Fatal Cure

by Robin Cook

  3

  MARCH 25, 2010

  THURSDAY, 7:44 a.m.

  NEW YORK CITY

  Laurie was the first out of the taxi at the corner of First Avenue and 30th Street. The building was as unattractive as ever: a 1960s relic with its blue tile and aluminum windows. It was ugly then and ugly now. But it looked familiar to her, as though she was coming home after a long trip away. As for her earlier nervousness about her professional competence, seeing the building made it worse. The workday was about to begin.

  Turning back to the taxi, she watched Jack climb out after having paid the fare. He’d graciously offered to ride with her instead of using his beloved bike, which had recently changed to a Cannondale after his Trek had been mortally injured by a city bus that had run over it. Luckily, Jack was not on the bike at the time, but he had had to watch the tragedy from a few feet away.

  “Well, we’re here,” Jack said, glancing at this watch. It was later than he liked. Actually, later than they were supposed to arrive, which was early enough to start the first autopsies of the day at seven-thirty. But no one started their cases at seven-thirty except Jack on normal days. The seven-thirty rule had been made by the chief, Dr. Harold Bingham, but as he’d aged, his insistence of the hated early start had faltered. As a result, most of the senior staff began when they wanted to, sometime after eight. Jack stuck with the early rule because it gave him the chance to choose his cases rather than wait for what was assigned to him, by the on-call medical examiner, one of whose tasks was to arrive before the others to go over the cases that had came in during the night, to decide which needed to have postmortems and who would do them. The main part of the on-call medical examiner’s job was to be available if one of the evening or night medical legal investigators, or MLIs, needed the backup of a forensic pathologist for a difficult case. It was a job Jack himself did for a week three or four times a year when his turn rolled around.

  “I’m sorry we are late,” Laurie said, noticing Jack checking his watch. “I’ll do better in the future.” They were behind schedule because the handoff of JJ to Leticia had not gone as smoothly as Laurie had hoped. Every time she’d descended the stairs to where Jack was waiting at the front door, she’d think of something else and dash back up to the kitchen, where JJ and Leticia were dealing with oatmeal and pears, most of which, but not all, was being swallowed.

  “No problem,” Jack said. “How do you feel?”

  “As best as can be expected.”

  “You are going to be fine,” Jack assured her.

  Yeah, sure, Laurie said silently to herself. She followed him up the front steps and through the door. She entered the foyer with a sense of déjà vu. There was the same tired-looking sofa, with the same coffee table in front with a smattering of outdated magazines, some without covers. There were the same locked doors leading into the identification room and into the administrative offices of the chief medical examiner and the chief of staff.

  Finally, there was the same reception counter guarded by Marlene Wilson, a kind African-American woman whose flawless complexion belied her years and whose attitude was always happy and welcoming.

  “Dr. Montgomery!” Marlene exclaimed, catching sight of Laurie. “Welcome back,” she cried with obvious glee. Without a second’s hesitation, she slipped from her stool and came out from behind the desk to give Laurie a forceful hug. Laurie was initially taken aback by Marlene’s enthusiasm, but she quickly relaxed and let herself enjoy the warm welcome. It was a good thing, because Marlene’s reaction to seeing Laurie was to be repeated by just about everyone Laurie would encounter throughout the day.

  Inside the ID room where relatives were confronted by photos of the dead or the body itself if they insisted, Laurie and Jack found Dr. Arnold Besserman, who’d been working at OCME for thirty-some-odd years. As it was his turn to be the on-call medical examiner, he was sitting at the old, dented metal ID desk, checking through the most recent arrivals. It was immediately obvious it had been a quiet night in the Big Apple, as there was only a short stack of case files for him to deal with.

  Like Marlene, although not quite so ardent, Arnold got up as soon as Laurie appeared and gave her a welcoming hug.

  Also in the room was Vinnie Amendola, one of the mortuary techs. He regularly came in a half-hour early to transition from the two night techs, but really what he did was make the communal coffee in an institution-size drip coffee machine. He had to wait for Arnold for his turn to greet Laurie, then retreated to one of the old leather club chairs and his copy of the Daily News. He and Jack were close, though it was sometimes hard to tell amid their verbal sparring. On most days Vinnie and Jack started autopsies as much as an hour before anyone else.

