No Immunity

by Susan Dunlap

  The Weasel was eyeing the aluminum shed directly across the courtyard from him. It was the one sturdy building in the complex, the logically safe place. To his right was the house, to his left the car barn from which Kiernan watched him. “The boys, O’Shaughnessy! Get me those lads.”

  The copter was moving down fast. Fox was half way out the door.

  The helicopter was twenty feet above them. Fox was bracing himself, ready to leap the moment it hit ground.

  The boards of the car barn shimmied. At any moment the whole building could collapse on top of her. She forced herself to wait, to gauge the right moment.

  On the ground in front, Connie and Louisa shifted in unison. It wasn’t them moving, she realized. The ground was shimmying.

  “This way, McGuire!” She ran out under the copter. The maelstrom from the blades threw dirt and snow into her face. She ran, but the wind was so strong, it blew her back. She leaned almost horizontal, pushing off hard with each step. The Weasel was yelling, but she couldn’t make out words over the frantic beating of the blades. “The shed, Weasel. They’re in the shed. Come on, we’ve just got time.” She bent lower, using all her strength to keep going. She was under the copter when she shot a glance back at the Weasel. The man wasn’t moving. “Weasel, you want the boys or not? How many million dollars?”

  She didn’t wait for his reaction. The ground was snapping up and down like a trampoline. Like a tent roof. Like a skylight ready to crack. Beneath the thunderous clap of the blades she could hear the groan as the earth gave way. The mine roof was caving in. The helicopter blades skimmed her head, knocking her forward. She flung her shoulders back, desperate to keep from falling, being sucked down into the growing hole. She was almost across the cavern. The gray soil was rushing down all around. She grabbed for the edge of the hole, her legs pedaling like mad as the ground beneath her collapsed. She flung herself onto the rim and rolled.

  Only then did she turn and look back. She could see Fox’s horror-widened eyes. He yelled at the pilot. The copter jerked, head up. The engine screamed. Then it stalled and the copter smashed down on its side into the collapsed mine. The hole was fifty feet deep at the center, and soil was rushing in from all sides. Under the blade she spotted the Weasel, legs flailing against the rushing dirt. He wouldn’t be coming out without help.

  She needed time to catch her breath, but there wasn’t time. Once the dirt settled, Fox and his pilot would get themselves out. “The boys!” Skirting the growing hole, she ran back to Connie. Connie lay two yards from the growing hole; she had pulled her arm under her head. Her face was gray. But she was breathing. Kiernan pulled her back near the grass. “The boys, Connie, where are they?”

  “Hoist house.” She pointed to the looming structure on the low hill. “Upstairs, trapdoor.”

  Ignoring the men’s angry screams in the hole, Kiernan ran for the decaying mine building, clambered up the wooden stairs onto the tracks leading to the ore shoots. One side was blank wall, the other empty windows through which ore must have been poured. At the end of the open hall the ore bin stood empty, rusting. She slowed, looked down, kicking away the dirt till she spotted a metal loop handle.

  The trapdoor lifted with surprising ease.

  The room below was lit by a camping lantern. Wooden walls, wood floor, table, chairs, and in the shadows a cot with two forms, huddled together on it. Heat from the tiny space flowed up through the hole.

  She lowered herself onto the rung ladder and climbed down. She was holding her breath. At the bottom she turned toward the boys. They looked so small, so wasted. But their fevers had broken and they were alive.

  CHAPTER 53

  BRAD TCHERNAK LEANED BACK in the seat of the fine gold Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. “So, Kiernan, ‘after you got out of the burning pit,’ as my father used to say—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Well, he said it about those old Saturday-morning serials in the movie theaters, the ones that ended with the hero trapped in the burning pit and a promise of great excitement next week. Dad spent the whole week trying to figure out how the hero could possibly extricate himself. The next Saturday he would rush to the theater, ready to see the great escape. What he’d get instead would be the next episode starting with the hero saying, ‘After I got out of the burning pit, I went on to …’ So?”

