by Cook, Robin
8
* * *
3:00 p.m., Thursday
Manhattan
After getting a cup of coffee from the ID office that looked more like sludge than coffee by that time of the day, Laurie pushed her way into the Thursday afternoon conference which was held in the conference room connected to Bingham’s office. This was the one opportunity for all the city’s medical examiners to get together and share cases and discuss diagnostic problems. Although the office of the chief medical examiner handled deaths in the Bronx as well as Manhattan, the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island had their own offices. Thursday was the day they all got together. Coming to the conference was not an option. As far as Bingham was concerned, it was a command performance.
As usual, Laurie took a seat near to the door. When the discussions became too administrative or political for her taste, she liked to slip away.
The most interesting part of these weekly conferences usually occurred before the meeting was called to order. It was in these casual conversations beforehand that Laurie was able to pick up interesting tidbits and details of particularly baffling or gruesome cases. In that respect, this Thursday’s meeting proved no different.
“I’d thought I’d seen it all,” Dick Katzenburg told Paul Plodgett and Kevin Southgate. Dick was a senior medical examiner assigned to the Queens office. Laurie’s ears perked up.
“It was the weirdest homicide I’d seen,” Dick continued. “And God knows I’ve seen some strange ones.”
“Are you going to tell us or do we have to beg?” Kevin asked, obviously as eager for the story. Medical examiners loved to swap “war stories” that were either intellectually stimulating or grotesquely bizarre.
“It was a young guy,” Dick said. “Done in a funeral home with the aspirator that they use for embalming.”
“He was bludgeoned to death?” Kevin asked. So far he was unimpressed.
“No!” Dick said. “With the trocar. The aspirator was running. It was as if the kid was embalmed alive.”
“Ugh,” Paul said, obviously impressed. “That is weird. It reminds me of the case—”
“Dr. Montgomery,” a voice called.
Laurie turned. Dr. Bingham stood before her. “I’m afraid there is something else I have to discuss with you,” he said.
Laurie felt queasy. She wondered what she’d done now.
“Dr. DeVries came to see me,” Bingham said. “He complained that you have been coming in his lab bothering him about some test results. Now I know that you are eager for those results, but you’re not the only one waiting. Dr. DeVries is swamped right now. I don’t think I have to tell you. But don’t expect special treatment. You’re going to have to wait like everyone else. I’ll thank you not to harass Dr. DeVries any further. Do I make myself clear?”
Laurie was tempted to say something like DeVries had a hell of a way of going after more funding, but Bingham turned away. Before Laurie had a chance to dwell on this, her third reprimand in four days, Bingham called the meeting to order.
Bingham began the conference, as usual, by summarizing the statistics for the previous week. Then he gave a short report on the status of the Central Park murder case since it had been so much in the news. He again rebutted the media’s charges of mismanagement of the case on the part of the medical examiner’s office. He concluded by advising everyone not to offer any personal opinions.
Laurie was certain that last remark was directed at her. Who else had been offering opinions from within the medical examiner’s ranks?
Following Bingham’s talk, Calvin spoke about administrative issues, particularly concerning how reduced city funding was affecting operations. Every other week one service or supply was being curtailed or eliminated.
Following Calvin’s talk, each of the deputy medical examiners from the other borough offices gave summaries. Some of the people present yawned, others nodded off.
When the borough chiefs were finished, the floor was opened up for general discussion. Dick Katzenburg described a few cases, including the rather grisly one at the Queens funeral home.
Once he was through, Laurie cleared her throat and began to address the group. She presented her six overdose cases as succinctly as possible, careful to delineate the demographic differences that set them apart from usual overdoses. Laurie described the deceased as single yuppies whose drug use came as a surprise to friends and family. She explained the cocaine was mainlined although not mixed with heroin.
“My concern,” Laurie said, avoiding looking at Bingham, “is that we are seeing the beginning of a series of unusual overdose deaths. I suspect a contaminant in the drug is to blame, but so far none has been found. What I’d like to request is that if anybody sees any cases similar to the ones I’ve described, please send them to me.”
“I’ve seen four myself over the last several weeks,” Dick said once Laurie was through. “Since we see so many overdose/toxicity cases I didn’t give the demographics much thought. But now that you mention it, all four seemed like overachievers. In fact, two were professionals. And three of the four took the cocaine intravenously, the fourth orally.”
“Orally?” someone echoed with surprise. “An oral cocaine overdose? That’s pretty uncommon. You usually only see that in drug-smuggling “mules’ coming from South America whose condoms break.”
“I’m never surprised what druggies do,” Dick said. “One of the cases that I had was found wedged in the refrigerator. Apparently he got so hot, he had to crawl into the ice box for relief.”
“One of mine climbed into a refrigerator, too,” Laurie said.
“I had one also,” Jim Bennett said. He was the chief at the Brooklyn office. “And now that I think about it, I had another who ran out into the street stark naked before he had a terminal seizure. He’d taken the drug orally but only after attempting to take it IV.”
“Did these two cases have the same unlikely demographics for a drug overdose?” Laurie asked Jim.