  “What do we have today?” Jack asked as he followed Arnold back to the desk.

  “Not much,” Arnold said vaguely. He knew full well what Jack was up to—namely, cherry-picking cases—which had always rubbed him the wrong way in contrast to all the other medical examiners, who forgave Jack this habit since he always did more cases than anyone else. Animosity had simmered between the two because Jack saw Arnold as a slacker who was merely putting in his time, doing as little as possible, certainly not carrying his weight, to reach retirement age, affording maximum pension.

  Despite a threatening look from Arnold, Jack started pawing through the case files, checking each one quickly for the circumstances of death, such as GSW (gunshot wound), hospital-based if unexpected, accident, suicide, murder, or somehow suspicious.

  With his hands on his hips and a frustrated, impatient expression on his face, Arnold let the whistling Jack continue with no attempt of assistance, which he could have given, since he’d already gone through the cases himself.

  Still absorbed in his rapid assessment of the day’s autopsy workload, Jack became aware of another occupant in the room. In one of the club chairs facing the radiator was another male figure scrunched down so that just the top of his hat could be seen over the back of the chair. The only other parts of his body that were visible were his scuffed shoes, which were balanced on top of the radiator cover.Thinking the hat and shoes could belong only to one person, Jack dropped the case files, rounded the desk, and walked over to where he could glance down at the sleeping figure. As he’d suspected, it was a long-time friend, the recently promoted Detective Captain Lou Soldano.

  “Look who’s here!” Jack called out to Laurie, who was busy making herself a cup of coffee to her liking.

  Laurie immediately walked over and, standing next to Jack, joined him in gazing down at Lou. Not much of Lou’s face was visible, as he had his hat tipped down to cover most of it. His arms were crossed on his chest. Over them was an open newspaper. His coat was on but unbuttoned and trailing on the floor. He was breathing deeply but not snoring, and the open newspaper across his chest rose and fell rhythmically.

  “He must be exhausted,” Laurie remarked like the mother she now was.

  “He’s always exhausted,” Jack said. He reached down to tip Lou’s hat back to expose his face, but Laurie grabbed his arm and pulled it back.

  “Let him sleep!”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, he must be exhausted.”

  “He’s here for a reason,” Jack remarked as he pulled his hand free from Laurie’s grip and gently lifted Lou’s hat off the sleeping policeman. “The sooner he gets into a real bed, the better.”

  With his face now visible, Lou appeared the picture of absolute repose, despite the surroundings. He also looked exhausted, with dark circles under his somewhat sunken eyes. The dark circles were even apparent with the man’s deep complexion. He was handsome in a masculine, muscular fashion: a man’s man, clearly Italian. His clothes were disheveled and rumpled, as if he’d been in them for days, and it appeared he’d not shaved for an equivalent amount of time.

  “He’s been here as long as I have,” Arnold called from behind the desk.

  “Hey, big guy!” Jack said, giving Lou’s shoulder a light shove
. “Time to get you home to beddy-bye.”

  Lou’s breathing changed its rhythm briefly, but he didn’t awaken.

  “Let the poor man sleep, even for a short time.”

  “Come on, my man,” Jack said, increasing the force on Lou’s shoulder and ignoring Laurie.

  Everyone jumped when Lou suddenly sat bolt upright, his feet hitting the floor with a solid thump. His eyes had gone from fully closed to fully open such that the whites could be seen all around his irises. Before anyone could respond, he caught sight of Laurie. “Hey, Laurie! What a surprise! I thought it was next week you were going to start work.” With a slight wobble, he got to his feet and enveloped Laurie in a big hug. “How’s the little one?”

  Laurie recovered from having been startled and hugged Lou back despite his reeking of cigarette smoke. She had known Lou even longer than she’d known Jack, having met him the year she had started at OCME in the early nineties. They had even dated briefly before both realized they were more suited to be friends than lovers. Lou knew the whole difficult story of JJ better than anyone at OCME, as he was a regular visitor to the Stapleton home.

