"I mean, how many doctors arrive at the ER riding with the patient in the ambulance? I can tell you: not many. The fact that he's being sued is a travesty. It shows how far out of whack the system is when doctors like Dr. Bowman are ambushed by the likes of the ambulance-chaser lawyer on the case. I can't remember his name."

"Tony Fasano," Jack offered. He was enjoying hearing someone who shared his thoughts, although he wondered if Georgina had heard the social side of Craig's tale, especially since Leona had come to the ER that fatal night.

"That was it: Tony Fasano. When he first came snooping around here, I thought he was an extra in one of those gangster movies. I really did. I mean, I couldn't imagine he was for real. Did he really go to law school?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, it wasn't Harvard, I can tell you that. Anyway, I can't imagine him calling me as a witness. I told him exactly what I thought of Dr. Bowman. I think he did a great job. He even had a portable ECG machine and had already tested for biomarkers before they arrived here at the ER."

Jack nodded as Georgina spoke. He'd read all this in her deposition in which she'd fulsomely praised Craig.

When she fell silent, Jack said, "What I wanted to talk to you people about was the cyanosis."

"What about the cyanosis?" Dr. Matt Gilbert asked. It was the first time he'd spoken. His laid-back personality was overwhelmed by Georgina 's vivacity.

"You remember the cyanosis, silly," Georgina said, giving Matt a playful slap on the shoulder before Jack could speak. "She was as blue as a blue moon when they brought her in here."

"I don't think that expression has anything to do with color," Matt said.

"It doesn't?" Georgina questioned. "Well, it should."

"Do you not remember the cyanosis?" Jack asked Matt.

"Vaguely, I suppose, but her general condition trumped everything else."

"You described it as 'central cyanosis' in your notes," Jack said to Georgina. "Was there some specific reason for that?"

"Well, of course! She was blue all over, not just her fingers or legs. Her whole body was blue until they got her on oxygen with the respirator and started doing cardiac massage."

"What do you think might have been the cause?" Jack asked. "Do you think it could have been a right-to-left shunt or maybe severe pulmonary edema?"

"I don't know about a shunt," Matt said. "But she didn't have any pulmonary edema at all. Her lungs were clear."

"One thing I remember," Georgina said suddenly. "She was completely flaccid. When I started another IV line, her arm was like a rag doll's."

"Is that unique, in your experience?" Jack asked.

"Yeah," Georgina said. She looked at Matt for confirmation. "There's usually some resistance. I guess it varies with the degree of consciousness."

"Did either of you see any petechial hemorrhages in her eyes, any strange marks on her face or neck?"

Georgina shook her head. "I didn't." She looked at Matt.

"I was worrying too much about the big picture to see any such details," Matt said.

"Why do you ask?" Georgina questioned.

"I'm a medical examiner," Jack explained. "I'm trained to be cynical. Smothering or strangulation has to be at least considered in any sudden death with cyanosis."

"Now that's a new angle," Georgina said.

"A biomarker assay confirmed a heart attack," Matt said.

"I'm not questioning there was a myocardial infarction," Jack said. "But I'd be interested if something other than a natural process brought it on. Let me give you an example. I once had a case of a woman, arguably a few years older than Mrs. Stanhope, who had a heart attack immediately after being robbed at gunpoint. It was easy to prove a temporal connection, and the perpetrator is sitting on death row to this day."

"My word!" Georgina said.

After giving both individuals a business card that included his cell phone number, Jack headed back to his car. By the time he unlocked the door and climbed in, it was after four o'clock. He sat for a moment, looking out at the small pond. He thought about his conversation with the hospital staff, thinking it was a wash in regard to Craig's cause between Noelle and Georgina, with one avidly for and one avidly against. The trouble was that Noelle was surely going to testify, whereas Georgina, as she expected, probably would not since she wasn't on the defense list. Other than that, he hadn't learned much, or if he had, he was too dumb to recognize it. One thing was for certain: He'd liked and was impressed by all these people, and if he got into an accident and was brought in there, he'd feel he was in good hands.

Jack thought about his next move. What he would have liked to do was drive back to the Bowman house, suit up in his basketball gear, and have a run with David Thomas, Warren 's friend, over on Memorial Drive. But realistically speaking, Jack knew that if there were any chance of his contributing to the case by doing an autopsy on Patience Stanhope's earthly remains, he had to force himself to face Jordan Stanhope with the idea of getting him to sign the exhumation permit. The problem was how to get him to do it short of procuring a pistol and holding it to his temple. Jack could not think of a single reasonable stratagem and ultimately resigned himself to ad-libbing while trying to appeal to the man's sense of justice and fairness.

Jack took out the three-by-five index card that Harold Langley had given him with Harold's cell phone number and Jordan Stanhope's address. Balancing it on the steering wheel, he picked up the trusty Hertz map and tried to find the street. It took a bit of patience, but he located it near both Chandler Pond and Chestnut Hill Country Club. Assuming that the court would have recessed somewhere in the three thirty to four o'clock range, he thought now would be as appropriate a time as any to drop in for a visit. Whether he'd get into the man's house or not he had no idea, but it wasn't going to be for lack of trying.

It took him a half-hour of navigating a maddening maze of twisty streets to find the Stanhope house. The fact that Jordan Stanhope was a wealthy man was immediately apparent. The house was huge, with spacious, immaculate grounds, carefully pruned trees and shrubs, and flowering gardens. A shiny, new, dark blue Bentley two-door coupe was parked in the circular drive that fronted the house. A separate three-car garage with a carriage house above was just visible through the trees to the right of the main building.

Jack pulled his Hyundai Accent up alongside its obscenely expensive counterpart. The juxtaposition was a study in contrasts. He got out of his car and approached the other. He had to look inside the extravagant machine, humorously attributing his unexpected interest to a heretofore unexpressed gene on his Y chromosome. The windows were down, so the aroma of the luxurious leather bathed the whole area. The car was obviously brand-spanking-new. After making sure he wasn't being observed, Jack stuck his head through the driver's-side window. The control panel had a simple, rich elegance. Then he noticed something else: The keys were in the ignition. Jack stepped back. Although he thought it was the height of ridiculousness to spend the kind of money he imagined the car cost, the fact that the keys were available unleashed a pleasant fleeting fantasy of breezing down a scenic road in the Bentley with Laurie at his side. It was a reverie that reminded him of a recurrent dream of flying he'd had in his youth. But the daydream quickly dissolved to be replaced by a mild embarrassment of coveting another man's car, even if just for an imagined joyride.

Jack skirted the Bentley and approached the front door. His reaction to the car had surprised him on several levels, most important of which concerned the idea of unabashedly enjoying himself. For many years after the fateful plane crash, he'd been unable to do so, since it aroused his guilt of being the only one in the family still alive. The fact that he could entertain the idea now was the best suggestion yet that he'd made significant progress toward recovery.