Michael Palmer - Flashback

The Sisterhood
Side Effects
Natural Causes
Extreme Measures
Silent Treatment
Miracle Cure
Crtical Judgement
The Patient
Fatal
And in hardcover
The Society

M ICHAEL P ALMER , M.D., is the author of Fatal, The Patient, Miracle Cure, Critical Judgment, Silent Treatment, Natural Causes, Extreme Measures, Flashback, Side Effects, and The Sisterhood. His books have been translated into thirty languages. He trained in internal medicine at Boston City and Massachusetts General Hospitals, spent twenty years as a full-time practitioner of internal and emergency medicine, and is now an associate director of the Massachusetts Medical Societys physician health program.

Turn the page for an exciting preview of
Michael Palmers medical thriller

FATAL

available from Bantam Books

It was the second straight day of unremitting rain. Nikki Solari hated running in this kind of weather, but today she was considering doing it anyway. It had been more than a week since her roommate and close friend, Kathy Wilson, had stormed from their South Boston flat. A week without so much as a wordto her or to their mutual friends. The police had been surprisingly little help. Nikki had filled out the appropriate forms and brought in some photographs, but so far nothing.

Miss Solari, try to relax. Im sure your friend will turn up.

Its Doctor Solari, and why are you so sure?

Thats the way it is with cases like this. Everyone worries and the missing person just shows up.

Well, this missing person is an incredibly talented musician who would never leave her band in the lurch, which she has. She is a wonderfully dependable friend who would never do anything to upset me, which she has. And she is an extremely compassionate and kind woman who would never say anything abusive to anyone, yet before she disappeared she had become abusive to everyone.

Doctor Solari, tell me something honestly. Were you and Miss Wilson lovers?

Oh, Christ

Nikki desperately needed to wrest the worry from her brain, if only for a while, and the only ways she had ever been able to do so were running, making music, and performing autopsies.

It was eleven in the morning. One more hour until lunch. She could go out and splash through a few miles then. She stood by the window of her office watching the cars creep down Albany Street past the modern building that was the headquarters of the chief medical examiner and his staff. This was her third year as an associate in ME Josef Kellers office. She was fascinated by the work and absolutely adored the man. But the past week had been hell. She glanced over at her desk. There were reports to read, dictations to do, and several boxes of slides to review, but the concentration just wasnt there.

Hey there, beautiful, youve got a case.

Without waiting for an invitation, Brad Cummings strode into the office. Divorced, with a couple of kids, Cummings was the deputy chief medical examiner. He was athletic, urbane, and, in the eyes of perhaps every woman in the city except Nikki, handsome. She found him smug, self-absorbed, and way too prettyquite possibly the absolute antithesis of what she was looking for in a man.

Wheres Dr. Keller? she asked.

Away until one. That means Im the boss until then, so I get to say who gets what case, and you get this tubber.

This what?

Sixty-six-year-old guy had a coronary getting into his Jacuzzi, smacked his head on the side, and went for the eternal swim. Hes just eight months post-bypass surgery. I spoke to his doctor, who said he was on mucho cardiac meds and undoubtedly had an MI. So hes really just a view. You dont have to cut on him at all. And that means we have time to go have lunch at that place on Newbury Street Ive been telling you about.

Brad, I dont want to go out with you.

But I thought you broke up with that drip you were dating.

Correction, that drip broke up with me. And Im not interested in starting up with another one.

She digs me. I can tell.

In the best of times Nikki had precious little patience for the man.

Brad, you have more than enough scalps hanging on your lodgepole without mine. And Im sure there are plenty more where those came from. Well keep getting along fine so long as you keep things on a business or collegial basis. But I promise you, Brad, call me beautiful again, or sweets, or honey, or babe, or anything other than Nikki or Dr. Solari, and Ill write you up and hand it over to Dr. Keller. Clear?

Hey, easy does it.

Nikki could tell that he stopped himself at the last possible instant from adding Babe.

Im going to get started on the new case, she said.

I told you, this is a straightforward view. No scalpel required, just eyeball him and sign off.

If its all the same to you, Ill make that decision after Ive seen the guy.

Nikki didnt add that there wasnt a chance in the world she would pass on this case regardless of how open and shut it was. Here was the perfect opportunity to get her mind off Kathy for a few hours without getting soaked on the streets of Boston.

Suit yourself, Cummings said. Three days,

What?

Three days. Thats how long the dudes been in the water. Hes a little, um, bloated. Sure you dont want to just view and then skiddoo?

Have a good lunch, Brad.

Nikki changed into scrubs and located the remains of Roger Belanger on the center of three stainless steel tables in Autopsy Suite 1. The daughter of an Italian and an Irishwoman, she could easily trace her thick, black hair and wide (some said sensuous) mouth to her father, and her fair skin, sea-green eyes, slender frame, and caustic wit to her mom. At her fathers urging, she had tried to follow his rather large footsteps into surgery. But after a year of residency, she switched to pathology, realizing that her desire to have a life outside of medicine was precluded by spending most of it in the OR or on rounds. Not once had she regretted her decision.

Belanger was hardly the most unsightly corpse Nikki had ever examined, but neither was he at all pleasant to look at. Overweight and nearly egg bald, he was extremely bloated and discolored, with purplish marbling of his skin. His flaccid limbs were well past rigor mortis. The white scar from his bypass ran the length of his breastbone.

Good-bye for now, Kath, she thought as she began to focus in on the details of the body. Ill let you back in in two hours.

No matter how obvious a case is, Joe Keller had reminded her on more than one occasion, no matter how apparently open and shut, you must make no assumptions. Process is everything. If you stick to process, step by step, you will seldom have to explain having missed something.

Step one: Read over as much information as you can lay your hands on about the subject. Step two: Inspect every millimeter of the skin.

Nikki used the foot-activated dictation system as she went.

There is a well-healed three-inch scar in the right lower abdominal quadrant, possibly from an appendectomy; a ten-inch scar less than a year old down the midr anterior chest; a ten-inch scar of about the same age on the inner right thigh, probably from harvesting a vein for his bypass; and a well-healed two-inch scar just below the left patella, probably from the repair of a laceration many years ago.

There is a single contusion just above and behind the right ear, with discoloration and some swelling but no depression of the bone beneath. There is a nickel-size abrasion just beneath the right mandible that