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dabble in both bananas and computer chips. Ultimately, Mark knew that’s why the Journal hired him. He had good instincts. After all, he titled a chapter in his second book with one of his favorite sayings, “Everyone is Naked Under a Double-Breasted Suit.” He knew what made people tick and his profiles always succeeded in showing the more human side of a man masked by a well-groomed corporate image.
    Mark Stern would do a little digging to find out more about the younger Randall. After all, that was what he did best.

5
     
    Gwen Maulder was up most of the night. Jack did his best to comfort her and the conversations she’d had with friends gave her a bit of solace, but the force of what had happened seemed to have an increasingly greater impact on her. She hadn’t even begun to consider what she’d lost in Marci. All she understood for now was that her dearest friend was gone forever—and Gwen refused to believe it was something that “just happened.”
    She entered the New York Medical Examiner’s Office the following morning looking for Dave Dardenoff , whom she regarded as tops in forensics. She had hated to see him leave the FDA but respected his decision considering that more than a few people still wondered why Gwen had made the jump from old-fashioned “doc with a lollipop” to epidemiologist. She found the tall, imposing medical examiner sitting in the lounge, feet propped up on a Formica table next to a soda machine.
    “Well, bless my soul, if it isn’t Captain Maulder!” Dardenoff proclaimed as he jumped up to greet his visitor.
    “Morning, doc,” said Gwen, pulling together the energy to smile broadly. “I think we can drop the formality. When the PHS gave me that fourth stripe, I realized that even I didn’t have big enough shoulders for it, so I had to settle for those Army eagles instead. You, of all people, should know that rank and intelligence are usually inversely related. But enough about me. What’s with you, Dave?”
    Dardenoff, attired in green scrubs, returned the smile and shrugged. “I can’t complain, Gwen. The city gives me the stiffs and I do my thing. I like to call it ‘reading the bones.’ I stayed late last night so I could perform your autopsy personally. I figured you had a special interest in this one given your request for … well, you know.” They were alone in the lounge, but Dardenoff walked to the doorway and looked up and down the corridor.
    “Marci was a good friend,” Gwen explained, and the smile that had blossomed during their exchanged pleasantries evaporated entirely.
    She paused, steeling herself for a series of questions she could not have imagined asking when she’d left Washington two days ago. “Did you find anything unusual?” The question was extremely general, but given the decidedly personal nature of her investigation, it was the only way she could think to begin.
    Dardenoff took a deep breath and ran his fingers through brown, wavy hair that was slightly tamped down from being under a surgical cap. “Not really,” he said. “Ultimate cause of death was from cardiovascular collapse.”
    “I’m not interested in ‘ultimate.’”
    Dardenoff shook his head. “Then I’m afraid I’m not going to be of much help. Your friend only weighed ninety-five pounds. She had the typical mitral valve prolapse seen in many young, thin women. That, by itself, can cause sudden cardiac death once in ten thousand cases, but this just isn’t the right picture for prolapse as a cause of death. The convulsions don’t fit, either. On the other hand, the prolapse might have made her heart more vulnerable, and the resulting convulsions might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Your friend also had low potassium and sodium levels, and her stomach contents didn’t go beyond some lettuce, carrots, and a few shrimp, all of it coming, I suspect, from a lunchtime salad. And speaking of the stomach, it looks as though she was a worrier. I noted