“No! Definitely not! She did it because she felt she was expected to do it in the context of her religion and her family, but you saved her. So that’s that. It wasn’t to be her karma to die, even if she had thought it was. No, she won’t try it again.”

“Let me ask you something else,” Cal said. “Since you’re her best friend, does she ever talk about sex?”

Samira laughed hollowly. “Sex? Are you joking? No, she never talks about sex. She hates sex. Well, let me amend that. I know she wants to have kids one day. But sex for sex’s sake, no deal. Not like other people I know.” Samira winked at Durell, who snickered behind a closed fist.

“Thanks,” Cal said. “I should have asked you these questions weeks ago.”

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

OCTOBER 17, 2007
WEDNESDAY, 6:15 A.M.
NEW YORK, USA

Before ever opening his eyes, Dr. Jack Stapleton heard a sound that was foreign to his ears. It was a distant hushed roar, the likes of which he found hard to describe. For a moment he tried to think what could be making it. Since their 106th Street Manhattan brownstone, which was actually brick, had been renovated only two years ago, he thought it could have been a sound that was normal to the newly configured house but that he’d just never appreciated. Yet on further thought it was too loud for that. Trying harder to characterize it, he suddenly thought of a waterfall.

Jack’s eyes blinked open. Sweeping his hand under the covers on his wife’s side of the bed and not encountering her sleeping form, he knew what the sound was: It was the shower. Laurie was already up, an unheard-of phenomenon. Laurie was a dyed-in-the-wool night owl and often had to be dragged kicking and screaming from her bed in order for her to get to the OCME, also known as the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, at some reasonable time. As for himself, Jack liked to arrive early, before everyone else, to give him the opportunity to cherry-pick the good cases.

Mystified, Jack tossed back the covers, and completely naked, which was the way he liked to sleep, he padded into the steamy bathroom. Laurie was practically invisible within the shower stall. Jack cracked the door.

“Hey in there,” Jack called out over the sound of the water.

With suds in her hair, Laurie leaned out of the spray. “Good morning, sleepyhead,” she said. “It’s about time you woke up. It’s going to be a busy day.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The India trip!” Laurie said. She leaned her head back into the torrent and vigorously rinsed her hair.