Authors: Judith Townsend Rocchiccioli
When
Jack reached his car, he was sweating like a pig. He opened the door of his
silver Cadillac and sat down relishing the plush seats. He turned the AC on
full blast, turned all the vents towards himself and sat there for a good three
minutes taking pleasure in the cold air. Finally, he started the short
distance towards the M.E.’s office on Rampart, praying for a decent parking
place, even if it was illegal. He spied one. Bingo! It looked promising as
he viewed the street parking. And the parking spot was legal. The day was
looking a bit brighter as he slid into the metered spot. Of course, he would
never put money in the meter.
Jack
squinted in the florescent lights as he entered the temporary administrative
offices of New Orleans Forensic Center. He was overcome by the smell of
disinfectant and bleach. He high-fived the guard at the desk, signed-in, and
continued down the back hall to the stark white autopsy room and morgue.
The
NOLA Coroner's Office had been under considerable strain lately due to bad
publicity in the media. The
Times Picayune
had run a whole series of
articles about screw-ups at the Coroner's office. The stories had focused on
staff losing DNA evidence, filing incomplete reports, and misinterpreting
autopsy findings that had never existed. Worst of all, the office had been accused
of selling body parts. It was rumored that the coroner had made thousands of
dollars selling livers, corneas, and bone marrow. These provided a field day
for defense lawyers. Jack clenched his jaw and gritted his teeth just
thinking about it. Damn the liberal press!
The
Coroner's office employees, like most state offices in the many parts of the
nation, were underpaid, understaffed, and under appreciated by most people who
crossed their thresholds. The NOLA staff was demoralized and the office had
experienced lots of turnover when in fact it was also home to some really
fantastic forensic pathologists, dentists, and physicians. They were probably
some of the best in the country, although you can bet the
Times Picayune
hadn't reported that little detail. He cursed the newspapers again under his
breath.
The
autopsy room was busy. Three physicians were autopsying recent victims, but
he didn't see his favorite medical examiner. Nor did he find his two stiffs
from this morning – at least, he didn’t think he did since the victims on the
tables all looked pretty old.
"Yo,
Fred," he hailed a morgue tech, "You seen Dr. Jeanfreau?"
"Yeah,
she's in her office. Straight back, Commander," Fred gestured, giving the
Commander a big grin. Fred was a favorite of Jack Françoise because he always
knew what was going on, never played dumb, and wasn't lazy, all traits which
put Fred on his way to meeting most of Jack's criteria for earning praise.
"Thanks,
man," Jack said as he started back down the hall and noticed the decrepit
condition of the offices. Unlike the bright autopsy room, the temporary
offices of the Coroner were pretty shabby. Jack eyed the faded, dirty carpet
as he wandered down the hall towards Maddy's office. He wondered when they were
moving into their new building, although he hated the thought of them leaving
his police district. It had been convenient having them so close. Now he'd
probably have to hit I-10 to get there. What a pain. Traffic was always bad
going out of New Orleans. As a matter of fact, traffic in New Orleans was
always awful and he didn't know all of the illegal parking spots in that part
of town.
Maddy's
door was partially open. Since she wasn't dictating, Jack decided to knock and
interrupt her.
"Yo,
Maddy, you rang?"
Dr.
Madeline Jeanfreau, Assistant Medical Examiner, stood and walked around her
desk to see Jack. She was a tiny woman. Even with high heels, she was only a
little over 5 feet tall. She hugged Jack and kissed him on the cheek. Jack
returned the hug.
"What
the hell, Commander? You get promoted, have a party and don't even invite your
favorite M.E.? How do you expect to keep getting special treatment from me or
my office?" the diminutive Dr. Jeanfreau queried, as she smiled and shook
her short, highlighted hair.
"That
wasn't a party, it was just a bureaucratic BS hour. I didn't want to go and
you would have hated it. Think of who you would have had to hobnob with for an
hour, all while getting nothing but punch and cookies. It was grueling."
"Well,
you owe me lunch then and it's going to cost you a bunch ... and drinks as
well," Maddy insisted, giving Jack a grin. “Soon! I want my lunch
soon."
"Anytime,
Maddy. You're the busy one. You know I just sit around and eat chocolate éclairs
all day, Jack commented sarcastically. "What's up? Jason said you wanted
to see me."
"Yeah,
about those two dead kids that came in a couple of hours ago. Have you got any
ID or information on them?"
