Death Benefit (42 page)

“Thank you so much for your help,” Pia said nervously, looking at Laurie and Jack but not quite looking them in the eye. She was itching to get away. “I can be in touch about the isotopes tomorrow.”

Pia didn’t want to be trapped there when the MEs called the authorities, which she knew they would do shortly. She had to finish this on her terms.

“Young lady, what’s going on?” Jack said. “You show up with a Geiger counter in a shopping bag and bruises on your face. Are you a medical student at all? Who sent you here?”

“No one sent me,” said Pia. “I can see how this must look, but I am a medical student. You have to trust me—no one else was contaminated, I’m sure of it. But I can’t stay here, I have to get back, I’m sorry.”

Pia started backing toward the door, and Jack stepped toward her.

“You can’t hold me here if I want to leave,” Pia said. “And I want to leave. Right now!”

Laurie touched Jack on the shoulder, and he paused. Pia turned and walked away quickly. Chet followed and looked back at Jack, puzzlement written on his face. He had no idea what to do. He didn’t even have her cell number. Pia and Chet disappeared. Maureen was confused too, wondering if she should call security.

“She’s right, Jack, we can’t keep her here. She said she’s at Columbia, so she won’t be hard to find.”

“If she wasn’t lying about that too.”

Part of what Jack and Laurie liked about their work as MEs was the unexpected. This was something very new.

“What do you make of it?” Laurie asked.

“I dunno,” said Jack. “There’s a lot she isn’t saying. She suspected there’d be radiation in the bodies. Of course she did, she brought her own Geiger counter! But when she found what she was looking for, she was completely spooked. More like terrified.”

“Definitely,” Laurie said. “We need to get someone to track her down.”

“I agree.”

Jack thought for a second.

“Let’s check the other guy quickly.”

Maureen was glad to have something to do. She fetched Yamamoto’s specimens. They looked for all intents and purposes the same as Rothman’s, mirror images in fact. But whether they were radioactive they had no idea. Pia had taken her Geiger counter with her.

“Should we call DeVries to find out how we can determine what the radioisotope we’re dealing with is?” Jack asked, referring to the OCME head toxicologist.

Suddenly Laurie remembered a disaster kit that the OCME had put together after the agency had recovered from 9/11, the events of which had caught them, and most of the city agencies, completely unprepared. The concern was that if 9/11 had been a nuclear terrorist event, OCME would have been completely unable to cope. So as not to be caught unawares, the disaster kit had been put together. “I think there’s an instrument in the disaster kit that detects radiation,” Laurie said. “And it should be able to identify the radioisotopes involved. You remember? Bingham insisted on getting it.”

Jack didn’t recall, but he trusted Laurie’s memory. When she left to see if she could find the device, Jack called John DeVries, the toxicologist, and asked him how they could identify the radioactive material.

“I honestly have no idea, Jack. My whole career I’ve never had to, thank goodness. The only radioactive cases to come through the OCME in my experience were patients being treated by nuclear medicine so we already knew the identity of the radioisotope. I guess you’ll use atomic absorption somehow but I’ll have to get back to you. It’s Friday night, you know, Jack.”

“I know it is, John. Many thanks.”

That was a dead end for now. Then Laurie returned. She’d found the disaster kit and in it a Berkeley Nucleonics Corp. handheld Model 935 Surveillance and Measurement System, capable of identifying individual isotopes. Together Jack and Laurie read the directions and then used the machine to measure Rothman’s intestine’s emissions. After about five minutes, the result was available. Although mostly alpha particles were being emitted, there was also a low level of gamma radiation. It was the gamma radiation that yielded the result. It was polonium-210!

“The death certificates are wrong, both of them,” Jack said. “Damn it, I missed this completely. This was no accident.”

“Obviously. Do you know much about polonium?”

“I happen to know a little bit about it. First of all, there are no medical uses for it. In fact, you know what it’s mainly used for? It’s mixed with beryllium such that the alpha particles from the polonium cause the beryllium to release neutrons to act as a trigger for nuclear weapons.”

“Good God!” Laurie exclaimed. “How do you know
that
?”

