Jack found the section where Jordan discussed Patience's weakness, which, it turns out, didn't refer to a diminution of any particular muscle group. Rather, the weakness was a more global problem. It started with difficulty walking and progressed to difficulty sitting up in short order. Jack added the information to the yellow pad.

"There's something else you should know about batrachotoxin if you don't already. Its molecular mode of action is to depolarize electrical membranes like heart muscle and nerves. And do you know how it does it? It does it by affecting sodium transport, something you thought was esoterica. Remember?"

"What was that about sodium?" Jack asked as Latasha's comments penetrated his concentration. When Jack was thinking hard about something, he often could be oblivious to his surroundings, as Latasha had experienced.

"Batrachotoxin latches onto nerve and muscle cells and causes the sodium ion channels to lock in the open position, meaning the involved nerves and muscles stop functioning."

"Sodium," Jack repeated, as if in a daze.

"Yes," Latasha said. "Remember we were speaking…"

All of a sudden, Jack leaped to his feet and scrabbled madly through the litter spread around the table. "Where are those papers?" he demanded in a minor frenzy.

"What papers?" Latasha questioned. She had stopped speaking in mid-sentence and had leaned back in her chair, surprised by Jack's abrupt impetuosity. In his haste, he was knocking deposition transcripts off the table.

"You know!" he blurted, struggling to come up with the right word. "Those… those papers!"

"We've got a lot of papers here, big guy. God! How many Diet Cokes did you drink anyway?"

"Screw it!" Jack sputtered. He gave up on his search. Instead, he reached out toward Latasha. "Let me see that toxicology text!" He demanded rashly.

"Sure," Latasha said, mystified at his transformation. She watched as he riffled through the pages of the massive tome to get to the index. Once there, he hastily ran his fingers down the columns until he found what he was looking for. Then he went back to rapidly leafing through the book so fast that Latasha had a fear for its integrity. He found the correct page and was silent.

"Would it be asking too much for you to tell me what you are doing?" Latasha scoffed.

"I think I've had what you would call a eureka moment and I would call an epiphany," Jack muttered while continuing to read. "Yes!" he cried after a few moments, raising a triumphant fist in the air. He slammed the book closed and looked across the table at Latasha. "I have an idea of what to ask Allan to look for! It's weird, and if it is present, it might not fit all the facts as we know them, but it fits some of the most important ones, and it would prove Craig Bowman did not commit medical negligence."

"Like what?" Latasha demanded. She couldn't help but feel some irritation that Jack was being so coy. She was in no mood for games at almost five o'clock in the morning.

"Check out this strange symptom you wrote," Jack said. He reached over with the yellow pad and pointed to the notation "sensation of floating."

"Now, that's not your run-of-the-mill complaint of even the most dedicated hypochondriac. That suggests something truly weird was going on, and if Allan is able to find what I'm thinking, there would be the suggestion that Patience Stanhope was either a die-hard sushi fan or a crazed devotee of Haitian voodoo, but we're going to know differently."

"Jack!" Latasha said irritably. "I'm too tired for this kind of joking."

"I'm sorry" Jack said. "This apparent teasing is because I'm afraid I might be right. This is one of those situations, despite the effort involved, where I'd rather be wrong." He reached out for her. "Come on! I'll tell it to you straight while we hurry over to Allan's lab. This is going to go right down to the wire."

Jack nosed his worse-for-wear Hyundai to the curb behind a brown UPS truck. It was a loading area on busy Cambridge Street in front of a long, arcaded, curved building facing Boston City Hall. Jack thought the chances of getting a parking ticket, even though he was planning on being as fast as he could, were close to one hundred percent. He was hoping the car wouldn't be towed, but in case it was, he took his carry-on bag with him along with a large envelope with the return address of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner printed in the upper-left-hand corner.

He charged up a flight of stairs that penetrated the building and emerged into the courtyard fronting the Suffolk County Superior Court. Wasting no time, Jack sprinted over to the entrance. He was slowed down by security and the need for his carry-on, envelope, and cell phone to go through the X-ray machine. At the elevators, he made sure he pushed into the very next car.

As the elevator rose, Jack managed to glance at his watch. The fact that he was to be married in four hours wasn't lost on him, and the fact that he was in the wrong city gave him considerable anxiety. When the elevator arrived on the third floor, Jack tried to be as polite as he could as he struggled to get off. If he didn't know better, he would have thought the other passengers were deliberately impeding him.

Although on previous occasions, Jack had tried to be as quiet as possible while entering the courtroom, on this day he just burst in. His feeling was the more of a scene he created, the better. As he walked deliberately down the aisle toward the gate separating the bar area from the spectator area, most of the spectators turned to look at him, including Alexis in the first row. Jack nodded to her. The court officer was in his box, reading something out of sight on his desktop, and did not look up. The jury was in the jury box, as impassive as ever, and was focusing on Randolph, who was at the podium, apparently just beginning his closing statement. The judge was at his bench, looking at papers on his desktop. Both the court reporter and the clerk were busy at their stations. At the defense table, Jack saw the back of Craig's head and that of Randolph 's assistant. At the plaintiff's table, Jack could see the backs of the heads of Tony, Jordan, and Tony's assistant. All was in order; like an old-fashioned steam locomotive, the wheels of justice were slowly, implacably picking up speed and rolling to a conclusion.

It was Jack's intention to hijack the train. He didn't want to derail it, but wanted to stop it and let it take a different track. He reached the bar and stopped. He could see the jurors' eyes swing toward him without so much as a dent in their acquired impassivity. Randolph was continuing to speak in his cultured, mellifluous voice. His words were golden like the shafts of late-spring sunlight that skirted the blinds on the high windows and knifed down through the mote-filled air.

"Excuse me!" Jack said. "Excuse me!" he said louder when Randolph had continued to speak. Jack was not in his line of sight, but Randolph turned in Jack's direction when Jack called out the second time. His arctic-blue eyes reflected a mixture of confusion and vexation. The court officer, who had also missed Jack's first utterance, definitely heard the second. He got to his feet. Security in the courtroom was his bailiwick.

"I need to talk with you this very instant," Jack said, loud enough for everyone in the otherwise-silent courtroom to hear. "I know it's rather inconvenient, but it is of vital importance if you are interested in avoiding a miscarriage of justice."

"Counselor, what the devil is going on?" Judge Davidson demanded. He was tipping his head down to see over the top of his half-glasses. He motioned for the court officer to stay in his box.