“It could put a halt to a possible serial killer,” Laurie said. “What we are concerned about is the existence of an Indian angel-of-death healthcare worker flying under the radar here in Delhi, targeting American medical tourism patients. Now, we were going to go to the involved hospital administrations, but we have learned since getting here that the administrations are, for some ill-advised reason, totally against investigating this problem.”

“How have you heard about it?” Arun asked.

“By happenstance a young woman whom I have known for many years is here because her grandmother was the ostensible first victim.”

“I think you’d better tell me the whole story,” Arun said.

Between the two of them, Laurie and Jack told Arun everything they’d heard the night before from Jennifer and Neil, including the probable attempt on Jennifer’s life. Arun was captivated by the story and listened intently, hardly blinking. “And that’s it,” Jack concluded, and Laurie nodded. “If any cases needed an autopsy, it’s Maria Hernandez’s and the two others,” Jack added. “Our thinking is, we’re dealing with a probable poisoning, which an autopsy can often ascertain, and even suggest the likely agent. Of course, then it has to be confirmed by toxicology. One way or the other, we definitely need to do an autopsy on at least one case, and all three if possible.”

“The only toxicology labs here in India are at the public hospitals, like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where I am an alumnus, but you wouldn’t be able to do an autopsy there. That’s for certain. Vijay’s facility would be the best bet, and he could arrange for the toxicology to be done. You know, I heard of these two cases here at the Queen Victoria. There is not much chatter about them, but what there is, I did hear. You see, there are very few adverse outcomes in India with medical tourism cases, and when there is, it’s almost always a very high-risk case.”

“Usually in healthcare serial-killer circumstances,” Laurie said, “there’s an element of rationality perverted involved, such as a misconstrued desire to prevent suffering, or putting people in jeopardy to get the credit for saving them. Can you think of what could be the rationale here, killing American medical tourists? We certainly can’t.”