No Immunity

by Susan Dunlap

  “I’m a city guy,” McGuire muttered to himself for the sixth or seventh time since he’d lost sight of the bright lights of the Strip in his rearview. “I get hired ’cause I know who’s into who, and where ‘who’ is hanging. It goes down in Vegas, I know about it. But here …” The Weasel glared out at the offending darkness as if it were a line of hoods in black cravats and bulletproof vests.

  There was a sound coming from the engine, or maybe the front axle. Metal grating on metal. It hadn’t been there before, not till he got out on this road with no gas station for another hundred miles, unless he wanted to turn off and drive miles of unlit, winding, two-lane roads and hope one of the marinas would have something besides a self-serve pump. Was it getting worse? He couldn’t tell. If he got stuck out here …

  It could have been there before, he told himself, knowing he was grabbing at straws. He hadn’t taken the ’Cuda out of town in a couple years. Hadn’t hit—he glanced at the speedometer that was stuck at fifty—hadn’t gone above fifty in years.

  If he’d known about this trip into the desert when Adcock called, he’d have turned him down flat no matter—He laughed aloud. For ten grand he’d have walked across the atomic testing grounds. He wouldn’t have believed the feds about no one downwind being in danger, he wasn’t that blinded by cash, he’d just have figured that with his lifestyle he was lots more likely to see the end of ten grand than thirty years, or however long it took for those cancers to get you.

  He slowed for the turnoff for 93, felt the ’Cuda pull against the turn, then ease into the straightaway. McGuire pushed pedal to floor, leaned back against the seat, and rested his hands loosely on the wheel. Nothing was going to change between here and the Doll’s House. Nothing except an hour of time.

  The metallic clanging in Louisa Larson’s car was not in the engine. Her foot was nowhere near the floor. Her toes tapped on the gas pedal, giving the BMW a sputtering ride probably not unlike the miserable old rattletrap she was trying to stay behind. They said people grew to resemble their dogs and take on the personality of their vehicles. If there was ever a guy meant for a sleazy rust bag of a car …

  Perspiration was so thick on her hands, the steering kept slipping. The rattling noise wasn’t so loud, she knew that, but it was driving her crazy. She could have passed the thug—she knew his destination—but she didn’t want to alert him. Tailing a car on an empty road should have been as complicated as prescribing ibuprofen for temporary pain relief. But this …Every time she came over a rise, she had to yank her foot off the gas. Once, she was almost in the guy’s trunk, back when there was other traffic on the road. She was losing it. Damn Grady Hummacher, did everything the man touched turn to poison? Okay, so the boys didn’t have the best of lives in Panama, but before Grady, they hadn’t been kidnapped, infected, and likely to be murdered before the virus could kill them.

  She could still feel the little thug’s hands on her throat, and the knife slicing down her face. Automatically her hand went to the wound—rough, blood-caked—and she felt the panic and fury anew. Her back was slimy, her sweater wadded against her skin. Last year she had a growing medical practice, a spot on two NMA committees, and useful connections in the Association, in government; she was on her way. And now? Here she was speeding up a deserted highway after a vicious gangster. She had to get to those boys before he did. The thug figured they’d be at the Doll’s House. Maybe. But that wasn’t the only possibility, it was merely the most benign.

  The rattling hammered on her head as if it were not coming from the glove compartment but inside her skull.

  She had driven this road often enough while finishing off her scholarship commitment to know how long, how frustrating, how endless it was. She floored the pedal and passed the clunker so fast, it had shrunk to miniature size by the time she could check the rearview.

  Tchernak squinted against the lulling dark. He couldn’t afford to space out. It wasn’t like the terrain was going to tell him if he made a mistake. He cracked the window and let the cool, dry desert air slap him alert. On this empty straightaway it would be so easy to drift off, and then even the fine new Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo’s four-wheel drive wouldn’t save him.

