The laboratory was a nondescript place at the south end of Palm Beach Gardens. Like everything in Palm Beach Gardens it could have been an office block or a shopping mall. There were signs for the laboratory and a travel clinic, and posters talking about such lovely things as West Nile virus and yellow fever and malaria and E. coli bacteria. The halls were sanitary in the fashion of a hospital but I fought the compulsion to hold my breath.
Connie Persil was sitting in a waiting area like a patient. On one side was the clinic, and a stand-up banner told me that I needed to get inoculated if I wanted to go to South America or Asia or Africa or parts of Europe. It was like a travel poster for staying home. Connie stood and Danielle introduced Nixon, and then Connie led us the other way, into the lab.
“This is the top infectious disease laboratory in the state, outside of Miami,” Connie said. I wondered why we couldn’t have this chat in a bar.
“I want to show you something,” she said. She led us into a room that looked like a laboratory. It was white. The floors, the ceiling, the cupboards. Connie led us to a microscope. At least that’s what I thought it was. It was bigger than the ones I remembered from school, and it too was white. But we didn’t look into the microscope. She offered us hard plastic chairs and we sat in a row against the wall like kids outside the principal’s office. Connie hit a button and a black monitor screen came to life. The picture took a moment to materialize. And when it did, I had no idea what I was looking at. It looked like a ragged cauliflower, only green. The cauliflower was suspended in midpicture, with other similar cauliflowers floating around and behind it.
“You know what this is?” she asked with a touch of the dramatic that I didn’t think she possessed.
“An alien life form?” I said.
“Norovirus,” said Danielle.
“Right, Deputy,” said Connie. “Norovirus. But not just any norovirus. As I mentioned at your bar the other night, the assays that this lab runs can tell us not only what genogroup a virus is, but what genotype. That’s like a subcategory, and it can help track where a particular strain might have originated from. The genogroup most harmful to humans is genogroup II. That’s what this is. It’s no wonder the people at the wedding got sick, or that the incubation period was so brief. This is one nasty little bug.”
“What do you know about it?” asked Danielle.
“Well, we know that it was on the chairs in the hospitality tent, in quantities that almost ensured contact would result in contamination and illness. And thanks to you, we know that it came from the bleach bottle you found. Good protocol by the way, Deputy. You could have easily gotten contaminated.”
“Hang on, doesn’t bleach kill the virus?” I asked.
“It does. It’s most effective.”
“So why didn’t it die in the bottle?”
“Excellent question. And the answer is because the bottle had been cleaned out. There would have been only trace elements of the bleach left. Not enough to counteract the virus. And that bottle was one heck of a viral solution.”
Danielle sat forward and gestured at the blob on the screen. “How can you be sure that the virus in the bottle is the same one that infected the people? I mean it looks likely, but in a courtroom the presence of a gun at a shooting is proof of nothing. We have to match the ballistics. How can we do that here?”
“That, Deputy, is also an excellent question. And in a fashion we can do the equivalent of a ballistics match. That’s where the genotype comes in. These viruses mutate, which is why it’s so hard to stay on top of them. The most common genotype doing the rounds in the US these days is a variant known as GII.4. That is what we most commonly see.”
“You mentioned before this was different?” Danielle asked.
“Yes, it’s a new genotype.”
“It’s new? How?”
“It mutated, somewhere, and someone brought it here, that’s how. People pick these things up from contact with contagious people or contaminated surfaces. Then they get on airplanes. We can thank modern aviation for the spread of viruses around the world.”
“So you can link the bottle to the sick people from the wedding.”
“We can. Same genotype. Never before seen in the US, and now in your bottle and in the patients.” Connie leaned back against the counter with a satisfied grin.
“Do you know where the virus originated?” Nixon asked.
“That’s what’s taken some time. When we found the new strain in the patients we had to run tests again. Once confirmed, we put the news on the wire to see if there had been other cases. There had. It seemed the virus originates from the Cordoba region of Colombia.”
“So someone went to Colombia and brought the virus back?” asked Danielle.
“Yes.”
I asked, “Did Ernesto go to Colombia? Or was he from Colombia?”
Danielle shook her head. “He was US-born and raised. From Mexican parents. And we found no record of a passport.”
“It wasn’t Ernesto,” said Connie. “We got a sample from the necropsy. He didn’t have the virus.”
I said, “But he sprayed it. I think we can agree on that. So how did it get in the bottle? I mean, sure, someone put it there. But how?” I pointed at the alien cauliflower on the screen. “How do you get that thing into a spray bottle.”
“That part isn’t very pleasant.”
“I’m a big boy. I can take it.” The words came out of my mouth but I wasn’t sure they were true. I could live a long and happy life not knowing the secret to how the virus got in the bottle.
“Feces,” Connie said.
It was Danielle’s turn to frown. “Excuse me?”
“The bottle contains a water-based solution. In the solution we found contaminated human feces.”
Some days it doesn’t pay to take a case. Some cases weren’t worth any amount of money. I know, it’s a human bodily function. We all create waste and we all need to get rid of it. But this one was going to hang around in the recesses of my mind longer than most. Of that I was certain.
