by James A Ross
Susan looked up. “I knew you’d come back.”
Words can be pain too, when they come too late.
“There’s a posse of state troopers at your house, Susan. Did you know that?”
“Yes, they showed up early this morning.”
Something that looked like a picnic cooler sat on the floor next to Susan’s feet. He watched her remove a slide from the polished metal cylinder and add it to the stack of others inside the cooler. She was packing.
“How long, do you think, before they find out that you killed your brother? And that you fooled mine into helping you get away with it?”
“What!” She looked genuinely shocked and surprised. “How could you think that?”
“I found your little garden, Susan. Your brother’s autopsy found some of it, too. Inside him.”
She laid a slide back on the lab table. “That’s not possible.”
“Is that your story?”
Susan leaned on a corner of the lab table and lowered herself onto the stool beside it. Then raised her eyes to look at her long ago lover. “I didn’t kill Billy.”
Tom recited the contrary evidence. “Joe found Billy down at the boathouse sick as a dog. He called you here and told you that Billy needed to be in the hospital. He said that if you couldn’t get him to go, he’d come and drag him there himself. Billy was dying, but you didn’t want him going to the hospital and getting saved. You wanted him dead.”
Susan met his cold stare with one of her own. “That’s right. But I didn’t kill him.”
“So you made him some tea or soup or something, from one of those Rosary pea plants. Then you dragged him down to the boat and took him out into the lake.”
“No.”
“Joe came by as you pulled away. He heard you and followed in the police boat. It took a while for him to get through Wilson Cove. And before he got close enough to come on board, he heard a splash. That was you dumping Billy overboard. Alive.”
“You’ve got it wrong.”
Tom laughed. “Which part?”
“The part that isn’t there.” Susan’s voice recovered a measure of volume and animation. “The Frankie Heller part.”
Surprise and suspicion swirled in equal measure through Tom’s sleep-deprived brain. “You’ve got one chance to get this right, Susan. Tell me some fairy tale now and improve it later… and I’ll see you fry.”
“You’ve gotten cold.” Her voice was a whisper.
“What I know says I’m talking to a killer. Show me I’m wrong and maybe I’ll thaw.”
Susan stepped away from the lab table. “Alright. Billy and Frankie were arguing about something all week. Billy was getting scared… and sick, too. I think he finally told Frankie about Suliman and what he was doing for him. I think Frankie saw immediately what Billy didn’t. That Suliman came from a bigger pond than the one that floated Frankie and his little cannabis business. And Frankie was smart enough to be scared of the bigger fish.
“And you’re right. When your brother stopped by that night, Billy was in bad shape. I’m pretty sure he was dying. Joe called me at work and told me to get Billy to the hospital. But by the time I got home, Frankie was back again, and he and Billy were down at the boathouse going at it like they were in a bar fight: screaming, breaking things. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near there. When the noise stopped and I heard a boat engine start up and pull away, I went down to check.
“The boathouse looked like a bomb had gone off. Billy and Frankie were gone. Billy’s bird was screaming. I could see it was injured, but it wouldn’t let me come near. Then I heard your brother drive up. I didn’t want to see him, or anyone else, right then. I needed time to think. So I took Daddy’s boat and headed out into the cove.”
Tom’s voice was hard. “Where was Frankie’s car?”
Susan hesitated. “I don’t know. He must have come in his own boat. From the sound of it, that’s how he and Billy left.”
“Why didn’t you want to see Joe?”
“Think about it!” she hissed. “My brother had gotten himself and God knows who else exposed to some lethal neuro-toxin! He’d been running drugs from Canada with Frankie Heller, and now they’re at each other’s throats. He’s dying. But for the moment, he and Frankie have gone off someplace and maybe, just maybe, they won’t be back.”
Tom pressed. “When Joe came out in the police boat and found you in the middle of the cove, why didn’t you tell him then?”
“I didn’t know then that Billy had been killed. I just knew he’d gone off someplace with Frankie. And that maybe he’d die there.”
“And what about the abrin?” Tom’s voice was throttled by calm. “How did a bit of rosary pea from a garden you planted out in the woods, in a spot my brother showed to you, wind up in Billy’s corpse?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
She recoiled as if slapped, then she drifted toward the window. It was a long half-minute before she spoke. Tom was ready to call Joe and have him send the state troopers.
“I’m a scientist,” she said at last. “But I read the newspapers like everyone else. When I read about those terrorists in London being caught with something called ricin, I looked it up and found that the plant it came from was from the same family as the rosary pea plant I was using to keep the deer away from my research plots, and that their toxins were similar. So when I harvested the plants, I took some of the rosary pea too, to look at in the lab. Scientific curiosity, that’s all.”
“How did it get into Billy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess. Because if you can’t explain that part, the rest isn’t going to make any difference to anybody.”
For the first time, Susan looked unsure of herself. She paced in front of the windows overlooking the strip of woods between the office building and the road. “Let me think out loud. Because I honestly don’t know.”
He waited.
