Vector

by Robin Cook

  A middle-aged couple whom Laurie had never seen stood up from one of the waiting room’s vinyl couches. The burly man was in a heavy red-checked wool jacket and needed a shave. He was holding a hunting cap with earmuffs tied over the top. The woman seemed frail. There was a lace collar around her coat. The two looked as if they belonged in a small town in the Midwest. They were plainly intimidated, and exhausted, as if they’d been traveling all night.

  “Can I help you?” Laurie asked.

  “We hope so,” the man said. “I’m Chester Cassidy and this here is my wife, Shirley.”

  Laurie recoiled at the surname, realizing that she was most likely facing the parents of Brad Cassidy. Instantly, the horrific image of the tortured young man she’d posted the day before sprang unbidden into her mind’s eye. She remembered the gouged eye sockets, the huge nail that had been pounded through the boy’s palm, and the naked part of his chest and abdomen where he’d been skinned alive. She shuddered.

  “What can I do for you?” Laurie managed to say.

  “We understand you are the doctor who took care of our son, Brad,” Chester said. His large, gnarled hands were unconsciously worrying his hat.

  Laurie nodded, although “taking care of Brad” was hardly an appropriate euphemism for what she’d had to do.

  “We would like to talk to you for a few moments,” Chester added. “Provided you have the time.”

  “Of course,” Laurie said, although she wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. Dealing with bereaved parents was not easy for her. “But I’m just arriving at this very moment. You’ll have to give me about fifteen minutes.”

  “We understand,” Chester said. With an arm around his wife, Chester retreated to the couch.

  Laurie had herself buzzed into the building. Preoccupied with the upcoming meeting with the Cassidy family, she took the elevator up to the fifth floor and went into her office. She hung her coat behind the door. A quick glance at the mound of unfinished folders on her desk made her thankful she’d been steadfast in her decision not to go on the Budapest trip.

  Laurie found Brad Cassidy’s folder near the top of the stack. Using her index finger she went through the contents until she came to the identification sheet. She pulled it out. She was curious who had made the ID. The name was listed as Helen Trautman, the deceased’s sister.

  Back down on the first floor she took the circuitous route through communications to the ID room. She wanted a bolt of coffee before facing the Cassidys. As she entered, she ran into Jack and Vinnie on their way down to the autopsy room. As usual, they were getting a jump on the day.

  “Could we talk for a moment?” Jack asked sheepishly the moment he saw Laurie.

  “Can it wait?” Laurie asked. She looked at Jack curiously; sheepishness was hardly one of Jack’s typical behavioral traits. “There’s a couple waiting for me out in the waiting room. I have a feeling they’ve been here for a long time.”

  “It’ll only take a second,” Jack promised. “Vinnie, run down and get set up in the autopsy room! I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”

  “Why don’t I just go back to my newspaper?” Vinnie suggested. “I don’t want to be standing down there in the deserted pit twiddling my thumbs. Some of your spontaneous conversations go on for half an hour.”

  “Not this time,” Jack said. “Get!”

  Vinnie slunk off. Jack watched him go until he was out of earshot. Then he stepped over to Laurie, who was helping herself to the community coffee. Jack cast a quick glance at George Fontworth, but he was ignoring them while busily sorting the cases that had come in over the night.

  “Where’s the Hope diamond ring?” Jack asked.

  Laurie glanced at her naked finger as if she expected the ring to be there. “It’s hidden in the freezer compartment of my refrigerator.”

  “On ice, so to speak,” Jack said.

  Laurie couldn’t help but smile. Such a comment was much more like the Jack she knew. “I’m not officially engaged,” she said. “I mentioned that last night, in case you don’t remember.”

  “I guess not until you tell your parents,” Jack said.

  “That and a few other things,” Laurie said.

  “Anyway,” Jack stammered. “I wanted to apologize for last night.”

  “Apologize for what?” Laurie asked. Apology wasn’t one of Jack’s strong suits either.

  “For not being more positive about Paul,” Jack said. “He seems like a nice enough guy, and I’m impressed by you two going to Paris for the weekend. I could never do that in a million years.”

