"I didn't have any eureka moment, either," Latasha admitted. "I might have laughed at some of your ideas, but I have to give you credit for creativity. I can't come up with nothing, you know what I'm saying?"

Jack smiled. "Maybe if you combined what I've told you with some of this material, you would," Jack said. He gestured at the case-file material on the table. "There's quite a cast of characters. There's depositions here of four times the number of witnesses actually called."

"I'd be happy to read some if you could tell me which you think would be potentially the most helpful."

"If you were to read any, read Craig Bowman's and Jordan Stanhope's. As defendant and plaintiff, they occupy center stage. Actually, I want to reread both their recollections of Patience's symptoms. For sake of argument, if she had been poisoned as we're considering, subtle symptoms would be crucial. You know, as well as I, that some poisons are nigh impossible to find in the complicated soup of chemicals that make up a human being. More than likely, we'll have to tell Allan what to look for in order for him to find it."

"Where are Dr. Bowman's and Mr. Stanhope's depositions?"

Jack picked them up. He had placed them in their own stack. Both were thick. He reached across and gave them to Latasha.

"Holy shit!" she exclaimed, feeling their weight. "What is this, War and Peace? How many pages do we have here?"

"Craig Bowman's deposition went on for days. The court reporter has to take down every word."

"I'm not sure I'm up to this at nearly two a.m.," Latasha said. She let the volumes thump down on the table in front of her.

"It's all dialogue with lots of spacing. It's actually easy to breeze through them for the most part."

"What are these scientific reprints doing here?" Latasha said, picking up the small stack of scientific publications.

"Dr. Bowman is the lead author in most of them and a contributing author in the rest. Craig's lawyer had considered introducing them as supporting evidence of Craig's commitment to medicine as a way of blunting the plaintiff's stratagem of character assassination."

"I remember this one when it came out in the Journal," Latasha said, holding up Craig's seminal article in the New EnglandJournal of Medicine.

Once again, Jack was duly impressed. "You find time to read such esoterica?"

"This isn't esoteric stuff," Latasha said with a disapproving chuckle. "Membrane physiology is key in just about every field of medicine these days, particularly pharmacology and immunology even infectious disease and cancer."

"Okay, okay!" Jack said, holding up his hands as if to protect himself. "I take back what I said. My problem is that I went to medical school in the last century."

"That's a lame excuse," Latasha said. She flipped through the pages of Craig's paper. "Sodium channel function is the basis of muscle and nerve function. If they don't work, nothing works."

"All right already," Jack said. "You made your point. I'll bone up on it."

Latasha's cell phone suddenly sprang to life. In the silence, it made both of them jump.

Latasha snatched it up, glanced at the LCD screen, and then flipped it open. "What's happening?" she said without preamble, pressing the phone to her ear.

Jack tried to hear the voice on the other end but couldn't. He assumed and hoped it was Allan.

The conversation was pointedly short. Latasha merely said, "You got it," and flipped her phone shut. She stood up.

"Who was it?" Jack asked.

"Allan," Latasha said. "He wants us to pay him a visit in his lab, which is just around the corner. I believe it's worth the effort if we're thinking of keeping him busy with our stuff. Are you game?"

"Are you kidding?" Jack questioned rhetorically. He pushed his chair back and got to his feet.

Jack hadn't realized that the Boston medical examiner's office was on the periphery of the vast Boston City Hospital Medical Center complex. Despite the hour, they passed a number of medical-center employees, including several medical students, walking between various buildings. No one seemed in a hurry, despite the hour. Everyone was enjoying the warmth and silky texture of the air. Although technically still spring, it felt like a summer night.

The toxicology lab was a mere two short blocks' walk in a new, eight-story glass-and-steel structure.

In the elevator on the way up to the sixth floor, Jack looked over at Latasha. Her dark eyes were riveted on the floor indicator display, and her face was reflecting her rightful fatigue.

"I apologize in advance if I say anything inappropriate," Jack said, "but I have the sense that this special effort Allan Smitham is willing to devote to this case is because of unrequited feelings he has for you."

"Maybe," Latasha said equivocally.

"I hope that accepting his aid doesn't put you in an uncomfortable position."

"I think I can handle it," Latasha said in a tone that proclaimed: End of discussion.

The lab was state-of-the-art and almost deserted. In addition to Allan, there were only two other people there, both lab technicians who were busily engaged at the far side of the generous-sized room. There were three aisles of benches groaning under the weight of gleaming new equipment.

Allan was a striking-looking African American with a closely trimmed mustache and goatee that gave him an intimidatingly Mephistophelean air. Adding to his imposing appearance was a heavily muscular frame barely concealed by a white lab coat with rolled-up sleeves over a form-fitting black T-shirt. His skin was a burnished mahogany, a shade or two darker than Latasha's. His eyes were bright and fixated on his old college friend.

Latasha introduced Jack, who rated only a quick but firm handshake and a rapid, appraising glance. Allan was unabashedly interested in Latasha, whom he lavished with a broad smile filled with startlingly white teeth.

"You shouldn't make yourself such a stranger, girl," Allan said as he gestured toward his tiny, utilitarian office. He ended up sitting at his desk while Latasha and Jack took two straight chairs in his line of sight.

"You have an impressive lab," Jack said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "Seems lean on staff, though."

"Just for this shift," Allan said. He was still smiling at Latasha. "In terms of the number of employees, the difference between us and the day shift is like night and day." He laughed at his own joke. Jack had the feeling he wasn't lacking self-esteem or humor.

"What did you find with our samples?" Latasha asked, cutting to the chase.

"Ah, yes," Allan said, steepling his fingers while his elbows rested on the desk. "You gave me a little background in your note, which I'd like to go over to make sure I understand. The patient died of a heart attack approximately eight months ago. She was embalmed, interred, and recently exhumed. What you want to do is rule out drug involvement."

"Let's put it more succinctly," Latasha said. "Her manner of death was assumed to be natural. We want to be sure it wasn't homicide."

"Okay," Allan intoned as if mulling over what he wanted to say next.

"What was the result of the screen?" Latasha asked impatiently. "Why are you dragging this out?"

Jack inwardly cringed at Latasha's tone. It made him uncomfortable that she was being less than gracious with Allan, who was doing them an enormous favor. For Jack, it was becoming progressively clear there was something between them that he didn't know and didn't want to know.

"I want to be sure you interpret the findings correctly," Allan said defensively.

"We're both medical examiners," Latasha shot back. "I think we are relatively informed about the limitations of a toxicology screen."

"Informed enough to know the predictive value of a negative test is only about forty percent?" Allan questioned, eyebrows raised. "And that is with a recently deceased, not embalmed, corpse."