shipments came in months before they were needed. She also said there no employees at the warehouse or at the office.
'Sounds like a one-man operation, ' Jack said.
'Very much so, ' Helen said.
Jack thanked her profusely and reiterated his sympathies. Then he suggested that she contact her doctor about possible prophylactic antibiotics even though he explained that she was probably not at risk since person-to- person spread did not occur and she hadn't been exposed to the hides. Finally he told her she'd probably be hearing from other Department of Health professionals. She thanked him for the call, and they disconnected.
Jack swung around to face Chet, who couldn't have helped but overhear the conversation.
'Sounds like you solved that one pretty quickly, ' Chet said. 'At least now you don't have to put your life at risk by going out there in the field.'
'I'm disappointed, ' Jack said with a sigh.
'What can you possibly be disappointed about? ' Chet asked with exasperated disbelief. 'You've made a brilliant and rapid diagnosis and you've even solved what could have been a difficult epidemiological enigma.'
'That's the problem, ' Jack said dispiritedly. 'It was too easy, too pat. With my last exotic disease it was a real mystery. I like challenges.'
'I don't know what you're complaining about, ' Chet said. 'I wish some of my cases would have such nice tidy endings.' Jack grabbed his open textbook of medicine and stuck it under Chet's nose. He pointed to a specific paragraph and told his officemate to read it. Chet did as he was told. When he was finished, he looked up.
'Now that was an epidemiological challenge, ' Jack said. 'Can you imagine? A slew of inhalation anthrax cases from spores leaking out of a bio-weapons factory! What a disaster! '
'Where's Sverdlovsk? ' Chet asked.
'How should I know? ' Jack commented. 'Obviously someplace in the former Soviet Union.'
'I'd never heard about that 1979 incident, ' Chet said. He reread the paragraph. 'What a joke! The Russians tried to pass it off as exposure to contaminated meat.'
'From a forensic point of view, it would have been a fascinating case, ' Jack said.
'Certainly a lot more provocative than picking up a case in a rug salesman.' ..
Jack got to his feet. After appearing so animated earlier, he now looked depressed.
'Where are you going? ' Chet asked.
'Down to see Calvin, ' Jack said. 'He told me that if my case turned out to be anthrax he wanted to know right away.'
'Cheer up! ' Chet urged. 'You look like death warmed over.' Jack tried to smile. He walked down to the elevator and pushed the button.
What he didn't tell Chet was that his restless mood hadn't resulted only from the anthrax case's resolving itself so easily. It was also about the mystery with Laur
As the elevator descended, Jack tried to think how he could get back at her. The only idea that came to mind was to buy her a Christmas present over the next few days and then start giving her confusing hints.
Laurie was always wildly curious about presents and the suspense ate at her. Two months of suspense would surely be adequate revenge.
Emerging on the first floor, Jack felt better. The Christmas present idea was sounding better and better, although now he'd have to think of something to buy.
Calvin was in his office working on the reams of paper that passed over his desk every day. His hand was so large that the way his fingers had to hold his pen looked comical. He glanced up when Jack approached the desk.
'Are you sure you don't want to bet on that anthrax diagnosis? ' Jack asked.
'Don't tell me it was positive? ' Calvin leaned back in his chair, and it protested loudly under his weight.
'According to Agnes it was anthrax, ' Jack said. 'Cultures are pend.
, , 'Holy crap! ' Calvin exclaimed. 'This is going to raise some hackles in the Department of Health.'
'Actually I don't think that's the case, ' Jack said.
'Oh? ' Calvin replied. Jack never failed to surprise him. 'Why the hell not? ' B. e 'Because the disease does not spread person to person, and because it was an occupational exposure limited to the decedent.
The source is apparently safely locked up in a warehouse in Queens.'
'I'm all ears, ' Calvin said. 'Talk to me! ' Jack explained the Corinthian Rug Company connection, and the recent shipment of rugs and goatskins from Turkey. Calvin nodded as Jack spoke.
'Thank the Lord for small favors, ' Calvin said. He tipped forward in his chair, and the workings again moaned in complaint. 'I'll have Bingham call Patricia Markham, the Commissioner of Health. Why don't you phone the city epidemiologist, the one you worked with so closely concerning the plague case. What was his name? '
'Clint Abelard, ' Jack said.
'Yeah, that's the guy, ' Calvin said. 'Give him a call. It will foster that cooperative interagency agenda the mayor's been harping on.'
'Clint Abelard and I hardly worked closely, ' Jack said. 'Back then when I tried to call him he wouldn't even talk to me on the phone.'
'I'm sure he'll feel differently in light of what eventually transpired, ' Calvin said.
'Why not have someone else on our capable staff make the call? ' Jack said. 'Like one of the janitors.'
'Hold the sarcasm, ' Calvin said.
'Don't cause problems! Call the man!
Case closed! Now, what about that prisoner death? '
'What do you mean, What about the prisoner death'? ' Jack asked. 'You saw the blood in the neck muscles and the broken hyoid bone. They had him in a deadly choke hold.'
'What about his brain? ' Calvin asked. 'Did you find anything? '
'You mean like a temporal lobe tumor, ' Jack said.
'So we could suggest he'd had a psychomotor seizure that turned him into a raving madman.
Sorry! The brain was normal.'
'Do me a favor and look at the histology carefully, ' Calvin said.
'Find something! '
'This case is in the hands of our happy toxicologist, ' Jack said.
'Maybe he'll come up with cocaine or something like that.'
'I want the completed file including death certificate on my desk by Thursday, ' Calvin said. 'I've already got a call from the attorney general's office.'
'In that case it would help if you gave John Devries a call, ' Jack said. 'A request to the lab for a rapid result coming from the front office would have far more import than from a grunt like me.'
'I'll call John, ' Calvin said. 'But irrespective of what John comes up with, it's going to be your job to make sure there's something in the file that leaves the door open, even if only by a crack.' Jack rolled his eyes and headed for the door. He knew what Calvin was implying, namely that the police commissioner had impressed Bingham that the involved officers needed some justification for the deadly restraining force they'd used. Jack knew prisoners could be violent, Dealing with them was a job he did not envy.
At the same time there had been episodes of abuse on the part of the police. Making judgments beyond the forensic facts was a slippery slope Jack refused to descend.
'Hold up! ' Calvin called out before Jack was beyond earshot.
Jack leaned back in the deputy chief's office.
'There's someone else I want you to call about the anthrax case, ' Calvin said. 'Stan Thornton. Do you know him? '
'Sure, ' Jack said.
Stan Thornton was the director of the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. He'd been the featured speaker at one of the Thursday afternoon medical examiner's conferences organized in the spirit of interagency cooperation. The topic had been mortuary challenges in the event of a disaster associated with a weapon of mass destruction.
Jack had found the talk disturbing. Prior to the lecture he'd never seriously contemplated the logistics of
