Blindsight

The first person Laurie confronted was Vinnie Amendola, one of the mortuary techs. Oblivious to the pandemonium in the reception area, Vinnie was drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup and studying the sports pages of the New York Post. His feet were propped up on the edge of one of the gray metal desks. As usual before eight in the morning, Vinnie was the only person in the room. It was his job to make the coffee for the coffee pool. A large, commercial-style coffeemaker was in the ID office, a room that served a number of functions, including an informal morning congregation area.

“What on earth is going on?” Laurie asked as she picked up the day’s autopsy schedule. Even though she wasn’t scheduled for any autopsies, she was always curious to see what cases had come in.

Vinnie lowered his paper. “Trouble,” he said.

“What kind of trouble?” Laurie asked. Through the doorway leading to the communications room, she could see that the two day-shift secretaries were busy on their phones. The panels in front of them were blinking with waiting calls. Laurie poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Another “preppy murder’ case,” Vinnie said. “A teenage girl apparently strangled by her boyfriend. Sex and drugs. You know rich kids. Happened over near the Tavern On The Green. With all the excitement that first case caused a couple of years ago, the media has been here from the moment the body was brought in.”

Laurie clucked her tongue. “How awful for everyone. A life lost and a life ruined.” She added sugar and a touch of cream to her coffee. “Who’s handling it?”

“Dr. Plodgett,” Vinnie said. “He was called by the tour doctor and he had to go out to the scene. It was around three in the morning.”

Laurie sighed. “Oh boy,” she muttered. She felt sorry for Paul. Handling such a case would most likely be stressful for him because he was relatively inexperienced like herself. He’d been an associate medical examiner for just over a year. Laurie had been there for only four and a half months. “Where’s Paul now? Up in his office?”

“Nope,” Vinnie said. “He’s in doing the autopsy.”

“Already?” Laurie questioned. “Why the rush?”

“Beats me,” Vinnie said. “But the guys going off the graveyard shift told me that Bingham came in around six. Paul must have called him.”

“This case gets more intriguing by the minute,” Laurie said. Dr. Harold Bingham, age fifty-eight, was the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, a position that made him a powerful figure in the forensic world. “I think I’ll duck into the pit and see what’s happening.”

“I’d be careful if I were you,” Vinnie said, struggling to fold his paper. “I was thinking of going in there myself, but the word is that Bingham is in a foul mood. Not that that’s so out of the ordinary.”

Laurie nodded to Vinnie as she left the room. To avoid the mass of reporters in the reception area, she took the long route to the elevators, walking through Communications. The secretaries were too busy to say hello. Laurie waved to one of the two police detectives assigned to the medical examiner’s office who was sitting in his cubbyhole office off the communications room. He, too, was on the phone.

After going through another doorway, Laurie glanced into each of the forensic medical investigators’ offices to say good morning, but no one was in yet. Reaching the main elevators, she pushed the up button and as usual had to wait while the aged machine slowly responded. Looking down the hall to her right, she could see the mass of reporters seething in the reception area. Laurie felt sorry for poor Marlene Wilson.

As she rode up to her office on the fifth floor, Laurie thought about the meaning of Bingham’s early presence not only at the office but also in the autopsy room. Both occurrences were rare and they fanned her curiosity.

Since her office-mate, Dr. Riva Mehta, was not yet in, Laurie spent only minutes in her office. She locked her briefcase, purse, and lunch in her file cabinet, then changed into green scrub clothes. Since she wasn’t going to do an autopsy herself, she didn’t bother putting on her usual second layer of protective, impervious clothing.

Back in the elevator Laurie descended to the basement level, where the morgue was located. This was not a basement in the true sense because it was actually the street level from the building’s Thirtieth Street side. A loading dock from Thirtieth Street was the route bodies arrived and left the morgue.

In the locker room, which she rarely used as such, preferring to change in her office, Laurie got shoe covers, apron, mask, and hood. Thus dressed as if she were about to perform surgery, she pushed through the door into the autopsy room.