Critical (40 page)

“I see you have brought the slides,” he said, eagerly eyeing Laurie's slide box.

In anticipation of her arrival, he'd positioned his impressive microscope on a customized shelf that pulled out of the end of the desk. It was a teaching scope with double-binocular eyepieces. An impressive digital camera was mounted on top and shared the same view as the eyepieces.

“Should we?” he continued, motioning for Laurie to take the seat positioned on her side of the scope.

Laurie sat. She could see out of the corner of her eye how zealously he watched as she opened her tray and carefully extracted one of the slides marked with grease pencil. Respecting that the microscope was his, she handed him the slide. Eagerly, he placed it onto the mechanical stage and lined up the grease-pencil markings. After he'd lowered the low-power objective, he told her to use the mechanical stage control to find the object of interest.

Having become quite proficient at locating the objects despite their lack of staining, Laurie quickly located one. “I don't know if you can quite see it, but it's under the pointer now.”

“I think I see it,” Dr. Malovar said. He backed up the objective, changed to higher power, then refocused. “Ah, yes!” he said, as if experiencing visceral pleasure. “Most interesting! Are they all similar?”

“They are,” Laurie said. “Strikingly so.”

“Such symmetry, such an elegant border. Have you observed them on end?”

“No, I haven't,” Laurie admitted, “so I don't know if it is disc-shaped or spherical.”

“I'd say disc-shaped. Have you noted the slight nodularity?”

“I have, but I didn't know if it was real.”

“It's real, all right. Fascinating, as is the degree of necrosis of the lung tissue.”

Laurie was dying for him to tell her what it was and questioned why he was teasing her by withholding the information.

“It is quite apparent they are in the bronchioles and not within the alveolar walls.”

“I felt the same way,” Laurie admitted.

“I can see why you said they looked like diatoms, but I wouldn't have thought of it myself.”

Laurie was becoming impatient. Finally, she just asked, “What is it?”

“I have no idea,” Dr. Malovar said.

Laurie was stunned. Particularly from the appreciative way he was describing the object, she thought for sure he knew what it was the very instant he'd seen it. Shock turned into dismay when she realized she could not charge home to Jack with new, decisive information. It also made her consider that maybe some of her colleagues had seen them, but dismissed them as being unimportant.

“Do you think that they had anything to do with the fulminant MRSA infections these people had?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you have any idea of how we might identify them?”

“For that, I do have an idea. I'd like to look at them under the scanning electron microscope, especially after slicing one open.”

“Is that a lengthy procedure? Can we do it tonight?”

Dr. Malovar leaned back and laughed. “Your eagerness is commendable. No, we cannot do it tonight. There's some skill involved. We do have a talented person, but of course he is gone for the night. I can see if he can at least start tomorrow.”

“How about a microbiologist?” Laurie suggested. “Should I show it to a microbiologist?”

“You could, but I'm not optimistic. I've had a bit of microbiology myself.” He pointed to a Ph.D. diploma in microbiology.

Laurie was crestfallen.

“But I believe I do know who will be able to identify it at a glance.”

Laurie's eyes brightened. Her emotional roller coaster was taking her up once again. “Who?” she asked eagerly.

“Our own Dr. Collin Wiley. My sense is that what we are seeing is a parasite, and Dr. Wiley is department head of parasitology.”

“Can we get him to look at it tonight? Do you think he is still here?”

“He is not here. In fact, Dr. Wiley is in New Zealand for a parasitology meeting.”

“Good Lord,” Laurie murmured. The roller coaster was on its way down again. She visibly sagged in her seat.

“Don't look so forlorn, my dear,” Dr. Malovar said, leaning to the side to gaze directly at Laurie with his glacial blue eyes. “We live in the information age. I will simply take a few high-definition digital photos tonight and e-mail them to Dr. Wiley, along with a description of the case. I know for a fact he has his laptop with him, since it has his lectures' PowerPoints. Could you give me your e-mail address?”

Laurie rummaged in her bag for one of her ME business cards. She handed it over.

“Perfect,” Dr. Malovar said, putting it on the corner of his desk.

“When do you suppose I might get an answer?”

“That's totally up to Dr. Wiley. And remember, he's halfway around the world.”

After discussing with Dr. Malovar the process of getting a sample of David Jeffries's lung to him, perhaps even the paraffin block used by histology, Laurie left the pathologist's office. As she rode down in the empty elevator, she made a decision. Although she was eager to finish her matrix, she decided to forgo it for the time being and go home. She thought there was a significant chance, maybe not huge but at least possible, that the discovery of the unknown objects might be enough in and of itself to make Jack see the risk issue her way.

Down at the hospital entrance, she was able to catch a taxi with relative ease.

 

AS SOON AS
Adam had turned onto 106th Street, he had sensed his thoughts about the imminent end to the mission were probably unduly optimistic. Instead of being a quiet side street, it had been alive with all sorts of people and children enjoying the improving weather. Driving by Laurie Montgomery's house had added to his feeling, because directly across the street was a sizable and popular playground with an impressive array of mercury vapor lights capable of turning the entire area into day. But what had totally convinced him was when he'd stopped for a few moments to survey the area, he'd spotted Montgomery's injured spouse or boyfriend on the sidelines of an active neighborhood basketball game with more than fifty people either playing or watching. Seeing the man standing there leaning on his crutches strongly suggested to Adam that Laurie was probably already home as well.

