by Greg Iles
“Chris?”
He looked up with red-rimmed eyes. “Hey.”
“My God. How’s your headache?”
“A little better. My stomach’s the problem now.”
“Do you have any new information?”
He groaned softly. “I talked to Pete Connolly again. He wants me to fly up to Sloan-Kettering today.”
“Then you should do that.”
Chris shrugged with a fatalistic air. “Actually, I can take the same drugs here that he can give me there. Tom Cage already called in a prescription for some strong antiviral drugs. AZT, ritonavir, enfuvirtide, and vidarabine. I think that’s why I’m nauseated.”
“Does Connolly think those will work?”
Chris laughed darkly. “How can he know that when he doesn’t know what was injected into me? Pete thinks I should start intensive IV chemotherapy as well.”
“Then why haven’t you done that?”
“There are serious risks. A lot of chemotherapy drugs are carcinogenic themselves. I’m not sure I’m desperate enough to try that. But Connolly thinks that blasting me as soon as possible gives me the greatest chance of survival.”
Alex tried to follow the logic. “How could chemotherapy help you, if you don’t have cancer yet?”
Chris stood slowly, took hold of her arm for balance, then looked into her eyes. “It’s possible that I do.”
Alex paled. “What?”
“Remember Pete’s scariest scenario? The one where someone gets hold of your cells, turns those cells cancerous in the lab, then injects them back into you?”
Alex nodded slowly.
“Those would be active cancer cells from the moment they entered my body.”
She thought of the needle mark in Chris’s anus. “What do you think happened last night? Did someone steal cells in order to alter them? Or did they inject cancerous cells into you?”
Chris’s eyes held only bitterness. “I pray it’s the first. But I doubt I’m that lucky.”
“Why?”
“Because there are easier ways to get my cells.”
Alex shook her head in confusion. “Like how?”
“Think about it. Who has constant access to my body?”
“Thora?”
“Right. And she’s a nurse.”
“All right. But how could Thora take your blood without you knowing about it?”
Chris moved his hand in a “Come along” gesture, urging Alex toward the truth. “Not blood.”
She tried to imagine what other cells Thora could take from Chris. Hair? Skin? Or—Her mouth twisted in horror and disgust.
“You get it now?” Chris asked.
“Semen?”
“Exactly. How’s that for cold and calculating?”
Alex shook her head. “I can’t believe she’d be capable of that.”
“Why not? Once you’ve made the decision to commit murder, how does the method matter? You think any of the other victims died pretty?”
She stared at him, not knowing what to say or do. The situation was simply beyond her comprehension.
“The other night,” Chris whispered, “the night of the day that you and I met, Thora came out to my studio and made love with me. She told me she wanted to get pregnant. It was really out of character, with the way things had been, but I went with it, hoping for the best.” Chris’s jaw flexed in fury. “Three days later, I found out she’d taken a morning-after pill.”
Alex felt cold.
“Thora never meant to get pregnant at all. So…why the sex?”
Alex shook her head in disbelief. “But surely no one could induce cancer in those cells that rapidly, not even in the lab.”
“I hope not. That’s one reason I haven’t taken the chemo yet. But who knows what’s possible?”
Alex put both arms around him and hugged tight. Chris stiffened at first, but then she felt him go limp. When his arms closed around her back, she realized he was shivering. Was it the drugs? Or was he about to break down right there in the lobby? Anybody would, given the unimaginable strain he was under.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she said. “Have you checked in?”
He nodded.
She left a message at the desk for Will, and sixty seconds later they were unlocking the door to room 638. Alex had reserved a suite on the “executive” floor. Attached to the bedroom was a little den with a sofa, two club chairs, and a desk against the wall. In one corner was a sink, a minifridge, and a microwave oven.
“Is that a minibar?” Chris asked.
Alex checked the fridge. “No alcohol.”
He cursed softly.
“What do you want?”
“I don’t care.”
She checked the bedroom. “Here we go, under the TV.”
“Vodka?”
“Coming up. I’ll get you some ice.”
She handed him a tiny bottle of Absolut, and he drank most of it in a single gulp. Alex wasn’t sure how Kaiser would react to a drunken witness, but she wasn’t about to reprimand a man who had just learned he might be dying.
“Is Kaiser in town yet?” Chris asked.
“He’ll be up any minute.”
“Why did you pick him?”
She walked to the window and looked out at the verdant campus of Millsaps College, with its clock tower rising into the sky. She’d been offered an academic scholarship there as a high school senior. “Kaiser worked with the Investigative Support Unit for a long time. He worked with the guys who invented it, when it was still called Behavioral Science. He’s seen stuff that the suits in Washington can’t even imagine. Reading it in a report just doesn’t communicate the horror of some things, you know?”
Chris nodded. “It’s like reading about diseases in a textbook. You think you know what something is until you see a patient rotting away before your eyes.”
“Exactly. Kaiser gets it. He served in Vietnam before he entered the Bureau, heavy combat. He’s a first-class guy. His wife is the best, too. He met her during a serial murder case. She’s a war photographer.”
“What’s her name?”
