The Blue Death

by Joan Brady

  He set to work on the other avenue open to him: extracting chunks of DNA from the sample, sequencing them, trying to match them to a computer database, much as the CIA might try to match a terrorist to the DNA in a blood sample left at the scene of a bombing. But the human genome is known; matching techniques are advanced, and there’s a good chance of identification. Not so with cryptosporidium. Only bits of its DNA are on record, and matching techniques are primitive: chances of spotting the suspect on the vast databases are poor at best. Even so, his spirits were high. So were his team’s.

  The thing about challenges like this unidentified Springfield bug is that they don’t come around all that often, and they cause a real stir when they do. Whichever lab got the answer first reaped the glory and banked the funding. Labs spied on each other. They sniped at each other in the press. They withheld data. They shaded what they had towards their own research. From the beginning Prof Stands had suffered nightmares about hotshot kids in California or Zurich getting there before he did.

  And yet this morning as he lay in his bath, he felt an abrupt sense of familiarity with this bug. They’d met before. They shared a history.

  There were all those ‘ghosts’. Yet another theory about ‘ghosts’ is that they indicate a dying strain. Lots of researchers had commented that there were far more of them in the Springfield Fever samples than they’d ever seen. And then the parvum in cryptosporidium parvum really does mean small; the standard bug is very tiny, a single-celled parasite that utility plants have to use special filters to keep out. But this bug was tinier even than that. Lots of researchers had commented that Springfield’s filters weren’t small enough to have caught it. Nobody’s were. This last piece of information explained the secrecy around research into the bug. If nobody’s filters were small enough to keep it out, it was the perfect tool for bioterrorism. Which had everybody scared rigid.

  That’s when Prof Stands knew. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He leapt out of his bath just like Archimedes back in ancient Greece. He ran dripping to his study.

  But this was no Eureka moment. Age plays such nasty tricks.

  By the time he had pencil to paper, the insight was gone.

  53

  SPRINGFIELD & ST LOUIS: Wednesday

  When it comes to identification, corpses without names have more in common with bugs than with terrorists, especially in the chaotic aftermath of a catastrophe like Springfield’s. Unknown homeless people died. Drifters from God knows where died. Runaways died. Even respectable people like Donna Stevenson died without papers on them, and victims of the Fever were so profoundly dehydrated that they weren’t physically recognizable.

  But Donna’s neighbours had reported her missing, and the time of her disappearance tallied with the death of an ‘Unknown Female’ in one of the body bags. Her height, hair colour, eye colour all matched. The police found her Hummer parked not far from the Ferris wheel and the admissions tent she’d stumbled into, and the Hummer’s keys were in her clothing on the same ring as her house keys. Her friends and her family were satisfied; nobody saw the need for DNA confirmation.

  Aloysia Gonzaga might have presented a far more serious challenge if it hadn’t been for Marina Rodriguez and her Uncle Bill the coroner. But there is real empowerment in standing up for the rights of a person nobody else gives a damn about, and Marina still wore Aloysia’s highlights in her hair. There was sisterhood too, and Marina’s back was up. As she saw it, Springfield cops weren’t interested in what happened to people named Gonzaga, especially when people named Rodriguez were inquiring.

  ‘I represent the coroner of Tipton County, Tennessee,’ she announced to the Springfield policewoman at reception in the station.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘And I insist on seeing a detective.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Look, lady, I’m already filing a complaint against the Springfield Police Department for prejudice against Hispanics. Push me a single inch and I’ll add a complaint on the grounds of injury to a citizen of Tennessee due to maladministration in the state of Illinois.’

  Five minutes later, she sat opposite a detective. He looked very young. ‘Are you sure you’re a detective?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Nearly six months now. Please tell me what the trouble is. I do hope they haven’t kept you waiting.’

  She was so ready to do battle that his sheer niceness only annoyed her. ‘You reported her missing, and you don’t care. A couple of kids called the coroner in Tipton County, Tennessee, and he cares. I buried her, and I care. We want her formally identified. We want to make sure her family knows she’s been found.’

  The coroner’s official report included both a DNA sample and an X-ray of Aloysia’s teeth clearly showing the ‘professionally perfect’ job that had been done on them. Marina hadn’t stopped there. She’d searched out Aloysia on a national database called NameUs; she’d ticked boxes on the website that cross-checked sex, race, teeth, tattoos, hair colour and practically everything else. NameUs had come up with Aloysia Gonzaga.

  Marina slapped a printout down on the detective’s desk.

  The burial of Springfield’s dead was the focus of a national grief and fear just like the aftermath of the Trade Center bombings. Each corpse took on the iconic state of a martyr, and unidentified victims always give the heart a special wrench. There was human interest in a Tennessee mortician insisting on the proper identification of a floater several months old, but it just didn’t have the headline appeal of the epidemic.

  The media and the nation heard about Aloysia and Donna on the same day: two more victims of Springfield’s tragedy, whose families were at long last free to grieve.

  ‘The Lord sure do look after His own,’ Sebastian Slad said to his twin, handing him the St Louis Post-Dispatch with a respectful glance at the full-size statue of Jesus in his office at the top of the Follaton Tower. The weather was bright and clear, the single McDonald’s arch – Eero Saarinen’s celebration of St Louis as the Gateway to the West – catching the sun in the distance.

  Francis scanned Aloysia’s obituary. ‘Marion’s kept her in Springfield all this time? You have to be joking.’

  ‘Well, now Francis, if’n the paper says she was staying round there somewhere, who am I to argue? The Internet says it too. The TV says it. I’m just a simple country boy. All them powerful journalists is plenty good enough to convince me.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Ah, come on, if anybody’d put two and two together, there ain’t nothing that woulda kept ’em quiet.’ Sebastian shook his head at his twin’s worried face. ‘So we had a little accident, the lid’s—’

  ‘A little accident?’

  ‘—back on the toy box, ’cause there ain’t nobody left to say nothing. Francis, it don’t make no difference where she’s been. She’s home with papa now.’

  Francis scanned the article again. It mentioned Aloysia’s work as a microbiologist at Oxford University as well as her position on the staff at the University of Illinois. ‘I don’t like it,’ he repeated. ‘No. No, I really don’t like it.’

  54

  Springfield: The same day

  Becky and Helen had invited themselves to coffee at Ruth Madison’s on the morning the news of Aloysia and Donna hit the public. There’d been so many shocks during this shocking time that neither quite registered this last one beyond simple relief that Aloysia wasn’t a part of their lives any more. But Donna? There’s just so much death a person can handle, and they’d lost so many friends to the disease, half a dozen of them from the Arts Society alone. Helen wouldn’t have shed tears for Donna in any case; they’d never much liked each other. For Becky, it was going to be harder. Donna’s admiration had been real. So had Becky’s fondness for her.

  As for Ruth, she was a sympathy call, and there’d been way too many of those as well. Freyls and Madisons had traded dinners and drinks for years, done good works for the Arts Society together, banked together, gossiped toget
her, sniped behind each other’s backs. Similar bonds held in many of the other sympathy calls, but Becky and Helen had put this one off again and again. A shared tragedy is one thing. There’s a sense of community even in harrowed faces and emotional storms; people have some grasp of what others are suffering. But a raped widow who’d watched her husband murdered in front of her own eyes? What kind of sympathy makes sense for that?

  Becky walked slowly up to Ruth’s door, on her feet at last and leaning on Helen’s arm more for reassurance than for support, no sign of a wheelchair, not even a cane. The relief was enormous. She’d hated the cripple’s life, just couldn’t see a dignified way out of it. When David had refused to protect her unless she got stronger, she’d felt real triumph. Forced against her will into exactly what she wanted? Perfect. But she did hold onto Helen a bit harder when Ruth opened the door, looking all too much the part, eyes and cheeks still swollen from her ordeal, bruising going yellow, hair untidy, clothes rumpled, fingers unmanicured. She brought out some Nescafé, a kettle of water and three mugs that didn’t look entirely clean. Springfield society does not serve coffee this way, no matter what the circumstances; even so, Helen and Becky launched into half an hour of condolences, sympathies, offers of help that had come close to ritual in a town that reeled every day with funerals and mourning.

