Outbreak

by Davis Bunn

  Half an hour after he returned, Cruz watched as a heavyset woman drove a Lexus SUV with Maryland plates out through the estate’s front gates. She had two children in the rear seat. Twenty-six minutes later, a Jeep Cherokee departed. The driver was a handsome African-American woman, with a white woman in her early thirties in the passenger seat. Cruz had been supplied with photos of the professor’s team. He identified the Jeep’s driver as the target’s attorney. The scientist down from the Bishop main labs was seated in the rear. The white woman in the front passenger seat was prettier than her photograph, another employee of the brother’s company. The target, Theo Bishop, was nowhere in sight.

  With more prep time, Cruz would have fitted all the vehicles with GPS trackers. Today, however, he was left with a difficult choice. Follow the lawyer lady’s Jeep or assume the target was still in the house. The problem was, he had arrived late after thinking the job had been taken care of by the other hunters. Now, if the target had left before he arrived, Cruz risked losing his only connection to where the professor would be later.

  Cruz scrambled down from the hide and hot-footed it to his rental. He tracked the Jeep until, ten minutes later, the attorney took the turnoff that led straight for the university. Soon as he was certain of their destination, Cruz wheeled about and raced back to the residence.

  He knew such an estate was bound to have electronic security. But these people did not fit the house. Wealthy and powerful people made up almost all of Cruz’s targets. He knew them and he knew their habits. They were cautious by nature. Leaving such a residence usually meant entering into a staged process. These people were simply too normal. The only thing they checked for was oncoming traffic. There was no surveillance, no driver, no guards. Nothing. Which left Cruz fairly certain they were sloppy when it came to the house’s built-in security system.

  Just in case he was wrong, Cruz donned a baseball cap and hooded sweatshirt and dark sunglasses. He pulled the hood over the cap and kept his face tilted toward the earth. He scouted the empty road, scaled the fence, and raced up the incline.

  Theo Bishop lived in the pool house. Cruz knew this within ten seconds of entering the apartment. The target did not even bother to lock his door. Cruz searched the two rooms in less than a minute, then headed up to the main house. Again the place was unlocked. He knew within a dozen heartbeats that the vast home was vacant.

  He spent another five minutes doing a more careful search, now looking for the ideal hideaway. If Bishop did not show up at the university lab, Cruz would return here and wait. Which meant taking out all the others as well.

  Three minutes later, Cruz was back in his car and heading into town. He hoped Theo Bishop would be there at the university. Cruz had never liked shooting kids. But a job was a job. And one thing was certain. Today the target would breathe his last.

  thirty-five

  Kenny called when Theo was still driving back to the university. The sound of jet engines and rushing air filled the car’s speakers. “Preston’s just completed a transfer to your corporate account. We decided to go ahead and send you two million.” Kenny sounded almost amused by the news. “He wanted to make it contingent upon your accepting a security detail. I told him to save his breath.”

  “I actually don’t know what to say.”

  “He’s right, just the same. You need to have guards.”

  “I’ll think about it.” That much at least was true. Theo thought about it a lot. “How’s your head?”

  “Flying helps. Lower air pressure reduces the swelling. I’m okay and getting better.” Kenny paused, then confessed, “I’m really worried.”

  “About what?”

  “Lanica hasn’t contacted me. Preston’s hunting. He can be more discreet about things like that. I tend to shove my weight around like a bull on a binge.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Theo liked the easy confession. Two friends. No boundaries. “I could try to have Avery use the scientific back channels. He’s ordered lab samples through regional hospitals.”

  “That is bound to raise red flags. Listen, Theo . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Preston thinks I’ll probably be arrested again. Sometime later today is the word he’s picked up through his connections.”

  The casual way Kenny spoke made the news seem even more brutal. “I’m with Amelia on this. Your attitude is nuts.”

  Kenny’s only response was to go quiet.

  Theo sighed. “So, what do you want me to do here?”

