Marker

by Robin Cook

  “Fine by me,” Dick said agreeably.

  “Any other business?” Calvin asked. He scanned the group, then concluded the meeting. “See you all next Thursday.”

  As most of the medical examiners stood up, stretched, and recommenced their conversations that the meeting had cut short, Dick made his way over to Laurie. He had his cell phone pressed up against his ear and was describing the location of a folder in his desk. He motioned for Laurie to wait.

  Glancing over at Jack, Laurie saw him immediately duck out of the conference room. She had hoped to talk with him, even if only briefly, and thank him for being ultimately supportive during her mini-presentation.

  “Do you have something to write on?” Dick asked.

  Laurie produced a pen and the back of an envelope. While Laurie kept her finger on the envelope to keep it steady on the writing surface of one of the chairs, Dick wrote down the names and the accession numbers. He thanked his secretary and rang off. “Well, there you have them,” he said. “Let me know if I can be of assistance in any other way. I have to say, it does seem curious.”

  “I imagine I’ll be able to access what I need from the data bank, but if I can’t, I’ll be in touch. Thanks, Dick! This is the second time you have helped me out. Do you remember those cocaine cases twelve years ago?”

  “Now that you mention it, of course I remember, although it seems like it was in a different lifetime. At any rate, I’m glad to be of service.”

  “Dr. Montgomery!” Calvin called. “Can I speak to you for a moment?” Although his comment was presented as a request, it was more of a command.

  Laurie gave Dick a parting wave and then stepped warily over to Calvin. “If these cases of Dick’s turn out to resemble yours demographically, I want you to let me know. In the meantime, the proscription of talking about your supposed series with anyone outside of the OCME still holds. Am I clear on that? You and I have had disagreements about information leaks to the media in the past, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

  “I understand,” Laurie said nervously. “Don’t worry! I learned my lesson, and I certainly would not go to the media. At the same time, I must admit I have been speaking with the chief of the medical staff over at the Manhattan General right from the beginning about the cases. He happens to be a friend.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Dr. Roger Rousseau.”

  “Since he’s on the staff, I suppose it’s safe to assume he is aware of the sensitive nature of the issue.”

  “Most definitely.”

  “I suppose it’s equally safe to assume he’s not apt to go to the media.”

  “Hardly,” Laurie said. She was feeling more confident. Calvin was definitely in a mild-mannered mood. “Yet Dr. Rousseau is rightfully concerned, and I believe he would want to hear if Dick’s cases are indeed similar. It would give him the opportunity to talk with his counterpart at Saint Francis and make him feel he’s not the only one with such a problem.”

  “Well, I don’t see any harm in talking with him, provided you are clear the OCME officially does not currently agree with your assessment of the manner of death, and at the moment will back the Queens office’s disposition.”

  “Certainly, and thank you,” Laurie said. It was good to clear the air. She’d carried a twinge of guilt from having talked to Roger about the deaths when she’d first met him, despite Calvin’s wishes.

  Leaving the conference room, Laurie headed directly to the investigators’ office. She was beginning to calm down from the anxiety of talking in front of the group and from having to confront Calvin. She felt even better when she found Cheryl Meyers at her desk, since her workday had officially ended an hour earlier. In Laurie’s estimation, Cheryl was the most talented investigator at the OCME and just as hard a worker as Janice. Laurie had Cheryl copy the list of names and accession numbers Dick had provided, and Laurie asked her to put in a request for copies of the patients’ charts from St. Francis Hospital.

  “What about the autopsy folders and death certificates?” Cheryl asked.

  As Laurie had told Dick, she said she’d first try to see what she could obtain from the computerized database. If she needed help for hard copies, Laurie said she’d get back to her.

  Clutching her envelope and silently reading the names over and over, Laurie rode up in the elevator. Her intuition told her loudly and clearly that the demographics and details of this new list of victims was going to match her own. Her SADS series was now twelve people.