“Sure did,” Jim said. “The man who ran out in the street was a successful lawyer. And the families in both cases swore up and down that the deceased didn’t do drugs.”
Laurie looked to Margaret Hauptman, who headed the Staten Island office. “Have you seen any similar cases?” she asked.
Margaret shook her head.
Laurie asked Dick and Jim if they would mind faxing over the records on the cases they’d described. They immediately said that they would.
“One thing I have to mention,” Dick said. “In three out of four I’ve had a lot of pressure from the involved families to sign the case out as natural.”
“That’s a point I want to underline,” Bingham said, speaking for the first time since the beginning of the discussion. “With upscale overdose deaths like these the families will certainly want to keep the whole episode low profile. I think we should cooperate in this regard. Politically we cannot afford to alienate this constituency.”
“I don’t know what to make of this refrigerator aspect,” Laurie said. “Although it brings me back to the contaminant idea. Perhaps there is some chemical that has a synergistic effect with cocaine vis-á-vis causing hyperpyrexia. At any rate I’m concerned that all these deaths are coming from the same source of the drug. Now that we have this many cases we ought to be able to prove it by comparing the percentages of its natural hydrolysates. Of course we will need the lab to cooperate.”
Laurie looked nervously at Bingham to see if his expression changed with her reference to the lab. It didn’t.
“I don’t think a contaminant is a given,” Dick said. “Cocaine is fully capable of causing these deaths all by itself. On the four cases I’ve seen, the serum level was high. Very high. These people took big doses. Maybe the cocaine wasn’t cut with anything; maybe it was one-hundred-percent pure. We’ve all seen that kind of death with heroin.”
“I still think a contaminant is involved,” Laurie said. “With the general intelligence of this group of victims, i
t’s hard for me to believe that so many would mess up if it were purely dose related.”
Dick shrugged. “You may be right,” he admitted. “All I’m saying is let’s not jump to hasty conclusions.”
Leaving the conference, Laurie felt a strange and disturbing mixture of excitement, yet a renewed frustration and anxiety. Within a couple of hours her “series” had doubled from six cases to twelve. That was ominous. Her intuition about the number of cases increasing was already coming to pass, and at an alarming rate.
Now, even more than before, Laurie felt that the public had to be warned, especially this group of yuppie types. The problem was how to do it. Certainly she dared not go back to Bingham. But she had to do something.
Suddenly she thought of Lou. The police had a whole division devoted to drugs and vice. Perhaps that division had a way of putting out the word that a certain drug was particularly dangerous. With growing resolve, she went to her office and dialed Lou immediately. When he answered, she felt relieved.
“I’m so glad you’re still there,” she said with a sigh.
“You are?” Lou asked.
“I want to come right down and talk to you,” Laurie said.
“You do?”
“Will you wait for me?” Laurie demanded.
“Sure,” Lou said. He was puzzled and elated at the same time. “Come on down.”
Laurie hung up the phone, grabbed her briefcase, opened it, threw in some half-finished records, snapped it shut, snatched her coat, and literally ran down to the elevator.
A slight rain was falling as she stepped out onto First Avenue. She despaired of catching a cab, but as luck would have it, one pulled up to the curb and let off a passenger right in front of her. Laurie got in before the passenger had a chance to close the door.
Never having been to New York City police headquarters, Laurie was surprised to find it a relatively modern brick structure. Entering the front entrance, she had to sign in while a security person called up to Lou to make sure she was expected. Then they went through her briefcase. Armed with a visitor’s pass and directions, she found his office. Like the entire building, it reeked of cigarette smoke.
“Can I take your coat?” Lou asked as she stepped inside. Lou took the coat and hung it on a coatrack. While he was doing so he caught Harvey Lawson giving him a dirty look from across the hall. Lou closed his office door.
“You sounded excited on the phone,” Lou commented as he went around behind his desk. Laurie had taken one of the two straight-backed chairs. Her briefcase was on the floor next to her.
“I need your help,” Laurie said. She was intense and obviously nervous, clutching her hands in her lap.
“Oh, really?” Lou commented. “I was hoping this excitement had something to do with dinner tonight, like you had changed your mind.” He couldn’t keep the sarcasm from his voice. He was obviously disappointed.
“My “series’ has doubled,” Laurie said. “There are now twelve cases, not six.”
“That’s interesting,” Lou said flatly.
“I was hoping that you might know some way we can warn the public,” Laurie said. “I think we’re about to see a flood of these cases unless something is done, and done soon.”
“What would you have me do?” Lou asked. “Have an ad posted in The Wall Street Journal: “Yuppies, Just Say No’?”
“Lou, I’m serious,” Laurie said. “I’m truly worried about this.”
Lou sighed. He took out a cigarette and lit up.
“Must you smoke?” Laurie asked him. “I’ll only be here a few moments.”
“Jesus Christ,” Lou snapped. “It’s my office.”
“Then try to blow the smoke away, please,” Laurie said.
“I’ll ask you again,” Lou said. “What do you want me to do? You must have had something in mind if you bothered coming all the way down here.”
