Stinger

by Nancy Kress

  “Let’s go,” Melanie finally said aloud. They did.

  They drove in silence through the ugly suburban sprawl. Melanie watched black children playing on the steaming sidewalks, the ragged lawns, the streets. Women sat on sagging steps watching the children, as women did everywhere in the world, caretaking and chatting. But here the caretaking would have an extra desperate edge, and the chatter would not be light.

  I’m not leaving Maryland for very long, Jim. Not till it’s completely over. But that she did not say out loud.

  Cavanaugh rode in the second car, with Dunbar and two members of the evidence-protection team. In the car ahead were Pilozzi and Arnett, an FBI medic, and one of the division Five agents, Bruce Maloney. Two more cars followed with the scientific team, the physical evidence team, a media representative, and God-knew-who else. Twenty unsmiling agents in four dark cars. If they turned on their lights, they’d look like a funeral.

  Dunbar, officially the case agent, carried the search warrant. “Can I see it?” Cavanaugh asked. Dunbar gave him a hard look that meant, Don’t start anything, Robert. Cavanaugh knew by now that Dunbar disliked him. Cavanaugh minded, but at least it made Dunbar, with his J. Edgar Hoover sense of Bureau solidarity, bend over backwards to be “fair” to Cavanaugh. He handed over the warrant.

  It was thick, at least thirty pages, A copy had been delivered to Donohue’s lawyer earlier this morning. Cavanaugh skipped past the legal formalities and the object-of-search section, which he had already seen. It listed sixty-four categories of items that could be seized from Donohue’s town house. These included “materials used for scientific experiments;” “paraphernalia associated with genetic engineering, blood drawing, storage, or use;” “correspondence, books, or magazines connected to genetic engineering, malaria, or mosquitoes;” “hate literature;” and “equipment, specimens, or instruments, or tools associated with the breeding, altering, collecting, control, or breeding of mosquitoes, especially but not limited to Anopheles quadrimaculatus.” Oh, great. “Tools associated with the … control … of mosquitoes.” What if Donohue owned a fly swatter?

  Cavanaugh turned to the section on probable cause.

  He expected, given Maloney’s presence, to see an evocation of national security. The Supreme Court had declined to comment on whether the Fourth Amendment, which guaranteed “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,” applied in cases of national security. However, the Court had said that whatever powers the president had to dump the Fourth Amendment in order to preserve national security should be used very, very cautiously. In fact, they should be limited to “instances of immediate and grave peril” to the nation. Also, the search warrant should be authorized directly by either the president or the attorney general. Given the high profile of malaria reading, Cavanaugh expected to see that this search was in response to “immediate and grave peril” to 25 percent of the population of the state of Maryland. He expected to see the attorney general’s signature.

  None of it was there.

  The warrant had been issued by a federal judge. And although there was a nod toward a “serious health emergency,” probable cause rested mostly on the Hobbs Act and on information from informants. Just like a routine drug bust.

  “The Hobbs Act?” Cavanaugh said out loud. Immediately he regretted it. Dunbar looked even stonier than usual, if that was possible. Cavanaugh returned to reading.

  The Hobbs Act was certainly a safer, less controversial choice on which to base a search warrant than was national security. In fact, the Hobbs Act was the FBI’s best friend. It prohibited the use of interstate facilities, such as mail or phone, to advance illegal activities, such as murder. The Hobbs Act kept so many investigators off unemployment that Cavanaugh had once referred to it in a Bureau meeting as the Jobs Act. This had amused no one.

  According to the warrant, the FBI had probable cause to believe that Michael Sean Donohue had used both mail and telephone to advance the genetic engineering of Anopheles into a killer of at least 917 people in at least three states.

  “Reliable informants” had stated that Donohue had received packages from both scientific and insect-supply houses. The supply house itself, in Los Angeles, confirmed his order for six thousand Anopheles mosquitoes.

  Donohue had opened a PO box in Bel Alton, Charles County, Maryland, forty miles from his home, and very near the epicenter identified by the CDC. The mosquitoes from California had been sent to this PO box.

