“Be my guest,” said Johnson. “You should’ve spoken up sooner. I’d’ve been happy to let you go in there and fish it out of the sink for us.”
The speaker fell silent for a few seconds. “Look, I’m glad you guys have secured it. I would have taken it a little slower, called in some more people and equipment—”
“—and generated two or three days of paralysis and panic doing it that way,” said Johnson. “We safed an extremely hot source in about an hour. We have years of experience here dealing with radioisotopes. If something like this had to happen, it’s hard to imagine a better-equipped place for it to happen than UT Medical Center. So: now that we’ve safed it for you, what does TEMA propose to do with a hundred curies of iridium-192?”
“We’ll have a staff meeting in the morning to discuss the options,” said Wilhoit. “Whoever owns the source is the culpable party, and they have a responsibility to collect and dispose of it.”
“And you think the ‘culpable party’ is going to be eager to step forward,” said Johnson, “eager to own up to one man’s death and four people’s exposure in the morgue? Meanwhile — as we wait for this ‘culpable party’ to step forward to say ‘Arrest me, and please sue me for millions of dollars, too’—do you plan on stashing this in your attic?”
The TEMA official fell silent again. “The Department of Energy,” he finally said. “DOE has a Radiological Assistance team based over in Oak Ridge. I’ll ask the governor to ask the feds to take it off our hands.”
“Sounds great,” said Johnson. “But at the risk of sounding like a broken record: Until DOE gets here, would you mind if we lock it up in a hot cell? That seems a little more secure than the frickin’ hallway it’s sitting in right now.”
Two minutes and a little fence-mending later, Johnson trundled the box to the elevator and up to a hot cell — a massive box of lead and leaded glass, equipped with robotic manipulator arms — built to handle powerful radiopharmaceuticals without risk to the hands and bone marrow of technicians and pharmacists.
It was a shame Garcia hadn’t known to conduct Leonard Novak’s autopsy inside a hot cell. Garcia might have looked like a mad scientist, wielding robotic arms to dissect a corpse. But better a mad scientist than a maimed or dying doctor.
CHAPTER 7
The knock on my office door made me jump, and I realized that I must have nodded off. Miranda and I had spent several hours with Carmen Garcia. Around midnight we’d returned to her husband’s hospital room, where we’d stayed until it was time for our 7 A.M. blood sample. Carmen had been terrified to learn that her husband — who had left home that morning as usual, kissing her and their baby goodbye in the kitchen after breakfast — was now a hospital patient, his hands and possibly even his life jeopardized by one of the bodies he had autopsied.
Garcia had served as the medical examiner for less than a year now; he’d been hired from Dallas to take Jess Carter’s place when Jess was killed. At first I’d disliked Garcia — he’d struck me as stuffy and condescending — but I soon realized that what I’d mistaken for stuffiness was actually just a veneer of formality, maybe even shyness. A slight, handsome man, he’d grown up in a well-to-do Mexico City family before being sent to the United States for college and medical school. His wife Carmen was a Colombian beauty; their Latino genes had combined to produce a gorgeous toddler, Tomas, who had a thick shock of curly black hair and enormous brown eyes. Miranda had taken to babysitting for Tomas one evening a week. She claimed it was so the boy’s harried parents could relax over dinner and a movie, but I suspected it was because she was so smitten with the child.
Another knock; another awakening. I had fallen back asleep after the first knock. “Sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Come in.”
“How’s Dr. Garcia?”
“Too soon to know,” I said, fully awake now. “But it doesn’t look good. Are you Special Agent Thornton?”
“Yes sir. Charles Thornton.”
He stepped into my office and gave me a solid handshake. Thornton was tall and lanky — six foot two, maybe, and tipping the scales at around 190; possibly 200, since he seemed to be carrying some lean muscle on his frame. His sandy hair was cut short, but it appeared to contain some styling gel and some color highlights and some attitude. Then there was the tie: he wore one, but he wore it loosely, like it was an afterthought or an ironic commentary; like he might take it the rest of the way off any minute. The tie was printed with an abstract design that was either the work of an artistic genius or a second grader. The guy was almost a cop, but not quite. Too metrosexual, if I understood the term right. I suspected some of his more buttoned-down FBI colleagues regarded his wardrobe with mistrust.
