“You don’t need the flu. Rose doesn’t need it. No one needs it,” I said, furiously. “You know, I’m almost out of cash. This is awful. Look at my suit. You think an autoclave presses anything and leaves a pleasant smell? The hell with my hose. I got no coat, no gloves. Here I am, and it’s what?” I yanked open the back door of a cab that was Carolina blue. “Thirty degrees?”
Marino stared at me as I got in. He handed me a twenty-dollar bill, careful his fingers did not brush mine.
“You need anything at the store?” he called out as I drove off.
My throat and eyes swelled with tears. Digging tissues out of my purse, I blew my nose and quietly wept.
“Don’t mean to bug ya, lady,” said my driver, a portly old man. “But where are we going?”
“Windsor Farms. I’ll show you when we get there,” I choked as I said.
“Fights.” He shook his head. “Dontcha hate ’em? I ’member one time me and the wife got to arguing in one these all-you-can-eat fish camps. She takes the car. Me, I take a hike. Five miles home through a bad part of town.”
He was nodding, eyeing me in the rearview mirror as he assumed that Marino and I were having a lovers’ quarrel.
“So, you’re married to a cop?” he then said. “I saw him drive in. Not an unmarked car on the road that can fool this guy.” He thumped his chest.
My head was splitting, my face burning. I settled back in the seat and shut my eyes while he droned on about an earlier life in Philadelphia, and his hopes that this winter would not bring much snow. I settled into a feverish sleep. When I awoke, I did not know where I was.
“Ma’am. Ma’am. We’re here,” the driver was saying loudly to wake me up. “Where to next?”
He had just turned onto Canterbury and was sitting at a stop sign.
“Up here, take a right on Dover,” I replied.
I directed him into my neighborhood, the look on his face increasingly baffled as he drove past Georgian and Tudor estates behind walls in the city’s wealthiest neighborhood. When he stopped at my front door, he stared at fieldstone, at the wooded land around my home, and he watched me closely as I climbed out.
“Don’t worry,” he said as I handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change. “I seen it all, lady, and never say nothing.” He zipped his lips, winking at me.
I was a rich man’s wife having a tempestuous affair with a detective.
“A good credo,” I said, coughing.
The burglar alarm welcomed me with its warning beep, and never in my life had I been more relieved to be home. I wasted no time getting out of my scalded clothes, and straight into a hot shower, where I inhaled steam and tried to clear the rattle from my lungs. When I was wrapping up in a thick terry cloth robe, the telephone rang. It was exactly four P.M.
“Dr. Scarpetta?” It was Fielding.
“I just got home,” I said.
“You don’t sound good.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, my news isn’t going to help,” he said. “They’ve got possibly two more cases on Tangier.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“A mother and daughter. Fever of a hundred and five, a rash. CDC’s deployed a team with bed isolators, the whole nine yards.”
“How’s Wingo?” I asked.
He paused, as if puzzled. “Fine. Why?”
“He helped with the torso,” I reminded him.
“Oh yeah. Well, he’s the same as always.”
Relieved, I sat down and shut my eyes.
“What’s going on with the samples you took to Atlanta?” Fielding asked.
“They’re doing tests, I hope, with what few people they can muster now.”
“So we still don’t know what this is.”
“Jack, everything points to smallpox,” I said to him. “That’s the way it looks so far.”
“I’ve never seen it. Have you?”
“Not before now. Maybe leprosy is worse. It’s bad enough to die of a disease, but to be disfigured in the process is cruel.” I coughed again and was very thirsty. “I’ll see you in the morning, and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”
“It doesn’t sound to me like you should be going anywhere.”
“You’re absolutely right. And I don’t have a choice.”
I hung up and tried Bret Martin at CDC, but his phone was answered by voice mail, and he did not call me back. I also left a message for Fujitsubo, but he did not return my call, either, and I figured he was at home, like most of his colleagues. The budget war raged on.
