by Alex Kava
“Morning?” Maggie was visibly irritated. She glanced back at the Decon line, which had gotten considerably shorter. “We should be finished in twenty to thirty minutes. Maybe we can talk over dinner. I heard they have a meal and a cot for us.”
Logan grinned and shook his head. “I’m afraid I won’t be staying here. I have other accommodations. But I’ll see you both in the morning.”
To Creed he said, “And I expect you up on the site tomorrow. Not one of your surrogates.” Then, as if he hadn’t just registered a chewing out, he added, “Good to work with you again, dogman.”
He reached out to slap Creed on the shoulder and Grace lunged for his hand, teeth bared, a growl deep in her throat.
Logan’s eyes went wide before Creed settled her back against his chest.
“Good grief, dogman. Send that little bitch back home.”
“She saved an elderly woman today who probably would have died if Grace hadn’t found her.”
Fake smile still planted on his face, but now with teeth gritted, Logan told Creed, “Yeah, well, I’m not paying you to find elderly women.”
He headed toward the street where Creed could see headlights waiting for him.
Maggie watched him leave, then turned back to Creed and said, “He’s a real piece of work. Are you two friends?”
“Not even close. I owe him a favor and he’s collecting it.”
43.
O’Dell had the women’s locker room to herself after a couple of female rescue workers left. It felt good to be clean again and in dry clothes. She wished she had thought to bring another pair of hiking boots. She scraped and wiped off the mud as best she could, then pulled them back on over a warm pair of fresh socks.
She was meeting Creed for the 7:30 dinner. The cafeteria staff had asked that the crews separate into two groups so they could accommodate all the workers and volunteers. She had been trying to get ahold of Dr. Gunther. After leaving several more voice messages O’Dell gave up. But as she was stowing her gear and overnight case in a locker, her phone pinged.
At first she didn’t recognize the phone number for the text that had just come through. But the message left no doubt who it was from:
AT RALPH’S. COME IN THE BACK DOOR.
She remembered that Ralph’s was the meat locker they were using to store the body recovered from the government facility. She tapped a reply:
BE THERE IN 10.
She asked one of the volunteers for directions to Ralph’s. The shortcut through the parking lot led her directly to the front door. Which was padlocked and had a sign warning to KEEP OUT. O’Dell made her way to the alley behind the building and found the back door. The heavy wood creaked as she shoved it open and darkness greeted her on the other side.
“Dr. Gunther? It’s Agent O’Dell.”
Suddenly a door down the hallway opened and light seeped out around the doorjamb.
“Are you alone?” the old woman asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Then come on down here. I don’t have all night.”
The room was set up with stainless steel work stations and multiple sinks. Three refrigerator doors lined one wall. O’Dell found Dr. Gunther in baggy scrubs, teetering on a footstool that she had pushed up to one of the tables. The body on the table was the man with the shaved scalp. O’Dell noticed the hand they’d found on a stainless steel tray on one of the counters.
The old woman jutted her chin in the direction of a desk where there was a box of latex gloves, another with shoe covers, and still another with surgical masks. Over the back of the desk chair were a couple of scrubs tops. O’Dell pulled on the necessities and joined Dr. Gunther.
“Sons of bitches padlocked the place. Don’t know how they expected me to get in. I’ll be registering a complaint with their boss.” Then she snorted through her face mask and added, “Actually, I think they didn’t want anybody inside.”
“So how did you get in?”
“Ralph gave me a key for the back door. You closed it, right?” She shot O’Dell a look.
O’Dell nodded.
“Why would they ask you to help recover the bodies if they didn’t want you to do the autopsies?”
“Maybe because they don’t want anyone to find out what really happened to these men.”
If that were true, it hadn’t stopped her. She’d already cleaned the body. Instruments crowded a tray beside the doctor. A tool that looked like hedge trimmers sat on the counter, and O’Dell knew it would be used to cut the rib cage. No Y incision had been made. No samples had been taken and cataloged. Empty vials waited to be filled and labeled.
Without the mud O’Dell could now clearly see the U.S. Airborne tattoo with an eagle beneath it. What she thought had been burns farther down his arm now looked more like a large red bruise. Not a rash, but a bruise underneath the skin. Small white blisters like tapioca bubbled up around the edges. There were large red patches like this over most of his body. It reminded her of burns because in some places the skin had torn away. But this was different.
“What caused the skin to do this?” O’Dell knew it couldn’t have happened postmortem.
“I’ve only seen something like this once before. Years ago. Back in the late sixties. My husband was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base outside Pensacola, Florida. I was just a medical student at the time and he let me assist him. They were doing some kind of trials, spraying what they called tracer BG. It was supposed to be a harmless compound with fluorescent particles so they could track how the wind might affect an enemy attack with a biological weapon. We must have had two dozen airmen come in coughing up blood or bleeding from the ears. But there were blisters, too, and red patches almost like these.”
“Do you know what they actually sprayed?”
