"Is it Sasha?" she asked, then, in the next breath, she went through the list of her other cousins' names. "Natalya? Tanya? Kady? Marja?"

He shook his head, his slightly longish gray hair moving back and forth. "No, no, not that family. My blue family."

She stared at him, confused. It took her a moment to understand, only after she remembered that her uncle was a retired police sergeant who'd served proudly with the NYPD.

Her mind leaped to the only conclusion she could. "You're here about Sergeant Kelly?"

The look on her uncle's face told her she'd guessed right before he ever said a word. "Yes, I am here because of him. I am hearing he had n.o.body. That he is being to lie inside of a drawer of metal. That is not being right," he said with feeling.

It was a small, small world after all. "You were a friend of his?"

"He was teaching me," Josef told her. For a moment, he was back in the past, when his girls were small and he made his living by risking his life every day on the street. "He was my boss. If I am not knowing him, I would not be being here now, talking to you. He was saving my life when I was a rockie," he told her.

"A rookie?" she suggested tactfully.

It was clear that he was frustrated as well as saddened. The former came from having lost touch with the late sergeant after the man had retired from the force. But there was always something to do, jobs to juggle. He was proud of the fact that he had helped all five of his girls through medical school, but it had been at the cost of more than one former friendship.

"Yes, that word. Rookie. I am forgetting the words, but not the feelings. He was being a good man, John was. Good mens should not be being forgotten."

And that was when Nika suddenly realized what her uncle was doing here. "You're claiming his body?" she asked.

Josef nodded his head solemnly. "I am doing what is needing to be done."

"Can I chip in?" she asked. When he looked at her, a slight puzzled expression on his face, she rephrased her question. "Can I give you money toward Sergeant Kelly's funeral?"

His first inclination was to refuse. There was pride involved and the knowledge that funds were tight for her at this stage, but Josef knew that there were some things that a person needed to do. It was a matter of conscience. This he understood.

"That would be being very nice of you," he told her with a grateful smile.

Chapter 7.

Nika accompanied her uncle when he went to view the former police sergeant's body. She stood to one side, a silent support for Josef as he paid his last respects to a fellow brother in arms.

"I am sorry we losted touch, my friend. I am hoping you are happy now," he murmured.

As she watched Josef, a thought suddenly occurred to her. And as it did, she felt excitement bubbling up inside of her. So much so that it was a struggle not to say anything while they were in this room, which demanded near silence as well as respect.

Because of her regard for her uncle, Nika let him have his moment and held her tongue until he was ready to leave the hospital morgue.

"Thank you," Josef said to the attendant who'd initially allowed them into the room. "Someone from the funeral place will be coming for him."

Once outside, Nika found herself searching for a way to broach the subject without stomping all over her uncle's grief. It was obvious that he regretted losing touch with the man and she didn't want to intrude on that. At the same time, she really needed to in order to ask him to agree to what she proposed.

How would he feel about her asking him to give his permission to carve up his dead friend so that she could lay her own suspicions to rest? Suspicions that no one else seemed to have?

Walking away from the morgue, Josef abruptly stopped and turned toward her. His eyes were kind as he studied her face. "What is it you are fighting with yourself about, Nika?"

His question caught her completely off guard. She stared at him, stunned. "Excuse me?"

"Something is being on your mind." It wasn't a question. "What is it?"

Mind reading was not a known family trait. To say Nika was flabbergasted was an understatement. "How did you-"

Josef laughed softly, as if the answer was obvious. "I am having five daughters and your aunt Magda. When a woman, she is not talking and it is not because she is sleeping, something is troubling her." His kind eyes delved into hers. "So what is it?"

Okay, here went nothing.

She took a breath and then started. Nika watched her uncle's face carefully as she asked, "Uncle Josef, since you're claiming the sergeant's body, would you request an autopsy?"

Rather than annoyed or upset by the request, her uncle looked confused. "Why would I want to be doing that?"

She knew how strange this had to sound to him. "Because I really need to know what your friend died from."

"I was told it was heart attack," he said, then asked, "It was not heart attack?"

She had to be honest. "I'm not sure." Glancing around to make sure they weren't going to be overheard, she explained her thinking: that there seemed to be just too many deaths occurring in the ward lately. That, although the sergeant's health could ultimately be regarded as poor, he was being sent back to the nursing home because there was really nothing more to be done for him here at the hospital. This was as good as things were going to be for the former police sergeant.

