From Scapegoat to Donna novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: What the Lab Said

Ignazio had set up court in the hospital lobby, with a folding table and eleven capos on folding chairs.

Two of his soldiers stood at the door to the Don's floor with rifles.

Tancredi and I came through the revolving door together.

"Nephew," Ignazio said, spreading his hands. "And the new Donna. I was just explaining to the families that with my brother incapacitated, someone must hold the seat."

"The Don is awake and giving orders," Tancredi said.

"The Don is a sick man, and sick men are easily led."

His eyes slid over me.

"By a woman who needs a husband's protection, because she is under suspicion of murder."

"Marta," I said.

Marta Valenti stepped out from behind a pillar with her knitting bag on her arm.

She reached inside it and set a blood bag on the folding table.

It was the taped bag from OR One, sealed in a clear evidence sleeve with the time and my initials written across it in marker.

Ignazio looked at it.

"What is that?"

"Yesterday morning's blood," I said. "I gave it to Marta before I left the theater, and she took it to a lab across the river. A lab that is not owned by this family."

The capos shifted in their chairs.

"I didn't want to ask anyone in this building to test it," I said. "I didn't know who in this building could be trusted."

I took the single printed page out of my coat.

"The lab says it held twenty thousand units of heparin. That's enough to kill a man with a bullet wound in his chest in under an hour. A blood bank bag does not contain heparin unless somebody puts it there."

"A convenient result," Ignazio said.

"It's a printed result with a signature, and it's on the table in front of a dozen men." I turned and faced them. "The technician who released this unit was killed an hour after the surgery began. She had my badge in her fist. I was in the operating room, in front of all your eyes."

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