Feast of Shadows, #1

by Rick Wayne

  WHAT ABOUT YOU?

  WHAT ABOUT ME?

  KIDS ARE HARD

  JUST CHECKING

  YEAH

  I had almost arrived at my destination when she finally asked.

  NEED A LITTLE SUPPORT?

  GUESS WE’LL FIND OUT!

  I walked into the hospital. Oliver was nowhere to be found, so I went right up.

  We’re not supposed to use patients’ names—to protect their privacy. So I’ll call this little boy “Alvin.” He had a cherub face like my brother. Not quite as smiley, but a good kid. Stayed with a neighbor on those nights his mom worked a double shift. She could pick up extra money cleaning the big corporate offices in lower Manhattan, but only when there was a no-show and her employer was shorthanded. She’d work most of the night, get three hours’ sleep, and be back at her day job the following morning.

  “Alvin” came home to the babysitter’s apartment, just down the hall from his own, and said he was tired and didn’t feel good. He said he wasn’t hungry. He fell asleep on the couch. Woke up later to vomit. It happens. Kids get sick, as any parent knows. When he did it again and lost consciousness, the neighbor called his mom, who rushed home and found him catatonic. He got lucky and was admitted to a good hospital sometime after midnight. None of the adults had any idea where he’d been playing around the public housing block they called home.

  By the time I saw him, he was isolated behind a plastic barrier, which was unnecessary. But then I suspect it had psychological value—for the staff, maybe. He looked blighted, like he was suffering an Old Testament plague. His skin was turning to ash right there in the hospital bed. He was wheezing. His gums were weeping. His hair had thinned to a sparse brown fuzz. His eyes were cracked open, and I could see them turning deliriously under his lids. His young mother was hunched over his bright, starched sheets like a nun at prayer. She had plump cheeks and colorful beads in her hair. She’d tucked his bedding so tight it pinned him down. Like she was worried he might float away. She dabbed the drool from his mouth with a damp cloth.

  I picked up a small stuffed bear that had fallen to the floor. She smiled at me weakly then, with bloodshot, too-dry eyes. As if she’d cried all she could. I smiled back and set the bear next to some flowers on a side table. The little card poking from the top of the bouquet suggested they were from her employer, Allied Commercial Cleaners. It was, I suspected, a programmed response from a human resources staffer who had never met this woman or her dying son.

  Organ failure is sort of like having a body full of wobbling dominoes. As the liver starts to go, toxins build up in the blood, putting more stress on the kidneys and the GI tract and the rest. If they’re damaged as well, the body struggles to keep up, and all it takes is one more good jolt and the dominoes start to fall. I was sitting on a bench in the hall contemplating what it would be like to lose my daughter when Oliver finally showed.

  “Chalmers has our colleagues going over the housing complex right now,” he said in a high whisper.

  I leaned forward and put my elbows on my knees. “They’re not gonna find anything.”

  “That’s what you said at the grocer. They can’t all be strikes.”

  Oliver was from a middle-class neighborhood in Rhode Island. His grandparents paid for his medical education. I didn’t feel like explaining the ghetto to him.

  “If it’s not a waste of time,” I said, “then why aren’t you up there?”

  “Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you.”

  I made a face. “And there’s no one straighter.”

  “You wanna tell me what happened?” He gestured to the bandaged cut on my hand, and then to the dark bruise on the side of my face.

  “Fell down some stairs.”

  “Doing what?”

  “My job,” I answered.

  “We should get going.” He motioned to the elevators.

  “Seriously?” I nodded to the door across the hall. “You came all this way and you’re not even gonna look?”

  He leaned back and peered in sideways. “Looks terrible.” Then he started walking. “Did you find anything while you were out working hard?”

  I stood to follow. “Not yet.”

  “Ever the optimist.” He smiled and hit the down button on the wall by the elevator. “You sure do know how to make problems. Day before yesterday, I thought I had a shot at getting caught up.”

  “Make?”

  “I meant find.” He looked at me again and saw something he didn’t like. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s nothing.”

  “Kid’s gonna die, you know,” he said with a frown. “You need to be ready for that.”

  “Fuck, man . . .” I felt like I should whisper. I turned to make sure the boy’s mother hadn’t followed us and overheard.

  “I’m serious.” Once a child died, he said, the whole city would go nuts. Parents would pull their kids out of school. There’d be calls. Probably an inquest, too—after the dust settled. People generally backed down once there was someone to blame. “Maybe even charges.”

  “Charges?”

  “Sure. Negligence. For starters.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “That’s politics. Really it’s about the threat more than anything. Doing damage by getting the story on the news. There’s usually not much chance of conviction. But hey, if they can convince a jury, all the better for them, right? Just a different kind of ghetto, man.”

  “I’m not even going to honor that with a response.”

  The elevator dinged and I walked away, down the opposite hall from where we came.

  “Where you going?” he called, hand on the door.

  I stopped. “You’re a real doctor. You’re know anyone at the ME’s office?”

  “Sure. Rue Whitney, who is presently upstate battling pancreatic cancer.”

