Unnatural Exposure

  “Listen,” I said when she got to me. “Might there be a Bible around here somewhere.”

  She hesitated, as if she’d never heard of such a thing. “Gee, now that I don’t know.”

  “Could you check?”

  “Are you feeling all right?” She looked suspiciously at me.

  “Absolutely.”

  “They’ve got a library. Maybe there’s one in there somewhere. I’m sorry. I’m not very religious.” She continued talking as she went out again.

  She returned maybe half an hour later with a black leather-bound Bible, Cambridge Red Letter edition, that she claimed to have borrowed from someone’s office. I opened it and found a name in front written in calligraphy, and a date that showed the Bible had been given to its owner on a special occasion almost ten years before. As I began to turn its pages, I realized I had not been to Mass in months. I envied people with a faith so strong that they kept their Bibles at work.

  “Now you’re sure you’re feeling okay?” said the nurse as she hovered near the door.

  “You’ve never told me your name,” I said.

  “Sally.”

  “You’ve been very helpful and I certainly appreciate it. I know it’s no fun working on Thanksgiving.”

  This seemed to please her a great deal and gave her enough confidence to say, “I haven’t wanted to poke my nose into anything, but I can’t help but hear what people are talking about. That island in Virginia where your case came from. All they do is crabbing there?”

  “Pretty much,” I said.

  “Blue crab.”

  “And soft-shell crab.”

  “Anybody bothering to worry about that?”

  I knew what she was getting at, and yes, I was worried. I had a personal reason to be worried about Wesley and me.

  “They ship those things all over the country, right?” she went on.

  I nodded.

  “What if whatever that lady had is transmitted through water or food?” Her eyes were bright behind her hood. “I didn’t see her body, but I heard. That’s really scary.”

  “I know,” I said. “I hope we can get an answer to that soon.”

  “By the way, lunch is turkey. Don’t expect much.”

  She unplugged her air line and stopped talking. Opening the door, she gave me a little wave and went out. I turned back to the Concordance and had to search for a while under various words before I found the passage deadoc had quoted to me. It was Matthew 10, verse one, and in its entirety it read: And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

  The next verse went on to identify the disciples by name, and then Jesus invoked them to go out and find lost sheep, and to preach to them that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. He directed his disciples to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. As I read, I did not know if this killer who called himself deadoc had a message he believed, if twelve referred to the disciples, or if he was simply playing games.

  I got up and paced, looking out the window as light waned. Night came early now, and it had become a habit for me to watch people walk out to their cars. Their breath was frosted, and the lot was almost empty because of the furlough. Two women chatted while one held open the door to a Honda, and they shrugged and gestured with intensity, as if trying to resolve life’s big problems. I stood looking through blinds until they drove away.

  I tried to go to sleep early to escape. But I was fitful again, rearranging myself and the covers every few hours. Images floated past the inside of my eyelids, projected like old movies, unedited and illogically arranged. I saw two women talking by a mailbox. One had a mole on her cheek that became eruptions all over her face as she shielded her eyes with a hand. Then palm trees were writhing in fierce winds as a hurricane roared in from the sea, fronds ripped off and flying. A trunk stripped bare, a bloody table lined with severed hands and feet.

  I sat up sweating, and waited for my muscles to stop twitching. It was as if there were an electrical disturbance in my entire system, and I might have a heart attack or a stroke. Taking deep, slow breaths, I blanked out my mind. I did not move. When the vision had passed, I rang for the nurse.

  When she saw the look on my face, she did not argue about the phone. She brought it right away and I called Marino after she left.

  “You still in jail?” he said over the line.

  “I think he killed his guinea pig,” I said.

  “Whoa. How ’bout starting over again.”

  “Deadoc. The woman he shot and dismembered may have been his guinea pig. Someone he knew and had easy access to.”

  “I gotta confess, Doc, I got no idea what the hell you’re talking about.” I could tell by his tone he was worried about my state of mind.

  “It makes sense that he couldn’t look at her. The M.O. makes a lot of sense.”

  “Now you really got me confused.”

  “If you wanted to find a way to murder people through a virus,” I explained, “first you would have to figure out a way. The route of transmission, for example. Is it a food, a drink, dust? With smallpox, transmission is airborne, spread by droplets or by fluid from the lesions. The disease can be carried on a person or his clothes.”

  “Start with this,” he said. “Where did this person get the virus to begin with? Not exactly something you order through the mail.”

  “I don’t know. To my knowledge there are only two places in the world that keep archival smallpox. CDC and a laboratory in Moscow.”

  “So maybe this is all a Russian plot,” he said, sardonically.

  “Let me give you a scenario,” I said. “The killer has a grudge, maybe even some delusion that he has a religious calling to bring back one of the worst diseases this planet has ever known. He’s got to figure out a way to randomly infect people and be sure that it can work.”

  “So he needs a guinea pig,” Marino said.

  “Yes. And let’s suppose he has a neighbor, a relative, someone elderly and not well. Maybe he even takes care of her. What better way to test the virus than on that person? And if it works, you kill her and stage her death to look like something else. After all, he certainly can’t have her die of smallpox. Not if there is a connection between him and her. We might figure out who he is. So he shoots her in the head, dismembers her so we’ll think it’s the serial killings again.”