  Kiernan laughed. She was slumped in the passenger seat, and her bare feet were braced against the windshield. “I don’t know how long it took Fox to get himself and crew—and the Weasel—out of the not-burning pit, but I moved like a whirlwind hauling the boys, Louisa, and Connie into Connie’s truck. I knew I didn’t have much time. I was afraid I’d have to spend most of it just shifting cars to get out of the driveway, and Fox would nab me right there. Or if I did get out, he’d have me intercepted on the road to Gattozzi. But I’d underestimated Connie. Her place was, after all, a safe house. The potential need for escape was always on her mind. Of course she had her truck at a hidden exit. Of course she knew other routes to Gattozzi. Even so it took so long, I was afraid Louisa wouldn’t make it.”

  “But she did?”

  “She won’t be using her right arm for a while, but she’s not dead like Adcock. And she’s not bleeding out from contagious hemorrhagic fever the way you and I might have been.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t mention that danger yesterday. Bad enough I thought I was going to be permanent navy property. Then, all of a sudden, I’m sent to the shower, my clothes are pressed—”

  “Not cleaned, or deodorized, I note.”

  “Jeez, look who’s talking. You could be Lot’s wife. That’s salt, not dirt, isn’t it? But tell me. How did you get me free?”

  “Connie Tremaine has connections in the fourth estate, and it would look real bad for the United States Navy to devote taxpayers’ money to harassing a local citizen who was only caring for two disabled boys who’d entered the country legally. The boys’ fevers had broken. There’s no longer evidence they ever had an exotic virus. Anyway the virus-detection program is the second-to-last thing the navy wants on the front page.”

  “The second-to-last thing? What’s the last?”

  Kiernan laughed. “The picture of their helicopter half buried in the mine. Not exactly your recruiting poster picture.”

  Tchernak grinned. “Grady Hummacher would have loved that. It’s better than the Volkswagen in the staircase of Tasman Hall.” When she looked at him blankly, he said, “I’ll tell you later. But am I indebted to Connie Tremaine too? Did you both trade silence for my release?”

  “Hardly. Not that I don’t love you, Tchernak, but silence, really. We just got Louisa to give us the name of her contact at B-CAD. I pointed out to him that they’d be in deep enough shit without a kidnapping charge. Weak as Louisa was, she was still real anxious to minimize bad publicity. It’s one thing for a local doctor to have worked on a project with the navy. It’s quite another for that doctor to know that lethal bacteria and chemicals are being tossed into the air and citizens are not being notified. She’s desperate to keep that quiet.”

  “Desperate enough to kill?”

  “She didn’t shoot Adcock over publicity. I think she really felt she was protecting the boys. Who knows? And would she have killed Grady if the Weasel hadn’t gotten to him first? I doubt it. She’s not a stare-you-in-the-face-and-shoot-you kinda gal. Whereas the Weasel wasn’t knee-deep in qualms.”

  Tchernak laughed. “Like the lightbulb jokes: How many qualms does it take to overcome the smell of millions?”

  Kiernan fished in the hamper behind the seat and pulled out two Cokes. Mexican Cokes, the kind with the caffeine-and-sugar kick that might keep her awake. They had been in Gattozzi all afternoon answering questions. For a while she was afraid she’d get another chance at a night above the Gattozzi saloon. But at dusk the county sheriff had said “Go,” and they hadn’t looked back.

  She took a swallow of Coke. “Here, Tchernak, is Rule One from the Hostage Taker’s Guide. Don’t price
your hostages before you check them out. McGuire had no way of knowing the boys had no language and were worthless to him. Adcock had Grady’s geological exploration reports; maybe he could have gotten close enough to the oil for the boys to wander back to the site for reasons of their own. To anyone else they were useless. No one would take the boys back to Yaviza and devote years to following them around in case they might come across Grady’s oil deposit—and pay the Weasel millions for the privilege of doing it. For that kind of investment you hire a seismic crew, string sensor wires, set off dynamite, and get yourself geologists to start evaluating the results. But the Weasel didn’t think that through. He went after the kidnap scheme the same way he went at Louisa and then at Grady.”