“I don’t know how I know it, but I know it,” said Jack. He remembered something else. “It was used to kill that Russian guy in London, you remember that?”

“Oh, yes, the defected former KGB officer?”

“Right.”

Laurie and Jack had taken a professional interest in the case a few years back as did most forensic pathologists.

“We have to report this to Homeland Security,” Laurie said.

“Yes,” Jack said. “It doesn’t mean Rothman and Yamamoto were making nuclear weapons, but it does mean that they didn’t die from typhoid fever alone. They had typhoid fever from the salmonella, but they obviously had radiation sickness on top of it. My guess at this point is that the typhoid was a mask for the polonium, which, in retrospect, was probably the lethal agent. I should have questioned the fact that the entire gut was involved.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Laurie said. “I can assure you that no one could have made this diagnosis.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Jack agreed, although he wondered for a moment if he wasn’t just making an excuse for himself. “I have to say, it’s a rather devilishly ingenious way of murdering someone. And whoever did it nearly got away with it. It fooled me. It would have got past everyone if not for that girl. What happened to Chet—maybe he talked her into staying?”

Jack got out his cell phone and called Chet.

“Chet, that girl, is she still here?”

Jack listened for a second.

“All right. You better get back up here.” Jack disconnected. He looked at Laurie. “She’s gone. According to Chet, no matter what he said, she literally ran out of the building. And he didn’t get her contact information.”

“She’s got to be found. She could be in danger,” said Laurie.

“You’ve got that right. If whoever is involved in this knows what she knows . . .” Jack didn’t finish his sentence. Laurie instinctively knew what he meant. Instead Jack said, “I’ll call the chief. This is going to be a bombshell and a media circus.”

“And I’ll call Lou. And then Paula. It looks like we’re spending more of our Friday night here.”

Jack nodded. He looked over at Maureen. “Sorry about all this,” he said. “A bit of an emergency. Would you mind getting the rest of the specimens? They’re going to have to be put in a shielded container of some kind.”

“Will do,” Maureen said. She’d picked up on Jack and Laurie’s anxiety.

Jack and Laurie then ran out of the histology lab, down the stairs, and back to Laurie’s office. As he punched in the numbers for Dr. Harold Bingham, the OCME chief, Jack could already see the problems that lay ahead: It was a high-profile case involving prominent medical researchers and the cause of death and the manner of death had been missed. At least they’d found it now, but that was unlikely to appease Bingham. It was Bingham who would have to report the findings to the various government agencies and deal with them, a job that Jack was thankful he did not have to do.

While Jack was calling Bingham, Laurie called Lou Soldano on his cell.

“Lou, it’s Laurie. Can you talk?” She dispensed with any pleasantries.

“Hey, Laurie, nice to hear your voice,” Lou said, his tone becoming wary. “What’s happening?”

“We have a situation here at the office. It seems we have a case of polonium poisoning. Remember that case in London four or five years ago?”

“Of course I do!” Lou said gravely.

Laurie took Lou through what she knew—about the mysterious medical student arriving with her Geiger counter, about how she was upset not to find the researchers’ bodies but able to test the tissue Jack had saved, and about her extreme reaction at the findings.

“If you’re right and it’s a copycat of that Russian guy and you mention the words ‘KGB’ and ‘radiation,’ this is going to be a shit storm, pardon my French. All the alphabet agencies, the media . . . And if the Russians are involved, it’s serious trouble. You gotta keep a lid on it.”

“Jack’s on the phone to Bingham right now. I’ll call the PR people and get them in lockdown mode.”

“Appreciate it, Laurie. Now we gotta find this girl. Any reason to think she’s not going back up to Columbia?”

“Hold on a second, Lou, Chet just walked in.” Laurie turned to McGovern.

“Chet, the woman, she say where she was going?”

“No, she half jogged down Thirtieth Street, heading west. I assumed she was heading back up to Columbia. Why are you asking? What’s going on, Laurie?”

Laurie ignored Chet.

“I’d guess she’s heading back to the subway, Lou. Ten, fifteen minutes ago now.”

“Lou? Are you talking to Lou Soldano?” Laurie waved him off. Jack was standing in the corner, on the phone with a finger in his other ear and saying a lot of “yessirs” and “nosirs.”

