Intervention (7 page)

“What am I looking at?” Vinnie questioned.

“It is called a dissection,” Jack said. “A bilateral dissection of the vertebral arteries. I’ve actually never seen it.”

Using the handle of the scalpel, Jack pointed to a spot just before the arteries’ S-curve where they looped up and over the first cervical vertebra. “Can you see this tear in the intima, or the inside lining of the blood vessel? In both arteries there is a tear at the point between the atlas, or first vertebra, and the axis, or second cervical vertebra. In such a situation, what happens is that arterial pressure forces blood into the tear and balloons the lining of the arteries away from the vessel’s fibrous wall, eventually blocking the vessel’s lumen. The brain is then deprived of a major portion of its blood supply and bingo, lights out.”

“Meaning curtains for the victim.”

“I’m afraid so,” Jack agreed.

With the pathology determined, the rest of the autopsy continued apace. Twenty minutes later, Jack exited the autopsy room to learn that Dr. Besserman had assigned him a second autopsy, the private-school meningitis case. While he waited for Vinnie to set it up, Jack ditched his soiled Tyvek suit and took Keara Abelard’s chart into the locker room.

Making himself comfortable, Jack carefully reread Janice Jaeger’s medicolegal investigation report. As he had noted earlier when he’d skimmed the record, the woman had been brought into the emergency room by her drinking buddies with the sudden onset of confusion and spasticity, leading to unconsciousness. From Janice’s choice of syntax, Jack could tell that she had not spoken with the friends directly but rather had gotten her information from a combination of the Saint Luke’s ER record, one of the ER

nurses, and one of the ER docs. Typical of Janice, the report was complete, with no mention of an auto accident.

Switching to the ID sheet, Jack saw that it had been Keara’s mother who’d made the identification. The woman lived in Engle wood, New Jersey, and Jack glanced at her phone number with its 201 area code.

Impulsively, Jack got to his feet. It was clear he needed more information than what he had. With the OCME record in hand, he used the back stairs to get up to the first floor, and, passing though the SIDS investigation area, he walked into the expanded medicolegal space. He found Bart Arnold, the chief of forensic investigation, at his desk in cubbyhole number one. He and Jack had an excellent working relationship, as Jack was one of the few medical examiners willing to give the investigators the credit they deserved by letting them know he couldn’t do his job without their help.

“Morning, Dr. Stapleton. Is there a problem?” Bart asked, seeing the case file under Jack’s arm.

“Hey, Bart, I was wondering if during your shift-change report session this morning Janice happened to mention anything memorable about Keara Abelard?”

Bart looked at his list of the night’s cases. “Nope, not that I can remember. It seemed routine to her, but definitely a case that fell under OCME jurisdiction.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Jack said. “But there’s so little history.”

“She mentioned that the ER docs felt the same, which is why they left word with Janice to get a callback. They want to know what’s found.”

“I didn’t see a note to that effect in the record.”

“I believe Janice knows the doc in question and was going to do it herself rather than obligating you.”

“Do you know if she spoke to the mother when the mother came in to make the identification?”

“That I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say no, because Janice is so thorough—if she’d spoken with the mother, she would have written it down. But why don’t you call her and ask? What’s the problem, not enough info?”

Jack nodded. “It’s a curious case. The woman died from occlusion of both her vertebral arteries. Unless she had had some connective-tissue disease like Marfan syndrome, which I seriously doubt, she had to have suffered serious trauma. Her vessels dissected, meaning the lining came off, blocking them up. Vinnie suggested whiplash injury from an auto accident, and he might be right. I think her friends or her mom might have some information. It could be extremely important. If someone ran into the back of her, he or she would now be looking at possible manslaughter, even murder, if the parties knew each other and there was some kind of conflict or controversy between them. I’d give the mother a call myself, but I’d hate to bother her if Janice has already spoken with her.”

“As I said, why not give Janice a call?”

With his left hand, Jack twisted up the bezel of his watch tied with the cincture of his scrub pants. “It’s a quarter to ten. Isn’t that too late?”