“Damn,” I swore as I put a kettle of water on the stove and dug in a cupboard for tea. “Damn, damn, damn.”
It was not quite five when I called Wesley. At Quantico, at least, people were still working.
“Thank God someone is answering the phones somewhere,” I blurted out to his secretary.
“They haven’t figured out how nonessential I am yet,” she said.
“Is he in?” I asked.
Wesley got on the phone, and sounded so energetic and cheery that it instantly got on my nerves.
“You have no right to feel this good,” I said.
“You have the flu.”
“I don’t know what I’ve got.”
“That’s what it is, right?” He was worried and his mood went bad.
“I don’t know. We can only assume.”
“I don’t mean to be an alarmist . . .”
“Then don’t,” I cut him off.
“Kay,” his voice was firm. “You’ve got to face this. What if it’s not?”
I said nothing because I could not bear to think such thoughts.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t blow this off. Don’t pretend it’s nothing like you do with most things in your life.”
“Now you’re making me mad,” I snapped. “I fly into this goddamn airport and Marino doesn’t want me in his car so I take a taxi and the driver thinks we’re having an affair and my rich husband doesn’t know, and all the while I have a fever and hurt like hell and just want to go home.”
“The taxi driver thinks you’re having an affair?”
“Just forget it.”
“How do you know you’ve got the flu? That it’s not something else?”
“I don’t have a rash. Is that what you want to hear?”
There was a long silence. Then he said, “What if you get one?”
“Then I’m probably going to die, Benton.” I coughed again. “You’ll probably never touch me again. And I’d never want you to see me again, if it goes its course. It’s easier to worry about stalkers, serial killers, people you can blow away with a gun. But the invisible ones are who I’ve always feared. They take you on a sunny day in a public place. They slide in with your lemonade. I’ve been vaccinated for hepatitis B. But that’s just one killer in a huge population. What about tuberculosis and HIV, and Hanta and Ebola? What about this? God.” I took a deep breath. “It started with a torso and I did not know.”
“I heard about the two new cases,” he said, and his voice had gotten quiet and gentle. “I can be there in two hours. Do you want to see me?”
“Right now I don’t want to see anyone.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m on my way.”
“Benton,” I said, “don’t.”
But he had his mind made up, and when he pulled into my driveway in his throaty BMW, it was almost midnight. I met him at the door, and we did not touch.
“Let’s sit in front of the fire,” he said.
We did, and he was kind enough to make me another cup of decaffeinated tea. I sat on the couch, he was in a side chair, and flames fed by gas enveloped an artificial log. I had turned the lights low.
“I don’t doubt your theory,” he said as he lingered over cognac.
“Maybe tomorrow, we’ll know more.” I was perspiring as I shivered, staring into the fire.
“Right now I don’t give a shit about any of that.” He looked fiercely at me.
“You
have to give a shit about that.” I wiped my brow with a sleeve.
“No.”
I was silent as he stared at me.
“What I care about is you,” he said.
Still, I did not respond.
“Kay.” He gripped my arm.
“Don’t touch me, Benton.” I shut my eyes. “Don’t. I don’t want you sick, too.”
“See, and that’s convenient for you. To be sick. And I can’t touch you. And you the noble doctor caring more about my well-being than your own.”
I was quiet, determined not to cry.
“Convenient. You want to be sick right now so nobody can get close. Marino won’t even give you a ride home. And I can’t put my hands on you. And Lucy won’t see you and Janet has to talk to you behind glass.”
“What is your point?” I looked at him.
“Functional illness.”
“Oh. I guess you studied that in school. Maybe during your master’s in psychology or something.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I never have.”
I could feel his hurt as I turned my face to the fire, my eyes closed tight.
“Kay. Don’t you die on me.”
I did not speak.
“Don’t you dare.” His voice shook. “Don’t you dare!”
“You won’t get off the hook that easy,” I said, getting out of my chair. “Let’s go to bed.”
