Leap of Fate

What little girl dreamed of growing up to examine cold, stiff cadavers all day? Certainly not me. From the age of eight I was dead set on becoming a lawyer so I could help to find and defend the truth. Forty years and a misstep in following an old boyfriend down a career path later and I am a few days away from finishing my paperwork to end this chapter in my life as a mortician. Maybe I would indulge my childhood dream and go to law school. Not having a family had saved me a fortune and I could probably start my own business in the commercial property they were showing down the street. I’d given up the idea of a husband some time ago but without all the inhuman work shifts maybe I could find a willing partner. The world was my oyster, as they say.

Detective Michael Lach of the New Haven Police Department walks into my examination room just as I am finishing with a man who did indeed overdose from drugs he had illegally sought out on his own, not from a doctor’s prescription as his family insisted. Heartbreaking for the family, a relief for the doctor who dodged malpractice this time around. I slide the man back in as Detective Lach approaches me. I already know what he is here for. Every once in a while I am asked to consult on a homicide case if their resident coroner is out or they just need a second opinion. The only reason they don’t hire me is because I can’t handle the excess of gory cases that frequent the police department.

“Hello, Michael,” I greet as I remove my gloves. I see him glance at my finger which has been completely void of any jewelry inactive of a long term commitment in the five years we have known each other. Still, he feels the need to check, which in its own way is somewhat flattering. I look at his barren hand out of courtesy as well.

“Hello, Jean. I’m sorry to bother you, but we need you down at the station yet again.” He looked perturbed, like he was considering turning around and walking back out the door. “We need you right away. I already cleared it with the dean.”

“What’s wrong, Michael?” This was not the typical order of things.

“Oh it’s nothing, just an unusual case that’s all. Kind of a head scratcher, ya know? The new coroner we just hired is just not experienced enough for it, so we need you.”

“New coroner?” I asked as I threw on my winter coat. “Where’s Andy?”

“He didn’t pass his last psych eval. Don’t know much else.”

“No kidding.”

“No kidding.”
* * *

He’s a John Doe and he is about as average as average can get, with one of those forgettable faces that leave no real impression on anyone around them. I think I passed a hundred of this man on my way to work this morning. Rather tall, thinning brown hair, large nose, but not so large that it is his dominating feature. He had been suicidal and decided to take the final step this morning when he jumped off of a twelve-story apartment building. There was no doubt this man had every intention of ending his life, with a note as proof. His suicide was interrupted however when a shotgun blasted through the ninth floor window, hitting him above the right eye and killing him instantly, which I not too rashly declared his cause of death. The uncertainty arose from the fact that a safety net had been erected at a lower level to protect the window washers coming on duty and this man would not have been able to complete his suicide attempt.

I turn all of this over in my head as I watch the scene unfold in front of me. The elderly woman is sitting in an armchair weeping incoherently while her husband stands at her side and rubs her shoulders in a soothing gesture as he tries to make sense of his story to the police. He is visibly upset as he watches the police rifle through their belongings with reckless abandon. I can see the tears in his eyes as he stumbles over every word he gives to the officers.

“Dr. Atropo?” one of the officers calls and I meet him halfway. I’ve never seen him before and by the inappropriate gleam in his eyes I would guess this is his first case. “This is the gun that killed our guy,” he says as he hands me a shotgun wrapped in plastic covering. I blink down at it once. The situation is something akin to a cat dragging in a grisly mouse corpse and placing it at its owner’s feet. The kind of gun he was killed with matters just about as much to me as whether he liked jazz music or not. My only job as medical examiner is to declare if this was a murder or suicide by gathering all the facts.

I hand him the gun. “Thank you, officer,” I say as I go to return to Jack and Nora Cloth. The gunshot was traced back to their apartment where, if what the man claims is true, the old couple was fighting and he pulled a gun on his wife. Apparently this was a common practice for him when he got angry, but he claimed the gun was never loaded.

“Jack never meant no harm!” the wife, who was now coherent shouts. “Honest! We get into spats all the time now what with our retirement fund in trouble and our son so angry at us, but I promise you Jack would never hurt me or anybody! Please don’t take him away!” She retreated back into sobs.

It’s hard to doubt what they were saying was the truth. Maybe Mr. Cloth really did mean no harm, but that did not take murder off the table.

“Dr. Atropo?” I turn to see Michael walking toward me, hat in his hands. “There’s likely nothing else we’ll find here that’s relevant to you. I can give you a ride back to the station if you’d like to look at the body again.”

I sigh. I have a plethora of pictures in the file and all the information I could ever want or need. “The ride would be great thank you, but I think I’ll just get my car and go over all this at home.”

He nods once quickly. “Of course.”

I follow him to his cruiser. The building is very nice, somewhere I might consider living if I wanted to upgrade. I absently wonder what this whole series of events would do to the property value.

“Just a crazy coincidence,” Michael says exasperatedly as he runs a hand over his face and we begin to drive.

“Yes,” I agree. “Once in a lifetime case.”

