degrees, he would be looking directly at her. But he didn’t turn his head, nor did he interrupt his conversation with the uniformed officers.
“He’s not looking at you,” Neil said.
“He doesn’t appear to be,” Jennifer agreed.
“Let’s get out of here before he does,” Neil said, grabbing Jennifer’s arm and giving it a tug.
As the crowd thinned, they were able to pick up the pace and soon emerged from the shadows and tunnel- like atmosphere of the bazaar. The enormous Jama Masjid was now in front and to the right. Jennifer slowed and glanced back over her shoulder into the depths of the bazaar, although she couldn’t see far.
“I feel more exposed out of the bazaar than in it,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m with you,” Neil agreed.
They both started to run, but as they did so, Jennifer kept glancing back over her shoulder.
“You’re really becoming progressivly paranoid, I’m afraid,” Neil commented between breaths.
“You’d be paranoid, too, if someone pointed a gun at you and got killed in the process.”
“I can’t argue with you there.”
Around the front entrance of the mosque they had to slow with the crowds of tourists and those who preyed on them. Jennifer continued checking over her shoulder, and as they neared the parking area, it paid off.
“Don’t look!” Jennifer said, continuing forward. “But that short plainclothes policeman is actually following us.”
Neil stopped, but didn’t turn around. “Where is he?”
“Behind us. Come on! Let’s get out of here.”
“No. Let’s see if he approaches us,” Neil said. “Hey, I’m responsible for you leaving the scene of a crime. I don’t want you getting into trouble for it.”
“Now you’re saying conflicting things.”
“I’m not. Really. As I said, if he recognizes you as having been in that cycle rickshaw, we need to talk to him. Can you still see him?”
Jennifer turned around and scanned the crowd. “No, I don’t.”
Neil turned around and looked. “There he is, moving away from the mosque. Another false alarm.”
“Where?”
Neil pointed.
“You’re right.”
They watched as Inspector Prasad disappeared up the street that butted into the Jama Masjid.
Jennifer glanced at Neil and shrugged. “Sorry!”
“Don’t be silly. Until he turned up that street I would have thought he was following us as well.”
Jennifer and Neil continued on, entering the parking lot. Neil, as the taller one, was able to rise up on his toes and see over the sea of cars. The first black Mercedes they saw was not the Amal Palace car, but the second one was. Then it took the parking attendants almost twenty minutes to move all the cars boxing it in. Five minutes after that Jennifer and Neil were back on the main road heading south toward the Amal Palace.
“I thought you were going to go to Karim’s,” the driver said to Jennifer, while glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
“I lost my appetite,” Jennifer called from the backseat. “I just want to go back to the hotel.”
“Have you seen any sights here in Delhi?” Neil asked Jennifer.
“None,” Jennifer said. “This was to be my big attempt. Unfortunately it was a bust.” She held out her hand. It was trembling, not as much as it had been right after the shooting event but grossly shaking nonetheless.
“Despite this disaster, I gather you are doing much better dealing with your grandmother’s issues than you thought you would be able to do.”
Jennifer took in a deep breath and let it out through partially pursed lips. “I guess I am. I didn’t realize how much of a separation I would be making between my grandmother’s body and her soul or spirit. I don’t know if it is a side benefit of going to medical school and having worked with cadavers or what. Of course, when I looked at Granny’s body the first time, it got to me. But since then, I’ve been thinking of it as just a used body, and what it can tell us about how she died. At this point I really want there to be an autopsy.”
“Are they going to do an autopsy for you?”
“I wish. No, no autopsy. They have a signed death certificate, and once that’s signed, they want the body embalmed or cremated. My grandmother’s case manager is dead set, so to speak, on getting the body disposed of and has been ragging on me from day one, which for me was Monday morning.”
“Where is the body, in a morgue?”
“Yeah, sure,” Jennifer voiced with a mocking laugh. “Granny’s body and that of a man named Benfatti are in a cafeteria cooler. Yesterday morning, I actually saw my granny’s body in there. It’s not a perfect location for lots of reasons, but it’s okay. It’s cold enough.”
“What’s this other body you mentioned?”
“There have been two other similar deaths. One was so similar to my grandmother’s it seems eerie. The other is sorta similar, but my guess would be that he was discovered immediately after he suffered whatever the other two suffered, because on the third one they actually went through a real resuscitation attempt.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’ve met the wives. I also talked both of them into not allowing their husbands to be embalmed or cremated. I think we have three bodies of people who have suffered some kind of a fatal medical crisis. The hospitals want to call it a heart attack, whether it’s warranted or not, because all three have each had some kind of cardiac history. To tell you the truth, it has been my sense that the hospitals just want to get rid of these cases as soon as possible, and frankly, that has made me suspicious from day one.”
“Could any of this be a kind of defense on your part as a way of helping you deal with the emotional aspect of losing your grandmother?”
For a moment Jennifer turned and stared out the car window. It was a good question, even though her first response was irritation that Neil would be capable of thinking she was making all this up. She turned back to Neil. “I think that there is something wrong with these three deaths. I think they were not natural. I do.”
It was now Neil’s turn to stare. He chose to stare out the front window. When he looked back at Jennifer, she was still looking at him. “It would be something hard to prove without autopsies. I assume you’ve been trying to get one.”
“To some degree,” Jennifer admitted. “As I said, once the death certificate is signed, they don’t think about autopsies. They just want to get the body out of the cafeteria cooler. But the reason I’m treading water today is because something is happening tonight that could turn this all around.”
“What do I have to do, guess?” Neil complained when Jennifer paused.
“I just want to make sure you are listening.” Jennifer said. “Did I ever mention to you that Granny was a nanny to a woman who’s become quite well known as a medical examiner?”
“I believe so, but remind me again.”
“Her name is Laurie Montgomery. She works as a medical examiner in New York City along with her husband, Jack Stapleton.”
“I can recall your mentioning Laurie Montgomery but not Jack.”
“Well, they just got married a couple of years ago. I called her Tuesday, right after I’d seen Granny. I just wanted to run some things by her, and she shocked me by offering to come immediately. I guess I didn’t know that Granny meant so much to her. I should have. Maria had that kind of effect on people. But then a problem arose: Laurie and Jack are in the middle of an assisted reproduction cycle, meaning Jack’s got to be around to perform.”
Neil rolled his eyes.
“Anyway, to solve the problem they both are coming and are scheduled to land tonight.”
“The fact that they are coming won’t hurt,” Neil said. “But I’m not so sure you should put such hope on it. If you’ve been unable to move the authorities here, I wouldn’t count on a couple of medical examiners doing much better. I happen to know that forensic pathology is not a really popular field here in India, and whether or not an autopsy is done is not up to the doctors.”
“I’ve heard the same. And to add to the trouble, there is some controversy over which ministry oversees what. The morgues are under the ministry of home, while medical examiners who use them are under the ministry
