showing the puncture.
With the stylus in her right hand, Laurie flattened the skin with her left. Gently she applied the smaller end of the stylus to the reddened patch of skin, and with a slight pressure the nodular end popped inside. It was definitely a puncture wound.
Pressing a little harder but not so much as to create an artifact, Laurie advanced the nodular end of the stylus until it hit the end of the track. Laurie took another photograph of the stylus in the track. Then, placing her fingers around the stylus where it disappeared into the skin, she drew it out and measured. The track was two and a half centimeters deep.
Laurie disposed of her gloves and left the autopsy room. Using the case’s accession number, she found the X-rays, brought them back into the pit, and snapped them up onto the view box. Carefully she scanned the area in question on both the frontal and lateral views, in hopes of seeing a possible pellet of some sort, but there was nothing. That meant that either a pellet was used that was capable of being dissolved by the body or whatever toxin was used was injected directly. Either way, Laurie assumed the greatest concentration of the poisonous agent had to be at the end of the track.
Returning to Kenji with a new pair of gloves, Laurie picked up the scalpel and fell to work. What she wanted was the track itself, encased in a core of muscle tissue about the size of a wine cork. It sounded easy enough, but Laurie struggled. With the tissue being easily compressible, it was difficult to avoid cutting into the track. She wanted the sample to be en bloc. The handheld dissecting microscope was a help, but it precluded the use of her left hand, and in the end, she didn’t use it.
As Laurie worked with the scalpel, and having now ascertained that Kenji had been murdered, presumably with an umbrella air gun, her thoughts naturally drifted back to what agent might have been involved. She already knew it could not be ricin, as was used in the infamous Bulgarian’s case. Although she did not know the specific poison, she did know some things about it. It had to be extraordinarily toxic, as the security tapes indicated. According to what she saw on the tapes, the poison had been almost instantly effectual. She also knew it had to be neurotoxic, because of the seizure, as a number of snake and fish venoms were. She eventually decided to go on the Net and check out seizure-inducing reptilian and aquatic neurotoxins.
Laurie struggled for almost half an hour, but the final sample approximately an inch and a half long and an inch thick looked very close to what she’d envisioned.
Laurie removed her gloves yet again and went into the supply room for a sample bottle and a sample custody tag. Back at the autopsy table, she put the sample in the bottle and completed the tag, which included the case’s accession number, the date, and the location from the body where the sample had originated, and then signed it. She was being exquisitely careful: If there was to be a trial concerning the case, which she now considered a distinct possibility, the sample she was holding would be a key piece of evidence.
With her last chore finished, Laurie went looking for an available mortuary tech to lend a hand. With practiced ease she and the tech got Kenji off the autopsy table and onto a gurney. Wheeling the corpse herself out of the autopsy room, Laurie deposited him and his gurney back in the cooler, where the corpse would stay for the next several months, unless he was lucky enough to be identified and shipped off to his next of kin. “I know you’re trying to tell me some things, Kenji,” Laurie said out loud in the heavy stillness of the cooler, “and I’m trying to listen. We already have the person who killed you, but unfortunately we don’t yet know who you both are. Be patient!” She stepped out of the cooler and closed its heavy insulated door, causing it to emit a final-sounding reverberant click.
Laurie had planned to take the sample directly up to toxicology on the fifth floor, but a glance at her watch changed her mind. She was aware that John DeVries was one of the most compulsive people she knew, and one of the ways he manifested his compulsive-ness was to stop whatever he was doing at exactly noon, and take his old- fashioned lunch box with a thermos mounted in its vaulted top to OCME’s sad excuse of a lunchroom on the second floor. The room was windowless, with cement-block walls. All that was in the room were a bank of vending machines filled with unhealthy food, plastic-topped tubular steel tables, and plastic chairs. Although Laurie could have stopped to say hello, she was reluctant to interrupt his lunch. It was also true that the room depressed her. Instead she went directly up to her office so as not to waste time. As punctual as John was about getting to the lunchroom at noon, he was just as punctual about returning to work at twelve-thirty, and Laurie planned to take the sample to him then.
25
MARCH 26, 2010
FRIDAY, 12:15 p.m.
Louie was in seventh heaven. He’d not had such fun for a good decade. From the moment Brennan had suggested they kidnap Laurie Montgomery’s kid to the moment he’d just slid into his favorite booth of his restaurant, he’d been totally engrossed in planning the operation. The kidnapping idea had been pure genius, and Louie gave Brennan full credit. First, it was a great way to kick the woman in the teeth for having been instrumental in putting Paulie in the slammer for more than a decade. Louie hadn’t heard that story and had been surprised by it. He’d also been surprised by Paulie’s prohibition of killing the woman. But in many respects, this was going to be better in that she’d suffer more. In Louie’s mind, when a person got killed, they didn’t suffer at all.
Second and foremost, the kidnapping would surely take the pesky woman’s attention away from investigating Satoshi, which would be to everybody’s relief.
And third, it could result in serious pocket change. Louie’s last kidnapping, more than fifteen years ago, had netted for the Vaccarro group more than ten million dollars, making Louie eager to try another go-round. Unfortunately, Paulie wasn’t of the same mind, and despite the success, nixed another. In Paulie’s estimation, from hearing some horror stories, kidnappings were just too dangerous despite the potentially big payoff.
Louie shook his head and laughed. There was a certain irony about the fact that he was now about to mount his second kidnapping, partially based on retribution for Paulie, who had kept him from doing a repeat years earlier. This time he knew it wouldn’t bring in quite the same money. The first one had been a Wall Street type whose net worth hovered around a hundred million. This time, the principals were a couple of salaried doctors, and he knew he couldn’t count on more than a million or so, but worrying about that was premature and even secondary. The reason for taking the kid was to get Laurie Stapleton out of the picture.
“Hey, Benito!” Louie yelled at the top of his lungs, causing his own ears to ring. No one had come out of the kitchen, and Louie didn’t know how long he had for lunch, since he was counting on getting a call any minute from Brennan. At that moment Brennan, Carlo, and two younger guys who had been working for Louie for close to four years, Duane Mackenzie and Tommaso Deluca, along with Hisayuki Ishii’s two lieutenants, were sitting in a stolen white Dodge van outside Dr. Laurie Montgomery-Stapleton’s house on 106th, waiting for their victim to appear.
Over the previous hour Brennan had more than fulfilled his promise to glean information about Laurie from the Net. Carlo had made himself useful by obtaining the stolen vehicle, which they planned to dump. All was ready for the snatch.
In response to Louie’s sudden yell, which had rattled some of the glasses hanging over the bar, Benito came crashing out of the swinging door leading into the kitchen. He was full of apology, explaining that he’d heard nothing of Louie’s arrival, as he usually did.
“I had no idea you were here, boss. Believe me!”
Louie reached out and gently laid fingers on Benito’s forearm. He was, after all, in a gracious mood the way everything was going. “It’s okay,” he said, trying to calm the overexcited man. “It’s okay,” he repeated, before asking what was for lunch.
“Your favorite!” Benito said with alacrity, glad to have something on hand to make amends. “Penne Bolognese with fresh ground Parmesan.”
Louie watched Benito retreat into the kitchen. Still thinking about the upcoming kidnapping, he’d come up with yet another one of its benefits. With Hisayuki’s acquiescence and participation, he felt more certain that the