  Two security guards had seen him illegally remove a gene sequencer from his former place of employment, Genemod, Inc. One of the guards had also seen him carry out late at night “other scientific equipment.”

  Citizen informants, deemed by the court to be more reliable than criminal informants, stated that on at least three occasions Donohue had expressed “murderous contempt” for African Americans.

  Finally, and most damning, was a statement from an informant named Curtis P. McGraw, of 658 Crestview Avenue, Chevy Chase, Maryland, and 841 Beach Road, Town Creek, Maryland. McGraw, personally known to and deemed reliable by an FBI agent, told the agent that Donohue had shown him a “small cardboard box with holes covered with cheesecloth.” In the box, visible through the cheesecloth, buzzed live mosquitoes. McGraw said that Donohue said, “These are instruments of death like the world has never seen. And like nobody else is smart enough to make.”

  Attachments to the warrant included signed and sworn affidavits, invoices, bills of lading, PO documents, correspondence. Cavanaugh went back and read through the “probable cause” section again. It was not illegal to order mosquitoes through the mail. It was not illegal to order scientific equipment through the mail. It was not illegal to open a post office box in another city. It was not illegal to sit around a bar and air your prejudices.

  It was illegal to steal equipment from your employer, but it was a state crime, not a federal one.

  A magistrate who issued a search warrant was supposed to take into account the “totality of circumstance.” Still, most of this search warrant depended on the affidavit of one informant, as vouched for by one FBI agent. The whole thing puzzled Cavanaugh.

  “All right,” Dunbar said, “let’s go.”

  At the sight of four more Bucars, added to the four surveillance vehicles already present, the waiting media went crazy. They photographed, they filmed, they climbed on top of vehicles for wide-angle shots, they shouted. “Hey, Agent Dunbar, you making an arrest?” “You doing a search?” “Just one comment! Look this way, please!” Dunbar ignored them all, and everybody else followed Dunbar. A twenty-faced Mount Rushmore, Cavanaugh thought. Only not as cheerful.

  Erickson, the lawyer, answered the door. The FBI filed in past him. Donohue sat in his living room, reading a magazine. He barely looked up as Dunbar ran through the formalities.

  Cavanaugh studied the town house. On this level were a living/dining area, tiny kitchen, half bath, another room with closed door that might be a den or a small bedroom. Stairs led to the upper level. Donohue’s furniture was clean-lined but a little shabby, his pictures all prints or posters. The only expensive item was a glassed and lighted display case filled with Oriental bowls, vases, and small statues. Some were painted, some lacquered, some made of jade or stone. Even Cavanaugh, who had studied art in college but barely knew what he liked, could see that these were beautiful.

  The agents began their methodical work. “One issue of Cell Biology, June 1998,” an agent announced, putting it into a bag.

  “Noted,” said a second agent, recording the item, labeling the bag, and starting a stack of seized objects.

  “One large scientific beaker being used as a planter for … um … plants.”

  Bird’s nest fern, Cavanaugh thought but didn’t say aloud. He was technically still assigned to Surveillance. Silently, he surveilled.

  “Noted.”

  “One book, paperback, titled Field Guide to Insects, by John G. Barnaby, with handwritten comments in t
he margins.”

  “Noted.”

  “One book, hardcover, titled Short Protocols in Molecular Biology. Lots of drawings and stuff, but I don’t see any handwriting.”

  “Noted.”

  Cavanaugh watched as the agent leafed through the book. He caught words like “oligonucleotide” and chapter titles like “Construction of Hybrid DNA Molecules.” A full-color drawing looked like a lava lamp in progress, but probably wasn’t. Donohue, whatever else he might be, was a bona fide scientist. They should all remember that.

  “Dr. Donohue,” Dunbar said, the medic beside him, “the warrant specifies two vials of your blood. Will you come into the kitchen, please?”

  Donohue looked at his lawyer, who nodded. Cavanaugh followed. In the kitchen, agents pulled cupboards apart, stacking skillets and dishes and candles, granola and ketchup and chutney on the counter. While the medic drew his blood, Donohue gazed at nothing, smiling faintly.

