The Blue Death

by Joan Brady

  The abstract from the Incol Executive report? So it said private water was safer than utility water. Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. The town was divided on the point; a report like that makes quite an impression on anybody who doesn’t go through it with the care that Helen had, to say nothing of her expertise. But the town wasn’t divided on UCAI. If private water was safer, why that company? There were lots of contenders out there. Maybe there were better deals on offer. Maybe there weren’t. Either way, it was their democratic right to choose, most assuredly not Jimmy’s. Who’d he think he was anyhow?

  ‘Don’t tease me, Ruth,’ he said, setting down his dessert spoon and sliding his hand over hers. ‘I’m feeling delicate. You know, this beat-up look really becomes you. Maybe I should try it myself. What do you think?’

  She laughed. ‘Tell you what, we’ll call a kickback a bonus, just to cheer you up.’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘How about “enterprise inducement”?’

  ‘Oh, silly me. That is what you said it was, wasn’t it? I just plain forgot. And you’re really going to need the money, aren’t you? God, it’s heart-rending when such a good idea stumbles. First mayor in the Midwest to go private. I suppose an epidemic was just a delightfully unexpected sparkler on the cake, wasn’t it? God does favour a winning hand.’ She tilted her head to one side. ‘Just like Allan. Which is why I think brother Frank would have refused you even a much smaller loan.’

  Jimmy withdrew his hand. ‘Hey, this is beginning to hurt.’

  ‘You see, Frank is every bit as boring as Allan, Jimmy, but he’s not any stupider.’ Frank Madison had succeeded his murdered brother as President of First National. ‘With Herndon Freyl & Zemanski hobbling around on its financial knees, he’s certainly not—’

  ‘Enough, Ruth.’

  ‘—going to fork over a couple of million. What made you think he would? In fact, I think it was Frank—’ she broke off. ‘Or could it have been Allan himself? They’re both so dull it’s hard to remember which one is which. Anyhow, they told me that some savings-and-loan golf buddy said he’d refused to refinance your law offices. Amazing really. I’m sure Hugh owned the building, which means you must have mortgaged it. Campaign funds maybe? I wonder if Becky knows about that. I mean, she still holds the title. I’m not even sure what class of a criminal that makes you.’ She studied him. ‘Can’t be an ordinary old thief. Not our Jimmy.’

  ‘I don’t know how to talk to you when you’re like this,’ he said.

  ‘Well, poppet, I’d advise you to learn. I’m still a fan, Jimmy. There aren’t many of us left either.’

  ‘You’d knife me in the back if it amused you.’

  ‘Maybe I already have, my cherub. On the other hand, why would I need to? You’ve done such a good job yourself.’

  Jimmy pushed out his chair to get up.

  ‘Leaving so soon?’ Ruth glanced around at the other tables. ‘Do you think that’s wise? I might break down and cry. Think what that would do to your reputation.’

  He sat down at once.

  ‘Jimmy, I am fond of you, you know. It’s just that you’re so goddamned cocky, I can’t help—’ She broke off, patted his hand. ‘You really are going through a tough time, aren’t you?’

  A tough time? Speak of understatement. His head was spinning. It was all so sudden. The voters who’d finally learned to trust him were now hating him all over again, and buying their support for the mayoralty in the first place hadn’t come cheap even with Becky’s help. He’d had to ‘borrow’ client money for it. Then he’d had to ‘borrow’ more with the firm as surety to build a portfolio of high yield investments so he could pay back the client ‘loan’. He was nearly there when Wall Street plunged. Half of what he held disappeared at once. The other half was in a hedge fund that capsized during the flood and the military occupation. He had no idea what’d happened until just a week ago, and it left him scrabbling to cover his tracks before the IRS picked up the scent. And oh, dear, the scrabbling was leaving its own trail of bank statements and contracts that charted otherwise impenetrably complex transfers of assets, cash, inventory as well as capital borrowed from more client accounts that had been abruptly renamed ‘loans’ to be repaid to, well, to Jimmy. Which is to say, there was evidence of God knows what all kinds of fraud.

