by Alex Kava
“When I was with Logan’s unit I knew he was selling stuff on the black market.”
She looked surprised.
“He always had free samples, whether it was pills or designer running shoes, sunglasses or protein bars. He was giving his guys stuff. I think some of it was experimental. But he was selling some of it, too. There was this Afghan kid named Jabar. Logan had him coming in and out of the camp so often that everybody knew him. So he never got stopped. Never got checked.”
Creed pushed his plate aside and stared out the window again. The memory was fresh because of the recent nightmares. Seven years and he could still see that kid’s crooked smile.
“One day Jabar came into camp and he was acting strange. Erratic. He was arguing with Logan about something. My dog started alerting. We were in the middle of camp. It wasn’t like we were out anywhere that IEDs could be. It didn’t occur to me that it was Jabar he was alerting to until I saw the kid reach under his jacket.”
“My God. He had explosives?”
Creed nodded. “I woke up in a military hospital. Later I found out that Logan was being hailed as a hero for saving his platoon from a suicide bomber. No one even questioned that maybe he was the one who put all of them in jeopardy in the first place.”
“Wait a minute. You said you owed Logan a favor. This sounds more like he owes you for keeping silent.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? I landed on my dog when the bomb went off. Thankfully he wasn’t hurt. I loved that dog. Before the explosion I was even going to sign up for another tour of duty so we wouldn’t be separated.” He saw the look on Maggie’s face. She knew where he was going.
“But dogs are considered the military’s.”
“Equipment. That’s how they were categorized. At least back then. Rufus was reassigned to a new handler. I tried everything I could think of to bring him home. For four years he was my rock, my stability, my life. Nobody would listen. Nobody except Logan.”
“Rufus is the chocolate Lab that sleeps beside your bed.”
Creed nodded, impressed that she remembered from her brief visit about a month ago.
“Logan made it happen. He got me my dog back.”
60.
They were headed back to the high school gymnasium. O’Dell felt a bit numb with exhaustion. She knew it had been tough for Creed to share what he had. They were a lot alike in that respect—both slow to trust and stubborn about keeping their personal lives personal.
They walked side by side along the narrow sidewalk and she hated that each time their arms brushed she felt a spark of electricity. Suddenly she was keenly aware that later that night they’d be lying in their cots watching each other, less than two feet separating their bodies. Those broad shoulders, six-pack abs—and she imagined what he’d feel like beneath her touch. The scrape of his bristled jaw against her skin.
Later she’d realize the irony that she had been thinking about sparks when she saw the first flames. She wasn’t totally familiar with the layout of the town, but she knew immediately that they were coming from Ralph’s.
Creed pulled out his cell phone and was punching in numbers. She left him behind. Took the shortcut through the alley. The front door would still be padlocked. She’d take a chance that the back door might be open. She was half sick to find that it was. She didn’t get far. A body lay just inside the door, and in the darkness O’Dell tripped over it. Her hands came down in a puddle of what she suspected was blood, still warm and sticky.
She heard a gurgle. Maybe not dead.
The door opened and Creed stood against it. In the light that seeped in from the back alley, O’Dell could now see Dr. Gunther’s crumpled body. Her throat was slashed.
“We need to pull her out,” Creed yelled.
Already smoke billowed at them from deep inside.
O’Dell helped Creed lift the old woman, and she was sickened by the rag-doll feel of her body. He carried her to the back parking lot and laid her down on the concrete. In seconds he was on his knees, his hands trying to staunch the bleeding. But O’Dell could see the gap was too wide.
She could hear shouts and calls from the street on the other side of the building. Sirens filled the night air. So loud. So close.
The old woman was gone and yet Creed kept his hands pressed into the wound. O’Dell knelt on the opposite side and searched for a pulse. She didn’t know what else to do. She was worthless to the dying. She never had a clue what to do or say. Only after they were dead did she know what her job was.
Volunteer firefighters made their way into the building. The sound of water rushed from a nearby hydrant. The heat was enough that she was drenched in sweat on a night that had made her shiver earlier.
O’Dell imagined everything inside would be lost to the flames. Everything including the body and the severed hand. Every piece of evidence of what may have happened at the government facility that once sat up on the mountain.
And O’Dell couldn’t help thinking it was no coincidence that this should happen only hours after she had told Peter Logan about the strange bruising and rash that covered the dead man inside. The man whose body was now being incinerated.
61.
You think Logan started the fire?” Creed asked Maggie and watched her face in the flickering light of the blaze that engulfed Ralph’s Meat Locker.
Her eyes had been wild with adrenaline just moments ago when they pulled the woman from the building. Now he worried as she stared, almost hypnotized by the dancing flames.
Rescue crews who had been coming in from a day of working the landslide had joined the firefighters. They were hosing down the neighboring buildings, hoping to keep the fire from spreading. A second explosion inside the brick structure prevented them from entering.
Creed felt the spray of cold water raining down even as the heat from the flames felt like it would scorch his skin. He and Maggie stood in the back alley, guarding the old woman’s body, now covered by a tarp.
Earlier, one of the medics had taken over, shoving Creed aside. But he knew it was too late. The blood had been warm on his hands but there was no sign of life. No fluttering eyelids. No beat of a pulse under his fingers. Not a single gasp or breath.
Maggie had told him the old woman was Dr. Gunther, the medical examiner. And then she went silent. Now she stood, arms crossed over her chest, looking angry and annoyed that the firefighters had asked them to keep back and stay with the body. Maybe it wasn’t anger as much as frustration. That’s what he was feeling—frustrated that there wasn’t anything more he could do.
