“Most definitely,” he said. “There is no guarantee, of course, since it depends on at least some of the relatives of the father having contributed their DNA to the ancestral DNA pool and created family trees. But from purely an organizational standpoint, we can certainly produce the kits for the mother and the child on a timely basis. On top of that, for such a cause, I could have our in-house software people, including me, do the matching and try to construct a family tree for the ailing toddler. As an aside, do you have reason to believe the unknown father is from the NYC metropolitan area?”

  “Yes,” Aria said. “I’m quite sure that he is.”

  “That could possibly help,” Vijay said. “Sometimes talking people into sharing their genealogical information can be difficult and a face-to-face meeting can make the difference.”

  “That’s good news,” she said. “When can we start?”

  “When can you get us the blood samples?” Vijay said.

  “How about this afternoon?” Aria said. “I can bring them to your office.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I will be here all afternoon. When you come in, just ask the receptionist for me.”

  “I’ll be there shortly,” Aria said, and disconnected. Before she pocketed her phone, she noticed she’d gotten three texts as well as two voice messages from Dr. Chet McGovern. She ignored them all.

  CHAPTER 22

  May 9th

  2:05 P.M.

  Aria was duly impressed upon stepping off the elevators into the sixth-floor toxicology lab, her first visit there since she’d arrived at the OCME at the beginning of the month. Although the entire building was slated for demolition sometime in the not-too-distant future, the lab looked as if it had recently been renovated with banks of spanking-new, obviously high-tech equipment, and lots of counter space. The only thing that looked old and outdated were the windows. Two technicians in laboratory garb were monitoring the mostly automated machines. Aria went up to the nearest individual, a tall black woman whose hair was completely contained in a hood.

  “I’m Dr. Nichols,” she said. “I need some samples of blood that was sent up yesterday. How can that be arranged?”

  “You’ll have to speak with the department head, Dr. DeVries,” the woman said, pointing to an open office door.

  Aria walked over and into the office. A slim, older Caucasian man with thinning white hair was seated at a desk, signing a stack of reports. Aria repeated her request but was shunted to the neighboring office to find the assistant supervisor, Peter Letterman. Yet again she asked for the samples, this time from a youthful-looking, diminutive tow-haired man.

  “What was the name?” Peter asked with a pleasant smile after Aria introduced herself and repeated her request.

  “Kera Jacobsen,” Aria said. “There was also a fetus associated, obviously with no name but perhaps with a different accession number. I don’t know how that is handled.”

  “I remember the case,” Peter said. “It was an overdose.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “What do you need blood samples for?” Peter asked.

  “DNA test,” Aria said.

  “Blood had already been sent over to the Molecular Genetics lab at 421 for DNA analysis,” Peter said.

  “This is for a different DNA test,” Aria said irritably. She didn’t want to have trouble with this nerd after making so much potential progress on the phone with Vijay Srinivasan.

  “How much blood will you need?” Peter said. “There wasn’t a lot obtained from the fetus, considering the age and size.”

  “Whatever you can give me,” she said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She was about to say something abusive when Peter got to his feet.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said. He smiled. Aria did the same but hers wasn’t as sincere.

  As she waited, Aria glanced around the windowless office. Although it looked newly redecorated, the desk was as old and pitiful as the one she’d just been sitting at in the residents’ room. There were pictures of two kids thumbtacked to a cork bulletin board, and one framed photo of an overweight, smiling woman on the desk.

  Just when she was about to go out and search for Peter he returned. He handed her two tiny, capped test tubes with labels. One obviously contained about a cc of blood, the other a quarter of that amount.

  “That’s all we can spare of the fetal blood,” Peter said. “Sorry, but we might have to redo our drug screen for the fetus if a problem develops with the first sample.”

  Aria merely nodded and walked back into the lab proper. Without wasting any time, she continued out into the hall and summoned an elevator. As she waited, she checked the time on her phone and inwardly groaned as it was already after two. As she boarded the elevator, she acknowledged it wasn’t a good time to be wandering around on the first floor since the afternoon conference that Dr. McGovern ran would soon be starting. Yet she had little choice. With the blood samples in hand, she was intending to head directly over to the Meatpacking District, which required going out the front door. The problem was that she preferred not to run into McGovern even though it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  As it turned out she needn’t have worried about running into him on the first floor because the elevator stopped on the fourth floor, and he boarded, to her exasperation.

  “My goodness gracious!” he marveled, making an exaggerated expression of total surprise. “The Phantom herself! I’m so lucky! Such a nice coincidence. Here I thought you might not grace us with your presence until morning.”

  Aria took a deep breath to gird herself against this Don Juan who obviously took himself way too seriously, coming up with such a stupid nickname.

  “Where have you been?” Chet snapped with a 180-degree change in his demeanor. “I’ve texted you and tried to call. This is getting absurd, young lady.”

  She gritted her teeth. There was that offensively condescending “young lady” again.

