Robin Cook - Blindsight

The elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and Laurie motioned for them to get off.

“As you’ve probably already guessed,” Lou continued, following Laurie down the corridor, “DePasquale’s death was an obvious execution.”

“It was?” Laurie questioned. As of yet, nothing was obvious to her.

“Absolutely,” Lou said. “You’re going to find that he was shot from close range with a small caliber bullet into the base of the brain. It’s the usual, proven method. No mess, no fuss.”

They went into Laurie’s office. Laurie introduced Lou to Riva, who was already hard at work. Laurie got a chair for Lou and put it next to her desk. They both sat down.

“You’ve seen these gangland-style execution cases before, haven’t you?” Lou questioned.

“I’m not sure,” Laurie said evasively. From medical school training, she knew how to be vague when asked a pointed question. She didn’t want to give the impression she was inexperienced.

“They usually mean friction between rival organizations,” Lou said. “And in this case it would mean friction between the Lucia and the Vaccarro crime families. They are the major players in the Queens area and their respective interests are controlled by midlevel bosses, Vinnie Dominick and Paul Cerino. My guess would be that Paul Cerino had a hand in poor Frank DePasquale’s murder, and if he did, I’d like nothing better than to nail him with an indictment. I was after the guy for the entire six years I was assigned to Organized Crime. I could never get an indictment to stick. But if I could link him to a capital offense like whacking DePasquale, I’d be in fat city.”

“That puts the burden on us,” Laurie said as she opened DePasquale’s folder.

“If you or your lab could come up with something, I’d be eternally grateful,” Lou said. “We need some kind of break. The problem with guys like Cerino is that they keep so many layers between themselves and all the crime committed in their name, we seldom get any charges to stick.”

“Oh, damn!” Laurie said suddenly. She’d been listening to Lou as well as going through the DePasquale file.

“What’s the matter?” Lou asked.

“They didn’t take an X-ray on DePasquale,” Laurie said. She reached for her phone and dialed the morgue. “We have to have an X-ray before the autopsy. Unfortunately that’s going to hold things up. I’ll have to post one of the other cases first. I’m sorry.”

Lou shrugged.

Laurie told the mortuary tech who answered the phone to X-ray Frank DePasquale as soon as possible. The tech said he’d do his best. As she was hanging up, the doorway to her office was filled by Calvin Washington.

“Laurie,” Calvin said, “we’ve got a problem that you should know about.”

Laurie stood up when Calvin entered. “What is it?” she asked. She noticed that Calvin was eyeing Lou questioningly. “Dr. Washington, I believe you met Lieutenant Soldano.”

“Ah, yes,” Calvin said. “Don’t mind me. It’s just Alzheimer’s setting in. We met just this morning.” He shook hands with Lou, who’d stood when Laurie introduced him.

“Sit down, both of you,” Calvin boomed. “Laurie, I have to warn you that we’ve already been getting some heat from the Mayor’s office about this Duncan Andrews case. It seems that the deceased has some powerful political connections. So we’re going to have to cooperate. I want you to look hard for some natural cause of death so that you can downplay the drugs. The family would prefer it that way.”

Laurie looked up at Calvin’s face, half expecting it to break out in a broad smile, saying that he was only joking. But Calvin’s expression didn’t change.

“I’m not sure I understand,” Laurie said.

“I can’t be much clearer,” Calvin said. His infamous impatience began to show.

“What do you want me to do, lie?” Laurie asked.

“Hell, no, Dr. Montgomery!” Calvin snapped. “What do I have to do, draw you a map? I’m just asking you to lean as far as you can, okay? Find something like a coronary plaque, an aneurysm, anything, and then write it up. And don’t act so surprised or self-righteous. Politics play a role here and the sooner you learn that the better off we’ll all be. Just do it.”

Calvin turned and left as quickly as he’d come.

Lou whistled and sat down. “Tough guy,” he said.

Laurie shook her head in disbelief. She turned to Riva, who hadn’t paused in her work. “Did you hear that?” Laurie asked her.

“It happened to me once, too,” Riva said without looking up. “Only my case was a suicide.”

With a sigh, Laurie sat down in her desk chair and looked across at Lou. “I don’t know if I’m prepared to sacrifice integrity and ethics for the sake of politics.”

“I don’t think that was what Dr. Washington was asking you to do,” Lou said.

Laurie felt her face flush. “It wasn’t? I’m sorry, but I think it was.”

“I don’t mean to tell you your business,” Lou said, “but my take was that Dr. Washington wants you to emphasize any potential natural cause of death you find. The rest can be left to interpretation. For some reason it makes a difference in this case. It’s the real world versus the world of make-believe.”

“Well, you seem pretty blasé about fudging the details,” Laurie said. “In Pathology we’re supposed to be dealing with the truth.”

“Come on,” Lou said. “What is the truth? There are shades of gray in most everything in life, so why not in death? My line of work happens to be justice. It’s an ideal. I pursue it. But if you don’t think politics sometimes plays a lead role in how justice is applied, you’re kidding yourself. There’s always a gap between law and justice. Welcome to the real world.”

“Well, I don’t like it one bit,” Laurie said. All this was reminding her of the concerns about compromise she’d had when she’d arrived a half hour earlier.

“You don’t have to like it,” Lou said. “Not many do.”

Laurie flipped open the file on Duncan Andrews. She leafed through the papers until she came to the investigator’s report. After reading for a few moments, she looked up at Lou. “I’m beginning to get the big picture,” she said. “The deceased was some kind of financial whiz kid, a senior vice president of an investment banking firm at only thirty-five. And on top of that there is a note here that says his father is running for the U.S. Senate.”

“Can’t get much more political than that,” Lou said.

Laurie nodded, then read more of the investigator’s report. When she got to the section noting who had identified the deceased at the scene, she found a name, Sara Wetherbee. In the space left to describe the witness’s relationship to the deceased, the investigator had scrawled: “girlfriend.”

Laurie shook her head. Discovering a loved one dead from drugs carried an ugly resonance for her. In a flash her thoughts drifted back seventeen years to when she was fifteen, a freshman at Langley School. She could remember the bright sunny day as if it had been yesterday. It was midfall, crisp and clear, and the trees in Central Park had been a blaze of color. She’d walked past the Metropolitan with its banners snapping in the gusty wind. She’d turned left on Eighty-fourth Street and entered her parents’ massive apartment building on the west side of Park Avenue.

“I’m home!” Laurie called as she tossed her bookbag onto the foyer table. There was no answer. All she could hear was the traffic on Park peppered by the inevitable bleat of taxi horns.

“Anybody home?” Laurie called and heard her voice echo through the halls. Surprised to find the apartment empty, Laurie pushed through the door from the butler’s pantry into the kitchen. Even Holly, their maid, was nowhere to be seen. But then Laurie remembered that it was Friday, Holly’s day off.