Brooke parked the car in her carport and we made our way up to her place. On the way up the steps, I asked her, “How are you feeling?”
“The coffee was too big and pushed me into caffeine toxicity.”
“Good one. You know what I mean.”
“Kind of excited, kind of nervous. Probably more excited, though.”
“More scintillating than HIV monitoring?”
“Almost anything is more scintillating than HIV monitoring.” She hit the Up button on the elevator. “I should have been a cop.”
“They don’t get paid enough.”
“We don’t get paid enough. What do you think about all this?”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Bullshit, Nathaniel. An hour and a half ago you were spouting about becoming a plastic surgeon, quoting Nietzsche.”
“See what happens when I think? I’ve stopped all reflection.”
“You’re impossible.”
The elevator doors opened. “I have to ask,” I said. “You wanted to be part of this from the beginning. How much of it was that you really thought it was important, how much of it was relief from boredom?”
“I don’t know if I want to answer that.”
“How much of it was that you wanted to work with me?”
“I definitely don’t want to answer that.”
I smiled. For the first time since I got that early-morning call from Verlach, I felt things were coming together. I felt . . . satisfied, I guess. Fulfilled. Maybe this was a game after all and damn it if we weren’t winning. And, to be honest, I liked working with Brooke. I liked her. Before I could filter my next words, they were out of my mouth. “I think we make a good team,” I said.
I half-expected Brooke to laugh at me, to chastise me for a lame come-on. Instead, she replied, “I do, too. I think we might even be a great team.”
At that moment, I thought about kissing her. But I hadn’t had any alcohol since the night before and my courage in these matters was down. So, brave man that I am, I followed Brooke down the hall to her apartment. She unlocked the door and entered. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I could work in a kiss before striking out to question Alaine.
I didn’t wonder long. I heard Brooke scream.
CHAPTER 77
Brooke was shaking, staring at the wall on which her road bike hung. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open and quivering. I rushed into the room and swung my head to follow her gaze. I felt my stomach clutch.
Wires ran downward from each hook that supported her bike. The wires stretched two feet. The ends were wrapped around the necks of the two dachshunds, so that the dogs looked like the weights at the end of the pendulum. The animals had been sliced through the belly and their entrails pulled out. The intestines hung another foot below the bodies. Blood dripped over the bookcase and the floor.
I grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into the hallway. She was hyperventilating a little now. Down the hall, a few doors opened. Heads popped out. “Just a little scare,” I said. “Cat got hold of a couple of mice.” I did my best to smile.
The neighbors hesitated; then, one by one, they closed their doors. I leaned Brooke up against the wall. “Wait here. Okay? You wait here.” She didn’t respond, but she didn’t move. I left her there and went back into the apartment.
“I’m calling the police now,” I said to the room. A lie. I waited and heard nothing. Quickly, I stepped into Brooke’s bedroom. I opened the closet door, checked in her bathroom. Nothing. I went back into the living space and checked the small bathroom near her office/guest room. Again, nothing. I opened the door to the guest room and walked inside. The sliding closet door was open a crack, and I ripped it open the rest of the way.
“Jesus!” I yelled. The cat bolted from the closet to the futon, looking freaked and ready to spring. I let myself calm down, then turned to the closet—except for the cat and collection of clothes and boxes, it was empty. I went back into the hall to Brooke.
“Get your things,” I told her. She looked at me, still shaking, not comprehending. “Get some clothes. We’re leaving here.”
She nodded quickly. I walked her into the apartment. “You don’t need to look at it.” She didn’t, and disappeared into the bedroom, keeping a wide distance between herself and the mutilated dogs.
I felt sick, but not as sick as I might have. It was possible, I thought glumly, that I was getting used to this shit. Even so, I couldn’t take my eyes off the scene in front of me.
A few minutes later, Brooke came out of the bedroom with a duffel. “We need to clean—”
“No we don’t,” I said.
“Buddy—?”
“The cat is fine.” Physically, I meant; there was nothing we could do about Buddy’s state of mind at that moment. I moved to the door; Brooke didn’t follow. “He’s in the guest room.” She still didn’t move. “I’ll leave him more food, okay?” This time, I pushed her out the door. I went to the kitchen, filled the cat’s bowl with food. My hands were unsteady and I spilled kibble. I spilled the water as I filled up that bowl.
CHAPTER 78
Brooke and I drove separate cars to the motel, an antiseptic affair near the airport. When we pulled into the parking spaces there, I got out of my car. Brooke didn’t. I walked over to her.
“I’ll get two rooms,” I said.
“Get one. Two beds.”
She was looking straight ahead, so I had a little trouble seeing her face. I could, however, see tears dribbling down her cheek. I put my hand on her shoulder, held it there for a second, then went to the motel office.
Ten minutes later we were sitting on the stiff beds in the motel.
“It was a warning,” I said.
“Oh, really?” Brooke’s eyes were dry, a little puffy maybe, but she had pulled herself together. The sarcasm was back. “I thought it was my cat. Buddy always had an eye for the dramatic.”
“I’m going to call the police; then I’ll head back and clean up.”
“What are the police going to do?”
“Nothing, probably.”