  “You mean breaking the door chains and shoving his way in?”

  She nodded. “No one else would have had to do that. For Louisa or even Adcock, Grady would have opened the door.”

  “I hope they …” Tchernak shrugged. “What’ll happen to the boys?”

  Kiernan smiled. “The fact that they’re still alive is a good sign. I was afraid I’d find them dead in that hole. To have survived all they’ve been through … those guys are tough. Between Connie and Jeff they’ll make sure the kids have the best shot, whether that’s here or back in Panama. They’ll start with a top-notch physical and see where that leads. Might be some oil money for tutors that could make their lives easier either place.” She sighed. “You know, if Jeff had just been up-front—”

  “Didn’t I warn you about him? Who was it who said, ‘Don’t take that case,’ huh?”

  “You know, Tchernak, a more gracious person wouldn’t have brought that up.”

  “Graciousness? Is this a new requirement in O’Shaughnessy’s Gracious Investigations?” He laughed, then took a deep swallow of his Coke. “You were saying about the taciturn doctor … ?”

  “He could have leveled with me about his suspicions of Fox and B-CADS. But I guess after all his years of noting strange things he knew were connected with B-CADS and not being able to pin any of it down, it’d make the sanest person paranoid. And with his record with the navy, who’d believe him?”

  She leaned back against the leather seat and looked out at the expanse of desert. The sun was crimson and shot stripes of gold above the western hills. In a few minutes it would disappear entirely. But for the moment it threw the land into high relief. In her two days here she had felt the vastness of the land, its emptiness, its inherent threat. Now its subtle changes filled her with awe. She could see why people like Connie Tremaine loved it.

  She had been wrong about the danger. It didn’t come from the land. “You know, Tchernak, we were lucky, this time. Whatever this virus was, its transmission wasn’t airborne. It didn’t survive in the air. You and I weren’t infected. Jeff wasn’t. Only Grady and Connie picked it up from live carriers, and the boys must have been barely contagious anymore by the time Connie touched them. Still, there could have been an epidemic. And Louisa was right about the danger of cutting a road through the Colombia-Panama rain forest. You do that and you set loose microbes never known outside a rain forest. You infect people like Grady Hummacher and then fly them all over the world and give those viruses new hosts who have no immunities. There are laws of nature; we keep breaking them. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Tchernak finished his Coke and tossed the can in a bag. “But the boys didn’t pick up the virus in Panama.”

  “No, they didn’t. They got it right here in Nevada. And if they had been in closer contact with their neighbors in the barrio, they could have spread it to people who are afraid to go to clinics.”

  “No!” Tchernak put a hand on her arm. “Don’t start on the dangers of denying people health care. I don’t want to hear again about inviting epidemic. I’m not arguing. I am,” he said, “just trying to figure how soon I can buy myself a fine Laredo.”

  “Ah, the hard life of the private eye, eh? Right down to the leather seats?” She plunked a hand on Tchernak’s arm and laughed, taking the time to observe his craggy face and now fanglike mustache and those fine wide football shoulders. “So, Tchernak, speaking of fees …”

  “Did Adcock pay me, is that what you’re asking? You want to know how the competition is making out? Well, you learn lots of lessons in pro football, but none as important as: Get your money up front.”

  “You got the whole thing?”

  “Well, no, not the per diem.”

  “The whole rest?”

  “Well, no, not the payment on delivery.”

  “Well, then,” she said, mocking his delivery, “what?”

  “Thou.”

  “A thousand dollars? I wouldn’t have hoisted out of my chair for that.”

  “You would if you weren’t licensed.”

  “I wouldn’t, but that’s another issue.”

  Tchernak stretched a long arm around her shoulder. He didn’t pull her closer; the Cherokee’s seats didn’t indulge togetherness. He stared straight ahead, and when he spoke, his voice was so impersonal he could have been reading the want ads. “I could become licensed. All I need is the hours.”

  She didn’t respond, nor did she pull away.

