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"Not long at all."

Laurie wandered toward Jack with mixed feelings. She was not prepared for more of his levity, but after the earlier tease about Cromwell, she was curious about what he'd discovered. Laurie stopped at the foot of the table. Jack was concentrating intently on making a mold of a lesion on the woman's forehead, just within the hairline. Laurie stood for a moment, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence. Vinnie had looked up immediately and had at least given a restrained wave.

"What did you find on your first case?" Laurie asked finally. It seemed unlikely that he hadn't seen her, but it had to have been the case. She didn't want to think otherwise.

Another few minutes went by without Jack responding. She glanced back at Vinnie, who spread his hands out, palms up, and shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate that there was no accounting for Jack's behavior. Laurie stood for another beat, uncertain of what to do before moving on. Although she was aware that Jack could become so engrossed as to be oblivious of his surroundings, it was demeaning for her to stand there.

Things were not much better at Fontworth's table. Even though Bingham had left, Calvin was riding poor Fontworth with equivalent venom as the case dragged on interminably. After a quick glance at the other five tables, Laurie gave up on socializing and returned to lend Marvin a hand.

"I can get one of the other techs to help," Marvin said. He'd brought in a gurney and positioned it next to the table.

"I don't mind," Laurie said. There had been a time not too long ago that between cases, the examiners would go upstairs either to the ID room or the lunchroom for a quick coffee and impromptu discussions. But with the more elaborate protection apparatus they were required to wear, it was too much effort.

Once Sean McGillin's remains had been placed in the walk-in cooler, Marvin led Laurie to the appropriate compartment for the next case, a man named David Ellroy.

The moment Marvin pulled out the drawer to reveal the body of thin, undernourished, middle-aged African-American, Laurie remembered that it was a presumed overdose.

Her trained eye immediately took in the scars and tracks on the man's arms and legs from his intravenous habit. Although Laurie was accustomed to overdose cases, they still had the power to evoke an emotional reaction. With less than the usual control over her thoughts, her mind yanked her back to a crisp, clear, flag-snapping October day in I975 when she'd rushed home from her high school, the Langley School for Girls. She lived with her parents in a large, prewar flat on Park Avenue. It was the Friday before the long Columbus Day weekend, and she was excited because her brother, Shelly, her only sibling, had come home the night before from Yale, where he was a freshman.

As Laurie had gotten off the elevator in their private lobby, she sensed a disturbing stillness. None of the usual sounds issued forth from the laundry room door vent.

Entering the apartment proper, she called Shelly's name while she stashed her books on the console table in the foyer before cutting through the kitchen. When she didn't see Holly, she was momentarily relieved, remembering it was their maid's day off. Yelling out Shelly's name again, she glanced in the den beyond the family room. The TV was on without sound, which heightened her uneasiness. For a moment, she watched the antics of a midday game show, wondering why the TV would be on without sound. Resuming her tour of the apartment, she called out Shelly's name yet again, convinced that someone had to be home. As she passed the formal living room, she began to move faster, sensing a secret urgency.

Shelly's door was closed. She knocked, but there was no answer. She knocked again before trying the door. It was unlocked. She pushed it open only to see her beloved brother stretched out on the carpet, clad in only his briefs. To her horror, bloody froth oozed from his mouth, and his overall color was as pale as the bone china in the dining-room breakfront. A tourniquet was loosely looped about his upper arm. Near his half-open hand was a syringe. On the desk was a glassine envelope, which Laurie guessed contained the speedball, a mixture of heroin and cocaine he'd bragged about the night before. Laurie had taken it all in instantly before dropping to her knees to try to help.

With some difficulty, Laurie pulled herself back to the present. She didn't want to think about her vain attempt to resuscitate her brother. She didn't want to remember how cold and lifeless his lips felt when she touched them with her own.

"Can you help move him over onto the gurney?" Marvin asked. "He's not very heavy."

