‘I don’t know. A few days ago. When was that? I don’t know. We’ d never seen anything so fancy. Imagine, something sweet to cool your face.’
That made twelve canisters deadoc had delivered to my staff, and twelve had been his message to me. It was the number of full-time people in my central office, if I included myself. How could he know such trivia as the size of my staff, and even some of their names and where they lived, if he were far away and anonymous?
I dreaded my next question because I already thought I knew. ‘Wingo, did you touch it in any way?’
‘I tried it. Just to see.’ His voice was shaking badly and he was choking from coughing fits. ‘When it was sitting there. I picked it up one time, just to see. It smelled like roses.’
‘Who else in your house has tried it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I want you to make certain no one touches that canister. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ He was sobbing.
‘I’m going to send some people to your house to pick it up and take care of you and your family, okay?’
He was crying too hard to answer.
When I got home, it was minutes past midnight, and I was so out of sorts and sick that I did not know what to do first. I called Marino and Wesley, and Fujitsubo. I told everybody what was happening and that Wingo and his family needed a team at their home immediately. My bad news was returned by theirs. The girl on Tangier who had gotten sick had died, and now a fisherman had the disease. Depressed and feeling like hell, I checked my e-mail, and deadoc was there in his small, mean way. I was glad. His message had been sent while Keith Pleasants was in jail.
mirror mirror on the wall where have you been
‘You bastard,’ I screamed at him.
The day was too much. All of it was too much, and I was achy and woozy and completely fed up. So I should not have gone into that chat room, where I waited for him as if this were the O.K. Corral. I should have left it for another time. But I made my presence known and paced in my mind as I waited for the monster to appear. He did.
DEADOC:
toil and trouble
SCARPETTA:
What do you want?
DEADOC:
we are angry tonight
SCARPETTA:
Yes, we are.
DEADOC:
why should you care about ignorant fishermen and their ignorant families and those inept people who work for you
SCARPETTA:
Stop it. Tell me what you want to make this stop.
DEADOC:
it s too late the damage is done it was done long before this
SCARPETTA:
What was done to you?
But he did not answer. Oddly, he did not leave the room, but he did not respond to any further questions from me. I thought of Squad 19 and prayed they were listening and following from trunk to trunk, tracing him to his lair. Half an hour passed. I finally logged off as my telephone rang.
‘You’re a genius!’ Lucy was so excited she was hurting my ears. ‘How the hell have you managed to keep him on that long?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, amazed. ‘Eleven minutes so far. You win the prize.’
‘I was only on with him maybe two minutes.’ I tried to cool my forehead with the back of my hand. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
But she didn’t care. ‘We nailed the son of a bitch!’ She was ecstatic. ‘A campground in Maryland, agents from Salisbury already en route. Janet and I gotta plane to catch.’
Before I got up the next morning, the World Health Organization put out another international alert about Vita aromatic facial spray. WHO reassured people that this virus would be eliminated, that we were working on the vaccine around the clock and would have it soon. But the panic began anyway.
The virus, dubbed by the press Mutantpox, was on the cover of Newsweek and Time, and the Senate was forming a subcommittee as the White House contemplated emergency measures. Vita was distributed in New York, but the manufacturer was actually French. The obvious concern was that deadoc was making good on his threat. Although there were yet no reports of the disease in France, economic and diplomatic relations were strained as a large plant was forced to shut down, and accusations about where the tampering was done were volleyed back and forth between countries.