“I don’t know how I know it, but I know it,” said Jack. He remembered something else. “It was used to kill that Russian guy in London, you remember that?”

“Oh, yes, the defected former KGB officer?”

“Right.”

Laurie and Jack had taken a professional interest in the case a few years back as did most forensic pathologists.

“We have to report this to Homeland Security,” Laurie said.

“Yes,” Jack said. “It doesn’t mean Rothman and Yamamoto were making nuclear weapons, but it does mean that they didn’t die from typhoid fever alone. They had typhoid fever from the salmonella, but they obviously had radiation sickness on top of it. My guess at this point is that the typhoid was a mask for the polonium, which, in retrospect, was probably the lethal agent. I should have questioned the fact that the entire gut was involved.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself,” Laurie said. “I can assure you that no one could have made this diagnosis.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Jack agreed, although he wondered for a moment if he wasn’t just making an excuse for himself. “I have to say, it’s a rather devilishly ingenious way of murdering someone. And whoever did it nearly got away with it. It fooled me. It would have got past everyone if not for that girl. What happened to Chet—maybe he talked her into staying?”

Jack got out his cell phone and called Chet.

“Chet, that girl, is she still here?”

Jack listened for a second.

“All right. You better get back up here.” Jack disconnected. He looked at Laurie. “She’s gone. According to Chet, no matter what he said, she literally ran out of the building. And he didn’t get her contact information.”

“She’s got to be found. She could be in danger,” said Laurie.

“You’ve got that right. If whoever is involved in this knows what she knows . . .” Jack didn’t finish his sentence. Laurie instinctively knew what he meant. Instead Jack said, “I’ll call the chief. This is going to be a bombshell and a media circus.”

“And I’ll call Lou. And then Paula. It looks like we’re spending more of our Friday night here.”

Jack nodded. He looked over at Maureen. “Sorry about all this,” he said. “A bit of an emergency. Would you mind getting the rest of the specimens? They’re going to have to be put in a shielded container of some kind.”

“Will do,” Maureen said. She’d picked up on Jack and Laurie’s anxiety.