“How?” asked Danielle before I could tie a gag around her mouth to stop her asking questions to which I didn’t want the answers.
“Someone put it there.”
“But I mean, where would you get it? It’s not like there’s a market for that sort of thing.”
The picture formed in my mind before I could stop it. A market—a Middle Eastern-type place with heavy-bearded traders and spices and fresh dates. And a stall doing a brisk trade in human waste. If I woke up in hot sweats dreaming about that later, I was waking Danielle up for sure.
“No, I can’t imagine there is,” said Connie. “I think the logical explanation is that it belonged to the person who put it there.”
Nixon said, “You mean they harvested their own—”
“Yes, Special Agent. It would appear that way.”
Danielle nodded. “So chances are, they were sick?”
“Yes.”
“So we’ve narrowed it down to people who showed symptoms.”
“At some point,” said Connie.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the virus could survive in that water-based environment for months.”
Danielle sat back like she’d almost caught a break but then lost it. But I wasn’t so sure. I felt like we were getting somewhere. Investigations are like baseball games. Momentum is everything. When you can’t catch a break, you don’t. And then when things swing your way, you have to make hay. You have to ride the momentum.
“So our perp has been to Colombia. And they’ve been sick. But not months ago. You don’t hold onto something like this and wait for your opportunity. This is not a pistol sitting in your bedside table. The opportunity and means came together. So our perp got sick recently. Not days, but not months either. And they either disappeared off the map for a time, or they came into contact with the people. People who themselves may have gotten sick.”
“No. No one else outside the wedding has con
tracted this strain of the virus.”
“No, Connie. No one else has reported it. Not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.” The cogs were spinning now. Momentum was ours. Truth was we knew some stuff that didn’t link together very well, but that was irrelevant. A batter didn’t go from hitting .200 to hitting .400 inside a week because he suddenly got good. What he got was confident. His mind clicked into the right place for the world to slow down so he could see the curveball coming his way like it was being thrown by a child. My world was slowing. My mind was clicking. I had to get the hell out of stomach bug central.
I stood and thanked Connie for her time. I wasn’t sure if Danielle or Nixon had more questions, and I didn’t care. I had places to go and people to see. Danielle and Nixon followed me into the parking lot.
“Eew,” said Danielle.
Nixon was wiping his hands on his trousers, but I wasn’t sure if he knew he was doing it.
“What now?” he asked.
“You need to get to the course?” I asked Danielle. She nodded. I looked to Nixon. “Can you give her a ride?”
“Sure. What are you doing?”
“As an old friend would say, I need to see a man about a dog.”
Chapter Thirty
Nixon had mentioned the Capricorn Lakes development over breakfast when talking about Martin Costas. It wasn’t the first time it had come up in conversation, so I decided since I was in the neighborhood I’d visit. I preferred to drop in without a uniformed deputy with me. Sometimes the uniform helped, sometimes not. I suspected this would be a not.
It looked like every other master-planned community in Florida. There was a gatehouse that stood empty until the developer reached a quorum of homeowners to pay for a guard. There were fresh white sidewalks and swathes of green grass that to my until recently untrained eye looked like St. Augustine. There was a small row of houses—single-family homes with pastel stucco and small yards that looked over a manmade lake that really ranked as more of a dam. The first release of houses in a long cul-de-sac. Probably four model homes and twelve more sales. The St. Augustine grass looked long and healthy, and ran around the finished homes and along the main road, which led to where the clubhouse and community pool were. Everything else was graded flat. Stakes marked the plot lines. There was no grass there, just sandy-looking dirt.
I drove around the clubhouse. Every community had one, a place with barbecues and a pool table and sofas for guests to lounge in, which in reality hardly got used because people preferred to use their own grills and lounge on their own sofas. This one looked dark and vacant. A pool that seemed disproportionately tiny compared to the size of the estate sparkled in the sunlight, inviting me in. Water sold real estate in Florida, even forty-five minutes from the ocean. Fake lakes and community pools, that’s where the gold lay.
I returned back down the smooth blacktop and turned into the completed street. I was right. There were signs in front of the first two homes on either side, telling me the model name and the square footage. None of them looked particularly open. They weren’t as big as they first seemed, but perhaps to the eco-friendly crowd that was a selling point. But from what I saw, the eco-friendly crowd wasn’t that big of a market. I passed the models, drove to the end and then did a slow loop around the cul-de-sac and headed back.
I stopped outside a house and parked behind an old red Toyota Tacoma. I was starting to think that I was the only person in Florida who didn’t own one. There were a couple guys in green uniforms. One was trimming the hedges that hid the air-conditioning units from view. The other was spraying something onto the hedges with a wand connected to a canister he wore on his back. I got out and heard the buzz of a lawn mower, and then saw the ride-on unit between the houses as it zoomed back and forth across the rear lawns that led down to the thimble-sized lake.
One of the gardeners saw me approach and gave me a nod.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“S’okay.”