“No, nothing specific,” Laurie admitted. “I just thought the police narcotics squad might have some way of warning the public. Couldn’t they make some kind of announcement to the press?”
“Why doesn’t the medical examiner’s office do it?” Lou asked. “The police are around to arrest people with drugs, not help them.”
“The chief refuses to take a public stand so far. I’m sure he’ll come around, but in the meantime lives are being lost.”
Lou took a drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke over his shoulder. “What about the other medical examiners? Are they as convinced as you about this thing exploding into a glut of dead yuppies?”
“I haven’t polled them,” Laurie said.
“Don’t you think you might be a little overly sensitive about these deaths because of your brother?” Lou offered.
Laurie became enraged. “I didn’t come down here for you to play amateur psychologist. But while we’re on the subject, sure, I’m sensitive. I know how it feels to lose a loved one to drugs. But I would say that kind of empathy is a boon to my work. Maybe if a few more jaded policemen like yourself had a little more empathy, we civil servants would be in the business of saving lives instead of picking corpses’ pockets.”
Lou held his temper. “Frankly, Dr. Montgomery, I’d love to be in the lifesaving business. In fact, I already consider myself to be in the lifesaving business. But unless you furnish me with more proof as to this grand contaminant theory of yours, I’m afraid Narcotics won’t do anything more than laugh me back to Homicide.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Me? A detective lieutenant in Homicide?” Lou was exasperated but he knew Laurie was genuinely concerned. “Can’t you go to the media?”
“I can’t,” Laurie said. “If I go to the media behind Dr. Bingham’s back, I’ll be looking for work. That much I know. We already had a run-in about that. How about you?”
“Me?” Lou questioned with surprise. “A homicide lieutenant suddenly involved with drug overdoses! They’d want names and where I got them, and I’d have to say I got them from you. Besides my bosses would wonder why I was worried about druggies and not solving the problem with the gangland slayings. No, I can’t go either. If I went to the media I’d probably be out looking for work as well.”
“Won’t you try talking with the narcotics division?” Laurie asked.
“I got an idea,” Lou said. “What about your boyfriend, the doctor. It’s sorta natural that a doctor would be interested in this kind of problem. Besides he seems to be pretty high profile with a limo and that posh office.”
“Jordan is not my boyfriend,” Laurie said. “He’s a male acquaintance. And how do you know about his office?”
“I went to see him this afternoon,” Lou said.
“Why?” Laurie asked.
“You want the truth or what I told myself?” Lou said.
“How about both,” Laurie said.
“I wanted to ask him about his patient Paul Cerino,” Lou said. “And also about his secretary now that she is a homicide victim. But I was also curious to meet the guy. And if you want my opinion, he’s a creep.”
“I don’t want your opinion,” Laurie snapped.
“What I don’t understand,” Lou persisted, “is why you’d be interested in such a fake, pompous, ostentatious bum. I’ve never seen such an office for a doctor. And a limo . . . please! The guy must be robbing his patients blind. Excuse the pun! What is it that attracts you? His money?”
“No!” Laurie said indignantly. “And as long as you are bringing up money, I called your Internal Affairs department—”
“So I heard,” Lou interrupted. “Well, I hope you sleep better now that you’ve probably gotten some poor patrolman in hot water while he’s trying to send his kids to college. Bravo for your strict morality. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go out to Forest Hills and try to solve some real crime.” Lou stubbed out his cigarette and got to his feet.
“So you won’t talk to your drug division?” Laurie asked, trying one more time.
Lou leaned over
his desk. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I believe I’ll just let you rich people look after yourselves.”
Having reined in her anger over the last few minutes, Laurie now gave in to it. “Thanks for nothing, Lieutenant,” she said superciliously. Getting up, she got her coat, picked up her briefcase, and stalked out of Lou’s office. Downstairs she threw her visitors pass on the Security table and walked out.
Catching a cab was easy as they came in from the Brooklyn Bridge. With just about a straight shot up First Avenue, she was home in no time. Getting off the elevator on her floor, she glared at Debra Engler, then slammed her door.
“And at one point you thought he was charming,” she said out loud, ridiculing herself as she stripped down and got into the shower. She couldn’t believe that she had allowed herself to sit for as long as she had in Lou Soldano’s office absorbing all that abuse in the futile hopes that he might deign to help her. It had been a degrading experience.
Ensconced in a white terry robe, Laurie went to her answering machine and listened to her messages while a hungry Tom rubbed across her legs and purred. One was from her mother and the other was from Jordan. Both asked her to call when she got home.
Jordan had left a number different from his home number with an extension.
When she called Jordan at the number he’d left, she was told that he was in surgery but that she should hold on.
“Sorry,” said Jordan once he picked up a few minutes later. “I’m still in surgery. But I insisted on being told when you called.”
“You’re in the middle of an operation right now?” Laurie couldn’t believe it.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jordan said. “I can break scrub for a few minutes. I wanted to ask if we could make dinner tonight a bit later. I don’t want to keep you waiting again, but I have another case to go.”
“Maybe it would be just as well if we took a raincheck.”