by Robin Cook
“Thanks for the tip,” Jack said as Laurie moved on.
Laurie removed her Tyvek coveralls in the locker room and disposed of them before heading upstairs in her scrubs. The first stop was Sergeant Murphy’s office, where she turned over the information she had involving the pickpocket episode seen on the security tape. Then she asked about John Doe.
“I haven’t heard a damn thing about your case from yesterday,” the sergeant confessed. “But I expect to hear something today. If I don’t, I’ll give Missing Persons a call myself. If they’d received any calls about a missing Asian male, they would have let me know.”
Laurie thanked the sergeant before climbing a flight of stairs and dropping in on Hank Monroe, the director of identification in the anthropology department. Laurie knocked on the closed door. It seemed that Hank, in contrast to most everyone else, preferred his privacy.
Hank Monroe was no more help than Sergeant Murphy had been, saying that the Missing Persons Squad had admitted they had yet to run the victim’s fingerprints on any local database, much less on the state or federal level. “As I believe I told you yesterday, they usually wait at least twenty-four hours or so, because the vast number of cases are solved by someone calling in within that time period. But as soon as I hear anything, you’ll be the first to know.”
From the director of identification’s office, Laurie went up to toxicology and stopped in to see John DeVries. “So far the screen for drugs, poisons, or toxins has shown absolutely nothing,” John said with an apologetic tone. “I’m sorry. You did get the essentially negative blood alcohol, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Laurie said. “And I appreciate you making the effort to do it so quickly.”
“We’re happy to help,” John said in his new persona. “But I want to emphasize that just because the toxicology screen is so far negative, it doesn’t necessarily mean there is none present. With some of the more potent agents, so little is needed to kill someone that the only way to identify it is to look for it specifically. What I’m trying to suggest is that if you have any reason to suspect a specific agent, you have to tell us, and we’ll specially look for it. Even then we can’t guarantee success, even with the trick of running the sample through the mass spec twice.”
“I understand,” Laurie said, and she did. She had been involved in several poisonings over the years. One had involved finding the agent at the crime scene, the other by discovering evidence that the perpetrator had purchased the material. But in her current case, neither of those opportunities was available.
“We’re not totally finished,” John added. “If we find something, I’ll be sure to give you a call.”
Next Laurie went down to the fourth floor and entered the histology lab, bracing herself for Maureen O’Conner’s invariable humor. She was not disappointed, nor was she disappointed about getting her slides overnight. As usual, Maureen came through with both.
Descending yet another floor, Laurie entered her office, eager to get to work. In order not to be bothered, she shut her door, which she rarely did. Next she deposited the tray of histology slides next to her microscope and turned on her monitor.
Her final act of preparing to get to work was to take out her cell phone and give Leticia a call. She actually felt proud of the fact that she’d resisted calling until almost ten. She thought it showed marked restraint, at least in comparison to the previous day. Leticia agreed.
“I’m surprised you didn’t call earlier,” Leticia said teasingly when she first answered.
“I’m surprised myself. How are things going?”
“Couldn’t be better. We’re staying in this morning, then going out to the park this afternoon. The sun is supposed to come out after noon.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Laurie said. While she had been talking to Leticia, she’d gotten out the photo she’d made from the security tapes and compared it to the photo in the new case file. It seemed that there was a definite resemblance between the man she’d just autopsied and one of the men in the photo. Actually, more than she expected.
After hanging up with Leticia, Laurie got the two security disks out of her bag and slipped the first into the DVD drawer. Then she put the photograph of the floater next to the monitor to make it easy to compare. With her mouse, she advanced the DVD to the appropriate time and pressed play.
The image was from camera five, and the timing was that of the victim rushing down the stairs to the subway platform. Within seconds, the two pursuing men appeared at the top of the stairs. At that point, Laurie stopped the action and then moved it forward frame by frame. As the action advanced and the men became larger and larger, Laurie alternately got a good view of first one and then the other. Although the two men resembled each other in terms of size and dress, one had a more or less full, oval face, while the other’s was lean and narrow. Of course, the more obvious difference was that the thinner man was carrying an umbrella, while the full-faced one was not.
Laurie advanced the frames until she had the best view of the full-faced man, as it was clear the man she’d just autopsied also had a full, oval face. At that point, with the security tape halted, she picked up the photo of the tattooed gentleman in the cooler and put them side by side.
For several minutes Laurie stared alternately at the photo and the image on her monitor. In a sense, she was disappointed. From the initial comparison using the photo she’d made at home and the photo taken at OCME, she’d been optimistic and had counted on the identification being easy: It was going to be either a yes or a no. She hadn’t expected a maybe, which seemed to be the situation. It was close. Alternately she looked at photos and then at the monitor image, again advancing the monitor image a frame at a time.
Still not certain, perhaps due to the dark glasses, Laurie quickly advanced the security tape to camera six and went to the same time sequence as she’d been on camera five. From that angle, something she’d not seen on camera five appeared. The man had a mole about the size of a dime on his right temple. It wasn’t particularly obvious, but it was definitely there, no doubt about it. Checking the photograph of the right profile on the photo, there it was as well! Laurie was reasonably confident that the two people were one and the same!
