Remains Silent mm-1

by Michael Baden

  “Been raiding the medicine cabinet?” he asked calmly.

  “As my mother says, if you want to learn the truth about someone, look in their medicine chest and their refrigerator. And now I know the truth about you. The name on the bottle is Marianna Candler Rosen. Is there a little unscientific detail about your life you forgot to tell me? Like you’re married? I should have known when you opened my car door for me after the Terrell autopsy. I asked you then if you were married because you weren’t wearing a ring. Now I know what ‘not quite’ meant.”

  “You’re angry,” he said.

  “You’re so right, for a change. I should have known better than to get involved with a two-timing lying son of a-”

  “Involved with?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Of course you did. Don’t you listen to yourself?”

  “Then I didn’t mean it in the way you’re taking it. We’re involved in a case, not romantically. You, Dr. Rosen, have a good imagination.”

  “And so, Ms. Manfreda, do you. If you look at the date on the bottle, you’ll see it’s at least two years old. It should have been thrown out. Marianna and I were divorced a year ago. We were separated a year before that. Do you want a glass of wine?” There was pain in his voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Nothing like making a fool of yourself. “Champagne would be nice. But I’ll settle for wine this time.”

  “Our marriage fell apart in less than a year. It was a marriage of opposites, full of battles. She was funny and hotheaded and never reticent.” He smiled at her. “Like you. She worked for a financial newsletter but didn’t like it. ‘I could walk away from my job and never look back,’ she told me before we were married. That’s a fantasy of mine, too- walking away- but I know I couldn’t do it.”

  “Neither could I,” Manny said, entranced. No opposites here.

  “No, I suppose not. Anyway, she did walk away from her job after she left me. She met someone in California and lives with him. Cooks dinner, takes his suits to the dry cleaner- that sort of thing.”

  “Your suits could use a trip to the dry cleaner.”

  He looked down. Some blood from that afternoon’s autopsy had landed on his cuff. “Taking them would be a full-time job.”

  “Maybe we could train Mycroft,” she said.

  He looked at her hard. “I’ll open the Pellegrino and put the takeout in the oven. I hope you like souvlaki.”

  She realized she was famished. The wound, the threat at Turner, Mycroft’s fear, the smells of the autopsy: they all retreated in the presence of the man who was responsible for them. Food, then sleep. For one night, normalcy. A warmth spread through her that reminded her of childhood. I’m comfortable with him.

  Her cell phone rang. She had left it on the table, so she hobbled over to pick it up.

  It was her mother, calling from New Jersey, worried. Kenneth had told her what happened and had brought Mycroft over, and of course she didn’t mind taking care of him.

  Manny was conscious that Jake had returned with their wine and was standing in the doorway, listening. “Yes, I can keep food down,” she said in answer to her mother’s questions. “Yes, I’m with a doctor. I’m spending the night here.”

  Jake handed her the wine. “Of course not!” she said. He watched her blush and guessed what her mother had asked.

  Manny lowered her voice. “Mommy, please, I can’t talk about him now. I’ll call you first thing tomorrow. Kiss Mycroft good night for me and tell him I love him. I love you, too, Mommy. Sleep well. Your daughter’s fine.” She hung up.

  “Mommy?” was all Jake said.

  She wanted to kill him.

  SHE SLEPT in a guest bedroom, waking in pain from time to time not wanting to take any more of the painkiller Jake had placed by her bedside. When she hobbled down to the kitchen in the morning, dressed in chinos and a work shirt he had left for her, her heart was buoyant. His expression was grave.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. He poured her coffee into a mug with fake red blood drops running down its front. Across the blood, black letters blared: CALL THE EXPERTS. SPATTER IS OUR SECOND LANGUAGE.

  “Refreshed. Invigorated. Ready for action.”

  He scowled. “What can I do to persuade you to drop the case?”

  “Drop it yourself.”

  He had actually considered doing just that, to keep her safe. But they both knew so much already that, even if they quit, there would be no guarantee against further attacks. Besides, his obligation to Pete was too strong. He would have to protect her as best he could.

  “I want you to take it easy today,” he told her. “Go home. Rest. Let your mother stay with you.”