"Certainly," Laurie said, glad to be of use. She put down David's folder and lent a hand. A few minutes later, they were on their way back to the autopsy room. Inside, when Marvin maneuvered the gurney next to the table, one of the other techs helped Marvin get the body onto the table. Laurie could see the dried remains of a bloody froth that had issued from David's mouth, and the image drew her back into her disturbing reverie. It wasn't her failed attempt to resuscitate her brother that occupied her thoughts, but rather the confrontation she had to endure with her parents a number of hours later.

"Did you know your brother was using drugs?" her father had demanded. His face was purple with rage and was mere inches away from Laurie's face. His thumbs dug into her skin where he held her upper arms. "Answer me!"

"Yes," Laurie blurted through tears. "Yes, yes."

"Are you using drugs, too?"

"No!"

"How did you know he was?"

"By accident: I found a syringe he'd gotten from your office in his shaving bag."

There was a momentary silence as her father's eyes narrowed and his lips stretched out in a thin, cruel line. "Why didn't you tell us," he growled. "If you told us, he'd be alive."

"I couldn't," Laurie sobbed.

"Why?" he shouted. "Tell me why!"

"Because ..." Laurie cried. She paused, then added: "Because he told me not to. He made me promise. He said he'd never talk to me again if I did."

"Well, that promise killed him," her father hissed. "It killed him just as much as the damn drug."

A hand gripped Laurie's arm and she jumped. She turned to look at Marvin.

"Anything special you want for this case," Marvin asked, motioning toward David's corpse. "It looks pretty straightforward to me."

"Just the usual," Laurie said. As Marvin went to get the necessary supplies, Laurie took a deep breath to get herself under control. Intuitively, she knew she had to keep her mind busy to keep it from dredging up other bad memories. Opening the folder she had in her hand, she searched through the papers to find Janice's forensic investigator report and began reading. The body had been found along with drug paraphernalia in a Dumpster, suggesting that David had died at a crack house and had been thrown out with the rest of the trash. Laurie sighed. Dealing with such a case was the negative side of her job.

An hour later and back in her street clothes, Laurie stepped into the back elevator.

The overdose case had been routine. There had been no surprises; David Ellroy had shown the usual signs of asphyxial death with a frothy pulmonary edema. The only mildly interesting finds were multiple, tiny, discrete lesions in various organs, suggesting that he had suffered numerous episodes of infection from his habit.

As the antiquated elevator clunked upward toward the fifth floor, Laurie thought about Jack. When she'd finished with David Ellroy, he had already started his third case.

Between his second and third, he'd gone out of the room, pushing the gurney with Vinnie steering. Even from where she was standing, Laurie could hear the usual banter.

Five minutes later, they'd both reappeared, bringing in the new case while carrying on with the same wisecracking behavior. They then proceeded to transfer the body to the table and go through the setup before starting the post. At no time through any of this did Jack make an attempt to come over to Laurie's table, engage her in conversation in any way, or even look in her direction. Laurie shrugged. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, it was becoming obvious that he was actively ignoring her. Such behavior was uncharacteristic. For the nine years she'd known him, he'd never been passive-aggressive.

Before Laurie went to her office, she stopped in the histology lab. In addition to the case folders, she was carrying a brown paper bag containing the tissue and toxicology samples from McGillin. It didn't take her long to locate the supervisor, Maureen O'Conner. The full-bodied, busty redhead was sitting at a microscope, checking a tray of slides. She looked up as Laurie approached. A knowing smile spread across her heavily freckled face.

"Now, what have we here?" Maureen questioned with her heavy brogue. She looked from Laurie to the bag Laurie was carrying. "Let me guess: tissue samples whose slides you desperately need yesterday."

Laurie smiled guiltily. "Am I really that predictable?"

"With you and Dr. Stapleton, it's always the same story. Whenever you two come in here, you've got to have the slides immediately. But let me remind you of something, sister: Your patients are already dead." Maureen laughed heartily, and a few of the other histology techs who'd overheard joined in.

Laurie found herself chuckling as well. Maureen's ebullience was infectious, and it never varied, despite the lab being chronically understaffed due to OCME budgetary restraints. Laurie opened the bag, took out the tissue samples, and lined them up on the counter next to Maureen's microscope. "Maybe if I told you why I'd like these sooner rather than later, it might help."