Thornton glanced around my office, taking in the grimy windows, the fretwork of crisscrossing steel girders outside, and the skulls resting on the wide windowsill. “I’m pleased to meet you, sir. I’ve heard a lot about the Body Farm from the Forensic Recovery Teams who’ve trained there. It’s a great opportunity for them.”
“We’re always glad to help,” I said. “And you don’t have to ‘sir’ me. Hell, you’re the high-wattage guy from FBI headquarters.”
He grinned, a lopsided, aw-shucks kind of grin. “Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate — sounds impressive, doesn’t it? I’m actually pretty low on the food chain, though.”
“Well, Captain Sievers practically saluted Hank’s cell phone when you started talking yesterday,” I said. “What’d you say to make such an impression?”
“Not much,” he said. “Usually the more I say, the less impressive I get.” That drew a laugh from me, weary though I was. “The WMD Directorate is part of the National Security Branch. I just told Captain Sievers this incident could involve terrorism and national security, and that we’d appreciate it if he could help us keep it low-profile till we figured out if there was a bigger threat.”
“Were you just blowing smoke to keep Sievers in line? Or might there really be a bigger threat?”
“In the post-9/11 world,” he said, “we consider any suspicious incident involving radiation to be terrorism, and we assume the threat could be big until we find out otherwise.”
Thornton pulled a small, glossy pamphlet out of a jacket pocket and handed it to me. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), the title panel read. A Pocket Guide. Inside, one panel described various weapons — explosive, chemical, biological, and radiological — while a second panel listed the federal laws terrorists would be breaking if they used weapons of mass destruction. The pamphlet’s innermost spread outlined how the FBI would assess the danger from an actual or threatened WMD attack.
“Yikes,” I said. “Good to know you guys are prepared, but scary that there’s the need to print this sort of thing in mass quantity. Also scary that you have to assume the worst.”
“We’ll be happy to be proven wrong,” he said. “We’ve sent the source to Savannah River National Laboratory, where we have a forensic rad lab. The lab should be able to tell us where it came from, and when.”
“It’s already there? That was quick.”
He shrugged. “We figured that since we were sending a plane to Knoxville anyhow, we might as well get some more mileage out of it. A couple of my cohorts landed in South Carolina with it about thirty minutes ago. That’s not for public consumption, by the way, but I wanted you to know we’ll be bringing a lot of resources to bear on this.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “Listen, I was just about to go look in on Dr. Garcia. You want to come with me?”
“Thanks, but I guess I should pass,” he said. “I probably should start seeing what we can dig up in Oak Ridge.”
“I understand,” I said. “Good luck.”
Just then I heard Miranda’s voice in the hallway. “Hey, boss, you ready to go back across the river?”
“Can’t wait,” I said as she reached the doorway. “Miranda, this is Special Agent Charles Thornton. Agent Thornton, this is my graduate assistant, Miranda Lovelady.”
“Miranda runs the bone lab and works forensic cases with me,” I said. “She was in the autopsy suite yesterday.”
“I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances,” he said. “Dr. Brockton invited me to head over to the hospital with you guys to meet Dr. Garcia. We can talk on the way.” Miranda looked a question at me; I answered with a slight shrug of the shoulders. Thornton had apparently decided he could wait a bit to start his spadework in Oak Ridge.
* * *
Despite the tangle of tubes and wires attached to him, Eddie Garcia looked better than he had in the ER fourteen hours before. His nausea and diarrhea had subsided, and ordinary fatigue had replaced panic as the predominant look on his face.