  “Is that all you want to say?”

  “I guess,” Jack said.

  “Then your apology is accepted,” Laurie said matter-of-factly. She tossed back the quarter cup of coffee she’d poured for herself, flashed Jack a quick, fake smile, then headed for the meeting with the Cassidys. She knew Jack was transfixed and probably baffled by her behavior, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t wanted an apology, especially not an insincere one. What she wanted to hear from him was how he felt about her possible plans to marry. But she now knew it wasn’t going to happen, and it frustrated her.

  Laurie first checked one of the small side rooms used for relatives during the emotional identification process. In the past, people had to go down to the morgue and view the body, but that was an unnecessarily cruel procedure for individuals still coping with the shock of loss of a loved one. Now Polaroid pictures were used, and it was a lot easier on everyone.

  Once Laurie was certain the room was reasonably clean, she went to get the Cassidys. They filed in silently and sat in two of the straight-back chairs. Laurie leaned against the scarred wooden desk. The only other things in the room were a box of tissues, a wastebasket, and several chipped ashtrays.

  “Could I get either of you some coffee?” Laurie questioned as a way of introduction.

  “I don’t reckon so,” Chester said. He’d taken off his coat. His plaid flannel shirt was buttoned to the neck. “We don’t want to take too much of your time.”

  “It’s quite all right,” Laurie said. “We’re really here to serve the public, quite literally. And let me say that I’m very sorry about your son. I’m sure it was a big shock for you.”

  “In some ways yes and in some ways no,” Chester said. “He’d been a kinda wayward kid. Nothing like his older sister or older brother. To tell you the truth, we were embarrassed by the way he dressed and looked, especially with that Nazi sign he tattooed on his forehead. My uncle died fighting those Nazis. Brad and I had a set-to about that tattoo, the good it did.”

  “Teenage rebellion is sometimes hard to understand,” Laurie offered. She wanted to steer the conversation away from the boy’s appearance. One of her worries was that the Cassidys would request to see the pictures of their son that had been taken on his arrival at the morgue. Such photographs were not fit for any layperson to see, much less a parent.

  “Trouble was, he was no longer a teenager,” Chester said. Shirley nodded in agreement. “But he’d gotten in with the wrong crowd. They all had that Nazi stuff. And then they started going around beating up on people who were different, like gays and Puerto Ricans.”

  “That’s how he got in trouble the first time,” Shirley said, speaking up for the first time. She had an unexpectedly high, strident voice.

  “I understand he’d had difficulties with the police,” Laurie said. She started to relax. It seemed as if the Cassidys merely wanted to talk. Laurie could appreciate that kind of urge, considering their grief and bafflement at their son’s untimely death. The only problem was that there were things that Lou and Agent Tyrrell had told her about the victim that she wasn’t in a position to disclose, such as the fact that he’d been cooperating with the authorities as part of a plea bargain.

  “We heard that some awful things had happened to Brad from our daughter, Helen,” Chester said. “Brad had come down here recently to stay with her in the city. But she couldn’t tell us very much about th
e details of his death. That’s why we came ourselves from where we live upstate.”

  “What would you like to know?” Laurie asked. She was hoping she could speak in generalities.

  The husband and wife glanced at each other to see who should go first. Chester cleared his throat: “One of the things we wanted to know was whether he was shot.”

  “He was,” Laurie said. “Most definitely.”

  “I told you so,” Shirley said to Chester, as if the news validated her position in an argument. “For all they who taketh the sword shall perish with the sword: Matthew twenty-six.”

  “Do you know what kind of gun it was?” Chester asked.

  “No,” Laurie said. “And I’m not sure we’ll ever know. The bullet, of course, will be examined, and if a particular gun was believed to be involved, it could be implicated.”

  “Was he shot only once?” Chester asked.

  “We believe so,” Laurie said with less emphasis. She was uncomfortable giving more than sketchy details, since Brad’s homicide was under investigation.

