“Is there some way to get those samples over there?” Laurie said, as she finished obtaining the last sample.

“I’m sure there is,” Arun said. “I’ll get Jeet to take care of it. I’d imagine the clinical laboratory here at the Gangamurthy Hospital has a delivery service.”

With two proficient prosectors at work, the autopsy proceeded apace until Laurie got to the kidneys. After checking them and determining them to be normal in situ, she lopped them out with the knife used for gross dissection. Using the same knife, she opened one with a bifurcating coronal slice, exposing the parenchyma and the calyx.

“Jack, look at this!” she said excitedly.

Jack looked over her shoulder. “That looks odd,” he said. “The parenchyma looks sort of waxy.”

“Exactly,” Laurie said, with even more excitement. “I’ve seen this before. You know what it turned out to be?”

“Amyloid?” Jack guessed.

“No, silly. That pink stuff is in the tubules. It’s in the lumen, not in the cells. Maria suffered acute rhabdomyolysis!”

“Arun!” Jack called excitedly, “call Jeet. We want a frozen section. If this is myosin and we’re dealing with an intoxication, as we suspect, this is practically pathognomonic for succinylcholine poisoning.”

A half-hour later, Laurie was the first to get to look at the kidney sections. The autopsy had been finished and dictated. Specimens had been fixed, particularly of the kidney and the heart, and the slides would be made. Finally, the body had been placed in a proper mortuary cooler.

“Well,” Jack demanded impatiently. Laurie seemed to be taking longer than usual peering into the microscope.

“They are definitely pink casts in the tubules,” she said. She leaned back so Jack could look.

“Rhabdomyolysis for sure!” Jack said. He straightened up. “Considering the history, I’d accept that as proof, even without toxicology.”

Laurie got up so that Arun and then Neil could look in and see the myosin blocking the kidney tubules.

“So, what are you going to do now?” Arun asked. He was exhilarated to be part of a forensic pathology case, just what he’d dreamed of when he was in high school, before the realities of the field in India had become known to him.

“We should probably be asking you at this point,” Jack said. “In the United States, medical examiners operating in an independent capacity would approach either the police or the district attorney or both. This is clearly a criminal situation.”

“I don’t know what should be done,” Arun admitted. “Perhaps I should ask one of my lawyer friends.”