  Once on the fifth floor, Laurie hesitated. It took her a moment to build up her confidence. She wanted to go down to Jack’s office and talk to him, even if only briefly, about her disturbing, potential epiphany she had had in Rogers office. She thought it would assuage her anxieties to share them, but she didn’t quite know what she wanted to say or even how to begin. Attempting to steel herself against all the uncertainties, she took a fortifying breath and started off.

  The closer she got, the slower she walked. She hesitated again before stepping into view in the doorway, appalled at her indecision. She was becoming either a coward or hopelessly wishy-washy, or a mixture of both. Laurie looked back longingly over her shoulder at her own door some forty feet away and waffled.

  Hearing a desk chair scrape back within the office in front of her, and sensing that Jack was coming out, Laurie almost fled in a panic. Fortunately, there wasn’t enough time, and it wasn’t even Jack. It was Chet who literally bumped into her in his haste.

  “Oh, gosh, I’m sorry!” Chet offered as he grabbed Laurie by the shoulders to keep from bowling her over as the two stumbled back a step. He immediately let go of Laurie and bent down to pick up the jacket he’d dropped.

  “It’s quite all right,” Laurie said. She recovered quickly, although her pulse was racing.

  “I’m off to my body-sculpting class,” Chet offered as an explanation. “Obviously, I’m late. And if you are looking for Jack, you missed him. He had some important basketball game at his neighborhood court and bolted out of here ten minutes ago.”

  “Oh, too bad,” Laurie said. She was actually relieved. “No problem. I’ll catch him in the morning.”

  Chet waved good-bye and ran down the corridor toward the elevator. Laurie walked toward her office. Suddenly, she was very tired. The day had taken its toll. She looked forward to getting back to her apartment and taking a hot bath.

  As Laurie suspected, her office was empty. She sat down at her desk and typed in her password. For the next thirty minutes, she downloaded the records on the six cases from Queens. Although the forensic investigators’ reports were not even close in quality to those done by Janice, there was enough information for Laurie to conclude that the cases were indeed similar to hers. The deaths were all in the early-morning hours between two and four, the ages ranged from twenty-six to forty-two, none of the patients had a history of cardiac problems, and all were within twenty-four hours of elective surgery.

  When she was finished, Laurie reached for her phone and dialed Roger’s number. She had promised to call, and this was as good a time as any, especially since she had something particular to say besides explaining her behavior in his office. As the call went through, she found herself hoping on this occasion to get his voicemail to avoid having to resist being drawn into a conversation about things that she didn’t want to discuss, but unfortunately, Roger answered on the second ring with his usual cheerful voice. When he realized it was Laurie, he became immediately solicitous.

  “Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.

  “I’m holding my own,” Laurie answered. She wasn’t going to lie. “I’m looking forward to getting back to my apartment. It hasn’t been my idea of a great day. In the meantime, I’ve learned something within the hour that I think you will find interesting. During our Thursday-afternoon interdepartmental conference, it was brought to my attention that there had been six deaths at Saint Francis Hospital in Queens that so far sound strikingly similar to those at the Man
hattan General.”

  “Really?” Roger questioned. He was both surprised and interested.

  “I’ve downloaded their death certificates and investigative reports, and I’ve ordered copies of their hospital charts. Getting the charts will take a while, but in the interim, I’ll get what I can over to you tomorrow. I assume you’ll want to discuss this with the chief of the medical staff at Saint Francis.”

  “Most definitely, if only to commiserate with him.” Switching gears, Roger added, “Now, let’s talk about you. I have to say I’ve been worried sick since you mysteriously stopped in mid-sentence here in my office and then essentially walked out. What’s going on in your mind?”

  Laurie twisted the phone cord in her fingers while she tried to think of something appropriate to say. It was not her intent by any stretch of the imagination to cause Roger anxiety, but there was no way she wanted to discuss what was dominating her thoughts, especially when she didn’t even know for certain that her worries were justified.

  “Are you still there?” Roger questioned.