  “Then maybe it wasn’t one of his guns,” Chester said to Shirley. “If it had been, then he probably would have been hit many times.”

  “Did your son have a lot of guns?” Laurie asked.

  “Too many guns,” Shirley said. “That’s how he got in trouble the second time. We thought he was going to go to prison. I tell you: I don’t know what men see in guns.”

  “Now, it’s not all guns that are bad,” Chester said.

  “Most of them, if you ask me,” Shirley snapped. “Particularly those automatic ones.” Then turning to Laurie she added: “That’s what Brad got involved in. He was selling assault rifles.”

  “Where did he get them?” Laurie asked. The idea of a skinhead youth selling assault rifles in upstate New York gave her a shiver.

  “We don’t rightly know,” Chester said. “They came from Bulgaria originally. At least that’s where they’d been made. I came across a bunch of them hidden in our barn.”

  “That’s terrible,” Laurie said. She knew it was a trite response, but she meant it. With her particular interest in the forensics of gunshot wounds, she’d seen a lot of cases, more than anyone else at the office. She couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever autopsied anyone victimized by one of Brad Cassidy’s customers.

  “There’s one other thing we’d like to ask,” Shirley said haltingly. “We’d like to know if our boy suffered.”

  Laurie looked away for a moment while her mind wrestled with the question. She hated to have to choose between truth and compassion. It was undeniable that Brad Cassidy had been mercilessly tortured, but what purpose would it serve to relate such horror to his grieving parents? On the other hand, she hated to lie.

  “You can tell us straight,” Chester said, as if sensing Laurie’s quandary.

  “He was shot in the head, and I believe he died instantly,” Laurie said, suddenly realizing she had an out. By such a statement she wasn’t being entirely honest, since she was not answering Shirley’s question, yet she wasn’t lying either. It was up to the Cassidys to ask the critical question about the order of events preceding Brad’s murder.

  “Thank the Lord!” Shirley said. “He was a troubled boy and certainly not a good boy, but the idea that he might have suffered bothered me deeply.”

  “I’m glad we could be of service,” Laurie said. She pushed off the desk, eager to avoid more questions by breaking up the meeting. “If there’s anything else I can do, please give me a call.”

  Chester and Shirley stood up. They were grateful to Laurie, and the father pumped her hand enthusiastically. Laurie gave him one of her cards as she escorted them out of the cubicle and across the ID room. She opened the door to the waiting room, and the Cassidys filed out.

  After a final goodbye, Laurie let the door close and lock. Then she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Were you doing an ID in there of a case I don’t know about?” George Fontworth asked. He was bent over the list of fatalities, trying to schedule the day’s autopsies.

  “No! They were the parents of one of yesterday’s cases,” Laurie said while staring off into the middle distance. With the Cassidys gone, she found herself preoccupied by the horror of their son selling assault rifles, probably to other skinheads. With what she’d learned the day before from Special Agent Gordon Tyrrell, putting such deadly weapons in the hands of such violent and bigoted people was an invitation to disaster, especially since the far-right neo-Nazi militias were busily recruiting the skinheads as shock troops.

  What’s this world coming to? Laurie voicelessly questioned to herself. Her strong support for gun control ratcheted up yet another notch.

  ____

  TEN

  Tuesday, October 19

  11:15 A.M.

  With the cab’s motor running, Yuri got out and opened his garage door. Despite his exhaustion, the sight of the pest control truck brought a smile to his face. The fact that it was sitting there waiting for the big day was a source of great satisfaction and gave meaning to the effort he was expending and the anxieties he was suffering. Yuri pulled his taxi inside and shut the overhead door. He didn’t want anyone to see the truck.

  At his back door Yuri hesitated for a moment and let his eyes roam his immediate neighborhood. He wanted to make sure no one was paying him any heed. It wasn’t usual for him to be coming home in the middle of the morning. And certainly all the commotion of the ambulance in the wee hours of that morning must have gotten the neighbors’attention. Yet he saw no one. It was a peaceful Indian summer day with the temperature in the low seventies. For the moment, there weren’t even any dogs barking.

