PATRICIA CORNWELL. Unnatural Exposure

I sat up sweating, and waited for my muscles to stop twitching. It was as if there were an electrical disturbance in my entire system, and I might have a heart attack or a stroke. Taking deep, slow breaths, I blanked out my mind. I did not move. When the vision had passed, I rang for the nurse.

When she saw the look on my face, she did not argue about the phone. She brought it right away and I called Marino after she left.

‘You still in jail?’ he said over the line.

‘I think he killed his guinea pig,’ I said.

‘Whoa. How ’bout starting over again.’

‘Deadoc. The woman he shot and dismembered may have been his guinea pig. Someone he knew and had easy access to.’

‘I gotta confess, Doc, I got no idea what the hell you’re talking about.’ I could tell by his tone he was worried about my state of mind.

‘It makes sense that he couldn’t look at her. The M.O. makes a lot of sense.’

‘Now you really got me confused.’

‘If you wanted to find a way to murder people through a virus,’ I explained, ‘first you would have to figure out a way. The route of transmission, for example. Is it a food, a drink, dust? With smallpox, transmission is airborne, spread by droplets or by fluid from the lesions. The disease can be carried on a person or his clothes.’

‘Start with this,’ he said. ‘Where did this person get the virus to begin with? Not exactly something you order through the mail.’

‘I don’t know. To my knowledge there are only two places in the world that keep archival smallpox. CDC and a laboratory in Moscow.’

‘So maybe this is all a Russian plot,’ he said, sardonically.

‘Let me give you a scenario,’ I said. ‘The killer has a grudge, maybe even some delusion that he has a religious calling to bring back one of the worst diseases this planet has ever known. He’s got to figure out a way to randomly infect people and be sure that it can work.’

‘So he needs a guinea pig,’ Marino said.

‘Yes. And let’s suppose he has a neighbor, a relative, someone elderly and not well. Maybe he even takes care of her. What better way to test the virus than on that person? And if it works, you kill her and stage her death to look like something else. After all, he certainly can’t have her die of smallpox. Not if there is a connection between him and her. We might figure out who he is. So he shoots her in the head, dismembers her so we’ll think it’s the serial killings again.’

‘Then how do you get from that to the lady on Tangier?’

‘She was exposed,’ I simply said.

‘How? Was something delivered to her? Did she get something in the mail? Was it carried on the air? Was she pricked in her sleep?’

‘I don’t know how.’

‘You think deadoc lives on Tangier?’ Marino then asked.

‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘I think he picked it because the island is the perfect place to start an epidemic. Small, self-contained. Also easy to quarantine, meaning the killer doesn’t intend to annihilate all of society with one blow. He’s trying a little bit at a time, cutting us up in small pieces.’

‘Yeah. Like he did the old lady, if you’re right.’

‘He wants something,’ I said. ‘Tangier is an attention-getter.’

‘No offense, Doc, but I hope you’re wrong about all of this.’

‘I’m heading to Atlanta in the morning. How about checking with Vander, see if he’s had any luck with the thumbprint.’

‘So far he hasn’t. It’s looking like the victim doesn’t have any prints on file. Anything comes up, I’ll call your pager.’

‘Damn,’ I muttered, for the nurse had taken that, too.

The rest of the day moved interminably slowly, and it wasn’t until after supper that Fujitsubo came to say goodbye. Although the act of releasing me implied I was neither infected nor infectious, he was in a blue suit, which he plugged into an air line.

‘I should keep you longer,’ he said right off, filling my heart with dread. ‘Incubation, on average, is twelve to thirteen days. But it can be as long as twenty-one. What I’m saying to you is that you could still get sick.’

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *