Lord, Manny thought. He’s becoming taller in the witness stand. More authoritative. And the jury’s starting to believe him! “Additionally,” Rosen continued, “when the top of the skull was removed at autopsy, blood leaking from the postmortem incisions pooled inside the lower part of the skull, making it look like an even bigger subdural bleed. It could easily be mistaken for a traumatic injury, but it’s actually consistent with the officers’ testimony that the victim’s head never struck the ground.”
“In your opinion,” Manny snarled, watching uncertainty cloud the jurors’ faces. If that pontificating hired gun persuades them- “An opinion,” Rosen said, “which is backed by the vomitus the medical examiner found on the victim’s clothing. Vomiting is a classic sign of a leaking berry aneurysm.”
Manny felt her blood pressure spike. Her hair fell wetly across her cheeks. The son of a bitch was twisting the girl’s suffering to get the cops off the hook. “That vomit,” she said, “is evidence of the trauma six policemen inflicted on a one-hundred-and-five-pound girl. Or didn’t you read Dr. Sumet’s report?”
“I did. But what he failed to note was that the vomitus recovered from her jacket sleeve contained eggs, tomatoes, and tortillas.”
“Exactly. Which the victim ate for breakfast.”
“Counselor,” Rosen said, condescension dripping from the word, “according to her family, Miss Carramia ate at ten-thirty a.m. If she’d vomited as a result of the arrest four hours later, the food would have been mostly digested. It was not. This is proof that vomiting preceded the arrest. The girl died of natural causes. That’s what the science tells us.”
Manny shot a glance at the jury. They believe him. She felt sick, cold. Counterattack. But how? “Dr. Rosen,” she said, “apart from all this suspect speculation, you don’t have any solid evidence about what happened to Miss Carramia, do you?”
He leaned back, looking maddeningly comfortable. She envisioned him with pipe and slippers. “The body always tells the story,” he said. “Not only about how people died but how they lived.”
She felt a shiver of fear. Never mind that he’s an arrogant jerk. Just finish your cross.
“Come on, Doctor. Now you’re telling us you can read a body like some psychic with tea leaves?” Mistake! Never ask a question you can’t answer. What the hell am I doing? “Go ahead. Enlighten us. What could you know about the death of Esmeralda Carramia that hasn’t been covered by two years’ worth of investigation?”
“For one thing,” he said, “she was a gang member.”
Manny heard a gasp and looked behind her. Mrs. Carramia sat with her face covered by her hands, sobbing.
“The evidence is in the autopsy photos,” Rosen went on. “Miss Carramia had a pachuco tattoo.”
Manny breathed a sigh of relief. “You mean the crucifix? A religious symbol?”
Now Rosen stared directly at the jurors. “A simple homemade cross with three small dashes on top. It’s a gang sign, often made with ink or ashes. Hers also had a fourth mark on the lower right side.” His voice lowered. The jury leaned forward to listen. “This indicates heroin addiction. In the really rough gangs it’s a badge of honor. It’s usually a prison tattoo, by the way.”
Manny felt dizzy. She saw Mr. Carramia, his face ashen, lead his wife from the room. They looked like a pair of children caught with their hands in a candy box. Rosen had transformed their angelic little girl into a shoplifting drug-addicted gangbanger. And her parents had known it all along. “Move to strike,” she said tonelessly. Lost. I’ve lost.
A defense lawyer was on his feet. “Counsel opened the door when she had Miss Carramia’s mother testify about her child’s spotless record.”
The judge nodded. “She sure did.”
The others in the room, Essie’s friends and the friends of the cops, sat silently for a moment and then began to talk, heedless of the judge’s gavel. Only Rosen was still, sitting in the witness box like a king on his throne or, Manny thought, like my executioner.
“No further questions,” she whispered.