  “I really don’t understand your attitude,” Chet said. “Dr. Stapleton was reasonably complimentary this morning, but he said you just disappeared at the end while he was finishing his bullet-tracking diagram. And you were supposed to find me after the case so I could assign you another. Where on earth did you go?”

  “I’m still working on the case I did yesterday,” Aria said. “There’s a big difference between observing and doing. I’ve done enough observing.”

  “What do you mean ‘the case you did’?” Chet asked. “Are you talking about Dr. Montgomery’s autopsy yesterday?”

  “Dr. Montgomery let me do the case,” Aria said. “I was the prosector, and she the observer, which is a lot more appropriate considering I’m a senior pathology resident. And now I’m doing some follow-up investigating on the case to try to determine the manner of death. Most important, I’m learning something, which you should applaud as the supposed director of education.”

  “Let’s not be sarcastic,” Chet said.

  “You can be patronizing, and I can’t be sarcastic?” she questioned with exaggerated uptalk. “How is that fair?”

  “How am I being patronizing?” Chet asked.

  “The fact that you have to ask is pathetic,” Aria said as the elevator bumped to a stop on the first floor and the doors opened. Aria didn’t wait. In a blink of an eye she was out and heading toward the front of the building.

  “Hold up!” Chet called after her. “Aren’t you coming to the conference?”

  She didn’t even bother turning around. Instead she flipped him the bird over her shoulder as she pushed through the door leading out to the building’s public foyer.

  CHAPTER 23

  May 9th

  2:35 P.M.

  Climbing from the taxi she’d hailed in a hurry in case she’d been pursued by McGovern, Aria gazed up at the building that housed GenealogyDNA. It didn’t look any more interesting in person than it did in the Google photo, although now she could tell it had been recently renovated. A plaque attached to the wall by the entrance to the upper commercial spaces described it as the Ferrara Canning Building circa 1880. Inside she could tell that most of the building except the ground floor was vacant. GenealogyDNA was the only tenant on the sixth floor.

  “Can I help you?” said a youthful, extraordinarily casually dressed lavender-haired woman sitting at a reception desk in the small, nondescript outer office. She also had a collection of piercings in her ears and a nose ring.

  “I’m here to see Vijay Srinivasan,” Aria said.

  “Are you Dr. Nichols?” the woman asked, eyeing her white resident jacket, which Aria had left on in the hopes that it would give more legitimacy to her leukemia story.

  “I am,” Aria said.

  “You can go right in,” the woman said. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  The second she stepped into the office proper, she could tell that her initial stereotypical assumptions about GenealogyDNA’s character were correct. What she found herself surveying was far from the typical office. It was a large loft-like space with exposed, hand-hewn roofing beams and no floor dividers or window treatments of any kind. Without a dropped ceiling, the various piping and ducting was in full view, all of which was painted white. The two biggest pieces of furniture were a Ping-Pong table and an elaborate computer game station. Both were in use. Although there were a few desks, most of the furniture was composed of couches and beanbag chairs, popular in an era before Aria had been born. A few of the workstations were mere slabs of plywood set up on sawhorses. What was most apparent were dozens of computer screens and keyboards being used by casually or even sloppily attired, nerdy-looking youthful males. At least that was Aria’s initial assessment until one of them stood up and came toward her. In contrast to the others, he was tastefully dressed in a clean, pressed white shirt and designer jeans. His hair was thick and dark, and his skin tone was a deep brown that made his teeth seem whiter than white. He exuded a Bollywood attractiveness.

  “Dr. Nichols, I presume?” Vijay said with a smile. His accent was distinctly Indian as she remembered from the phone conversation.

  Wary of men in general, Aria felt an immediate unease as he approached, his hand outstretched in greeting. Instead of shaking his hand, she reached into the side pocket of her doctor’s jacket and pulled out the two capped test tubes. She handed them to Vijay.

  Without the slightest hesitation or acknowledgment of Aria’s apparent rebuff, he took the samples. “Ah, yes! The blood samples,” he said. “Thank you. We’ll send these directly out to our lab in Garden City. I’ve already alerted them, and we’ll get right on it.”

  “Thank you,” Aria said. “We’re appreciative of your help.”

  “Do you have a few extra minutes?” Vijay asked.

  “I guess so,” she said, not sure what was coming. She felt a little like a fish out of water.

  “I’ve let the whole team know about your dilemma,” Vijay said, “and we’ve discussed it. We are all going to pitch in. But would you mind if I introduced you?”

  “I suppose not,” Aria said. She wasn’t wild about the idea, but if it could help, she was willing.

  He gestured ahead toward an open area among the various furniture, most of which looked like it came from yard sales. Aria walked in the direction he indicated. As she moved, she noticed that the dozen or so people in the room had all stopped what they were doing and were watching her, including the Ping-Pong players. She also felt Vijay’s hand touch her arm and then grasp it to pull her to a stop. Just when she was going to yank her arm away, he let go of her. She and Vijay were now standing in the middle of the room. Directly in front of them was a particularly large, old leather couch. The two men sitting on it looked to Aria like the computer techies she’d imagined, who’d never dated in high school and could play League of Legends with the best of them. To Aria they appeared totally bored. Both were dressed in sweats and high-top sneakers with their laces untied.