  He needed every penny of that UCAI kickback just to pay off the client accounts. The question now was how to manoeuvre the privatization’s open-and-above-board profit away from Springfield’s own football stadium and towards the rest of the mess.

  As a thoroughly depressed Jimmy was driving Ruth home, he got a call from Donna’s sister on his mobile. She told him she had to leave on the afternoon plane to Chicago and would stop en route to drop off a package marked for him. She arrived at his house not long after he did and handed over a package big enough to hold a year’s subscription of The New Yorker. On the top it said:

  For J. Zemanski in the event of my death.

  ‘Good Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s huge. What is it?’

  ‘That novel she was working on, I imagine,’ the sister said.

  ‘Why send it to me? Why not to Becky?’

  ‘She loved you, Jimmy.’

  Nothing seemed less appealing than Donna’s endless novel, but he could hardly afford to affront the relative of a Springfield Fever victim. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know. I loved her too. Look, I’m really grateful to you for bringing this over. How about some coffee? Maybe a chocolate cookie?’

  He set the package beside the fake Eames chair, served the sister more coffee than he’d intended – she was a woman who liked to talk – before he managed to get her out of the house and start in on some serious drinking. He downed a third of a bottle of Scotch, watched daylight fade, watched the moon rise, ate a can of baked beans and had just started in on what remained of the chocolate-chip cookies when he suddenly realized that the handwriting on that package wasn’t Donna’s.

  He hoisted it up on a coffee table, unwrapped it, opened the box inside. A covering letter lay atop an A4 envelope and a mass of paper:

  I hope you will never read this note. If by some absurd chance you do, I trust you will do the right thing by my legacy to the world in appreciation of the gossip in the envelope.

  Aloysia Gonzaga

  The envelope read simply ‘David Marion’. Jimmy ripped it open. Inside was a clutch of pages held together at the upper left-hand corner with those connectors that British solicitors use, like tiny shoelaces with long aglets. And the first sheet almost made him drop the glass in his hand. It also made him think of that same Nixon aphorism that Helen had quoted to David: ‘It’s not the crime that gets you. It’s the cover-up.’

  That first document was an original copy of the marriage certificate for Aloysia Hermione Olivier Gonzaga and David Marion. The witness: Hugh Freyl. The officiator the prison chaplain at South Hams State Penitentiary.

  Jimmy’s hands were shaking with anticipation as he set the marriage certificate aside; he felt as though his life had just been snatched out of the jaws of the devil. The second document was a letter from a ten-year-old Helen. A note of its author and its date arrival appeared at the top in Hugh Freyl’s own handwriting. This one Jimmy recognized at once. He’d forged it often enough:

  Then came a sheaf of letters from David to Aloysia that made painful reading even for Jimmy; the desperation was so raw. Apparently she’d visited David only once after the wedding.

  The last entries were a birth certificate for ‘Aloysius David Gonzaga’ with David listed as the father, the child’s death certificate at the age of ‘one week’ and a letter from Hugh, saying both he and Helen sent their deepest sympathies for Aloysia’s loss.

  The large ‘David Marion’ envelope included a small envelope that said:

  Keys to my house in Leland Grove

  Jimmy poured himself another Scotch. Bigamy is a Class 4 felony in Illinois, punishable by four years in prison. Since Helen knew about this prison marriage – and h
ow could she deny so passionate a letter in her own hand? – she too was guilty. Most importantly though, bigamy would violate the conditions of David’s release. He’d be put away for the rest of his life, and without Hugh Freyl, he’d never get out. Nothing like that would happen to Helen of course, but the stigma would be hard to erase from people’s minds, especially since according to Illinois law it would remain a permanent part of her official record.

  Jimmy had known in his bones that David Marion was Aloysia’s killer. He just hadn’t had any idea why. The only question now was how to use this material to best advantage and still protect his future wife’s reputation.

  The night ahead was a rollercoaster.

  First came some very tense telephone calls. Jimmy had to strike bargains. He had to pull in favours. At about three in the morning he set off on an errand into town, and for more than one solid hour, he was scared out of his wits. There was so much at stake.

