Jack gave Chet a thumbnail sketch of the Papparis case and showed him the pathology in the chest. He even showed him the cut surface of the lung, which revealed minimal pneumonia.

“Interesting,” Chet said. “The infection must have been airborne.”

“No doubt,” Jack said. “But why so little pneumonia?”

“Beats me,” Chet said. “You’re the infectious-disease expert.”

“I wish that were true,” Jack said. He carefully slipped the lung back into the pan. “I’m positive I’ve heard of this combination of findings. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was.”

“I’ll wager you’ll figure it out,” Chet said. He started to move off, but Jack called after him, asking if he’d run into Laurie.

Chet shook his head. “Not yet.”

Jack looked up at the wall clock. It was going on nine. She should have been there an hour ago. He shrugged and went back to work.

The next order of business was to remove the brain. Since Jack and Vinnie worked together so frequently, they had established a routine of cutting into the head that didn’t require conversation. Although Vinnie did a significant amount of the work, it was always Jack who lifted off the skullcap.

“My, my,” Jack commented as the brain came into view. As with the lungs, there was a significant amount of blood on its surface. When this was seen in an infectious case, it usually meant hemorrhagic meningitis, or inflammation of the meninges to the point of causing bleeding.

“This guy must have had one wicked headache,” Vinnie said.

“That and crushing chest pain,” Jack said. “The poor fellow probably felt like he’d gotten run over by a train.”

“What do you have there, Doctor?” a deep, resonant voice asked. “A burst aneurysm or a trauma victim?”

“Neither,” Jack said. “It’s an infectious case.” He turned and looked up at the imposing six-foot-seven silhouette of Dr. Calvin Washington, the deputy chief.

“How appropriate,” Calvin said. “Contagion is right up your alley. Have you got a tentative diagnosis?”

Calvin leaned over the table to get a better look. His massive muscled bulk made Jack’s stocky frame look tiny by comparison. As an athletically talented African-American giant, Calvin could have played professional football if he hadn’t been so eager to get to medical school. His father had been a respected surgeon in Philadelphia and he was determined to follow a similar career pattern.

“I hadn’t a clue until two seconds ago,” Jack said. “But as soon as I saw the blood on the surface of the brain it hit me. I remembered reading about inhalational anthrax a couple of years ago when I was boning up about infectious disease.”

“Anthrax?” Calvin gave a disbelieving chuckle. Jack had a penchant for coming up with outlandish diagnoses. Although he often turned out to be correct, anthrax seemed beyond the realm of possibility. In all Calvin’s years as a pathologist he had seen only one case, and that had been in a cattleman in Oklahoma, and it wasn’t inhalational. It had been the more common cutaneous form.