Slipping out the contents, he rifled through it until he was able to come across the MLI’s workup. Like Sue Passero’s case, it had been written by Kevin Strauss. He was about to read the relatively short write-up when his eye caught the name at the top of the form. It was Cherine Gardener.
“Shit!” Jack blurted. Like the previous day when he came across the name Susan Passero, his seeing the name Cherine Gardener was an utter shock. “Sorry for my outburst,” he added for Jennifer’s benefit. He even held up his hand as a kind of apology. He was rather old school when it came to expletives and frequently criticized mortuary techs who used colorful language. As loud and out of character as Jack’s utterance had been, even Vinnie lowered his Post to peer at him, dumbfounded.
“What’s wrong?” Jennifer asked. She was as surprised as Vinnie.
“I think I know this person,” he said. “God! Two days in a row.” His eyes scanned the page for identification details, learning that the deceased was a nurse at the Manhattan Memorial Hospital. Unfortunately, all that confirmed for Jack that the deceased was the Cherine Gardener he feared it to be.
“How did you know her?” Jennifer asked. “Another friend?”
“No, she wasn’t a friend,” Jack said, scanning the workup again as he spoke. “Curiously enough, I just met her yesterday afternoon for the first time. I can’t believe this. She was a nurse at the MMH who was supposed to call me sometime today, so we could get together to finish a conversation we were having about Passero’s case.”
“You met her at the MMH?” Jennifer questioned. She frowned.
“Yeah,” he said, trying to sound casual but covertly wincing as he realized he’d just made a regrettable faux pas by admitting he’d been out investigating. In an attempt to recover he added, “I stopped there briefly on my way home last night just to pick up some paperwork that was left for me.”
“And you happened to run into her?” Jennifer asked quizzically.
“That’s what happened,” Jack said, wincing yet again as his explanation sounded pathetic, even to him.
“Well, that’s quite a coincidence,” Jennifer said. She shrugged.
“It sure is,” Jack agreed quickly as he went back to Kevin’s workup. All he could do was hope his loose talk didn’t find its way to Laurie’s ears.
“Do you want to change your mind and do the case?” Jennifer asked.
He didn’t answer right away but waited until he’d reread the workup more carefully. “Sorry,” he said again when Jennifer’s question registered. “Yes, I guess I’m going to have to do the case whether I want to or not.”
“Fine and dandy,” Jennifer said. “But tell me, does reading the MLI’s workup give you an idea of why Detective Soldano is here?”
“Yes and no,” Jack said. “At least not entirely. It seems it wasn’t run of the mill.”
“How so?” Jennifer asked. In her experience, a case had to be significantly consequential for a lieutenant commander detective to be involved.
“Well,” he said while looking back at the workup to come up with a synopsis, “the patrolmen who responded to the original nine-one-one call ended up calling the precinct detectives and the crime scene unit following an unsuccessful attempt with the Narcan because the apartment was in shambles, as if there had been a struggle. Anyway, it was out of the ordinary.”
“Were there signs of a break-in?”
“Nope, no break-in, and a bag of white powder was found on the coffee table. More important, one of the building’s tenants said she heard what might have been a scream although she wasn’t entirely sure. What she was positive about was hearing crashing noises, explaining the apartment’s disarray and debris scattered about the living room. Another tenant said they saw a man leave the building who seemed to be in a hurry and who didn’t turn around when she called out to him. That’s it.”
“It sounds a bit suspicious,” Jennifer agreed. “But it still doesn’t explain why a detective of Detective Soldano’s rank is here to observe the autopsy.”
“That’s my feeling, too,” Jack said. “Luckily it’s going to be easy to find out, which I will do right now.”
With the reconstituted autopsy folder under his arm and his coffee mug in his hand, he walked over to Lou Soldano’s sleeping form and gave his shoulder a gentle shake. Jack had to do it a second time to get the man to lift his eyelids. When Lou finally did, it was obviously a struggle requiring quite an effort.
“Why can’t I sleep this soundly when I am at home?” Lou questioned. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers hard enough to create squishing noises. When he was done, he sat up straighter and looked up at Jack, who had waited patiently. The whites of Lou’s eyes were beet red.
Jack held up the autopsy folder. “I heard you are here about this Cherine Gardener case, which confuses me. I read the MLI workup, and he signed it out as an overdose. What gives? Why are you interested? What’s up?”
“My gut tells me it wasn’t a run-of-the mill overdose,” Lou said. “Same with the responding detective who called me last night. But I have to confess up front, we homicide detectives, maybe me more than anyone else, are getting sick and tired of the uptick in homicides this pandemic is bringing to our fair city. Before the pandemic big strides had been made lowering the rate, but now it’s getting out of control, which we’re all taking as a personal insult. So maybe we are more sensitive than we should be, especially in a case like this where some rank amateur might be trying to camouflage his dirty work by making it look like an overdose. If that’s what we’re dealing with here, I want to know ASAP. Will you help?”
“When you ask so nicely, how can I say no?” Jack questioned as he playfully slapped Lou on top of his head with the autopsy folder. “Okay, but let’s get it over with so you can get your ass home and get some real sleep, and, more important, so I can get back to yesterday’s case.”
Walking over to Vinnie, who was still hidden behind his newspaper, Jack snapped the tabloid out of his hands and plopped the autopsy folder in his lap. “Let’s go, big guy! Let’s knock this one of the park.”
“I knew it was too good to be true that you’d be taking a paper day,” Vinnie whined. With a sudden lunge, he grabbed his paper back and then calmly pretended to go back to reading it. Jack snapped it away for the second time. On this occasion, he rolled it up into a tight tube and smacked Vinnie over the head with it before dropping it into his lap. Both laughed while Jennifer rolled her eyes.
Chapter 24
Wednesday, December 8, 8:11 a.m.
Jack held the door to the stairwell open for Lou. They had delayed leaving the ID area so Lou could help himself to a quick cup of coffee. Vinnie had gone ahead to get everything ready for the autopsy. While Lou downed his needed shot of caffeine, Jack thanked him for his advice about not making waves at home, saying that he’d taken Lou’s suggestions and was feeling a lot better about everything. Lou was pleased, saying he wished he had followed his own advice years ago. He’d been divorced for more than a decade.