He watched me through wary eyes. I didn’t think anything of it. A lot of gardeners, like a lot of manual workers in Florida, didn’t always have the right paperwork. And not having paperwork meant there was always someone out there looking for you, to send you back where you came from. I didn’t care they were here. I didn’t want to mow my own lawn, and I wasn’t getting my door banged down by offers from the neighbors’ kids to take the job on.
“I’m thinking about buying a place here.”
“It’s nice.”
I nodded. “Not too many houses.”
“No yet.”
“Yeah. Say, you know what’s out there?” I pointed out in a general westerly direction. Out where there were no graded plots.
“Nature,” he said.
Nature, all right. It was the damn Everglades. What every eco-friendly buyer wants. A view of the eco.
“You ever see any animals here?”
“Animals?”
“Yeah, you know. You ever see any gators in the lakes?”
The guy looked at his buddy, who had stopped working on the hedge under the front window of the house.
“Que?”
His buddy ambled over. I nodded hi to him. “You know, alligators.”
“No,” said the buddy. “No alligators.”
“No? This close to the nature.”
“No alligators.”
I nodded. “You guys here full-time?”
“Si.”
I smiled at the first guy. “Doesn’t look like a full-time job yet.”
“Soon. When you buy.”
“Right on. How many guys you got?”
“Cuatro.”
“Three,” said the buddy. “They hire more guy. Later. See?”
“Sure, sure. Anyone home here? You mind if I take a look at the lake?”
“No, is okay.”
“Cheers.”
I left them to their hedges and wandered between two houses. The small rear yards of both places were covered by mesh cages to keep out the bugs. One can get too eco-friendly. Beyond the cages was more lush grass, which ran down to the water. The lake was ringed by what might have been marketed as a beach, except it was at a forty-five degree angle to the water, and was only about six inches wide all around. A sign was planted just below the water line. It warned there might be alligators down below. That sort of sign was mandatory on any freshwater lake in Florida. The marketers would have moaned but the lawyers would have insisted.
The guy zoomed by on the mower and offered a nod, which I returned. It was pleasantly warm in the sun, and this far from the coast we were practically on the gulf side of the state, so there was no breeze. The guy on the mower was sweating hard, and I didn’t blame him. It was tough work, and the plants grew 365 days a year. Even in summer these guys had to work to keep the eco at bay. I watched the guy stop the mower but not switch it off. He wiped his face with a cloth. He must have been losing pounds per day, and I wondered what he ate to keep going.
I left him to it and wandered along the water’s edge, past the rear of the houses. I got to the last house and stopped. Beyond me on one side lay graded plots, on the other side was scrubby swamp. I’d seen wild ground like it before. It housed all manner of beasties, from snakes to wild pigs. I heard a door slide open and turned to see a woman step out of her home into her caged backyard. She looked like an aviary exhibit at the zoo.
“Hi,” she said, stepping to the screen.
“How are you?” I asked, moving up from the lake. “Beautiful day.”
“Another one. You buying?”
“Giving it some thought. You like it here?”
She shrugged. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement. “It’s fine. It’ll be better when there are more people. They’ll get around to putting in the resort pool and the gym.”
“How long you been here?”
“Almost a year.”
“Seems quiet.”
“It is. Except for bugs. And the gators.”
“You hear gators?
”
“Yeah. Did you know they bark? It’s quite a noise. I think it’s a mating thing. Or maybe territory. I don’t know.”
“You see any?”
She shook her head. “No, not really. In a year I’ve seen one. Do you have pets?”
“No.”
“Kids?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll be fine.”
“You see a big one?”
“They’re all big aren’t they?”
“True enough. Where’d you see him?”
“In there.” She nodded at the lake. “The guys just came and got him out.”
“Where’d they take it?”
“No idea. Out to the ‘Glades, wouldn’t you think?”
“I would.”
“I hope I didn’t put you off. Like I say, it’s the only one I’ve seen.”
“Not a problem. It’s Florida, am I right?”
She nodded.
“It’s nice meeting you,” I said.
“You too. Hope to see you around.”
I waved and walked back down the lake and out to my car. The gardeners seemed to have stopped for a break. I didn’t blame them. They had retreated to the shade of a couple palm trees that stood outside the nearest of the model homes. Two of them were sitting on the grass quietly munching on something that resembled coconut. The third guy lay out on the thick grass, a towel covering his face. I was familiar with the position. Hangovers and Florida sun don’t always mix well. I passed them and noted the garage door was open on the model. It looked like the gardeners were using it as temporary storage, since their entire reason for being was in that solitary street.
I drove out and stopped near the gatehouse. I pulled over but was still partially blocking the road out of the community, but traffic was so close to zero that I was it. In most gated communities the security person would have dashed out of the gatehouse to give me the move on. But there was no guard, so I sat for a while with the top up and the air-conditioning on and brought up the internet on my phone. My fingers were too big for the screen and it was laborious work, but I learned a thing about geography. I kept at it until I heard the familiar buzzing of the lawn mower.
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