"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.
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."