“Jordan Glass.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You know her?”
“No. But I do some documentary-film work, as a hobby. Jordan Glass is up there with Nachtwey and those guys. She’s won a Pulitzer.”
“Two, I think.”
Chris drank off the rest of the vodka and went back to the minibar. Alex started at a knock on the door. She answered expecting Kaiser, but Will stood there with a shoe box in his hands.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the improbably heavy box. “What is it?”
“A Sig nine. Untraceable.”
“Thanks, Will. You’d better get going.”
The old detective looked as if he’d been wrestling some dark demons.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel like I let the doc down.”
You have no idea. “Last night doesn’t matter now. It’s going to work out. Get going, Will.”
Kilmer trotted down the hall to the fire stairs.
When Alex went back inside, Chris was drinking bourbon.
“Room service delivers shoes?” he asked.
“Nine-millimeter shoes.” She took the box into the bedroom and stowed it on the top shelf of the closet. “Kaiser doesn’t need to know.”
Chris nodded. “My .38 is down in my car.”
“I’ll get it for you after John leaves.”
“I can definitely see myself using it on a certain person.”
Who? Alex wondered. Thora? Shane Lansing? Both of them? “Chris…you’re not really thinking that, are you?”
“I was raised in Mississippi. I’ve got some redneck in me that’ll never wash out.”
Alex touched his arm. “I hope you’re kidding. Because that wouldn’t solve anything. It would only guarantee that Ben would be raised by someone besides you.”
Chris’s eyes went dead.
/> “What do you think caused the headache?” she asked, trying to divert him from thoughts of Ben.
“I think we were all sedated before the attack. I’m not sure how. Will ate the same turkey and cheese I did, but Ben had frozen pizza. And Ben didn’t drink any beer. We have a watercooler…it could have been that. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, does it? As long as Ben and Will aren’t sick.”
Three strong knocks echoed through the room.
Chris followed Alex to the door.
A tall man with deep-set eyes and longer hair than Chris had expected stood there. Chris could hardly believe the guy had served in Vietnam, because he looked about forty-five. He had to be at least seven years older.
“You gonna invite me in?” asked the newcomer.
Alex smiled and hugged Kaiser, then pulled him into the suite. Chris stepped back and watched the FBI agent set a leather bag down on the sofa. Then Kaiser turned and held out a hand to Chris.
“Dr. Shepard?”
“Yes.” Chris shook his hand.
“Glad to meet you.”
“You, too.”
“I have a lot of catching up to do.”
Alex folded her arms and looked up at Kaiser. “It’s worse than I thought, John. Chris is already in bad trouble. He was hit last night.”
Kaiser’s eyes roamed over Chris for several moments. He was taking in the smell of alcohol, the look of fatigue, even desperation. Alex knew he would have a lot of questions, and right now Chris looked as if he wanted only to climb into one of the beds and go to sleep. Kaiser looked at Alex.
“Somebody fill me in before Dr. Shepard passes out.”
CHAPTER 39
John Kaiser stood at the window overlooking the college. Alex was sitting beside Chris on the bed, holding a trash can for him whenever he vomited. He’d started about twenty minutes into Alex’s summary of events, and the waves were still coming.
“It’s probably the drugs,” he said, clutching his cramping midsection with both arms. “My body’s not used to them, and I’m taking three at once.”
Kaiser didn’t look away from the window when he spoke to Alex. “So you feel like you got active resistance from Webb Tyler?”
Webb Tyler was the SAC of the Jackson field office. It was Tyler that Alex had first approached with her murder theory. “You could say that. Five minutes after I walked into his office, Tyler was praying I’d disappear.”
Kaiser tilted his head to one side, as though looking at something on the ground six floors below. “I’m sure he was.”
“I also think he started complaining to Mark Dodson about me from that first day.”
“Right again.”
“What do you think, John? Is there anything you can do?”
Kaiser turned from the window at last. “You need objective evidence of murder. Some kind, any kind.”
“Is there any way that you can expedite autopsies of the victims?”
“Not without on ongoing murder investigation. The local authorities don’t even believe that crimes have occurred. How can they invite the FBI into a case that doesn’t exist?”
“I know. But I was thinking, Chris may have been injected with some revolutionary drug that’s capable of giving people cancer. Why couldn’t you classify that as a biological weapon? If you did, couldn’t the Bureau investigate it under counterterror rules? Like searching for a weapon of mass destruction?”
Kaiser pursed his lips. “That’s actually not a bad idea. But it’s too soon. Again, we have no evidence that such a drug exists.”
“We have the injection site on Chris’s body.”
“That could be anything. You’d have to isolate the compound from his blood.”
“Can we try that?”
“We don’t know what to look for,” Chris croaked. “A radioactive metal? A retrovirus? A toxin? Is it even traceable?”
Kaiser nodded dejectedly. “And who’s going to do that for us?”
“Fuck!” Alex shouted. “I’m sick of having my hands tied!”
“Pete Connolly will start testing me if I fly up to Sloan-Kettering,” Chris told them. “Maybe he could isolate something.”
“I want to see it,” Kaiser said.
“What?” asked Alex.
