“People make mistakes.”

“Not Dhaval,” Shashank growled. “He was the best. Listen, I want this woman taken care of.”

“We feel similarly, but she’s now been alerted that someone wants her dead. I think we better handle this problem from this end.”

“You’d better!” Shashank groused. “I don’t want you to have to start looking over your shoulder to and from work.” With that said, he hung up.

Ramesh dropped the phone back into its cradle. He looked up at Naresh, who’d finished his call as well.

“Nothing yet,” Naresh said. “But they’ve barely begun the investigation. It’s not going to be easy. There are lots of private academic doctors who have admitting privileges at other nonacademic private hospitals, and most have admitting privileges at more than one. It’s more for convenience’s sake for the patients in terms of location, and they apparently don’t admit that many, as they are not supposed to have private patients.”

“Your people are going to continue to work on it, I presume?”

“Very much so. What do you want me to do?”

“Keep tabs on the Hernandez woman. Supposedly, a friend is coming tonight who is a forensic pathologist. Remember, there are to be no autopsies. Luckily, in this situation, we have the law on our side.”

Chapter 28

Chapter 28

OCTOBER 18, 2007
THURSDAY, 4:32 P.M.
NEW DELHI, INDIA

Cal had his legs crossed and his feet on the corner of the library table. Santana had gotten him a bunch of articles about medical tourism that had been springing up in the U.S. newspapers. They had all picked up on the three CNN segments about the New Delhi deaths, and on the three networks’ evening news broadcasts. People were eating it up. Cal’s favorites were those laced with personal stories of people canceling scheduled trips, mostly to India but also to Thailand.

With everything suddenly going so well, Cal should have been ecstatic, but he wasn’t. Like a toothache, the issue involving the Hernandez woman had been bothering him all day. Early that morning, he’d called back the anesthesiologist and the pathologist, and again had gone over the hypothetical scenario involving succinylcholine. If the two doctors had been at all suspicious, they didn’t show it in the slightest, and in certain respects competed with each other in making certain the diabolical scheme was foolproof.

When he had hung up from the conference call, he’d felt reassured. Unfortunately, it hadn’t lasted, and the issue had slowly wormed its way back into his consciousness. What could it have been that the pesky medical student had come across that had initiated her suspicions? Even after the Hernandez woman’s departure, there were bound to be others who’d be just as curious and stumble on the same mysterious and potentially fatal flaw.

“Hey, man!” Durell called out from the library doorway.

Cal waved. “What’s up?”