I was a rich man’s wife having a tempestuous affair with a detective.
‘A good credo,’ I said, coughing.
The burglar alarm welcomed me with its warning beep, and never in my life had I been more relieved to be home. I wasted no time getting out of my scalded clothes, and straight into a hot shower, where I inhaled steam and tried to clear the rattle from my lungs. When I was wrapping up in a thick terry cloth robe, the telephone rang. It was exactly four P.M.
‘Dr Scarpetta?’ It was Fielding.
‘I just got home,’ I said.
‘You don’t sound good.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Well, my news isn’t going to help,’ he said. ‘They’ve got possibly two more cases on Tangier.’
‘Oh no,’ I said.
‘A mother and daughter. Fever of a hundred and five, a rash. CDC’s deployed a team with bed isolators, the whole nine yards.’
‘How’s Wingo?’ I asked.
He paused, as if puzzled. ‘Fine. Why?’
‘He helped with the torso,’ I reminded him.
‘Oh yeah. Well, he’s the same as always.’
Relieved, I sat down and shut my eyes.
‘What’s going on with the samples you took to Atlanta?’ Fielding asked.
‘They’re doing tests, I hope, with what few people they can muster now.’
‘So we still don’t know what this is.’
‘Jack, everything points to smallpox,’ I said to him. ‘That’s the way it looks so far.’
‘I’ve never seen it. Have you?’
‘Not before now. Maybe leprosy is worse. It’s bad enough to die of a disease, but to be disfigured in the process is cruel.’ I coughed again and was very thirsty. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.’
‘It doesn’t sound to me like you should be going anywhere.’
‘You’re absolutely right. And I don’t have a choice.’
I hung up and tried Bret Martin at CDC, but his phone was answered by voice mail, and he did not call me back. I also left a message for Fujitsubo, but he did not return my call, either, and I figured he was at home, like most of his colleagues. The budget war raged on.
‘Damn,’ I swore as I put a kettle of water on the stove and dug in a cupboard for tea. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’
It was not quite five when I called Wesley. At Quantico, at least, people were still working.
‘Thank God someone is answering the phones somewhere,’ I blurted out to his secretary.
‘They haven’t figured out how nonessential I am yet,’ she said.
‘Is he in?’ I asked.
Wesley got on the phone, and sounded so energetic and cheery that it instantly got on my nerves.
‘You have no right to feel this good,’ I said.
‘You have the flu.’
‘I don’t know what I’ve got.’
‘That’s what it is, right?’ He was worried and his mood went bad.
‘I don’t know. We can only assume.’
‘I don’t mean to be an alarmist . . .’
‘Then don’t,’ I cut him off.
‘Kay,’ his voice was firm. ‘You’ve got to face this. What if it’s not?’
I said nothing because I could not bear to think such thoughts.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Don’t blow this off. Don’t pretend it’s nothing like you do with most things in your life.’
‘Now you’re making me mad,’ I snapped. ‘I fly into this goddamn airport and Marino doesn’t want me in his car so I take a taxi and the driver thinks we’re having an affair and my rich husband doesn’t know, and all the while I have a fever and hurt like hell and just want to go home.’
‘The taxi driver thinks you’re having an affair?’
‘Just forget it.’
‘How do you know you’ve got the flu? That it’s not something else?’
‘I don’t have a rash. Is that what you want to hear?’
There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘What if you get one?’
‘Then I’m probably going to die, Benton.’ I coughed again. ‘You’ll probably never touch me again. And I’d never want you to see me again, if it goes its course. It’s easier to worry about stalkers, serial killers, people you can blow away with a gun. But the invisible ones are who I’ve always feared. They take you on a sunny day in a public place. They slide in with your lemonade. I’ve been vaccinated for hepatitis B. But that’s just one killer in a huge population. What about tuberculosis and HIV, and Hanta and Ebola? What about this? God.’ I took a deep breath. ‘It started with a torso and I did not know.’