  “Great.” I rubbed my eyes.

  “Chalmers wants us at the housing complex with the others,” he said. “I’m supposed to bring you.”

  “What do you think they’re gonna find there, Ollie? What are those folks gonna tell you and Tucker? Couple white guys in business suits and galoshes.”

  He looked down at his shoes. “What’s wrong with my galoshes? It’s supposed to rain later.”

  “The people there, man, they got bigger problems than that some kid got sick. Even if someone did see something, they got no reason to tell you because they don’t know who they might be pissing off by telling it. Who’s gonna keep their kids safe? You and Tucker gonna camp out in the hallway of the projects and keep the gangstas away?”

  “So what am I supposed to tell Chalmers?”

  “Tell her I fell down some stairs.” I stormed around the corner and stopped. I heard the elevator doors close. I took a deep breath and checked my email. I wanted the preliminary report on the undocumented Chinese to be waiting in my inbox with a nice little note from the ME. But there was nothing. Not even an acknowledgment of the request I had sent the other day. All I had was a blatantly passive-aggressive note from Tucker Davis, PhD, updating me on the samples from the grocer. Everything was at the lab. Nothing noticeably out of the ordinary.

  I stood in the hospital staring at my phone. I closed my email and noticed the bright green messaging app. I opened it. My thumb hovered over the phone icon next to Amber’s name for a cool minute before I tapped it.

  She answered almost immediately. “Hey, you. I’m glad you called.”

  “Yeah.”

  She waited a moment for me to elaborate. When that didn’t come, she said “Well, I guess now we know the answer to my question.”

  “Just . . . Do me a favor and tell me I’m not screwing this up.”

  She made a noise like that was the stupidest thing she ever heard.

  “Oh please, you are not screwing this up. You’re busting your ass! They are so lucky to have you.”

  I felt weak and stupid for reaching out to her. Like I’d pissed myself or something.

  �
��You can’t do it alone,” she said.

  “I’m not. There’s a whole team over at—”

  “That’s not what I meant. And you know it.”

  I paced in a circle in the hall, head low. I ran my fingers through my beard.

  “Look. Kids are the hardest.” She said it like she had experience.

  “Yeah, Ollie said the same thing.”

  “You need someone to talk to. If not about the little boy, then about anything and everything else. Just so you can feel normal and get up the next day and keep fighting. Okay?”

  I nodded. As if she could see me. It was sentimental bullshit, I knew. But I wanted it.

  “I still owe you dinner,” she said.

  “I don’t know if I can get off tonight,” I explained. “Sounds like we might be working late.”

  “Tomorrow then.” She wasn’t gonna let me put her off a third time. “My treat.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’ll text you later, okay? After I figure out my schedule.”

  “Fair enough. And, you know . . . you can call before then if you need to. Anytime, really.”

  “Thanks.” I hung up and looked at my phone screen.

  Down the hall, a man was arguing with a nurse about his sick wife. I couldn’t get the details, but I could tell he was very good at it. Well practiced at being the squeaky wheel. Probably because he needed to be. I turned around and walked back to the boy’s room. His mother was still there. No one else dared get close. They seemed like such a lonely pair. I knocked gently.

  She turned.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” I said. “My name’s Dr. Alexander, by the way.” I held out my hand.

  She took it. “Nicki.” She seemed so young. “You don’t look like a doctor,” she said.

  I smiled. Spiky hair. Bushy beard. Thick-rimmed glasses. Jeans.

  “You got me. I’m not a real doctor. I’m an epidemiologist.”

  I nodded toward her son, like she should look. She turned and she caught the drool that was running.

  “A what?”

  I thought about how to explain it. “Doctors worry about the health of their patients. Epidemiologists worry about the health of the community. The people here are trying to make him better. I’m trying to find what made him sick so it doesn’t happen to some other little boy.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t suppose you could share a picture of your son.”

  She looked at me. It took only a second, but I knew I was getting the lie detector test. Folks from a certain part of town grow up with a healthy suspicion of everyone. They have to. Because everyone has a hustle.

  I must have passed because she reached to her purse on the floor and produced a phone. The particular model she owned was at least five years old—bought for pennies second-hand, probably. Maybe from a store. More likely off the street. The screen was badly cracked, but it worked. Like most parents, she had no shortage of photos. She scrolled through them, one after the other.

  “How many you want?” she asked, making fun of herself.

  I showed her my phone. All pictures of Marigold. “Same.”

  She smiled and turned the screen in my hand to see it better. “She pretty. You marry a white girl?”

  I pointed to a photo in her gallery. It seemed like it had been taken by the boy’s school—a close-up of his face and torso. Big bright dimples on a brown cherub face. She sent it via direct connection and I thanked her as earnestly as I could. I took a step back. It seemed like I should say more then, like “We’re gonna figure this out.” But that felt like a lie. So instead I came back with the stock “We’re doing everything we can.”

  She nodded.

  I don’t think I passed that time. I excused myself and went right for the taxi stand.

  I didn’t want to be a liar.

