by Mark Wheaton
The chapel, with over a thousand people in it, was so silent that Luis could hear a bird singing outside.
“So on this feast day of Saint Peter Claver, I would like to invite you to remember the man and not the story. All we know is that he was born in Catalonia in 1580, arrived in Colombia in 1610, and spent every moment of his life ministering to slaves, to the sick and destitute, on the quay, in hospitals, and even on the plantations after the slaves were moved from the docks and were already baptized. Whether this was wanted or not, Claver expressed his revulsion for the slave trade in the only way his age made him think possible. He did the best he could. He tried. He thought about his fellow man. That’s all anyone can do. And I invite you to do the same. Let us pray.”
As Luis led the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer, he heard the voices of the multitude rising as one. He wasn’t sure if the increase in volume was due to his standing at the pulpit and thereby being the focal point of all the voices aimed in his direction, or if his sermon had inspired such a—
But his thoughts were cut off by the coughing of Father Siu-Tung. Luis momentarily lost his place in the prayer and cursed Siu-Tung in his mind, something he immediately regretted and chalked up to another sin of pride.
Luis waited a half second for Siu-Tung to finish his protest, odd and antiquated that it might be, but the coughs did not stop. A voice said, “Father?” and there were gasps.
Father Siu-Tung stood up, staggered past the three other clergymen between his seat and the end of the pew, and continued to cough. Luis saw now that he was in distress. His eyes were watering and his nose was running.
Oh God, Luis thought. Oh dear Lord no.
Luis hurried down from the pulpit. A woman screamed as Father Siu-Tung stumbled toward Luis. The pastor’s hands clawed into Luis’s vestments. He stared up at him with wild eyes.
“Bless me, Father,” Siu-Tung said. “Absolve me before God.”
Luis stared into the priest’s desperate eyes and knew the truth. There’d been one last person, either guilty or at least complicit in the death of Father Chang, who’d escaped the dragnet of the police.
Luis turned to the nearest gawker. “Call 911. Right now.” He then turned to the nearest clergyman. “Get everyone out of here that was more than three rows away. The rest stay to be looked over by the CDC.”
The priest nodded, though with the face of a terrified onlooker, not a man of God.
Luis turned back to Father Siu-Tung, but it was a second too late. The priest would go to his maker unabsolved.
An ambulance arrived within minutes, but Luis was already out the door. His worst fears had been confirmed right in front of him—a dying man in his arms who couldn’t possibly have been infected by the initial strain of the disease. Yes, it might be a coincidence, and Father Chang’s pastor was the one man in Los Angeles who hadn’t thrown away an old prescription and had taken tainted pills, but then Luis remembered his words.
Our insurance, as you must know, requires us to receive anything we have for ongoing conditions through bulk mail order.
Taking one of the parish cars, Luis raced across the city as fast as he could, lazy Sunday morning traffic allowing him to whip through intersections and past stop signs without hitting anyone.
“Susan?” he said after she groggily answered her cell. “There’s been another case. At St. Augustine’s. Father Siu-Tung died in the middle of Mass.”
“Oh my God,” Susan replied, quickly rousing. “I’m on my way.”
“Not there,” he said, then told her where he was headed.
“See you there in five minutes.”
St. Jerome’s Chinese-American Catholic Church was nowhere near as full as St. Augustine’s that morning. The chapel was maybe half-full and the congregants uneasy. As Luis scanned the pews, he realized the double whammy of the murder of their priest and the outbreak that swept the Chinese community in Los Angeles might’ve kept anyone from services.
He finally spotted a priest and headed straight toward him.
“I need you to unlock Pastor Siu-Tung’s room in the rectory,” Luis said when he reached him. “That needs to happen immediately.”
“Um, I’ll need to consult with Father Siu-Tung,” the priest stammered back.
“The father is dead,” Luis said simply. “I’m sorry. Come with me now.”
The priest was so shaken, he could do nothing but as Luis commanded. The pair exited the chapel to the stares of congregants and clergy alike and found Susan waiting by the rectory. Luis saw that, likely unbeknownst to her, she was standing in the exact spot where Father Chang had been murdered.
“Does he have keys?” she asked, nodding to the priest.
“If he doesn’t, we’ll break the door down,” Luis replied.
The priest gave him a stricken, how-could-you look. Luis shoved him forward.
“This is a matter of life and death,” Luis said. “Just get us to his room.”
Unlike the other priests in the rectory, the parish pastor had his own small bathroom within his room. When the priest Luis had plucked from the chapel opened the door, Luis and Susan saw that it was almost as empty as Chang’s had been. The bathroom door was open and the light carelessly left on.
Or was he already sick when he left this morning? Luis wondered.
There were three prescription bottles in the cabinet, none of them generics, all of which were brands that seemed outside the reach of Jiankang. Luis was about to open them when Susan’s hand shot forward.
“You’re being too cavalier now,” she said. “If these really are infected, you can’t touch them.”
Realizing the truth of her words, Luis backed down. Susan extracted a pair of latex gloves from her pocket, as well as a face mask, put everything on, then dropped the three prescription bottles into a specimen bag. Once it was sealed, she took out her cell phone and called the CDC rep at Good Samaritan.
“I have the drugs here,” she said. “They’re contained. But we need a decontamination team over here, as well as a group to test the other priests.” She covered the phone with a gloved hand and sent the priest who had let them in a shrug and a smile. “Sorry,” she hissed.
When she hung up, she nodded to Luis.
“We have to test these immediately.”
“Your lab?” he asked.
“Hell no,” she said. “CDC lab at Good Samaritan. The outbreak is supposed to be over. If it’s not, everything is by the book. Even one life, including either of ours, is too much to risk. Got it?”
Luis did.
Forty-five minutes later in the lab at Good Samaritan, they had their answer. Two of the bottles were contaminant-free, as if they had never once been touched by human hands. In the third bottle, in a total of thirty pills a single infected pill hid among the others. Almost by a fluke the technician who tested it said that it had been on top, the first pill to come out of the bottle. When the inside of the bottle was tested, SARS was not discovered except at the very top.
As if the infected pill had been placed there on purpose.
“It appears the virus was introduced,” the visibly shaken lab technician told Susan, Luis, and a small assemblage of his colleagues that had gathered as word began to spread of what was happening. “If that’s the case, that makes the St. Jerome’s rectory and possibly even St. Augustine’s a crime scene.”
Introduced.
Luis could tell that no one could quite process this. After dealing with SARS as a viral infection for so many days, the idea that it could be used as a weapon did not compute. But to Luis, in a flash it suddenly all made sense.
“They were all murders,” he said. “Every last one of them. And I think I know who did it.”
XXIII
Oscar awoke to light streaming in through the still curtainless windows overlooking the city from their perch on Outpost. There was a bed now, but aside from the table and chairs it was still the only furniture in the place. Even though he’d known his arrangement with Tony Q
i could well be fragmenting, he’d impulsively bought the place the morning after he and Helen had made love on the balcony for the first time. Now that it was clear there would be no more birth houses for the triad for the foreseeable future, he figured he should be free to work on any renovations to be done and get it back on the market as quickly as possible.
When Helen walked back into the room carrying breakfast but wearing nothing, Oscar was shocked. He thought she’d left hours ago.
“You’re still here?”
“No, I woke up early, was home in time for the kids to wake up, got them ready for school, dropped them off, and came back. You hadn’t stirred.”
Did you see your husband? Oscar was dying to ask but didn’t.
“It’s a nice place, isn’t it?” Helen said, glancing around.
“Yeah, it is. It’s away from everything but close,” Oscar agreed. “And those jetliner views. Can’t beat that.”
“During the summer when the Hollywood Bowl is going, apparently you can hear all the concerts. To make it up to residents here, you’re given free tickets.”
“Smart,” Oscar said. “Gotta keep your neighbors on your side.”
Helen knelt beside the bed and placed a hand on Oscar’s shoulder. She met his gaze, and he knew exactly what she was about to say. So he said it first.
“What about this place for us?” he asked. “Room enough for your kids. If they stay with their dad during the week, they’re still going to their same schools, but then weekends and, say, all summer up here. What do you think?”
Helen kissed him. She then pushed herself against his body, effectively lowering him back onto the bed, and kissed him again. She put her arms around his torso and laid her head on his chest.
“Is that a yes?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What changed between now and ‘Don’t tie me down with all your rules’?” he half joked.
“It didn’t feel right then. It felt reckless and impulsive. But it feels right now.”
Oscar realized that she was right. He ran his fingers through her hair and kissed her lightly.
“You talk to Michael about a divorce?”
“He brought it up. Because of the campaign. He either wanted a long, quiet separation or a very quick and painless divorce.”
“And you chose?”
“The latter. And no, not because of you but because maybe I owe him that.”
Oscar didn’t like the idea that Helen thought she owed anything to Michael but kept his mouth shut. That’s when his cell phone rang. He considered not picking up but figured being off the grid for as long as he had been already wasn’t smart.
“Hello?”
“Mr. de Icaza,” said a voice he didn’t recognize. “I am a representative of Mr. Wanquan Yang. We need a word with you.”
“I don’t know any Wanquan Yang,” Oscar said with a hefty helping of bravado. He had a pretty good idea of who Yang must be affiliated with.
“Be that as it may, you have accepted his money this past week after entering into an arrangement with his organization. That arrangement was demolished by the intercession of the city’s prosecutor’s office. The catalyst of this dissolution, however, came from within.”
The list, Oscar realized. Oh crap.
“Hey, I’m kind of busy right now,” Oscar said. “Maybe in a day or so?”
“We have a car waiting in front of your house,” the man continued. “Please have Mrs. Story accompany you.”
