“I think I’m beginning to understand,” Cal said. “What worries me, though, is the suicide thing. Is there any chance she’ll try that again?”
“No! Definitely not! She did it because she felt she was expected to do it in the context of her religion and her family, but you saved her. So that’s that. It wasn’t to be her karma to die, even if she had thought it was. No, she won’t try it again.”
“Let me ask you something else,” Cal said. “Since you’re her best friend, does she ever talk about sex?”
Samira laughed hollowly. “Sex? Are you joking? No, she never talks about sex. She hates sex. Well, let me amend that. I know she wants to have kids one day. But sex for sex’s sake, no deal. Not like other people I know.” Samira winked at Durell, who snickered behind a closed fist.
“Thanks,” Cal said. “I should have asked you these questions weeks ago.”
Chapter 19
October 17, 2007
Wednesday, 6:15 a.m.
New York, USA
Before ever opening his eyes, Dr. Jack Stapleton heard a sound that was foreign to his ears. It was a distant hushed roar, the likes of which he found hard to describe. For a moment he tried to think what could be making it. Since their 106th Street Manhattan brownstone, which was actually brick, had been renovated only two years ago, he thought it could have been a sound that was normal to the newly configured house but that he’d just never appreciated. Yet on further thought it was too loud for that. Trying harder to characterize it, he suddenly thought of a waterfall.
Jack’s eyes blinked open. Sweeping his hand under the covers on his wife’s side of the bed and not encountering her sleeping form, he knew what the sound was: It was the shower. Laurie was already up, an unheard-of phenomenon. Laurie was a dyed-in-the-wool night owl and often had to be dragged kicking and screaming from her bed in order for her to get to the OCME, also known as the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, at some reasonable time. As for himself, Jack liked to arrive early, before everyone else, to give him the opportunity to cherry-pick the good cases.
Mystified, Jack tossed back the covers, and completely naked, which was the way he liked to sleep, he padded into the steamy bathroom. Laurie was practically invisible within the shower stall. Jack cracked the door.
“Hey in there,” Jack called out over the sound of the water.
With suds in her hair, Laurie leaned out of the spray. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said. “It’s about time you woke up. It’s going to be a busy day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The India trip!” Laurie said. She leaned her head back into the torrent and vigorously rinsed her hair.
Jack leaped back to avoid being splashed and let the shower door close. It all came back to him in a rush. He’d vaguely remembered snatches of the conversation in the middle of the night when he’d first awakened, but he’d thought it all had been a nightmare.
Jack had not seen Laurie so motivated since she and her mom had teamed up for planning their wedding. A little later Jack learned that Laurie had stayed up and essentially made all the travel and lodging arrangements, pending Calvin’s permission for the two of them to take a week off. They were to leave that evening, change planes in Paris, and arrive in New Delhi late the following night. As far as the hotel was concerned, they were booked in the same place Jennifer Hernandez was staying.
By seven a.m. Jack found himself staring into the lens of a digital camera in a shop on Columbus Avenue. When the flash went off, he jumped. A few minutes later he and Laurie were back on the street.
“Let me see your photo!” Laurie said, and giggled when she looked at it. Jack grabbed it back, miffed that she was making fun of it. “Want to see mine?” Laurie asked, but she extended it to Jack before he had a chance to respond. As he’d expected, hers looked better than his, with the flash catching the auburn highlights in her brunette hair as if the clerk was a professional photographer. The biggest difference was the eyes. Whereas Jack’s light brown, deeply set eyes looked like he was hungover, Laurie’s blue-green eyes were bright and sparkly.
When they got to the OCME at seven-thirty, Laurie thought things looked auspicious. She imagined that if it had been a particularly busy day, Calvin would be less inclined psychologically to let them both take a week. But it was not busy, at least not yet. When she and Jack walked into the ID office, where the day began for all the medical examiners, the medical examiner in charge of reviewing the cases that had come in during the night, Dr. Paul Plodget, was sitting at the ID desk reading The New York Times. In front of him was an unusually small stack of folders that had already been reviewed. Next to him in one of the brown vinyl club chairs sat Vinnie Amendola, one of the mortuary techs whose job it was to come in early to help with the transition from the night techs. He also made the communal coffee. At the moment he was reading the New York Post.
“A light day today?” Laurie questioned to be certain.
“One of the lightest,” Paul said, without appearing from behind his newspaper.
“Any interesting cases?” Jack asked as he started rummaging through the short stack.
“Depends on who’s asking,” Paul said. “There’s one suicide that’s going to be a problem. Maybe you saw the parents. They were parked out in the ID room earlier. They are part of a prominent, well-connected Jewish family. To put it bluntly, they don’t want an autopsy, and they are pretty adamant.” Paul glanced around the edge of his paper at Jack to make sure he’d heard.
“Does the case really need an autopsy?” Jack asked. By law, suicides demanded autopsies, but the OCME tried to be sensitive to families, especially when religion was involved.
Paul shrugged. “I’d say yes, so there needs to be some finesse involved.”
“That leaves out Dr. Stapleton,” Vinnie commented.
Jack roughly flicked the back of Vinnie’s paper with his fingernails, causing the man to jump. “With that kind of recommendation, mind if I take the case?” Jack asked Paul.
“Be my guest,” Paul said.
“Has Calvin arrived yet?” Laurie asked.
Paul lowered his paper so he could look at Laurie with an exaggerated questioning expression that said, Are you crazy?
“Jack and I are possibly having to take some emergency leave starting later today,” Laurie said to Paul. “If it’s not a problem, which it doesn’t look like it will be, I’d like to take a paper day to sign out any and all cases I can.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Paul agreed.
“I’m heading out to talk with these parents,” Jack said to anybody and everybody while holding the case file aloft.
Laurie grabbed his arm. “I’m going to wait for Calvin. I want a yes or a no as early as possible. If it’s yes, I’ll pop down to the pit before heading out to get our visas.”
“Okay,” Jack said, but it was apparent he was already preoccupied by the purported case.
After a quick detour out to Marlene at reception to ask to be informed the minute Calvin arrived, Laurie took the elevator up to her fifth-floor office. Sitting down, she dove into the stack of cases she had pending. But she didn’t get far. It was only twenty-two minutes later that Marlene informed her that Calvin had just come in through the front door, much earlier than usual.