  She smiled at him. “Yessir, boss.”

  “I’m serious. I don’t know who attacked you at your office, but I have the feeling it was your last warning. Next time they’ll strike to kill, particularly if either of us gets closer. So stay home, and for God’s sake be careful.”

  His intensity sobered her. “You be careful, too. What’s your plan for the day?”

  “I’ll see you home and then head for the office. Sometime or other, though, I’ll take the hair and bone samples to Hans Galt’s lab in Brooklyn. Maybe they can tell us something.”

  “Will I see you tonight?”

  He caught the appeal in her tone. “Of course, but I’m not sure when. I’ll call you. Meanwhile, I’ll ask Sam to check on you and relieve your mother if she wants to go back to Jersey. I don’t want you to move from your apartment.”

  She bristled. “Look, I told you before. I don’t like anybody telling me what I can and can’t do.”

  “I’m not telling you, it’s an order. If you don’t obey, the team’s dissolved.”

  He means it. She bowed her head. “I’ll be good. I promise.”

  ***

  Late that afternoon, Jake went to Galt’s lab. He could have done the work at the ME office, but he didn’t want Pederson to catch him at it. His boss had told him to use a private lab, so Galt’s it was. He took the bone samples down to the X-ray room.

  He put on a lead apron, placed the bones on separate metal X-ray cassettes, and, one at a time, put the cassettes on the examining table, the one usually reserved for cadavers, and x-rayed them: the mandible from Skeleton Four, the metal plate from Skeleton Three, the humerus from Two, and the metacarpal and ulna from One. The metacarpal, he noticed for the first time, had an unusual bulge with a small hole in it. Funny, he thought, how even the best-trained eye- mine- can overlook something. He’d seen it happen to others a hundred times.

  He shot the X-rays, developed the films, and examined them on the fluorescent viewing box. The bulge on the left metacarpal was an irregular, almost shaggy-lined bone cyst- osteomyelitis- from which pus would have oozed through the skin of the palm of the left hand during life. He’d have to take a culture- some bacteria and fungi stick around for decades- and then decalcify it, so it could be cut down and made into a slide for further examination under a microscope.

  The X-ray of the humerus was obscured by a white blur. Damn. Something wrong with the film. He reshot the X-ray and developed it; the blur remained. Jake remembered Harrigan saying he needed to reshoot the X-rays on one of the skeletons because something had gone wrong. The same shot? Probably.

  He studied the film. With the thousands of X-rays of bodies and bones he’d examined over the years, he’d never seen a white blur like this from any of his own autopsies. But I’ve seen it before, an X-ray from a bone in the ME museum on the sixth floor. His heart quickened. The museum’s X-ray dated from the 1930s and was of the mandible of a woman who had worked at the U.S. Radium Dial factory in New Jersey. She and her fellow workers licked the tips of their brushes to make the fine points they needed to paint the glow-in-the-dark watch dials the company featured. Yes! That was it! Many of the women developed jaw necrosis and leukemia. The woman had died of it. But this humerus had been taken out of the ground in rural Turner. Farms were there,
not factories. Very strange. An idea was forming, one so sinister, so unthinkable, he tried to brush it aside, but it stayed with him.

  He dialed Hans Galt in his upstairs office. Hans wasn’t there, but his assistant, Amy Fontayne, was.

  “I need your help,” he told her.

  “Of course.”

  “Got any X-ray film? A new box, unopened?”

  “A whole cabinet full.”

  “Good. And bring me a fresh slide, would you?”

  Amy came down moments later. She was not yet thirty, he guessed, but there were already lines around her eyes. Too much staring into microscopes. He put the humerus on the new cassette and asked Amy to change the settings on the X-ray machine to be more penetrating. He went out of the X-ray room and examined his other specimens, which gave her a chance to take the X-ray, then returned and took the cassette into the darkroom. There he removed the film and put it through the automatic developer and then put the X-ray on the viewing box again.

  Weird. Worse than weird. The same white blur obscured the humerus, only it was more pronounced. “Did you change the setting on the X-ray machine?” he asked Amy.

  “I didn’t touch it.”