"As busy as we are around here, a few extra hands would be more helpful than talk, but fire away."

Laurie pulled out all the stops, knowing there was no professional reason for what she was asking. She started by describing how sympathetic Dr. and Mrs. McGillin were, and how their deceased son seemed to have been their whole life. She even mentioned the son's imminent marriage and the parents' hope for grandchildren. She then admitted that she had promised to provide the couple the cause of their son's death that morning to help their grieving. The problem was that the autopsy had failed to confirm her clinical impression. Thus, she needed the slides in hopes the answers would be forthcoming. What she didn't explain
were
her personal reasons for taking on this mini-crusade.

"Well, that's quite a touching story," Maureen said softly. She took a deep breath and then gathered up the samples. "We'll see what we can do. I promise you we'll give it a go."

Laurie thanked her and hurried out of histology. She glanced at her watch. It was already after eleven, and she wanted to call Dr. McGillin before noon. Taking the stairs, she descended a floor and walked into the toxicology lab. Here, the atmosphere was different than in the histology lab. Instead of a babble of voices, there was the continual hum of the sophisticated and mostly automated equipment. It took Laurie a few moments to locate anyone. To her relief, she saw Peter Letterman, the assistant director.

If it had been the lab director, John DeVries, Laurie would have walked out. She and John had gotten off on the wrong foot back when Laurie desperately needed quicker results on a series of cocaine overdose cases and had badgered the man. That was thirteen years earlier, when Laurie had first started at the OCME, and John had held on to his animosity like a dog with a bone. Laurie had long ago given up trying to make amends.

"My favorite ME," Peter said happily, catching sight of Laurie. He was a thin, blond man with androgynous features and almost no beard. He wore his long hair in a ponytail, and although he was pushing forty, he could still pass as a teenager. In contrast to John, he and Laurie got along famously. "You have something for me?"

"Indeed I do," Laurie said. She handed over the bag while warily looking around for John.

"The Führer is down in the general lab, so you can relax."

"It's my lucky day," Laurie commented.

Peter glanced in at the sample bottles. "What's the scoop? What am I looking for and why?"

Laurie told a shorter version of the same story she'd related to Maureen. At the end, she added: "I don't really expect you to find anything, but I've got to be complete, especially if the microscopic doesn't show anything."

"I'll see what I can do," Peter said.

"I appreciate it," Laurie responded.

After climbing back up the single flight of stairs, Laurie walked down the corridor toward her office. She passed Jack's office, with its door ajar, but neither Jack nor his officemate, Chet McGovern, were inside. Laurie assumed that they were both still down in the pit. Coming into her own office, she immediately caught sight of her suitcase that she'd brought from Jack's. Although she hadn't forgotten the morning's confrontation, seeing the suitcase brought it back with unpleasant clarity. It also didn't help that she felt let down by not finding a smoking gun during Sean McGillin's autopsy. The more she thought about it, the more surprising it was.

How could an ostensibly healthy twenty-eight-year-old man die and the cause not be apparent from a combination of a detailed history and the autopsy? In some respects, the case was mildly shaking her belief in forensic pathology.

"That microscopic better come through!" Laurie voiced out loud as she sat down at her desk. She was emphatic but didn't quite know how she would act on the threat if the microscopic failed to live up to her expectations. Leaning over, she added the folders from the morning's cases to her sizable unfinished pile. It was Laurie's job on each case to collate all the material from the autopsy, from the forensic investigators, from the laboratories, and from any other source she needed to come up with a cause and manner of death. The meaning of "cause" was obvious, whereas "manner" referred to whether the death was natural, accidental, suicidal, or homicidal, each with specific legal ramifications. Sometimes it took weeks for all the material to be available. When it was, Laurie had to make her decision about the cause and manner on a preponderance of evidence, meaning she had to be at least fifty-one percent certain. Of course, in the vast majority of cases, she was close to or at one hundred percent certain.