  “Now a voice exemplar, please,” Dunbar said. “Just speak clearly into this microphone.”

  “And what am I supposed to say?”

  “Anything you wish.”

  The lawyer said quickly, “Mike, just recite … oh, ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”

  Donohue said, clearly and without hesitation, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is at present dismantling my house. They are most thorough, most intrusive, and most mistaken. Twinkle, twinkle, agents blind, I wonder what you think you’ll find. Up above the real so high, truth escapes your misled eye. Twinkle, twinkle, agents blind.”

  Dunbar said tightly, “I advise you to be careful with your name calling, Dr. Donohue. The FBI already has evidence tying you closely to a white supremacist hate group.”

  Cavanaugh hid his surprise. It wasn’t illegal to lie in order to get a statement out of a suspect, but it was unlike Dunbar. And Donohue wasn’t the kind of suspect to crumble under accusations; Dunbar must know that. The case agent stood stiffly, arms rigid at his side, obviously controlling some emotion.

  All Donohue said, one eyebrow raised was, “Oh? How interesting.”

  A sudden commotion upstairs. Two agents clattered down the stairs, one carrying a cardboard box. Inside were two insect carriers like the ones Cavanaugh had seen in the insect-supply-house catalogues. The agent flipped open the lids and tilted the box toward Dunbar. Cavanaugh knew what he was looking at. The bottoms of both cages were piled with the dark brown, patchy-winged corpses of Anopheles quadrimaculatus. Some of the tiny dead bodies were tagged, just like the ones Melanie Anderson had shown him at the CDC temporary lab.

  The lawyer groaned. Donohue gazed blankly ahead, faintly smiling.

  Cavanaugh drove south from College Park to the Weather Vane Motel, where his peripatetic belongings now sat in Marcy’s neat packing boxes. It seemed as good a place as any to park himself temporarily. Abigail hadn’t seemed to mind the move, although Cavanaugh had already had one complaint that she howled when he was away all day.

  As he drove, Cavanaugh went over it all again and again. Dunbar’s strange, unidentified emotion. Dunbar’s lying to Donohue. Most of all, the discrepancy between what Donohue had said and the informant had said he’d said. Not a discrepancy of content.

  Of style.

  “These are instruments of death like the world has never seen. And like nobody else is smart enough to make.” That was one.

  “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is at present dismantling my house. They are most thorough, most intrusive, and most mistaken.” That was the other, followed by the “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” parody, without preparation, right off the top of Donohue’s head.

  Both the informant’s hearsay and Donohue’s mocking description of the search used parallel structure, true. But the hearsay statement just didn’t sound like Donohue’s balanced sentences. And “like” was a preposition, not a conjunction. And the awkward verb. Wouldn’t Donohue have said something like, “These are instruments of death such as the world has never seen, and such as no one else is intelligent enough to create”? The word “create” would fit with Donohue’s demeanor; he’d sat among the scurrying, bustling agents like a god among mortals.

  Or maybe he, Cavanaugh, was just reading too much into diction and sentence structure. After all, the informant, this Curtis P. McGraw, might have simply paraphrased what he’d heard, in words that he would have used. Especially if McGraw were uneducated, or flighty, or on drugs. Or maybe he had a tin ear for the cadence of English prose. Many people did.

  Nonetheless, Cavanaugh worried the problem for another ten miles. Then he pulled over and phoned Dunbar at his home. Special Agent Dunbar, his wife said in a voice as tight-assed as Dunbar’s own, had not yet arrived home. She would turn on the machine so that Special Agent Cavanaugh could leave a detailed message.

  He did, explaining about the parallel structure and incorrect preposition, feeling every second like more of a fool. He ended, lamely, “So there it is.”

  Pause.

  “For you to consider.”

  Pause. Then, lamest of all, “I was an English major.”

  He drove on to the Weather Vane Motel and his howling dog.

