“Just for the money’? Wouldn’t they be risking too much?”
“That’s a good question,” Tristan said.
“I’ve asked it myself.
My guess is that they might be part of a money-laundering scheme. The clinic needs lots of capital for continued global expansion.”
“So the Chinese coming from the PRC are couriers for money or drugs or both,” Marissa said.
“That’s my guess,” Tristan said.
“But that brings me back to the tuberculosis,” Marissa said.
“How does that fit in?”
Tristan shrugged.
“As I said, I don’t have all the answers. I suppose it has to be an inadvertent effect. I don’t have a clue as to how the women pick it up. TB is usually an airborne infection.
How it gets to the fallopian tubes is beyond me.”
“That’s not how you make a diagnosis in medicine,” Marissa. said.
“All the symptoms and signs have to be related directly to the main diagnosis. Almost always it is one disease. I think TB has to be considered central to the problem.”
“Then you’re on your own,” Tristan said.
“There’s no way I can explain what’s happened with that caveat.”
“So come with me,” Marissa begged.
“You certainly have as much at stake as I do in learning the truth.”
“No!” Tristan said.
“I’m not getting involved. Not again.
Recently I’ve been thinking that enough time has passed and I’ve saved a lot of money, enough to take my son back and move someplace far away, maybe even the States.”
“Okay,” Marissa said.
“I guess I can understand.” Her tone said she didn’t understand at all.
“Thank you again for talking with me.” The two stood up. Marissa stuck her hand out and Tristan shook it.
“Good luck,” Tristan said.
Marissa squinted as she stepped outside into the blazing hot sun. She walked to her car and looked in at the dust. She was not relishing her ride back to Windorah, nor the odyssey back to Charleville the next day.
She got into the car as carefully as possible to avoid raising a dust cloud. After starting the engine, she drove out of the Wilmington
Station, waving to a few of the stock men working on a run of fence. She hung a left and started back toward Windorah.
As she drove through the forbidding countryside, she reviewed everything Tristan had told her. Although she hadn’t found out anything new about the TB salpingitis, she’d learned much she’d never expected, all of it disturbing. Perhaps the most disturbing was the suggestion of foul play in Tristan’s wife’s death. If Tristan was right, Marissa felt that lent greater plausibility to the idea that the sharks had been deliberately attracted by the two men tossing the chum. And if that were the case, her own life was in jeopardy.
Marissa drove the car by reflex as she wondered what she could do to protect herself. Unfortunately she didn’t have any particularly startling ideas. If people she didn’t know wanted to kill her, how would she know who they were? It was hard to protect herself from the unexpected. Danger could come at any moment.
Just then, as if to prove her fears, she became aware of an odd vibration. At first she thought her car had been tampered with.
She glanced at the gauges and dials on the dashboard. All registered normal. Yet the vibration soon crescendoed to a roar.
In a panic, Marissa gripped the steering wheel. She knew she had to do something fast. In desperation she slammed on the brakes and threw the steering wheel hard to the left. The car skidded sideways. For an instant, Marissa felt it was about to roll over.
The instant Marissa came to a jolting halt, a plane thundered overhead, missing the top of her car by barely ten feet.
Marissa knew then that the people who had killed Wendy had somehow found her. Now they would concoct an accident to dispense with her.
Her car had stalled. Frantically, she tried to restart it. Through the windshield she could see that the plane had looped up, banked, and was now coming back toward her. In the distance it looked no bigger than an insect, but already its sound was rattling the car.