She sat back in her chair, amazed at the coincidence. Then she sat forward again and continued watching the tape from the sixth camera to the point where the train pulled into the station. Although it was not easy to make out because of the crowd surging forward toward the arriving train, Laurie tried to see exactly what happened when the two pursuers reached the victim. She could not see any of their hands, but quickly the two men seemed to be supporting the victim while the victim appeared to be convulsing. It was very fast, only a couple of frames. What wasn’t clear was whether the pursuers caused the victim to convulse or it was spontaneous, like a heart attack or stroke.
Laurie sat back in her chair again, watching the rapid denouement with the pursuers laying the now unconscious man onto the platform, having already stripped him of his bag and presumably his wallet. On this viewing, Laurie also saw something else she hadn’t made note of the previous evening: how the oval-faced man, after relieving the victim of his belongings, carefully picked up the umbrella and opened it about halfway before closing it again. The impression was that it took some force to get it closed. The thought that immediately came to Laurie’s mind was that the umbrella was being cocked like an air rifle.
Halting the security tape, Laurie was about to view the same sequence from the vantage point of some of the other cameras when a specific remembrance flashed through her mind. It was about a famous forensic case that she’d heard about in a lecture when she was a resident in forensic pathology. It involved the assassination in London of a diplomat from an Iron Curtain country she couldn’t remember. It was carried out with the help of an air gun cleverly hidden by the KGB within an umbrella.
Putting down the photos that she was still holding, Laurie went online and did a quick search, and within seconds
she was reading about Georgi Ivanov Markov, a rather famous Bulgarian at the time, who had indeed been murdered with a KGB-manufactured pellet gun hidden within the shaft of an umbrella. Most important, Laurie learned that the substance involved was ricin, a remarkably toxic protein derived from castor beans.
Going back to the Web, Laurie looked up ricin, particularly interested in the symptoms associated with ricin poisoning. Immediately she could tell that her case of the previous day could not have been a copycat of the Markov incident, at least not with ricin, as ricin caused gastrointestinal symptoms, and the symptoms developed over hours, not instantaneously, as with her case. As far as the delivery aspect, however, meaning a pellet gun in an umbrella, that was a definite possibility. Laurie was now eager to repeat the external exams.
Why she hadn’t done a better external exam at the time, even if Southgate had supposedly done it and reputedly had called it negative, she didn’t know. In fact, from her current vantage point she was embarrassed she hadn’t done her own. Not long into the autopsy, her intuition was telling her it had not been a natural death, as there was no pathology at all: none! The challenge now was to prove her intuition was correct: whether there was a tiny entrance wound that he’d received through his clothing.
Laurie picked up the phone and called Vinnie’s cell. She and most people at OCME had been finding that using personal cell phones was significantly more efficient than using the regular internal phone lines. She wondered if Vinnie’s mood had improved. He answered after the first ring.
“How about my Asian John Doe?” Laurie asked. “Is he ready for another look?”
“A table is just opening up,” Vinnie said. “It should be within a half-hour or so.”
“Terrific! Should I just come down in a half-hour, or do you want to give me a call?”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll have Marvin give you a call,” Vinnie said, continuing to suffer guilt about his very real fears of having been caught in an untenable situation where he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. If he went to Laurie and took responsibility for sending her the threatening note and tried to convince her about what to do, he and/or his family, particularly his girls, would surely be harassed if not killed. If he didn’t do anything and Laurie didn’t heed the message, she could be killed. The situation was driving him to distraction. “He’s available now, and I know you guys like to work together.”
“Suit yourself!” Laurie said, finally truly irritated. It seemed to her that Vinnie had been trying to provoke her all morning, and now he’d succeeded.
Calming herself down, Laurie turned to the histology slides. Until she’d viewed all of them, particularly the sections involving the brain and the heart, and found nothing, there was still a slight chance yesterday’s case was a natural death, despite her intuition to the contrary. Last night she’d become excited over the case. Now she was really excited with the added intrigue that she had both the victim and the killer, meaning the case might very well represent war between two organized-crime organizations just as Lou had feared, since at least one of the victims was most likely a Yakuza member.
21
MARCH 26, 2010
FRIDAY, 10:13 a.m.
There was no doubt in Vinnie’s mind that Laurie knew he was acting out of character. Try as he might, he couldn’t help it even though he tried. The problem, of course, was that he took the Vaccarros at their word since he’d heard all sorts of stories over the years, and Carlo and Brennan had threatened his daughters. Vinnie could not help but take such threats seriously. Being involved with such people was a lose-lose situation, and going to the police, unfortunately, was not an option.
Having begged off helping Laurie, he reflexively answered his phone when it rang only minutes later, thinking it was Laurie calling back for some change in the plans. Instead, to Vinnie’s serious chagrin, it was Carlo, the Barbera hood.