  “How many hours have I already worked for you, free of charge, I might add?”

  “Instead of cooking as I paid you to do?”

  “Yeah, well …”

  Tchernak slung his arm across the back of her seat and she leaned into it. It felt cozy and warm and the desert reminded her that sometimes friendship can be all you’ve got. At times she had assured herself she was immune from the need for friends, for lovers, for anyone who tied her down. She hadn’t been immune, just wary. People are demanding; they misunderstand; they leave; and sometimes they die. No matter how many cases she worked on, trying to explain a death, the explanation was never enough. It never blotted out death. She felt foolish even thinking about it. But that she wasn’t about to admit, certainly not to Tchernak.

  Her silence hung between them. When she turned and looked at him, he kept his eyes on the road. But his hand tensed on her shoulder.

  She could manage without Tchernak, she told herself; she’d managed before him. She could hire another housekeeper, make arrangements for Ezra. But no one would care enough to badger and fuss like Tchernak. And if he was gone, she’d worry about him working all alone. And, well, she’d miss him.

  “Okay,” she said, “here’s the deal. Get your six thousand hours with me. We’ll negotiate pay. But you’ve still got to cook. And be available to walk Ezra—”

  “Ez? This just saves me kidnapping him. This is terrific,” he said clapping her shoulder. “So I’m going to be a partner.”

  She shook her head. “Tchernak! We haven’t even finalized the verbal deal and already you’re out of control. You’re not going to be a partner. You’re going to be an apprentice.”

  “Oh, right. No problem.” He was grinning. “No problem, boss. I can follow orders.”

  She was smiling, too, but a bit more skeptically than he.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Martha Lauritzen, superb guide to Nevada.

  To John Arndt for his oil expertise,

  Bette Golden Lamb for her medical expertise, and Toby Gottfried for her guidance with research, and to Linda Grant and Marilyn Wallace for their thoughtful and perceptive comments.

  As always, I am indebted to my superb editor, Jackie Cantor, and my agent, Dominick Abel, for their support, insight, and integrity.

  A Biography of Susan Dunlap

  Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is the author of more than twenty mystery novels and a founding member of Sisters in Crime, an organization that promotes women in the field of crime writing.

  Born in New York City, Dunlap entered Bucknell University as a math major, but quickly switched to English. After earning a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, she taught junior high before becoming a social worker. Her jobs took her all over the country, from Baltimore to
New York and finally to Northern California, where many of her novels take place.

  One night, while reading an Agatha Christie novel, Dunlap told her husband that she thought she could write mysteries. When he asked her to prove it, she accepted the challenge. Dunlap wrote in her spare time, completing six manuscripts before selling her first book, Karma (1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.

  After selling her second novel, Dunlap quit her job to write fulltime. While penning the Jill Smith mysteries, she also wrote three novels about utility-meter-reading amateur sleuth Vejay Haskell. In 1989, she published Pious Deception, the first in a series starring former medical examiner Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. To research the O’Shaughnessy and Smith series, Dunlap rode along with police officers, attended autopsies, and spent ten weeks studying the daily operations of the Berkeley Police Department.

  Dunlap concluded the Smith series with Cop Out (1997). In 2006 she published A Single Eye, her first mystery featuring Darcy Lott, a Zen Buddhist stuntwoman. Her most recent novel is No Footprints (2012), the fifth in the Darcy Lott series.

  In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga and worked for a private investigator on death penalty defense cases and as a paralegal. In 1986, she helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women in the field of mystery writing. She lives and writes near San Francisco.

  Dunlap and her father at the beach, probably Coney Island. ”“My happiest vacations were at the beach,” says Dunlap, “here, at the Jersey shore, at Jones Beach, and two glorious winter weeks in Florida.”

  Dunlap’s grammar school graduation from Stewart School on Long Island, New York.

  In 1968, Dunlap arrived in San Francisco; this photo was taken by her husband-to-be atop one of the city’s many hills. Dunlap recalls, “It’s winter; I’m wearing a T-shirt; I’m ecstatic!”