  “Somebody with a lot of clout is very angry over my public announcements. They intend to shut me up. Obviously we need to know who that is.”

  “I thought that was Preston’s job. He still can’t say who’s put you at the top of their enemies list?”

  “No. Or why. Which is curious and worrisome both. Preston’s contacts go all the way to the very top.”

  Theo felt the faint niggling of a new idea. “Then he’s asking the wrong questions to the wrong people.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  The answer was, Theo didn’t know. Not yet. “I’ll get back to you when I have something. In the meantime, stay out of jail.”

  Theo spent the rest of the drive replaying the conversation in his head. Kenny’s casual indifference over returning to prison rattled Theo. Nothing about this new attitude made sense through the lens of their shared past. The brother Theo knew had been focused exclusively on winning.

  His mind went back to the Bible on the airplane’s table and all the markings on its pages, and from there Theo relived the prayer time at breakfast with Amelia. The woman’s iron-hard resolve was on clear display when the armed guards linked hands with the family. Theo drove and mulled over Amelia’s pain and fury at his brother. As he thought about their argument, he had the distinct sense that something more than what he had heard was at work. When he pulled into the bank’s parking lot, it struck him that Amelia had in fact been more angry at herself. She was drawn into an impossible conflict by her situation. Praying for years, was how Kenny had put it. Praying for years only to have her prayers answered.

  He entered the bank and asked to speak to the assistant manager, the woman who had been on their side through the hardest of days, who had actually shed tears when she told him the bank had decided to call their loans, thus forcing them into bankruptcy. To describe her as ecstatic over the change in their financial status did not go far enough. Theo endured her embrace, her delight, her congratulations, and then got down to business.

  Theo spent almost three hours setting up new accounts. Kenny’s funds came in while he was at the bank. Theo arranged for the first wire transfer, putting the next stage of his plan into motion. As he prepared to leave, Della called and said they had arrived back from Winston-Salem and were all at the lab. She asked him to stop for takeout and bring enough food for six people. Theo drove to his favorite sandwich shop, then on to the university lab building, where he found Della and Harper sharing Avery’s desk.

  Harper was working through a list of everything she needed to do to get their business up and running again. Della typed furiously, transcribing from her notepad into her laptop. The wall between the office and the lab was glass from the waist up. Theo could see Avery and his lab techies working the equipment, unloading Styrofoam containers, preparing lab glass. Theo unwrapped the sandwiches and passed them around. Avery waved distractedly and sent an assistant over for their meals. Theo took a turkey and avocado on whole wheat for himself and studied the others. His team. They were bonding, the two women here in the office and Avery with his postgrads. All of them hunting.

  After they finished eating, Theo went next door and asked Avery if he could spare a minute. The scientist seemed reluctant but joined them nonetheless. Theo asked if he could explain what it was he sought, and why the samples were important. “None of them come from victims,” Theo said. “I’m not clear on what role they might play. Seems like a lot of t
ime and money to invest in something that doesn’t really matter.”

  “Oh, it matters,” Avery replied. “Even if there’s nothing, it still helps us discount potentialities.”

  Theo took a long look at the scientist. A new gleam was evident in the man’s eyes, a happy tension. “But it’s not nothing, is it?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve already found something.”

  Avery’s smile grew broader. “I have indeed.”

  thirty-six

  Cruz could not find a decent hide.

  The UNC Asheville campus was laid out like a checkerboard. There was no center. Money had come in waves, and each new phase meant another square had been inserted alongside the others. The biology building formed the link between old and new developments. Parking lots linked the bio building to two other squares. The bio building itself had five access points, counting three alarmed fire exits. The campus was in full summer-school swing. Students and visitors drifted through the sunlight. Cruz dumped his jacket in the trunk, pulled out his shirt, and slung his backpack over one shoulder. There were a lot of other mature students moving around or settled at outdoor tables. The only difference was, his pack probably held the only loaded gun and skinning knife.