  “Didn’t touch it?”

  “Did I screw up?”

  “Tell me once more. You didn’t push the X-ray button?”

  “No,” said Amy. “I’m sorry, Dr. Rosen. I was waiting for you to tell me to go ahead. When you took the film from me, I thought you wanted to see it before I x-rayed the bone.”

  “My God,” he blurted. He pulled the film from the viewing table and held it to the fluorescent ceiling light, praying he’d see something different. “I can’t believe this,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Amy, you didn’t do anything wrong.” Jake felt as if his head would burst. “You didn’t turn the X-ray machine on, yet here we have an X-ray of the humerus. Can you explain it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “It means the bone took a picture of itself. The radiation released by a radioactive bone is similar to the radiation released by the X-ray machine.” He turned to face her, aware that he must seem like a madman.

  She took a step back. “You’re telling me that bone is-”

  “Radioactive.” He stared at her, as though needing her verification of something he dared not believe. “That bone is radioactive.”

  “THERE’S A GENTLEMAN here named Sam. Says you’re expecting him,” the doorman told her over the intercom.

  Manny and her mother had long since finished breakfast and were reading the Times. “Send him up.” Damn Jake. One mother’s already here. I don’t need him to act like another.

  Sam, dressed in military fatigues, marched in as soon as Rose Manfreda opened the door. “You must be Manny’s sister,” he said, kissing Rose’s hand.

  Manny glared at them from the couch. “Oh, brother, Sam, cut it out.”

  Rose glared back. “Where are your manners, young lady? Sam’s a gentleman.”

  “Runs in his family, Mom, trust me. They have a Ted Bundy gene.”

  “Now I know where Philomena gets her charm,” Sam said. “I’ve come to protect her, and all I want to do is murder her.” He winked at Rose. “Instead, I’ll walk the dog. Want to come with me?”

  “I don’t think we should leave Manny alone.”

  “We’ll double-lock the door. If anyone comes in, she’ll bite him and he’ll die of rattlesnake venom.”

  “In that case…” Rose reached for her coat.

  “Don’t come back, either of you,” Manny said. “Just give the key to Mycroft. He can let himself in.”

  When they left, she called her office and asked Kenneth to field all phone calls and fax her the mail. She didn’t want to tell him Jake had grounded her, so she simply said she had a stomach flu. He seemed to accept it.

  She stretched out on her bed. I’ll get to work in a minute, she thought- and fell asleep.

  ***

  Wally called from Turner just as Jake was saying goodbye to Amy. “I’m coming home,” he announced, his voice alive with triumph.

  “Find anything?”

  “Lots. Fisk’s in bed with Reynolds Construction. He’s getting ten percent of everything Reynolds makes. Mayor Stevenson doesn’t seem to be involved, though he probably knows about it; he’s got other sources for kickbacks. Marge Crespy? Straight as a ruler. Anyway, Reynolds will get huge bonuses- all legal and aboveboard- from Wal-Mart and PriceChopper if the mall’s finished before next spring, and only under those circumstances does Fisk get his reward.”

  I love this man. “What kind of money you talking about?”

  “I don’t know the exact amount- the budget’s a greater work of fiction than The Da Vinci Code- but it’s multiple millions to Reynolds, a couple million to Fisk.”

  Enough to kill for. “You sure of this? You’ve got proof?”

  “Yes and yes. The figures on costs of the mall are public record, distorted downward though they may be. And there’s a written agreement between Reynolds and Fisk- a contract, Dr. Rosen- sitting in Fisk’s safe.”

  “You’ve seen the contract?”

  “I have a copy of it.”

  “For God’s sake, how?”

  “My foot. I knew it would come in handy someday. Seems Fisk’s deputy, a Mrs. Bonnie Geller, has a boy born with one leg shorter than the other. Guess who arranged for a specialist to perform the operation that made him all well?”

  Of course. “Pete Harrigan.”

  “Bingo! When I told her Dr. Harrigan was my teacher, that I owed my life to him, we became friends. Okay, I exaggerated his role- I owe my life to you-but in the interests of research-”

  “Go on.”

