CHAPTER 41
Manhattan, NY Sunday, July 4, 2021
ON SUNDAY MORNING AVERY TOOK A LONG RUN THROUGH CENTRAL Park. It was peaceful, quiet, and, unlike any other time she had run these trails, nearly empty. Normally crowded with joggers, bikers, and dog walkers, this morning the park belonged only to the few remaining souls left in the city who were up early on the Fourth of July. Avery nodded at the joggers she passed, sensing an unspoken message in the way they smiled and delivered their good mornings that the once-a-year emptiness and tranquility of the country’s most populated city was a secret shared by only a select few, and that Avery was now part of the group.
Thirty minutes earlier she had quietly snuck out of Walt’s hotel room while he slept peacefully among the knotted bed sheets. The aftermath of long-awaited sex had filled her with an urge to sweat and run and wring from her body any second thoughts or doubts that would surely surface. For some sophomoric reason Avery had decided on a clean getaway. She had slipped out of bed with catlike poise, and resisted the urge to use the bathroom before leaving for fear that flushing the toilet would wake him. Why, she asked herself as she jogged, is the idea of sharing coffee and breakfast with Walt Jenkins so uncomfortable? Because those situations always had a way of leading back to her childhood and her upbringing and her parents and her brother, and Avery didn’t have it in her this morning to tiptoe through the land mines of her past and figure out what to divulge and what to avoid. She had already managed to share more about herself with Walt than she had with any other man in recent memory, and wasn’t sure it was a good idea to offer any more.
In a perfect world—or even just a normal one—Avery would have relished the opportunity to sleep late while lying in bed with a man she found fiercely attractive and more than a little endearing. Walt had shared with her a part of his own past that was riddled with betrayal and secrets. Their histories were so very similar that it would have been a perfect opportunity to share her own scars. If Avery’s life bore any semblance of normal, she would have sunk her head deeper into the crook of Walt’s shoulder earlier this morning and draped her arm over his chest. Instead, she tiptoed out of his hotel room, and cringed in the hallway when the latch clicked loudly as she tried to silently close the door.
In the end, she stopped the self-analysis and chalked it up to Avery being Avery. This was her life and she was stuck with it. Besides, whether she was up for the whole morning-after routine or not was immaterial. This particular morning she had no time. While Walt lay in a postcoital coma the previous night, Avery’s mind had drifted back to Victoria Ford. Even during the review of the Cameron Young file and the potential flaws she found, Avery had been unable to stop thinking about Victoria Ford’s manuscripts and their connection to Natalie Ratcliff.
She grabbed her phone just after midnight and, on a whim, sent out a text while Walt softly snored next to her. She hadn’t expected a reply so late on a Saturday night—especially on a holiday weekend. But it had taken only a few seconds for Livia Cutty, New York’s chief medical examiner and the doctor Avery had met with when she first arrived in New York, to text back. Avery had questions about some of the forensics noted in the Cameron Young case and needed to pick Livia’s brain about them. She had other questions, too, about things completely unrelated to the case file she and Walt had paged through, but the forensics would be a good place to start.
She put in three miles, just enough to get a good sweat and burn her lungs, and used the walk back to the Lowell as a cool down. Showered and dressed, Avery grabbed two coffees from Starbucks and hailed a cab for Kips Bay. She saw Livia standing in front of the entrance to the medical examiner’s office when the cab pulled to the curb. Avery paid the fare with cash, climbed out of the cab, and handed Livia a coffee.
“Black, two sugars.”
“Thanks,” Livia said in a questioning tone. “How did you know how I like my coffee?”
“Last time we were together, when you were out in LA, we grabbed coffee with Mack Carter.”
“That was two years ago.”
“I know. I have a weird thing with coffee.”
“Impressive. Thank you.”
“Thank you for taking time on a Sunday morning, especially over a holiday weekend. And sorry to text you like a lunatic in the middle of the night. I was in a weird place.”
“No worries. I was up. I’m on call this weekend, and bored to death. The Fourth is a notoriously slow time at the morgue. No one really dies when the city is so empty, which sounds like a good thing unless your life revolves around people dying. Besides, some of our strangest thoughts and ideas come in the middle of the night. I’m curious to know what’s on your mind.”
Avery was curious, as well. A revelation had come to her, and she needed Dr. Cutty to confirm it.
“Let’s head inside,” Livia said.
Avery followed Livia through the front entrance of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. It was Sunday morning and the building was dark, other than the scattered overhead lights that remained permanently aglow. Livia touched her ID card to the sensor in the lobby to unlock the door. Inside, they rode the elevator to the bottom floor where Livia again scanned her card key to gain access to the long corridor that led to her office. She flicked the wall switch when she walked into the windowless office.
“Have a seat,” Livia said. “So what did you find out about Victoria Ford that had you up so late at night?”
Avery sat in one of the chairs in front of the gunmetal desk. She pulled a single page from her purse and handed it to Livia. She had taken it from the Cameron Young file before sneaking out of Walt’s room earlier. It was the crime lab’s analysis of the DNA found at the crime scene.
“It turns out Victoria Ford was involved in a high-profile murder investigation in the months before she died. My story about her has taken an unexpected turn from her remains being identified to the details about the homicide investigation. I need some help with some specifics about it.”
“The woman identified was a suspect in a murder?” Livia said.
