Pia nodded and looked expectantly at George, as if she knew the answer and was waiting for him to get it. It was like a game of charades.

George became impatient, ready to give up before he remembered something else.

“What about chemotherapy and radiation?” George sounded uncertain. Sure, they caused hair loss, but what could be the relevance?

“Right on!” Pia exclaimed. “Radiation! You saw people undergoing radiation when you were on oncology during internal medicine.”

George nodded.

“Chemotherapy and/or radiation destroys the hair follicles and the hair falls out immediately.”

“What are you getting at?” George noticed that Pia’s face had brightened considerably.

“I said I was wondering if Rothman could have been infected with another bug besides the salmonella, another bug that was not sensitive to chloramphenicol or the third-generation cephalosporin he was given.”

“Right, the ceftriaxone.”

“I suddenly don’t think there was another microbe,” Pia said. “Damn it, George, you said it yourself, remember? You said they had to autopsy the bodies the same day the men died because they were ‘hot.’ I thought at the time it was a strange word to use, but I think you were more right than you knew. I don’t think they were hot because they were full of bacteria. I think they might have been hot because of radiation.”

Chapter 41.

41.

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER
520 FIRST AVENUE, NEW YORK CITY
MARCH 25, 2011, 12:32 P.M.

Laurie Montgomery had been sitting in her office at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner catching up with an old friend, Detective Captain Lou Soldano, when the phone rang. She saw it was her boss, apologized, and took the call. She was soon rolling her eyes, and Lou smiled.

Laurie Montgomery had been back at the OCME for eleven months, since the harrowing events of the infamous Satoshi Machita case, involving both the New York mob and the Japanese Yakuza, which led to the kidnapping of her infant son, John Junior. The story had been plastered all over the media for several days as the details of the case unfolded. After JJ’s rescue, Laurie had come back to work but only after she had found a live-in nanny, Paula, who immediately proved to be a godsend. With Paula looking after JJ, Laurie felt secure. Right now, her husband and fellow ME, Jack Stapleton, was working in the same building, and JJ was safe with Paula at the couple’s home on 106th Street. It didn’t hurt that she and her husband had friends like Detective Captain Lou Soldano either. Right after the kidnapping, he’d insisted on a twenty-four-hour security detail for the Stapleton home.