by Betsy Ashton
“And I need you to make me feel better, pretty lady.”
I leaned over and kissed him.
###
Johnny responded well to the change in antibiotics. His plague symptoms diminished hourly, or so it seemed to him. Whatever the doctors used to neutralize his morphine overdose left him with no apparent permanent damage. The only side effect was his growing restlessness to get out of bed.
Dr. Running Bear allowed him to sit on the edge, feet hanging over for ten minutes at a time, as long as a nurse or an orderly was present. The first time made him so dizzy that he lasted two minutes before lying back in a cold sweat.
We were barely finished with Johnny’s first standing session when I answered a buzz on my phone, a text from Sharon asking me to come to the diagnosis room as soon as possible. I helped Johnny back to bed and waved to Alex before leaving the ward. A new addition stood outside the door—a Secret Service agent was stationed where he could block entry into the ICU, if necessary. The thirty-something nodded when I walked past.
“Ma’am.” The agent’s eyes were never still, regardless of the empty corridor. His erect posture said he was going to stay that way until he was replaced by another agent.
In the diagnosis room, all the CDC doctors, Leena, Dr. Running Bear, and Sharon watched Dr. White redo her boards once again. Flip chart pages littered the floor, face up and reordered to present a story whose plot only she could decipher. Silence shrouded the room. I perched on a squeaky stool and tried not to fidget while I watched Dr. White’s hands fly along a board wiped clean of earlier data. In the center of the board she’d drawn a crude image of a person with a large question mark on its torso.
“Since we assume the hospital is ground zero, we also have to assume the question mark works here.”
“Nothing new with that,” Dr. Klein said.
“Alex is patient zero for hantavirus, Max. He was the first and was infected here,” Dr. White continued.
“Even though he fell in dirt near Navajo Springs?” I asked.
Dr. White jerked her head at a timeline lying on the floor. “Yes. He’d have needed at least eight days after his fall to start showing symptoms under natural circumstances. He was intentionally exposed to a heavy viral load that infected him remarkably quickly.”
Dr. Duval turned to Sharon. “Do we know anything more about the two people who died in that lab explosion?”
Time for a little levity. “You mean the one that never happened?” I asked. I shot a look at Dr. Duval, who smiled.
“Yes, that one.”
Sharon told Keith that identifying the people who died was top priority. So far, the outside worker’s name and background were not in question. He had worked for the HVAC company for several years and was known in the local community. His body had been positively identified and released to his family for burial. Besides, the body was found in the downstairs men’s room.
“Wait a minute. Was that men’s room behind a security door?” I wasn’t sure why I asked, but the answer seemed important.
Sharon flipped through the redacted report. “No. It was off the lobby, but not in any secure area.” Sharon looked at Dr. Duval and said, “His presence couldn’t have triggered the alarm.”
“Didn’t you say the authorities found charred remains in the lab?” I asked.
“The victim was male, and like I said earlier, one employee was not accounted for when all the personnel were counted,” Sharon said.
“Do you know his name yet?” I asked, impatient. Who the hell died?
“I don’t.” Sharon stared at the figure with the question mark emblazoned on its chest. “But he was a biochemist.”
I pounced. “So, you do know who he was. Sorry, but I never believed the authorities didn’t know.”
“Milt said the authorities had no idea. He also said no name appeared anywhere in the official or redacted report,” Sharon said in defense of her husband.
“If he was a biochemist, his identity has to be recorded somewhere,” Dr. Duval said.
Nothing made sense. “Why was that so classified?” Dr. White asked.
“I have no idea. More important, Milt can’t seem to break the wall to find out. No matter what, someone high up won’t talk.” Sharon took a brief stroll around the room.
“I wonder why.” I chewed on the question and spat out some seeds but found nothing I could swallow.
“No fingerprints?’ Dr. Klein asked.
“Apparently not,” Sharon said.
“No dental records?”
“None that matched anything on file.”
“DNA?” Dr. White asked in exasperation.
“If I had to guess,” Dr. Duval said, “there is no official record of this person anywhere. He does not exist, because he is not supposed to exist.”
Sharon confirmed Dr. Duval’s guess. No one would go on the record having identified the corpse. The charred remains were never claimed. “It’s literally a dead end.”
“None of this makes sense. That report is full of contradictions and obfuscations.” I stared at Sharon, looking for her to confirm that the report was a lie.
“I agree. I do not think the reality of what happened in the destroyed lab ended with the official report. I asked for a list of certified doctors and researchers in that facility as well as our list of CDC-approved personnel conducting research on our three pathogens in other labs around the country. I should have it in a few hours, if not sooner,” Dr. Duval said.
What will that tell us? That there are multiple people authorized to conduct research in the lab? That perhaps hundreds of others might have had access to the pathogens in other labs? So what? Unless we know who the dead man was—
“Did you find out when the fire was?” I asked
“Six years ago.”
“And how many people were hired after that date?” I continued.
“Three,” Leena said. “One doctor who stayed three years before moving on, a nurse whose been working around the clock in the ICU, and Toby the vampire.”
Click. Another bit of the puzzle fit. Warmth enveloped me at the same time the feather stroked my cheek.
