“You mentioned earlier that the bile ducts were also involved,” Ben said.
“That’s correct, and the damage is analogous to what you’ve seen in the lungs and pancreas. Only the bile ducts themselves were destroyed. The adjacent liver tissue was untouched.”
“Have you surveyed any other morgues for similar cases?” Luke asked.
“We canvassed about a dozen coroners’ offices, all of the larger ones between here and Dallas.”
“And?”
Jay shook his head. “Nothing.”
Ben asked, “Can I get some tissue samples to take back with me?”
“I’ll sign out our slides to you.”
“Good, but I’d also like to have a tissue block from each organ. I may want to do some special staining, and I’ll need the tissues to prepare my own slides from.”
“We’re not doing anything on this case right now,” Jay said. “It’s easier for me if I just give you the entire file with all of our tissues. You can return it when you’re done.”
Ben nodded.
Luke asked Ben, “Anything in particular that you’re looking for?”
“Nothing that’s worth a discussion at this point. More of a fishing expedition.”
Jay said, “The truth is, we don’t have the staff to go any further on this case. I appreciate any help you’re willing to give us. I’d like to know what caused this girl’s death. It’s just one of those cases that gnaws at you.”
The M.E. reached over and turned off the projector.
“Before we leave the building,” Luke said, “there’s one other thing I’d like to see.”
20
“How did you know her?” Jay asked.
Luke glanced across the autopsy table at the M.E., then back at Kate Tartaglia’s corpse. “She used to work at our hospital.” The man didn’t need to know any more than that, Luke decided.
The upper half of her body was exposed, a thick plastic cover drawn back to her waist. The back of her skull was propped on a wooden block, lifting her head and tilting it forward, as though she were taking in the room.
“I’d like to know what you find on her autopsy,” Luke said.
“I’ll have to run your request by the homicide detectives.” The medical examiner’s voice carried a hint of hesitation. “I’m already stretching the rules by showing you the cadaver. I hope you understand.”
Luke nodded while studying two tightly grouped entry wounds on her chest and a black-rimmed hole in the center of her forehead.
“Those look like some well-aimed shots,” Ben observed, saying aloud what Luke was already thinking.
“Yes, I’d say there’s not much doubt about the cause of death,” Jay said as he pulled the semitransparent covering back over Kate’s head. “Life is full of irony, isn’t it? Just last week I was speaking with Dr. Tartaglia.”
Luke shot an inquisitive glance at the M.E.
“For the past four months,” Jay explained, “we’ve been sending her blood samples. Part of some research study.”
From behind Luke, Ben asked, “What kind of study were you working on?”
“I had nothing to do with the study itself,” Jay said. “She wanted serum samples from Hispanics and Indians who were non-U.S. citizens. She was looking for a comparison group for some vaccine research.”
Luke asked, “Did you send her a blood sample from the Jane Doe case, the one we were just discussing?”
“She met the criteria. So yes, I’m sure we did.”
“There’re a few more pieces to this story,” Luke said to Ben as soon as they were outside the front door of the Coroner’s Office.
Luke was carrying a cardboard box containing Jane Doe’s slide folders as well as plastic cassettes with paraffin-encased blocks of her tissues. He set it down onto a waist-high brick newel at the top of the steps, then described for Ben his past relationship with Kate, her calls to the E.R. on Friday night, the planned meeting at Kolter’s, and the missing e-mail she’d sent to him just hours before her murder.
The pathologist’s eyes bounced between Luke and the box as he listened.
“So, think about it,” Luke said when he finished. “Kate calls me at the E.R. on the same night that Josue Chaca arrives. Now, her name pops up in connection with a girl whose death looks strangely similar to the Chaca boy.”
Ben’s head rocked up and down like a slow-moving oil derrick, mulling the information.
“Ben, she had to know about both of these cases. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”
“And that whole thing about a research study?”
“I think it was a ruse,” Luke said. “She wanted to know about the Jane Doe case, and to do that, she needed a Trojan horse — something to get her inside the Coroner’s Office — so she concocted that story about a research project.”
“If you’re right, the question is — what was she up to?”
“Maybe she was trying to figure this out,” Luke said, “just like we are. That would explain why she asked the M.E. for samples of blood serum. She was probably running her own tests on Jane Doe’s blood.”
“You’re ignoring the other possibility. Maybe she already knew what’d caused the girl’s death. Maybe Kate was a fox in the henhouse.”
“I don’t think so. She came looking for me, remember? Kate was upset. She had something she wanted to tell me.”
But before she could do that, someone put two bullets through her heart and one through her head.
Luke studied his friend’s eyes, to see if they revealed the same question that was gnawing at him. Ben’s expression revealed nothing, and Luke wasn’t going to proffer a macabre theory about Kate’s murder — at least not yet. He didn’t want to give Ben any reason to back away from their probe into the children’s deaths.
He hadn’t called O’Reilly yet. Just as well, Luke thought. Now he had a lot more to talk about with the detective.
Luke lifted the box. “Let’s go.” He swept the parking lot as they started down the steps. Nothing seemed out of place.
Ben pulled a remote device from his pocket and aimed it at his car. The Cadillac chirped as Luke reached the bottom of the steps.
“Forget about taking me home,” Luke said. “I want to stop by my father’s office and ask him what he knows about Zenavax. I’ll grab a cab home from the hospital.”
As they were getting into the car, Ben said, “I may send some of the girl’s tissue to Caleb Fagan.”
“Immunology? Why?”
“I’d like Caleb to do some subtyping of the lymphocytes. Find out what type of critters we’re dealing with.” Ben pulled out of the parking lot and merged into traffic on Mission Avenue. “It’s not too often that I run across something I haven’t seen before. Seeing it twice in the same week tells me there’s a connection. The lymphocytes are what connect these two cases. They weren’t just hanging around to pass the time.”
“So, where does this hunch lead you?”
Ben tapped the steering wheel a few times. “Does anything strike you about the organs that were destroyed by…whatever this is?”
“Which case — the boy or the girl?”
“Both,” the pathologist said. “You got the small airways in the lung, the pancreas—”
“Cystic fibrosis?”
“Yep. And we know that Jane Doe’s bile ducts were involved. There’s not much other than CF that selectively attacks those organs.”
“How do you explain the bone marrow findings? And the fact that Adam Smith made a diagnosis of leukemia in my patient?”