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Laurie took the sheet of paper containing Dr. McGillin's phone number from her pocket and smoothed it out on the blotter in front of her. Although she was reluctant to call him, she knew she had to make good on her promise. The problem was, Laurie was not good at any type of confrontation. It was a given that he was going to be even more let down, as there was, as of yet, no ostensible cause for his son's untimely death.

With her elbows on her desk, she leaned forward to massage her forehead while staring at the Westchester number. She tried to think of what to say in hopes of mitigating the impact. For a fleeting moment, she considered handing the situation over to the public relations department as she was supposed to do, but she quickly ruled that out, since she had specifically offered to make the call herself. While her mind was struggling over her prospective wording, she found herself thinking about the victim's first name, Sean, since it was the name of a college boyfriend.

Sean Mackenzie had been a colorful fellow Wesleyan University student who'd appealed to Laurie's rebellious side. Although he wasn't exactly a hoodlum, he'd been a bit over the edge with his motorcycle, artistic craziness, and outlaw behavior, including mild drug use. At the time the whole package had excited Laurie and driven her parents to distraction, which was part of the attraction. But the on-again, off-again relationship had been unhealthily mercurial from the start, and Laurie had finally put an end to it just before joining the OCME. Now, with her relationship with Jack in question, she vaguely thought about calling Sean, since she knew he was living in the city and had become a rather successful artist. But she quickly nixed the idea. There was no way she wanted to reopen that Pandora's box.

"A penny for your thoughts?" a voice asked.

Laurie's head popped up. Filling her doorway was Jack's athletic, six-foot frame. He was the picture of relaxed informality in his lived-in chambray shirt, knitted tie, and faded jeans.

"Let's up that to a quarter," he added. "There's been significant inflation since I learned that phrase, and I know how valuable your thoughts are." An impish smirk dimpled his cheeks. His lips were pressed together into a thin line.

Laurie regarded her friend of at least a decade and lover of nearly four years. His irreverent gaiety and sarcasm could at times be wearing, and this was one of them. "So you're deigning to speak with me now?" she questioned with an equally affected tone.

Jack's smile faltered. "Of course I'm going to talk with you. What kind of question is that?"

"Except for that brief professorial game when I first came into the autopsy room, you've been ignoring me all morning."

"Ignoring you?" Jack questioned with knitted brows. "I think I should remind you we came to work separately, which was more your decision than mine, arrived at different times, and since then, we've been working on our own cases."

"We work most days, and most days we communicate almost continuously, particularly when we are in the same room. I even went over to your table during your second case and asked you a direct question."

"I didn't see or hear you. Scout's honor." Jack held up his index and middle finger in the form of a V. His smile returned.

Laurie arched her eyebrows and shrugged. She was being provocative by suggesting that she didn't believe him, but she didn't care. "Fine and dandy, and now I have more work to do." She turned her attention back to the sheet with the Westchester phone number.

"No doubt," Jack said, refusing to rise to the bait or be dismissed. "How were your cases this morning?"

Laurie looked up but not at Jack. "One was routine and rather uninteresting. The other was disappointing."

"In what regard?"

"I'd promised a couple whose son died at the Manhattan General to find out what killed him and let them know immediately, but the autopsy was clean; there was no gross pathology whatsoever. Now I've got to call and say we have to wait for the microscopic to be available. I know they are going to be disappointed, and I am, too."

"Janice briefed me on that case," Jack said. "You didn't find any emboli?"

"Nothing!"

"And the heart?"

Laurie looked back at Jack. "The heart, the lungs, and the great vessels were all completely normal."

"I'll wager you find something with the heart's conduction system or maybe micro emboli in the brainstem. You took adequate samples for toxicology? That would be my second thought."

"I did," Laurie said. "I'd also kept in mind he'd had anesthesia less than twenty-four hours ago."

"Well, sorry your cases were a letdown. Mine were the opposite. In fact, I'd have to say they were fun."

"Fun?"

