Laurie tossed the tape into her briefcase and tried to get back to work. But after fifteen minutes of wasted effort, she turned the light off under her microscope. She couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept toying with the baffling question of how the body had disappeared. It was as if it had been an amazing magic trick. One minute the body was safely stored in compartment one eleven and viewed by three employees, then poof, it was gone. There had to be an explanation, but try as she might, Laurie could not fathom it.
Laurie decided to head down to the basement to visit the mortuary office. She’d expected at least one tech to be available, but when she arrived the room was unoccupied. Undaunted, Laurie went over to the large, leather-bound log. Flipping the page, she looked for the entries that Mike Passano had shown her the previous night. She found them without difficulty. Taking a pencil from a collection in a coffee mug and a sheet of scratch paper, Laurie wrote down the names and accession numbers of the two bodies that had come in during the night shift: Dorothy Kline #101455 and Frank Gleason #100385. She also wrote down the names of the two funeral homes: Spoletto in Ozone Park, New York, and the Dickson in Summit, New Jersey.
Laurie was about to leave when her eye caught the large Rolodex on the corner of the desk. She decided to call each home. After identifying herself, she asked to speak to the managers.
What had sparked her interest in telephoning was the outside chance that either one of the pickups could have been bogus. She thought the chances were slim, since the night tech, Mike Passano, had said the homes had called before coming and presumably he was familiar with the people.
As Laurie expected, the pickups indeed were legitimate, both managers attesting to the fact that the bodies had come in to their respective homes and were at that time on view.
Laurie went back to the logbook and looked again at the names of the two arrivals. To be complete, she copied them down along with their accession numbers. The names were familiar to her, since she’d assigned them as autopsies the following morning to Paul Plodgett. But she wasn’t as interested in the arrivals as the departures. The arrivals had come in with longtime ME employees, whereas the bodies that had gone out had done so with strangers.
Feeling frustrated, Laurie drummed her pencil on the desk surface. She was sure she had to be missing something. Once again, her eye caught the Rolodex which was open to the Spoletto Funeral Home. In the very back of Laurie’s mind, the name made a hazy association. For a moment, she struggled with her memory. Why was that name familiar? Then she remembered. It had been during the Cerino affair. A man had been murdered in the Spoletto Funeral Home on orders from Paul Cerino, Franconi’s predecessor.
Laurie pocketed her memo, pushed away from the desk and returned to the fifth floor. She walked directly to Jack’s office. The door was ajar. She knocked on the jamb. Both Jack and Chet looked up from their respective labors.
“I had a thought,” Laurie said to Jack.
“Just one?” Jack quipped.
Laurie threw her pencil at him, which he easily evaded. She plopped down in the chair to his right and told him about the mob connection with the Spoletto Funeral Home.
“Good grief, Laurie,” Jack complained. “Just because there is a mob hit in a funeral home, doesn’t mean that it is mob-connected.”
“You don’t think so?” Laurie asked. Jack didn’t have to answer. She could see by his expression. And, now that she thought about her idea, she understood it was a ridiculous notion. She’d been grabbing for straws.
“Besides,” Jack said. “Why won’t you just leave this alone?”
“I told you,” Laurie said. “It’s a personal thing.”
“Maybe I can channel your efforts into a more positive direction,” Jack said. He motioned toward his microscope. “Take a look at a frozen section. Tell me what you think.”
Laurie got up from the chair and leaned over the microscope. “What is this, the shotgun entrance wound?” she asked.
“Just as sharp as usual,” Jack commented. “You’re right on the money.”
“Well, it’s not a hard call,” Laurie said. “I’d say the muzzle was within inches of the skin.”
“My opinion exactly,” Jack said. “Anything else?”
“My gosh, there’s absolutely no extravasation of blood!” Laurie said. “None at all, so this had to have been a postmortem wound.” She raised her head and looked at Jack. She was amazed. She’d assumed it had been the mortal wound.
“Ah, the power of modern science,” Jack commented. “This floater you foisted on me is turning into a bastard of a case.”
“Hey, you volunteered,” Laurie said.
“I’m teasing,” Jack said. “I’m glad I got the case. The shotgun wounds were definitely postmortem, so was the decapitation and removal of the hands. Of course the propeller injuries were, too.”
“What was the cause of death?” Laurie asked.
“Two other gunshot wounds,” Jack said. “One through the base of the neck.” He pointed to an area just above his right collarbone. “And another in the left side that shattered the tenth rib. The irony was that both slugs ended up in the mass of shotgun pellets in the right upper abdominal area and were difficult to be seen on the X ray.”
“Now that’s a first,” Laurie said. “Bullets hidden by shotgun pellets. Amazing! The beauty of this job is that you see new things every day.”
“The best is yet to come,” Jack said.
“This is a ‘beaut,’ ” Chet said. He’d been listening to the conversation. “It’ll be perfect for one of the forensic pathology dinner seminars.”
“I think the shotgun blasts were an attempt to shield the victim’s identity as much as the decapitation and removal of the hands,” Jack said.
“In what way?” Laurie asked.
“I believe this patient had had a liver transplant,” Jack said. “And not that long ago. The killer must have understood that such a procedure put the patient in a relatively small group, and hence jeopardized the chances of hiding the victim’s identity.”
“Was there much liver left?” Laurie asked.
“Very little,” Jack said. “Most of it was destroyed by the shotgun injury.”
“And the fish helped,” Chet said.
Laurie winced.
“But I was able to find some liver tissue,” Jack said. “We’ll use that to corroborate the transplant. As we speak, Ted Lynch ip in DNA is running a DQ alpha. We’ll have the results in an hour or so. But for me the clincher was the sutures in the vena cava and the hepatic artery.”
“What’s a DQ alpha?” Laurie asked.
Jack laughed. “Makes me feel better that you don’t know,” he said, “because I had to ask Ted the same question. He told me it is a convenient and rapid DNA marker for differentiating two individuals. It compares the DQ region of the histocompatibility complex on chromosome six.”
“What about the portal vein?” Laurie asked. “Were there sutures in it as well?”
“Unfortunately, the portal vein was pretty much gone,” Jack said. “Along with a lot of the intestines.”
“Well,” Laurie said. “This should all make identification rather easy.”
“My thought exactly,” Jack said. “I’ve already got Bart Arnold hot on the trail. He’s been in contact with the national organ procurement organization UNOS. He’s also in the process of calling all the centers actively doing liver transplants, especially here in the city.”
“That’s a small list,” Laurie said. “Good job, Jack.”
Jack’s face reddened slightly, and Laurie was touched. She thought he was immune to such compliments.
“What about the bullets?” Laurie asked. “Same gun?”
“We’ve packed them off to the police lab for ballistics,” Jack said. “It was hard to say if they came from the same gun or not because of their distortion. One of them made direct contact with the tenth rib and was flattened. Even the second one wasn’t in good shape. I think it grazed the vertebral column.”