  “Okay, listen up!” he called out to quiet the background chatter. “This is Dr. Nichols. Here’s your chance to ask any questions about this leukemia project. She just handed me the blood samples from the mother and the child, so we’ll be getting the respective kits probably sometime tonight or at the latest tomorrow.”

  Vijay pivoted around to look at everyone. A hand popped up. It belonged to a skinny fellow with facial hair that had not yet turned to whiskers. He also had a sprinkling of acne. “How long do we have before the toddler dies?”

  Vijay turned to her and raised his eyebrows.

  “That’s hard to say,” Aria said. “It could be days or it could be weeks.”

  He again looked around. No one had any more questions. He turned back to Aria. “Do you have any questions?”

  “So, your whole team here is going to work on our toddler’s problem?” she asked him, just to be sure. It sounded almost too good to be true.

  “That’s right,” Vijay said. “We think a project like this could put us on the map where we deserve to be. I told you that our algorithms are the best in the business with the least false positives.”

  “Will you be using phasing and triangulation?” Aria asked. She remembered Madison saying that was how the process worked, and Aria’s reading had confirmed it, particularly the triangulation, which was the best way to determine if matches were real, meaning matches by descent from common ancestors. She had to remember that the process was matching pinpoint variations along a chromosome, the so-called SNPs, or single-nucleotide polymorphisms, not the actual full chromosome sequences. She knew that in the future when full sequencing was faster and cheaper, which was undoubtedly coming sooner than most people realized, it would all be infinitely easier and much more accurate, striking a mortal blow to the concept of individual privacy.

  “Of course,” Vijay said. “That’s how this genealogy system works. It’s relatively easy to find matches but finding the real IBD, or identical-by-descent, matches is the tricky part and that requires triangulation.”

  “Then I guess I don’t have any questions,” Aria said. She couldn’t be more pleased. With just a few white lies, she’d managed to get a whole team of genealogical software experts working on the problem of finding Lover Boy.

  “Before you go, let me show you the type of family tree we’ll be constructing for this child. Do you have the time?”

  “I’ll make the time,” Aria said.

  CHAPTER 24

  May 9th

  4:30 P.M.

  Knock, knock,” Jack said as he rapped on the jamb of Laurie’s open office door. She looked up from the architectural plans for the new Forensic Pathology building that would be housing the autopsy room and offices for all the medical examiners. She’d worked on them in the middle of the night and thought they were nearly done, but now had different ideas in the light of day. Although the Toxicology Department had stayed in the old building by moving up to floors five and six, the Histology Department had been moved down to the new OCME high-rise. The problem was that there was a particularly strong connection with both departments and the autopsy work that the medical examiners did. Laurie could remember the many times she’d visited both departments while trying to complete her investigations to sign out the death certificates. Having them at different locations logistically didn’t make a lot of sense, so she’d gone back to the plans to see what she could do.

  “Is this a good time to chat?” Jack asked. He looked and sounded intense.

  “It is,” Laurie said. “Whenever the door is open, I’m available. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day. Come on in!” In contrast to Jack she tried to sound casual, almost carefree.

  He came in, closed the door behind him, and went directly to the couch, which was his usual destination on visits to her office. He was still dressed in scrubs, as he’d been in the pit most of the day. “So, what did you learn about your projected surgery?” he asked. He was sitting but leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He didn’t blink. He was obviously stressed.

  “Where is my quick-witted, wisecracking, double-entendre Jack?” Laurie asked, trying to make light of the situation. She stayed seated behind her desk.

  “He’s on vacation until all this is put to bed,” Jack said, not minding he was mixing his metaphors. “Stop torturing me! What’s the story?”

  “I spoke twice today with Dr. Claudine Cartier,” Laurie told him. “The last time was just a few minutes ago. She’s being wonderfully accommodating. She understands perfectly my interest in getting this handled as soon as possible. If my questionable one-centimeter lump is cancer, I can’t help but feel that I’m taking a risk with every minute that goes by. All that’s needed to change my prognosis is one cell out of billions to detach itself and set up shop in a distant location.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’d feel the same way. So, what did she say?”

  “She’s had several cancellations of her scheduled surgeries due to the patients coming down with influenza, and she’s willing to fit me in on a semi-emergency basis. She wants me to be in the Kimmel Pavilion because of the accommodations. Now it’s up to the OR and their scheduling. I guess I’m essentially on call, which is fine by me. Now that I have decided to go through with it, I want it done.”

  “So that means it could happen at any time?” Jack asked.

  “No, not at any time,” she said. “I’ll have at least eight to twelve hours’ notice. I’ll be having general anesthesia, so I’ll have to be prepared.”

  “Does our deputy chief know he’s about to be the captain of the ship for a period of time?”

  “He does,” Laurie said. “I had a meeting with him this morning to tell him, and he’s fine with it. I did tell him not to spread it around until it was actually scheduled.”