior.
“Are we going to have a press conference this afternoon?” Jack inquired.
“It’s not going to be that much of a revelation,” Laurie said with a chuckle.
“Although if it turns out to be what I suspect, I’m going to be pleased with myself, and you and Lou are going to be surprised at the very least.”
“Then let’s hope it is what you suspect.”
Laurie moved on to Kenji. She put the papers that she’d brought from her office down on the writing surface. They were copies of outline drawings of the human body from both dorsal and ventral perspectives, where she could indicate any external findings of note. Then she went to get the only equipment she thought she would need: a scalpel, a digital camera, a handheld dissecting microscope, and a stainless-steel probe, which was nothing more than a thin metal stylus with a slightly nodular end used to probe puncture wounds, such as the tracks of bullets or pellets.
With the body supine, Laurie started with the head and face, poring over the scalp, the ears, the face, even the inside of Kenji’s mouth, his ears, and his nose.
Having recognized she’d done such a poor job on the external exam the day before, she meant to do an A-plus one today.
Moving on to the upper extremities, Laurie noted every irregularity, including cuts, bruises, moles, hemangiomas, and even calluses. Next were the chest, abdomen, and lower extremities. When she was finished with the ventral surface, she went to find someone to help her turn the corpse over. Jack had finished his case, and Eddie was available. He was happy to give Laurie a hand.
Laurie repeated herself on the dorsal surface. As she worked down the back, her pulse quickened. If there were to be a suspicious break in the skin, she assumed 196
she would find it somewhere on the buttocks or the back or side of the legs. Just because she hadn’t seen anything suspicious with her initial overall glance, Laurie maintained her careful, methodical scrutiny, and her systematic approach paid off. Within the gluteal fold where the buttocks join the leg, Laurie felt she’d found what she was looking for: a possible tiny puncture wound. It was a circular reddened area that required flattening the skin to truly appreciate. She took a digital photograph of the area, showing the puncture.
With the stylus in her right hand, Laurie flattened the skin with her left. Gently she applied the smaller end of the stylus to the reddened patch of skin, and with a slight pressure the nodular end popped inside. It was definitely a puncture wound.
Pressing a little harder but not so much as to create an artifact, Laurie advanced the nodular end of the stylus until it hit the end of the track. Laurie took another photograph of the stylus in the track. Then, placing her fingers around the stylus where it disappeared into the skin, she drew it out and measured. The track was two and a half centimeters deep.
Laurie disposed of her gloves and left the autopsy room. Using the case’s accession number, she found the X-rays, brought them back into the pit, and snapped them up onto the view box. Carefully she scanned the area in question on both the frontal and lateral views, in hopes of seeing a possible pellet of some sort, but there was nothing. That meant that either a pellet was used that was capable of being dissolved by the body or whatever toxin was used was injected directly. Either way, Laurie assumed the greatest concentration of the poisonous agent had to be at the end of the track.
Returning to Kenji with a new pair of gloves, Laurie picked up the scalpel and fell to work. What she wanted was the track itself, encased in a core of muscle tissue about the size of a wine cork. It sounded easy enough, but Laurie struggled. With the tissue being easily compressible, it was difficult to avoid cutting into the track. She wanted the sample to be en bloc. The handheld dissecting microscope was a help, but it precluded the use of her left hand, and in the end, she didn’t use it.
As Laurie worked with the scalpel, and having now ascertained that Kenji had been murdered, presumably with an umbrella air gun, her thoughts naturally drifted back to what agent might have been involved. She already knew it could not be ricin, as was used in the infamous Bulgarian’s case. Although she did not know the specific poison, she did know some things about it. It had to be extraordinarily toxic, as the security tapes indicated. According to what she saw on the tapes, the poison had been almost instantly effectual. She also knew it had to be neurotoxic, because of the seizure, as a number of snake and fish 197
venoms were. She eventually decided to go on the Net and check out seizure-inducing reptilian and aquatic neurotoxins.
Laurie struggled for almost half an hour, but the final sample approximately an inch and a half long and an inch thick looked very close to what she’d envisioned.
Laurie removed her gloves yet again and went into the supply room for a sample bottle and a sample custody tag. Back at the autopsy table, she put the sample in the bottle and completed the tag, which included the case’s accession number, the date, and the location from the body where the sample had originated, and then signed it. She was being exquisitely careful: If there was to be a trial concerning the case, which she now considered a distinct possibility, the sample she was holding would be a key piece of evidence.
With her last chore finished, Laurie went looking for an available mortuary tech to lend a hand. With practiced ease she and the tech got Kenji off the autopsy table and onto a gurney. Wheeling the corpse herself out of the autopsy room, Laurie deposited him and his gurney back in the cooler, where the corpse would stay for the next several months, unless he was lucky enough to be identified and shipped off to his next of kin. “I know you’re trying to tell me some things, Kenji,” Laurie said out loud in the heavy stillness of the cooler, “and I’m trying to listen. We already have the person who killed you, but unfortunately we don’t yet know who you both are. Be patient!” She stepped out of the cooler and closed its heavy insulated door, causing it to emit a final-sounding reverberant click.