  After a bit more personal talk, Jack asked Lou what he was doing at OCME, which Lou insisted on calling “the morgue.” Although Lou knew that OCME was a lot more than a morgue and that the actual morgue was only a small part of the operation, he still couldn’t change, and Jack had given up getting him to do so.

  “There’s a case I want you to do for me,” Lou began. “The incident happened in Queens, but I threw my weight around and got the body brought here instead of being taken to the Queens office. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Me mind?” Jack questioned humorously. “Not on your life. Now, Bingham may throw a fit as a stickler for rules, and our man in Queens might have his feelings hurt that you didn’t think he could handle it, but I’m certain he’ll be able to put it behind him before retirement.”

  Lou chuckled. “Will it be that bad?”

  “I sincerely doubt it, at least not with Dick Katzenburg.”

  “Katzenburg won’t mind in the slightest,” Laurie threw in. She’d had lots of opportunity to work with the chief of the Queens office. The New York OCME had four physical locations, with 519 First Avenue serving Manhattan and the Bronx, and with separate offices in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island serving their own boroughs.

  “It was a GSW,” Lou began.

  “Hey, Arnold!” Jack called out. “Can I do the gunshot victim?” Ultimately, as the on-call ME, it was Arnold’s choice which case was to be assigned to which pathologist. Some people had specific preferences, especially if they were doing a study on a specific forensic issue. Other people had specific dislikes, and no one liked unpleasant decomposed corpses, which were doled out on a semi-rotating basis.

  “No skin off my nose,”Arnold said gruffly as he passive-aggressively tossed the case file toward Jack as if he were throwing a Frisbee. Not unexpectedly, some of the contents flew out, forcing Jack to retrieve them. “Sorry,” Arnold said, being anything but sincere.

  Jack swore under his breath as he retrieved a partially filled-out death certificate, a completed identification sheet, and a lab slip for the required HIV antibody analysis. “Asshole,” he mumbled when he rejoined Lou and Laurie. Laurie had her hand partially covering a smile. She always told Jack not to provoke Arnold by letting him know how he felt about him.

  “So what’s the story?” Jack said as he returned the missing papers to the case folder and withdrew the medical legal investigator’s report. He was glad Janice Jaeger had been the MLI on the case; she was thorough and professional. Typical of Janice, she’d even drawn a map with actual distances and angles.

  “The incident involved two off-duty police officers by the name of Don and Gloria Morano,” Lou began. “They are husband and wife after meeting at the police academy. Good kids and good police officers. They’ve been on the beat for a little over two years and are still green, as expected. Last night, somewhere around three a.m., they heard the sound of breaking glass outside their bedroom window in Bayside and correctly surmised it had come from their new car, a Honda. Anyway, they leaped out of bed with Gloria grabbing her service automatic in the process. They ran outside into the driveway just in time to spot a couple of kids climbing into a van parked next to their vehicle. Later they learned the teenagers had stolen a Garmin GPS from their car’s dash. At that point, things went down pretty fast. The driver pulled forward toward the Moranos, who were standing in the driveway, with Don in the middle of the drive directly in the path of the van and Gloria slightly ahead of Don and to his left, closer to the house, and standing in the grass. Do you get the picture?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Jack said.

  “Was the driver bent on running into Don?” Laurie asked.

  “Nobody knows,” Lou admitted. “Either that or it could have been a mistake on his part, putting the van in drive rather than reverse in the excitement. But that’s something we’ll never know. Anyway, with the van lurching forward toward Don, Gloria pulls off a single round through the windshield, hitting the driver in the chest. He doesn’t die immediately; instead, he stops, then backs out into the street and dies a few yards down the road.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Jack asked with a furrowed brow.

  “The problem is the two other kids. They both insist the van never pulled forward. They say that the driver was looking back at them as they were climbing into the van via the open sliding door. They even insist he had his arm over the van’s bench front seat.”

  “Okay, I got it,” Jack said. “If the dead driver was backing up the whole time, the cops are in deep doo-doo, using unnecessary lethal force, whereas if he drove forward it would be justifiable homicide.”

