They climbed a single flight of steps though the building went up to a third floor. The apartment that had been burned was sandwiched right in the middle of others. How had none of the nearby units suffered fire damage?
Dana waited until they got inside the front door and snapped on gloves. She also pulled out a stack of face masks and started handing them out to the others. Donovan slipped the small nose and mouth filter onto his face, though it hardly accomplished anything other than looking like he was at least trying. He turned to Eleri out of habit, then reoriented himself to speak to Dana. “This is even fresher. How did they get the fire out so fast?”
Dana sighed the sigh of the weary. “That’s just it. They didn’t.”
“What?” This time it was Wade asking even as he reached gloved fingers out toward a blackened wall. Slowly he closed the distance and touched what should have been coal hot.
Donovan raised his eyebrows at his friend.
“Nothing.” Wade shrugged, flattening his whole hand against the dead and almost crumbling ash of the drywall. “I mean it’s warm—”
By then Donovan had both his hands on the wall and so did Christina. All were looking at each other in awe.
“—but it’s not even close to hot.”
Dana shook her head again. “The neighbor swears that Mrs. Orlov went out for groceries at ten a.m. Just like she does every day. She came back with three bags. Which the neighbor says is not normal—she usually only has one.”
“That’s why you think the neighbor is accurate.” Eleri commented. “But the extra grocery bags make today unusual. She hit the store every morning? Who does that?”
“Old Russian lady.” Dana answered without looking at Donovan’s partner. She moved to a new section of wall, then another, touching each flat handed and still marveling that it wasn’t hot. “Apparently, she’s still in the habit of buying each day’s supper on the day she makes it.”
“So, that part’s not unusual for her, except for the extra bags. Something big planned?” Eleri still wasn’t touching the walls, Donovan noticed. “Guests?”
With a sigh of resignation, Eleri peeled her gloves and reached out to touch the wall for herself. This time, Donovan noticed as she stood there, waiting, the paneling wasn’t wet. The fire department had found no stray embers, no sparks, no wiring problems, and stumped, they’d left it untouched for the feds. Though, clearly, they hadn’t left.
Gennida Orlov’s body lay untouched in the middle of the room. She lay on her back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. Donovan looked at it, only half noticing Christina standing guard in the doorway, Wade sniffing his way around the room, Eleri walking slowly, touching everything that she could.
He checked the air, though he didn’t need to.
“Smells the same?” Dana asked.
“Yes.” He and Wade said it at the same time. It was Donovan who added, “It’s got that hydrogen smell again. That . . . fizz of explosion. Though there’s clearly no explosion here. This is as controlled of a burn as I’ve ever seen.”
“Guests.” Eleri said the one word as she touched what was left of the couch. It was outside the oval that protected Gennida Orlov. “She had guests.”
Donovan ran back outside, subtly sniffing and checking the stairs. While the woman could have come up another set, he could tell Gennida Orlov used these stairs almost right up to her doorway every day. She’d done the same today, though she was alone.
The firefighters were watching the doorway—all that they could see of the burned shell of an apartment. They were probably just hanging out because of the complete oddity of the case. It took Donovan a moment to figure it out, but he decided to look like he was visually inspecting the stairs as that was plausible. He looked, too, but mostly he got his face close to the railing and while he tilted his head as though checking the light, he inhaled deeply.
He smelled firefighters—men, sweat, old gear with the scent of fires past—and residents. The residents were some older people, reeking of medications, and some younger. Some children. But . . . He stepped up a few more steps and got down on his hands and knees on the steps, then back up as though closely inspecting the handrail. She would have touched it probably, maybe trailed her hand along it as she climbed. Bare skin touching painted metal and leaving a trace of scent. And . . . there she was.
The woman.
Turning, feeling dumb for thinking of it so late, he scanned the crowd. He spotted a few women from other apartments. He called Eleri out and pulled her down as though showing her something on the staircase. “She was here. The woman from the Arvad house.”
“You smell her?” Eleri looked at him sharply before going back to the game of pretending they were looking at the textured steps staring at evidence instead of old gum.
“Yes, she was here. And this scene is new enough that we need to keep an eye out for her. Arsonists often come back to survey their work.” It was arson 101 and he felt dumb for not checking faces better when they came in.
Eleri’s hand touched his arm. “We didn’t think of it, because we usually come in long after the fire’s out. Any lookie-loos are usually gone. So don’t beat yourself up, just tell me what you have.”
He told her about the three women he saw in the crowd that might potentially be her and watched Eleri’s face as she surreptitiously spotted each of them and nodded. He added, “We need to keep track of them.”
“Let’s go one better.” Eleri stood up, motioning him to follow and headed down the stairs. They watched carefully but no one fled. It would have been a dumb thing to do and too lucky for them if someone did.
Eleri walked into the crowd and Donovan followed. She moved around, introducing herself and shaking hands and asking questions. She gathered the apartment dwellers and the watching crowd into a tight group, pushing the firefighters—probably not their suspect and not female—to the back of the crowd.