  And those boys … Tchernak jerked awake. How could Grady—But he knew only too well how Grady Hummacher could go flying after a dream and never look down at the consequences. Tchernak remembered the week he’d spent hustling beds because he wasn’t allowed in his dorm room, because he’d been suspended from school, because he had gotten caught in the Tasman Hall raid Grady Hummacher planned. When the campus cops stormed the building, Grady of course was gone. By the time Tchernak got back in his room, Grady was a hero and he, Tchernak, had pneumonia. But only a whiner would have mentioned that.

  Maybe nobody whined. Maybe Grady really didn’t know how nonchalantly he dangled people over the pit.

  But Grady wasn’t playing with undergraduates now. Tchernak floored the gas.

  CHAPTER 37

  “TAKE A THERMOS OF coffee with you, Kiernan. And gas for your truck? Do you need that?”

  “Thanks, Connie.” Her skin had that thick, heavy feel from lack of sleep. The coffee would only create a buzz in her nerves, but that would help somewhat. The hated thirty-six-hour rotations in med school had taught her well.

  She took a final look at the faded gentility of Connie Tremaine’s parlor in this isolated mine encampment. She could imagine Connie’s ancestors four generations back proudly hanging the oil paintings with their great gilded frames and staking their claim, not merely to silver or bauxite but to the future of culture in the West. At night when they sat on the pincushion love seat and the brocade sofa, their feet on the bright, thick carpet from the Orient, and the gaslight sparkled on long silk dresses, one of them had probably sipped from the brandy glass Connie now used. When they’d imagined this place a hundred years in the future, what had they seen? Could they ever have conceived of it all coming to this?

  In the silence she made out a low canine whine. The dog whose tennis ball she had spotted outside. It comforted her to think that Connie was not out here miles from town with nothing but a deep well dug in the days of gentility, a generator, and probably a cell phone.

  “One for the road.” Connie held out a cup of coffee. The china cup rattled on its saucer.

  Kiernan took it and drank gratefully. Taking a second swallow, she looked appraisingly at Connie Tremaine. The woman was exhausted. Her tan camouflaged blotches, but blotches were definitely there. And her eyes were rheumy. “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “No, really?”

  “Fine,” Connie snapped.

  “Let me take your temperature.”

  “I’m fine!”

  “You’re not fine. Maybe you’re just tired. But it could be more than that—”

  “It’s not!”

  “—in which case you could be contagious. So if you’ve got anyone hidden here—”

  “I don’t!”

  “—don’t infect them. I’ll get myself a thermos of coffee and the gas you offered.”

  “What? You’re afraid to be downwind of me?”

  Kiernan stared her in the face. “You got it.” There was no time to argue, and no sense in minimizing the danger. If she was going to help Connie, she had to find the dead woman and find out where she had contracted the virus that killed her.

  As she poured the coffee into the thermos, Connie handed her two Granola bars. “Still wrapped, so you’re safe from me. And be careful out there. Back out. Don’t drive over the courtyard.”

  “The courtyard?”

  “Yeah. It’s what we call the area between the buildings. There’s a mine under there. Real shaky. Dangerous. You can walk across it without caving it in, but I wouldn’t try it in your truck. You’d be fifty feet down before you got in gear.”

  Kiernan nodded in silent acknowledgment. “Take care of yourself, Connie. If you feel any worse, call a doctor you trust. I’m leav
ing you my number at home. If you don’t have a doctor, call me and I’ll get the right person here.”

  Connie laughed hollowly. “Which odds are better, me coming down with bleeding disease or you ending up wherever they’ve taken Jeff?”

  Kiernan stepped outside. The cold was bone-chilling. The sharp wind reminded her she was on a desert mountainside where no tree grew tall enough to fight the icy blasts. She started the truck and headed out past the deserted buildings. In less than a minute she was beyond any sign of human habitation and the desert seemed drier and sharper for the brief period of safety behind her.

  She couldn’t help but like Connie Tremaine, who lived by her own rules out here alone with her dog and the unsolid earth. But could she swear Connie hadn’t steered her toward the mine hole and wouldn’t have left her there to die? No, that she couldn’t swear.

  How long before Connie could no longer think to get help? How long before anyone thought to look for her, if they knew where to look? Kiernan stepped harder on the gas, but the narrow rutted road allowed little speed. To her left were the mountains, to her right the drop. She focused straight ahead. Nevada didn’t give second chances.