  “Not much more to tell. Bonnie hates Fisk but needs the salary to take care of her boy. Took me all this time to wear her down, but she finally opened up her heart- and his safe.” Wally laughed at his own ingenuity. “Proves two maxims of Dr. Harrigan’s: Over-confidence leads to carelessness and Never trust your assistant.” Another laugh. He’s sky-high. “That last is good advice for you. I can turn against you at any time.”

  Pete wasn’t right all the time. I’d trust Wally with my life. “Better get back here,” Jake said. “If Fisk finds out-”

  “I’m on my way. See you in the office tomorrow morning.” Wally hung up.

  Jake stood in the vestibule of Galt’s lab. I can understand why they didn’t want the project held up, he thought, but it doesn’t explain radioactive bones.

  ***

  Manny awoke to a gentle hand shaking her shoulder. Jake? She opened her eyes. Her mother was looking at her.

  “Dinner’s ready.”

  “What time it?”

  “After seven. You’ve been asleep for nine hours.”

  Manny sat up, pain coursing through her leg. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’re eating nevertheless.”

  There’s something special about being babied. “Bring it on.”

  They had pasta, salad, and a glass of wine, mother and daughter sitting side by side, comfortable in each other’s presence. “Best meal I ever ate,” said Manny, meaning it. She had been hungry after all.

  Rose did the dishes while Manny tried to concentrate on the material Kenneth had sent. Impossible. Images of the attack crowded in on her; thank God she had only been warned, not executed. Next time…? She picked up her latest copy of Vogue. Fashion was the only thing that could get her mind off her fear.

  At eleven, her mother and Mycroft had gone back to New Jersey with Kenneth, and Manny had turned on the news. A suicide bomber had killed seventeen Iraqi special forces and wounded forty-two others in Baghdad.

  “Closer to home, a bombing has rocked New York’s Upper East Side,” the anchorman announced. “Here with that story is reporter Tim Minton. Tim?”

  “Less than an hour ago, an explosion shook the house of City Medical Examiner Jacob Rosen-”

  A pain sharper than any inflicted on her earlier shot th
rough Manny’s system. No! Not Jake!

  On the screen, Manny saw fire engines and police cars in front of what was surely Jake’s house.

  “The ground floor is still too hot for firefighters to get inside,” Minton continued, “so there’s no way to know if Dr. Rosen was at home at the time of the blast. Fire Commissioner Nicholas Gould, a personal friend of Dr. Rosen’s, says that the cause might have been a faulty gas line, but he stresses that this is only speculation. Dr. Rosen testified recently in the trial of Mafia hitman Freddy “Big Ears” Francesca, but it’s far too early to tell if-”

  Manny stood up, winced at the pain, grabbed her keys, and limped away as fast as she could.

  THERE ARE MOMENTS in New York when hailing a cab is like finding water in the desert, Manny thought. Not even her doorman could work a miracle; every cab was occupied. Please, please, please! Please, cab, come!

  Finally a cab pulled up. Manny got in. “I’m in a rush, sir,” she urged.

  “Who isn’t?”

  “A bomb went off at the home of a friend of mine-” She could barely get the words out.

  He turned to look at her, suddenly interested. “The one uptown?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just heard about it on the radio.”

  “Then please hurry!”

  “You got it.”

  They drove up the FDR Drive, heading north. Manny leaned back, picturing Jake. Please, God, not dead- I take back everything I said about him. Please, God, not dead! “Don’t tempt God,” her mother used to say. Well, she was tempting him now- begging him- and if he granted her wish she didn’t care about the consequences.

  The cabbie left the drive on Ninety-sixth Street, went up First Avenue, and stopped at 103rd Street. “Can’t go any farther, lady. Street’s blocked.”

  She threw him a twenty and scrambled out of the cab, ignoring the pain in her leg while she negotiated through a sea of people who had gathered near Jake’s house to watch the tragedy. By the time she got to the staging area, yellow police tape was already up and uniformed policemen had formed a cordon to make sure nobody got past. Behind them she could see fire engines, police cars, the mayor, the police commissioner, and-oh, Lord-an ambulance. Flashing lights and the wail of sirens gave the scene the feel of a war zone.