"Truly! Both turned out to be the absolute opposite of what everybody thought."

"How so?"

"The first case was this well-known psychologist."

"Sara Cromwell."

"Supposedly, it was a brutal murder during a sexual assault."

"I saw the knife, remember?"

"That was what threw everybody for a loop. You see there was no other wound, and she hadn't been raped."

"How could all the blood that was described come from that single, nonfatal stab wound?"

"It didn't."

Jack stared at Laurie with a slight smile of anticipation. Laurie stared back. She was in no mood to play games. "So where did it come from?"

"Any ideas?"

"Why don't you just tell me?"

"I think you'd be able to guess if you thought about it for a minute. I mean, you did look at how gaunt she was, didn't you?"

"Jack, if you want to tell me, tell me. Otherwise, I have to make my call."

"The blood was from her stomach. It turns out there was a fatal engorgement of food, causing a rupture of her stomach and the lower part of her esophagus. Obviously, the woman had bulimia, and pushed herself over the edge. Can you believe it? Everybody was convinced it was homicide and it turns out to be accidental."

"What about the knife sticking out of her thigh?"

"That was the real teaser. It was self-inflicted, but not on purpose. In her final moments, while she was puking blood and putting away the cheese, she slipped on her own blood and fell on the knife she was holding. Isn't it too much? I tell you: This is going to be a good case to present at our Thursday conference."

For a moment, Laurie stared at Jack's satisfied face. The story had touched a chord in her inner life. There had been a time when she'd had self-esteem problems after her brother's death, causing her to have a brush with anorexia and bulimia. It was a secret she hadn't shared with anyone.

"And my next two cases were equally intriguing. It was a double suicide. Did you hear about it?"

"Vaguely," Laurie responded. She was still thinking about bulimia.

"I tell you, I have to give old Fontworth credit," Jack said. "I'd always considered him less than meticulous, but last night he seemed to have done a bang-up job. With the double suicide, he found a heavy Mag-Lite flashlight on the front seat of the SUV along with the victims and was smart enough to bring it with the bodies. He also noted the driver's-side door was ajar."

"What was important about the flashlight?" Laurie asked.

"Plenty," Jack replied. "First of all, let me say I was a bit suspicious when there was only one suicide note. In double suicides, it's usual to have two notes or one that is written by both parties. I mean, it makes sense, since they are doing it together. Anyway, that put up a red flag. Since the note was presumably from the woman, I elected to autopsy her first. What I expected to find after the fact was something toxicological, like a knock-out drug or the like. I didn't expect to find anything on gross, but I did. She had a literal indentation on her forehead just above the hairline that was curiously curved."

Jack paused. His smile returned.

"Don't tell me the flashlight and the indentation matched."

"You got it! A perfect match! It seems that the whole affair was an elaborate setup by the husband, who had prepared the scene and probably even wrote the note. After he knocked out his wife, got her into the passenger seat of the SUV, and started the engine, he probably went back in the house to wait. When he thought enough time had passed, he returned to check that his wife was dead, but didn't realize how quickly one can succumb to carbon monoxide if the level is high enough. Climbing behind the wheel, he rapidly fell unconscious and ended up joining his wife."

"What a story!" Laurie commented.

"Isn't it ironic? I mean, it was supposed to be a double suicide, and instead the manner of death turns out to be homicidal for the wife and accidental for the husband.

Forensic pathology certainly can surprise."

Laurie nodded. She distinctly remembered having the same thought before she started her overdose case.

"Even the police case is turning out to be opposite of what was expected."

"How so?" Laurie asked.

"Everybody has been assuming it was a case of justifiable homicide by the police, since the police acknowledged shooting him a number of times, but Calvin just told me that as near as they can determine, it was suicide. They've been able to ascertain that the victim shot himself through the heart before he was hit by any of the police rounds."

"That should help quiet the neighborhood."

