Lou nodded. "We've got our work cut out for us. It's almost too much. Here's a list of eight docs that got kicked off the General's staff over the last six months. I imagine one of them could be a deranged oddball who'd like to get back at AmeriCare somehow."

"That sounds familiar," Jack said. "Maybe you should add me to that list."

"I'm going to have to get a whole team to start working on all this," Lou said. "If Najah isn't our man, then we'll be looking at interviewing the lot. Hmmm. What's this, I wonder?" Lou held up a CD that was on top of several of the lists.

"Let's check it out," Laurie said. She took the CD and booted up Roger's computer by quickly typing in his password, which caused Jack's eyebrows to rise. Laurie caught the reaction but opted to ignore it.

The CD turned out to be the digital hospital records of all the cases in her series, including those from St. Francis. She guessed that Roger had gotten the St. Francis data when he'd gone over to get the employee records. Laurie explained to Lou what it was and asked if she could take it with her back to the OCME. It might help her when she went over the charts.

Lou thought for a moment. "Can you make a copy?"

Laurie located the computer's CD burner and made herself a copy.

"Actually, I wouldn't mind having copies of all this printed material as well," Laurie said after she thought about it. "Later this afternoon, I'll have time to go over it all, and maybe I'll have some helpful ideas. I'm sure there's a copy machine somewhere close by."

"Not a problem," Lou said. "With this much material, we can use all the help we can get."

The copy machine was just outside Roger's office, and Laurie made copies of all Roger's lists. When she was finished, she told Lou and Jack that she was heading back to the OCME.

"Do you want me to go back with you?" Jack asked. "I mean, I'll even take call if you want to go home."

"I'll be fine," Laurie assured him. "I'd rather stay busy than sit around in my apartment. You're welcome to come, but it's up to you."

Jack looked at Lou. "What's your plan?"

"I want to interview the man who found the body," Lou said.

"Then I want to meet this Najah, and check to see if we lucked out obtaining his gun. It might be that just reminding him of the science of ballistics might make him spill the beans, and wouldn't that be nice."

"Mind if I hang with you for a while?" Jack asked. "I'd like to meet Dr. Najah myself."

"Be my guest."

Jack turned to Laurie. "I'll be over. I'll even help you with that police custody case if you'd like."

"It's not going to be a problem," Laurie said. "I'll see you when I see you, but thanks for coming in and doing the case that you did. I really mean that."

Laurie gave each man a hug and lingered a little longer with Jack. She even gave his arm an added squeeze before walking out.

Prior to leaving the hospital administration area, Laurie took a detour into the ladies' room. Balancing Roger's lists and the CD on the edge of the washbasin, Laurie went into the stall. While she relieved herself, her mind flip-flopped from Roger's untimely demise to those of the two teenagers, whose innocent mischief had caused their deaths. It reminded her that humans, like all living organisms large and small, were always precariously poised on the edge of the abyss.

Preoccupied with such thoughts, Laurie used a small, folded wad of toilet tissue to wipe herself. As she was about to drop the paper in the toilet, she noticed something abnormal. There was a tiny bit of blood. She was spotting!

Laurie instinctively recoiled from the implications. It was only a minute amount of blood, yet as far as she could remember, any bleeding wasn't a good sign during a pregnancy, especially so early. At the same time, the limited exposure she'd had to obstetrics as a medical student had long since faded in her memory, so she didn't want to jump to conclusions.

Why does something like this always have to happen on a weekend? Laurie silently lamented. She'd like to ask Laura Riley the significance but was reluctant to call her on a Saturday. Laurie took a fresh piece of toilet tissue and again blotted herself. The blood didn't reappear, which provided a bit of consolation, yet combining the fact that there had been any blood with the right lower quadrant discomfort she'd been having lately seemed inauspicious at best.

Out at the sink, while she was washing her hands, Laurie looked at herself in the mirror. The last few nights of restless sleep had taken their toll. Although hardly in Janice's league, her eyes had dark circles and looked tired, and her face was drawn. She had a bad feeling that she might be facing yet another upheaval and prayed that if it were to happen, she'd find the emotional reserve to deal with it.

nineteen

It didn't take laurie as long as she'd feared to get back to the OCME, but once again, the ride in the taxi markedly aggravated her abdominal distress. Marvin had been waiting for her, and she immediately posted the police custody case, which turned out to be therapeutic. By the time she finished the autopsy, the pain had vanished and in its stead was a vague sensation of pressure. As she changed out of her scrubs, she pressed the area with her fingers. In contrast to what had happened that morning, palpating the area made it feel worse. As confused as ever, she went into the toilet stall to see if she was spotting, but she wasn't.

Laurie went up to her office and stared at her phone. Once again, she thought about calling Laura Riley but had the same reluctance. She didn't even know the woman, and she hated to start out the relationship by bothering her on a weekend with a problem that could probably wait until Monday. After all, Laurie had been having the symptoms for a number of days. The sudden appearance of the few drops of blood was the only aspect that was truly different, and that seemingly had stopped.

Annoyed with herself for her indecisiveness, Laurie switched to thinking about calling Calvin. She could update him on Roger and give him a heads-up on the police custody case. She'd found extensive trauma to the prisoner's larynx, with the implication that excessive force had been used. Such cases were invariably politically challenging and Calvin would need to be apprised. Yet there was no apparent pressure from the media, and the toxicology had yet to be done. Laurie decided it could all wait until Monday unless Calvin took it upon himself to call.

Instead of making any phone calls, Laurie decided to spend some serious time with the charts from Queens and then Roger's lists. She felt she owed it to him, since he had, in a way, sadly given his life for the cause.

The first thing that she noticed was that the St. Francis charts were significantly different from the General's. Whereas the Manhattan General was a tertiary teaching hospital, St. Francis was a mere community institution. There were no interns or residents writing notes, so the charts were much skimpier. Even the attending doctor's notes and the nurses' notes were shorter, which made them much easier to go through.

As she expected from having read the forensic investigators' reports on each of the cases, the demographics matched those of the General. The victims were all relatively youthful, and had died within twenty-four hours of elective surgery. They were also all healthy, compounding the tragedy.

Laurie then remembered Roger saying that he'd discovered that the General cases were all relatively recent subscribers to AmeriCare. Turning to the biographical data section of the chart she was currently examining, Laurie saw that it was the same. She quickly checked the other five Queens charts. All of the patients had been AmeriCare subscribers for less than a year. Two of them had been subscribers for only two months.