Cure

30

March 26, 2010

Friday, 1:14 p.m.

Laurie was having the time of her life, totally engrossed in her case. She’d finished with all of Kenji’s histology slides, and as with the autopsy, she’d found nothing pathological. The man had been remarkably healthy, and had he not come up against tetrodotoxin or some other equivalent toxin, he’d probably have lived to be a hundred.

After finishing the histology slides, she had called both Jack and Lou about her proposed news conference. Jack was all for it and said he would be in Laurie’s office at five sharp. Lou was the fly in the ointment, saying he wanted to be there but might be detained because there had been a double homicide in the Wall Street area of a couple of brokers who had not lived up to a customer’s expectations. The last thing he’d said was that he would try his damnedest to be there.

With everything out of the way regarding her two cases, Laurie went back to the fifth floor, where John was waiting for her. He surprised her by saying he had taken the time to make another close inspection of the results of the toxicology screen on the plasma and urine of Laurie’s case. “I got out some of our library matches for a number of neurotoxins, including tetrodotoxin, and compared them to your case.”

“And?” Laurie questioned.

“It was interesting,” John admitted. “There are some little bumps where there would be peaks if tetrodotoxin were present.”

“Are you suggesting tetrodotoxin is there, just not in sufficient concentration?”

“No, I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that I cannot rule it in, but I can’t rule it out, either. It’s a subtle difference. Now I’m as curious as you are about what we’ll find in the supposed pellet track. What about a pellet? Did you find anything like that, even a piece?”

“Nothing,” Laurie said. “I probed around in the track’s depths carefully. I also searched the X-rays. My guess is that the pellet could have been somehow digestible, such that once it was exposed to interstitial fluid, it slowly was digested. Well, it couldn’t be that slowly, since it was gone when I went looking for an entrance wound around forty or so hours after the man’s death.”

“Certainly a subtle but effective way to kill someone. I have to give the perpetrators some credit. Unless the entrance wound is noticed, it will seem like a natural death.”

“Which is exactly what happened in this case.”

“Okay, let’s get you set up in the lab,” John said, getting up from his desk. “I’ve arranged some bench space for you upstairs on the sixth floor. It’s actually in the same room with the liquid chromatography /mass spec/mass spec machines.”

“Sounds delightful,” Laurie said, following John into the stairwell and up to the sixth floor.

“I’ve also asked one of my techs, Teresa Chen, to be available for your questions. She’s my in-house expert with the LC/MS/MS,” he said as they headed into the lab.

It was a typical modern biological lab filled with several large machines that automatically handled multiple specimens and needed very little attention once they were set up and running. The sound in the room was a general hum interspersed with mechanical clicking noises as individual specimens advanced on conveyors.

There was only one person in the lab tending the multiple machines. Teresa Chen’s shiny dark hair was parted in the middle. She smiled graciously at Laurie and offered her hand when they were introduced.

“So here’s your bench area,” John said, indicating a stretch of countertop. “And I recommend using n-butanol for the extraction. I looked it up, and the butanol seems to be the most efficient. So are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” Laurie declared. “Especially if Teresa is ready.”

“I’m very ready,” Teresa said with another smile.

“So I’ll leave you to it,” John said. “I’ll pop in every so often to see how things are going.”

After John had left, Teresa went to the refrigerator and brought back a small beaker. “Here’s your slurry,” she said, handing it over.

Laurie took the specimen. It was slight pink in color with the consistency of heavy soup. With fond memories of cozy afternoons spent in chemistry lab in college, Laurie looked forward to her afternoon in the OCME toxicology lab. There was something particularly rewarding about having the time and opportunity to be so closely involved in searching for the toxin on her own case. Luckily for her current peace of mind, she was totally unaware of the tragedy involving her child unfolding at that very moment elsewhere in the city.