“You look pretty good,” I said. “You sure it wasn’t just something you ate?” Miranda elbowed me by way of a reprimand, then reached out and gave Garcia’s arm a squeeze. I felt a flash of panic when she did that — could that increase her exposure? — then I remembered the scene with the fearful ER nurse, and I felt ashamed. Garcia wasn’t contaminated or dangerous, I reminded myself; just exposed and endangered. Amazing, I thought, how easily fear trumps logic. I introduced Thornton, who shook hands with Garcia and then whipped out copies of the handy pocket guide for him and Miranda.
“Swell,” said Miranda. “Now I feel better.” Thornton glanced at me, but I just smiled. Apparently most people didn’t react to the pamphlet with the same pessimism Miranda and I had shown. She fluttered her fingers in the general direction of Garcia’s attachments. “What are all these things they’ve fastened to you since we were here a few hours ago?”
“The wires are EKG leads so they can monitor my heart,” he said. “One of the drips is saline and electrolytes, to replace what I’ve been losing from both ends. I have a line they can tap for blood without sticking me every time. So far, I’ve managed to fend off the nurse with the urinary catheter.”
“Pick your battles,” I said. “As good as you look, Eddie, I bet you’ll be out of here by this time tomorrow.”
He shook his head. “Appearances are deceiving with radiation sickness,” he said. “And you heard Dr. Sorensen; once the symptoms disappear, it’s just a matter of time before they come back with a vengeance. Sorensen’s seen a lot of cases of radiation sickness; if he’s worried about me, I’m in trouble.” I winced at his unsparing realism, though I admired the courage it took to face his situation squarely.
Miranda wheeled to face Thornton. “Who would have done this, and for God’s sake, why? It makes no sense. Why not just shoot the old guy, or strangle him? Why not just let him die of old age?” Her voice shook with anger and sorrow.
“Our people in Behavioral Sciences — the profilers — are asking exactly those questions now.” He looked as if he were about to add something, then changed his mind and kept quiet.
Miranda saw the hesitation, and she pounced. “What?”
“Nothing, really,” he said. “It’s just…you know the riddle of the albatross?”
She looked perplexed. “Uh, something to do with a sailor who shoots a bird and brings bad luck down on a whole ship?”
“No, that’s a poem,” said Thornton. “This is a riddle. A man who has returned from a voyage walks into a restaurant, sits down, and orders the albatross. The waiter brings it, the guy takes one bite, then rushes out of the restaurant and goes home and kills himself. Why?”
“Seems a bit of an overreaction,” I said. “It must have been really, really bad albatross.”
“It’s a guessing game,” said Thornton. “You have to guess what happened earlier, before he walked into the restaurant. You can ask me yes-or-no questions.”
“Was it really, really bad albatross?”
“No,” laughed the agent.
Miranda: “But his reaction had something to do with the albatross?”
“Yes.”
Me: “Was it fairly bad albatross?”
“Irrelevant.”
“That’s not yes or no,” I pointed out.
“But it’s helpful,” said Miranda, “and we need all the help we can get. Had he ever had albatross before?”
“No.”
Garcia: “Was there special significance to the fact that it was albatross?” Yes. “Did the man feel guilty about eating an albatross?” No.
A series of questions from me: “Was the man already depressed before he tasted the soup?” Yes. I thought of Jess. “Had the man lost someone he loved?” Yes. “And was an albatross somehow connected to that loss?” Yes. “Was it his wife he’d lost?” Yes. “Did she die on the voyage?” Yes.
Miranda: “Was there a shipwreck?” Yes. “Did she perish in the shipwreck?” Yes. “Was the man marooned on a desert island?” Yes. “All alone?” No. “Were other survivors with him?” Yes. “Did any of the others die?” No. “Were they marooned for a long time?”
“Depends on how you define it,” he said. “Ask more specifically.”
Me: “More than a month?” No. “More than a week?” Yes.
Garcia: “Did they have food from the ship?” No. “Did they catch fish?”
“No. Not enough, anyway.” Thornton was cheating slightly, maybe because we were slow.
Miranda: “Did they eat other food on the island?” Yes. “Albatross?” No. “Did the man think it was albatross?”
