“You’re right,” Cal said. Going inside the garage’s first bay, he opened the circuit-breaker box. It took a bit of a search to find the circuits for the basement, but once he found them, he unscrewed the fuses.

“A little darkness should help,” Cal said.

Later, as the two wounded men were crossing the lawn to the bungalow, Cal spoke up: “I told you she was a tigress.”

“You did!” Durell agreed. “She took me totally by surprise. I thought she’d be shitting in her pants. By the way, what the hell is the Stockholm syndrome?”

“No idea whatsoever,” Cal said. “What do you think the chances are that she’s going to talk to us? I’m not as confident as I was initially.”

“If I had to guess, I suppose I’d have to say I’m not confident at all.”

“We might have to talk Veena into coming to the rescue again,” Cal said. “She’s already spoken with her.”

“That’s an idea. She could be the good cop while you and I are the bad cops, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know exactly what you are saying,” Cal responded. “And I think it’s a terrific idea.”

Chapter 33

Chapter 33

OCTOBER 19, 2007
FRIDAY, 11:35 A.M.
NEW DELHI, INDIA

These are better facilities than we have in New York City,” Laurie said, letting her eyes roam around the autopsy room at the private Gangamurthy Medical College. “Our autopsy room is over half a century old. It looks like a movie set for an old horror film by comparison.”

Laurie, Jack, Neil, Arun, and Dr. Singh were standing in the postmortem room of the pathology department of the medical school. Everything was new and the very latest. Its hospital, the Gangamurthy Medical Center, was a big player in the medical tourism industry, particularly with cardiac problems and particularly for patients from Dubai and other cities in the Middle East. An extremely grateful Mr. Gangamurthy from Dubai was the major donor, to the tune of one hundred million dollars.

“Unfortunately, I have a lecture in just a few minutes, and I am going to have to leave you people,” Dr. Vijay Singh said. He was a lightly complected man of sizable girth. He was wearing a Western jacket and tie, but a voluminous wattle obscured his necktie’s knot. “But I believe we have arranged for everything you might need. My digital camera is on the counter. We even have frozen sections available, as we provide them for the hospital. Jeet, my assistant, will be available if you need anything specific. Arun knows how to contact him, and he’ll come right in.”

Arun pressed his hands together, bowed, and said, “Namasté.”

“I will be off, then,” Vijay said. “Enjoy yourselves.”

“I’m feeling a little guilty,” Jack said, the moment Vijay departed. “Don’t you think we should have told him we stole this body and have no official permission to autopsy it?”