“Congratulations,” Laurie remarked, and she meant it. It was a good case to demonstrate the power of forensics.
Moving on, Laurie greeted Marvin, who returned the greeting with great enthusiasm. Up until that moment, they’d not yet seen each other since Laurie’s return to work. After a short discussion of the rigors of parenthood, since Marvin had three kids of his own, Laurie directed the conversation to the victim stretched out on the autopsy table.
“So what do we have here?” she asked.
Looking down at the corpse, which had been butterflied with the typical Y-shaped autopsy incision to expose the internal organs, Marvin said, “The victim is an Asian male, which Dr. Southgate estimated to be approximately thirty-five years old, weighing one hundred and forty-two pounds, who collapsed on the subway platform. There is no known medical history, and no prescription drugs were found on his person.”
As Marvin continued his description, Laurie picked up the case file and extracted the MLI’s report. It had been written by Cheryl Meyers. Still listening to Marvin, her eyes scanned the report and immediately picked up on the fact that there had been no identification found on the victim.
“Is this an unidentified individual?” Laurie asked, interrupting Marvin.
“Yup,” Marvin said.
Laurie went back to the case file and pulled out the notice-of-death sheet and the identification-of-body form. The latter was blank and the former barely filled out with the facts that the body was picked up by emergency medical techs who’d responded to the scene after a call to 911. They’d found the victim unresponsive, with no heartbeat, no blood pressure, and without respiration. CPR was instituted and continued until the arrival at the Harlem Hospital Center emergency room, where he was declared dead.
Laurie looked up and locked eyes with Marvin. To her, an unidentified case was a complication, and she was disappointed to a degree. She knew it wasn’t necessarily a rational response, because she could do her forensic work just the same whether the corpse’s identity was known or not known, but on her first case back from her leave, she wanted the case to be definitive, with no loose ends. For her, being unidentified was a loose end, and more important for her, it was a loose end that was largely beyond her control to influence. There would be no medical history to help her confirm her findings.
“Was there anything unique about the external exam?” Laurie questioned.
Marvin shook his head. “No scars or tattoos, if that’s what you mean.”
“How about jewelry?”
“There is a police custody voucher for a wedding band.”
Laurie’s eyes brightened. A wedding band meant a wife, and glancing at the victim’s general appearance, she knew this was no derelict individual, as he was well groomed. “What were his clothes like?”
“Well dressed, with shirt, tie, and jacket under a long overcoat. The overcoat looked new, although it was soiled from the subway platform.”
“Those are all good signs,” Laurie said with relief. From experience she knew that identification of unidentified bodies depended largely on the victim being searched for, and in a situation like the one she was currently facing, a wife starting a search within twenty-four hours or less was the rule, not the exception. In contrast, identifying a body in a situation where there was no one looking for it was a very difficult task, even in this day and age, with tools such as DNA matching.
“Did Dr. Southgate mention if he had any suspicions about the cause of death?” Laurie asked.
“Not that he said,” Marvin offered, “but I think he was leaning toward a stroke or something intracranial. One witness — actually, the man who made the nine-one-one call — said that he thought there had been a short seizure involved.”
Laurie glanced back at Cheryl Meyers’s note and saw that she had duly included the suggestion of a stroke, but she’d gotten that from the EMTs and had not spoken with the individual. “What about the X-rays? Anything interesting seen on them?”
“Dr. Southgate said they were negative. But they are still up on the view box, if you care to look at them.”
“I care,” Laurie said. Clasping her hands together, she went over and gave them a look, concentrating on the head and the chest. She saw no abnormalities. She then scanned the abdomen and finally the extremities. Nothing.
“Okay,” Laurie said, returning to Marvin. “Let’s get the show on the road, and we’ll see what we find.”
Since Laurie and Marvin often worked together, the autopsy itself went quickly. The slowest part was when they removed the lungs and the heart en bloc, as cardiac arrest was often involved with sudden death. But the heart was normal and no abnormalities of the vessels were noted, particularly the coronary arteries. The second time they slowed the pace was after Marvin had cut off the crown of the head and gently removed the skullcap. Both had expected to see blood if there had been a fatal event in the brain, but there had been no blood whatsoever, either in the coverings of the brain or within the brain itself.
“Well,” Laurie said after finishing suturing the autopsy incision. “That’s about as normal an autopsy that one can have. Usually there’s some pathology that can be found, but with this unfortunate fellow, he seems to have been entirely healthy and normal.”
“What’s your guess, then?” Marvin asked.
“I suppose I’d have to guess that he suffered some sort of cardiac conduction abnormality despite the possibility of a seizure having been involved,” Laurie suggested with a discouraged shake of her head. “After the heart and great vessels appeared normal, I was surprised when we didn’t come across a solid tumor when we were slicing the brain. So now it will be up to histology — at least I hope histology will help. I don’t want to have to sign this case out as an unknown cause of death of an unknown individual, and especially not as my first case back from my maternity leave. It’s not going to be any help for my confidence.”
“What about the extra fluid we found in the stomach and the beginning of the small intestine?” Marvin questioned. “That seemed to surprise you when you saw it at the time. Any significance you can think of now?”
“Not really,” Laurie admitted. “As far as I know, that’s not associated with any natural cause of sudden death. The man must have drunk and eaten not long before he died. It will be interesting to see what his blood alcohol will turn out to be.”
“What about unnatural cause?”
Laurie paused. Marvin had reminded her that it was always important to keep an open mind, as one could be fooled, for example, by a homicide made to look like a suicide or an accident. Yet the possibility of this case fitting into that scenario seemed very unlikely, with the victim collapsing on a subway platform. At the same time, just to be complete, she had already decided on doing a toxicology screen as well as a BAL, or blood alcohol level test, and had taken the appropriate samples. OCME toxicology screen included some two to three hundred legal and illegal drugs, so she felt confident to be covered in a drug poisoning or overdose situation.
“I’m pretty sure, when all is said and done, this is going to be a natural death,” Laurie predicted. “We just have to wait for histology and toxicology to help us out if there is something else involved.”
“Are you booked for another case?” Marvin asked.
“I doubt it,” Laurie answered. “I wasn’t even booked for this one.”
Laurie helped move the body onto a gurney, then gathered up the toxicology and the histology sample bottles and put them in two brown paper bags. “I’ll carry these up myself,” she told Marvin. “I want to make a personal plea that they get processed quickly. I’ve nothing else to do.”