As Eleri asked them what they’d seen, if any visitors had gone into Mrs. Orlov’s home or come out of it, Donovan followed along, slowly inhaling.
No one had seen anyone come in or out. One man had been sitting on the bench in the playground area that was visible to the front door. He’d even been facing it. Just sitting and watching his kids play on the jungle gym. He’d seen Mrs. Orlov. He even correctly answered how many bags of groceries she was carrying. Then he noticed that there was smoke coming out of her door. He called 911 and ran up the steps but the firefighters were already there, pushing him back. Telling him to let them do their jobs.
Eleri thanked the crowd as they’d gotten around to everyone. Then she turned to Donovan as they climbed the stairs, out of earshot of anyone but a wolf.
“I didn’t sense anyone who’d been up here.”
“None of them were her.” He wanted to shake his head, but knew not to give away anything to onlookers. It was part of the steely demeanor that earned the feds their reputation, but it was based on necessity, not appearances, he’d learned.
Turning to his partner, he asked about the one man’s comment. “He said the firefighters were already there when he got up the steps. He’d just called but there they were. That doesn’t seem right.”
“Maybe they’d already been called?” Eleri shrugged and he watched her play out scenarios. “Maybe he wasn’t as brave as he wants us to believe, and he waited for them to arrive before making a show of running in. You’re right, it doesn’t add up, but it isn’t necessarily sinister. He wasn’t lying per se.
“They were all telling the truth as far as I could tell.” Eleri added, also not giving in to the shrug he could tell she wanted to make.
He agreed and spoke as he crossed the threshold, past the door the firefighters had broken through to get inside. Dana looked up at his words.
“The crowd was excited, but not anxious, not the way someone gets when they lie.” He looked at her. “We just checked the people out front. Our woman was here. She went up or down the steps, maybe both. But she’s not here anymore
and no one who is saw anything. Maybe she was waiting for Mrs. Orlov?”
“We’ve got a bigger problem here.” Dana sighed. “I’m getting concerned that there’s a poison we don’t know about at play. Again, our victim died of nothing. She simply ceased to live. Just like the other one.”
Donovan frowned at her, not putting together the pieces that were clearly bothering Dana. A lot.
“I’m starting to think it might be infectious.”
Eleri sucked in a breath, then immediately regretted it. “That would mean we’re all at risk.”
14
Eleri paced the room, though “room” was a generous term. It was the biggest one the hotel in Alexandria had. Dana moved them from single rooms to a suite, claiming she and Eleri and Donovan had enough expertise in biology and medicine to keep an eye out for symptoms. She’d argued, “We all need to be together.”
Eleri had responded with, “Why? Donovan has the most medical training and he prefers dead people. He is not the doctor you want watching over you.”
After the words tumbled, angry, out of her mouth she winced. She turned to Donovan and the look of mirth on his face was the only thing that kept her from saying, “No offense,” a term that literally meant the opposite.
Dana didn’t budge.
They had quickly abandoned their old hotel rooms, Dana leaving strict “Do not disturb” orders and flashing her badge. She didn’t say “infectious disease” but did everything she could to stop anyone from going in there. Then she said she was going to call Westerfield.
Eleri had jumped. “Wait. I know someone.”
Dana raised an eyebrow. Christina just sat, taking everything in, looking as grim as the rest of them, but not saying anything. Eleri wanted to yell at her. At first it had been nice to have Christina stay quiet, but it was beginning to verge on creepy now. What did she know? What did she feel? Eleri wanted to shout, “Just say something!” but she held that in, too.
Instead, she focused on Dana, as it was her senior agent who needed convincing. “I know a pair of infectious disease specialists at the CDC. They can at least talk us through the early evaluation. Otherwise, Westerfield is going to call in a team and lock us down and test the hell out of us and the bodies. We don’t even know if we’re on the right track yet.” She paused but clearly hadn’t convinced Dana yet. “These two are CDC. Top national clearance. They hunt diseases.”
She kept babbling in an effort to avoid the Westerfield/lockdown scenario. Westerfield had no medical background. He’d toss the key, hand the whole case to another team, and then apologize after three months of full quarantine when the five of them clearly had nothing. Eleri would likely have gone full Donner Party by then. The only question was would she eat Dana first or Christina? Eleri pushed the thought aside and ran her mouth. “I did an internship at the CDC with them. Two actually, as part of my graduate degree. I’m not an infectious disease expert by any means, but I don’t think we need to do the full lockdown yet. I don’t even think it’s an infectious disease. Let’s ask them before we go nuts.”
Dana finally conceded to the phone call and agreed to follow expert advice.
So Eleri pulled the number and paced the floor with the phone to her ear. Of course it was after 5pm in Atlanta. Of course even when she got through to the office, they weren’t there. No, she didn’t want to leave a message. Yes, she wanted to page them. Yes, it was an emergency.
Then she hung up and waited while the rest of the group sat there staring at her. There was no need to explain. The room wasn’t big enough for anyone not to have overheard exactly what she said.
She turned to Dana again. “They’re very trustworthy. Best of the best. They almost converted me out of forensics and chemistry.”