"No,
nothing yet. I just talked to Bridges, the detective who caught the case.
We're still looking for witnesses. There was no ID found with the bodies. The
detective said they looked Goth and were tatted up. Not much blood at the
scene, though probably enough for DNA. Why?"
Maddy
shook her head and said, "It's pretty strange. We haven't finished the
autopsies yet, but we started collecting body fluids when they first came in,
before we put them in the chiller."
"Yeah,
so? That's pretty normal, right?"
"Yes,
it is," Maddy replied, looking straight at Jack. "Problem is, they
didn't have any."
"Didn't
have any what? Maddy, I am not getting this. What are you telling me? The
stiffs didn't have any fluids?"
"That's
right, Jack. They didn't have any blood. It's likely the C.O.D. will be death
by exsanguination." Maddy stared at Jack.
Jack's
shoulders slumped as he stared back at his friend. He felt the fear crawling
out of his pores. Maybe not fear, just uncertainty perhaps?
What The
Fuck! Not again! Please, not again
, he thought to himself. Their eyes
locked, each reading the meaning on the other’s face.
Maddy
finally broke the silence. "Yeah, Jack. Here we go again. Just like
2009, 1984 and 1933.”
Jack
was suddenly overcome with fatigue. He shook his head. The day really wasn't
getting better after all. "Well, keep me in the loop. Hopefully, these
are the only two. We'll know more when we ID them." His voice sounded
worn and tired.
"If
you ever do ID them," Maddy replied. "Remember, we never had an ID
for the case in 2009. I'll handle the autopsies personally. There could be
another cause of death, but it is unlikely with the two of them and the fact
that they are young and healthy....."
"Yeah,
I know," Jack replied, while checking a text message that had just come
in. "I've got to go. I just got a 911 from CCMC. I hope there’s nothing
major gone wrong over there," he groaned, as he hugged Maddy and left her
office. But, he knew better. He knew something bad had happened. Whenever he
got called to Crescent Center Medical Center, it was always something bad.
"Oh,
Jack," Maddy called after him, "The vics had a receipt on them for
$116. From
Howl.
”
Jack
turned around, looked at her, and shook his head. "Great, this day just
keeps getting better, " he said sarcastically.
It
was a little after midnight and Angela Richlieu was just finishing her nursing
shift report when the red light went on in the corner of the nursing station at
Crescent City Psychiatric Pavilion signaling an All Staff Alert.
"Damn!" she muttered under her breath. Flashing red meant all hell
had broken out somewhere on the unit. She sadly knew what that meant for her
and picking up her daughter on time. Her shift had ended at 11, but paperwork
had taken her an hour after that. Now who knew when she would get out of
there.
Cursing
under her breath, she unlocked a small metal cabinet and took out a syringe
filled with Vitamin G. She laughed a bit as she thought about the Vitamin G -
a nickname for Geodon. A powerful anti-psychotic agent, it could settle down a
horse almost immediately. G for good night! She placed the syringe in the
pocket of her blue uniform top and cautiously opened the security door that led
onto the Psych unit. Never knew who was hanging around, just waiting to get
into the office.
Now
the coast was clear. Angela saw everybody heading toward the east corridor.
She heard an angry "Get the hell off of me! I'm a policeman!"
coming from that hallway.
Big Jim!
she thought to herself.
She
was surprised and not surprised at the same time. James McMurty, the former
NOPD cop, had been a model patient up until now, so she was surprised that he
was involved. She was not surprised because that she had almost seen something
coming earlier in the evening.
It
had been a great shift on the unit until that new administrator, Lester Whats-his-name,
had shown up. He wasn't even a real employee. Don Montgomery, the CEO, had
contracted with him to run the Psych Pavilion. Lester was weird, just as weird
as some of the patients. The patients had been quiet until he came onto the
unit. Once the patients saw him, a sort of agitation had set in like a wolf
walking into a field of tasty sheep.
Plus
he was creepy. Angie shook off a chill when she thought about the way he had looked
at her. He was gross and struck her as a real letch. He'd stayed most of
the evening on the unit. He was working in his office between the general psych
and the prison units when he wasn't on the units talking with the patients. She
remembered how the other nurses had said how inappropriate it was that he talked
so much with the patients. He had spent a lot of time talking with Jim in the
dayroom. A lot of time....