  On the drive back, he was euphoric. He’d done it! He’d actually pulled it off. But it’s only a twenty-minute drive to his lakeside house, and by the time he got home, he was so tightly wound he couldn’t go to bed. He went over detail after detail of every minute of that hour, as terrified as he’d been during it, pacing back and forth until there were shooting pains in his bad knee. When he couldn’t spot a hitch, he was euphoric again. He lay down on the Eames instead of his satin sheets, feet up on the matching stool – tipped back, an Eames makes a recliner as comfortable as an opium dream – but still he couldn’t rest. He got up, paced some more, reviewed that hour again.

  Not a single hitch. Not one.

  57

  SPRINGFIELD: Eight o’clock Friday morning

  ‘Mr Marion?’ The voice was female, frightened. David didn’t recognize it. He and two women were digging trenches for the drainage pipes at Otto’s Autos.

  ‘Who is this?’ he asked.

  ‘I work on the Vinegar Hill site.’ That one was a big job, a house almost as large as Becky’s, just as badly damaged too. ‘Your wife is trapped under some scaffolding, and we just—’

  ‘I’ll be right there.’

  ‘Wait! Wait! Not this site. Not one of ours at all. Eastdale Avenue.’

  ‘Number?’

  Eastdale Avenue was not only on the east side; it was industrial. There was no reason for Helen to be there. None.

  David screeched out of the Otto’s Autos in one of the company’s new vans. ‘Lillian’s Crew’ it said on the side.

  By the time he reached Eastdale Avenue, he’d run every red light en route. The site wasn’t large. The scaffolding around the structure looked intact as he slammed to a halt and got out. He paused a moment then. Nobody running out to meet him. No ambulance. From inside the structure, a radio blasted, and the site was as messy as Otto’s Autos used to be while his staff was still male. He picked up a piece of wood the size of a baseball bat and went inside through the open door.

  The entry was a large hallway, divided off from the rest of the space by studs for walls-to-be, and so crammed with bags of cement, plasterboard, doors, wheelbarrows full of bricks that two people couldn’t walk down it side by side. Tools lay everywhere. Ahead of him a couple of guys were more or less occupied at laying bricks to hold a door frame in place. One of them was so heavily tattooed that there was no skin visible.

  The tattooed guy looked up at David. ‘You motherfucker,’ he said. ‘You knew that bottle of water was mine, and you went right ahead and drank it anyhow. Now you come in here looking for me?’

  Whoever said a trap has to make sense?

  The door slammed shut behind David. Tattoo grabbed a circular saw attached to an extension cord, pulled the guard back, fired it up, got the blade spinning and started for him. There was nothing to do but back away and jab at Tattoo with the stick, but the hallway was so cluttered that secure footing wasn’t possible and Tattoo kept coming, revving up the saw. David lunged with his stick and clipped the hand holding the blade guard. The guard slipped; the blade jammed and juddered helplessly: ‘Click, click, click.’

  David wasn’t aware of anybody behind him. There wasn’t any pain, no sense that he’d been hit. He just felt suddenly drunk. Not about to throw up or anything, just hazy, groggy.

  Then came sleep.

  58

  CHAMPAIGN-URBANA: Same day, same time

  Prof Richard Stands luxuriated in his morning bath, remembering when he was King of America. That was his entire first week in school. Five years old, and chosen by God Himself. Monday? Pure magic. Everybody in his class and his teacher, Miss Penfold, swore to serve him for ever.

  King Richard was kindly, but he demanded obeisance from his classmates. By Friday – in the playground near the swings – one little girl had had enough.

  ‘King Richard?’ she said with a sneer. ‘There ain’t no King Richard.’

  ‘I am Richard Stands, the boy just under God.’

  She looked him up and down. ‘You’re stupid.’

  At home, his mother was so doubled up with laughter that she could barely get the words out. ‘Dicky darling, it’s “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands ” not “for Richard Stands ”.’

  Three-quarters of a century later, Professor Richard Stands – all of eighty years old – leapt out of the bath for the second time in under a week, and ran to his study. And it was ‘Eureka!’ now.