  “I’m still here,” Laurie assured him. “Roger, I’m all right. Truly! And as soon as I feel comfortable talking about what is on my mind, I promise I will do so. Can you accept that for the time being?”

  “I suppose,” Roger said without enthusiasm. “Is it about your being positive for the BRCA1 marker?”

  “Indirectly, to some extent. But please, Roger, no more questions.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to get together tonight?”

  “Not tonight. I’ll call you in the morning. I promise.”

  “Okay, I’ll be waiting to hear from you. But if you have a change of heart, I’ll be home all evening.”

  Laurie hung up the phone, leaving her hand resting on the receiver. She felt guilty about causing Roger distress, but she was not about to talk to him about what was on her mind.

  Pushing back from the desk and standing up, Laurie looked down at the stack of new material from the OCME database. She thought about taking the papers home with her and adding the names to her matrix, but then quickly dismissed the idea. She could deal with her burgeoning series the following day.

  With her coat over her arm and her umbrella in one hand, Laurie turned off the light and locked her office door. Next stop was the drugstore, and after that, her apartment. As Laurie pushed the elevator’s down button, she could almost feel the delicious sensation of slipping into an enveloping hot bath. For her, a bath was as much a therapeutic experience as it was an opportunity to get clean.

  twelve

  . . .ONE HUNDRED NINETY-NINE, two hundred,” Jazz counted to herself before stopping her sit-ups. She lay back on the inclined plane of the sit-up apparatus, keeping her hands behind her head while she stared up at the ceiling panels of the health club’s weight room. She was breathing heavily from pushing herself during her entire workout by doing twice her normal number of repetitions with each exercise and at each weight station. Such exertion usually had a cathartic effect on her, cleansing her mind, and today was no different. She felt better. She closed her eyes and let her body relax, despite her head being lower than the rest of her, causing her blood to rush to her head.

  The problem had been that Jazz hadn’t been able to stop fretting about the snafus with Lewis and Sobczyk to the point that sleep had been difficult. Prior to those two messy episodes, she’d done ten missions without a speck of trouble. It irritated her that people could be so difficult, especially Lewis grabbing her arm the way he did. Sobczyk hadn’t been much better, the way she gurgled and writhed around at just the wrong time. The only good part was that that sorry situation had pushed her over the edge as far as Susan Chapman was concerned. Jazz had fantasized about getting rid of her from day one, and now it was done.

  Jazz slipped her feet from beneath the padded restraints and swung her legs over to the side. She stood up and glanced in the mirror at her very red and perspiring face. She grabbed her towel and wiped the sweat off her forehead before glancing up at the clock. Although she had essentially doubled her entire workout routine, it had taken her only thirty minutes longer.

  Letting her eyes briefly sweep around the room, she caught the inevitable furtive looks from the mostly male occupants, including blond Mr. Ivy League, whom she hadn’t seen for a while. In the mood she was in, she almost wished he’d try to talk to her again. This time, she wouldn’t be so nice.

  Knowing that she had to get a move on if she was to get to work reasonably early, Jazz headed for the locker room. Now that she had her irritation about the Lewis and Sobczyk episodes under control, she was able to think more clearly about them. Both were hardly her fault. Rotating her left arm, she looked at the still-raw scratch marks. She couldn’t believe the guy had had the nerve to scratch her like that, and she hoped to hell he wasn’t HIV-positive. He certainly deserved what he got. In the future, Jazz reminded herself, she should steer clear of the subject’s free hand. As far as the Sobczyk debacle was concerned, that was Chapman’s fault, and now that Chapman was history, there was little to worry about.

  With her towel and her Walkman in one hand, Jazz used the other to push into the woman’s locker room. She tossed the towel into the convenient hamper, and with the Walkman under her arm, she took a Coke from the ice-filled tub. After a glance around to make sure no one was watching, she walked on. She flipped the tab and took a long, satisfying slug.