  “Then how do you get from that to the lady on Tangier?”

  “She was exposed,” I simply said.

  “How? Was something delivered to her? Did she get something in the mail? Was it carried on the air? Was she pricked in her sleep?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You think deadoc lives on Tangier?” Marino then asked.

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “I think he picked it because the island is the perfect place to start an epidemic. Small, self-contained. Also easy to quarantine, meaning the killer doesn’t intend to annihilate all of society with one blow. He’s trying a little bit at a time, cutting us up in small pieces.”

  “Yeah. Like he did the old lady, if you’re right.”

  “He wants something,” I said. “Tangier is an attention-getter.”

  “No offense, Doc, but I hope you’re wrong about all of this.”

  “I’m heading to Atlanta in the morning. How about checking with Vander, see if he’s had any luck with the thumbprint.”

  “So far he hasn’t. It’s looking like the victim doesn’t have any prints on file. Anything comes up, I’ll call your pager.”

  “Damn,” I muttered, for the nurse had taken that, too.

  The rest of the day moved interminably slowly, and it wasn’t until after supper that Fujitsubo came to say good-bye. Although the act of releasing me implied I was neither infected nor infectious, he was in a blue suit, which he plugged into an air line.

  “I should keep you longer,” he said right off, filling my h
eart with dread. “Incubation, on average, is twelve to thirteen days. But it can be as long as twenty-one. What I’m saying to you is that you could still get sick.”

  “I understand that,” I said, reaching for my water.

  “The revaccination may or may not help depending on what stage you were in when I gave it to you.”

  I nodded. “And I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to leave if you would just take this on instead of sending me to CDC.”

  “Kay, I can’t.” His voice was muffled through plastic. “You know it has nothing to do with what I feel like doing. But I can no more pull something out from under CDC than you can grab a case that isn’t your jurisdiction. I’ve talked to them. They are most concerned over a possible outbreak and will begin testing the moment you arrive with the samples.”

  “I fear terrorism may be involved.” I refused to back down.

  “Until there is evidence of it—and I hope there won’t be—we can do nothing more for you here.” His regret was sincere. “Go to Atlanta and see what they have to say. They’re operating with a skeleton crew, too. The timing couldn’t be worse.”

  “Or perhaps more deliberate,” I said. “If you were a bad person planning to commit serial crimes with a virus, what better time than when the significant federal health agencies are in extremis? And this furlough’s been going on for a while and not predicted to end anytime soon.”

  He was silent.

  “John,” I went on, “you helped with the autopsy. Have you ever seen a disease like this?”

  “Only in textbooks,” he grimly replied.

  “How does smallpox suddenly just reappear on its own?”

  “If that’s what it is.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s virulent and it kills,” I tried to reason with him.

  But he could do nothing more, and the rest of the night I wandered from room to room in AOL. Every hour, I checked my e-mail. Deadoc remained silent until six o’clock the next morning when he walked into the M.E. room. My heart jumped as his name appeared on screen. My adrenaline began to pump the way it always did when he talked to me. He was on the line, it was up to me. I could catch him, if only I could trip him.

  DEADOC: Sunday I went to church bet you didn’t

  SCARPETTA: What was the homily about?

  DEADOC: sermon

  SCARPETTA: You are not Catholic.

  DEADOC: beware of men

  SCARPETTA: Matthew 10. Tell me what you mean.

  DEADOC: to say he s sorry

  SCARPETTA: Who is he? And what did he do?

  DEADOC: ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of

  Before I could answer, he was gone, and I began flipping through the Bible. The verse he quoted this time was from Mark, and again, it was Jesus speaking, which hinted to me, if nothing else, that deadoc wasn’t Jewish. Nor was he Catholic, based on his comments about church. I was no theologian, but drinking of the cup seemed to refer to Christ’s eventual crucifixion. So deadoc had been crucified and I would be, too?

  It was my last few hours here and my nurse, Sally, was more liberal with the phone. I paged Lucy, who called me back almost instantly.

  “I’m talking to him,” I said. “Are you guys there?”

  “We’re there. He’s got to stay on longer,” my niece said. “There are so many trunk lines, and we got to line up all the phone companies to trap and trace. Your last call was coming in from Dallas.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said in dismay.

  “That’s not the origin, just a switch it was routed through. We didn’t get any farther because he disconnected. Keep trying. Sounds like this guy’s some kind of religious nut.”

  Eleven

  Later that morning I left in a taxi as the sun was getting high in the clouds. I had nothing but the clothes on my back, all of which had been sterilized in the autoclave or gassed. I was in a hurry, and guarding a large white cardboard box printed with PERISHABLE RUSH! RUSH! and IMPORTANT KEEP UPRIGHT and other big blue warnings.

