Cure by Robin Cook

back to expose his face, but Laurie grabbed his arm and pulled it back.

    “Let him sleep!”

    “Why?”

    “As I said, he must be exhausted.”

    “He’s here for a reason,” Jack remarked as he pulled his hand free from Laurie’s grip and gently lifted Lou’s hat off the sleeping policeman. “The sooner he gets into a real bed, the better.”

    With his face now visible, Lou appeared the picture of absolute repose, despite the surroundings. He also looked exhausted, with dark circles under his somewhat sunken eyes. The dark circles were even apparent with the man’s deep complexion. He was handsome in a masculine, muscular fashion: a man’s man, clearly Italian. His clothes were disheveled and rumpled, as if he’d been in them for days, and it appeared he’d not shaved for an equivalent amount of time.

    “He’s been here as long as I have,” Arnold called from behind the desk.

    “Hey, big guy!” Jack said, giving Lou’s shoulder a light shove. “Time to get you home to beddy-bye.”

    Lou’s breathing changed its rhythm briefly, but he didn’t awaken.

    “Let the poor man sleep, even for a short time.”

    “Come on, my man,” Jack said, increasing the force on Lou’s shoulder and ignoring Laurie.

    45

    Everyone jumped when Lou suddenly sat bolt upright, his feet hitting the floor with a solid thump. His eyes had gone from fully closed to fully open such that the whites could be seen all around his irises. Before anyone could respond, he caught sight of Laurie. “Hey, Laurie! What a surprise! I thought it was next week you were going to start work.” With a slight wobble, he got to his feet and enveloped Laurie in a big hug. “How’s the little one?”

    Laurie recovered from having been startled and hugged Lou back despite his reeking of cigarette smoke. She had known Lou even longer than she’d known Jack, having met him the year she had started at OCME in the early nineties.
    They had even dated briefly before both realized they were more suited to be friends than lovers. Lou knew the whole difficult story of JJ better than anyone at OCME, as he was a regular visitor to the Stapleton home.

    After a bit more personal talk, Jack asked Lou what he was doing at OCME, which Lou insisted on calling “the morgue.” Although Lou knew that OCME was a lot more than a morgue and that the actual morgue was only a small part of the operation, he still couldn’t change, and Jack had given up getting him to do so.

    “There’s a case I want you to do for me,” Lou began. “The incident happened in Queens, but I threw my weight around and got the body brought here instead of being taken to the Queens office. I hope you don’t mind.”

    “Me mind?” Jack questioned humorously. “Not on your life. Now, Bingham may throw a fit as a stickler for rules, and our man in Queens might have his feelings hurt that you didn’t think he could handle it, but I’m certain he’ll be able to put it behind him before retirement.”

    Lou chuckled. “Will it be that bad?”

    “I sincerely doubt it, at least not with Dick Katzenburg.”

    “Katzenburg won’t mind in the slightest,” Laurie threw in. She’d had lots of opportunity to work with the chief of the Queens office. The New York OCME had four physical locations, with 519 First Avenue serving Manhattan and the Bronx, and with separate offices in Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island serving their own boroughs.

    “It was a GSW,” Lou began.

    “Hey, Arnold!” Jack called out. “Can I do the gunshot victim?” Ultimately, as the on-call ME, it was Arnold’s choice which case was to be assigned to which pathologist. Some people had specific preferences, especially if they were doing 46

    a study on a specific forensic issue. Other people had specific dislikes, and no one liked unpleasant decomposed corpses, which were doled out on a semi-rotating basis.

    “No skin off my nose,”Arnold said gruffly as he passive-aggressively tossed the