“What about this Madison Bryant, who was also mentioned in the report?” Aria asked.
“What about her?”
“You described her as a friend and coworker,” she said. “Did you get the impression they were good friends or more like acquaintances?”
“Close friends was my take,” he said. “At the same time, she said that since the holidays they hadn’t seen as much of each other as they had during the fall. Miss Bryant’s sense was that Kera was struggling with New York winter weather and preferred to stay in her warm apartment.”
“Did you ask her about Kera having any current boyfriends?” Aria said.
“I didn’t, but one of the patrolmen said he did prior to getting the apartment door open. The answer was no.”
“I guess you have investigated quite a few overdose cases,” she said.
“Tons,” he said. “We average about four a day, meaning one every six hours or so, twenty-four-seven, and I get my share.”
“Was there anything about this case that made it different from the usual?”
He stared off into the middle distance for a beat and then said: “Not really, but we don’t see cases where the syringe is still in the vein all that often, although it does happen, especially now that fentanyl has become so prevalent. The other thing I noticed was that she had quite a lot of drug available, meaning a full sack. My guess was that she’d gotten a recent delivery. That started me thinking that maybe the batch had a lot more fentanyl than she expected. We’ve seen that problem before, where the drug user assumes the new stuff is the same as the last batch. We’ll get a better idea if this played a role when the toxicology report comes back.”
Suddenly Aria’s phone sounded, indicating she had just gotten a text message. “Hang on,” she said as she got her phone out to look at the screen: Dr. Nichols, please give me a call as soon as possible. I need to see you. It’s urgent. Dr. Henderson.
“Now that’s big-time weird,” Aria said. It was her turn to stare off for a moment. She’d never gotten a text from the chief of the NYU Department of Pathology before, nor could she remember even speaking with him.
“Excuse me?” David said.
“Sorry,” she said, returning to the present. “Something has come up so we need to wrap this up for now. What I’d like is Madison Bryant’s contact information.”
“I’m not sure I should provide that information.” David knitted his brows as he turned to look off toward Bart Arnold’s desk for help. Bart was head of the MLIs, but his desk was vacant. It was obvious he had already left.
“Listen to me, Mr. Goldberg. I’m looking into the case under the direct orders of the chief medical examiner, Dr. Laurie Montgomery. You are to supply me with all the help I need, or you will be hearing directly from her. Do I make myself clear?” Aria was never troubled by exaggeration or white lies.
“Of course,” David said. He turned back to his monitor to get the information. While he was writing the address and phone numbers, Aria asked another question.
“Did you manage to talk to any of Kera Jacobsen’s neighbors?”
“Yes, I spoke with the woman who lives in apartment 4A, across from Kera Jacobsen’s 4B. Their entrance doors face each other. Her name is Evelyn Mabry. I remember because her surname is the same as my mother’s maiden name. She apparently was the last person to see Kera Jacobsen alive, which, by the way, is the best way of determining the time of death, contrary to all the forensic TV shows.”
“And when was that?” Aria asked.
“Friday late afternoon.”
“Did you get the feeling this Evelyn Mabry was good friends with Kera Jacobsen?”
“Not at all,” David said. “My impression of Miss Mabry is that she’s a mildly paranoid recluse and a hoarder. There was barely room to stand in her apartment.”
Aria could understand the recluse part but not the paranoia or hoarding. “Did you ask Evelyn Mabry about whether Kera Jacobsen had many visitors, particularly boyfriends?”
“I was thinking more about possible drug dealers, not boyfriends, but yes, I did ask her. She said that in the past Miss Jacobsen had late-night visitors once or twice a week, usually midweek, but that had dropped off of late.”
“Men or women?”
“She couldn’t say for certain because she never saw them, just heard them arrive and occasionally heard them leave.”
“What about Friday night?” Aria asked. “Did you ask her if Miss Jacobsen had any visitors then?”
“Of course I asked her about Friday night,” David said with mild offense. “She said she went to bed early and didn’t hear anything.”
“Do you expect the police to be doing any investigation?”
“I don’t,” he said. “The precinct’s detective squad wasn’t even notified. What’s to investigate?”
Plenty, she thought, but didn’t say.
“Listen,” David said. “The police don’t want to make work for themselves, especially with all these overdoses that we’re seeing. Just notifying the detectives means a lot of paperwork. You have no idea.” He handed her a three-by-five card. She took it but then immediately handed it back.
“Dr. Montgomery says we have to do this investigation in tandem,” she said, purposefully avoiding the word supervision. She had no intention of being supervised by anyone, much less by a physician assistant, yet she knew how to make it look like she had. “How about your number along with the names and contact info for the cops that took the nine-one-one call. And what’s Kera Jacobsen’s address?”
He added the additional information to the card.
“All right,” Aria said, taking the card and standing. “I’ll be in touch.”
David started to respond, but she was already weaving through the gaggle of desks on her way to the elevator.
Chapter 10
May 8th
6:42 P.M.
Aria walked north along the east side of First Avenue, passing the famed and busy Bellevue Hospital on her right. Although it was almost seven P.M., sunset wouldn’t come for an hour or so. Despite wearing only a cotton blouse, her favorite pair of jeans, and her resident jacket, Aria wasn’t cold in the slightest although she knew things would change after the sun went down. Overhead, the sky was shockingly clear with only a few puffy clouds. To her right, the tops of the tall buildings were bathed in a golden glow of late-afternoon sun.
As soon as she had exited the OCME high-rise, Aria had placed the call to Dr. Henderson as he had requested in his text. As she did so, she had felt her pulse mildly quicken. It was rarely a good sign to be contacted by the front office, particularly after hours. Adding to her unease, she’d never had any dealings with the head of Pathology despite lots of dicey run-ins with the director of the pathology residency program, Dr. Gerald Zubin. Aria was well aware she was not considered a team player and accordingly had been continually balanced on a knife edge from the first days of her residency. Right out of the gate she’d bucked the system by refusing to do tasks dictated mostly by men and only because that was the way it had always been done. Her argument was that rules had to make sense. Even more disruptive, she’d made it a point to do as little scut work as possible, particularly during that first year of residency, when a lot of nonsense trickled down to those on the lower rungs of the totem pole as a kind of hazing. Yet through it all, here she was, poised to make it to her final year of residency in a little more than a month, provided the chief of the Pathology Department hadn’t been looking for her to try and suggest otherwise. Still, she was confident she could handle just about anything at this point, since she had proved she was significantly smarter than most of the male authority figures occupying the front office.