“Oh no, they never would tell us even while we were trying to treat those young men. They insisted the symptoms would go away. That what they used was completely safe. So safe they ended up conducting nine more tests. My husband was furious. It almost cost him his best friend.”
“Is it possible this facility was testing something similar?”
“I have no idea. But whatever this is, it’s much more potent. Watch this.” Dr. Gunther gently put an index finger on the bruise that covered his abdomen. She applied very little pressure and moved her finger an inch to the right. The skin fell away and peeled back with the motion of her finger.
She looked up at O’Dell over the top of her protective glasses. “How in the world am I supposed to conduct an autopsy?”
“Could it have been some kind of allergic reaction or accidental exposure?”
“Possibly. It would have been extreme. There’s more,” she said, and scooted over to hover above his face. With the same index finger and her thumb she pushed his lips up over his teeth, exposing his gums. The teeth were stained a rust color more prominent at the top, where the gums had peeled and bled.
The doctor waited for O’Dell’s surprise, then dropped the lips back, again accidentally tearing one with the slightest movement.
“It’s almost like the mud held him together.”
“He was hooked up to some kind of electrodes.” Dr. Gunther pointed to the clean circles on both temples. “And injected many times.” She moved his left arm for O’Dell to see all the puncture marks.
“It was a research facility,” O’Dell said, but her words sounded hollow even to her, with no passion to defend them. “We already suspected that he didn’t die in the landslide.”
“No, he certainly didn’t,” she said definitively.
“Did this . . . whatever he was exposed to—was it the cause of his death?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Help me sit him up.”
O’Dell stared at the woman, but she was already tugging at the
man’s right shoulder.
“Help me,” the woman instructed. “Be careful not to touch his skin. I don’t want to tear it.”
O’Dell moved around to the other side of the table and gripped his left shoulder. They raised him to a sitting position.
“Take a look at his back,” Dr. Gunther insisted.
Still holding on to the body, O’Dell shifted so she could see whatever it was the woman wanted her to see. She found more bruising, but that wasn’t what Dr. Gunther was showing her. In the middle of his shoulder blade was a small black hole.
They eased him back onto the table.
“So he was shot, too.”
“Yes.”
“The first man they found—the scientist. Wasn’t he shot in the head?”
The doctor glanced around the room. “That’s what I was told, but he’s not here. I checked all the refrigerators. There is no other body.”
“I thought Ross told us he was brought here.”
“Perhaps they have his body at the funeral home. That’s where they’re keeping the victims from the landslide.”
“Or they moved him already.”
“Well, there’s just this gentleman here now. And the woman’s hand.”
“You can tell the hand belonged to a woman?”
“I need to look more closely but it’s small and has characteristics of a female. Also there’s a gold ring with diamonds on the thumb.”
“Men sometimes wear rings on their thumbs.”
“Yes, but not many men wear red fingernail polish.”
44.
Creed called Hannah to let her know everyone was safe.
“I didn’t mean for Grace to go to work.”
“I know,” Creed said. He would have tried to keep it from her but Hannah always had a way of finding things out. “She’s okay.”
“She better be okay. I sent her with Jason so she wouldn’t be moping around here missing you. Not to work.”
As he watched the Jack Russell terrier, he realized how much he liked having her here with him. She was curled up in a dog bed beside his cot. She had tried to keep one eye open, checking on him, but finally gave in to exhaustion. Now he could see her breathing heavy, fast asleep.
Bolo was sprawled on the floor at the foot of Creed’s cot. One of the volunteers had set up two cots in the far corner of the gymnasium, making more room for Creed to be comfortable with the dogs and away from others so Bolo could relax. Still, the big dog lifted his head every time someone moved in one of the cots close by. He looked to see where the noise had come from, glanced over at Creed, then plopped his head down.
Jason and Dr. Avelyn had found a place about five cots over. They had eaten at the first dinner, then fed both dogs while Creed cleaned up. If he stood up he could see them.
At 7:15 he waved at Jason to come over. They had agreed Jason would stay with the sleeping dogs while Creed met Maggie for dinner. But now as Creed made his way through the cafeteria, he couldn’t find her. She seemed to have disappeared. Or maybe she changed her mind.
He hadn’t been able to figure Maggie O’Dell out. Creed didn’t usually have much trouble with women. Relationships were a different story, but most of the time women enjoyed his company.
He had worked with Maggie on two other cases in the last six months. One that ended in Blackwater River State Forest had almost gotten the two of them killed along with Bolo.
He knew there was chemistry between them. Could see she felt it as much as he did. But this guy, Ben—Logan had finally given him a name—had a hold on her. It was just as well. It looked like they’d be working together again, and Creed had only one rule about women—he never slept with women he worked with.
Still, he found himself watching the door.
Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Creed turned to find Oliver Vance, his tray piled with empty, dirty dishes.
“Thanks again for helping today.”
“Have you gotten any word on Mrs. Hamlet?”
“Last I heard she was doing good. They’re keeping her overnight at the hospital.” He waved at the spot he and his crew were vacating—the entire end of a table in the corner of the cafeteria. “Get your dinner. Bring me a cup of coffee. I’ll hold down a couple spots.”
