“You are scaring me,” Laurie said. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Laurie,” Jack said. “Please don’t ask any questions. The less you know right now the better off you are. But I think I should talk to someone high up in law enforcement.”
“You want me to call him now?”
“Whenever is convenient,” Jack said.
Laurie blew out through pursed lips as she dialed Lou Soldano’s number. She’d not talked to him in a few weeks, and she felt it was a little awkward calling about a situation she knew so little about. But she was definitely worried about Jack and wanted to help.
When police headquarters answered and Laurie asked for Lou, she was told the detective wasn’t available. She left a message on his voice mail for him to call her.
“That’s the best I could do,” Laurie said as she hung up. “Knowing Lou, he’ll be back to me as soon as he can.”
“I appreciate it,” Jack said. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. He had the comforting sense she was a true friend.
Jack went back to his own office just in time to run into Chet. Chet took one look at Jack’s face and whistled.
“And what did the other guy look like?” Chet asked jokingly.
“I’m not in the mood,” Jack said. He took off his jacket and hung it over his chair.
“I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with those gang members who visited you Friday,” Chet said.
Jack gave the same explanation he’d given to the others.
Chet flashed a wry smile as he stowed his coat in his file cabinet. “Sure, you fell while logging, he said. “And I’m dating Julia Roberts. But, hey, you don’t have to tell me what happened; I’m just your friend.”
That was exactly the point, Jack mused. After checking to see if he had any phone messages, he started back out of the office.
“You missed a nice little dinner last night,” Chet said. “Terese came along. We talked about you. She’s a fan of yours, but she’s as concerned as I am about your monomania concerning these infectious cases.”
Jack didn’t even bother to answer. If Chet or Terese knew what had really happened last night, they’d be more than concerned.
Returning to the first floor, Jack looked into Janice’s office. Now he wanted to ask her about the influenza case that was being posted by Bingham, but she’d left. Jack descended to the morgue level and changed into his isolation gear.
He went into the autopsy room and walked up to the only table in operation. Bingham was on the patient’s right, Calvin on the left, and Vinnie at the head. They were almost done.
“Well, well,” Bingham said when Jack joined them. “Isn’t this convenient? Here’s our in-house infectious expert.”
“Perhaps the expert would like to tell us what this case is,” Calvin challenged.
“I’ve already heard,” Jack said. “Influenza.”
“Too bad,” Bingham said. “It would have been fun to see if you truly have the nose for this stuff. When it came in early this morning there was no diagnosis yet. The suspicion was some sort of viral hemorrhagic fever. It had everybody up in arms.”
“When did you learn it was influenza?” Jack asked.
“A couple of hours ago,” Bingham answered. “Just before we started. It’s a good case, though. You want to see the lungs?”
“I would,” Jack said.
Bingham reached into the pan and lifted out the lungs. He showed the cut surface to Jack.
“My God, the whole lung is involved!” Jack commented. He was impressed. In some areas there was frank hemorrhage.
“Even some myocarditis,” Bingham said. He put the lung back and lifted up the heart and displayed it for Jack. “When you can see the inflammation grossly like this, you know it’s extensive.”
“Looks like a virulent strain,” Jack said.
“You’d better believe it,” Bingham said. “This patient’s only twenty-nine years old, and his first symptoms occurred around six last night. He was dead at four A.M. It reminds me of a case I did back in my residency during the pandemic of fifty-seven and fifty-eight.”
Vinnie rolled his eyes. Bingham had a mind-numbing habit of comparing every case to one that he’d had in his long career.