“Then why call them?”
“I don’t know,” I said. Realistically, the cops would take down what happened and leave. I could tell them about the break-in to my car, too, and they could take that down. They could file reports, but then what? Tell them about a videotape I don’t have? A rape that no one will talk about? A theory that involves the son of a prominent doctor, an outbreak in Baltimore, a dead man in Maryland, two dead women in California? Oh, sure, they’d listen. Then they’d call me a nut.
“At least we know we’re on the right track,” Brooke said.
I looked at her, surprised. I thought she’d want to get as far from this madness as she could. Now that it was real, now that there was a threat, I thought she’d decide HIV monitoring wasn’t that bad after all.
“We’re not safe, Brooke. Even though you might think we’re untouchable because of who we work for, we’re not.”
“I don’t think we’re untouchable. I think they don’t want to touch us, but they will if we keep pushing.”
“Then why should we keep pushing?”
“How many times do we have to go through this?”
“You’re not understanding me here. We is the issue. Us. Look, I’m thirty-three years old, I’ve got no wife or girlfriend. I’ve got no kids. The plastics practice in LA isn’t going to happen. I’m just me. If something happened to me, some people would be sad, but hell, some people would probably be happy. I’ve got nothing to lose.”
“And,” Brooke said, “I’ve got no boyfriend, no fiancé. No kids. The plastics practice was never going to happen for me anyway.” She thought for a moment. “More people would be sad if something happened to me than if something happened to you, sure . . .” Her smile was crooked.
Okay, I thought, I needed to get moving. I really didn’t want her to get involved in this any further. With the dogs, a line had been crossed. I was worried about her safety. R
eally, truly worried. I stood.
“Where are you going?”
“I told you. I’m going to clean up.”
“Wait.” She took my hand. She pulled me down to her and kissed me.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What was what?” She pulled me to the bed and kissed me again.
“I don’t want you to get involved in this.”
“Nate,” she whispered, “I am involved in this. I want to be involved in this.”
I was half on the bed, half off, looking, I’m sure, like some primate in midgait. I lowered myself to her. We kissed again. “These clothes—how many days have you worn them?”
“Less than ten, more than four.”
“That’s disgusting, Nathaniel. You need to get these off, off, off.” She began to undo my shirt.
It had been a year since I’d last seen Brooke Michaels’s naked body. A year, actually, since I’d seen any woman’s naked body, at least the three-dimensional kind. But, as with riding a bicycle, old lovers never forget.
A few minutes later, both of us were entwined on the bed, naked, breathing fast. We made love, and it was like the intervening year and the distance between Atlanta and San Jose never existed. It was—and I know there were extenuating circumstances—perfect.
The postcoital conversation wasn’t the one I’d choose, but considering the events of the past day, it was unavoidable.
Brooke was lying in the crook of my arm, talking. “So, say KC Falk rapes this woman; say she has some occult infection. So, it’s not a PERV. At least we know that. But it could be something else. It’s entirely possible that he picked it up from her and took it with him to Baltimore.”
“True,” I said, “but why would Falk let him go? It seems to me they would want to monitor him, keep him close.”
“Maybe they just wanted him gone.”
“Not these guys. Whatever they’re doing, they don’t want to introduce a new bug into the population.”
“They also don’t want to lose their work and money.”
Things still didn’t add up for me. “Harriet Tobel wouldn’t have been involved in anything that had risks like this.”
Brooke caressed my chest. “But she was involved, Nate.”
I changed the subject. “We need something more than conjecture. You can be damn sure that no one’s going to do anything—not Tim, not the police, not the FBI—unless we have a little more than employment records and a string of weird circumstances.”
“But what? It’s not like these people are going to keep a file on all this.”
I reached over and set the alarm for four a.m. Five hours’ sleep ought to do the trick. “I don’t know what. But I think I might know where.”
CHAPTER 79
I didn’t, after all, get five hours’ sleep. It was more like three, since Brooke and I still had some sex to work out of our systems. After we were finished, though, I slipped into the best 180 minutes of shut-eye I’d had for a month.
The alarm screeched for a while before I realized it wasn’t part of a dream. I switched it off and pushed myself out of the bed. Brooke didn’t move. I mean, she didn’t stir at all, from the alarm, from me moving. I’d forgotten how hard this woman could sleep.
The shower brought me a small step closer to the land of the living. My clothes, however, took me a giant leap back toward the dead. Wish I’d had some deodorant.
Brooke still hadn’t moved. I took the view in for a second. If I were sentimental, I’d say she looked angelic.
Okay, I am sentimental. But an angel like that didn’t need to deal with dog carcasses. I found a piece of motel stationery and wrote a note asking Brooke to call me. From the table, I took her apartment key. Then I kissed her lightly—she didn’t stir—and left.
The short ride on the highway to downtown was the fastest I’d ever made on a major Northern California artery. Four thirty on a Saturday morning. I almost wished I had farther to go, up to the city, maybe. Hell, if traffic stayed that light, I could be in LA in an hour. But as it was, I had two gutted dogs to dispose of.
