Death Benefit

51.

BROADWAY, IN FRONT OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER NEW YORK CITY MARCH 25, 2011, 6:45 P.M.

Pia emerged from the subway at the same entrance she’d used on her way to the OCME, pausing near the MTA area map in the shadow of the Columbia Medical Center’s art deco buildings. She’d raced out of the medical examiner’s office with her head spinning. It was dark, the streets were wet and slick, and there seemed to be hundreds of people on the sidewalks. Pia couldn’t face going all the way across town in the rain despite her umbrella so she took a different route, walking to Park Avenue South and the Twenty-eighth Street station on the 6 line, then traveling to Grand Central and taking the S train, the shuttle across town to Times Square. There she had taken the A express train up to Washington Heights.

Throughout the entire unpleasant train ride Pia had acted like a zombie, seemingly impervious to her environment. A few people, mostly men, tried to talk to her, but she didn’t respond in the slightest. She was in a daze, going over and over the events since Rothman and Yamamoto had fallen ill. It was as if she were experiencing a living nightmare. Having her suspicions corroborated at the OCME afforded her no satisfaction in the slightest. All it had done was cement her fears and sense of dread. She didn’t know specifically if the lethal agent that had been given to Rothman and Yamamoto was polonium, but her intuition told her it was. What to do now was the question for which she had no answer. Maybe she should just run and hide someplace until all the pieces fell wherever they were going to fall. The reality was that she had certainly opened the floodgates at the OCME. Whether she liked it or not or intended it or not, the police were now going to be involved, along with every other law enforcement agency. In her vernacular, the shit was about to hit the fan.

Pia’s intention when she got out of the subway was to hurry back to the dorm. She felt her only resource was George. Even though she was under no illusion that George would know what to do, she hoped she could use him as a sounding board. The fact was, she had no one else. She’d thought briefly about involving the two other stalwarts in her life-Sheila Brown and the mother superior-to get their advice, but the story was much too long and complex and more important, Pia was reluctant to put either of them at risk. In the current situation, knowledge was dangerous.

Although Pia was desperate to get to the dorm, she was also terrified. The moment she’d emerged from the relative safety of the subway, she felt inordinately vulnerable. The men who had attacked her said they would be watching her, and she believed them. It meant that they were there, lurking somewhere in the darkness surrounding the medical center. Although where she was at that moment, near the corner of Broadway and 168th Street, was lit and crowded with commuters, looking west down 168th Street was neither.

Holding her umbrella in the crook of her neck, Pia got out her cell phone, which she’d turned off before going into the OCME. She switched it on. Immediately she saw she had more than ten missed calls and three voice mails. She called George, but he didn’t answer. Instead she left a voice message of her own: “George, it’s me. It’s about six forty-five. I’m at the hospital entrance to the subway at 168th Street. Can you come get me so we can walk back to the dorm together? Okay, I’ll be waiting here.”