Pia had been worried about making it in time, but she’d been lucky with the trains. Now that she was there, she wasn’t as confident as she had been about going in cold like this. She had no contacts there, no one she knew she could trust, no one she knew on any level, and this wasn’t a feeling she liked. She was very aware that this was the New York City OCME and she’d had a lot of bad experiences with various city agencies as a child. The state may have provided her with food and shelter, but it had also fed and sheltered her enemies and abused her. There was not a lot of reason not to worry that this city agency wouldn’t be equally as nasty.

Pia had another thought. What would happen if she went in there and actually succeeded in her mission? What if she asked to see Rothman’s body and somehow got permission and then found that he had in fact been irradiated, proving that he and Yamamoto were murdered? Her mind raced. There’d be a huge police action, and she’d be at the center. It would be a media circus. She and George would be questioned, she’d have to voice her myriad suspicions and assist with inquiries and make statements and possibly appear in court. But then she touched her tender jaw and remembered the beating and the warning she’d gotten the night before. She had no choice. The answers to her questions lay in this building, or they were nowhere at all.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Pia tucked her umbrella under her arm and went in the front door.

The reception area showed every bit of its fifty years. It was dark and somewhat dingy with a worn dark brown leather couch and a few other worn, mismatched chairs. The linoleum floor was cracked and scarred. On a low coffee table were some dog-eared magazines with the address labels torn off the covers. There was a crowd of people sprinkled on the furniture and some leaning against the wall. Soon it became apparent they were all together, members of a grieving African-American family with at least three generations represented. Two teenaged girls were hugging in a corner, crying softly.

“Excuse me,” Pia said, approaching the receptionist. A security guard sat at another table off to the side next to a set of glass doors. The receptionist, carefully dressed and pleasantly plump, was wearing a name tag that read “Marlene.” She looked up. She had a friendly smile.

“Yes, honey.”

“Hi. I’m a medical student and I’d very much like to talk to one of the medical examiners.”

“Are you here to find out about teaching opportunities at the OCME, like the elective for medical students?”

“Maybe,” Pia said, wanting to keep her options open.