  He spent an hour nursing a coffee, then shifted to a bench with a clear view of the front and side entrances. The security police circled around twice. Otherwise it was just another day in the Carolina hills. Everybody busy and happy and completely without a clue. He debated relocating back to the estate and waiting for them to come home. The campus was both very public and very crowded. But the ticking clock kept him there. Waiting.

  He returned to the café, bought a blueberry muffin and second cup of coffee, and chose a table that was partly shaded from the sun.

  Twenty minutes later, Theo Bishop cruised into the adjacent lot, parked, and started walking at a brisk pace toward the bio building.

  Avery told them, “Criminal investigators all over the country share one rule. If the culprit to a murder is hidden, track the peripheral evidence.”

  “I like this already,” Harper said. “Calling it murder.”

  “Because that’s exactly what it is,” Della agreed.

  “Peripheral evidence,” Avery repeated. He stepped up to the whiteboard by the office’s side wall. He wiped fingers greasy from the takeout food down the sides of his lab coat, then uncapped a marker and wrote the two words at the top of the board.

  Theo watched as the letters took form in wide blue strokes and felt something resonate inside him. The sensation was so strong he could almost hear it, a powerful harmony. Peripheral evidence. The energy lifted him from his chair and pushed him back so that he stood near to the office’s windows, as far from the whiteboard as he could get.

  Avery’s smile was almost shy, like he knew what was happening to Theo and was embarrassed by the impact his words were having. “What do all these outbreaks have in common? We know there must be something. Why?” He took out the two folded pages from his pocket. “Doctors up and down the Atlantic coast of Africa have noted similar afflictions.”

  Della said, “The bloom.”

  Avery turned and wrote Lupa on the whiteboard. “Good. That’s one.”

  “One hundred percent mortality,” Theo said. He pulled the new phone from his jacket and texted the Washington attorney, Any word from Lanica? He could imagine the doctor’s name fitting into an unseen cavity, like a key made for a lock he had yet to identify.

  “Right,” Avery said, and added another line to the whiteboard.

  “No illness except for the one region,” said Della. “It comes, it attacks, it vanishes.”

  “Good.” Avery continued writing.

  Theo said, “We need to check wind directions for the days surrounding the events.”

  “Excellent.” Avery entered his lab, spoke to the technicians still lounging over their meals, and pulled another whiteboard into the office. Through the glass wall Theo saw the technicians gather up the remnants of their meals and resume working at their posts. Avery positioned the second whiteboard and wrote at the top, Tracking assignments.

  “I can do that,” Della said.

  Avery handed her the two sheets. “What else?”

  Theo’s attention shifted when his phone buzzed with an incoming message. He read, Still nothing.

  Theo watched as Avery wrote more words on both whiteboards. He could not bring them into focus. Instead, he felt as though the concepts were rearranging themselves, becoming part of the idea that continued to rock his internal world.

  He heard Avery say, “Anything else?”

  Harper asked, “What are you working on in your lab?”

  “Precisely the question.” Avery bent down and added another line to the first board, Seaweed baked into bread. He straightened and said, “Kenneth Bishop sent me down within forty-eight hours of hearing there had been another outbreak of Lupa. By the time I arrived, drying ovens up and down the beach had been shifted from fish to seaweed.”

  “They knew,” Harper said.

  “There you go.”

  She rose to her feet. “They knew. They’d heard from other places about this new stuff coming out of the . . .”

  Harper stopped speaking because Avery had crossed the office a second time, entered the lab, and returned with yet another whiteboard. On this one he wrote, Timeline.

  “Homicide investigators will spend days and days working this out,” Avery said.

  Theo wanted to object, say they did not have the luxury of time. But as he started to speak, his phone buzzed again. He read, Your brother is back behind bars. Working to release him. Very difficult. OAS has entered a formal request for his extradition to Ghana. His former company had a factory in Accra.

  Avery was saying, “By the time the bloom started, the fishermen had heard from others about this incredible new source of protein, and the money they could get from the bread.” He turned and looked at them. “But the illness isn’t linked to either making or eating the bread. We know this how?”