  Like a Chinese puzzle, my package was boxes within boxes containing BioPacks. Inside these were Bio-tubes of Lila Pruitt’s liver, spleen and spinal fluid, protected by fiberboard shields, and bubble and corrugated wrap. All of it was packed in dry ice with INFECTIOUS SUBSTANCE and DANGER stickers warning anyone who got beyond the first layer. Obviously, I could not let my cargo out of sight. In addition to its well-proven hazard, it could be evidence should it turn out that Pruitt was a homicide. At the Baltimore-Washington International airport, I found a pay phone and called Rose.

  “USAMRIID has my medical bag and microscope.” I didn’t waste time. “See what you can do about getting them shipped overnight. I’m at BWI, en route to CDC.”

  “I’ve been trying to page you,” she said.

  “Maybe they can return that to me, too.” I tried to remember what else I was missing. “And the phone,” I added.

  “You got a report back that you might find interesting. The animal hairs that turned up with the torso. Rabbit and monkey hairs.”

  “Bizarre,” was the only thing I could think to say.

  “I hate to tell you this news. The media’s been calling about the Carrie Grethen case. Apparently, something’s been leaked.”

  “Goddamn it!” I exclaimed as I thought about Ring.

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “How about calling Benton. I don’t know what to say. I’m a little overwhelmed.”

  “You sound that way.”

  I looked at my watch. “Rose, I’ve got to go fight my way on a plane. They didn’t want to let me through X-ray, and I know what’s going to happen when I try to board with this thing.”

  It was exactly what I expected. When I walked into the cabin, a flight attendant took one look and smiled.

  “Here.” She held out her hands. “Let me put this in baggage for you.”

  “It’s got to stay with me,” I said.

  “It won’t fit in an overhead rack or under your seat, ma’am.” Her smile got tight, the line behind me getting longer.

  “Can we discuss this out of traffic?” I said, moving into the kitchen.

  She was right next to me, hovering close. “Ma’am, this flight is overbooked. We simply don’t have room.”

  “Here,” I said, showing her the paperwork.

  Her eyes scanned the red-bordered Declaration For Dangerous Goods, and froze halfway down a column where it was typed that I was transporting “Infectious substances affecting humans.” She glanced nervously around the kitchen and moved me closer to the rest rooms.

  “Regulations require that only a trained person can handle dangerous goods like these,” I reasonably explained. “So it has to stay with me.”

  “What is it?” she whispered, her eyes round.

  “Autopsy specimens.”

  “Mother of God.”

  She immediately grabbed her seating chart. Soon after, I was escorted to an empty row in first class, near the back.

  “Just put it on the seat next to you. It’s not going to leak or anything?” she asked.

  “I’ll guard it with my life,” I promised.

  “We should have a lot of vacancies up here unless a bunch of people upgrade. But don’t you worry. I’ll steer everyone.” She motioned with her arms, as if she were driving.

  No one came near me or my box. I drank coffee during a very peaceful flight to Atlanta, feeling naked without my pager or phone, but overjoyed to be on my own. In the Atlanta airport, I took one moving sidewalk and escalator after another, traveling what seemed miles, before I got outside and found a taxi.

  We followed 85 North to Druid Hills Road, where soon we were passing pawnshops and auto rentals, then vast jungles of poison oak and kudzu, and strip malls. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was in the midst of the parking decks and parking lots of Emory University. Across the street from the American Cancer Society, CDC was six floors of tan brick trimmed with gray. I checked in at a desk that had guards and
closed circuit TV.

  “This is going to Bio Level 4, where I’m meeting Dr. Bret Martin in the atrium,” I explained.

  “Ma’am, you’ll need an escort,” one of the guards said.

  “Good,” I said as he reached for the phone. “I always get lost.”

  I followed him to the back of the building, where the facility was new and under intense surveillance. There were cameras everywhere, the glass bulletproof, and corridors were catwalks with grated floors. We passed bacteria and influenza labs, and the red brick and concrete area for rabies and AIDS.

  “This is impressive,” I said, for I had not been here in several years.

  “Yeah, it is. They got all the security you might want. Cameras, motion detectors at all exits and entrances. All the trash is boiled and burned, and they use these filters for the air so anything that comes in is killed. Except the scientists.” He laughed as he used a card key to open a door. “So what bad news you carrying in?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out,” I said, and we were in the atrium now.

  BL-4 was really nothing more than a huge laminar flow hood with thick walls of concrete and steel. It was a building within a building, its windows covered with blinds. Labs were behind thick walls of glass, and the only blue-suited scientists working this furloughed day were those who had cared enough to come in anyway.

  “This thing with the government,” the guard was saying as he shook his head. “What they think? These diseases like Ebola gonna wait until the budget gets straight?” He shook his head some more.

  He escorted me past containment rooms that were dark, and labs with no one in them, then empty rabbit cages in a corridor and rooms for large primates. A monkey looked at me through bars and glass, his eyes so human they unnerved me, and I thought of what Rose had said. Deadoc had transferred monkey and rabbit hairs to a victim I knew he had touched. He might work in a place like this.

  “They throw waste at you,” the guard said as we walked on. “Same thing their animal rights activists do. Kinda fits, don’t you think?”

  My anxiety was getting stronger.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.