"So, he was not being healthy," Josef concluded.

She knew what he meant. That the hospital, unable to do anything further for the man, was sending Sergeant Kelly to the nursing home to await death. "No, he wasn't. But it wasn't his heart that was the problem. He had prostate cancer-"

"Your gut, it is talking to you?" Josef surmised knowingly.

She smiled at his phraseology. There was something endearing about it, now that she'd gotten the hang of unraveling its mysteries. "Yes, it is."

Josef nodded, as if accepting the explanation. "Then this is being enough for me," he told her. "You will be having your autopsy, Nika."

Relieved, happy to finally be either confirming her suspicions or laying them to rest, she threw her arms around her uncle's neck and brushed a quick kiss against his cheek.

"Thank you, Uncle Josef!" Slipping her arms from his neck, she said, "I'll get the paperwork started."

It was all just probably her imagination, she reasoned, but until she knew for certain, she wasn't going to be able to have any peace.

And if it wasn't just her imagination, she needed to stop whoever or whatever it was that was causing this senseless elimination of senior citizens at their most vulnerable.

Two mornings later, Nika had just begun making her rounds when Sh.e.l.ley, one of the nurses on duty that day, poked her head into the room she was in, simultaneously knocking on the doorjamb to get her attention.

"Dr. Pulaski, Mrs. Silverman just called the nurse's station. She says she wants to see you in her office-her temp office," the heavyset woman added to eliminate any confusion.

All this and heaven, too, Nika thought. But she nodded, saying, "All right, I'll be there as soon as I finish my rounds." Focusing back on her patient, she removed the blood pressure cuff off the man's rail thin arm. Instead of high blood pressure, which was what she was accustomed to running into, this patient's blood pressure was low. So low that there was a risk of the man having hypo tension.

Sh.e.l.ley was still in the doorway. The nurse looked somewhat uncomfortable as she relayed the rest of the message. "She said to come now."

Nika pressed her lips together. Why did she feel as if her chain was being yanked by the administrator? Was the woman still upset because of what she'd said the other day? "Did she say why?"

Sh.e.l.ley laughed shortly. "Since when does Mrs. Silverman explain herself?"

Nika hadn't been at the hospital long enough to form a solid opinion based on experience. Just one, again, based on gut feelings.

"From the tone of your voice, never, I'm guessing." And then Nika smiled despite herself. She was beginning to sound like her uncle, bless him.

Momentarily banishing thoughts of the administrator, she looked at the patient in the bed and smiled. "You're doing fine, Mr. Peters. You'll be going home today."

"Home," the man repeated, shaking his bald head. "Wish I could go home."

Despite the order to put in an appearance, Nika lingered with the patient a moment longer. "Why can't you go home?"

The words just poured out as if he'd been damming them up too long. "Because my d.a.m.n greedy kids sold it out from under me. They said it was for 'the best.' That I couldn't take care of it anymore and that I was better off in a place with people my own age." He snorted with disgust. "Who the h.e.l.l wants to live with old fossils?" he demanded angrily.

Nika laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, aching for the man. He had to feel as if he'd been cast aside, thrown on a heap and regarded as useless. It wasn't fair.

"I like people your age," she told him kindly. "They have all this knowledge and experience that makes them interesting."

He snorted again, as if what she was saying was just so much make believe. "Maybe, but the only ones I ever seem to meet just want to talk about their last trip to the...bathroom-" the momentary pause gave Nika the impression that Joshua Peters had just cleaned up his language for her sake "-and what happened while they were there."

She had an alternative suggestion for him. "Did you ever think of finding yourself a roommate? The two of you could rent a place together. Kind of like two college students."

Thin shoulders rose and fell helplessly. "I wouldn't know how to get started." But it was obvious that he liked the idea. His eyes lit up. "Would you help me, Doctor?"

Nika grinned. "I thought you'd never ask," she told him, accompanying her words with a wink. "I'll get back to you before you leave today. Don't worry, we'll find a way to get you back on your own again," she promised.

For the first time since she'd seen him admitted a week ago, Joshua Peters grinned and, while the expression didn't transform him to a kid again, it gave her a glimpse of what he must have been like half a century ago when he was in his twenties.

Nika left the room heartened, even though she had a feeling she was going down to be interrogated.

Ella Silverman looked far from happy to see her when Nika walked into the woman's commandeered office. Nika could have sworn she actually saw the icicles forming as the administrator looked her way. "When I said I wanted to see you, Dr. Pulaski, I didn't mean at your leisure."