He slept in the room where Lucy usually stayed, and I was up most of the night coughing and trying to get comfortable, which simply was not possible. The next morning at half past six he was up, and coffee was brewing when I walked into the kitchen. Light filtered through trees beyond windows, and I could tell by the tight curl of rhododendron leaves that it was bitterly cold.
“I’m cooking,” Wesley announced. “What will it be?”
“I don’t think I can.” I was weak, and when I coughed, it felt as if my lungs were ripping.
“Obviously, you are worse.” Concern flickered in his eyes. “You should go to a doctor.”
“I am a doctor, and it’s too soon to go to one.”
I took aspirin, decongestants and a thousand milligrams of vitamin C. I ate a bagel and was beginning to feel almost human when Rose called and ruined me.
“Dr. Scarpetta? The mother from Tangier died early this morning.”
“Oh God no.” I was sitting at the kitchen table and running my fingers through my hair. “What about the daughter?”
“Condition’s serious. Or at least it was several hours ago.”
“And the body?”
Wesley was behind me, rubbing my sore shoulders and neck.
“No one’s moved it yet. No one’s sure what to do, and the Baltimore Medical Examiner’s Office has been trying to reach you. So has CDC.”
“Who at CDC?” I asked.
“A Dr. Martin.”
“I need to call him first, Rose. Meanwhile, you get hold of Baltimore and tell them that under no circumstances are they to have that body sent into their morgue until they’ve heard from me. What is Dr. Martin’s number?”
She gave it to me and I dialed it immediately. He answered on the first ring and sounded keyed up.
“We did PCR on the samples you brought in. Three primers and two of them match with smallpox, but one of them didn’t.”
“Then is it smallpox or not?”
“We ran its genomic sequence, and it doesn’t match up with any poxvirus in any reference lab in the world. Dr. Scarpetta, I believe you got a virus that’s a mutant.”
“Meaning, the smallpox vaccination isn’t going to work,” I said as my heart seemed to drop right out of me.
“All we can do is test in the animal lab. We’re talking at least a week before we know and can even begin thinking about a new vaccine. For practical purposes, we’re calling this smallpox, but we really don’t know what the hell it is. I’ll also remind you we’ve been working on an AIDS vaccine since 1986 and are no closer now than we were back then.”
“Tangier Island needs to be quarantined immediately. We’ve got to contain this,” I exclaimed, alarmed to the edge of panic.
“Believe me, we know. We’re getting a team together right now and will mobilize the Coast Guard.”
I hung up and was frantic when I said to Wesley, “I’ve got to go. We’ve got an outbreak of something no one’s ever heard of. It’s already killed at least two people. Maybe three. Maybe four.”
He was following me down the hall as I talked.
“It’s smallpox but not smallpox. We’ve got to find out how it’s being transmitted. Did Lila Pruitt know the mother who just died? Did they have any contact at all, or did the daughter? Did they even live near each other? What about the water supply? A water tower. Blue. I remember seeing one.”
I was getting dressed. Wesley stood in the doorway, his face almost gray and like stone.
“You’re going to go back out there,” he said.
“I need to get downtown first.” I looked at him.
“I’ll drive,” he said.
Twelve
Wesley dropped me off and said he was going to the Richmond Field Office for a while and would check with me later. My heels were loud as I walked down the corridor, bidding good morning to members of my staff. Rose was on the phone when I walked in, and the glimpse of my desk through her adjoining doorway was devastating. Hundreds of reports and death certificates awaited my initials and signature, and mail and phone messages were cascading out of my in-basket.
“What is this?” I said as she hung up. “You’d think I’ve been gone a year.”
“It feels like you have.”
She was rubbing lotion into her hands and I noticed the small canister of Vita aromatherapy facial spray on the edge of my desk, the open mailing tube next to it. There was also one on Rose’s desk, next to her bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care. I stared back and forth, from my Vita spray to hers, my subconscious processing what I was seeing before my reason did. Reality seemed to turn inside out, and I grabbed the door frame. Rose was on her feet, her chair flying back on its rollers as she lunged around her desk for me.