“Toby? He’s a lab technician, isn’t he? He wouldn’t have access to the pathogens, right?” I asked. “And since he’s here, he’s not the dead biologist, obviously.”
“No, he wouldn’t. What about the pathogens themselves? Did we ship them?” Dr. Klein asked, busily filling in details around Dr. White’s drawing.
Dr. Duval said, “Now that is odd. We have records showing we shipped hantavirus and monkeypox to several labs, but we have no records of anyone conducting active research on plague. Of course, we have all three pathogens in the CDC, but my associates have no indication the plague bacterium came from us.”
“Where else could plague come from? I thought all BSL-3 and -4 pathogens were under government control,” I said.
“The government is large and highly complex, Max. We all learned the hard way on 9/11 how little one section of the government shares with another. It’s all about compartmentalization.” Sharon looked at the phone in her hand as if the blank screen held the answer. “Milt says the military has stockpiles, probably as much as the CDC does, if not more.”
More?
Dr. Duval confirmed what the vice president told his wife. “Several DoD facilities continually conduct research on pathogens that could be weaponized to use against large population centers. DARPA researches delivery mechanisms. Fort Detrick works on biological defense.”
“Does DARPA have biotechnology facilities doing genetic research?” I asked.
“It might, and what do you know about DARPA? The average citizen has never heard of it,” said Sharon, staring at me with renewed respect.
“Well, I’m not an average citizen.” I explained that DARPA was interested in the engine my third husband Reggie was testing when he crashed. He’d hired a couple of top engineers away from the government to work on design and development.
&nb
sp; “So, you have a revolutionary engine?” Dr. Klein asked.
“We do, although the basic premise isn’t all that new. We haven’t put it into production because it’s still at the experimental stage. When we do, it could change how people in the Third World travel,” I said.
Dr. Klein unleashed his inner geek gene. “What does it run on? Not nuclear energy—our government would never allow miniature reactors on the freeways.”
“Don’t I wish. Not nuclear. Water.”
“Shit.” Dr. Klein stepped over and clapped me on the back.
“Back to the crisis at hand. I remember the anthrax scare after 9/11. All fingers pointed to Fort Detrick, but nothing was ever proved,” I said. Stories appeared in the press daily about envelopes filled with white powder being shipped to government officials. I laughed at one reported police response to a powdery substance found in Beth Israel Hospital: “Be advised. The powdery substance has been identified as a crushed peppermint candy.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Dr. White said, grinning despite the gravity, “that several military research centers may or may not have the plague bacterium.”
Confession time. “I consume thrillers like I consume coffee, so my idea may be far-fetched and colored by the stuff between the pages of my favorite novelists. But my friend Ducks has been poking around the Internet for several days. What he’s found about the destroyed lab is available on respected news sites as well as on conspiracy sites.”
Ducks found several old reports from newspapers in Missouri. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch headlined three days with reports of a six-story building in a suburban business park exploding. Other local papers reran the story, but the national papers gave it scant coverage. Ditto the large broadcast networks. The fire remained a local story with a very short shelf life.
“The Post-Dispatch reported witnesses seeing a flash of light heading directly into the building before it exploded.” Conspiracy websites propagated a drumbeat of theories charging the U.S. government with destroying the lab with a missile.
“That’s too crazy for words,” Dr. White said.
“You’d think all major outlets would have published screaming headlines and interrupted network programming with breaking news reports if that were true,” Dr. Klein reasoned. “Wouldn’t it have been major news had a missile been confirmed hitting the building? Unless, of course, this never happened, because the lab didn’t exist.”
“Rats. No government conspiracy, huh? How disappointing.” I thrust my lower lip.
“Like Tick, I can’t confirm this was the location of the lab,” Sharon said, checking the redacted report she carried with her at all times. She refused to leave it in the diagnosis room—if it fell into the wrong hands, either the unknown perpetrator would be tipped off or a parent would call the Santa Fe New Mexican. Either way, all hell would break loose.
“Let’s assume, for the sake of playing devil’s advocate, the place was destroyed. Can we estimate how fast the pathogens would degrade?”
Dr. Klein parsed his words with caution. “For laboratory pathogens to remain viable outside the controlled environment, they would have to be frozen using liquid nitrogen.”
“So, the idea that the smallpox virus is kept in a standard household freezer deep in the recesses of the CDC is the stuff of vivid imagination?” I was getting closer to an answer, but I wasn’t sure I’d recognize it when I saw it.
“Hold onto that image, Max. It is as good as any.” Dr. Duval picked up where Dr. Klein stopped. “If someone stole pathogens from a laboratory, we would expect to see degraded fragments as well as whole organisms.”
Dr. Klein had been bothered by the fragments since he first identified them after the autopsy on the first child. And when he lined up whole organisms and compared them with what he knew to happen in nature, he concluded his pathogens were man-made. Or at least man-enhanced. He nodded.
“So where does this take us?” I was willing to accept any of the ideas we’d discussed as potentially true, but we were no closer to the identity of the person who tried to kill Johnny than we were when Alex first became ill.
