“The FBI?”
Oh, crap,I thought,I’ve just blown it. I nodded, hoping my face hadn’t turned crimson. “They were testing sonar as a way of finding submerged bodies, so they asked us to loan them a couple of cadavers.”
“How’d it turn out? The sonar experiment?”
“They didn’t tell me. Just brought back the waterlogged bodies a couple weeks later. The FBI tends to hold its cards pretty close to the vest.”
“Even though you provided the bodies?”
I nodded.
“For free?”
I nodded again, and he shook his head at the injustice of it. He pressed his index finger into a pile of crumbs on his paper plate, then raised it to his mouth and sucked off the crumbs. His eyes swiveled up to me.
“You work with them often?”
I felt myself tensing—was he onto me? was he possibly even toying with me?—but I willed myself to relax. “I wouldn’t say ‘often.’ More like ‘occasionally.’ A handful of cases in the past ten years.”
“Hmm,” he grunted. I was bracing myself for a barrage of follow-up questions when he shifted in his plastic chair and held up a finger. “Excuse me just a second.” He pulled a vibrating BlackBerry from his pocket and scrolled down the display, frowning. “Well, hell,” he said. “Dr. Brockton, I’m sorry, but I need to go put out a little brushfire.”
He stood to go, so I did likewise, feeling a mixture of relief and disappointment: relief at escaping further interrogation about my dealings with the FBI, disappointment that I hadn’t managed to set the hook and land the fish.
I was just about to offer a handshake and a good-bye when he stopped me. “I’d love to continue our conversation about trainings, if you’ve got time and any interest.”
I felt my face breaking into a smile, which I hoped wasn’t transparently triumphant. “Sure,” I said. “I’ve got an early flight in the morning. The ivory tower calls. But I’m free late this afternoon or early this evening, if that works for you.”
“Perfect. How about seven o’clock? And how about we get out of this cheesy hotel?”
“Fine with me,” I said. “Do you know the restaurants? Is there someplace you’d recommend?”
“Actually,” he said, “I had a slightly different idea just now. How would you feel about getting together at the library? I try to go there anytime I’m in town.”
“The library?” It was an unexpected suggestion, but I liked it. The quiet and calm would be a welcome contrast to the relentless barrage of noise and lights that filled the public areas of the hotel and the streets.
“That’s my kind of place. Is it walking distance from the hotel?”
“I’m afraid not, but it’s worth a trip. I’d share a cab with you, but I’ve got a meeting at a hospital late this afternoon, so I won’t be coming straight from the hotel.” He reached into his coat pocket again and took out a business card, then scrawled on the back. “The driver’s bound to know where it is, but here’s the address, just in case.”
“And they’ll be open at seven?”
“Oh, for sure. I’ve been there plenty of times at seven.”
“Okay, sounds good,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to your brushfire. See you at the library at seven.”
He smiled broadly. “See you there. Looking forward to it.”
CHAPTER 24
GLEN FAUST’S TALK WAS TITLED “SYNTHETIC TISSUE,” a phrase bound to draw a crowd—an interested and potentially nervous or hostile crowd—at a tissue-bank convention. He began with a brief PowerPoint tour of OrthoMedica’s R&D complex in Bethesda. The facility was easily twice the size of UT’s biomedical engineering building. It bristled with medical-imaging equipment, robotic surgical tools, and computer-controlled machine lathes. I was impressed: OrthoMedica looked like a cross between a research university, a teaching hospital, an automotive assembly line, a NASA clean room, and a computer factory.