I manage to catch her around the waist—she’s slim as a child, and doesn’t weigh much more than one. One of the female officers darts forward to help me, but Ameera is much stronger than she looks. She manages to drag both myself and the female officer a few steps into Jasmine’s room . . . enough so that she sees her RA’s dead body on the bed.
That’s when Ameera begins to scream.
It’s a long, long time before she stops.
7
Fischer Hall Casino Night
Do you like to GAMBLE?
$ Blackjack $ Roulette $ Texax Hold’Em $
Ready for a night of revelry
on a romantic riverboat ride
around manhattan Island?
Then Come to Fischer Hall’s Freshman
Orientation Casino Night!
Win chips that can be cashed in
for New York College loot!
$$$$
Buses leave outside the building
at 5:00 P.M. SHARP
Be there or be
LEFT OUT FOREVER
One thing I did not expect when I took on the job as assistant resident hall director of Fischer Hall was that I was going to get to know so many investigators from the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on a first-name basis.
But thanks to there having been so many sudden deaths in the building over the past year, that’s exactly what’s happened.
“Hi, Heather,” says Eva, the MLI (medicolegal investigator) who shows up to examine Jasmine. “How’s it going? Oh, hey, thanks for the wedding invitation. Is it all right if I bring my mother as my plus one? She’s so damned excited about going to a real celebrity wedding, and she’s never been to a wedding at the Plaza before. Plus, you know the chances of my ever getting married at this point are slim to none—Mom says I scare guys off with all these tattoos—so you’d be doing me a real solid.”
“Oh,” I say, surprised to hear this . . . not that Eva wants to bring her mother to my wedding, but because these are not exactly the first words I expect to hear someone say as they’re walking into the room of a deceased twenty-year-old. “Sure.”
Also, I don’t recall inviting Eva to my wedding.
But this isn’t the most pressing concern on my mind at the moment.
The Housing Office has kicked into crisis mode, sending all its best people over to Fischer Hall to “deal with” the situation, including the on-staff psychologist, Dr. Flynn, and grief counselor, Dr. Gillian Kilgore.
It’s Gillian who—along with a nurse from Student Health Services—gets Ameera calmed down. She turns out to be way beyond my help. Every time she looked at me—and the female police officer—after we removed her from Jasmine’s room, all she seemed to able to see was the face of her dead RA.
That made her start weeping again, burying her head in her hands so that her long dark hair fell over her face.
It took two young male police officers to drag Ameera out of room 1416 and back into her own room. Afterward, they sat her down and explained that we’d found Jasmine that way—none of us had done it to her.
I don’t think she believed us, though.
“But she was fine at the party last night,” Ameera kept saying through her tears. Because of her English accent, she pronounced it pahty. “She was fine!”
“What party?” I asked, bewildered.
This only set Ameera off into a fresh fit of hysterics, for some reason.
So I’d gone back into Jasmine’s room, reflecting that I’d made a new discovery:
It’s sometimes preferable to sit with the corpse of a student than to be in the company of a live one.
Maybe Lisa’s right: this job has hardened me. What a depressing thought for a girl who’s supposed to be getting married in a month.
I tried not to dwell on this, however.
Death certificates can’t be issued for anyone who dies suddenly (and unattended by a physician) in New York State unless that body has first been seen by an MLI (then brought to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner—OCME).
Due to budget cuts, however, there are only a few MLIs assigned to each borough, so depending on how many deaths occur in the city on a given day, it can take anywhere from forty-five minutes to eight hours (sometimes more) for an investigator to show up after a death has been reported.
It took almost four hours for an MLI to show up to examine Jasmine.
Normally this would have meant my spending the afternoon hanging around with a bunch of yawning cops and uptight administrators.
But that’s not how things turned out this time. Because this time, Fischer Hall is housing a VIR, and the deceased lived one floor below him. And one of the first phone calls Dr. Jessup makes after learning about Jasmine’s death appears to have been to Prince Rashid’s special protection team, and they, in turn, have taken over the investigation.
“ID, please.” Special Agent Richard Lancaster, who looks devastatingly handsome in his dark suit and tie (not that I’ve noticed, since I’m a happily engaged woman), steps in front of the door to Jasmine’s room and holds out an intimidatingly large hand.
At least, it intimidates me. Medicolegal Investigator Eva Kovalenko, not so much. She looks as offended as if the agent asked to see something much more intimate than a mere ID.
“Who the hell are you,” Eva demands, “and what are you doing at my crime scene?”
“Potential crime scene,” Special Agent Lancaster corrects her.
“Who asked you?” Eva looks even more offended.
I don’t blame Special Agent Lancaster for not realizing who Eva is. With her spiky bleached-blond hair, eyebrow rings, and yellow-rose-of-Texas neck tattoo (the only tattoo that peeks out from beneath her clothes, as she’s wearing a long-sleeved coroner’s jacket. I’ve seen her in short sleeves, and know she has plenty more), Eva looks more like a student than an employee of the OCME.