"Sorry, Mrs. Silverman, I was in the middle of a patient's examination and I couldn't just leave the poor man hanging." Nika dropped into the empty chair before the administrator's desk. That was when she became aware that there was another person in the office with them.

Detective Baker.

What was he doing here? Was he registering a complaint for some reason? She couldn't even begin to form a guess.

So she addressed the administrator instead. "What can I do for you, Mrs. Silverman?"

The other woman looked as if she was in no mood for banter or sarcasm.

"You can cooperate with Detective Baker and answer his questions," she said curtly.

"I wasn't aware that I wasn't cooperating with Detective Baker." She looked at him, wondering why he hadn't come to her instead of taking whatever it was that was bothering him up with the administrator. He didn't strike her as the kind of person who went over people's heads. "Do you have some kind of complaint about the way your grandmother's being treated?"

"This isn't about his grandmother," Ms. Silverman informed her coldly before Cole had a chance to say anything.

Okay, she was now officially confused. Nika looked from the detective to the woman behind the oak desk. "Then what is this about?"

Mrs. Silverman's eyes all but disappeared as she narrowed them. "Do you remember our conversation the other day?"

She remembered being cut down royally. "Vividly," Nika replied.

Mrs. Silverman struggled to maintain her composure. "Well, it seems that one of your unit's deceased, a Philip Mayer, had two children who weren't all that happy with their father dying so suddenly, so they had a private autopsy performed on him."

Every fiber in her body was now alert. "And?" Nika asked, holding her breath.

Ella Silverman's indignation at being put in such a position was barely contained. "And his death was not from natural causes."

Yes!

"It wasn't?" Nika tried to keep the excitement from her voice.

"No," Mrs. Silverman practically spat out the word. "The medical examiner discovered a small puncture mark in Mr. Mayer's neck. The M.E. said that it appeared someone had injected air into a major artery." She looked pointedly at Nika. "I'm a.s.suming I don't have to explain the consequences of that to you."

Nika ignored the woman's sarcasm. "Then it was a homicide." She refrained from saying, "I told you so," although it wasn't easy. But her gut was right, she thought. Someone was playing Russian roulette with the patients in the Geriatrics Unit.

"It would appear that way." Each word out of the administrator's mouth came grudgingly. The only publicity she wanted for the hospital was of the positive variety. This promised to be the exact opposite, a nightmare in the making. "Detective Baker is going to ask you some questions."

"I'll do anything I can to help," Nika promised as she shifted in her chair in order to face Cole.

"Quite possibly you've already 'helped' too much," Mrs. Silverman informed her angrily.

For a second, Nika didn't understand what the woman was talking about.

And then it hit her. The woman thought she had something to do with the deaths. How? And for G.o.d's sake, why?

"Wait a minute," Nika cried. "Am I under suspicion?" How could the administrator even think such a thing? "I was the one who brought the unusual number of deaths to your attention, remember?"

The small eyes narrowed. "Exactly. They say that the first one on the scene of a crime usually turns out to be the murderer." The woman's brown eyes shifted toward the detective who had been sent from Homicide to investigate the allegations. "Am I right, Detective Baker?"

There was no emotion in his voice as Cole replied, "If this were a crime novel, yes." He rose from his chair. "I'd like to talk to the doctor in private, please."

"Anything to make this go away as quickly as possible, Detective," the administrator said with forced cheerfulness. "You can use my office," she told him, rising. And then she scowled at Nika again. "I have to speak to our lawyers. The Mayers are threatening a major lawsuit."

Silence hung in the air until Ella Silverman had left the room and shut the door behind her. The second she did, Nika started talking.

"I don't know what she might have said to you, but I was the one who brought it to her attention because I was uneasy about the number of people who had recently died in the unit. It didn't seem right. Especially the last one, Sergeant Kelly. He was set to leave the hospital on the day he died."

The moment the last words left her mouth, Nika realized something. Stunned, she looked at Cole sharply. "Come to think of it, several of the patients died on the day they were supposed to leave. But I am not the one responsible for their deaths. I took an oath and it didn't involve killing patients if I couldn't cure them." Her voice filled with pa.s.sion. "I'm a doctor, for G.o.d sakes. My job is to make them better and to keep trying until I finally succeed."

"Are you finished?" Cole asked quietly after a beat.

Nika did her best to try to get a grip on her feelings. "For now," she replied stiffly.