  “Exactly,” Lou said. “And to make it more interesting, the bullet’s core jacket was on the front seat and the victim has a wound on his forearm.”

  “That makes things even more interesting,” Jack said happily. “Vinnie, let’s get a move on. We got work to do.” Then, glancing at Laurie, he added, “Get a case and come on down. I’ll save the neighboring table like we talked about.”

  “Great,” Laurie responded, as Jack, Lou, and Vinnie disappeared back through the communications room, where operators sat waiting for death call-ins. She went over to Arnold. “Do you have a case for me yet? Perhaps it could be a straightforward case rather than something controversial. I’d like to get my feet wet rather than jumping into the deep end. I’m anxious about avoiding screwing up.”

  “No case for you today, Laurie,” Arnold said. “Bingham’s orders. He left word that unless there was an absolute flood today, I was to give you a free day to allow you some time to acclimatize after such a long absence. So you’re free. Welcome back!”

  Laurie let out an audible breath through pursed lips. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed. On the one hand, there was something to be said about getting up to her office and getting things organized since she’d not been there for almost two years, but on the other hand it was putting off the inevitable, and now she’d have to go through the anxiety all over again tomorrow. “You sure he was insistent, or did he say anything about what my preference might be?”

  “He was insistent as only Dr. Harold Bingham can be. You know the boss. He is never wishy-washy. He did say for you to come by his office first thing so he could welcome you back.”

  “Okay,” Laurie said with resignation. She left Arnold to his charts and headed after Jack and the others. She thought she’d descend to the morgue and tell Jack she was not going to be in the pit for the day. When she got to the back elevator, she changed her mind. Knowing Jack and his strong penchant for interesting cases, which Lou’s GSW certainly was, and how absorbed he’d be, she decided to tell him later. Instead, she turned around and headed for administration to see if Harold Bingham had arrived yet. As she walked she took out her mobile phone to make the first of many checks on JJ.

  4

/>   MARCH 25, 2010

  THURSDAY, 9:05 a.m.

  Ben Corey commuted into the city almost every weekday in his prized 2010 Range Rover Autobiography from his home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Despite the usual traffic, he enjoyed the drive, especially across the George Washington Bridge. He always made it a point to be in the far-right lane on the upper deck so that he could appreciate the view of the Manhattan skyline and the expanse of the Hudson River. It didn’t even bother him when the rush-hour traffic occasionally stopped dead, since it allowed him to appreciate the view even longer. To enhance the experience, he always loaded his CD player with classical music. It was the one time during the day that he allowed himself to be alone, even turning off his cell phone.

  On that particular day, the commute had done its job. By the time he drove into the parking garage just west of 57th Street, he was feeling very rested and happy, as well as wonderfully ignorant of what had occurred the previous evening.

  Ben walked less than a block to the office building where iPS USA had rented space on the eighth floor facing Fifth Avenue. The day was warm, in the high fifties, and the sun was out, all in sharp contrast to the misty, chilly, cloudy weather of the previous day. All in all, it promised to be a glorious day in every respect.

  Ben pulled off his coat as he passed the receptionist, Clair Bourse, whom his assistant, Jacqueline, had recently hired. He said good morning, and she returned the greeting.

  Entering his corner office, Ben hung up his coat and sat himself at his desk. Front and center was a fully signed and notarized copy of Satoshi’s contract with a yellow Post-it note saying “for your files.” There were also wills for Satoshi and his wife, and the trust documents Satoshi had signed concerning his infant son, Shigeru, with another Post-it note saying Satoshi had to get his wife’s signature on both her will and the trust document. There was also a reminder for Ben to ask Satoshi if he wanted to take physical possession of them all or whether he’d like to have them put in iPS USA’s safe-deposit box in the vault at JPMorgan Chase or in the safe there in the office. Finally, there was a current copy of an obscure biomolecular journal titled Reprogramming Technologies. On its glossy cover was a third yellow Post-it, also in Jacqueline’s handwriting: Check out the article on page 36. I think we’d better move on this. The suggestion was followed by several exclamation points.