“When I first brought everything back to the house,” she said, “I left the peas on the kitchen window sill to dry. Then I forgot about them for a while. When I noticed them again, I realized that I was going to need a mortar and pestle to crush them into something I could work with. I didn’t have one in the lab at the moment. But I’d seen a small head shop version down in the boathouse in Billy’s bathroom. So one night while he was out, I went down to borrow it. Only he came back there while I was there using it. I guess he got the wrong idea about what I was doing, because he picked that moment to tell me about what he was doing with Frankie and hinting about what he was up to with Suliman. We got into an argument. I told him I wanted him to move out. He laughed and said he’d take it up with Frankie—that maybe he could arrange another boat accident. It was a naked threat. I got out of there fast.
“I’m guessing now that I forgot to wash the mortar and pestle before I left, and that there would have been a residue of powdered rosary pea in it. Actually, considering what had just happened, I’m certain I didn’t remember to wash it. Then Billy must have used it sometime after that for mixing one of his happy powders.”
She stopped pacing and sat down at the lab table. “Anyway, that’s my guess of how the abrin might have gotten into him. But as I told you, I don’t really know.”
Tom waited for his own reaction, and found he had none. He was on overload. Numb. He didn’t know what to think.
“It couldn’t have been a lethal dose,” she added. “It would have been just the residue. And besides, he drowned, didn’t he?”
“Why didn’t you tell this to Joe when the Dooley twins hauled Billy out of the lake?”
“I was going to. But then all of a sudden your brother started avoiding me and ducking my calls. If you’ll remember, I was up at his cabin the very next morning looking for him. That’s when I met you. But Joe was running away from me all of a sudden. And by the time he wasn’t, I had decided it was better to let it slide.”
“Why?”
“I can’t
believe a Morgan is asking that.”
Tom closed his eyes while a wave of fatigue swept through his body. “I’m in no mood for guessing games, Susan.”
“Fine. I’ll spell it out. Did you or your brother tell anyone about the thousands of dollars in cash that Morini’s Funeral Home found in your father’s coat?”
A small, choking noise spit from the back of Tom’s throat.
“Did you really think Morini was going to keep a secret like that? In a town like this?”
A surge of adrenaline set his heart pound against his ribs.
“What good would have come of my washing the Pearce family linen after Billy died? I like Coldwater, Tom. I love my work. I want to stay here and enjoy a peaceful, productive life. Even if it helped put Frankie Heller in jail for a while, do I really need to worry about someone like him getting out in a few years and coming after me? Or sending one of his friends to do it? Do I deserve that?”
He had no answer, and Susan didn’t wait for one.
“I do not! I kept my family’s secret for the same reason that you and your brother kept yours.”
Tom tried to form a coherent thought. If true, this latest version of Billy’s death was Hellenic tragedy. Everything that Susan had hoped to keep private was going to become public no matter what she said or did. There was no way to stop it. And if untrue, it was brilliant. Those who might deny the story were dead. And those who might disprove it were compromised.
He looked at her hard. “If they find fibers from Billy’s sleeping bag or anything like that on your father’s boat, then this story’s going to turn around and bite you.”
“They won’t.”
But he could hear the hesitation in her voice. Or maybe she just saw the men in stenciled windbreakers through the lab door window, about to break in.
CHAPTER 27
Tom had a pretty good idea of where they had taken him. The rumbling eighteen-wheelers behind the curtained, ground floor window were one clue. The smell of deep fried fat that clung to the clothes of the public servants who took turns questioning him was another. The tub/shower had a curtain but not a door. The toiletries included shampoo but not conditioner. He assumed he was in one of those rent-a-beds along the strip of fast food palaces and used car lots on the main drag heading out of Coldwater. It wasn’t the Hilton.
The corner door opened without a knock and three thick bodies crowded in. One took the straight-backed chair beneath the curtained window, one a corner of the twin bed against the wall and the other stood. The one on his feet introduced himself as Mr. Johnsen. “With an ‘e’,” as if Tom might need that information later. “With the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” He identified the others as National Bioforensic Analysis Center and something called BARDA. He did not volunteer names. A fourth person came in during the brief introduction, attached a laptop to the television and left.
“We’ve decided you should see this first,” said Johnsen. “Then we can chat.”
The time stamp at the bottom of the screen read that day’s date, but Tom could not quite make out the time. The screen showed a man at a podium and behind him a large map of the northeast United States and eastern Canada, with Coldwater at the center. Johnsen turned up the volume.
“As you can see,” said the man on the screen, “there are eleven outdoor stadiums located within a two-hundred-mile radius of the first contamination.” He aimed a laser pointer at the map projected on the wall behind him. “Each holds between twenty to sixty thousand people. All but two are on the U. S. side of the border. Absent extreme weather, two-thirds of those stadiums will be filled on either day of each weekend between now and the end of November.” He pressed the controller in his hand and the border map was replaced by a photo of the Plexiglas box that the diver had recovered from the water beneath the Pearce boathouse. He explained where it was found, its probable function and that the boathouse’s last occupant had tested positive for something called ‘abrin.’ “For those of you not familiar with the compound abrin, and I assume that’s virtually all of you, it is a close chemical cousin to that other terrorist toy, ricin, only about seventy-five times more potent.”