  ‘I was so glad to hear that your children are with you, Ruth,’ Becky said, steering the visit towards a wind-up. Ruth’s son was twenty-two, her daughter twenty; both had set off to college in the east just a week before the flood. ‘This is certainly no time to be alone.’

  ‘Dear Christ, Becky,’ Ruth said. ‘What’s happened to gossip in this town? Little Julia shouted at me that the whole thing was my fault, and noble Mark just slammed out the door. They were gone within twenty-four hours of arriving.’ She stared down into her mug of Nescafé. ‘Fuck ’em both. I never liked either of them. They took after Allan, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that he’s dead. If I’d realized how much pleasure I get out of it now, I’d have done it myself years ago.’

  She got up and crossed the room to a portrait of herself that hung over the fireplace, gazed at it – some twenty years younger but not that much more beautiful despite bruises, swelling, unkempt clothes – then turned back to Helen and Becky. ‘Remember the old song “Do your balls hang low? Can you swing them to and fro?” Anyhow, before I married him, I thought it was a joke. Yeah, sure, I married him for his money, not his charms, and I resolved early not to give up a penny of it.’

  Helen murmured reassurances; like everybody else in town, she’d learned how violent emotions can be when experiences are too much for the mind to take in. Becky glanced down at her watch. ‘Oh, dear, it is getting—’

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ Ruth interrupted. She went back and sat again. ‘Look, I do need your help. I want to go to law school.’

  ‘You what?’ Helen said.

  Nobody thought Ruth was stupid. She was lazy, ready to trade on her looks, irritatingly coquettish, possibly nymphomaniac – and very smart. But law school? The woman had to be at least forty-five whether she looked it or not. She’d probably be pushing fifty before she could practise.

  Becky only nodded. ‘Such a brave way to grieve, Ruth. I don’t mean for Allan. I mean for yourself. We badly need people who can help other women who’ve been—’

  ‘Forget it, Becky,’ Ruth interrupted. ‘Not rape. I’m tired of women’s innards. Getting raped myself quite put me off the subject.’ She picked up her Nescafé, stared into it as she had before, put it down again. ‘All those parties with lawyers and bankers. Years of them. Years! I always loved hearing the lawyers talk: courts, precedents, cross, closings. But all the time I’m thinking to myself, “I could do this.” I mean, it’s simple at heart. Forget the rules unless you can find one you can club your opponent over the head with. Reserve emotion for use only when you need it. Manipulate everybody in range. I qualify on all grounds.’ She gave Becky and Helen a wry smile. ‘It’s the one thing I can think of that’ll get me out of this rut, make me clean myself up, maybe even care a little about something. Trouble is, I have no idea how to get a foot in the door. Who to see. Where to go. How to prepare.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Jimmy be more helpful?’ Becky asked.

  Ruth nodded. ‘Sure he would, but I don’t want to put myself in the position of owing him.’ She laughed then. ‘Don’t worry, ladies, I don’t intend to take something from you for nothing. One of many lessons Jimmy taught me is that information is the only commodity more valuable than money. Two small incidents. One before the flood. One shortly after it.’

  Ruth had arrived to spend a lunch hour with Jimmy out at his lakeside house on the day before the Council vote to sell off Springfield’s water to UCAI. She did enjoy her beddings with him. He entertained her, and sometimes he put himself out to give her pleasure. This particular noon, he’d really tried.

  As they lay sweating in his black satin sheets, she pulled herself up on one elbow, reached across to him, stroked his belly. ‘Okay, dear Mayor, what is it you want that you’re willing to work so hard for?’