  Inside, Yuri went directly to his refrigerator and poured himself a vodka. He leaned against the counter and took a calming sip. He was still nervous about Connie’s body having been taken to the medical examiner’s office at Kings County Hospital. He’d gone with it for purposes of identification, even though he’d been told it wasn’t necessary since he’d made adequate identification at Coney Island Hospital. But he’d gone anyway in hopes of talking the doctors out of doing the autopsy. Yet it turned out he never even got to see a doctor. The person he’d met with described herself as a forensic investigator. At least Yuri made sure she got the story about the asthma and the allergies. She told him that the autopsy wouldn’t take place until some time after eight, when the medical examiners arrived.

  It had been five o’clock in the morning by the time Yuri had gotten home. Although exhausted, he’d sensed there was no chance that he’d sleep. He was too keyed up, so he’d taken his cab out for a jump on rush hour.

  It had been a good decision. Not only had he been able to earn some decent money, but the work took his mind off his worries, at least while he’d been busy. As soon as there was a lull, it was a different story, and Yuri had started for home. Besides, he had other, more important things to do than spend the day driving. He was eager to get down into his lab.

  Even though he wasn’t hungry, Yuri forced himself to eat some cold cereal. His empty stomach was growling from the previous night’s pizza and too much coffee, and now vodka. As he ate, he eyed the telephone. The forensic investigator had given him a number to call that afternoon to find out when Connie’s body would be released to the funeral home Yuri had selected. Yuri wondered if she was already set to be moved. As far as he was concerned, the sooner Connie was out of the medical examiner’s office the better.

  Yuri dialed. To his surprise the phone was answered by a person rather than an answering machine. He identified himself and asked about his wife’s body.

  “What was that name again?” the operator asked.

  “Davydov,” Yuri reiterated. “Connie Davydov.”

  “Hold on a second, let me check.”

  Yuri felt his pulse quicken. He hated dealing with bureaucracy of any sort.

  “I don’t seem to find a Davydov,” the operator said. “Are you sure your wife came to the Brooklyn office?”r />
  “Of course!” Yuri said. “I was there myself.”

  “How do you spell Davydov?”

  Yuri spelled out his surname. His anxiety mounted. Maybe they’d made the diagnosis and the police were called. Maybe the police were already on their way to his house that very minute. Maybe ...

  “Oh, here it is,” the woman said. “No wonder I couldn’t find it. Your wife wasn’t autopsied.”

  “You mean they haven’t done it yet?” Yuri questioned.

  “No, I mean the doctors decided she didn’t need to be posted,” the operator said.

  “Why not?” Yuri asked. It sounded too good to be true.

  “They don’t tell us operators anything like that. You’ll have to speak to the duty doctor. Today it’s Dr. Randolph Sanders. Just a moment!”

  Yuri tried to get the operator’s attention, since he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to the duty doctor, but she’d put him on hold. Elevator music flowed out of the receiver.

  Yuri struggled to control his excitement as he waited. The fact that it had been decided not to autopsy Connie was unexpected good news, provided it was true. He drummed his fingers nervously on the countertop. He took another swig of vodka.

  “This is Dr. Sanders,” a voice said, cutting off the music. “Can I help you?”

  Nervously Yuri explained who he was and what he’d been told.

  “Ah, yes,” Dr. Sanders said. “I know the case well. I was the one who decided the autopsy was not necessary.”

  “So the body can be released?” Yuri asked.

  “Absolutely,” Dr. Sanders said. “It can be picked up at any time by the funeral home you’ve chosen. I believe that’s Strickland’s.”

  “That’s right,” Yuri said. “Should I call them to let them know?”

  “I’m sure our mortuary office has done that already,” Dr. Sanders said. “Or at least they’ll be doing it very soon.”

  “Thank you very much,” Yuri said, purposefully toning down his excitement lest it be interpreted correctly. “Out of curiosity, why the change of plans? I mean, I’m relieved there was no autopsy because I was not happy about my wife’s body being disturbed.”