Vector (40 page)

"Please! " Jack said. "I'm desperate."

"Okay, " Peter said agreeably. He started out of his office. Jack trailed him like a puppy.

"When can you do it? " Jack asked.

"I'll set it up right away, " Peter said. "It's better for me to get it going before Dr. Devries gets here. Otherwise he'd start asking questions."

"I do appreciate your help, Peter, " Jack said. "I hope I can reciprocate in some way. Speaking about your chief, do you happen to know about the status of David Jefferson's samples? "

"Is that the prisoner-in-custody case? " Peter asked.

"It sure is, " Jack voiced.

"John was complaining about it yesterday, " Peter said. "As far as I know it's done. Anyway it was positive for cocaine if that's what you wanted to know."

"Thank God for small favors, " Jack said. "Calvin is going to be jubilant. Now if I can only be so lucky with Connie Davydov."

"I'll give it my best shot, " Peter promised.

Jack started out of the lab but stopped when he remembered Laurie's final suggestion. "There's one other thing that Laurie suggested to test for, " he called back to Peter. "Botulinum toxin." Peter waved to indicate that he'd heard.

Jack climbed the stairs. With the Jefferson case sure to be completed by the Thursday deadline with what Calvin would consider a positive spin, there seemed to be a pinpoint of light at the end of Jack's current tunnel of problems.

Back in the office, Jack ran into Chet, who was brimming with news of his previous evening's experience at aerobics. Not only had the girl with the curvaceous figure shown up, but she'd deigned to have a yogurt fruit drink with him after the class. Jack had to wait until he'd heard all about the woman before he could get a word in edgewise.

"Tell me, Casanova, " Jack said. "Would you know how to get ahold of any of those vets who gave that seminar you went to yesterday? "

"I think so, " Chet said. "Why? "

"I want to find out if and when they figure out what killed those rats.

Also, whether any more of them had anthrax."

"I'll try to find out sometime today, " Chet said.

"I'd appreciate it, " Jack said, and quickly redirected his attention to his work spread out on his desk.

"Aren't you doing any posts today? " Chet asked.

"I've taken an unscheduled paper day, " Jack said without looking up.

"Are you sick? " Jack laughed. "That's what George asked. I wish I were. It would be a convenient excuse. I'm just trying to eliminate one of the reasons the front office is always on my case, namely, being perennially behind getting my cases signed out."

"One of the main reasons you're always behind is because you take on too many cases in the first place, " Chet said.

"Whatever, " Jack mumbled as he began scanning a section of David Jefferson's brain under his microscope.

After Chet left for the pit, Jack kicked the door shut to avoid the distraction of the casual visitor. Still, he found that he couldn't truly concentrate. As preoccupied as he was about everything, he was unable to keep himself from glancing up at the clock every so often.

Particularly as the time approached ten, he started to worry about the phone ringing. He fully expected Cheryl to call with the standard message that the chief wanted to see him ASAP. After all, by that time in the morning both Dr. Jim Bennett and Gordon Strickland would have had more than enough opportunity to phone their complaints about Jack.

As if on cue, the phone did ring at ten sharp. Despite Jack's expecting it, its jangle unnerved him. For several rings he considered not answering. But recognizing the futility of putting off the inevitable, he picked it up. To his surprise, it wasn't Cheryl. It was Peter Letterman.

"I've got some surprising news for you, " Peter said.

"Good or bad? " Jack questioned.

"I suppose you'll think it's good, " Peter said. "Connie Davydov did not have methemoglobinemia, but she does have botulinum toxin in all the samples you gave me, including her stomach contents."

"Good Lord!

" Jack said. "This isn't some kind of sick joke, is it? "

"Not at all, " Peter said. "I ran several of the assays twice just to be sure.

The results were strongly positive, suggesting the victim had a large dose. I can follow up with some quantitative tests, but that will take a while. I wanted you to know the qualitative results right away."

"Thanks, " Jack said. "I owe you."

"Glad to be of assistance, " Peter said before ringing off.

Jack hung up the phone slowly. He felt a mix of emotions. One was a kind of elation at the validation of his suspicions about Connie Davydov having been poisoned. The other was shock. Botulism probably was the last thing he expected.