  Thoughts of the virus, of the people threatened by it, flowed through her mind. The dead woman—what had drawn her to this desolate area? It was as if this were the edge of the earth and she had come here to step off. And no one cared.

  Or did they? Her family and friends would be in Las Vegas, or Reno, or somewhere farther. They would be on the horn to the police there. It would be there that signs with her picture would start to be plastered on kiosks and utility poles.

  And Jeff Tremaine. He was the key to the whole thing, and he was gone. Connie assumed the sheriff was holding him somewhere, but there was still no evidence of that. And Kiernan wasn’t about to rule out his leaving from disgust, paranoia, or rage. A tree jutted out over the road, throwing the surface into deep shadow. Kiernan yanked the wheel, overcompensating and sending the driver’s-side wheels up over the embankment. It was a moment before she righted the truck and breathed normally again.

  Wherever Jeff Tremaine was, for whatever reason, one thing was clear—he was the key to Sheriff Fox. It was Fox who had the answers, and Fox from whom she was going to have to get them. How to do that and not end up like Jeff, that was the big question.

  The road wound sharper and more suddenly than she remembered, the rutted paths thwarting every attempt at speed. At the crest she stopped and pulled out her cell phone. When she bearded Fox she needed to be backed up by every bit of evidence possible. Missing-person’s lists were one thing she could check. She could have Tchernak—

  No, dammit, not Tchernak. Well, BakDat—No, dammit, not BakDat anytime soon. And if Persis knew about Tchernak quitting, she wouldn’t produce the information at all. Damn Tchernak. Why couldn’t the man be satisfied with his extremely well-paid job, his fine studio on the beach, his superb wolfhound companion.

  Ezra! Oh God, Ezra. She had left assuming she would be back home by now to take him for his nighttime walk. She had asked Tchernak only to feed and walk him earlier. She could see Ezra’s big wiry face, his huge brown eyes drawn in sad disbelief as he lay facing the door that didn’t open. Ezra …

  But no matter how pissed Tchernak was with her, he’d never desert Ezra. He still lived in part of the duplex. So as long as he was there anyway, there was no reason he couldn’t get the latest missing-person’s report. She clicked the phone on and it crackled to life as she dialed Tchernak’s number.

  The phone rang, and again. “Come on, answer! You’ve got to be home!” The phone kept ringing. And the answering machine didn’t pick up.

  She dialed her own number. The phone rang. Tchernak could well be in her flat with Ezra. He’d done that before when she was out of town. For Ezra, he had contended. She wasn’t surprised he didn’t pick up. He was, after all, no longer in her employ. He’d have no business answering her calls. And, as he would be the first to remind her, it was three-thirty in the morning, an hour when many people sleep. None of that would keep him from monitoring the message, though. For this call he’d make her eat enough crow for a family Thanksgiving, but she’d deal with that later. She waited for the beep. “Tchernak, it’s me. Pick up. Listen, this is important.” She paused. “I need a check on Missing Persons for the dead woman up here. Tchernak? Tchernak? Listen, this is crucial. People are dying. Pick up, dammit! Okay, I’ll try you again in a few minutes.”

  How, long had it taken from the infection of the index case of Lassa fever in Africa to villages of nothing but maggots? If only they’d gotten to that index case …That had been the great what-if dream the medical team had played with night after night. Now she sat in the pick-up cab, drank some of the coffee, nibbled on the Granola bars, and redialed Tchernak and then her own number. When he didn’t answer this time, she shifted to Message Retrieval.

  The first three messages could wait. It was the fourth that caught her attention. “Tchernak, Adcock here. That other number doesn’t answer. Don’t you even have a goddamn phone machine? What kind of detect—? Listen, I got a closer read on that number for you, but you’re gone from the restaurant. You still in Vegas? Call me. Seven seven one, two seven seven two. If you don’t get through, try me again. I’m going to check the hospitals again—something you could have been doing, Tchernak.”