Four weeks before, if I’d been shown what would happen to me, I’d have thought I would be frightened. Car broken into, Godfather-like animal mutilation. But I wasn’t really scared. I was, mostly, angry. Angry that people had died violently. Angry that two little dogs had been killed to send a message. I mean, who does that shit? Mostly, I was angry that now, I was sure, doctors were involved. Say what you want about docs, but we’re not supposed to be involved in this kind of harm. Sure, I know about Mengele and the freaks who poison their patients, but Jesus . . .
The apartment was, of course, dark. I turned on the lights, and the unsettling scene on the wall lit up like a theater piece. The blood was congealed and dried in places. I could smell death, a musty, organic odor, thick in the air.
Anticipating Brooke’s call, I turned on my cell phone. Then I opened a window and began to clean.
An hour later, the dogs were double-bagged and the mess mopped up. I did the best I could, but there was still some blood encrusted in the gears and spokes of the bike. Brooke, I hoped, wouldn’t notice.
I walked downstairs—I took the stairs on the off chance that someone was using the elevator—and threw the dogs and the bloodied towels into the Dumpster. The unceremonious burial made me a little sick.
Brooke still hadn’t called, and I was thankful for that. At least one of us was getting some sleep. I really wanted a cigarette, but figured it was futile to go rummaging through Brooke’s place, looking for cancer sticks. I actually contemplated going to the nearest convenience store and buying a pack. But time was short. I had other things to contend with.
As it was, the challenges started early.
The cell phone rang. Assuming it was Brooke, I picked it up without looking at the caller ID. Mistake.
“You’re in Atlanta, I trust.”
Mein Führer.
“No,” I said.
“Oh, really?” Tim’s voice was thick with sarcasm. “Because I just got a call from my boss here, who got a call from some guys at the FDA saying you’re harassing some folks out there. Some pretty connected folks. And I wanted to say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about Dr. McCormick. He’s in Georgia now. No way he’s harassing people in California.’ But I can’t say that, can I, Nate?”
“I don’t know. . . .”
“I can’t say that because you’re still in goddamned California.”
So the swearing was back. Tim must have been very upset. I realized I was treading on dangerous ground here. To wit: Tim Lancaster’s career, not to mention my own, was feeling some heat.
“There have been developments,” I said. I filled him in quickly on what had happened, leaving out the bit about the dogs.
Except for the whistling from Tim’s nose breathing, there was silence on the phone.
“File that in the report. We’ll see it gets to the right people—”
“Tim—”
“And I want you on a flight today. Today. Saturday.”
“I can’t.”
“What?”
“There’s no time. These guys are closing ranks fast. I can’t leave—”
“Wait. I don’t think I heard you: you can’t what?”
“I can’t come back today.”
Though I realized the gravity of the situation for the future prospects of yours truly, I wished I could have seen the look on Tim Lancaster’s face at that moment. As it stood, the tone in his voice was payoff enough.
“I’m placing you on administrative leave.”
But I hadn’t counted on that. I imagined the look on my face.
“Come on—”
“As of this moment.”
“Tim, please—”
“Which means that any actions you take in the field under the auspices of CDC are illegal. Which means your only legal place of employ is at your desk in Atlanta.”
“Well, an administrative hack has his administrative weekends. I’l
l be in the office on Monday.” I hung up the phone.
Almost immediately, it began to ring again. I turned the fucker off.
So, there goes the medical career of Dr. Nathaniel McCormick. I guess I should have been surprised at how long it had lasted, how much goodwill I’d been able to squander before Tim finally gave up. Even so, despite the circumstances, I felt okay. My tactics had been for shit—though exactly how they’d been for shit I wouldn’t know until I had some time to reflect—but I was right about this. Damn it, I was right.
I went to Brooke’s refrigerator, found a beer, and opened it. Not yet six a.m. and I was sucking a beer. I couldn’t tell if I was impressed with myself or disgusted.
Since I had only two days left of my weekend, I needed to get to work. So I went to the couch, pulled out the PalmPilot, located the Cs, and took a swig of the beer. Then, from Brooke’s phone, I called my former lady friend.
“Hello,” she answered. Her words were crisp, telling me she wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t, in fact, at home. I could hear ambient noise in the background.
“Alaine, it’s Nate McCormick.”
She paused. “Hi. Hold on a second.”
I heard her hand slide over the phone’s mouthpiece, then heard muffled words. After a moment, she said quietly, “Hello?”
“Six a.m. on a Saturday, Alaine? At the gym?”
“Working.”
“Ah, well. Early bird catches the IPO.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what’s going on.”
“I’m—” She stopped herself. “I’m trying to protect you, Nate.”
“From whom?”
“Nate, please. Just go back to . . . back to Atlanta. That’s where you live, right? Forget all of this.”
I wondered if she’d spoken to Tim Lancaster.
I said, “I don’t know what exactly you’re mixed up in, but it does not look good. Not good, Alaine. I know some of what’s happening, and I know it’s not going to end well for anyone involved. So my advice to you is: don’t be involved. Because I’m not going back to Atlanta. The CDC is not sending me back to Atlanta.” I hoped the lie sounded convincing. “Take a step back and ask yourself what the chances are of things working out.” I let that sink in, then said, “What is going on?”
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