Робин Кук - Genesis

“What time is it?” he asked nervously, apparently thinking he’d overslept.

“It’s still early,” Jack said, speaking quietly. “Everyone is still asleep. I just wanted to talk with you before I go off to work.”

“What about?”

“About Mom’s surgery today,” he said. “Have you thought about it since you, Mom, and I discussed it last night?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“What do you mean?” JJ said.

“Does it scare you? Are you worried that she will be in the hospital for a few days? Anything like that?”

“I don’t know, maybe a little. Can I stay home from school today?”

Jack regarded his son. He tried to tell from JJ’s expression his motivation for asking if he could stay home from school. Knowing his son’s penchant for computer games, it was natural for Jack to be suspicious that electronic gaming was more the driving force than emotional turmoil, but how could he be sure?

“Is that what you’d like to do?”

“Maybe,” JJ said.

Jack smiled inwardly, sensing he’d already got his answer from his son’s equivocation. To test his suspicions, he said, “If you stay home, there will be very limited computer gaming.”

“Aw, why?”

“We’d have to get your school to send us the work you would be doing in class so you could do it here,” Jack said. “But let me tell you something. If you’re worried about Mom going into the hospital, going to school might be better to keep your mind occupied. That’s why I’m going to work, and I’m going to work particularly hard. What do you think?”

“I think I should go to school,” JJ said.

“I’ll call you as soon as I know her surgery is over,” Jack said. “How’s that?”

“That’s good,” JJ said.

“And you can call me whenever you want for whatever reason.”

“Yeah, I know,” JJ said.

“Do you want to come downstairs and have some breakfast with me?” he asked.

“Okay,” JJ said, as he struggled to untangle himself from his sheets.

Breakfast was a simple affair consisting of orange juice and cold cereal. Conversation involved the coming weekend with the promise of bike riding and using the lacrosse sticks in the park. When they were finished eating, JJ went back upstairs to dress for school while Jack wrote a note to Laurie. Although he had offered to stay home for the morning and drive her to the hospital, she had insisted otherwise. She’d said that she wanted him at the OCME to help George Fontworth if there was a need, which she doubted. She’d insisted that Jack not make a production of her having her minor procedure , as she called it, and that she preferred to get herself to the hospital. He hadn’t argued.

The last thing that Jack did was have a brief chat with Caitlin for final instructions and to make sure she had his mobile number front and center in case there was any need to get hold of him even though neither she nor Jack could see that happening. Then after a final goodbye to JJ, he got on his Trek, and headed south.

For the next thirty-one minutes Jack was able to enjoy himself. A combination of the weather and the required physical exertion cleared his mind. Even the traffic seemed slightly lighter than usual, and Jack had more tolerance than he often did for the yellow cabbies and the new bane of rideshare drivers. It was exactly 7:15 when he walked into the ID room to swat Vinnie’s newspaper and ask Jennifer if any interesting cases had come in overnight.

“It was kind of a slow night,” Jennifer said as he helped himself to a mug of the communal coffee. “But there is one here that might catch your interest. It’s a death by hanging that has the police confused as to whether it’s a homicide or a suicide.”

“Was there a suicide note?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t read the MLI report. Especially with the police expressing that kind of confusion, I knew it was a case that needed to be autopsied, so I just put it in the to-do stack.”

“Let me see it,” Jack said. He took the folder from her, leafed through the contents until he came across the MLI sheet, and pulled it free. He enjoyed doing cases that involved any type of controversy. The first thing he noticed was that the assigned MLI was Janice Jaeger, someone with whom he had worked on innumerable cases over the years and whose experience and acumen he truly admired. Often, she would anticipate the need for additional information or records and went ahead and ordered them before Jack even made a request.

Speed-reading through the investigative report, Jack learned that the victim was a twenty-eight-year-old Caucasian male who had been found hanged from a five-foot-high garden gate. He had been out drinking with friends but had gotten into a bar fight with someone who had been heard threatening that he was going to kill him. Later the victim had been escorted home by friends who’d described him as depressed and intoxicated. They said they had left him at the gate to the garden fronting his apartment. Hours later he’d been found by a passerby who’d called the police. At the very end of the report there was a final sentence that Janice had added as a postscript. It read, “See diagram and photos.”

Surprised by this suggestion, he went back to the case folder, which was more like a paper pocket for all the autopsy forms and labels it had to contain, and quickly found the diagram that Janice had hastily sketched with a stick figure. Stapled to the diagram were several pictures taken with a digital camera. They showed the victim in a sitting position with his back to the gate, his legs splayed out in front of him, and with his collar caught on the gate latch.

Jack slipped the investigative report back into the case folder. “I’ll take it,” he said to Jennifer. “And, just so you know, I want to stay busy today. Translated, that means I want you to keep me in mind for more cases.”

“I always do,” Jennifer said. She was telling the truth. Whenever she was the on-call ME and was presented with a case that she didn’t quite know what to do with, she knew she could call Jack, and usually did.

“One other thing,” he said. “When Dr. Nichols deigns to show up, send her down.”

“Don’t tell me we have to work with her again,” Vinnie whined from behind his newspaper.

“I’m afraid so,” Jack called over to him. “I promised both my wife and Dr. McGovern.”

When Vinnie didn’t bother to respond, Jack walked over and snatched away his newspaper. Instead of causing Vinnie to flinch, which was what he hoped and expected, Vinnie merely rolled his eyes. “You don’t need me if you have that miserable bitch’s capable hands.”

“Let’s not be nasty, and watch your language,” Jack said, feeling mildly frustrated by Vinnie’s total lack of response to having his paper taken. “Come on, big guy!” With his free hand he offered to pull Vinnie to his feet. “Let’s get a move on. I’m hoping for a big day ahead of us.” How big, Jack had no idea.

Juliana Santos and her younger brother Luiz had managed to immigrate to the US from Belém, Brazil, six years ago. Initially it had been a struggle to get by in Miami, where they first arrived. But thanks to some help from a couple of distant relatives as well as the Miami Brazilian community in general, they’d succeeded. Following an economic opportunity offered by an uncle, they moved on to New York, where they’d started a domestic house-cleaning service called Very Clean. Known by word of mouth as being thorough and reliable, they had relatively prospered, hiring five young women and buying a used Subaru station wagon and three vacuum cleaners. Luiz would drive the women to their respective sites, where they would work in groups of two. The entire day would find Luiz keeping in touch by phone and ferrying each team from one apartment to another.