  He looked up at her. ‘I wish I loved you, Ruth.’

  ‘Sure you do. I wish I loved somebody. Almost anybody. You’re lucky to love Helen, even if she eludes you. Look, my crumpet, I have to get out to the mall and back to the house before five.’ She got up and began to dress.

  He reached out for her, pulled her back. ‘It’s a little strange.’

  ‘Strange? Really? That’s not like you.’

  ‘Can you start a rumour for me?’

  ‘Why not? What’s it about?’

  ‘Tell people I bought off Morris Kline.’

  ‘The utility director? He’s the guy that’s going to destroy you at the Old Capitol tomorrow, isn’t he? Sure. Why not? But I have to admit it doesn’t sound very promising to me. All he has to do is show up and deny it.’

  ‘He’s not going to show up, Ruth.’

  Jimmy ran a hand up her thigh as he explained that he’d re-hired Morris as Director of Springfield Light and Power and sent him off to Chicago to help with the recovery of data that had been lost during the town’s first water-contamination incident. There was this boy genius Dieter Flaam at the university there with some really elaborate electronics who seemed to be recovering the lost data and needed Morris’s help to collate it.

  ‘Dieter Flaam, huh?’ she said. She did sense something not just ‘a little strange’ but something dangerous, and there’s nothing like danger to add spice to sex. She sat back down on the bed. ‘Does this kid even exist?’

  ‘Don’t know. Don’t think so.’

  ‘Isn’t it going to be a little difficult when Kline gets to Chicago and this somebody isn’t to be found? Why doesn’t he fly back at once and tell the meeting you sent him off on a wild-goose chase to keep him away?’

  Jimmy smiled up at her. ‘Can’t you just do this for me?’

  ‘Jimmy, I have to know. Is this Kline guy going to show up at the Council meeting or isn’t he? If he shows up I’m going to look like a total idiot. I hate looking like an idiot.’

  ‘I might let you look like an idiot, Ruth’ – he spread her legs and bent his head into her lap – ‘but I have no intention whatever of looking like one myself. Believe me. It’s not going to happen.’

  ‘Dieter Flaam,’ Becky said. ‘That’s the name Morris had on him when the police found him dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Do you think Jimmy knew Morris was going to Chicago to die?’

  Ruth thought a moment. ‘Jimmy’s very good at pretending to himself he doesn’t know things he does know. But, looking back on it, I think maybe he was getting scared. He was very . attentive to me after that. I don’t mean just the next few minutes, but I saw him more afterwards than I ever had before.’

  ‘What could he have been afraid of?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘And the second incident?’ Becky asked.

  ‘The
day after the rape.’

  ‘Right after the attack on you? Right after Allan’s murder?’

  Jimmy had come to visit Ruth at Memorial even though the town was in turmoil. She was too full of morphine to be more than dimly aware of him at first.

  ‘God, you look good to me, Ruth,’ he said. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? Here you are really looking like some battlefield casualty, but I was so afraid you might die that I . ’

  She must have dozed off then, but she couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few minutes because he was sitting beside her when she woke, staring into space. They were alone in the room together, and he was speaking in a very low voice as though he didn’t want to wake her. Something he’d said had caught her attention even through the morphine haze, and she struggled to listen, aware that he wouldn’t be saying anything at all if he thought she could hear.

  ‘. got this call from the Director at St Margaret’s Hospital. Maureen. Remember her? Of course not. Why would you? I don’t think you’ve ever met her. She’s got all fat and sloppy, not like you. Pity the way some women let themselves go. I’ve known her for – I don’t know – twenty years or so.’ He paused, took in a breath, let it out. ‘She’d seen some cases in Africa or somewhere and thought she recognized cholera, wanted to run to the Department of Health at once. I couldn’t let her do that, could I? I mean, look at what happened to my beautiful Ruth. Weirdos on the loose. Respectable people looting and clashing with cops. All we need is a story threatening a cholera epidemic. I told her to sit on it, and thank God she did.’