  Ultimately, the real threat of the foul-ups with Lewis and Sobczyk was the possibility of discovery. Mr. Bob had warned about ripples, and both episodes had been like ten-foot waves. Participating in Operation Winnow had been the best thing that had ever happened to Jazz, and she shuddered to think of what might have occurred had she not wasted Chapman when she did. Or, worse yet, what might have happened if Chapman had gone directly to the nursing supervisor that morning instead of walking out to her car. Jazz didn’t even like to think about it, because everything she had worked for could have gone down the drain. Back at the beginning of her relationship with Mr. Bob, she had decided that she was not going to let anything or anybody stand between her and her new-found success. Just before she came to the health club, she’d gone online and checked her account. As she had anticipated, her balance was now close to fifty thousand dollars. Just looking at the figures had made her feel like she had died and gone to heaven.

  “Hey,” someone taunted. “I heard you were a nurse, not a neurosurgeon!”

  Jazz stopped and turned to look at the person who had spoken to her. She was a fleshy woman, trussed up in a towel like a cannoli. “Do I know you?”

  “You told me you were a neurosurgeon,” the woman said disdainfully. “And the trusting person I am, I believed you. Well, I know differently now.”

  A derisive half-laugh escaped from Jazz’s mouth. Vaguely, she remembered making such a comment, but the fact that this tub of lard remembered it and had the nerve to bring it up was a bad joke. “Why don’t you get a life, you porker?” Jazz scoffed and then walked on before the woman could respond. Jazz shook her head and wondered if she should begin checking out another health club. At her current one, it used to be just the men who irked her, but now that the women were starting, it might be time to move on.

  Jazz didn’t take long in the shower, nor did she dillydally, climbing into her scrubs and white jacket. When she pulled on her oversized olive-drab coat, she checked her pockets as she always did. She fondled the Glock and the Blackberry while she scanned the locker to make sure she’d taken everything she wanted.

  As Jazz rode down in the elevator, she wondered when she’d get her next mission for Operation Winnow. She hoped it would be soon, and not just for the money. With the problems on the last two cases making the possibility of discovery a realistic concern, she worried about being spooked. She’d learned about dealing with such negative thoughts in the military. The idea was to jump right back into the water.

  On the upper garage level, she headed over toward her waiting car. It gleamed in t
he garage’s raw fluorescent light and looked awesome despite the fact that it was no longer virginal. On the back left quarter panel was a smudge of yellow paint and a slight dent from a recent run-in with a taxicab. Jazz wasn’t happy about the defect in the vehicle’s otherwise flawless surface, but the damage to the taxi and the irritation of the driver compensated for the minor blemish.

  When Jazz was about ten feet away, she activated the door release, and she could hear the mechanical clicks as the doors unlocked. Coming alongside, she glanced at her reflection in the tinted windows and fluffed her fringed hair with her fingers. She opened the driver’s-side door, tossed her gym bag into the passenger-side seat, and swung herself up behind the wheel. As she stuck the key in the ignition with anticipation of hearing the roar of the V-8, a hand gripped her shoulder.

  Jazz almost went through the roof. Spinning around fast enough to jab herself in the hip with the steering wheel, she shot a glance into the backseat. In the half-light of the interior, made dim by the darkly tinted windows, all she could see were the outlines of two men. Their faces were hidden in shadow. While Jazz frantically struggled to get her hand into her coat pocket to get the Glock, one of the men spoke: “Howdy, Doc JR!”

  “Jesus, Mr. Bob!” Jazz blurted. She gave up on the Glock. Instead, she slapped her hand over her forehead. “You scared me half to death.”

  “That wasn’t the intention,” Mr. Bob said unapologetically. “We’re just being discreet.” He was sitting on the passenger side of the back seat, leaning slightly forward. The other man was sitting back with his arms crossed.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” Jazz questioned. She squinted to try to get a look at the other guy while rubbing the top of her iliac crest. It was throbbing from its painful contact with the steering wheel.

  “Easy. We kept a key when we delivered the vehicle. I’d like you to meet a colleague of mine: Mr. Dave.”