Робин Кук - Genesis

“So, you moved me to protect me,” she said with a combination of astonishment and appreciation. “And then did you have confirmation that my life was indeed in danger?”

“Yes and, I’m afraid to say, yes again,” Jack said. “But when I moved you, I was far from convinced I was right and truly thought I might have been suffering from anxiety-induced paranoia. I really had no idea what to do besides try to stand guard all night. I wasn’t even sure enough to involve any of the hospital authorities, or to call and ask Lou’s opinion. I was truly at a loss.”

“So, after you moved me, what did you do?” Laurie asked. “Did you merely wait in ambush for someone to show up? I mean that wouldn’t really work unless I was there, and he tried something.”

“Exactly,” he said. “If someone used KCl in the ICU to take care of Madison, it had to be a healthcare worker of some import, like a nurse, or an aide, or a doctor. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gotten in there. After I’d safely stashed you in one of the vacant rooms, which turned out to be this room, I took a patient gurney down to the medical school simulation center and borrowed one of the computerized high-fidelity simulation mannequins that are used to teach students how to respond to critical emergencies. You know, the kind that are programed to respond physiologically just like a live human. I then brought it up to 838 and set it up with the ECG going and covered it with a blanket. I mean, it was terrific, especially in the dark. Even the breathing sounded entirely normal.”

“So, it was a kind of a trap,” Laurie said with amazement.

“Exactly,” Jack said. “And it worked like a charm. When the bad guy came in somewhere around three thirty, he obviously thought for sure it was you and was probably hyped up enough not to check. To tell you the truth, I was sound asleep at that point and didn’t wake up until he caused the simulator’s alarm to go off by injecting the damn KCl.”

“My good Lord!” she said.

“It’s appropriate to invoke his name,” Jack said with a smile. “In retrospect, he had to have been involved in how everything turned out.”

“Maybe you better not tell me the details of what happened after that,” Laurie said. Knowing him as well as she did, she could imagine he’d transformed into a wild man, possibly putting himself in danger. Her only consolation was the idea that the individual was most likely a healthcare worker and probably not armed.

“It wasn’t pretty,” Jack admitted.

“All right, enough evasions,” Laurie said. “Now I’m ready for you to tell me the identity of the bad guy. From your description of him as a bad guy , plus mentioning that you wanted Lou involved early because you feared a scandal, and finally your sense it had to be a healthcare worker, I’m fully prepared to be shocked. Who is it?”

“Dr. Carl Henderson,” Jack said.

“Oh. My. God!” she exclaimed, pronouncing each word separately. She was totally stunned. It took her a moment to gather her thoughts before saying: “Who would have guessed? He’s about the last person I would have suspected. It’s all such folly and such a tragedy on so many levels...”

“Let’s look on the bright side,” he said.

“I’m having trouble seeing a bright side,” Laurie said.

“It seems that you and Aria Nichols have added genetic genealogy to the forensic grab bag of tricks to make it possible to construct a perpetrator’s genome. If that’s not a bright side, I don’t know what is.”

In alphabetical order I would like to thank Mark Desire, Assistant Director of Forensic Biology, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, New York City, and Mark Flomenbaum, M.D., Chief Medical Examiner, State of Maine. Both were generously willing to answer multiple questions. I would also like to acknowledge that Blaine T. Bettinger’s The Family Tree Guide to DNA Testing and Genetic Genealogy and Tamar Weinberg’s The Adoptee’s Guide to DNA Testing provided valuable insight into the new frontier of genetic genealogy.