That was it. She was out of things to say—things that would help her cause, at least. Anything more she said would only make her look like an idiot. It took fifteen minutes for them to call back. During that time Dana orchestrated an order of Chinese food, paid by card and told the driver to deliver it to the hotel room and knock but just leave the food at the door.
Nope, nothing suspicious here. Move it along. Nothing to see.
Eleri was grateful when her phone finally rang. “Hello?”
“Eleri!”
“Jordan!” She was shocked by the relief coursing through her system just at hearing his voice. Dr. Jordan Abellard would tell them it was nothing. She believed that. “How are you? And Jillian? Is she with you?”
He laughed. “They rarely send us in different directions anymore. We’re good.” There was just a beat of a pause. “But you contacted us ‘emergent.’ What’s going on?”
“A case.” She’d stayed in touch with them enough in the intervening years. They didn’t know about her stay in the mental hospital, but they knew she was an FBI agent. “This is high order clearance. Is this line secure?”
“No. Shit.” She heard him talking to his wife, Dr. Jillian Brookwood in the background. “Give us five minutes.”
He hung up. Eleri wasn’t offended. He was right. There was nothing left to say if his line wasn’t secure. Three minutes later, her phone rang again. “Jordan?”
“Jillian this time. Good to hear your voice.” Eleri could hear the cautious smile. “We’ve got you on speaker. The line is secured and we are in a secured location. You?”
Again, Eleri breathed easier. In their lab, though she’d been a lowly grad student, they’d taught her everything they could in the two terms she stayed. She did chemistry panels for them. Ran toxicology tests. In return, they taught her to ID known infectious diseases and map their spread. They showed her what emerging diseases looked like when no one yet knew what they were. And when the budget allowed, they took her on field cases with them. She’d been a disease hunter for a short period of time, and it had been wonderful. The husband and wife team were excellent mentors. And now she needed them.
“We’re okay. All physically healthy right now. No one has any signs or symptoms. And one of our team is an M.D.—though he’s a medical examiner.” She introduced the team, leaving out their skills. Drs. Brookwood and Abellard were not part of NightShade and no one beyond Westerfield’s team knew what Westerfield’s team was capable of.
She explained the bodies, the lack of cause of death, the fire exposure. Dana opened her eyes wide, as though Eleri might give away the details of the odd fires. Eleri had enough, her own eyes narrowed in response, but at least Dana sat back a little. She sighed. “We’ve ruled out just about everything else. Infectious disease is what we have left.”
“You have a killer using a disease to take people out?” Jillian turned it over. Her tone gave away her skepticism and for that, Eleri was grateful. “That seems unlikely.” She paused. “What’s the timeframe for the death?”
Eleri looked around at everyone, but no one knew. Finally, it was Dana who spoke.
“Hello, Agent Dana Brantley speaking. It’s fast, whatever it is. And I don’t have any evidence that it’s a disease, but we also don’t see any evidence for anything else.
“How fast?”
Eleri grinned. That was just like Jillian, such a logical mathematical mind. They all shrugged until Dana said, “Probably a matter of minutes. Thirty minutes at the high end. But that’s a guess.”
She paused and said, “We really have no idea, but it seemed safer to quarantine.”
“It’s always safer to quarantine.” Jillian replied, the words rolling off her tongue as though she’d said them a thousand times. Eleri imagined she probably had.
There were murmurs on the other end of the line and Jordan came back on. “Sit tight. Follow quarantine, and we’ll be there tomorrow by two. Is that okay?”
Eleri was starting to answer him when a knock came at the door.
“What’s that?” Jordan asked.
“Chinese food.”
“I thought you understood how to run a quarantine.” He chided her, but Eleri laughed.
“It’s all set up.
No contact, we won’t open the door until he leaves. He can pass germs to us, but not the other way around. And we get dinner.”
“All right. Hang on to that. We’ll be there tomorrow.”
They quickly said goodbye and hung up. Eleri watched as Dana began parsing out too many food containers to fit on the table. That was probably fine, none of them fit in here anyway.
Dinner was a quiet affair—no one wanted to be stuck and everyone was trying to be polite until 2 pm the next day, and it was already difficult.
Dana had sorted them into the two bedrooms. Wade and Donovan in one, Eleri and Christina in the other and Dana on the pull-out couch in the middle. Eleri stayed up late, forcing herself to seem awake so she could talk to Dana without the others around. Probably they all realized what she was doing, but did they know why?
“Dana, what safeguards do you have on Christina?” Eleri asked point blank. She wasn’t excited about having the woman as a roommate, but she tried not to let that get in the way.
“Same as the rest of you.” Dana had enough nerve to look a bit offended.
“You need more.” Eleri stayed on point despite Dana’s narrowed eyes. “She can convince you she’s here and walk right out the door.”
“She won’t.” Dana seemed very assured.
“That’s good. You’ve been through quarantine with her before then?”
“No, but—”
“That’s the problem. Quarantine is scary. People crack—”
“She won’t crack. She’s one of us despite the cold shoulder you all have been giving her.” Dana’s lips thinned.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4) Page 10