with sharp political hearing. The employees did not miss much.
'Sorry about that, Darrell,' Rodgers said. 'Bob's angry.'
'He's Bob,' McCaskey replied.
'True.'
'Look, you've got things to do, and I've got to be somewhere,' McCaskey said. 'Let me know when you're free for a beer.'
'The end of the week should work.'
'Sounds good,' McCaskey said and shook Rodgers's hand. It seemed a remarkably anticlimactic gesture after all these years and all they had shared. But this was not the time or place for good-byes.
McCaskey hurried down the corridor to the elevator. He got in his car and switched on the new FIAT device, the Federal Intelligence Activity Transponder. It was a chip built into his watch and activated by pulling the stem and twisting it clockwise. The signal was monitored by all mobile metropolitan and state police units. It was basically a license to speed or leave the scene of an accident. It told the authorities that the car was on time- sensitive government business and could not be stopped. The FIATs were introduced two years before so that unmarked Homeland Security officials would not be stopped or detained. Though McCaskey was not on a high- priority mission, Scotland Yard was an important ally. He wanted to get them what they needed as quickly as possible.
Wilson's body had been taken to the Georgetown University Medical Center on Reservoir Road. That was where the medical officer was conducting autopsies while the coroner's office was being modernized.
McCaskey went downstairs to look at the body with Dr. Minnie Hennepin.
The middle-aged woman had red hair and freckles. She was wearing a sharply pressed lab coat.
'I guess this is what the Feds refer to as 'cover your ass,' the slender woman said as they walked down the concrete stairs.
'There's a little of that in everything we do,' McCaskey admitted.
'May I ask why Scotland Yard did not simply send over one of their own investigators?'
'The press would have been all over that,' McCaskey said. 'It would be positioned as suggesting a suspicion of wrongdoing. British authorities want to put their minds at ease and also be able to tell Wilson's shareholders that someone with criminal investigation experience had a look at the body.'
'You understand, Mr. McCaskey, that there was no evidence of lacerations or contusions other than what I would characterize as the natural result of an exuberant sexual encounter. We also did a very thorough toxicological examination. I'm not sure what's left.'
'You checked for every chemical that could produce results consistent with natural organic failure?' McCaskey asked.
'Everything from formaldehyde to pancuronium bromide,' Dr. Hennepin said. 'We found nothing.'
'Some of those chemicals dissipate very quickly.'
'That's true, Mr. McCaskey. But they would have to be of very low dosage and injected relatively near to the heart in order to be potent,' the doctor said. 'I did the pathology for that area of the body, looking for evidence of hypodermic trauma. There was none.'
'In the armpit?' McCaskey asked.
'Yes. I also checked the femoral artery, since that would be a rapid delivery system for chemicals.'
'Well, I'll have a look at the body anyway,' McCaskey said. 'You never know what will turn up.'
'Frankly, I'll be interested to see a nonmedical approach to a cadaver,' the doctor admitted. 'Have you done this sort of thing before?'
'I've sent a few people to the morgue but never had a look at them after they've made the trip.'
They reached the basement, and she turned on the light. The morgue was smaller than McCaskey had imagined, about the size of a bedroom. There were six stainless steel coolers on one wall in two rows of three.