  Interim

  The woman took her jacket and skirt and hung them carefully in the narrow locker. Jil Sander. Who would have thought that she could ever afford Jil Sander? Actually, she couldn’t. But the raise that accompanied her promotion would come through next paycheck, and anyway she deserved this suit. She’d bought it in a haze of euphoria just yesterday when the CEO himself had told her about the promotion. “Outstanding qualities of leadership,” he’d said. If that didn’t justify Jil Sander, what did?

  The noontime buzz in the locker room rose, but the woman didn’t join in. She preferred to keep to herself. She was going higher than all the rest of these women and in the not-too-distant-future. It wasn’t a good idea to form friendships that could prove awkward later.

  Her euphoria lasted throughout the aerobics class—fueled her, strengthened her. She had a great workout. Afterwards, stripping off her sweaty workout clothes in the shower booth, she couldn’t stop grinning. Damn, but she felt good. She had to restrain the impulse to sing.

  Soaping her arms under the stinging spray, angling herself to keep her hair dry, she noticed a small red patch high on her left shoulder.

  No. No. It wasn’t.

  But it was. She calculated rapidly. She’d worn a white silk tank top to Wolf Trap two nights ago, and they’d sat outdoors. Had she applied the insect repellent high enough on the shoulder? She thought she had. But here it was, a mosquito bite, and she’d never even felt the goddamn little thing get her. …

  Calm down, she told herself. Calm down. You can handle it. Yes, she was sickle-trait positive, her blood test early during the epidemic had confirmed that. But the bite was only two days old. The Plasmodium parasites took seven to ten days inside the liver before they were released into the bloodstream. That’s what the CDC bulletins said: on TV, on posters, on the flyer in her briefcase. She was still okay, as long as she went to the clinic immediately. They’d had months of experience with this thing; they’d learned what to do. Her next move was simply to get herself to one of the epidemic clinics, and they’d advise her from there.

  Quickly she dried herself, pulled on fresh underwear, and ran back to her locker to put on the new Jil Sander.

  Twelve

  Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

  —Hippocrates, Precepts, fourth century B.C.

  * * *

  Melanie sat numbly in front of the TV, its flickering grays the only light in her motel living room. It was six forty-five. The others had gone out to dinner. They, or maybe just Joe Krovetz, had knocked on her door, probably to ask her to join them. She’d kept the curtains closed and the lights off, and eventually they’d gone away.

  She was no longer a member of the malaria reading team.

  It could have been worse, of course. Farlow could have f
ired her. Instead she got a paid vacation, no official reprimand, the chance to work on other epidemics. It could have been much worse. All she’d failed at was this one epidemic.

  Except that she, Melanie Patricia Anderson, didn’t fail. Ever. She’d been summa cum laude at Berkeley. She’d graduated third in her class at Yale School of Medicine. She’d earned glowing recommendations and universal trust during her epidemiological work in Africa. Even when she was doctoring in Mississippi, hating it, she’d been a good doctor. Melanie Anderson did not encounter situations she couldn’t master.

  Except, of course, she had. And though she’d tried and tried to shame herself into recognizing that, next to the brothers and sisters who were dying, her own setback was pathetically minor—she somehow couldn’t do it. All she could do was sit numbly and stare at a newsman with carefully moussed hair, grinning about the “favorable developments” in malaria reading.

  “Only two deaths this week—a significant drop from just last week, which was, in turn, a drop from the week before. In a press statement this morning, Dr. James Farlow, head of the epidemiological team from the CDC, had this to say.”

  A picture of Jim flashed onto the screen behind the anchorman’s left shoulder, then enlarged and started talking. Farlow looked solemn. “The CDC is convinced we’ve pinned down the major components of this disease. The public-health measures undertaken by Maryland and Virginia, plus our new understanding of the biology involved, make us feel pretty sure that the public-health crisis is essentially over. The Health Service and the army will remain in southern Maryland, but the CDC team is ready to return to Atlanta and continue our research there.”

  Back to the anchorman. “But for at least one person, the crisis is not over. In fact, it may be just beginning. Today FBI agents obtained a search warrant for the town house of Dr. Michael Sean Donohue. Twenty special agents combed every inch—”