Free Cure by Robin Cook Page A

Tadamasa had him on the line. He thought back to the conversation he’d had with the man that morning, remembering he’d said that Satoshi’s death had gone flawlessly and would be interpreted as a natural death of an unidentified individual. Hisayuki hoped that was going to be true, particularly the natural-death part, because if it were to be considered a murder and the Yamaguchi-gumi found out that the Aizukotetsu-kai were involved, there was a good chance a full-blown war would flare up almost immediately.

    3

    MARCH 25, 2010
    THURSDAY, 7:44 a.m.
    NEW YORK CITY

    L aurie was the first out of the taxi at the corner of First Avenue and 30th Street.
    The building was as unattractive as ever: a 1960s relic with its blue tile and aluminum windows. It was ugly then and ugly now. But it looked familiar to her, as though she was coming home after a long trip away. As for her earlier nervousness about her professional competence, seeing the building made it worse. The workday was about to begin.

    Turning back to the taxi, she watched Jack climb out after having paid the fare.
    He’d graciously offered to ride with her instead of using his beloved bike, which had recently changed to a Cannondale after his Trek had been mortally injured by a city bus that had run over it. Luckily, Jack was not on the bike at the time, but he had had to watch the tragedy from a few feet away.

    “Well, we’re here,” Jack said, glancing at this watch. It was later than he liked.
    Actually, later than they were supposed to arrive, which was early enough to start the first autopsies of the day at seven-thirty. But no one started their cases at seven-thirty except Jack on normal days. The seven-thirty rule had been made by the chief, Dr. Harold Bingham, but as he’d aged, his insistence of the hated early start had faltered. As a result, most of the senior staff began when they wanted to, sometime after eight. Jack stuck with the early rule because it gave him the chance to choose his cases rather than wait for what was assigned to 42

    him, by the on-call medical examiner, one of whose tasks was to arrive before the others to go over the cases that had came in during the night, to decide which needed to have postmortems and who would do them. The main part of the on-call medical examiner’s job was to be available if one of the evening or night medical legal investigators, or MLIs, needed the backup of a forensic pathologist for a difficult case. It was a job Jack himself did for a week three or four times a year when his turn rolled around.

    “I’m sorry we are late,” Laurie said, noticing Jack checking his watch. “I’ll do better in the future.” They were behind schedule because the handoff of JJ to Leticia had not gone as smoothly as Laurie had hoped. Every time she’d descended the stairs to where Jack was waiting at the front door, she’d think of something else and dash back up to the kitchen, where JJ and Leticia were dealing with oatmeal and pears, most of which, but not all, was being swallowed.

    “No problem,” Jack said. “How do you feel?”

    “As best as can be expected.”

    “You are going to be fine,” Jack assured her.

    Yeah, sure, Laurie said silently to herself. She followed him up the front steps and through the door. She entered the foyer with a sense of déjà vu. There was the same tired-looking sofa, with the same coffee table in front with a smattering of outdated magazines, some without covers. There were the same locked doors leading into the identification room and into the administrative offices of the chief medical examiner and the chief of staff.

    Finally, there was the same reception counter guarded by Marlene Wilson, a kind African-American woman whose flawless complexion belied her years and whose attitude was always happy and welcoming.

    “Dr. Montgomery!” Marlene exclaimed, catching sight of Laurie. “Welcome back,”
    she cried with obvious glee. Without a second’s hesitation,