“She’s a perfectionist. She’ll want to help you out,” Bart said, handing him Janice’s home number. “Call her! Trust me!”

Using the front stairs, Jack hurried up to his office. After propping open his office door, he placed Janice’s card in the center of his blotter and pulled over his phone. Before he dialed the woman, he called down to Vinnie.

“I’m bringing in the body of the kid as we speak,” Vinnie said. “Five minutes and we’ll be ready to go. Calvin, our lovable deputy chief, wants us to do it in the decomposed room.” The decomposed room was a separate, small autopsy room with a single table. It was used mostly for putrid bodies.

“Make sure we have plenty of culture tubes,” Jack said. “See you in five.” He disconnected.

He was about to dial Janice’s number when the photo he had on his desk of Laurie and John Junior caught his eye. It had been taken at a happier time, the day Laurie and the baby were leaving the hospital after the delivery. At the moment there had been no symptoms or signs of the disaster that was to come.

Impulsively, Jack reached out, grabbed the photo, and tossed it into his bottom drawer, pushing it closed with his foot. “God!” he murmured. It was embarrassing how quickly he could be yanked back into a depressing thought, especially since Laurie was the one bearing ninety-nine percent of the burden. He wondered how she’d been able to do it. At least he’d been able to go to work to take his mind off the reality of the disaster.

For a moment Jack rubbed his eyes, causing a squishy sound from both sockets. With his elbows on the desk, he then roughly massaged his scalp. He was back to realizing how much he needed to find something professional to occupy his mind to rein in his fragile emotions.

Opening his eyes, Jack snatched up the telephone receiver and angrily poked the sequence of buttons corresponding to Janice’s phone number. When she answered, he snapped back with his name in such a way that he knew he sounded angry. Before Janice could even respond, he excused himself. “That didn’t come out right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Is something the matter?” Janice questioned. As conscientious as she was, her first concern was that she’d done something terribly wrong.

“No! No!” Jack assured her. “My mind was elsewhere for a second. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“Not at all. I can’t sleep for three or four hours after getting off shift.”

“I’m looking for more information on Keara Abelard.”

“I’m not surprised. There was so little available. Such a sad case, so young, attractive, and seemingly healthy.”

“Did you speak to any of the woman’s friends who brought her into the ER?”

“I didn’t have a chance. They had already left by the time I got there. I was able to get a name and number of one of them, Robert Farrell. I put it down at the bottom of the page.”

“Did you get to speak with her mother when she came in to make the ID?”

“I wanted to but got called out on another case before she arrived. And then when I returned, she’d already left. I’m sure Bart would be more than happy to follow up.”

“What I think I’ll do is call myself. My curiosity has been tweaked.”

“If you change your mind, I’m certain one of the day investigators would do it.”

“Thanks for your help,” Jack said.

“No problem,” Janice replied.

Jack disconnected with the forefinger of his left hand while still holding on to the receiver. With his right hand he pawed through the OCME record, looking again for the ID sheet for Mrs. Abelard’s phone number. The second he found it, the phone rang under his hand. It was Vinnie, saying all was ready down in the decomposed room.

After a moment’s hesitation, Jack replaced the receiver on the cradle. There was no rush to speak with Mrs. Abelard, as it was not a call he relished having to make. He was happy to put it off until he finished the next autopsy, although had he any inkling about what he’d learn from the mother, he wouldn’t have put off the call for a second. Mrs.

Abelard was going to tell him something he never would have guessed.

6

5:05 P.M., MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2008

CAIRO, EGYPT

(10:05 A.M., NEW YORK CITY)

S
o there you have it,” Shawn said. “Sorry it’s taken so bloody long. Greek was obviously not Saturninus’s forte. As I mentioned after the first reading, the letter is signed simply Saturninus, with the date of the sixth of April, AD 121.”

For a few beats Shawn studied his wife. She didn’t move or even blink. She had a dazed expression on her face; she didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“Hello,” Shawn called, to get Sana’s attention. “Say something! Anything! What are you thinking?” Shawn stood up and stepped back to the desk, where he gently deposited the papyri sheets for their protection, using the assorted weights to hold them flat. He slipped off the white gloves, placed them on the desk, and then returned to the straight-backed chair. Sana had followed him with her eyes, but it was clear her thoughts were on what she’d been hearing over the last few hours. When Shawn had laboriously finished reading the letter the first time, she’d seemed equally shell-shocked, managing to say only that she’d needed to hear it again.