Creed glanced at the door. Workers were coming in for the second dinner shift. But still no Maggie.
“Cream or sugar?” he asked Vance.
“Both. And grab me a piece of cherry pie if there’s any left.”
“There’s cherry pie?”
“Homemade.”
Creed was still grinning at the big man’s enthusiasm when he headed for the line. That’s when he saw Maggie come in the cafeteria door. She stopped and her eyes searched for him among the tables. She had her FBI windbreaker on but had definitely showered and changed from earlier, yet her hair was tousled and damp, her face flushed as if she had jogged there. When her eyes finally found him she smiled. He waited at the end of the line while she weaved around the tables and politely broke through the clusters of rescue workers, turning some heads as she passed by.
For a few minutes he didn’t even notice the pounding in his own head.
45.
Creed had hoped to have Maggie to himself despite the crowded cafeteria. Vance had ended up having a second piece of pie and a third cup of coffee, talking endlessly when Maggie asked if he had family affected by the landslide. He did not. He actually lived across the state, but that didn’t stop him from bringing up photos on his cell phone of the wife and two girls he already missed terribly. By the time he got to the family dog pictures he realized he’d rambled. He clicked the phone off and tucked it into his shirt pocket.
“Your dogs are pretty damned amazing,” he told Creed, as if suddenly embarrassed and trying to stop hogging the attention. “Jason told me they’re all rescues that people dumped at the end of your property. Is that true?”
“Yeah, a lot of them are. I’ve gotten several from shelters. The breed oftentimes isn’t as important as the dog’s drive.”
“And the trainer,” Maggie offered.
“I’ve seen a lot of handlers get in the way, though.”
The big man was nodding and grinning. “Ain’t that the truth. One of my men worked with a FEMA handler and dog today. The dog alerted and they spent the next three hours digging up what they expected was a victim. Turned out it was a busted refrigerator with a whole lot of spoiled meat.”
“What was the trainer using for a reward?”
Vance shrugged.
“If they use food it might account for the dog alerting to the site. That’s why it’s best to use a toy.”
“Well, I sure wish I could have you back out with my crew tomorrow, but I know your boss and Agent O’Dell here are expecting you to work their site.”
“If they don’t have the floodwater diverted, we won’t be able to do a thing,” Maggie said.
“That must be where I saw the heavy equipment being trucked to. Funny, the feds will bust their asses to get anything necessary to recover a couple of dead guys, but I’ve been screaming for a couple more bulldozers and a few more dogs and all I hear are excuses.”
By the time they left Vance, the gymnasium lights had been dimmed. Creed had to strain to lead them through the rows of cots, most with already-sleeping occupants. Jason was stretched out on Creed’s cot watching a football game on his phone. When he saw them he sat up and gathered his stuff in silence.
Grace’s dog bed was between the two cots. She glanced up and wagged. Then she wiggled and started to get up when she saw Maggie, but Creed put his hand out for her to stay put. Maggie came around and patted her head as she sat on the cot that was saved for her.
Creed talked to Jason in whispers, making plans for the next day. He wanted him to stay with Grace. He also gave him a crumpled piece of paper from his daypac
k. On it was a name and phone number.
“This guy’s supposed to have something for me. Would you mind calling him?”
“Yeah, I can do that.” But Jason still hesitated. “You sure you don’t want to stay and rest? I don’t mind going back up with Bolo.”
“I appreciate that, but Logan made it clear he wants me on the site.”
Jason didn’t press it. They said they’d see each other at breakfast and he left for his own cot.
Creed turned back around to find that Bolo had his head in Maggie’s lap and Grace was up on Maggie’s cot, her head already on the pillow.
“Grace—”
“I invited her up.” She hugged Bolo around the neck, then pointed him to his dog bed at the foot of the cots and he obeyed.
Maggie already had her boots off. She threw her windbreaker across the blanket, then peeled off her sweatshirt, leaving a T-shirt and her jeans. She snuggled back behind Grace.
Creed pulled off boots and shirt, leaving on his T-shirt. He was about to lie back when Maggie sat up, staring at him with concern.
“Are you still bleeding?” She pointed at the stain over his chest.
“I might have leaked a little.” After his shower he had wrapped a fresh ACE bandage around his ribs. In the process he’d opened a few cuts. He lifted up his T-shirt to check.
“You shouldn’t have it wrapped that tightly.”
“The medic had it even tighter.”
“Must be old-school. It actually keeps you from breathing deeply. You could get pneumonia. Do you have more ACE bandages?”
He reached to the foot of his cot and pulled another roll out from the side pocket of his duffel. He wasn’t looking forward to doing this again. It had been a challenge the first time.
Maggie held out her hand and he surrendered the roll.
“Take off your shirt,” she said. When he hesitated she added, “We’ll do it without too much pressure.”
He smiled at her and waited for her to realize what she had said. When she did, she rolled her eyes at him, but he noticed the slight blush.