Thornton began to smile. “Yes, he did.”
“Bless his heart,” she said. “No wonder he killed himself.”
I was utterly bewildered. “What?” I stared from one of them to the other. “So are you two actually twins, separated at birth, with a secret language and some weird twin-logic all your own?”
“The survivors resorted to cannibalism,” she said. “They cooked his dead wife, but they told him it was albatross.”
“Huh?”
“Ah,” said Garcia. “So when he tasted the albatross in the restaurant, he realized that he’d never tasted albatross before — and he realized that it was his wife they’d eaten on the island.”
“Hmm,” I said. “I still think the guy overreacted.”
“Looks like overreaction to us,” said Thornton, “but to him, it seemed the only acceptable response. Same thing with the iridium murder or suicide. Once we know the backstory, we’ll understand the reason for the bizarre method.” He looked at Garcia. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll get the guy who did this to you.”
Garcia gave Thornton an odd, sad smile. “Thank you, Agent Thornton,” he said. “But I have already eviscerated the guy who did this to me.”
Thornton turned bright red. “Wow,” Miranda said to Garcia, “you don’t even need a scalpel to eviscerate a guy.”
The FBI agent blinked as he processed Garcia’s joke and Miranda’s response. “Man, I’m out of my league here,” he said. “I better call headquarters and tell ’em to send the A-Team down to Tennessee.”
“Damn skippy,” said Miranda. “But don’t worry. We’ll go easy on you till they get here.” She flashed him a smile, and Thornton blushed again. He looked considerably more cheerful about it this time around.
CHAPTER 8
By the time Miranda, Thornton, and I left the hospital, the lid was blowing off the story. Rightly or wrongly, I blamed the skittish ER nurse for leaking word of the incident — I could imagine her calling WBIR-TV or the Knoxville News Sentinel to complain that she and other ER staff had been exposed to radioactive contamination. The truth, though, was that any number of people besides the nurse could have tipped off the media, including morgue employees (all of whom were being checked for exposure now), hospital police officers, even ORPD colleagues of Emert.
By midmorning, reporters from WBIR, the Knoxville News Sentinel, and the Oak Ridger were besieging UT Medical Center and the Oak Ridge Police Department for information about what had happened in the morgue. The hospital’s PR officer, Liz Chambers, was furious that
she’d been lied to. It took a personal visit from Special Agent Thornton to calm her down, though I wasn’t sure whether it was the national-security angle or Thornton’s personal charm that eased the facial tick and relaxed the neck tendons.
Liz initially issued a terse statement indicating that during a routine autopsy at the medical center, elevated levels of radioactivity were detected in the remains of Dr. Leonard Novak, a former Oak Ridge physicist. The radioactivity had been contained, the morgue was safe, the source of the elevated activity was being investigated, and everyone who had been exposed was being carefully monitored, the statement concluded.
That sanitized version survived only through the noon news. By the five o’clock newscast, the story had attained critical mass in the media. A squadron of news helicopters spent the afternoon circling the hospital for aerial shots. In the Anthropology Department, Peggy was swamped with calls from reporters who’d heard that I was in the morgue at the time of the incident. Luckily, I’d talked with Peggy several times since the incident; otherwise she might have believed the journalist who called to ask how Peggy felt about my untimely death in the morgue. I thought of Mark Twain’s famous quip. “Tell the guy I said, ‘Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.’ Then tell him those were my dying words.”
As the story took on a life of its own, reporters and news anchors began to speculate about whether Dr. Novak had absorbed enough radiation during his decades of work in Oak Ridge to become a hazardous source himself. It was a medical version of the glow-in-the-dark cliché, and it was the same question Emert had asked. Then they began to speculate that he might have been poisoned with polonium-210, as former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko had been in the fall of 2006. After a parade of experts had refuted the glow-in-the-dark theory, polonium seemed to become the media’s prime suspect. REAC/TS took blood samples from everyone who’d been in the morgue during the time the body was there — eleven additional people — and from the five other police officers who’d been at the pool.
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