"The deputy chief is due to leave for an Advisory Board luncheon in a few minutes," Connie said. "If you want to try to catch him, I'd advise you to come down immediately. Otherwise, you'll be looking at sometime after four, and even that is dependent on his getting back here, and there's no guarantee of that."
"I'll be right down," Laurie said. She hung up and got to her feet.
"Good luck," Riva said, overhearing the conversation.
"Thanks," Laurie responded without a lot of sincerity. She picked up her matrix.
"Don't be disappointed if Calvin is even more dubious than I," Riva called after her. "And he might bite your head off with such a suggestion of criminality. Remember, he has a soft spot for the Manhattan General, since he trained over there as a medical student and resident in its former life as a major university-affiliated teaching hospital."
"I'll keep that in mind," Laurie yelled back. She felt a little guilty about her behavior toward Riva. Being in such a bad mood was out of character for Laurie, but she couldn't help herself.
For fear of missing Calvin, she wasted no time. She took the front elevators and in less than five minutes, she was walking into the administration area. A number of people were seated on a long couch, waiting to see the chief, whose office door was closed and guarded by his secretary, Gloria Sanford. Laurie could remember a few times sitting there herself, waiting to be bawled out for doing something she was now avoiding by going to see Calvin. Laurie had been a good deal more headstrong, as well as apolitical, when she had first started at the OCME.
"You can go right in," Connie said as Laurie approached her desk. Calvin's door was ajar. He was on the phone with his legs perched on the corner of his desk. As Laurie came in, he motioned with his free hand for her to take one of the two chairs facing him. Laurie's eyes glanced around the familiar room. It was less than half the size of Bingham's and didn't connect with the conference room. Still, it was mammoth when compared to the space Laurie had to share with Riva. The walls were covered with the usual array of diplomas and awards and pictures with major city politicians.
Calvin concluded his conversation, which Laurie could tell dealt with the agenda of the up-and-coming Advisory Board luncheon. The Advisory Board had been set up by the mayor almost twenty years ago, to make the OCME less beholden to both the executive branch and law enforcement.
Calvin let his heavy legs plop down on the floor. He peered at Laurie through his newly acquired, rimless progressive lenses. Laurie felt herself tense. Thanks to a lingering, mild problem with male authority figures from an early age, Calvin had always intimidated Laurie, even more than the chief. It was a combination of his imposing physical presence; his unwavering cold, black eyes; his legendary stormy temperament; and his occasional chauvinism. At the same time, she knew him to be capable of warmth and gentlemanly behavior. What worried her at any given encounter was which side would be dominant.
"What can I do for you?" Calvin began. "Unfortunately, we have to make this short."
"It won't take but a moment," Laurie assured him. She handed over the matrix she had prepared. Then she quickly summarized the history of the four cases as they had unfolded, followed by her ideas concerning the possible mechanism, cause, and manner of death. It took only a few minutes, and when she was done, she fell silent.
Calvin was still studying the matrix. Finally, he looked up. His eyebrows were arched. Settling back into his seat, which complained with a squeak, he arched his index fingers with his elbows on the desk, and shook his head slowly. His expression was of confusion. "I guess my first question has to be why you are telling all this to me at this early stage? None of these cases has been signed out yet."
"Purely because I thought you might want to warn someone over at the Manhattan General what our thinking was, to raise the index of suspicion."
"Correction!" Calvin boomed. He took a fleeting glance at his watch, which wasn't lost on Laurie. "I would be warning them what your thinking was, not mine. Laurie, I'm surprised at you. You're using grossly inadequate data here to make a premature and ridiculous leap." He slapped the matrix with the back of his free hand. "You're suggesting that I communicate pure speculation, which could be extraordinarily detrimental to the Manhattan General Hospital if it got out into the wrong hands, something that happens all too frequently. It could even cause a panic. We deal in facts here at the OCME, not fanciful supposition. Hell, we could lose all credibility!"
"I have a strong intuition about this," Laurie countered.
Calvin slammed his sizable palm down onto the surface of his desk. A few papers went wafting off. "I have zero patience with female intuition, if that's what this is boiling down to. What do you think this is, a sewing club? We're a scientific organization; we deal in facts, not hunches and guesswork."
"But we're talking about four essentially unexplained cases within a two-week period," Laurie said while inwardly groaning. It seemed that she had awakened Calvin's dormant chauvinism.
"Yeah, but they do thousands of cases over at the Manhattan General. Thousands! I happen to know they have a low death rate, well below the bellwether three percent. How do I know? I serve on the board. Come back with some facts from toxicology or infallible evidence of low-voltage electrocution and I'll listen to you, not some cockamamie story of serial killer on the loose with no facts to back it up."
"They were not electrocuted," Laurie said. At one point, she had briefly considered the idea, since standard 110 voltage was capable of causing ventricular fibrillation. But she'd dismissed the idea because patients weren't routinely subjected to power sources. Maybe one could have been exposed to an aberrant piece of equipment, but surely not four, particularly since none had been monitored.
"I'm just trying to make a point," Calvin yelled. He stood up abruptly, causing his desk chair to roll back on its casters and strike the wall. He handed Laurie her paper. "Go back and get some facts if you are so motivated! I don't have time for this foolery. I've got to go to a meeting where we deal with real problems."
Embarrassed at being chastised like a schoolgirl, Laurie fled the administration area. Calvin's office door had been open during the exchange, and the people waiting to see Bingham watched her departure with expressionless faces. She couldn't imagine what they thought about what they had heard. She was relieved to catch an empty elevator to pull herself together. As she had said to Riva, she knew she was thin-skinned at the moment, and under normal circumstances, she probably could have brushed off Calvin's crusty response to her concerns. Yet combining Calvin's reaction with Jack and Riva's, she felt like a modern-day Cassandra. She couldn't believe that people whom she respected could not see what was so clear to her.
Back in her office, she threw herself into her chair and for a moment buried her head in her hands. She was stymied. She needed further information but was paralyzed by having to wait for the charts to come over from the Manhattan General through the usual channels. There was no way she could speed up the system. Other than that, she had to wait for Peter to work his magic with the gas chromatography and mass spectrograph. Short of getting yet another similar case the following day, which she was not wishing for, there was nothing to be done.
"I have to assume your meeting with Calvin was not as auspicious as you hoped," Riva said.
Laurie didn't respond. She was feeling even more temperamental than earlier. From when she was a little girl, she'd always sought approval from authority figures, and when she didn't get it, she felt terrible. Calvin's reaction was a case in point, making her feel that all the disparate segments of her life were unraveling. First was the situation with Jack, next her mother and the BRCAl problem, and now it seemed that even her job was in disarray. On top of it all, she felt physically exhausted from insufficient sleep two nights in a row.