Still not certain, perhaps due to the dark glasses, Laurie quickly advanced the security tape to camera six and went to the same time sequence as she’d been on camera five. From that angle, something she’d not seen on camera five appeared. The man had a mole about the size of a dime on his right temple. It wasn’t particularly obvious, but it was definitely there, no doubt about it. Checking the photograph of the right profile on the photo, there it was as well! Laurie was reasonably confident that the two people were one and the same!
She sat back in her chair, amazed at the coincidence. Then she sat forward again and continued watching the tape from the sixth camera to the point where the train pulled into the station. Although it was not easy to make out because of the crowd surging forward toward the arriving train, Laurie tried to see exactly what happened when the two pursuers reached the victim. She could not see any of their hands, but quickly the two men seemed to be supporting the victim while the victim appeared to be convulsing. It was very fast, only a couple of frames. What wasn’t clear was whether the pursuers caused the victim to convulse or it was spontaneous, like a heart attack or stroke.
Laurie sat back in her chair again, watching the rapid denouement with the pursuers laying the now unconscious man onto the platform, having already stripped him of his bag and presumably his wallet. On this viewing, Laurie also saw something else she hadn’t made note of the previous evening: how the oval-faced man, after relieving the victim of his belongings, carefully picked up the umbrella and opened it about halfway before closing it again. The impression was that it took some force to get it closed. The thought that immediately came to Laurie’s mind was that the umbrella was being cocked like an air rifle.
Halting the security tape, Laurie was about to view the same sequence from the vantage point of some of the other cameras when a specific remembrance flashed through her mind. It was about a famous forensic case that she’d heard about in a lecture when she was a resident in forensic pathology. It involved the assassination in London of a diplomat from an Iron Curtain country she couldn’t remember. It was carried out with the help of an air gun cleverly hidden by the KGB within an umbrella.
Putting down the photos that she was still holding, Laurie went online and did a quick search, and within seconds she was reading about Georgi Ivanov Markov, a rather famous Bulgarian at the time, who had indeed been murdered with a KGB-manufactured pellet gun hidden within the shaft of an umbrella. Most important, Laurie learned that the substance involved was ricin, a remarkably toxic protein derived from castor beans.
Going back to the Web, Laurie looked up ricin, particularly interested in the symptoms associated with ricin poisoning. Immediately she could tell that her case of the previous day could not have been a copycat of the Markov incident, at least not with ricin, as ricin caused gastrointestinal symptoms, and the symptoms developed over hours, not instantaneously, as with her case. As far as the delivery aspect, however, meaning a pellet gun in an umbrella, that was a definite possibility. Laurie was now eager to repeat the external exams.
Why she hadn’t done a better external exam at the time, even if Southgate had supposedly done it and reputedly had called it negative, she didn’t know. In fact, from her current vantage point she was embarrassed she hadn’t done her own. Not long into the autopsy, her intuition was telling her it had not been a natural death, as there was no pathology at alclass="underline" none! The challenge now was to prove her intuition was correct: whether there was a tiny entrance wound that he’d received through his clothing.
Laurie picked up the phone and called Vinnie’s cell. She and most people at OCME had been finding that using personal cell phones was significantly more efficient than using the regular internal phone lines. She wondered if Vinnie’s mood had improved. He answered after the first ring.
“How about my Asian John Doe?” Laurie asked. “Is he ready for another look?”
“A table is just opening up,” Vinnie said. “It should be within a half-hour or so.”
“Terrific! Should I just come down in a half-hour, or do you want to give me a call?”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll have Marvin give you a call,” Vinnie said, continuing to suffer guilt about his very real fears of having been caught in an untenable situation where he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. If he went to Laurie and took responsibility for sending her the threatening note and tried to convince her about what to do, he and/or his family, particularly his girls, would surely be harassed if not killed. If he didn’t do anything and Laurie didn’t heed the message, she could be killed. The situation was driving him to distraction. “He’s available now, and I know you guys like to work together.”
“Suit yourself!” Laurie said, finally truly irritated. It seemed to her that Vinnie had been trying to provoke her all morning, and now he’d succeeded.
Calming herself down, Laurie turned to the histology slides. Until she’d viewed all of them, particularly the sections involving the brain and the heart, and found nothing, there was still a slight chance yesterday’s case was a natural death, despite her intuition to the contrary. Last night she’d become excited over the case. Now she was really excited with the added intrigue that she had both the victim and the killer, meaning the case might very well represent war between two organized-crime organizations just as Lou had feared, since at least one of the victims was most likely a Yakuza member.
21
March 26, 2010
Friday, 10:13 a.m.
There was no doubt in Vinnie’s mind that Laurie knew he was acting out of character. Try as he might, he couldn’t help it even though he tried. The problem, of course, was that he took the Vaccarros at their word since he’d heard all sorts of stories over the years, and Carlo and Brennan had threatened his daughters. Vinnie could not help but take such threats seriously. Being involved with such people was a lose-lose situation, and going to the police, unfortunately, was not an option.
Having begged off helping Laurie, he reflexively answered his phone when it rang only minutes later, thinking it was Laurie calling back for some change in the plans. Instead, to Vinnie’s serious chagrin, it was Carlo, the Barbera hood.
“Good morning, Vinnie, buddy,” Carlo said with a false sense of camaraderie. “It’s me from yesterday. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” Vinnie acknowledged, trying to sound normal but failing miserably. Carlo was the last person he wanted to talk to. If only he’d looked at the incoming number.
“I had some questions, if you have a minute.”
Vinnie would have loved to say no, that he didn’t have time, but he didn’t dare. Instead he asked Carlo to hold on a minute until he could find a quiet spot. Quickly he ducked out of the mortuary office, where some of the other techs were gathered, drinking their first cups of coffee.
“Have you seen Dr. Laurie Montgomery yet this morning?” Carlo asked when Vinnie gave him the okay.
“I have,” Vinnie said. “I’ve already done a case with her.”
“Terrific,” Carlo said. “And how was she acting?”
“She was acting quite normal. Not like me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I hope your feeling out of sorts has nothing to do with us.”