"We should hope," Jack said. "Anyway, it was an interesting morning, to say the least, and I just thought you'd like to hear that we've had a rash of cases this morning where the manner of death was the opposite of what was expected. With that said, are you going to pop down for some lunch soon?"

"I don't know. I'm not terribly hungry, and I've got a lot to do." "Well, maybe I'll catch you down there. If not, I'll see you later." Laurie waved at Jack as he disappeared down the hall. She turned her attention back to Sean McGillin Sr.'s phone number. She thought about what Jack had said about forensic surprises and considered what that could mean for Sean McGillin Jr. She'd expected his manner of death to be natural, a fatal clot or fat emboli or even a congenital anomaly. Since she'd not found anything of the kind, at least so far, she was now entertaining the idea that the cause of death could've been accidental, such as an unexpected late complication with anesthesia. But if the cause of death were to be truly opposite, like the cases Jack had just described, it would have to have been homicidal.

Laurie mulled the idea. It seemed far-fetched, but then she thought about Sara Cromwell and how only minutes earlier, she would have thought it totally far-fetched that her manner of death was accidental. Sean Jr.'s autopsy had already surprised her with its lack of findings. Could the case surprise her once more? She doubted it, but then again, she couldn't rule it out completely.

FOUR

DESPITE LAURIE'S CONCERNS to the contrary, the phone conversation with Dr.

McGillin turned out be surprisingly civil. He had accepted that the autopsy had failed to show any pathology with unexpected equanimity. It was as if he had taken the information as a compliment about his adored son, corroborating the idea that the boy was indeed perfect, inside and out.

Having expected to be angrily chastised for not delivering on her promise, or at the very least anticipating having to weather passive-aggressive disappointment, Laurie felt even more beholden to the man when he maintained his composure. He had even gone to the extent of thanking her for her efforts on his son's behalf and for spending time with them in their hour of need. If she had been willing before to bend the rules by providing the man with the cause of his son's demise, she'd now become determined to get him that information.

After hanging up the phone with Sean Sr., Laurie spent some time pondering the case while staring blankly ahead at her cork-board with its various notes, reminders, and business cards. She tried to think of a way to speed up the process, but her hands were tied. She had to wait for Maureen and Peter, and hope that they would respond to her appeal.

Time melted away effortlessly. Riva came in and said hello as she dumped folders on her desk and took her seat. Laurie returned the greeting by reflex without turning around. Her mind by then had switched to Jack and his irritatingly insouciant joviality, and what that meant about their relationship. Although she hated to admit it, it was becoming progressively apparent that he was happy she'd decided to leave.

In a circular fashion, thoughts of Jack brought her back to Sean Jr.'s case as she recalled Jack's comments about forensics occasionally revealing that the causation and manner of death were the opposite of what was assumed. Laurie again considered the possibility that Sean's death could have been a homicide. She couldn't help but remember several infamous episodes of serial homicides that had occurred in healthcare institutions, particularly one rather recently that had continued undetected for an unconscionably long time. Such a scenario had to be considered, although she recognized that all the involved patients in those series were aged, chronically ill individuals and that there was an inkling of an imaginable, albeit sick motive. Not one of the victims had been a vigorous, healthy twenty-eight-year-old whose whole life was still ahead of him.

Laurie was certain that homicide was extremely implausible, and she wasn't going to worry about it, especially since Peter's toxicology screen would pick up an overdose of insulin or digoxin or another potentially lethal drug akin to those implicated in the previous institutional murders. After all, that was what the toxicology screen was all about. In her mind, Sean Jr.'s death had to be either natural, which was most probable, or accidental. Yet what was she going to do if the microscopic and the toxicological turned out to be negative? Such a concern seemed reasonable, considering the autopsy itself had been so surprisingly clean. From her experience, it was rare not to find some pathology, even in a twenty-eight-year-old, and even if the abnormalities were not associated with the demise.

To prepare for such an eventuality, Laurie needed as much information as possible.

Although the usual course of action in such a case would be to wait for the microscopic and the toxicological to come back, she decided to be proactive to save time.