Preston, Douglas - Blue Labyrinth by Preston Douglas

Author:Preston, Douglas [Preston, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781455525898
Google: t2qboAEACAAJ
Amazon: 1455525898
Publisher: Head Of Zeus
Published: 2014-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

Margo Green took a seat at a large conference table in a forensic suite on the tenth floor of One Police Plaza. The suite was an odd combination of computer lab and medical examination room: terminals and workstations stood cheek by jowl with gurneys, light boxes, and sharps disposal cases.

Across the table sat D’Agosta. He had summoned her from the Museum, where she’d been spending her off afternoon analyzing the anomalous compound found in the bones of Mrs. Padgett and dodging Dr. Frisby. Beside him sat a tall, thin Asian man. Next to him was Terry Bonomo, the department’s Identi-CAD expert, with his ubiquitous laptop. He was swiveling back and forth in his seat and grinning at nothing in particular.

“Margo,” D’Agosta said. “Thanks for coming. You already know Terry Bonomo.” He gestured at the other man. “This is Dr. Lu of Columbia Medical School. His expertise is plastic surgery. Dr. Lu, this is Dr. Green, an ethnopharmacologist and anthropologist currently working at the Pearson Institute.”

Margo nodded at Lu, who smiled in return. His teeth were dazzlingly white.

“Now that you’re both here, I can put the call through.” D’Agosta reached for a phone at the center of the table, pressed its SPEAKER button, and made a long-distance call. It was answered on the third ring.

“Hello?”

D’Agosta leaned toward the speaker. “Is this Dr. Samuels?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Samuels, this is Lieutenant D’Agosta, NYPD. I have you on speakerphone with a plastic surgeon from Columbia Medical and an anthropologist connected with the New York Museum of Natural History. Could you please share with them what you told me yesterday?”

“Certainly.” The man cleared his throat. “As I told the lieutenant, I’m a pathologist with the Indio Department of Corrections here in California. I was undertaking the autopsy on the John Doe suicide—the man suspected in the murder of the employee at your Museum—when I noticed something.” He paused. “I first established the mode of death, which, as you know, was rather unusual. As I was completing a gross examination of the corpse, I noticed some unusual healed scars. They were inside the mouth, along both the upper and lower gingival sulcus. At first I thought they might be the result of an old beating or car accident. But as I examined them, I could see the scars were too precise for that. I found a similar, symmetrical set of scars on the other side of the mouth. At this point, I realized they were the result of surgery: specifically, reconstructive facial surgery.”

“Cheek and chin implants?” Dr. Lu said.

“Yes. X-rays and CAT scans bore this out. In addition, the imaging showed plates—titanium, as it turned out—fixed to the jawbone.”

Dr. Lu nodded thoughtfully. “Were there any other scars? On the skull or the hip, or inside the nose?”

“When we shaved the head, we found no scars. But yes, there were intranasal incisions, and a scar on the hip, just above the iliac crest. The images I forwarded to Lieutenant D’Agosta document everything.”

“Did the autopsy turn up any anomalous findings, chemical or otherwise?” D’Agosta asked.

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