Thrusting his chair back from his desk, Jack jumped up.

Throwing open his door, he ran down to Laurie's office. He wanted her to be the first to know the news, since botulism had been her suggestion.

Unfortunately, her office was empty. She was undoubtedly down in the autopsy room.

Back at his desk, Jack's mind churned over whom to call first.

With a delicious sense of reprisal, he settled on Randolph Sanders. It took a few moments to get the doctor on the line. He'd been in the middle of an autopsy. Jack had insisted to the operator it was an emergency. When Randolph finally answered, his voice had an understandable urgency.

"Ah, hello, Randolph, " Jack said buoyantly. "This is your favorite colleague, Jack Stapleton."

"I was informed this was an emergency, " Randolph growled.

"And indeed it is, " Jack said. "Just this moment I've been informed that your case, Connie Davydov, which we had reason to discuss yesterday, apparently succumbed to a rather large dose of botulinum toxin." A pregnant pause ensued.

"How was this determined? " Randolph demanded.

"By my personal persistence, " Jack said. "I went to the funeral home, where the director graciously allowed me to take some appropriate body fluid samples."

"I'd not heard that had occurred, " Randolph said with a voice that had lost a good deal of its edge.

"Really? " Jack questioned. "I'd assumed you had. Nevertheless, as a favor to you, since we hold each other in such high esteem, I'm calling you rather than rushing down and informing Dr. Harold Bingham."

"I appreciate that, " Randolph managed.

"Of course there is a practical aspect, " Jack said. "Connie Davydov is a Brooklyn case. I would assume you'd like to get the body back as soon as possible. I'll also leave in your capable hands the chore of alerting the proper authorities."

"Of course, " Randolph said.

"Thank you."

"Not at all, " Jack said, thoroughly enjoying himself.

"It's nice to know we can help each other out on occasion." Jack disconnected. He couldn't suppress a broad smile. Revenge had been sweet. It had been easy to tell just how much Randolph had been squirming.

Next, Jack put in a call to Warren. Jack briefly explained what he'd found concerning Connie and asked for Flash's work number. It took Warren a few minutes, but he found it and gave it to Jack.

Flash worked at a moving and storage company, and it took a few minutes for him to be located. When he finally came on the line he was out of breath. He'd been moving boxes around the storage facility.

"I got the answer about Connie, " Jack said after he'd identified himself. "As Warren suggested yesterday, I think you're going to have to take your anger out on the basketball court and not Connie's husband."

"He didn't kill her? "

"It doesn't seem that way, " Jack said. "She apparently died of botulism. Have you ever heard of that?"

"I think so, " Flash said. "Isn't that some kind of food poisoning?"

"Generally, yes, " Jack said. "It's caused by a toxin that a specific type of bacteria manufactures. What makes this bacteria particularly dangerous is that it can grow without oxygen. You used to hear about it mainly in connection with canned goods when the food wasn't heated enough during processing to kill the spores. But in your sister's case, the important thing for you to understand is that it appears that foul play wasn't involved."

"Are you sure? "

"I just got the report back from the laboratory, " Jack said. "The technician assured me they checked the results. I'm personally confident she died of botulism, and except for a few apocryphal stories of the toxin being used to assassinate Reinhard Heyrich, one of Hitler's cronies, back in World War II, I've never heard of the agent being used in a deliberate poisoning. The stuff is not easy to come by. The idea of Connie's husband using it would be giving him more credit than he deserves."

"Damn! " Flash exclaimed.

"I tell you what, " Jack said. "Warren and I will let you win at basketball the next time we're on opposing teams." Flashed laughed halfheartedly. "You're too much, Doc! As competitive as you and Warren are, I can't see you guys throwing a game, nohow.

Anyway, thanks for looking into this mess for me. I appreciate it."

"I'm glad to have been able to help, " Jack said. "Now I have a question for you. What's Connie's husband's name? "

"Yuri, " Flash said, practically spitting the name. "Why do you ask? "

"I'm afraid I have to call him up, " Jack said. "With Connie passing away with botulism, Yuri is certainly at risk."