“We need the name of the dead man in the lab.” Sharon speed dialed her husband, only to reach his voicemail. She left a message.
“Maybe Keith can pull more strings,” Dr. Duval said.
My time in the diagnosis room was up. I was antsy about leaving Alex and Johnny alone for too long. Just before I left the room, I had another thought. “Does anyone know where Toby and the ICU nurse came from?”
Loving grand exits as I did, I swept out of the room. Those remaining behind had yet one more riddle to solve.
###
Between the diagnosis room and the ICU, I called Emilie and Ducks. I found both in the school bus working on calculus problems. Emilie put her phone on speaker.
“You guys are on the right track with links to that lab. Sharon Anderson is pulling in as many favors as she can to identify the body found in the office park fire. Did you guys pick up any more hints in your research?”
“Not really.” Emilie fussed. “I can’t figure out why I can’t get a clearer feeling.”
“I suspect the culprit is Toby the vampire, but I have no proof. I hope it’s not just because I don’t like him.” I must have sounded as frustrated as I felt, because Ducks’ voice penetrated my roiling thoughts to offer a solution to my helplessness.
“Can Dr. Running Bear send someone to his house to see what’s there?”
Well, duh, Max. “No, but the Secret Service can dispatch the local FBI. We need to stop Toby, if it is him, before he hurts anyone else.”
“Stick close to Dr. White, Sharon, and Uncle Johnny,” Emilie warned. “We’ll do some more research. Call if you learn anything new.”
I thumbed my phone off and immediately speed-dialed Keith, who had given me his number. In seconds, I learned we were on the same wavelength. He’d sent an outside nurse practitioner to visit all the families of the sick children under the guise of checking their health. If Toby had visited any of them in the past ten days, Keith would know. He expected an answer later in the day.
Leena sidled up to me and spoke quietly.
“My cousin is a cop with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. I asked him to pay an unofficial visit to Toby’s house. He has no qualms about picking locks. He laughed when I told him what I needed. He said he’d deal with the fallout if he gets caught,” she said.
I relaxed as I made my way back up to the ICU, but couldn’t help tensing when I passed Toby on the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SHARON AND I met for breakfast the following morning, as had become our habit, health crises and fatigue permitting. Circles under our eyes ratted us out.
“I got to thinking about what Leena said. She talked about three people coming to work here after the lab-that-didn’t-exist burned. Two are still here,” Sharon mused.
I ate a spoonful of instant oatmeal and made a face. Like Alex, I missed brown sugar and raisins. I missed breakfasts with something other than cereal, hot or cold.
“Toby and one nurse, she said. I don’t know which one it is,” I said.
“Leena never mentioned her name to the group, but Keith and Dr. Running Bear know who she is. Keith asked the FBI to check their backgrounds,” Sharon said.
“How can we be certain the nurse is female?”
“No male nurses in the hospital. I know your money is on Toby, but it could as easily be the nurse.” Sharon slathered marmalade from a plastic packet onto half of an English muffin.
“Or both,” I said, sipping coffee.
“Or both.” Sharon stared at the muffin, which, though toasted and dressed with jam, looked dry and unappetizing. “The thing is, we need motive and proof before we can talk to either one. We don’t want them to bolt.”
“We know the fire was in 1999, but has anyone confirmed the pathogens were at the lab?” I asked.
“Not yet. Dr. Duval should have the answer later to
day.” Sharon pushed her plate aside, half of the muffin untouched. She must have been as sick of the food as I was. She cradled a mug between her palms, eyes focused on something I couldn’t see. “The why of this mess escapes me, not that we seem to be getting closer to the who.”
“And the how. You’re right. It’s time to turn to the how and why. I can’t grasp how a nurse chartered with caring for desperately ill patients could be involved in making them sick.”
“It eludes me, too,” Sharon said.
“Do you know that Leena asked her cousin to search Toby’s house? He’s a reservation cop of some kind.”
“I don’t think I want to know about anything illegal, but has he found anything?” Sharon winked.
“I’ll check to see if there is any progress,” I said. I carried my empty dish and mug to the rubber conveyor belt, which whisked them into the bowels of the kitchen.
Sharon left me outside the cafeteria. “I’m going hunting for Keith to see if he’s learned anything new about either of our two suspects.”
“I’m going hunting for Leena.” I made a tour of the ICU, spoke with the nurses, and laughed at Alex, who was wreaking havoc on his crutches. I tried not to look at each nurse through a lens of suspicion. Which one is involved with Toby, if any? If it is him. I hated myself for harboring these thoughts despite all the work they’d collectively done to help Johnny and Alex.
I counted the nurses and put names to all but one. I’d stood next to her when eavesdropping on the lobby one day, but she melted away before I could introduce myself. I took a step toward her, but she walked into a patient’s room.
I huddled quietly with Johnny, bringing him up to date on what he missed while ill.
“You’ve been busy,” he said, gripping my hand, thumb rubbing circles on the back. “I wish I could have helped.”
“You’re helping by getting well,” I assured him.
Johnny snorted.
We discussed my continuing dislike for Toby. “I’m positive he’s involved, but we have no evidence. I don’t know for sure which nurse is under, um, observation as well.”