Death Benefit

54.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER NEW YORK CITY MARCH 25, 2011, 8:31 P.M.

Detective Captain Lou Soldano was frustrated. He was standing inside the taped-off area of the street that marked the McKinley crime scene. A full crime-scene unit had combed the area for clues, but none were to be found. They hadn’t even found the shell casing from the gun that was used to shoot the student. All they had was a shopping bag with a device one of the techs identified as a Geiger counter that the woman had been carrying when she was abducted.

Officers were taking statements from witnesses, hoping to get information on the perpetrators and on the van they had used. The reports he’d heard were wildly contradictory, from the men’s heights to their clothing. One witness swore that only two men had been involved, while all the others claimed three. The one thing they agreed on was that all the men had been wearing ski masks. The van was described consistently as dirty white, but they had nothing on the make or license plate.

George Wilson had given the most detailed account, and even told Lou something important and most likely related. He said that Pia had been assaulted in her dorm room the previous night and threatened with violence, which now had come to pass. When asked why she didn’t report the incident, George said she was afraid of the police because of her childhood experiences. He said that he had encouraged her to go to the police on multiple occasions. When asked why he didn’t report it himself, George said because he respected her wishes and privacy, and she had asked him not to.

Lou’s frustration was not only over the paucity of evidence at the scene. He was also frustrated that the local precinct of the NYPD hadn’t blanketed the area with personnel after Lou had specifically sent out a message to do so. He had given them the description of Pia from Jack and Laurie with the added information that she was carrying an umbrella and a canvas shopping bag. He had hoped that the police or the Columbia hospital security would have been able to pick her up. He had wanted to detain Pia not just to learn exactly what she knew but also for her protection, and now the bad guys had beat him to the punch. If the local boys had done what he had asked, the snatch-and-killing might have been avoided.

The only part of the operation that seemed to be going right was the radiation angle. Lou knew that the ME’s office had notified the relevant authorities about the possibility of alpha radiation at four sites in New York City: Columbia University Medical Center, the OCME itself, and the two funeral homes where the bodies of Dr. Rothman and Dr. Yamamoto were taken. But the ME wasn’t able to mobilize law enforcement. Soldano had had to do that, and his task force was still more on paper than in the field.

One of the other things that had frustrated Lou was how long it had taken to get a photo of the Grazdani woman. Lou himself had called Columbia hospital security to confirm that Pia was indeed a medical student. Lou had also asked for Pia’s details, as well as a recent photo, which the hospital security had trouble getting because it was locked up in the office of the dean of students, and the dean was unavailable. So it wasn’t until after the abduction that the photo was sent out to law enforcement. That was akin to locking the barn door after the horses were stolen.

“God damn it,” Lou said out loud for the umpteenth time. Nothing about the case seemed to be going well. The sole positive development was that a white van had been located that was believed to be the vehicle involved in the abduction. At that moment another team of forensic experts was going over it. Lou had no idea if it would lead to any clues, but he was hopeful. Meanwhile an APB had been put out in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Lou was hoping they’d get lucky. But he doubted that would be the case. Lou’s intuition was telling him that organized crime was involved big-time. He knew for sure that this wasn’t a kidnapping for money-meaning he feared for Pia’s life.

All of a sudden several news vans showed up and parked just beyond the crime-scene tape. As their antennae rose, their doors burst open and a bevy of cameramen and journalists alighted.

Lou groaned. He knew this was going to be a media circus, and he wondered how long it was going to take before the mayor got involved.

First Will McKinley was unlucky-twice, in fact-and then he got lucky twice. Will was unlucky to have been involved in the Rothman case to begin with-to be found on the street with Pia and mistaken for George, resulting in his being dealt with as an annoying tagalong who knew too much. Will was also unlucky that Neri Krasnigi’s gun had fired at all. When Neri had cleaned and loaded his gun earlier that day, he hadn’t been as careful as he thought. A few sizable pieces of grit had been stuck to the first bullet he loaded and lodged inside the chamber. Under different circumstances, or if the pieces of grit had been just slightly bigger, perhaps the gun would have blown up in Neri’s face rather than misfiring slightly and dispatching the bullet at perhaps fifty percent of usual velocity. That was lucky.

Will was lucky again, if someone shot in the head can be said to be lucky. Will had turned his head so that he was hit in the temple, not the forehead, meaning the bullet made a complete transit through his frontal lobe, a kind of injury that had seen miraculous recoveries in the past. It might also be considered fortuitous that he’d been shot a hundred yards from a major trauma center, where expert help was immediately available. A superb team of doctors had treated Will within minutes of his being shot and continued to monitor him closely. He was now in a medically induced coma, hooked up to an array of monitors and life-giving machinery. Everyone was hoping Will’s luck would not run out.