“As I said, you wanted a challenge, so now you have it. Good luck, but get it done! To help you, I’ll give Abby a call back shortly because I said I would. I’ll tell him that the results of the autopsy are pending and that you will be giving him a call to convey them. I’ll also mention that you will be the one to provide the death certificate and will arrange for the body to be released to the funeral home.”
“Aye, aye!” he said, being careful to resist making a salute by keeping his hand tightly gripped on the doorknob. Then he left.
Chapter 6
Tuesday, December 7, 9:55 a.m.
“Are you convinced now?” Jack asked Vinnie as he held the narrow wooden dowel alongside the head of the woman lying supine on the autopsy table. Her name was Sharron Seton, and she was suspected of having killed herself the night before. The dowel was lined up with a stellate gunshot entrance wound in her left temple, indicating the muzzle of the gun had been held against the skin when it discharged, and Jack had found the location of the bullet in the right mandible beneath one of her lower cuspids. In Jack’s experience and for most medical examiners, suicide with a handgun invariably entailed contact with the gun’s barrel, either against the temple or in the mouth.
“I’m convinced even if he isn’t,” Lou Soldano said when Vinnie hesitated to respond. Lou was lieutenant commander detective, a rank called LCD by those in the know. He had arrived while Jack was talking with Laurie in her office. He’d come in because Sharron Seton was the wife of Detective Third Grade Paul Seton, who worked under Lou, and Lou had gotten a call with the terrible news that Paul’s wife had killed herself. As the caring commander of a group of homicide detectives, Lou had wanted to get what information he could to help his young team member, but what he was learning was certainly not good news.
Lou Soldano was a distinctly masculine, quintessentially Southern Italian — appearing man who was getting a bit long in the tooth and past his pension age, meaning that by continuing to work, he was losing money over the long haul. But he didn’t care. Being a police officer completely defined him. There was no way he could imagine retiring, and as a particularly dedicated detective, he was frequent visitor to the OCME. Early in his career he had learned the value of forensic pathology in solving homicide cases, probably more than anyone else in the entire NYPD. And as a hopeless workaholic who had trouble sleeping more than a few hours, Lou frequently went out into the field on night homicide calls, and when he did, he would often follow the body to the morgue to observe the post. This appreciation of forensics led him to meet Laurie when she’d joined the OCME, and for a short time they had even seen each other socially. But it didn’t work out, more to do with what they admitted was a cultural difference than anything else. When Jack arrived on the scene as a medical examiner, Lou had found him to be especially copacetic, particularly appreciating Jack’s speed as well as his sarcastic humor. When Jack and Laurie became an item, Lou was a great advocate, and when they eventually married, he became one of their closest friends.
“Obviously the path of the bullet means the gun was angled from above the head and posterior to the midline,” Lou said. “That doesn’t compute.”
“Exactly,” Jack said. “Try to do it.” Jack formed his left hand into a gun by extending his index finger and thumb while keeping the rest of his fingers balled into his palm. In this fashion he tried to position it in a way that could align with the path of the bullet. “It’s impossible,” he said. “There’s no way this could have been a suicide. Zero!”
“I get it,” Vinnie said. “I’m just dumbfounded people can be so damn stupid. I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to stage a goddamn suicide, especially if you are a police detective.”
“It’s probably more indicative that there wasn’t a lot of planning,” Jack said. “Then again, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions other than this wasn’t a suicide. I suppose it could have possibly been an intruder. Any sign of a break-in?”
“No, none,” Lou said with a shake of his head. “The only people in the apartment at the time of the shooting were Paul and Sharron. That’s been established. Paul told me that he’d been sleeping in the guest room because he and Sharron had a bad argument and that he came running when he heard the gunshot. Obviously, that was not true from what you have demonstrated here. But to be honest, I’m not terribly surprised. When the boys from the precinct arrived on the initial nine-one-one call from Paul, Paul’s father was already there, and he lives in New Jersey. That means Paul had called him long before placing the nine-one-one call, which in my book raises a red flag. I just didn’t want to believe it.”
“It raised a red flag for the MLI, Janice Jaeger, as well,” Jack said. “She brought up the same facts in her report along with emphasizing the deceased was naked. All in all, it’s a good demonstration why all suicides need to be medical examiner cases.”
“Yeah, well, it’s goddamn depressing,” Lou said. “Paul Seton is a promising detective. Two lives ruined in an instant of insanity! What a tragedy!” Lou let out a long sigh behind his mask and face shield.
“Misery loves company,” Jack said with an equivalent sigh. “Obviously this case is going to end up being a major murder trial, which is going to involve me, and I hate court cases.” All medical examiners invariably worked closely with the District Attorney’s Office and were frequent participants in trials, which is why the OCME was so careful about chain-of-custody issues. Most medical examiners appreciated the legal role they were required to play, and some of them enjoyed the participation. Jack wasn’t one of them. Going to court and sitting for hours on end while lawyers bickered and tried to bully him wasn’t his idea of time well spent. It also kept him out of the autopsy room. In the end, he’d come to resent the court experience.
“But being dragged into court isn’t the worst of it,” Jack continued. “I was counting on this case to be a forensic challenge and keep me occupied for a couple of days, which it would have been if the husband had an ounce of criminal caginess. Instead, it’s turned out straightforward and simple. That’s not what I wanted. I’m in desperate need of a diversion from my own rather tumultuous home scene.”
“Uh-oh,” Lou said with concern. “What’s up at home?”
“Don’t get me started,” Jack said. “At least not until this case gets done, and we’re away from prying ears.”
“Ha ha!” Vinnie voiced derisively. “As if I’d give a flying crap.”
Lou was a good enough and close enough friend that Jack had confided in him on numerous occasions to get his opinion about issues involving Laurie, as he had insights about her that Jack had learned to respect. There had even been a time years ago that the two had conspired to try to prevent her from marrying a man they were convinced was a two-faced, unprincipled, shady arms dealer who would have made Laurie’s life a misery.
“You bum,” Lou mockingly complained. “Now I have to stick around longer than I’d planned.”
After the retrieval of the slug from the mandible, which was handled with great care for ballistics purposes, the rest of the case went rapidly, as it involved an entirely healthy thirty-three-year-old woman. There was little conversation until Jack slit open the uterus, at which point there was a silent pause.
“Is that what I think it is?” Lou questioned finally. He bent down to look a little closer.
“Afraid so,” Vinnie said.
Jack picked up a metal ruler to measure. “Almost two and a half centimeters. That, my friends, is about a ten-week-old fetus.”