He nods again and we sit in silence for a while.

“We’ll probably have an I.D. on the body by tomorrow morning,” he states. I feel guilty I hadn’t thought about it. A few more seconds pass before he asks the question that’s really on his mind.

“So what are you thinking? As far as ruling it murder or suicide I mean.”

I say nothing at first. It hits me that I am going to be the one to decide the outcome of the case that the entirety of the New Haven Police Department is salivating over. I think about this for a while and I’m sure Michael thinks I’m not going to answer.

“I wonder if he still would have done it.” I say and the detective looks over at me. “I wonder if he still would have jumped if he knew he would die, but it would be by someone else’s hand.”

Michael sucks in a breath through clenched teeth and cocks his head to one side. “Hard to say.” He doesn’t elaborate.
* * *

I go over the scenario as I drive home from the police station. I playback scenes from the elderly couple’s apartment at I try to wash off all the grime I accumulated today in the shower. I pour over the file as I sit on a barstool at my kitchen counter with a steaming mug of decaffeinated coffee. There is nothing else to see. There is no more information to gain. I have to make the call that will inevitably change people’s lives. I can’t help but feel like I’m playing God.

What would John Doe gain if I ruled it a murder? Jack and Nora Cloth would lose everything. Of course I didn’t agree with a man threatening his wife in any way, but was it really worth destroying their lives at such an old age? Especially since Nora would feel most of the punishment. Without her husband she would probably be helpless and who knows what she would have to do.

On the other hand, John Doe’s death did not just affect John Doe. He probably had a family that would like to see justice served if their loved one was a victim of a murder. The body has not even been identified, I remember. There is a family that will have their world rocked tomorrow morning and to wrong them would just be cruel.

I am at a loss. I am exhausted. The only thing I can physically do is go to bed and promise myself whatever I decide in the morning I will have to go with.
* * *

The drive to the police station is not easy. I slept horribly last night and I don’t know what to expect for the day ahead of me. Who am I supposed to tell my decision to? Michael? The chief of police? I’m thinking about turning this car around, hunting down Andy Katz, and making him pass judgment, mentally sound or not, when my phone rings.

“Jean Atropo.”

“Dr. Atropo? It’s Michael Lach.” I can hear the underlying excitement in his voice. In the back of my mind I wonder if he’s been at the station all night. “There’s been some new information you should probably be aware of.”

“Have you I.D.’d the body?”

“Oh. No.” His voice loses some of its luster. “They’re still running the DNA test, we should know by this afternoon. But you should know a neighbor testified saying she believes she saw Jack and Nora Cloth’s son load the shotgun as long as five weeks ago. We were able to place him where the witness said he was using the building’s security cameras and, to make a long story short, we found that Nora had recently cut the son off financially. Knowing his father often threatened his mother with a shotgun he took it upon himself to load the gun hoping his father would shoot his mother.”

I let all of this information wash over me. “So… so now you want to charge the son for John Doe’s murder?”

“That seems to be the only option, yeah. So, uh, don’t bother coming in this morning, but we will need you later today for documentary stuff. And you can pick up your check.”

I’m still shocked. “Okay. Thank you Michael.” I hang up the phone because I need to gather my thoughts. The John Doe case is going to be ruled a murder. The one being convicted had every intent to kill. Justice is going to be served. I’m not sure why this makes me so euphoric, but I have the sudden urge to turn into the nearest AARP and plan some spontaneous, lavish vacation. So I do. I even check out the local university’s law program and nearly put down a deposit. Yesterday had been so crazy that I forgot I’m going to hand in the documentation that ends my career tomorrow. I’m more excited than ever about it. I am going to be liberated, free to write the next chapter of my life, because for some reason, this case has made me realize that I am not fated to do or be anything because even if something is supposed to happen to you, what’s to say a stray shotgun pellet won’t knock everything off its course? I’m going to be in my own control.

I realize I must be needed at the police station and head over. When I see Michael in the bullpen he looks flustered.

“Oh good, you’re here. Come with me.”

I follow him down the stairs to the examination room. “We’ve I.D.’d the body,” he says over his shoulder.

“Oh?” I reply. “Any progress on the murderer?”

He hesitates. “Yeah we found out more about him too.” We enter the exam room where John Doe lies between us. “Jack and Nora Cloth’s son, David Cloth, loaded the shotgun because of his mother’s cut of his financial support five weeks ago. He had since become frustrated with his plan not coming through and depressed from his lack of money. This combined led him to attempt suicide by jumping off a twelve story building.”

I stared at him blankly, lost for words. A second later I was grabbing the toe tag of the body in front of me. There in big red letters JOHN DOE had been crossed out and DAVID CLOTH written above.

“Jean, the case is officially ruled a suicide.”
* * *

I enter through the back entrance of the hospital morgue the next day as per usual. The situation is familiar and it’s comfortable. Although I may have entertained some different notions over the past few days, this is where I belong and this is where I will spend however many years more I am fated to.