“But we don’t know who the suspects are unless we just include everyone. And we can’t really investigate anything. Say we think Springer was involved somehow. The only times we know what he was doing are when I was with him. I can’t pick up the phone and demand he answer any questions about his whereabouts at any other time.”

“This is why we should call the police,” George said. “They can investigate to their heart’s content and ask him anything they please.”

“Given that there’s a conspiracy, one of the things we don’t know is why.”

“Only, as you keep saying, Rothman was hated by half the human race. Of course that raises the question, why kill Yamamoto as well? He wasn’t unpopular, was he?”

“Not at all, people loved him. He was devoted to Rothman. They were like two peas in a pod, working together. If they weren’t working together in either the biosafety unit or the organ bath unit, Yamamoto was in Rothman’s office. They even ate together if they took time out for lunch, which wasn’t always the case. Yamamoto was the only one Rothman allowed to use his private coffee machine or drink the bottled mineral water from his private office fridge. They were like Siamese twins.”

“So there’s much more we don’t know than we do know, as far as what other people were thinking and what they were doing,” George said. “So what do we know, other than the fact that you were attacked last night and told to stop involving yourself in this?”

Pia turned back to her desk and picked up her pen and underscored a couple of lines on the page.

George looked at his watch. He was concerned about getting back over to the hospital but decided he was more worried about Pia. The resident to whom he’d been assigned for the day was rather laid-back, to say the least, and probably didn’t even realize George wasn’t around. Besides, George wanted to stay and humor Pia for a while. He was worried that she might have a concussion from the attack, and he wanted to make sure her mental status didn’t change. In addition, he reasoned, she couldn’t get into any more trouble while they were there in her room.

Suddenly Pia turned back around. “You know what we know the most about?”

George shrugged.

“We know the most about Rothman and Yamamoto’s illness even without the autopsy results and even without seeing their charts. I was in the lab when it presented, I saw them in the hospital, I talked to the doctor who was treating them, I examined Rothman myself, I diagnosed new symptoms, I spoke with the department head involved.”