“Cool it,” Warren said to Flash. He gave Flash’s shoulder a reassuring pat. Turning back to Jack he added, “I had to talk Flash out of going out there and beating the pulp out of his sister’s hubby.”

“The son of a bitch killed her,” Flash growled.

“Come on, man!” Warren pleaded. “You don’t know that for sure.”

“I know it,” Flash said.

Warren turned to Jack. “You see what I’m up against. If Flash goes out there, there’s going to be trouble. Somebody’s going to be dead, and I don’t think it’s going to be Flash.”

“What can I do to help?” Jack asked.

“See if you can find out what killed her,” Warren said. “If she died of something natural-like, then Flash here’s going to have to take his irritation out on something else, like on you and me on the court.” Warren gave Flash a friendly cuff on the top of the head. Flash parried the blow irritably.

“Where is her body at the moment?” Jack asked.

“At the morgue in Brooklyn,” Warren said. “At least that’s what Flash was told by the Coney Island Hospital where she’d been treated.”

“Well, then it’s going to be easy,” Jack said. “I’ll talk to whoever does her autopsy, and we’ll have the answer.”

“There ain’t going to be no autopsy,” Flash blurted. “That’s part of what’s bothering me. They took her to the morgue to have an autopsy, but now she’s not going to. Something’s wrong here, you know what I’m saying?”

“Not necessarily,” Jack said. “Not every corpse brought into the medical examiner’s office is autopsied. In fact, that she wasn’t autopsied means that the chances of foul play are small. Since she died at a hospital, it means that the attending doctor certified the cause of death, and in that case an autopsy is not mandatory.”

“Flash is thinking conspiracy here,” Warren said.

“I can assure you there’s no conspiracy,” Jack said. “Incompetence, maybe, but conspiracy, no.”

“But...” Flash began.

“Hold on!” Jack interrupted. “I’ll still look into it for you. What was her name?”

“Connie Davydov,” Flash said.

Jack wrote the name down and reached for the phone. He called the Brooklyn office, which administratively was part of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York. Technically Bingham was chief, but the Brooklyn office had its own acting head. His name was Jim Bennett.

“Who’s the scheduling ME this week?” Jack asked the operator who answered after Jack had identified himself.

“Dr. Randolph Sanders,” the operator said. “Would you like me to page him?”