“Good morning, Vinnie, buddy,” Carlo said with a false sense of camaraderie. “It’s me from yesterday. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” Vinnie acknowledged, trying to sound normal but failing miserably. Carlo was the last person he wanted to talk to. If only he’d looked at the incoming number.
“I had some questions, if you have a minute.”
Vinnie would have loved to say no, that he didn’t have time, but he didn’t dare. Instead he asked Carlo to hold on a minute until he could find a quiet spot. Quickly he ducked out of the mortuary office, where some of the other techs were gathered, drinking their first cups of coffee.
“Have you seen Dr. Laurie Montgomery yet this morning?” Carlo asked when Vinnie gave him the okay.
“I have,” Vinnie said. “I’ve already done a case with her.”
“Terrific,” Carlo said. “And how was she acting?”
“She was acting quite normal. Not like me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I hope your feeling out of sorts has nothing to do with us.”
“It has everything to do with you,” Vinnie said, vainly thinking that if he were up-front they might leave him alone. “Yesterday you said you just wanted to ask me some questions, and then, before you know it, you have me sending a threatening letter.”
“What did the letter say again? I know you told me when you called me back, but I can’t remember.”
“I said what you told me to say, that if she didn’t sign the case out as a natural death, she and her family would face serious consequences. I also said that if she went to the police about the warning, she and her family would suffer the same consquences.”
“Good, good,” Carlo repeated. “And you know she got your love letter?”
“As sure as I can be. I made it a point to check her office and saw it on her computer keyboard. It would have been hard for her to have missed it.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Do you know if she’s read it?”
“I assume she has, but I wasn’t hanging around to watch.”
“Has her behavior changed?”
“Not in the way you want. In fact, like I suggested yesterday, the letter seems to have made her more intent on investigating the case. She even mentioned this morning that she’d learned something particularly interesting last night.”
“Like what?” Carlo demanded, his tone changing from mockingly humorous to dead serious.
“I don’t know,” Vinnie said. “She said that she wanted to investigate a bit more. I think she believes she’s made some progress, and my guess would be that’s not in the direction of it being a natural death but rather a homicide.”
Vinnie then heard muffled conversation, as if Carlo was trying to cover the mouthpiece of his phone. Fighting the urge to hang up, Vinnie waited, but while he waited he came to acknowledge that he was allowing himself to be drawn progressively into a situation that would not end well. Next Carlo could and probably would ask him to do something worse than compose a threatening letter, which already had been bad enough.
Vinnie hung up the phone, realizing as he did that he could be putting himself and his family in even greater jeopardy. So great was his panic that he made the sudden decision to leave town. It was his only choice. He had plenty of sick leave and vacation time available. Although he knew admin liked more warning, Vinnie was confident they’d make an exception, especially if he pleaded a family emergency.
With sudden resolve, Vinnie quickly put in a call to his wife, Charlene, who worked for her brother’s moving company in Garden City, Long Island. He knew she’d be able to get the time off; their business had been slow. The real problem would be the girls and school, but such was life. As he waited for the call to go through, he ran up the rear stairs to head to the first floor, where the chief of staff had her office.
“Hastings Moving and Storage,” Charlene said when she answered.
Vinnie didn’t waste words. Charlene was aghast at first but was understanding when Vinnie explained that the situation involved Paulie Cerino and the Vacca
rro organization. Having grown up with Vinnie in Rego Park, Charlene knew all about the Mob and the danger they represented. She also knew Vinnie was indebted to Paulie Cerino and what that meant.
“We’ve got to do this right away,” Vinnie anxiously insisted, “like today! Get the girls and we’ll be off. At least Florida is nice this time of year.”
“I’ve got to pack some things,” Charlene said, sensing Vinnie’s panic.
“Of course, but don’t make it your life’s work,” Vinnie urged. “And don’t tell anyone we’re leaving.”
“What about my aunt Hazel. We can’t just drop in on her in Fort Myers. And I have to tell my brother.”
“Tell your brother, of course,” Vinnie said, “but tell him not to let anyone else know. As far as your aunt is concerned, let’s call her en route. We might be better off staying at one of those cheap motels near the beach.”
“When will you be home?”
“As soon as possible, within the hour,” Vinnie said. “At the moment I’m just outside the chief of staff’s office. I have to get Twyla Robinson’s blessing. I don’t think there’ll be a problem. It was just a week ago that she was reminding me how much vacation time I’m owed.”
“I’ll try to get some schoolwork to take for the kids.”
“Good idea.”
“Don’t you think you should warn Dr. Montgomery?” Charlene questioned.
“I already did,” Vinnie said. “That’s why I have to leave. I don’t want them asking me to do anything else. I know in my bones that’s what they were about to do before I hung up on them.”
“How long do you think we’ll have to be in Florida?”
“Not long. Maybe a week or two. My sense is that all hell is going to break out here in the next day or so, and I want to be south of the Mason-Dixon Line.”
22
MARCH 26, 2010
