Read Online Critical by Robin Cook - Free Book Online

knee, but we are supposed to be a team now.”
    â€œWe are a team,” Jack agreed. “Let’s drop the subject. We can talk about it tonight if you insist.”
    Jack gave Laurie’s hand a squeeze, and she squeezed back. Knowing Jack as well as she did, she took his willingness to suggest that they could bring the subject up again as a small victory.
    When the traffic light changed at the corner of 30th Street and First Avenue, the cabbie made a wide left-hand turn and pulled to the curb in front of a dated six-story, blue-glazed brick building with aluminum-mullioned windows wedged between NYU Medical Center on one side and the Bellevue Complex on the other. They had arrived at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, or OCME, where Laurie had worked for sixteen years and Jack twelve. Although Jack was older, forensic pathology had been a second medical career for him after a large HMO had gobbled up his private practice back when HMOs were in their heyday.
    â€œSomething’s brewing,” Jack commented. Ahead of them were several TV news vans parked at the curb. “Interesting deaths attract reporters like honey attracts flies. I wonder what’s up.”
    â€œI think of reporters more like vultures,” Laurie commented as she got out curbside, then reached back into the taxi to extract Jack’s lengthy and awkward crutches. “They feed on carrion, are more destructive of evidence, and can be a hell of a nuisance.”
    Jack paid the driver while he gave Laurie credit for a more apropos and clever simile. Out on the street, he took the crutches, got them poked into his armpits, and started toward the stairs. “I hate taxis,” he murmured under his breath. “They make me feel so vulnerable.”
    â€œThat’s a strong statement,” Laurie scoffed, “coming from a person who thinks commuting on a bike and challenging the city traffic is appropriate.”
    As expected, there were a half-dozen reporters in the OCME reception area busily chatting and feasting on takeout coffee and doughnuts. Several TV cameras were perched on the aged magazines on the coffee table. The reporters briefly glanced at Laurie and Jack as they traversed the room. Jack could move quickly on the crutches. Since he could put weight on the injured knee without a lot of pain, he could have done without the crutches, but he didn’t want to take any chance of reinjury. Marlene Wilson, the receptionist, buzzed Laurie and Jack into the ID room before any of the reporters recognized them.
    Within the ID room were two groups of people occupying separate sides. One group was six Hispanic-appearing individuals of widely mixed ages. They looked enough alike to be members of the same family. Two were children, and were wide-eyed in the spooky alien environment. Three youngish adults were whispering to an elderly matronly-appearing woman who intermittently dabbed a tissue against her eyes.
    The second group was a couple who could have been husband and wife and who, like the Hispanic children, appeared like deer caught in headlights.
    Laurie and Jack passed through a third door into a separate room that housed the OCME’s communal coffeepot. It was here that the medical examiner on call for the week went through the cases that had come in overnight and decided which cases needed to be autopsied and who out of the eleven doctors on staff would do the case. Laurie and Jack almost always arrived early, mostly at Jack’s insistence, since Laurie was a night person and more often than not had trouble getting up in the morning. Jack liked to get in early to cherry-pick through the cases, requesting the most interesting. The other doctors didn’t mind, because Jack always did more than his share as compensation.
    Dr. Riva Mehta, Laurie’s office mate, who had started at the OCME the same year as Laurie, was sitting at the ID room desk behind various stacks of large manila envelopes,