But Adam had not been discouraged. Quite the contrary. He still thought the area a far better location than in front of the OCME for the hit. It just meant he'd have to wait for morning, when she would appear at her door on her way to work and either walk east to catch a cab on Central Park West or walk west and snag one on Columbus Avenue. Either way, he'd have his opportunity to take her out. And considering Laurie had arrived at work that morning at seven-fifteen, he estimated that she'd left the house around six-forty-five. With that decided, Adam had vowed to be parked in front of Montgomery's house by six-fifteen at the latest the following day.

“Good evening, Mr. Bramford,” the doorman said when Adam climbed from the Range Rover back at the Pierre. “Will you be needing your vehicle again this evening?”

“No, but I'd like it to be available at six a.m. sharp. Will that be a problem?”

“No problem whatsoever, Mr. Bramford. It will be waiting for you.”

After collecting his things, particularly his tennis case, Adam hurried into the Pierre. He wanted to see if it wasn't too late for the concierge to get him a symphony ticket or a ticket for whatever else was happening that evening at Lincoln Center.

 

TO GET ANGELO'S
attention about the hour, Franco made a production of looking at his watch by sticking out his left arm full length, pulling back his jacket sleeve, rebending his elbow, and rotating his wrist. Next to him, Angelo was staring straight ahead out through the windshield at the darkened scene. Had his eyes not been open with an occasional blink, Franco would have thought he was asleep. The vehicular traffic racing past them on First Avenue had slowed to a mere trickle. Had it not been for the streetlights, it would have been pitch dark. The sun had long since set, and no moon had arisen to take its place.

“It's not going to happen,” Franco said at length. “At least not tonight. We can't sit here all night.”

“The bitch!” Angelo murmured.

“I know it's frustrating. It's as if she were taunting us. I guess she went home early, just before we got here, or maybe she's working late. Either way, I think we should go. The troops behind us are getting antsy.”

“I want to stay another fifteen minutes.”

“Angelo! That's what you said a half-hour ago. It's time to move on. We'll come back tomorrow morning. You'll get your revenge soon enough.”

“Ten minutes.”

“No! We're going now! I wanted to leave a half-hour ago. I've already extended our sitting here longer than I feel comfortable with. I don't want someone noticing us and getting suspicious. Start the van and signal the guys in back!”

Angelo got the engine going and then turned the headlights on and off a few times.

“All right, we're out of here.”

Reluctantly, Angelo pulled away from the curb. He drove slowly so that when they came abreast of the OCME, he could look through the front door into the building's interior.

“The place looks dead,” Franco said. “How appropriate.”

As they drove up First Avenue, Angelo broke the silence. “Maybe we'll have to check out the boyfriend's apartment if we can't get her here at the OCME.”

“That's on the bottom of the list,” Franco blurted with a shake of his head. He and Angelo had visited Jack's apartment ten years earlier, with disastrous results. “Those neighborhood gang friends of his are a menace to society, and they are always on alert for other gangs. We're going to stick with what we got. I mean, it's not like we've been sitting here for a week, you know what I'm saying.”

Angelo nodded, but he wasn't happy. He felt like a kid promised a present but being forced to wait.

 

AS LAURIE CLIMBED
out of the taxi in front of her house, she looked over at the lighted basketball court. It seemed like a particularly crowded evening, which always made the competition that much more fierce. As evidence, Laurie could hear that the cries of accomplishment and derision were more strident than usual. Standing on her tiptoes, Laurie scanned the spectators for Jack. As much as he enjoyed the game, she wouldn't have been surprised if she saw him, but she didn't.

A few minutes later, she found him soaking in the bathtub.

“You're early,” he said. “With as much work as you looked like you had with your matrix, I didn't expect to see you until after ten at the earliest. Did you finish already?”

“No, I did not finish,” Laurie admitted, as she stripped off her coat and tossed it out into the hallway. She shut the bathroom door to keep in the steamy heat. After putting down the toilet seat cover she sat and locked eyes with Jack.

“I'm soaking in antibiotic soap,” Jack said, averting his gaze. Laurie's serious expression and the fact that she was willing to sit in the steamy bathroom gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she was in one of her talking moods and, considering the timing, there was only one subject. “I thought you'd like to know how responsible I'm being,” he added.

“I didn't finish my matrix because I found more of those diatomlike objects.”

“Really?” Jack said without a lot of enthusiasm.

“Really,” Laurie repeated. She then went on to describe how she'd first found more in David Jeffries's slides, and then found them in most of the cases whose slides she was able to get.

“Were they in all cases whose slides you had?” Jack asked. Despite knowing where the discussion was going, Jack found himself interested. He'd convinced himself that the object he'd seen was an artifact of some sort.

“Not all but most. And most interesting is that I discovered with the help of my unseen matrix that the shorter the interval from the onset of symptoms until death, the greater the number of these particles were.”

“So you just randomly counted the number on each slide.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, that's hardly scientific.”

“I know,” Laurie admitted. “It's just suggestive, but it was consistent, and therefore very supportive.”

Jack ran a soapy hand through his hair. “This is all very interesting, but I'm not sure how to interpret it. I mean, neither one of us knows what it is.”

“I didn't leave it at that. I called up Dr. Malovar, whom you had praised so highly about your liver cyst.”

“How is he? He's a trip, isn't he? I admire the guy. I hope I'm still around at his age, much less still contributing.”

“He's fine, but don't you want to know what he said?”