“Were you doing an ID in there of a case I don’t know about?” George Fontworth asked. He was bent over the list of fatalities, trying to schedule the day’s autopsies.

“No! They were the parents of one of yesterday’s cases,” Laurie said while staring off into the middle distance. With the Cassidys gone, she found herself preoccupied by the horror of their son selling assault rifles, probably to other skinheads. With what she’d learned the day before from Special Agent Gordon Tyrrell, putting such deadly weapons in the hands of such violent and bigoted people was an invitation to disaster, especially since the far-right neo-Nazi militias were busily recruiting the skinheads as shock troops.

What’s this world coming to? Laurie voicelessly questioned to herself. Her strong support for gun control ratcheted up yet another notch.

TEN

____

TEN

Tuesday, October 19

11:15 A.M.

With the cab’s motor running, Yuri got out and opened his garage door. Despite his exhaustion, the sight of the pest control truck brought a smile to his face. The fact that it was sitting there waiting for the big day was a source of great satisfaction and gave meaning to the effort he was expending and the anxieties he was suffering. Yuri pulled his taxi inside and shut the overhead door. He didn’t want anyone to see the truck.

At his back door Yuri hesitated for a moment and let his eyes roam his immediate neighborhood. He wanted to make sure no one was paying him any heed. It wasn’t usual for him to be coming home in the middle of the morning. And certainly all the commotion of the ambulance in the wee hours of that morning must have gotten the neighbors’attention. Yet he saw no one. It was a peaceful Indian summer day with the temperature in the low seventies. For the moment, there weren’t even any dogs barking.

Inside, Yuri went directly to his refrigerator and poured himself a vodka. He leaned against the counter and took a calming sip. He was still nervous about Connie’s body having been taken to the medical examiner’s office at Kings County Hospital. He’d gone with it for purposes of identification, even though he’d been told it wasn’t necessary since he’d made adequate identification at Coney Island Hospital. But he’d gone anyway in hopes of talking the doctors out of doing the autopsy. Yet it turned out he never even got to see a doctor. The person he’d met with described herself as a forensic investigator. At least Yuri made sure she got the story about the asthma and the allergies. She told him that the autopsy wouldn’t take place until some time after eight, when the medical examiners arrived.