“The injection site.”
“Are you serious?”
“I’ve see a lot worse in my time.”
Alex looked at Chris. He felt cold sweat pouring down his face. “What the hell?” he said. “You can look if you want.”
Kaiser glanced at Alex. “Give us a minute?”
She went into the bathroom without a word.
Chris got slowly to his feet, dropped his pants, then lay down on his stomach.
Kaiser checked him as professionally as a physician. “Okay, Doctor. I’m done.”
“Well?” said Chris, slowly pulling his pants back up.
“Do you have any history of drug abuse, Dr. Shepard?”
“None.”
The FBI agent looked deep into his eyes. “Do you believe your wife is capable of murder?”
Chris sat on the edge of the bed. Another wave of nausea was coming. “I didn’t at first. But I didn’t think she was capable of cheating on me, either. And there are some gaps in her past that I know nothing about. Also…”
“What?”
“I adopted my son. My wife’s biological son. Ben has only known me for a couple of years, but if you gave him a choice about where to live after a divorce, he’d choose me over his biological mother. What does that tell you?”
“A lot, if you’re right.”
Kaiser called toward the bathroom, “Alex?”
She came out, a questioning look on her face. “Do you believe me now?”
He reached out and took hold of her hand. “I believe you because I believe in you. But I’m not sure anyone else would.”
“Is there anything you can do to help?”
“At the very least, I can pull some strings and get local surveillance on Andrew Rusk.”
“Will Webb Tyler allow that?”
Kaiser snorted. “Tyler’s not too popular with his own agents. I can think of a few who would help out, as a favor to me. I can’t do anything that will put me on the Bureau radar, but I can get you license plates, background checks, that kind of thing. I just have to do it through the New Orleans field office.”
“I appreciate that, John. But those are baby steps. These guys have been killing people for years, and knowing about my involvement hasn’t even slowed them down.”
Kaiser’s jaw muscles flexed. “This is going to sound cold, but that’s a good thing. If they went to ground now, we’d probably never get them. The best thing we can do right now is poke Andrew Rusk with a sharp stick. I’ll do my part. I’m going to find out everything there is to know about that asshole. Tear apart every company he’s even remotely associated with. Anybody in business with him is going to hate him within two days.”
Alex’s face flushed with hope.
Kaiser walked over to Chris and looked down. “I want you to get that chemotherapy, Doctor. There’s nothing else you can do to help this investigation. Your only job is to survive.”
Chris wanted to respond, but at that moment he doubled over the trash can and began to dry-heave.
Kaiser led Alex into the other room. Chris could hear their voices, but he couldn’t make out individual words. As though compelled by some will outside himself, he pulled back the bedclothes, crawled into the bed, and pulled the sheet up to his neck. By the time Alex returned, he could hardly make out what she was saying.
“Chris? Should I take you to the hospital?”
He shook his head. “No…just need to rest. Kaiser…?”
“He’s gone.”
She stared down at him, her expression vacillating between concern and outright fear. She’s lost too much, he realized. She doesn’t want me to go to sleep…doesn’t want to be alone—
“Is someone taking care of Ben?” she asked.
“Mrs. Johnson,” he whispered. “Number…her number’s in my cell phone.”
“I’ll call her. You sleep. I’ll be watching over you.”
She took hold of his shivering hand and squeezed. Chris squeezed back with what strength he could muster. Then, like a mountain of storm clouds sweeping over a tiny boat, the shadows took him.
Chris awoke in the dark to the chirp of his cell phone. He blinked several times, his dry eyes burning, then turned to the right. He saw a bar of artificial light where the curtains didn’t quite meet. In its faint pink glow, he saw Alex lying asleep on the other bed. She was wearing a shirt but no pants. He scrabbled on the night table until he found his phone.
“Hello?” he said, his mouth sour with vomit.
“Chris?” A frantic female voice.
“Mrs. Johnson?”
“It’s Thora! Where are you?”
“Um…Jackson.”
“Jackson! You left Ben with Mrs. Johnson, and she had no idea where you were!”
“That’s not true. She knew I might go out of town.”
“She told me that some woman named Alex called her about Ben. Who the hell is Alex?”
Chris sat up slowly, then stood and walked into the adjoining den. “Look…I had to drive up here to see a patient at UMC. There’s nothing to freak out about. Where are you?”
“In Greenwood, where I’m supposed to be.” Thora’s voice had lost none of its hysteria.
He clenched his jaw but said nothing.
“Chris? Are you there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What the hell is going on down there?”
He stood at the center of the dark room, his throat and scrotum aching from the spasms of repeated retching, his arm almost too weak to hold up the phone, and fought to keep from screaming from the depths of his soul. He remembered Alex begging him not to confront Thora, but the truth was, he didn’t care about the goddamn investigation. He could never look at Thora again and pretend that everything was fine.
“Answer me!” she shouted. “Are you drunk or something?”
“You’re where you’re supposed to be?” he said.
“Of course I am!”
“What about Shane Lansing? Is he where he’s supposed to be?”
Now there was only silence.
“Or is he where I’m supposed to be?”