IT WAS JAKE’S IDEA of a perfect rainy Friday night. The trial was over, the truth had prevailed- too bad about Manny Manfreda; she had done a good job but she didn’t have the right evidence- and now he was alone in his Upper East Side brownstone kitchen, eating Chinese food, reading a treatise on blood spatter, and listening to Duke Ellington’s soundtrack of Anatomy of a Murder. Brilliant movie, inspiring music. Peace, it’s wonderful.
Alongside his take-out containers, piles of paperwork cluttered the top of his chrome-and-red Formica table; he’d tackle it over the weekend. His kitchen held a motley group of appliances: a recently purchased commercial stainless steel refrigerator, an avocado-green stove from the sixties, a white porcelain double sink from the fifties. The countertops were fifties Formica in green geometrical patterns; the metal cabinets, painted and repainted over the years, were a drab beige. A butcher-block island, scarred by years of white rings from wet plates and glasses, stood in faded glory in the center of the space. French doors in the back opened into a garden, converted by neglect into living quarters for a few happy squirrels, some pigeons, and an occasional chair.
Jake had bought the five-story brownstone in the mid-1980s, shortly after being hired at the ME’s office. He could only afford it because it was north of Ninety-sixth Street near Harlem, in those days not the nicest of neighborhoods. But he didn’t see it as an investment or even a possession. He saw New York’s history: the wealthy who had once populated the area, the careful work of nineteenth-century stonemasons, and the varied texture of the constantly changing community. When he finally had the money to do some work on the place, it was so full of forensic teaching materials and artifacts, he had no idea where to start. Besides, he didn’t have the time. This was New York. People died by the hundreds every day. He never had the time.
The music stopped, and he stopped eating and stared at his food. The sauce on his sesame chicken, he realized, was nearly the consistency of human blood. He picked up a knife, dipped it, and spattered the sauce across the kitchen table and the wall behind it, as though someone had stabbed the chicken from behind.
The phone rang. Damn. He picked it up. “Rosen.”
“Miss me?”
The two words gave him a jolt of pleasure. The only voice allowed to intrude into his solitude was Pete Harrigan’s- any time and any place. Pete, thirty years Jake’s senior, was one of only two people on this earth Jake loved. The other was his brother, Sam, and Sam didn’t have intrusion privileges.
“Sure I miss you.” Jake studied the mess on the table. “In fact, I was just thinking about you. The influence of knife length on cast-off blood spatter patterns.”
“I’m flattered,” Harrigan said. “But you should be out on a date. Weren’t you seeing that fingerprint expert from-”
“Broke it off,” Jake said quickly, feeling a flash of pain. “Too soon after my divorce.”
“Trouble with women, trouble in the office. I hear you’ve had a go-round with Chief Pederson. Too much private work, not enough time serving the city.” Harrigan had once been chief himself. Retired now, he obviously still had tentacles inside the ME’s office. “How is my old friend Charles Pederson? Does he still resent me now that he’s replaced me as chief medical examiner?”
“Still the same where you’re concerned,” Jake said. “Hey, you’re the one who taught me any medical examiner worth a damn pisses off the powers that be. Comes with the territory.”
“And you were my best student. Developed pissing off into a specialty. How’s Wally?” Harrigan was given to abrupt changes of subject.
“Blossoming. The man’s a godsend. I thank you for him every day.”
Dr. Walter Winnick- Wally- was a protйgй whom Harrigan had recommended to Jake. The man had a clubfoot, but his mind sprinted to invariably accurate conclusions; Jake couldn’t have handled his workload without him.
“Glad to hear it.”
“How’s
Elizabeth?” Jake asked.
“Fine. The woman’s going to be New Jersey’s next governor. Ever since she married that Markis fellow, though, she’s pretty much stopped visiting. If I want to see my daughter, I have to go to New Jersey, and even then I have to make an appointment through her press agent.”
There was a pause. Unusual, Jake thought. Pete was generally so voluble Jake couldn’t shut him up. He could hear Harrigan’s labored breathing. Sick, Jake wondered, or in trouble? “What’s up?”
“Let’s talk shop.”
“Sure,” Jake said, relieved. “You heard about the Carramia case?”