Angela
hurried past the shuffling patients and when she turned the corner and looked
down the corridor, she saw a sight that was both tragic and comical. Jason,
the lone security guard, whose best asset was his enormous weight, was lying on
top of Jim in the hallway. Ben the orderly had control of Jim's right arm and
Amy, a petite Asian-American patient care assistant was trying to control his
left arm. Amy was wrapped around the arm like a python as he threw her up and
down as if she were weightless and he tireless. Amy grunted each time Jim
slammed her onto the dirty green tile floor.
Ben
looked up as Angela ran down the hallway. "Hurry up! He's beating the
hell out of Amy!"
Angela
looked to Jim's left arm where Amy was clinging like a tired squirrel to a tree
trunk, and saw that Jim's sleeve had ripped at the shoulder, exposing his taut
deltoid muscle. Without hesitating, she sat down on top of Amy. Mercifully,
their combined weight kept the flailing left arm pinned to the floor as Angela
plunged the needle into the deltoid muscle and pushed the Vitamin G into Jim's
body. She withdrew the needle and waited.
As
she sat perched on the softening arm, Angela thought about what a joke the
Psychiatric Pavilion was. The "Pavilion" was really an old three-story
storage warehouse that CCMC had hastily renovated into three psychiatric units
about eight years ago when psychiatric and substance abuse services had
actually been money-makers for the hospital. Now they weren't and the
building had been sadly neglected and was beginning to have the look of a
"blighted" building that Angie remembered from her Community Health
class at LSU where she had recently received her Bachelor's degree in Nursing.
Fat lot of good that did me, she mused.
But
Angie knew in her heart that her degree did matter. She chose to work at the
Pavilion where the salary was at least 50% more than the medical units because
the patients were so sick, scary and dangerous. The Pavilion was actually
three nursing units. Pavilion I was now was the Prison Unit and housed some
of the most dangerous, criminally insane inmates from the deep south. Pavilion
II was she was now was general psychiatry where chronically psychotic patients
were committed by temporary detaining orders. They were kept there "until
they promised not to try to kill themselves or others again." Angie
thought it was criminal that these sick patients were generally discharged in
two days. Jim was one of the exceptions. Pavilion III was the substance
abuse unit where patients were detoxed and "cured" in three days when
they were discharged. The absolute worst was the CCMC Pavilion management. Don
Montgomery, the CEO of CCMC, had contracted with the state hospital over in
Mandeville to take their forensic psychiatric patients several years ago when a
public outrage from the good citizens of Mandeville had succeeded and the
hospital closed. Even though CCMC received a premium for housing and caring
for the forensic patients, none of the money went back into the safety and
security of staff and patients at CCMC. Angie shuddered and felt a chill when
she thought about the patients she'd worked with over the past year. Some of
them had nearly frightened her to death. She had thought Jim was one of the
safe ones - until now.
As
she had plunged the needle into Jim's shoulder, she had made the mistake of
looking into his eyes. The eyes were there, but Jim wasn't. It was as if he
were somewhere else. He had not recognized her. Recognition was the basis of
human interaction, and is what separated friend from foe. Those empty eyes
terrified her!
"What
set him off tonight?" Angela asked Ben as she came back to the present.
"He was one of the good ones - I thought."
"Louis
and Jim were playing Battleship in the dayroom. Louis won and Jim said he was
cheating. It was strange-like. Normally Jim didn't care if he won or lost. Not
this time. Next thing, Jim said Louis was sleeping with his wife. Crazy!
Louis hasn't had a hardon in ten years. Next thing, Jim lunged at Louis and
missed and Louis ran into the hallway yelling. Jim followed with murder in his
eyes. Louis ducked under Jason's arm and Jim ran smack into that arm. Knocked
him down and Jason got on top of him. I came out of the dayroom and jumped on
Jim's arm."
"Thanks,
Louis. Many thanks to you, Jason. And Amy -what you did was above the call of
duty. I think you're going to be pretty sore. If you need to call off for
your next shift, I'll vouch for you," Angie said as she looked at the poor
battered Asian-American woman.
"Thank
you, Miss Angie." replied Amy in broken English.
"OK,
let's get a stretcher and get Jim into the seclusion room. I've got to go back
to the office and write up the report for this incident." Angie got up
and hurried back to the office, carrying the capped syringe with her to deposit
in the sharps container.