"I couldn't care less, " Flash said.

"I can appreciate that, " Jack said. "And as your friend, I couldn't care either. But as a doctor, I feel differently. Would you mind giving me his phone number? "

"Do I have to? " Flash asked.

"I suppose I could look it up, " Jack said. "Or get it from the Brooklyn office. But it would just be easier if you gave it to me."

"I feel like I'm doing the turd a favor, " Flash complained before giving Jack the number.

Jack wrote it down. They talked for a few more minutes about possibly playing ball that evening before saying goodbye and hanging up.

Once they did, Jack immediately dialed the Brighton Beach number. As the call went through, he mentally outlined what he'd say. He wondered if Yuri Davydov would have an accent, and if he truly was the ogre that Flash believed he was. But Jack didn't get through. The line was occupied.

In a significantly more buoyant mood, Jack returned to his paperwork.

With enhanced efficiency, he completed yet another of his cases. After placing it on top of the completed pile, he tried the Brighton Beach number again. He got the same busy signal.

Jack wasn't surprised. He imagined the man had a lot of calls to make in the aftermath of his wife's death. But as the morning wore on, and Jack continued to try to place the call with the same lack of success, he finally lost patience. He dialed the operator and asked for Yuri's telephone to be checked. A few minutes later the operator returned to say there was no conversation on the line.

"What does that mean? " Jack asked.

"It's either off the hook or out of order, " the operator said. "I can connect you to repair if you'd like."

"Never mind, " Jack said. He realized that Yuri was most likely at home but unwilling to talk to anybody. As understandable as it might be for the man to take his phone off the hook, it still frustrated Jack not to be able to get through, sometimes it seemed that nothing was easy. All he wanted to do was contact the man to warn him about possible botulism infection.

Having put the case back in Randolph Sanders's lap, he expected the Brooklyn office to follow up with the case as they were legally bound to do. That meant alerting the Department of Health and ultimately Jack's nemesis, Dr. Clint Abelard, the city epidemiologist.

As Jack had been duly informed on several occasions, it was Clint's job to do the follow-up, which, of course, included contacting Yuri Davydov.

Yet, as a physician, Jack felt honor-bound to notify the widower himself.

Jack absently played with the telephone cord while pondering the situation. There was always the chance that the Brooklyn office could run into trouble by not getting the body back. After all, Jack reasoned, the body could have been cremated. If that was the case and no further samples were available to confirm the diagnosis, a delay would be inevitable. What it all boiled down to was that Yuri Davydov might not learn about his risk in time to make a difference.

Pulling open one of the drawers of his desk, Jack took out a map of New York City. He opened it to the Brooklyn section and searched for Brighton Beach. The assumption it was somewhere on the waterfront helped, he found it next to Coney Island, jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Jack estimated that Brighton Beach was about fifteen miles away. He'd never ridden out to that area on his bike but he'd been as far as Brooklyn's Prospect Park on several weekend occasions and remembered how to get there. From the map he could see that Brighton Beach was a straight shot down Coney Island Avenue from the base of the park.

Checking his watch, Jack decided a bicycle jaunt to Brighton Beach would be a nice way to spend his lunch hour, even if it turned out to be a two-hour-plus trip. Although Yuri Davydov's health was his main reason for wanting to go out there, he could also justify the outing as a reward for having made a significant dent in his paperwork and for coming up with a compelling alibi for the previous day's escapades.

But what really clinched the decision was the knowledge that it happened to be a particularly gorgeous Indian summer day with strong sunshine, warm temperature, and gentle wind. As Jack explained it to himself, it might be the last great day weather-wise before winter's onslaught.

Before he left, Jack looked for Laurie again to tell her about the botulism, but he was told that she was still in the autopsy room. Jack decided he'd see her when he got back.

The trip was even better than Jack imagined it would be, especially going over the Brooklyn Bridge and riding through Prospect Park. The Coney Island Avenue portion was less stimulating but still enjoyable.

As he passed Neptune Avenue, he noticed something he'd not expected, all the business signs were written in the Cyrillic alphabet.