“As a matter of fact, no. For once I’m not calling about your cases, I’m calling about one of mine.”
“Shoot,” Jake said.
A hesitation, a cough. “I was wondering if you’d like to come up here and help me decipher some bones.”
***
Since his retirement, Dr. Peter Harrigan lived in the hamlet of Turner, a little town on a big lake two hours north of the city. Jake got there at six the next morning. He met Harrigan at his home, a white Cape Cod cottage with yellow shutters, which looked from the outside more like a doll’s house than the residence of a globally respected forensic pathologist.
The two men embraced. “We’ll have to take your car even though I hate seeing the street through your floorboards,” Pete said. “My Suburban’s sick.” He piled a box of autopsy tools, a camera, and a few body bags into the backseat of Jake’s old, falling apart Oldsmobile and brought two mugs of coffee to the front. He was wearing the same blue Polartec jacket Jake had given him seven years ago on the eve of Pete’s departure; Jake had on the dark green oilskin Marianna had bought him on their only trip to London.
“You do realize,” Jake said, as Pete backed the Camaro out of the driveway, “that you live in the geographical center of nowhere.”
Harrigan grinned. “It’s exciting, though. Big-time crime. Just last week our mayor shot an elk out of season. Town’s still debating how much to fine him.”
Jake swallowed hot coffee. It was bitter and strong; considering his sleep deprivation he was going to need a lot of it. “You lived in New York for over thirty years.”
“I got over it.”
After almost four decades in forensic pathology, Harrigan had retired to the country to please his wife, Dolores, who died less than three years later. Bored with fishing, he had taken on the post of Baxter County medical examiner, which meant signing off on one or two death certificates a week and doing two or three autopsies a month. At seventy-two, he was the oldest sitting medical examiner in the state of New York.
“So explain,” Jake said. “Why did I drive up here in the middle of the night?”
“To get here before the excavation starts up again.”
“Excavation of what?”
“That field in the distance.”
“And they’re digging on a Saturday morning?”
“Apparently,” Pete said, “the building of a shopping mall waits for no man- or bones.”
They were traveling on a two-lane road, passing trees, not houses. “A shopping mall? Up here?”
“Rumor has it the governor’s going to give the Senecas rights to build a casino. The town fathers are half mad with the prospect of all those tourists, so naturally they want to give them a place to spend their winnings. And what more appropriate location than in back of the Turner insane asylum?”
Jake grunted. “Fat chance anyone will win.”
Pete glanced at him, amused. “You never were much of a gambler, were you.”
“Only at love. And look what that won me: a monthly alimony check.”
Jake still felt the divorce of his parents with almost the same pain he’d experienced with his own. He remembered hugging his father’s leg the last time he walked out the door. His younger brother, Sam, had been a baby, couldn’t even stand yet, and didn’t know what was going on. But Jake’s childhood had gone downhill from that moment. After twenty years of being a medical examiner, he was convinced that the biggest risk factors for murder were love and marriage. He believed the marriage vow should say, I promise to love, honor, and not kill you. He had chosen a career as an ME both to improve society and to prove that a delinquent kid could make something of his life. The time it took to make a marriage work wasn’t compatible with his goals.
They continued down the road, sunlight just starting to peek through the trees. “They’d just broken ground on their god-forsaken center early yesterday morning,” Pete said, “when the backhoe brought up the upper part of a skull. The lower jaw, the mandible, was missing, probably carried off with the dirt before the crew realized what they had. In a construction site like this, the first instinct is to ignore anything that gets in the way, but the backhoe driver called the authorities and they called me. I found an ulna and a tibia to go along with the skull and ordered a shutdown.” Harrigan shot Jake a look. “I leave you to guess what the developer said the delay would cost him.”
Jake smiled into his mug. “An arm and a leg?”
“Just so.”
“I’m guessing those aren’t an old settler’s bones or you wouldn’t have brought me up here.”
