Struggling to stay awake at least until the end of camera five, she suddenly did a double take. Not quite in the middle of the screen was the man she was looking for. At least she thought so. Quickly she pressed pause on the remote to freeze the scene. At that moment the man was looking back over his shoulder and up the stairs that he’d apparently just descended, although she’d not recognized him until he’d gotten close to the edge of the platform. Picking up the photos of the corpse, she compared them. She was reasonably confident she was correct and the man in the photos and on the screen was the same individual. Though she couldn’t be a hundred percent certain because of the camera angle, the time stamp worked: It was several minutes before the 911 call. Laurie carefully reversed the image and watched the man retreat up the stairs backward. Even watching it frame by frame, she sensed the man was running as he bumped into other people, who were obviously moving more slowly than he was. Checking the other side of the image, she could see that the track was still clear; the train had not yet arrived.
Laurie continued reversing the video frame by frame until the man disappeared from view. The only thing she’d learned was that the man was carrying a canvas bag of some sort. Sitting back in her seat, she allowed the video to run forward at normal speed. The man was indeed running. “He definitely doesn’t want to miss the train,” Laurie said to herself out loud as she watched the man collide into people. At normal speed the collisions appeared more jarring than when viewed frame by frame.
The man pressed into the crowds on the platform, clearly irritating people as he did so. One man even grabbed the Asian man’s arm, but he yanked it from the stranger’s grip and pressed on, continually glancing over his shoulder as if being chased.
“He is being chased!” Laurie blurted, leaning forward again. Two more Asian men had come down the stairs, and like the first one, they forced their way into the crowd with one of them holding an umbrella, the other empty- handed. As Laurie watched, the two pursuing men reached the other man just as the subway charged into the station. At that point, Laurie could just barely see the men of interest, as they were all shorter than the other commuters pressed up against them. For the next few moments there was little movement as the people exiting the train confronted those entering. Finally movement returned to the crowd, and when it did, Laurie could see that the man with the bag was seizing, or at least it looked like he was seizing while still standing upright, his head rapidly and rhythmically fully extending, then relaxing. As people began boarding the train and the crowd slowly thinned, Laurie watched the two men lay the stricken man down on the platform. By this time there was no convulsive activity, and the bag the first was carrying was now in the possession of one of the others. Laurie also recognized that the two men could easily have taken the man’s wallet while they had been holding him upright, to explain why he did not have one when he arrived at the ER.
“My word,” Laurie said out loud. “It was a robbery!” She continued to watch as people continued to pass around and over the supine body. She was amazed by the demonstration of how dispassionate New Yorkers could be. The only positive reaction was a man at the door to the train, who was placing his cell phone to his ear, making Laurie wonder if it was Robert Delacroix. She shifted her attention to the two Asian men as they calmly walked out of sight.
Laurie stopped the video. Running into the master bedroom, she wanted to get Jack. She wanted him to see the video, even though she knew what he was going to say: “Okay, it was an apparent robbery, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the bag belongs to one of the two who took it. The key thing is that the autopsy was negative.”
Coming into the bedroom, Laurie pulled up short. As usual, when Jack said he was going to read in bed, he was already fast asleep. The heavy textbook he’d brought into the room was open and lying across his chest. Carefully, Laurie lifted it off and placed it on the side table. Then she turned off his bedside light. It was a ritual that occurred almost every night. Unlike Laurie, Jack had no difficulty whatsoever falling asleep or getting up in the morning, two activities that had always been difficult for her.
Back in the family room, Laurie took the disk from the DVD player and retreated into the study. There she put it back into the computer, went to camera five, and scanned through the file until she found the best frame of the second two men, then printed out a copy. Looking at the two thieves, she totally changed her mind about the case. Initially she’d been disappointed that her first case was an unidentified natural death, and totally pathology free to boot—hardly a case to challenge her competency. Now her perseverance was proving it to be much more interesting than anyone expected, especially herself.
Laurie began to feel the old excitement she used to feel when figuring out complicated and different cases, and she actually couldn’t wait to get into the office in the morning and get the lab results and histology slides. The truth of the matter was that her intuition, which she’d worried might have abandoned her during her leave, was back and strongly suggesting that there were surprises ahead. Her plan was not to reveal what she’d learned from the security tapes until she figured out what had killed the man. Laurie knew that by law, perpetrators of crimes have to assume responsibility of the health of the people they victimize: If a person has a heart attack and dies while running from a thief, it is considered a homicide, not a natural death, and the thief will be tried and punished accordingly. Laurie knew she was now dealing with a definite homicide, changing the case from boring to engaging, at least that’s what she thought as she packed away the photos and the disk in her bag she carried back and forth from work.
The next job was to try to fall asleep—a trick for her, given the new development she’d discovered with the security tapes. On top of that was the realistic concern about JJ possibly waking up. Sometimes Laurie wished she did not need sleep, believing she’d be content to read during the night. But every morning, no matter what, she felt exhausted during the first hour or so and recognized what the reality was.
After checking on JJ, who was fast asleep, Laurie got herself ready for bed. When she at last climbed between the sheets and turned out the light, she reflected on the day. In hindsight it had not been entirely smooth. In fact, it had been rather bumpy. She’d missed JJ, as all her calls home reflected, and she’d been hurt when he’d seemingly rejected her, suggesting a definite vulnerability. On the work side, her case initially had not totally reassured her of her sense of competency, but that seemed to be changing with her evening’s discoveries. When all was said and done, she recognized she very much liked her job and felt reasonably sure she could be both a medical examiner and a mother, and do equal justice to both.
16
MARCH 25, 2010
THURSDAY, 10:44 PM
There they are!” Carlo said as Brennan turned onto 17th Street on the north side of Union Square. As usual the area was alive with people, including sidewalk musicians, panhandlers, and students of all ages and ethnicities. Despite the crowds, Susumu Nomura and Yoshiaki Eto still managed to stand out slightly because of their attire. Like the previous night, they were dressed in black sharkskin suits, white shirts, black ties, and dark glasses.
“Let’s be clear on this,” Carlo said. “We drive to the pier, supposedly to get the explosives for the supposed distraction, we all get out, saying we need everybody to help carry the explosives back to the SUV, and head inside. That’s where we’ll do the hit. Remember, these guys are going to be armed, and they don’t hesitate to use their weapons.”
There was a general grunt of acquiescence from all present. Brennan and Carlo were in the front seat, with Brennan again driving. Arthur and Ted were cramped back in the third row. The middle seats were left empty for Susumu and Yoshiaki.
Brennan pulled over to the curb in front of the Barnes & Noble store, which had closed some forty-five minutes earlier but whose interior lights were still on. Susumu and Yoshiaki were busy glancing in at the window display.
“Okay,” Carlo said, twisting around in his seat and looking back at Arthur and Ted. “You guys ready? You have your pieces handy?”
Both Arthur and Ted raised their hands to give Carlo a quick glance of their respective automatics and then lowered them out of sight. “Good,” Carlo said. “We don’t expect any trouble, but we might as well be prepared.” Carlo then turned to Brennan. “Are you ready?”
