provide.
On a three-by-five card Ben scribbled the words Columbia bench space available, can start immediately, need to know reagents and special equipment.
Adding the index card to the already sizable stack of contract, wills, and trust, Ben reached for the phone. He’d waited long enough, and his impatience had taken over. He dialed Satoshi’s cell phone number, which he’d committed to memory.
With an uncomfortable premonition building with each hollow ring, Ben impatiently drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk. When the prerecorded generic outgoing message came on, Ben’s premonition was unhappily vindicated.
When appropriate, he left a message for Satoshi to return the call, adding that he had some good news to report. It was Ben’s hope that such a message was the best way to ensure a call back as soon as possible.
With that accomplished, Ben went into his closet and dragged out his coat. It was time to leave for his morning meeting with Michael.
5
MARCH 25, 2010
THURSDAY, 10:18 a.m.
L aurie realized she was not concentrating as she went back once again to the beginning of the chapter of the book she was reading. With nothing else to do, she resigned herself to reviewing general forensics, reading up on gunshot 56
wounds. She had chosen GSW after hearing Lou’s story about the case that Jack was currently doing down in the pit. The trouble was that her mind was running all over creation, jumping from one thing to another. She’d already called Leticia so many times just to check in that she had detected a bit of frustration on Leticia’s part. During her last call Laurie had even detected irritation. While Leticia said everything was fine, she suggested that perhaps she, Leticia, should be the next to call, and only if there was a problem of any sort. In her highly sensitive state, Laurie felt as if she was being told that she was not quite as important as she thought and that it was she who was having the problem of adapting, not JJ.
As for her general reception at OCME, Jack had been right. Everyone from the janitorial staff and building engineers all the way up to the chief and the deputy chief had been effusive in welcoming her back. The universality of the response had been warming, but it had done nothing for her professional anxieties. If anything, they’d hardened partially as a consequence of not having been assigned a case. She had found herself unreasonably interpreting the situation not as a favor to her to get acclimated but rather because they, meaning Bingham, didn’t think she could do it to their expectations. The problem, however, was more because she had too much time on her hands with essentially nothing to do.
Laurie’s eyes drifted around her office. There were no Post-its clinging to the tops, sides, or bottom of her computer screen, as there usually were. No stacks of case files on the corner of her desk waiting for information or laboratory results before they could be signed out. In fact, the entire room looked so clean as to be sterile. The microscope standing by itself without slide trays seemed the most lonely, with protective covers on its eyepieces.
Laurie was about to give up trying to read, thinking she would wander down to the autopsy room and at least participate with Jack and Lou on the GSW case.
By doing so she hoped she would feel that she was participating, if not contributing. Instead her phone surprised her by filling the room with its persistent jangle. Laurie snapped it up as if it was a desperate emergency, thankful that someone wanted to talk with her.
“Laurie, I have a problem,” a voice said. It took her a moment to recognize that it was Dr. Arnold Besserman, the on-call medical examiner who’d denied her a case that morning and who was thereby guilty of intensifying her anxieties, or so she irrationally and unfairly thought.
“Oh?” Laurie questioned with a glimmer of hope. Maybe a new case had just come
On a three-by-five card Ben scribbled the words Columbia bench space available, can start immediately, need to know reagents and special equipment.
Adding the index card to the already sizable stack of contract, wills, and trust, Ben reached for the phone. He’d waited long enough, and his impatience had taken over. He dialed Satoshi’s cell phone number, which he’d committed to memory.
With an uncomfortable premonition building with each hollow ring, Ben impatiently drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk. When the prerecorded generic outgoing message came on, Ben’s premonition was unhappily vindicated.
When appropriate, he left a message for Satoshi to return the call, adding that he had some good news to report. It was Ben’s hope that such a message was the best way to ensure a call back as soon as possible.
With that accomplished, Ben went into his closet and dragged out his coat. It was time to leave for his morning meeting with Michael.
5
MARCH 25, 2010
THURSDAY, 10:18 a.m.
L aurie realized she was not concentrating as she went back once again to the beginning of the chapter of the book she was reading. With nothing else to do, she resigned herself to reviewing general forensics, reading up on gunshot 56
wounds. She had chosen GSW after hearing Lou’s story about the case that Jack was currently doing down in the pit. The trouble was that her mind was running all over creation, jumping from one thing to another. She’d already called Leticia so many times just to check in that she had detected a bit of frustration on Leticia’s part. During her last call Laurie had even detected irritation. While Leticia said everything was fine, she suggested that perhaps she, Leticia, should be the next to call, and only if there was a problem of any sort. In her highly sensitive state, Laurie felt as if she was being told that she was not quite as important as she thought and that it was she who was having the problem of adapting, not JJ.
As for her general reception at OCME, Jack had been right. Everyone from the janitorial staff and building engineers all the way up to the chief and the deputy chief had been effusive in welcoming her back. The universality of the response had been warming, but it had done nothing for her professional anxieties. If anything, they’d hardened partially as a consequence of not having been assigned a case. She had found herself unreasonably interpreting the situation not as a favor to her to get acclimated but rather because they, meaning Bingham, didn’t think she could do it to their expectations. The problem, however, was more because she had too much time on her hands with essentially nothing to do.
Laurie’s eyes drifted around her office. There were no Post-its clinging to the tops, sides, or bottom of her computer screen, as there usually were. No stacks of case files on the corner of her desk waiting for information or laboratory results before they could be signed out. In fact, the entire room looked so clean as to be sterile. The microscope standing by itself without slide trays seemed the most lonely, with protective covers on its eyepieces.
Laurie was about to give up trying to read, thinking she would wander down to the autopsy room and at least participate with Jack and Lou on the GSW case.
By doing so she hoped she would feel that she was participating, if not contributing. Instead her phone surprised her by filling the room with its persistent jangle. Laurie snapped it up as if it was a desperate emergency, thankful that someone wanted to talk with her.
“Laurie, I have a problem,” a voice said. It took her a moment to recognize that it was Dr. Arnold Besserman, the on-call medical examiner who’d denied her a case that morning and who was thereby guilty of intensifying her anxieties, or so she irrationally and unfairly thought.
“Oh?” Laurie questioned with a glimmer of hope. Maybe a new case had just come
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