For the first time in many years, Oscar felt fear. It appalled him, but he knew why it had come. If it had just been him, he would’ve been fine. The cost of doing business. If it had been any other woman, he would’ve also been okay. Again the cost.
But this was the woman he loved. And only seconds after they seemed ready to plot a future together, he’d put her in grave danger.
“And if I don’t?” Oscar snapped.
“Please, Mr. de Icaza,” the voice said sternly.
Before Oscar could respond, the line went dead. He turned to Helen, who’d clearly heard his half of the conversation. She looked terrified but nodded anyway.
“I’ll get dressed.”
Luis didn’t need to return to St. Jerome’s and search through the security camera footage to know who had poisoned Pastor Siu-Tung. He knew the police would, however, and hoped it would buy him and Susan enough time to confront the killer and make him turn himself in.
Not that he was optimistic.
The University of Southern California campus was one of the largest in the country. Stretching over more than two hundred acres, it was bordered on three sides by neighborhoods no one would mistake for anything like a cozy university community, and a museum district on the other. Students were routinely told to stay on campus after dark or limit their excursions into the surrounding area. Police and campus security were everywhere and vigilant about outsiders.
It was a warm Sunday in fall, which meant many students could be found laying out in the grass between buildings, chatting on the numerous benches or low walls, or just in general walking or cycling or skate- or hover-boarding between destinations.
Luis had left his cassock in the car but was still in his black clerical pants and shirt and Roman collar as he stalked onto campus with Susan in tow. They’d parked in a shopping center across the street after having been denied access to the university grounds in the car.
“It’s an emergency,” Luis had said. “A matter of life and death.”
“Did you call 911?” the security guard asked.
Luis had rolled his eyes and reversed out.
He was angry now. He understood the plot, but more than that realized that in order for it to work somebody had to be manipulated into coming along and tripping the dominoes. So even though he’d stopped the SARS outbreak and helped to line up what looked like an endless string of indictments against the LA triad, he’d still just been a puppet on someone else’s strings.
The dorm itself was as secure as the campus, as only students were allowed access to the elevator banks that went up to the rooms. Susan led Luis to one of the stairwells, however, and they simply waited for someone to exit before heading up to the eleventh floor.
“Is Nan here?” Luis demanded when a sleepy-eyed young man finally opened the door to Room 1142.
“Um, no,” the young man said, glancing over his shoulder to an empty bed on the opposite side of a narrow room.
“Any idea where he is?” Luis asked.
“The labs probably,” the student said, then spotted Susan. “Oh, hey. What’s going on?”
Susan pushed past Luis and into the room. Luis followed as she sorted through the piles of paper on Nan’s desk. Luis recognized a handful of the articles printed out immediately as ones relating to Father Chang’s visits to Indonesia. Also, a handful more from Los Angeles papers focused on business dealings in the Chinese-American community over the past several years. Luis saw the names of prominent business leaders circled, men who in recent days had been outed as members of the LA triad. He also saw a photo of Jing Saifai.
Are you going to kill them, too, Nan?
The solution had been staring him in the face all week; he just hadn’t been able to see the whole picture. The triad had killed Father Chang and covered it up. Not only that, they’d provided the police with the shooter and a motive that most believed without question. That should’ve been the end of it. What they hadn’t known was that someone out there not only had loved Father Chang but would be so incensed by their act that he’d concoct a revenge scheme capable of bringing them all down.
“Call the police,” Luis said to the roommate. “And when they come, show them all this.”
“Um, the police?”
“Now,” Susan added as she followed Luis out the door.
As he strode across campus, Luis found his cell phone again and dialed the same number he’d been ringing all week.
“The priest who died just now—that was your parish?” M
ichael said the second he picked up.
“It was Father Chang’s pastor,” Luis said. “I think you’re going to find a monetary connection at least between him and the triad. You need to seize his bank records and perhaps those of his parish.”
“Done. Are you okay?”
Luis brushed off the question. “The guy who did all this is named Nan Tiu. He was Father Chang’s partner.”
“Partner?” Michael asked. Luis remained silent. “Got it. Wait. What do you mean, ‘did all this’?”
“There was no patient zero from China. Father Chang was investigating counterfeit pharmaceuticals when he was killed and discovered that some of the latest were being manufactured right here in Los Angeles. Before he could report it, though, the triad had him murdered and covered it up. Only they didn’t realize Chang’s partner had a way to beat them at their own game and the access to do it.”
“Access to what?”
“I just asked the CDC where someone could get ahold of a sample of the SARS virus,” Luis continued. “They said it’s very difficult, in fact. There’s the CDC itself and its secure holding facility in Atlanta, or the VECTOR Institute in Koltsovo, Russia. But then there are the biochemistry labs at universities across the country. You can’t keep it in storage, but you can request copies of it for study. Nan Tiu is a biochemical engineering student at USC. And just like the papers believed Father Chang was a child molester because of the other priests that came before him, Nan knew they’d believe the Jiankang-linked pharmaceuticals were tainted because the same company had been guilty of so many violations in the past.”