He clicked the slide changer again, and an image appeared of an open automobile trunk with a box the size of a footlocker wedged inside. The next slide showed the underside of the same car with a Frisbee-sized hole cut through the floor of the trunk and the bottom of the box inside it. The final slide was a crude diagram of a wire cable passing through a box and the back seat of a car, ending in a loop next to the driver’s seat. The opposite end of the cable was attached to a plastic disk that covered the hole in the bottom of the box and trunk. “Like an old-fashioned bathtub plug and chain,” he explained.
“We found two cars modified with this homemade device in a junkyard less than three miles from where we found the apparatus in slide number two. One was on a hydraulic lift inside a commercial garage and the other was parked in an adjacent junkyard with full tank of gas and an ignition key under the driver’s seat. We don’t know how many of these vehicles may have been cobbled together there or whether any have been made in other locations. But it’s ingenious, low-tech, easy to make and simple to use.”
Someone spoke from outside the range of the video monitor. The speaker cupped a hand to his ear and then leaned toward the microphone. “I’m just coming to that.” He opened a three-ring binder and consulted a tabbed section before resuming.
“Our wonderful planet is full of deadly compounds. That one may be seventy-five times more potent than another is hardly significant, if both are one hundred percent lethal and kill their victims one at a time. But what slide two and three are telling us is that someone has developed a way to deliver the toxin abrin in aerosol form, thus enabling murder by the thousands.
“We don’t have data on abrin in aerosol form. Until now, we didn’t know that it existed outside the lab, much less ready to be manufactured and delivered in mass quantities. But that’s what these slides seem to be telling us.
“Based on the delivery mechanisms we found at this site, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority has made modifications to the anthrax contamination model created by Dr. Inglesby at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense and which is still the most up to date scenario we have for aerosol bio-attack. The revised projected outcome is subject to a number of variables and is probably conservative.”
He turned to another tab in the note book and began to read:
“In Inglesby’s scenario, a car modified like the one in slide number four cruises by a sports stadium while a game is in progress. The driver pulls the plug at the bottom of the trunk using the cable device shown in the last slide. Several kilos of powered toxin spill from the bottom of the vehicle, spread over the highway and then start to blow across the cars in the nearby parking lot, into the stadium and through the surrounding neighborhoods. The model predicts that, depending on prevailing winds, one out of five people who attended the game will inhale a number of molecules of toxin sufficient to cause illness or death. From that point forward, the day-to-day progress of the contamination is as follows:”
The reader’s crisp voice was momentarily muffled by the undertone of Tom’s disbelief. What have you done, Susan?
“Hospital personnel are overwhelmed and confused, some fearing for their own safety. Those who can find them, begin to wear anti-contamination suits, photos of which are widely displayed on the news. Tests conducted by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center on blood samples taken from the first to die confirm the presence of abrin.”
“People who have not yet been infected begin to flee the city. Massive traffic congestion and widespread panic result… The mortuaries are full. Funeral homes close. The accumulation of dead bodies threatens to cause additional health crisis. State health officials order the dead to be cremated, setting off violent protests by several religious groups…”
By the end of Day Eight, eight thousand people are symptomatic
and over two thousand have died.’”
The man behind the podium looked up. There was no conversation, no rustling of papers, no movement or stirring of any kind. He flipped a final page in his notebook.
“‘Six Months Later,” he read, “the stadium is abandoned. Businesses in the surrounding neighborhood have left. Commercial and tourist travel to the city has all but disappeared. Of the fifty thousand people in and around the stadium on the afternoon of the attack, ten thousand became symptomatic and twenty-five hundred died… Economic losses as a result of the attack are estimated to be in the billions.’”
He closed his notebook and addressed a silent room. “The Inglesby scenario I’ve just read is based on a single attack from a single vehicle. Multiple simultaneous attacks at different locations and serial attacks over time are not only possible, they are to be expected. We don’t know if a weaponized version of abrin is as effective as the toxins and spores we know more about, like anthrax—whether it’s half as effective or one hundred times as effective. Assuming that it is effective—and judging from slide two and three, some people seem ready to put it out there for a test—the purpose of this gathering is to identify intervention points in the revised Inglesby Scenario where timely and coordinated efforts of the agencies represented in this room might minimize fatalities or achieve other positive results.”
Johnsen turned off the television. “We can skip the rest. There aren’t enough medical supplies and personnel to cover all of the possible sites ahead of time and the federal government isn’t going to warn and protect one city and not another. Frankly, we just have to make sure that a catastrophe like the one you just heard doesn’t happen.”
Tom looked at the three strained faces. “I get it. But why am I here?”
The bearded man, who Johnsen had identified as from the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, answered. “We have a tape of this fellow Hassad coming over the Champlain Bridge last night. He used the name Aza and a green card to go with it. He hasn’t been spotted going back. Our Canadian friends tell us that he hasn’t left from any of their airports and we know that he hasn’t left from any of ours. So our best guess is that he’s still hanging around. We assume for a reason. Something to protect. Something to finish. Maybe both.”