  Kiernan smacked the Off button so hard she knocked the phone out of her hand. Adcock? Reston Adcock? The Reston Adcock who had demanded she drop everything to find his missing employee? Now he was dealing with Tchernak? What the hell did Tchernak think he was doing? Quitting without notice was bad enough, but absconding with her case was something else. And to work for a sleaze like Adcock.

  Oh, shit. Did Tchernak know Adcock would walk over anyone? He’d been right next to her when she told the guy she didn’t deal with clients who had no ethics, but he was so busy pointing out that he knew Adcock’s missing guy that he’d glossed right over the danger. And when Adcock called him and offered him the job, he’d have stepped right up like he’d been called in to replace the quarterback. And now he was missing! “Oh, Tchernak, what have you gotten yourself into?”

  And now Adcock was calling hospitals. Again. Just the logical precaution in a missing-person’s case? That couldn’t have any connection to the dead woman’s virus …

  Surely.

  She picked the phone up off the floor of the cab and dialed Adcock’s number.

  “Yeah?” The line was thick with static as if it was connected to another cell phone.

  “Reston Adcock?”

  “Hey, who’s this?”

  “Kiernan O’Shaughnessy here. I finished up and I’m here in Las Vegas. My associate, Bradley Tchernak, left me your number to contact him.”

  “Guy’s got some sense of humor.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know where he is, and now you, his boss, don’t know either. If I handled my business like that, there’d be oil seeping all over the ground and not a bit of it marked.”

  “About the message you left on our California answering machine …”

  “Haven’t heard shit from him since then. It’s like the guy’s dropped off the face of the earth.”

  He wasn’t here, he wasn’t home. It was way too late for flights, so he wasn’t in a plane somewhere. He would never have walked out on a case, particularly not his very first one. The only way he’d leave the field would be if he’d been carried off. This was worse than she’d imagined. What had Tchernak gotten himself into? He was too big to slither out a back window. Too decent, too eager to help. She stared out at the rumpled black mountains, dry and endless. Tchernak could be anywhere; his battered body could be lying a hundred yards off the highway and no one would find him. But if she picked up his trail from Adcock, she’d have a chance.

  What about the dead woman? And Connie? And maybe Jeff and everyone in Gattozzi? Were they less important than Tchernak?

  “Where are you, Adcock?�
�

  There was a hesitation before he said, “Vegas.”

  She said, “Have everything you showed Mr. Tchernak ready at your office. It’ll take me three hours to get there. You were calling the hospitals. I’m assuming you didn’t find your guy.”

  “Not him or the Panamanians.”

  “Panamanians?”

  “Jeez, didn’t Tchernak tell you anything?”

  “Adcock, you want to discuss business management at three-thirty in the morning? Just tell me who these boys are and why you think they might be in the hospital.”

  “They’re seismic aides Hummacher brought in from Panama.”

  “Brought in why?”

  “Only one reason, to keep the competition from getting to them.”

  “Give me what you’ve got on them too.” She got the address, turned off the phone, and started down the mountain.

  By the time she got to Vegas, it would be business hours in Atlanta. She’d call the CDC, track down someone who at least knew someone who knew her. She’d find credibility. She’d have to. How else was she going to convince them there was a threat of epidemic in a body that had disappeared? She’d have to convince them; no one here was going to take the word of an out-of-state private eye, not against the word of the sheriff.

  But first she had to make it through Gattozzi.

  CHAPTER 38

  THE RADIO KNOB TURNED easily between Louisa Larson’s fingers as she moved from one band of static to another. Bursts of song shot out, only to be shrouded in great hisses and grindings. She’d gotten a station up here at this time of night often enough before. Why couldn’t she find it now when she needed the calming company of music, even music she didn’t like? It had to be somewhere on the dial.

  Unless the station had closed. Up here in the open, that broadcast could have been coming out of some guy’s garage a hundred miles away. The “station” could close when he went out for a beer. She tried to remember if there had been commercials, newscasts, anything to suggest legitimacy. Of course she couldn’t remember. If her mind were that clear, she wouldn’t need to bother with finding music. She ground the knob to the left and clicked the car into silence.