Robin Cook - Crisis

"Yeah, well, he was getting on my nerves. He's such a cocky bastard."

"I sensed he didn't have a self-esteem problem."

Latasha laughed and perceptively relaxed a degree.

They walked out into the night. It was going on three, but there were still people on the street. As they neared the medical examiner's office, Latasha spoke up: "I suppose you wondered why I appeared somewhat rude."

"It crossed my mind," Jack admitted.

"Allan and I were tight the last year of college, but then something happened that gave me insight into his personality that I didn't like." She keyed open the front door and waved to the security person. As they started up the single flight of stairs, she continued: "I got a scare that I was pregnant. When I told him, his response was to ditch me. I couldn't even get a call back, so I wrote him off. The irony is that I wasn't pregnant. During the last year or so when he found out I was here at the ME office, he's tried to get us to connect up, but I'm not interested. I'm sorry if it was uncomfortable back there in his office."

"No need to apologize," Jack said. "As I said on the way over, I hope accepting his help won't cause a problem."

"With as many years as there have been, I'd thought I'd handle myself better than I did. But just seeing him made me pissed about the episode all over again. You'd think I would have gotten over it."

They walked into the library. The clutter was exactly as they'd left it.

"How about we take a look at the slides we stained?" Latasha suggested.

"Maybe you should go home and get some shut-eye," Jack said. "There's no reason for you to pull an all-nighter. I mean I love the help and the company, but this is asking way too much."

"You're not getting rid of me that easy," Latasha said with a coy smile. "I learned back in medical school that for me, when it's this late, it's better to just stay up. Plus, I'd love to solve this case."

"Well, I think I'm going to take a drive out to Newton."

"Back to the hospital?"

"Nope. Back to the Bowmans' house. I told my sister I'd look in on her husband to make sure he's not in a coma. Thanks to his depression, he's been mixing alcohol in the form of a single-malt scotch with some sort of sleeping pill."

"Yikes!" Latasha said. "I've had to post several people like that."

"Truthfully, with him I don't think it's much of a worry," Jack said. "He thinks far too much of himself. I doubt I'd even go if checking on him was the only reason. What I'm also going to do is check the biomarker assay kit he used with Patience to see if there is any reasonable reason to suspect he got a false positive. If it were a false positive, the possibility goes way up that the manner of death was not natural."

"What about suicide?" Latasha questioned. "You've never mentioned suicide even as a wildly remote possibility. How come?"

Jack absently scratched the back of his head. It was true that he'd not thought about suicide, and he wondered why. He let out a small chuckle, remembering how many cases he'd been involved with over the years where the apparent manner of death was ultimately not the correct manner. The last such case had involved the wife of the Iranian diplomat that was supposed to be suicide but had been homicide.

"I don't know why I haven't given even a passing thought about suicide," Jack said, "especially considering some of my other equally unlikely ideas."

"The little you've told me about the woman suggests she wasn't terribly happy."

"That's probably true," Jack admitted, "but that's the only thing the idea of suicide has going for it. We'll keep it in mind along with my hospital conspiracy idea. But now I'm going to head out to Newton. Of course, you're welcome to come, but I can't imagine why you'd want to."

"I'll stay," Latasha said. She pulled over Craig's and Jordan's deposition transcripts to a position in front of one of the chairs and sat down. "I'll do some background reading while you're gone. Where are the medical records?"

Jack reached for the correct pile and pushed it over against Craig's and Jordan's depositions.

Latasha picked up a short run of ECG that was sticking out of the stack. "What's this?"

"It's a recording Dr. Bowman made when he first got to Patience's house. Unfortunately it's almost useless. He couldn't even remember the lead. He had to give up doing the ECG because she was in such dire straits and rapidly worsening."

"Has anyone looked at it?"

"All the experts looked at it, but without knowing the lead and not being able to figure it out, they couldn't say much. They all agreed the marked bradycardia suggested an AV block. With that and other suggestive conduction abnormalities, they all felt it was at least consistent with a heart attack someplace in the heart."

"Too bad there's not more," Latasha said.

"I'm out of here so I can get back," Jack said. "My cell phone is on if you have a eureka moment or if Allan is able to pull off a miracle."

"See you when you get back," Latasha said. She was already speed-reading Craig's deposition.

AT THREE O'CLOCK in the morning, it was finally easy for Jack to drive in Boston. At some of the traffic lights on Massachusetts Avenue, Jack's Accent was the only vehicle waiting. On several occasions he debated ignoring the light when there also wasn't any cross-traffic, but he never did. Jack didn't have a problem breaking rules he judged ridiculous, but traffic lights didn't fall into that category.

The Massachusetts Turnpike was another story. It wasn't crowded, but there was more traffic than he expected, and it wasn't all trucks. It made him wonder with amazement what so many people were doing out and about at such an hour.

The short drive to Newton gave Jack a chance to calm down from the near mania Latasha had unleashed when she said she had access to a toxicologist just at the point Jack was ready to throw in the towel. In a more relaxed state of mind, he was able to think about the whole situation considerably more rationally, and when he did so, it was clear what the most probable outcome was going to be. First, he was going to decide from lack of proof to the contrary that Patience Stanhope most likely died of a massive heart attack despite there being no obvious pathology; and second, that Fasano et al. were most likely behind the despicable assault on Craig and Alexis's children for trite economic reasons. Fasano had been unambiguously clear about the rationale when he directly threatened Jack.

Jack's mild mania had devolved into a tepid despondency by the time he arrived at the Bowmans' house. He found himself again wondering if the reason he was still in Boston and imagining out-of-the-box conspiracies had more to do with half-conscious fears of getting married in ten hours than trying to help his sister and brother-in-law.

Jack climbed out of the car clutching the umbrella he had the presence of mind to rescue from the backseat. He was parked next to Craig's Lexus. Walking back to the street, he looked up and down for the police cruiser that had been there that morning. It was nowhere to be seen. So much for the surveillance. Turning back to the house, Jack trudged up the front walk. His fatigue was catching up to him.

The house was dark, save for a little light filtering through the sidelights bordering the front door. Tilting his head back as he approached the front stoop, Jack checked the second-floor dormer windows. There were as black as onyx, reflecting back the light from a distant streetlamp.

Being relatively quiet, Jack slipped the key into the lock. He wasn't trying to be secretive, but at the same time, he preferred not to wake Craig if at all possible. It was at that point Jack remembered the alarm system. With the key in the lock, he tried to remember the code. As tired as his mind was, it took him a minute to recall it. Then he wondered if he was supposed to hit another button after the code. He didn't know. When he was as prepared as possible, he turned the key. The mechanism seemed loud in the nighttime stillness.