At the corner of 30th Street, Laurie waited for the light to cross First Avenue. As she did so, she thought about how her newly acknowledged personality trait applied to her ailing relationship with Jack. With sudden clairvoyance, it seemed rather clear. She had wanted to put all the blame on him for being noncommittal about their future and for not bringing up the issue of marriage and children. Now she realized she had to share some of the blame as she had failed to bring it up herself. She also realized that his offer to broach the subject on a regular basis had actually been a concession on his part, maybe not a monumental one, but a concession nonetheless. How she was going to communicate all this to Jack, she had no idea. The last time they had spoken on any kind of personal level had been five weeks earlier.

As the light changed and she hurried across First Avenue and up the front steps of the OCME, she thought that having met Roger complicated things. Rather than having problems with one man, she now had problems with two. Although she cared for both of them, she knew she loved Jack, and she found herself longing for his un- compromising candor. Part of the reason she'd gone out with Roger in the first place was to make Jack jealous, an adolescent machination worsened by two complications: First, she hadn't expected to be as attracted to Roger as she had become; and second, she hadn't expected the jealousy ploy to work so well.

Although Laurie felt that Jack loved her, his enduring reluctance to make any commitment convinced her, his love was not the same as hers. Specifically, he had never made her feel that he valued their relationship as much as she did. She was convinced that he wasn't going to change and that he was incapable of jealousy.

But now, thanks to his current behavior, she felt differently. The tone of their interactions and conversations had deteriorated over time. When she had first moved back to her apartment, there'd been flippant sarcasm. After she started seeing Roger, it had become nastier, and it made Laurie feel terrible. A month ago, when Jack had asked her to have dinner with him and she told him she had plans to go to the symphony with Roger on the evening in question, Jack had responded by telling her to have a good life. He didn't suggest an alternative date. The implication was that he didn't even want to remain her friend.

Waving to Marlene, the receptionist, as she buzzed her into the ID room, Laurie had to smile. The whole situation smacked of a soap opera, and she told herself to put thoughts of the two men out of her mind. Clearly, changing her behavior or anyone else's was not going to be the easiest thing in the world.

Laurie draped her coat over one of the club chairs in the ID room, placed her umbrella on top, and went directly to the coffee machine. It was Chet's turn to decide which cases needed to be posted, and he was hard at work, bent over a stack of folders.

Laurie stirred her coffee and checked the time. It was still before eight, but certainly not as early as she used to get in with Jack.

She noticed that Vinnie wasn't there reading his newspaper, suggesting that he was already down with Jack, doing an autopsy. The only sounds Laurie could hear were the chatter of the operators in the communications room, preparing for the day. Laurie enjoyed the relative solitude, knowing that in an hour, the place would be humming with activity.

"Is Jack already downstairs?" Laurie asked, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Yup," Chet said without lifting his head. Then, suddenly, he looked up when he recognized the voice. "Laurie! Great! I was supposed to give you a message if you came in before eight. Janice is very eager to talk with you. She's been in here twice."

"Was it about a recent postoperative patient from the General?" Laurie questioned, her eyes lighting up. She had asked Janice to be sure to let her know if another such case surfaced. If it had, it would mean that not thinking about the two men in her life would be considerably easier, as her four suspicious homicide cases would grow by a hefty twenty-five percent. The two cases she had posted, McGillin and Morgan, she had yet to sign out. The other two had been signed out by Kevin and George, citing the manner of death as natural, a conclusion that Laurie had opposed.

"No, it wasn't a patient from the General," Chet said with a teasing smile that Laurie failed to detect. Laurie's shoulders slumped in disappointment. "It wasn't one, but rather two!" He reached out and tapped the top of two folders he'd put aside. He then gave them a gentle push in Laurie's direction. "And both obviously need to be posted."

Laurie snatched them up and looked at their names: Rowena Sobczyk and Stephen Lewis. She quickly checked their ages: twenty-six and thirty-two, respectively. "Are they both from the Manhattan General?" she asked. She wanted to be sure.

Chet nodded.

For Laurie, it seemed almost too good to be true from the standpoint of a diversion. Her series would grow to six cases, not five. That was a fifty percent increase. "I'd like to do these two cases," she said hastily.

"You got them," Chet responded.

Without another word, Laurie grabbed her coat and umbrella. With the folders under her arms, and balancing her coffee as best she could, she quickly headed through communications and the clerical room on her way to the forensic investigators' office. She was beside herself with curiosity. She'd had to eat a bit of crow over the course of the previous five weeks, as her supposed serial-killer scenario had failed to materialize as a viable possibility and had been dismissed by everyone except Roger. Jack had used the issue to tease her rather sarcastically on several occasions. Even Sue Passero had been dismissive after making what she described as multiple, discreet inquiries around the hospital. Luckily, Calvin had not brought up the issue at all. Nor had Riva.

The hospital charts on the original four cases had eventually arrived in Laurie's office, and she had completely filled in her matrix but found no smoking gun. In fact, there was no way the cases were related. There were different surgeons, mostly different anesthetists, a variety of anesthetic agents, a significant variation of preoperative and postoperative drugs, and differing locations in the hospital. Worst of all, the toxicology results were completely negative, despite Peter pulling every trick that he could think of with the gas chromatograph and the mass spectroscopy. For Laurie's benefit, he had truly gone out of his way to find even the most minute traces of an offending agent. And with no agent, no one was willing to give the serial-killer idea any credence, especially since there had been no more cases after Darlene Morgan. Everyone relegated the four cases to the wastebasket of statistical oddities occurring in the inherently dangerous environment of the hospital.

As Laurie popped into the forensic investigators' office, Bart looked up from his desk. "You're just in time," he said, and pointed to the rear of the room to make his point. Janice was in the process of pulling on her coat.

"Dr. Montgomery" she said. "I was afraid I was going to miss you. I've run out of steam, and my bed is calling." She peeled off her coat and after draping it over her desk chair, sat down heavily.

"Sorry to hold you up," Laurie said.

"No problem," Janice said gamely. "This won't take but a minute. Are those the Lewis and Sobczyk folders you've got?"

"They are," Laurie said, pulling up a chair. Janice took the folders, opened them, and took out her reports, handing them back to Laurie.

"Both these General cases remind me of the other four you were interested in," Janice said as Laurie scanned the write-ups. Janice cupped her tired face in her hands and leaned her elbows on the desk. She took a deep breath before continuing. "In short, both were young and healthy, both seemed to die of an unexpected cardiac problem, both had had minor surgery less than twenty-four hours earlier, and both obviously could not be resuscitated."