For a moment Cal worried about how to get some clothes for Jennifer but then decided it wasn’t necessary.

“She’ll have to make do with the bathrobes,” Cal said.

Returning to the car, Sachin asked Subrata to open the trunk. As the lid was raised, Jennifer squinted in the sunlight. Her eyes reflected a combination of anger and terror. Sachin had Suresh and Subrata lift her out and carry her down the stairs. Sachin and Cal followed. Cal carried the bathrobes.

“Where to?” Sachin asked.

“On the couch,” Cal said, pointing. “And remove the tape.”

It took a lot longer to get the duct tape off than it did to get it on, and it was painful in places, but Jennifer did not complain until they removed the gag.

“You fuckers,” she snarled the moment she could talk. “Who the hell are you people?”

“That kind of attitude doesn’t bode well for your visit,” Sachin said to Cal.

“She’ll settle down,” Cal said confidently.

“Like hell I’ll settle down,” Jennifer spat. When Suresh removed the last piece of tape from her legs, she leaped to her feet and bolted toward the stairs. Suresh managed to get a hold of her arm, and she reeled around and scratched him with her fingernails. He backhanded her viciously and knocked her down. It was apparent she was dizzy when she sat up; she was swaying slightly and didn’t get right to her feet. Her expression was momentarily blank but quickly cleared.

“She might not be the most pleasant guest,” Sachin said.

Cal draped one of the bathrobes over her shoulders. “Actually, you don’t have to stay here long,” he said to Jennifer. “We only want to talk to you, and then you can leave. I’ll even tell you what we need. Somehow you have become suspicious of the three medical deaths that occurred Monday night, Tuesday night, and Wednesday night. Something has made you skeptical of the diagnosis on all three. We’d like to know what it is. And that’s it.” Cal spread his hands and raised his eyebrows. “That’s all we want. As soon as you tell us, we’ll take you back to the hotel. I wanted to give you a heads-up so you could be thinking about it.”

Jennifer glared at Cal. “I’m not going to tell you shit.”

“What do you think?” Jack asked. He stepped back. He, Laurie, Neil, and Arun were in the Queen Victoria Hospital basement cooler. With some difficulty, all four of them had gotten Maria Hernandez dressed in the clothes that Neil had brought from the Amal Palace Hotel. Jack had just added the pièce de résistance: his Yankees baseball hat. He had placed it so that the visor was slanted downward and covered most of Maria’s face to camouflage her other-worldly color.

“I don’t know,” Laurie said.