  “Because the people in those other places didn’t get sick,” Harper said. Still on her feet. Totally engaged now.

  “Right. Which means two things. First, the outbreaks are airborne. And second, the life cycle is very short.” He wrote on all three boards now, scribbling faster, his words harder to make out. But Theo did not care. He was no longer reading along with the others.

  Instead, he walked forward, waited until Avery straightened, and said, “I have an idea.”

  thirty-seven

  Cruz stayed where he was, seated at one of the tables outside the student coffee shop, for almost an hour after he spotted Theo Bishop entering the biology building. There was no need to track him personally now. He knew the target’s entry and exit points. The man’s car was parked in the lot to Cruz’s left. It would be nice if Bishop delivered the sacks of food, maybe had a bite with his crew, then left. Cruz could follow him and make the hit away from the university’s patrolling security and the students milling about. Maybe arrange a solitary accident. Walk in close and make sure the job was done. Then disappear into the flower crowd at the Rainbow Gathering. Drift out of sight. Bang and gone.

  But the target and his group continued to astonish Cruz. He had never before been assigned a hit where the target showed such an utter disregard for security. Theo Bishop’s casual manner was almost comic. Cruz had no idea what the target had become involved in. Nor did he much care. Yet whatever it was, surely the man had to know he had threatened some powerful interests. Not even some ivory-tower academic could remain totally blind to the risks. Especially when the issue he’d involved himself in was so time sensitive. It made no sense.

  Cruz spotted the university cops patrolling in their little open-sided vehicles. It was the third time in less than an hour they’d made the circuit, one heavyset guy and a lady in her forties who might once have been a professional wrestler, her neck and shoulders were that developed. His spider sense told
him that he was the reason for their vigilance. Cruz pretended to sip from his empty cup while slowly crumpling into a ball the waxed bag that had held his muffin. He waited another dozen breaths, just another summer student learning new meanings for the word lazy. He stood and approached a nearby table where the occupant had just slipped inside the coffee shop for whatever reason. Three books were piled on the tabletop. Cruz grabbed the top book and strolled away.

  The rental car’s lock beeped loud as an alarm. Cruz hated the vehicle and everything it represented, all the wasted time, the strangeness of this job. He wished he’d never taken the assignment. Several pedestrians turned his way, giving him that look. The one that suggested he didn’t belong, and having a textbook tucked under his arm made no difference whatsoever. Cruz settled into the sun-heated seat, fired the engine, and reversed from the lot.

  The one positive outcome of this whole wasted morning was that he could be certain the second hit team was no longer around. He would have noticed. Big time. That was how he’d survived for as long as he had. By noticing.

  Cruz trundled around the winding university streets, holding to the speed limit. He couldn’t take the risk that he’d already been linked to the vehicle by campus security. The days when university cops were a joke belonged to a different era. Kidnappings and molestations and school shootings had changed everything. The university could not afford bad publicity. Security was crucial. They hired the best and paid them to stay focused.

  Cruz found what he was looking for two streets away from the university’s main entrance. It was the sort of residence a senior professor might own, or maybe a dean. Red brick, not new, two stories, built in a time of conservative houses and bow ties and cocktail parties on the back veranda. The empty drive was sheltered by massive oaks. The ground-floor windows were covered by pale drapes. Cruz pulled midway up the drive to where the first pair of trees masked him in shadow. He walked to the front door, feeling as if the day sought to trap him in a web of sunlight and heat. He rang the bell four times, then turned and walked back to his car. The house was hidden from its neighbors by hedges and more trees. The neighborhood was totally silent. He opened the trunk and changed into running shorts and a sleeveless sweatshirt. The cap and shades stayed in place. He belted on a fanny pack and filled it with a pistol, three clips, and his favorite knife. He fitted in earbuds, jammed the cable in place with the pack’s zipper, and set off running.