“I know I didn’t do a good job at translating it,” Shawn confessed, “especially that first time. Again, I’m sorry it took so long, but the grammar and the syntax are both so convoluted. It’s obvious that Greek was not Saturninus’s first language, and because of the sensitive nature of the subject matter, he did not want to entrust the writing of the letter to a secretary. His mother tongue would have been Aramaic, as he was from Samaria.”

“What are the chances it is a fake? Perhaps a second-century fake, but a fake nonetheless.”

“That’s a good question, and if the letter had been addressed to one of the early Orthodox Church fathers, the idea it was a fake might be something I’d question, if only to discredit the Gnostic heretics by making a direct association with them and the archvillain Simon Magus. But it was sent to an early Gnostic teacher, from someone who had theological inclinations in that direction. This was kind of an ‘inside communication’ sent to someone with answers to specific questions. There’s almost zero chance it’s a fake, especially where it ended up. It wasn’t as if someone ever expected it to be found.”

“When do you believe the codex was put together? I mean, when was this letter presumably sandwiched into the leather cover?”

“Let’s say it had to be before approximately AD 367.”

Sana smiled. “Approximately AD 367! That’s a pretty specific date.”

“Well, something specific happened in AD 367.”

“So the letter was saved for several hundred years. It was important, but then it became less so?”

“Yes,” Shawn agreed. “But it’s something I cannot explain.”

“What happened in AD 367, and what’s the theory of why these codices ended up being sealed in a jar and buried in the sand?”

“In AD 367 the Gnosticism movement had peaked and was on the decline, as ordered by the Orthodox Church. In compliance, the influential bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, ordered the monasteries under his jurisdiction to dispose of all heretical writing, including the monastery that existed close to modern-day Nag Hammadi. It’s supposed that some of the monks rebelled at that monastery and instead of destroying the texts, hid them, with the intention of eventually retrieving them. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t happen, and their loss turned out to be our gain.”

“And you think this letter is a response to a letter that Basilides wrote to Saturninus.”

“There is no question in my mind, considering Saturninus’s syntax. He surely didn’t pull any punches in his description of his former boss and teacher, Simon the Magician. It is clear to me that Basilides had specifically asked if Saturninus thought Simon was divine, a true Christ in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, and whether or not Simon possessed the Great Power as he claimed. Although Saturninus suggests that Simon himself thought he was either divine or was possessed of a spark of the divine, Saturninus surely didn’t. Saturninus clearly states that Simon’s magic was trickery, for which Saturninus and Simon’s other assistant, Menander, were largely responsible. Saturninus also says Simon was extremely jealous of the supposed curative power of the Apostles, especially Peter. This is a canonical fact. It appears in the Bible’s Acts of the Apostles, where it specifically states that Simon tried to buy Peter’s power.” Shawn paused to catch his breath but then added with a contemptuous chuckle, “Thanks to Saturninus and this letter, we know now that Simon didn’t give up after that initial rebuff.”

“What I find ironic is that we have this extraordinary historical information because of one person’s venality.”

“True,” Shawn agreed with a more open laugh. “But what I find ironic is that the same venality is quite likely going to vault me into the archaeological stratosphere. Belzoni, Schliemann, and Carter will have nothing on me.”

Sana couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Although Shawn’s seeming self-confidence had impressed her at the beginning of their relationship, she now found it puerile and self-absorbed, again suggesting Shawn harbored insecurity that she had not initially suspected.

Catching her reaction and misinterpreting it, Shawn added, “You don’t think this is going to be a big event? You’re wrong! This is going to be huge. And you know who I’m going to have the most fun breaking the news to?”

“I can’t imagine,” Sana said. She was more interested in continuing the discussion of the contents of the shocking letter, rather than its potential effect on Shawn’s career.