  The cab dropped me in front of a building tiled in aquamarine. Thin metal letters in a 1940s-style font were pinned to it.

  CITY OF NEW YORK

  OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER

  I signed in and was admitted to a back office where a bespectacled woman named Shirley promised she’d be right with me. I was eventually taken to an older, more spartan office just outside one of the examination rooms. A white board covered in colored writing summarized the work in progress. There were at least two dozen bodies at various stages of the autopsy process. My five hadn’t even been added yet, but Shirley confirmed they had arrived and were in the lockers.

  I waited by myself for another twenty minutes before a tall, balding, bearded man with a full protruding belly came in and introduced himself as Dr. Pratt. I shook his hand, which felt like it was twice as big as mine. I explained why I was there, and he told me that even if they put a rush on the work, it would take several days at least.

  “I don’t need a full autopsy,” I said, trying not to sound frustrated. “At least not right away.”

  I had a damned good idea of what killed them. I just needed to know what they ate.

  “Stomach contents,” I said. “And blood work.”

  He scowled at me and said my request was duly noted. Dr. Pratt had the manners of a man who spent more time with the dead than the living. He walked to the back without a farewell. I heard the electric lock on the door click as it shut. I was being brushed off.

  There was a key pad next to the door. No going that way. I stormed into the hall and around to a long stretch of glass used for identification. That’s where the scared and grieving people stood when men like Pratt rolled up the gurney and pulled back the sheet and changed their lives forever. Right now it was empty. It smelled like old carpet. There was a curtain on the other side of the window, but it wasn’t drawn. I saw Dr. Pratt in the middle of the room, his face buried in a clipboard.

  I slammed my phone to the glass. “Alvin’s” dimpled school photo. Dr. Pratt turned.

  “Seven years old,” I said as loud as I could without yelling.

  His eyes caught the picture for just a moment. He scowled and turned back to his work.

  “He’s dying in a hospital,” I said through the glass. “Right now. The dead folks in that room with you can wait. He can’t. I need to know what was in their system. Today. Please.”

  Pratt didn’t look at me. He kept checking boxes on his clipboard form. But he nodded slightly as if to say “All right, all right.”

  “Thank you.” I knocked twice on the glass in solidarity and walked outside.

  I realized just then how tired I was. My knee still hurt from the day before. I felt queasy and realized I hadn’t eaten yet. I’d even forgone my mandatory morning cup of coffee. I sat on the curb. I still had my phone in my hand and I flipped through pictures of my daughter. I read an email from my wife that included the direct number to Mom’s hospital room and a mostly patient reminder that I’d said I’d call. People came and went around me and didn’t pay any mind. Everything was going on pretty much as it does.

  So here’s the thing. Statistics works. There are a bunch of people in life who say it’s just a fancy way to lie, but it’s actually a really powerful tool. It can be abused. That’s true. But then that’s true of any tool. We don’t burn baseball bats every time some asshole takes one to his wife’s lover’s head. The thing about statistics that gets it into trouble is that it’s not as intuitive as a baseball bat, and regular people tend not to trust anything that can’t be grasped squarely with two hands.

  By the numbers, whatever I was chasing could only be one of two things: something completely new to science, which was extremely unlikely—on the order of winning the Powerball—or an oversight, something known but rare enough that we hadn’t considered it. Our likely Patient Zero, Alonso White, was missing. The first case, a young prostitute, had already been cremated by the state. That meant all we had was the little boy and the Chinese immigrants—at least, until someone else died.

  And I was out of ideas.

  Something had to give.

  That night, poor blighted “Al
vin” hit the local news—anonymous tip, I was told—and the following morning, the entire investigation changed. It was hinted at obliquely in a group email that someone else might be assigned lead on the case. Dr. Chalmers pulled Ollie into an early phone conference with senior management ahead of a later phone conference with staffers at the mayor’s office ahead of a press conference that afternoon. Everyone else poked at their work the way Marigold pokes at food she doesn’t want to eat. There was a pervasive expectation that we were all going to be re-tasked just as soon as the higher-ups figured out a game plan. The mood toward me was definitely mixed.

  Tucker had finished surveying the grocer but had left 98% of the paperwork unfinished on my desk. I saw the three-inch stack, sighed, and got to work.

  Type.

  Scan.

  Double-verify.

  Stamp.

  Sign.

  Next.

  Midmorning, I got a call from our counterparts across the river. It was from a cell phone. I could hear traffic in the background. A man asked if I was the one who reported a mass of dead animals. I said yes and he confirmed the address.

  “There’s nothing here,” he said. “Are you sure that’s the correct address?”

  I verified the location. I even talked him through the various landmarks—the old used car lot, the kebab joint, and the rest. I asked if they checked upstairs, and he said they weren’t allowed to go.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Can’t do it,” he said. “That building is condemned. Not sure if you saw the notice. The upper floors are not structurally sound. I can’t put my guys up there.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Not for a bunch of carcasses.”

  “But there was a—” I stopped. “At least, I think . . .”

  “You think what?”

  “Nothing. So, you’re just going to leave it there? Is that safe?”