“I’ll put out an APB if you can give me a description. You said she seemed scared?”

“Very. She couldn’t wait to get out of here,” Laurie said.

“Sounds like she knows more than she should. So how would you describe her?”

“Maybe five-six, slim, about what, one-ten? Black hair, just down to the shoulder. Lovely skin.”

“ ‘Lovely skin’ ain’t a description, Laurie.”

Jack had finished talking with Bingham, and he piped up. “She’s incredibly attractive. Maybe French/Moroccan/Slavic. Chet McGovern here was panting like a dog.”

McGovern took the phone from Laurie.

“I’d say she’s more likely Italian. Dark skin, like olive color. Soft features, dark brown eyes. Gorgeous, like a supermodel. She told me her name is Grazdani, that’s all. You think she’s in danger?”

Laurie snatched back the phone.

“Lou, it’s Laurie again. Remember I said she’s a fourth-year medical student at Columbia.”

“Good point,” Lou said. “If we’re lucky, we might be able to get a picture from Columbia, if she actually goes to Columbia. Now, you guys have to zip your lips. Keep me posted if anything happens. I gotta go, Laurie. I’ll be putting a task force together including the NYPD organized-crime unit. This is serious, Laurie. This has organized crime written all over it. And it has to somehow involve the Russians. Jesus, Laurie, that polonium stuff is associated with nuclear weapons.”

 

 

P
ia emerged from the subway at the same entrance she’d used on her way to the OCME, pausing near the MTA area map in the shadow of the Columbia Medical Center’s art deco buildings. She’d raced out of the medical examiner’s office with her head spinning. It was dark, the streets were wet and slick, and there seemed to be hundreds of people on the sidewalks. Pia couldn’t face going all the way across town in the rain despite her umbrella so she took a different route, walking to Park Avenue South and the Twenty-eighth Street station on the 6 line, then traveling to Grand Central and taking the S train, the shuttle across town to Times Square. There she had taken the A express train up to Washington Heights.

Throughout the entire unpleasant train ride Pia had acted like a zombie, seemingly impervious to her environment. A few people, mostly men, tried to talk to her, but she didn’t respond in the slightest. She was in a daze, going over and over the events since Rothman and Yamamoto had fallen ill. It was as if she were experiencing a living nightmare. Having her suspicions corroborated at the OCME afforded her no satisfaction in the slightest. All it had done was cement her fears and sense of dread. She didn’t know specifically if the lethal agent that had been given to Rothman and Yamamoto was polonium, but her intuition told her it was. What to do now was the question for which she had no answer. Maybe she should just run and hide someplace until all the pieces fell wherever they were going to fall. The reality was that she had certainly opened the floodgates at the OCME. Whether she liked it or not or intended it or not, the police were now going to be involved, along with every other law enforcement agency. In her vernacular, the shit was about to hit the fan.

Pia’s intention when she got out of the subway was to hurry back to the dorm. She felt her only resource was George. Even though she was under no illusion that George would know what to do, she hoped she could use him as a sounding board. The fact was, she had no one else. She’d thought briefly about involving the two other stalwarts in her life—Sheila Brown and the mother superior—to get their advice, but the story was much too long and complex and more important, Pia was reluctant to put either of them at risk. In the current situation, knowledge was dangerous.

Although Pia was desperate to get to the dorm, she was also terrified. The moment she’d emerged from the relative safety of the subway, she felt inordinately vulnerable. The men who had attacked her said they would be watching her, and she believed them. It meant that they were there, lurking somewhere in the darkness surrounding the medical center. Although where she was at that moment, near the corner of Broadway and 168th Street, was lit and crowded with commuters, looking west down 168th Street was neither.

Holding her umbrella in the crook of her neck, Pia got out her cell phone, which she’d turned off before going into the OCME. She switched it on. Immediately she saw she had more than ten missed calls and three voice mails. She called George, but he didn’t answer. Instead she left a voice message of her own: “George, it’s me. It’s about six forty-five. I’m at the hospital entrance to the subway at 168th Street. Can you come get me so we can walk back to the dorm together? Okay, I’ll be waiting here.”