Laurie had planned to take the sample directly up to toxicology on the fifth floor, but a glance at her watch changed her mind. She was aware that John DeVries was one of the most compulsive people she knew, and one of the ways he manifested his compulsive-ness was to stop whatever he was doing at exactly noon, and take his old-fashioned lunch box with a thermos mounted in its vaulted top to OCME’s sad excuse of a lunchroom on the second floor. The room was windowless, with cement-block walls. All that was in the room were a bank of vending machines filled with unhealthy food, plastic-topped tubular steel tables, and plastic chairs. Although Laurie could have stopped to say hello, she was reluctant to interrupt his lunch. It was also true that the room depressed her. Instead she went directly up to her office so as not to waste time. As punctual as John was about getting to the lunchroom at noon, he was just as punctual about returning to work at twelve-thirty, and Laurie planned to take the sample to him then.
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25
MARCH 26, 2010
FRIDAY, 12:15 p.m.
L
ouie was in seventh heaven. He’d not had such fun for a good decade. From the moment Brennan had suggested they kidnap Laurie Montgomery’s kid to the moment he’d just slid into his favorite booth of his restaurant, he’d been totally engrossed in planning the operation. The kidnapping idea had been pure genius, and Louie gave Brennan full credit. First, it was a great way to kick the woman in the teeth for having been instrumental in putting Paulie in the slammer for more than a decade. Louie hadn’t heard that story and had been surprised by it. He’d also been surprised by Paulie’s prohibition of killing the woman. But in many respects, this was going to be better in that she’d suffer more. In Louie’s mind, when a person got killed, they didn’t suffer at all.
Second and foremost, the kidnapping would surely take the pesky woman’s attention away from investigating Satoshi, which would be to everybody’s relief.
And third, it could result in serious pocket change. Louie’s last kidnapping, more than fifteen years ago, had netted for the Vaccarro group more than ten million dollars, making Louie eager to try another go-round. Unfortunately, Paulie wasn’t of the same mind, and despite the success, nixed another. In Paulie’s estimation, from hearing some horror stories, kidnappings were just too dangerous despite the potentially big payoff.
Louie shook his head and laughed. There was a certain irony about the fact that he was now about to mount his second kidnapping, partially based on retribution for Paulie, who had kept him from doing a repeat years earlier. This time he knew it wouldn’t bring in quite the same money. The first one had been a Wall Street type whose net worth hovered around a hundred million. This time, the principals were a couple of salaried doctors, and he knew he couldn’t count on more than a million or so, but worrying about that was premature and even secondary. The reason for taking the kid was to get Laurie Stapleton out of the picture.
“Hey, Benito!” Louie yelled at the top of his lungs, causing his own ears to ring.
No one had come out of the kitchen, and Louie didn’t know how long he had for lunch, since he was counting on getting a call any minute from Brennan. At that moment Brennan, Carlo, and two younger guys who had been working for Louie for close to four years, Duane Mackenzie and Tommaso Deluca, along with Hisayuki Ishii’s two lieutenants, were sitting in a stolen white Dodge van outside Dr. Laurie Montgomery-Stapleton’s house on 106th, waiting for their victim to appear.
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Over the previous hour Brennan had more than fulfilled his promise to glean information about Laurie from the Net. Carlo had made himself useful by obtaining the stolen vehicle, which they planned to dump. All was ready for the snatch.
In response to Louie’s sudden yell, which had rattled some of the glasses hanging over the bar, Benito came crashing out of the swinging door leading into the kitchen. He was full of apology, explaining that he’d heard nothing of Louie’s arrival, as he usually did.
“I had no idea you were here, boss. Believe me!”
Louie reached out and gently laid fingers on Benito’s forearm. He was, after all, in a gracious mood the way everything was going. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to calm the overexcited man. “It’s okay,” he repeated, before asking what was for lunch.
“Your favorite!” Benito said with alacrity, glad to have something on hand to make amends. “Penne Bolognese with fresh ground Parmesan.”
Louie watched Benito retreat into the kitchen. Still thinking about the upcoming kidnapping, he’d come up with yet another one of its benefits. With Hisayuki’s acquiescence and participation, he felt more certain that the oyabun would have no reason to suspect that Louie had any complicity in the disappearance and murder of Susumu and Yoshiaki.
Suddenly the phone at Louie’s elbow jangled. Louie grabbed it as his heart skipped a beat. It was Brennan, as he expected.
26
MARCH 26, 2010
FRIDAY, 12:18 p.m.
T
here’s a young woman coming out of the doctor’s house right this second,”
Brennan blurted, sounding frantic. “She’s carrying a kid in one hand and a stroller in the other. Do you think it’s the kid we want or what?”
Louie felt his confidence falter. “Calm down!” he ordered sharply. All the talk he’d had with Brennan over the last hour about remaining calm and detached had apparently gone out the window. Louie had expected more from Brennan.
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Brennan obviously had allowed himself to get so wound up, he was not thinking clearly.
“How the hell are we going to be sure it’s the right kid?” Brennan whined with a touch of desperation.
“You’ll never be completely sure,” Louie said, “but you can be pretty darn close to being sure. As a starter, do mother and child look alike?”
“No, the kid’s white and the nanny’s black.”
“Well, I’d say that’s pretty definitive.”
“She’s stuffing the kid into the stroller. She acts a little like she’s impatient. You know what I’m saying? And the kid is bawling.”
“That’s not our worry. Now, is she ready to leave?”
“I’d say so,” Brennan said. “Yes, they are! They’re pushing off, heading for the park, just like you’d hoped.”
“Sounds like it is going to be almost too easy,” Louie said. Before he’d left them in front of Laurie’s building, Louie had expressed the hope that the nanny would take JJ to Central Park, as that section of the park was never as crowded as it was to the south, and usually rather deserted. Also, there were forested hills, which would provide near-perfect locations for a snatch.