“You got it. Within an hour, the scene was crawling with people: the developer himself- R. Seward Reynolds- his lackeys, his lawyers, the mayor, the sheriff, half the town council, and the ever-lovely Marge Crespy, doyenne of the Turner Historical Society.”
“Good God!”
“All of them seemed eager for the remains to be a settler. I told them, Impossible. I needed to take care of something else I couldn’t put off yesterday afternoon. I called you last night for help on this issue.”
Jake got the familiar queasy feeling in his stomach that came with the suspicion of corruption. “Sure. A settler means no fights over Indian burial grounds, no worries about a crime scene. They can just rebury the bones somewhere else and get on with the mall.” He looked at his friend and mentor, feeling the anger in Pete’s bearing. “Do you think it’s a Native American?”
“I found an incisor. It isn’t shovel-shaped. The skull has rectangular eye sockets and a triangular nasal opening. You tell me.”
“Caucasian.”
Harrigan nodded. “And a good thing, too, as far as the mayor’s concerned. He was apoplectic at the prospect of a dispute over native land.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The bones were normal weight and nonporous.”
“Meaning they’re probably less than fifty years old.”
“And they weren’t sticky. The tongue doesn’t lie.”
Jake imagined Miss Crespy’s reaction when Pete touched his tongue to the remains, looking for stickiness caused by porous texture and a lack of organic material. “The death was recent. You told them that?”
“Of course. But with all that lovely tax revenue at stake, they’re hardly inclined to take the word of a bone-licker.”
“That’s why you called me in? To back you up?”
“Partly. And there are practical considerations. My hands and eyes are no longer as sharp as my mind. My heart isn’t getting any stronger. I’d already decided to step down as ME at the end of the year.” He paused. “This may be the last interesting case I ever get. It would be fitting if we did it together.”
He’s pleading with me, Jake thought, struck by a tone he had never heard before. Why? It was easy to remember Harrigan as the vigorous pathologist who had mentored him from the moment they’d met at the morgue at Bellevue Hospital; Jake had still been in medical school and the ME office had used the old Bellevue morgue. Now he studied his friend like the scientist Pete had trained him to be.
What he saw was a man whose hands shook with faint tremors, whose skin had become papery and translucent, whose watery eyes had lost some of their clarity and focus. He’s old. Older and more tired than I’ve ever seen him before.
“Of course I’ll help,” Jake said, feeling deeply moved. “I’m honored.�
�
Pete snorted. “Jesus, don’t go soft on me. Have some dignity, man.”
“Be polite,” Jake warned, “or you’re not getting your Johnnie Walker Blue.”
Pete’s eyes widened. “Blue?”
“Right there in my overnight bag. A little present from your most ardent admirer.”
“We’re here,” Pete said, stopping the car. “Let’s get this over with quickly so we can go back home and drink it.”
***
There were already more than a dozen cars parked on the scraggly grass at the edge of the construction site, including the sheriff’s cruiser. Beyond stretched land that had once been forest. Dozens of trees had already been felled, the logs waiting in neat pyramids to be hauled off to the sawmill. Pete and Jake set off toward the backhoe, a mute monster standing at the side of the field, impotent as a child’s toy. Fifteen people were clustered nearby, all men but for one woman, fiftyish and fierce beneath her blue peacoat- indubitably, Jake thought, Miss Crespy. Most of the men were wearing jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots, the universal garb of construction workers. Three more were standing a few yards from the rest, two wearing khakis and open-collared shirts, the other a beer belly and a badge. As soon as she saw Harrigan, the woman joined them.
“The one on the left’s the mayor,” Pete whispered. “Next to him’s the Reynolds foreman. The other’s the sheriff, obviously.”
The group had clearly been waiting for Harrigan to arrive. They looked at Rosen with the suspicion reserved for strangers in a small town.
“This here’s Dr. Jacob Rosen from the New York City medical examiner’s office,” Pete said. “Mayor Bob Stevenson, Sheriff Joe Fisk, Harry King- he’s in charge of construction- and, of course, Miss Crespy.”
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