“She was. And I’ve managed to hook up with . . .” Avery stopped herself and shook her head. “. . . To get in touch with the detective who ran the investigation. We’ve been reviewing the evidence and I’m having trouble with the blood that was found at the crime scene.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Well, I’m stuck on it. I’m working hard to figure out if there’s another explanation of the crime scene. If there’s any chance things happened differently than how the prosecution presented them. My biggest issue is that droplets of blood recovered from the scene were matched to Victoria Ford through DNA analysis. I need to know how accurate the science is that made that match.”
“Very,” Livia said. “A specific DNA sequence is sequestered from the blood and then, in a normal investigation, matched against DNA samples taken from the suspect—usually through an oral swab. If the DNA profiles match, it’s as accurate as it gets. Statistically, the science is just about one hundred percent.”
Avery slowly nodded her head as she considered Livia’s words. The fact was that the blood at the crime scene belonged to Victoria. This would be the biggest problem with the theory that someone else had killed Cameron Young, and she could see no way around it.
“The science likely came out at trial,” Livia said. “DNA evidence and the science behind it are challenged when it’s done badly or if there is even a chance that it’s less accurate than normal. If the blood had been contaminated, for instance. Or, if it was not preserved correctly. Was any of the DNA evidence challenged at trial?”
“That’s just it,” Avery said. “The case never went to trial.”
“Why not?”
“Because the chaos of September eleventh marked the unofficial end of the case.”
“So the investigation was closed?”
“Not formally. It just sort of went away because after 9/11 the main suspect was dead and the case was not pursued. America started chasing terrorists.”
Avery’s mind returned again to the previous day when she skimmed through Victoria’s lost manuscripts. Finally, she looked at Livia.
“The other thing I texted you about,” Avery said. “Were you able to find anything out about it?”
“Yes,” Livia said. “I called Arthur Trudeau earlier this morning and he told me where to look. It’s in the bone-processing lab. Grab your coffee.”
Avery followed Livia through the dark hallways until they came to the lab. Livia swiped her card key and the red light on the lock turned green as she opened the door. She flicked on the lights and headed toward a bank of computers lining the far wall. The monitors were dark until Livia sat down at one of the stations and jiggled the mouse. The computer screen woke and brightened with the OCME logo. She logged in and clicked through the screens.
“The identification of Victoria Ford was made on May eighth. It’ll take me a second to get back there.”
Avery stood next to Livia as she scrolled through the screens.
“Okay,” Livia said. “Here we go.”
Avery bent over Livia’s shoulder and scanned the screen.
“It looks like the specimen was collected from North Tower debris on September twenty-second of 2001.”
“Does it tell you more about the original specimen?” Avery asked.
“I’m looking. Let’s see . . .”
A few more screens clicked past and then some more scrolling.
“Yes. Here are the original notes on the specimen. Small fragment measuring just three quarters of an inch long and badly charred at the time of recovery.”
“That’s tiny,” Avery said.
“From what I know about the recovery efforts, this was not uncommon. Many tiny fragments of charred bone were recovered. It’s really a miracle that from this minute fragment, DNA could be extracted.” Livia went back to the report. “It goes on a bit about the damage to the exterior of the specimen—pathology jargon. And then, let’s see.” Livia pointed to the screen. “The forensic dentists identified the specimen as a central incisor or canine.”
“Meaning what?” Avery asked.
“It was a tooth.”
“A tooth? From the rubble of the Twin Towers, a tooth was recovered?”
“Yes. We have over five hundred individual teeth here at the crime lab waiting to be identified. Some were recovered as part of a jaw and skull, but many more were single teeth.”
“How could a single tooth be salvaged from the rubble of a hundred-story building?”
“Not in the way you’re imagining. The recovery efforts in the early days and weeks after 9/11 did take place like you’re thinking—OCME employees literally walked through Ground Zero and collected bodies and body parts from the rubble. That’s true. And it was grisly work, from what I’ve been told. Many of those victims were identified quickly. But most of the remains the office still has stored today that are waiting to be identified are small bone fragments, and yes, many individual teeth. These small specimens were not recovered at Ground Zero, but instead through a sifting program that started a year after the towers fell. When construction and excavating machines cleared the debris from Ground Zero, it was loaded into trucks and transferred to a landfill in Staten Island. All the 9/11 debris was placed to the side in its own section of the landfill. That debris went through various stages of sifting. Think of it as panning for gold. From the rocks and rubble and construction debris, tiny artifacts were teased out. That’s how so many personal items like wedding rings, jewelry, wallets, and driver’s licenses have been recovered. It’s also how small bone fragments and teeth have been found.”
“That’s amazing,” Avery said.
Her mind was racing. Her ludicrous theory, as it echoed in her head, was sounding more plausible. Reading Victoria Ford’s manuscripts had sent her thoughts tumbling down a dark rabbit hole toward a wild theory. Until this moment, she believed the idea was fueled by an offshoot of her imagination that constantly searched for the sensationalism her American Events stories needed. But the fact that the specimen used to identify Victoria Ford was a tooth not only made her theory realistic, but possible.
“Has Dr. Trudeau been able to locate any other remains that matched Victoria Ford?”
“No,” Livia said. “The tooth was the only match to date. But the hope is that the new DNA technology will be able to get through the remaining unidentified bone fragments in the next few months. If more of Victoria Ford was recovered in the ruins of the Twin Towers, we’ll know soon enough.”
Avery suspected that, if her wild theory were correct, none of the other specimens salvaged from the Twin Towers would belong to Victoria Ford.