After the police had left, Jack wearily climbed the stairs up to the apartment. Although he hadn’t played as much basketball as usual, he felt particularly exhausted. He wondered if it had to do with the scary and weird shooting or all the running around he’d done that day. The frustrating part about the day was that despite all the effort, he really wasn’t any closer to a definitive cause of Carol Stewart’s death, and now Helen VanDam’s, nor to understanding the curious details surrounding Carol’s lifesaving surgery.
Getting his keys out to open the apartment door, Jack took the opportunity to check the time. Inwardly he groaned when he saw it was almost 9:30. The guilt of having abandoned Laurie to her parents, which had kept him from playing a third basketball game, came back with a vengeance. He was certainly much later than he had intended.
Jack paused for a moment to think what he would say. He thought about using the shooting as an excuse but then quickly nixed the idea. If he’d been an integral part of the event, which was still a possibility, Laurie would insist he be more forthcoming about what he had been up to that day. He was reasonably sure that if Laurie heard the details, she’d demand he turn the whole affair over to the authorities. Since he was not willing to do that as of yet, he thought it might be best not to bring up the shooting. After all, he rationalized, he didn’t know for sure it involved him.
As it turned out, Jack’s reception was far better than he’d feared, even though he had ended up being gone for two hours. Apparently, the children had been uncommonly angelic, including Emma. Consequently, Laurie was in a fine mood and wasn’t at all captious about his playing, and Sheldon proclaimed he was jealous of the exercise, wishing he was thirty years younger so he could have participated. Jack had smiled at this suggestion but inwardly was glad Sheldon was not thirty years younger. Not everybody could play street basketball, as it was more a contact sport than the uninitiated imagined. Dorothy was the only one who attempted to poison the atmosphere by making a point of complaining that Jack had not been available to help put the children to bed. To her credit, Laurie immediately came to Jack’s aid by describing how easy it had been, even with Emma, who was often a struggle to get to nod off.
Despite the unexpected general bonhomie, the moment it was socially appropriate, Jack excused himself to take a quick shower. While he did so, Laurie was happy to warm up the pasta they had had for dinner.
29
THURSDAY, 5:15 A.M.
With everything that had happened on Wednesday underscored by the bizarre and unnerving shooting episode, Jack had had trouble going to sleep and was still tossing and turning well after midnight. Also disturbing had been a call from Warren to inform him there was yet another Suburban parked on his block with an Asian driver. The only difference was that the driver was significantly younger than the previous, tall dude.
As a consequence, Jack was sound asleep when Laurie’s mobile phone rang at 5:15 in the morning. Laurie was the night person, not Jack, but because she was a deep sleeper in the morning, she didn’t stir. Although she had mocked people in the past who kept their phones close to them at night, now that she was the chief medical examiner, she always had hers hearby. Yet Jack always had to give her a couple nudges to bring her to a stage that she heard the phone’s rather quiet ringtone. She’d chosen a tone calledIlluminatethat Jack was always trying to get her to change. It was a bit too pleasant. After the second gentle shoulder shake, she finally answered, and Jack buried his head under his pillow to try to screen out her conversation with the hope of possibly getting another half hour of sleep.
“Really?” Laurie questioned loud enough that Jack thought it capable of waking up JJ’s gerbil a floor below. He could feel her sit up, partially pulling the covers off Jack’s naked body. Instantly, any chance of him going back to sleep vanished. “Yes, of course,” Laurie added at a more reasonable decibel level but with unmistakable urgency. “I understand and will see that it is implemented immediately.”
Removing the pillow from his head, Jack looked at Laurie. She was rapidly scrolling through her contacts. “What’s up?” he asked, but Laurie ignored him. In the half-light, with her moderately long mop of hair in disarray and her eyes thrown open to their fullest, she looked like a madwoman. A second later, having found what she was looking for, she placed a call. “Who are you calling?” Jack asked, but she still ignored him, even after he repeated his question.
“Paul, it’s Laurie. Sorry to wake you so early, but I just got a call from the duty supervisor at the Department of Health, who’d gotten a call from the city’s Emergency Operations Center. We are to initiate immediately the OCME Pandemic Influenza Surge Plan. No, it’s not an exercise. It’s the real thing. So get out your copy of the protocol. I’ll be in the office as soon as I can, but since you’re closer, make sure that the mortuary tents that will go in the parking lot next to 421 are retrieved from storage. And then start the process of dispatching the refrigerated body collection trailers to all the city hospitals. I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
The next thing Jack knew, Laurie leaped out of bed and dashed into the bathroom. She was so preoccupied it was as if he wasn’t there, despite his calling out her name. He’d never seen her so animated in the morning. As long as he had known her, she’d been the antithesis of a morning person. Normally she dragged around with heavy-lidded eyes and a shuffling gait until she had a coffee.
Throwing back the covers, Jack followed her into the bathroom. Laurie was already in the shower and partially obscured by steam. The room was chilly, and she took showers hotter than Jack could stand.
Jack cracked the glass door to the shower and yelled over the sound of the water to ask her what was going on, although he had a pretty good idea from hearing her side of the conversation with Paul Plodget, the deputy chief medical examiner.
“New York City Emergency Management initiated the NYC Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan that Bloomberg spearheaded in 2006.”
“My God!” Jack exclaimed. “Do you know what caused them to do so?”
“The duty supervisor didn’t know,” Laurie said as she rapidly soaped herself. “It’s not surprising. I’m assuming it had been a Case Load Hazard Trigger Point coming from city hospitals, which was set up a few years ago as an early-warning mechanism. My guess would be that there was a flood of really sick people yesterday and last night. It certainly wasn’t from us at OCME. I would have heard for sure if there had been a surge of influenza deaths last night. My worry is that’s what we’re going to be seeing today.”
“The timing is a bit ironic,” Jack shouted. “I’ve been worrying about such a situation because of the two subway deaths. And now to have it happen... weird! I hope to God it’s not a rash of cases like the two subway deaths.”
“Let me finish showering!” Laurie yelled back.
Jack quickly shaved, and after Laurie got out of the shower, he got in. Ten minutes later they were both down in the kitchen to have a quick bite on the run.
“Should I turn on the TV?” Jack questioned.
“Don’t bother,” Laurie said. “We don’t have time. Besides, let’s not subject ourselves to media misinformation. We’ll hear the true details soon enough.”
While Jack rushed to make coffee, Laurie called the night medical-legal investigator, Janice Jaeger. She used speakerphone.
“Has there been a flood of influenza deaths?” Laurie asked, just to be sure. After she’d told Jack the trigger didn’t come from the OCME, she wanted to be certain.
“There haven’t been any,” Janice assured her. “It’s been a busy night, but no influenza deaths. Mostly overdoses but also a couple accidents and one homicide.”
“Well, there’s going to be a surge of influenza deaths if NYC Emergency Management is correct,” Laurie said. “They’ve declared a Pandemic Influenza Emergency. So be sure to let Bart know the moment he arrives. Better still, try to get him on his mobile. Also call the mortuary techs and give them notice. Tell them I want everybody to be wearing personal protection gear, including N95 HEPA masks, with any presumed cases.”
“Should I tell anyone else?”
“Yes. Call the duty ME and give the same message. We are probably looking at working twenty-four/seven for the foreseeable future. I’ll be in my office in about a half hour.”
After finishing her call, Laurie tossed down the coffee she had diluted with a dollop of fat-free milk. “It seems awfully early for an influenza outbreak to start,” she said. “It’s usually not until late December or early January.”