  He’d kept detailed notes of his entire scientific life because his memory had always been a weak point; he’d trained himself so well that his right hand kept taking notes even when his mind had disengaged. Twenty years ago he’d been visiting Oxford in England in what had turned into a publicity tour after winning his prize. King again: Prof Richard Stands, famous for his study of protozoan metabolism, winner of microbiology’s coveted Marjorie Stephenson Prize, inspecting British labs before giving a lecture to the Royal Society that evening. He wasn’t used to being fêted. It was thrilling, ennobling, terrifying, all at the same time.

  How could he keep his mind on his guide? He certainly couldn’t hide his preoccupation, and his guide grew as impatient as the little girl in the playground. ‘I have a patent on a protozoan,’ she was saying. Clearly a very self-centred woman – all too like that little girl – hair so expensive, teeth too white.

  ‘Oh?’ he’d said, catching his reflection in a shiny microscope.

  ‘Would you like to see it?’

  ‘The patent?’

  ‘The bug.’

  ‘Of course. Of course.’

  What had yanked him out of his morning bath was the edge of a memory of the slides she’d shown him: a bug that just might – just might – be related to the one he and his team were studying in search of Springfield Fever.

  It took him less than twenty minutes to dig out his notes; his hands trembled as he opened to his sketch of his guide’s protozoan: clearly a cryptosporidium parvum – and an unusually tiny one. The notes went on to explain that she was Dr Aloysia Gonzaga and that she’d been researching this minute and as yet unidentified variety of the very bug he’d been sent to study. He wasn’t sure at first why he’d suspected that she shouldn’t be showing him her sample – something in her manner? – but she was so annoyed at this new King Richard that she couldn’t help herself.

  Cryptosporidium : the most important waterborne pathogen in the developed world. Since its armour keeps it safe from the chlorine that kills most bugs and since processing-plant filters can and do fail to catch it, outbreaks aren’t uncommon. People become ill in varying ways, and there are deaths among the weak. Aloysia had hijacked the toxin-producing genes of another bug, E. coli 0157, and inserted them into the cryptosporidium genome. E. coli 0157 kills much more easily. It can destroy the kidneys and cause the intestines to haemorrhage. It can’t get past chlorine itself, but cryptosporidium ’s armour would get it through. Most importantly, it was so very tiny – well under a micron in diameter – that it would simply float past water util
ity filters. It and its E. coli 0157 payload could take out whole swathes of a population.

  A couple of details like this, and Prof Stands knew Aloysia shouldn’t be talking to him at all. Poisoning an enemy’s water supply is a holy grail in biological warfare, and he had no clearance for work on biological weaponry. But back then nobody was stitching bits of one bug’s DNA into another bug’s genome, which made her seem more nut job than a dangerous innovative researcher. But nut jobs sometimes come up with interesting ideas. His notes continued, although they became sketchier.

  Injecting the E. coli 0157 toxin caused a flaw that made delivery complex. The bug couldn’t function without a protein that had to be kept separate until the delivery itself, rather like detonator and explosive. There was an important upside though. The disease wouldn’t spread beyond the first generation. An invading army would remain safe from its effects; the second generation were almost entirely ‘ghosts’: those empty cryptosporidium shells that had kept Prof Stands awake for weeks.

  Aloysia had even designed a delivery system for introducing her weapon into a city’s water supply. He couldn’t piece it together in any detail, although she’d plainly adapted industrial equipment to deliver the bug. He had sketched her drawing, but his sketch was the sketch of a man with his mind on his speech to come. He turned it upside down. Then right side up. It looked a little like an old-fashioned jukebox from his teenage years, curved pipes, push-button dials, gauges – exactly what it had seemed like to Lamar Bryant’s wife Brittany, who’d paid for the observation with her life and her husband’s. An industrial whatsit? Prof Stands couldn’t think of the name, but he’d seen machines like it that were used to deliver specific amounts of gases. On this one, the gauges might set the mixture, and then the tubes would deliver specified amounts of bug and protein from a carrier into a city’s pumping station. The carrier would probably have to be a specialized truck of some kind.