“Dr. Scarpetta!”
“Where did you get this?” I asked, staring at the spray.
“It’s just a sample.” She looked bewildered. “A bunch of them came in the mail.”
“Have you used it?”
Now she was really worried as she looked at me. “Well, it just got here. I haven’t tried it yet.”
“Don’t touch it!” I said, severely. “Who else got one?”
“Gosh, I really don’t know. What is it? What’s wrong?” She raised her voice.
Getting gloves from my office, I grabbed the facial spray off her desk and triple-bagged it.
“Everybody in the conference room, now!”
I ran down the hall to the front office, and made the same announcement. Within minutes, my entire staff, including doctors still in scrubs, was assembled. Some people were out of breath, and everyone was staring at me, unnerved and frazzled.
I held up the transparent evidence bag containing the sample size of Vita spray.
“Who has one of these?” I asked, looking around the room.
Four people raised their hands.
“Who has used it?” I then asked. “I need to know if absolutely anybody has.”
Cleta, a clerk from the front office, looked frightened. “Why? What’s the matter?”
“Have you sprayed this on your face,” I said to her.
“On my plants,” she said.
“Plants get bagged and burned,” I said. “Where’s Wingo?”
“MCV.”
“I don’t know this for a fact,” I spoke to everyone, “and I pray I’m wrong. But we might be dealing with product tampering. Please don’t panic, but under no circumstances does anyone touch this spray. Do we know exactly how they were delivered?”
It was Cleta who spoke. “This morning I came in before anybody up front. There were poli
ce reports shoved through the slot, as always. And these had been, too. They were in little mailing tubes. There were eleven of them. I know because I counted to see if there was enough to go around.”
“And the mailman didn’t bring them. They had just been shoved through the slot of the front door.”
“I don’t know who brought them. But they looked like they’d been mailed.”
“Any tubes you still have, please bring them to me,” I said.
I was told that no one had used one, and all were collected and brought to my office. Putting on cotton gloves and glasses, I studied the mailing tube meant for me. Postage was bulk rate and clearly a manufacturer’s sample, and I found it most unusual for something like that to be addressed to a specific individual. I looked inside the tube, and there was a coupon for the spray. As I held it up to the light, I noticed edges imperceptibly uneven, as if the coupon had been clipped with scissors versus a machine.
“Rose?” I called out.
She walked into my office.
“The tube you got,” I said. “Who was it addressed to?”
“Resident, I think.” Her face was stressed.
“Then the only one with a name on it is mine.”
“I think so. This is awful.”
“Yes, it is.” I picked up the mailing tube. “Look at this. Letters all the same size, the postmark on the same label as the address. I’ve never seen that.”
“Like it came off a computer,” she said as her amazement grew.
“I’m going across the street to the DNA lab.” I got up. “Call USAMRIID right away and tell Colonel Fujitsubo we need to schedule a conference call between him, us, CDC, Quantico, now.”
“Where do you want to do it?” she asked as I hurried out the door.
“Not here. See what Benton says.”
Outside, I ran down the sidewalk, past my parking lot, and crossed Fourteenth Street. I entered the Seaboard Building where DNA and other forensic labs had relocated several years before. At the security desk, I called the section chief, Dr. Douglas Wheat, who had been given a male family name, despite her gender.
“I need a closed air system and a hood,” I explained to her.
“Come on back.”
A long sloping hallway always polished bright led to a series of glass-enclosed laboratories. Inside, scientists were prepossessed with pipettes and gels and radioactive probes as they coaxed sequences of genetic code to unravel their identities. Wheat, who battled paperwork almost as much as I did, was sitting at her desk, typing something on her computer. She was an attractive woman in a strong way, forty and friendly.