But then out of the silence, Maggie said, “Logan did this.”
It was almost as if she was telling herself. She didn’t even seem to have heard his question.
Just when Creed was about to ask again, she said, “You don’t think he’s capable of doing something like this?”
“If he thought it might save his own skin, I think he might be capable of doing just about anything. But why would he do this? Especially after being such a pain in the ass about recovering those bodies?”
Now Maggie’s eyes darted around. Was she looking for Logan? Or was she worried they’d be overheard? No one was paying attention to the two of them. People were rushing by, once even bumping a hose over the tarp, not noticing as Creed pulled it up and readjusted it.
“The body we dug up yesterday had a strange bruising all over it. At first Dr. Gunther thought it looked like chemical burns.”
“There’s a lot of weird stuff that leaked into the mud.”
She shook her head, moved closer to him, and turned so that she was facing him. “They weren’t postmortem.”
“She was sure about that?”
“The skin had bubbled up in places. We discounted burns. It almost looked like a rash, except that it was deeper. More like a bruise. And in some areas the skin practically fell away with the slightest t
ouch.”
“Fell away? Not from decomp?”
“He wasn’t dead long enough for that kind of decomposition.”
He realized that she had quieted her tone. Anything less and she’d be whispering.
“What did she think it was from?”
“She hadn’t been able to make that determination. I’m guessing that’s what brought her back here tonight.”
“Why come at night? Wasn’t she hired to process the bodies we recovered?”
“Someone padlocked the front door. Ralph gave her a key to the back door. Otherwise she wouldn’t have had access until Logan allowed it.”
“So Logan didn’t really want anyone examining the bodies?”
“I guess not. But here’s the weird part. I told him about the condition of the body, and he seemed surprised. He knew about the bullet hole in the back, but he pretended not to know about the strange bruising.”
“So you think this is how he prevents anyone else from knowing?”
She was biting her lower lip when she nodded this time.
“Only one problem,” she said. “He knows that I know.”
62.
Creed hadn’t noticed in the last twenty-four hours whether or not Maggie was carrying a weapon. Now as she sat on her cot and peeled off her sweatshirt he saw the shoulder holster snug against her side, just under her left breast. There was an unsettling nervous energy about her. Even the dogs sensed it.
All the way back she had been obsessed with her cell phone, leaving messages, then checking every five minutes. She had it beside her. Creed sat down opposite her on his cot, so close their knees brushed.
“Maggie, what’s going on?”
“I’m trying to find out.” Her eyes were on the phone, waiting. “Logan told me recovering the bodies was only part of their mission. He said the facility had samples of Level 3 and Level 4 pathogens.”
“Why would they have those?”
“They’re a research facility.” She shrugged. “It’s actually not that unusual. Unfortunate, but not unusual. If they were trying to come up with a vaccine or antidote, they’d need samples of the real stuff.”
“Wait a minute. What are we talking about? You mean like anthrax?”
“Anthrax. Possibly the bird flu. Maybe Ebola.”
Creed took a deep breath and winced. He was hanging on to the final threads of the pain medicine Dr. Avelyn had given him.
“He said the samples are stored in a lockbox. He thinks someone was trying to steal it. That they murdered Dr. Shaw and Dr. Carrington and these other men and hoped it would be covered up by the landslide.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” he asked.
“I am telling you.”
“When did you find out?”
“Just before I came to get you.”
“But you’re only telling me now?”
“Logan told me in confidence. The bastard,” she mumbled. “Now I don’t even know if it’s true.”
“Wouldn’t Ben know about all this?”
She rubbed her hands over her face, wiping at the exhaustion.
When she didn’t answer he realized it was one of the phone calls she was waiting for.
Creed let it go and asked instead, “Do you think this dead man—the one with the strange bruising—do you think he might have been exposed to one of those deadly samples?”
Her eyes looked up at him and he could see that she had already thought about this.
Creed said the obvious: “If he was, isn’t there a chance that you and Dr. Gunther were exposed?”
“We had gloves and masks on. We didn’t come in contact with any of his bodily fluids.”
“Are you sure?”
His eyes held hers until he saw the realization strike her. She grabbed his hand.
“I know what you’re thinking. Your hands were drenched in her blood. I can’t say for certain that we weren’t exposed, but I do know that she was careful. She hadn’t even cut him or taken any blood.”
Her phone rang, startling both of them.
She grabbed it, looked at the screen, and answered without a greeting.
“Thanks for calling me back. Have you heard from Logan?” Her face remained unchanged as she listened. “He told me earlier that you found where the facility is buried. I need you to take me there.”
63.
At midnight O’Dell finally got a call from Ben.
“You sounded upset. Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay. You need to tell me what the hell is going on.”
She was talking in a forced whisper so she wouldn’t wake those in the cots around her. She saw Creed stir but she knew Dr. Avelyn had given him another dose of pain meds. She hurried to find an exit.
Clear skies, but the air was crisp and still held the smell of the smoldering fire blocks away.
“Maggie, all I know is that the second body you dug up was shot in the back. And that Dr. Shaw is now believed to be one of the victims.”
“You had to know that this facility had Level 3 and Level 4 pathogens.”
She waited out his silence.
“Is that what Logan told you?”
“It would have been nice if you had told me.”
“We suspected it,” he said. “But I swear to you, Maggie, I didn’t know when I asked you to go down.”
“I can’t believe you let me dig around in the mud knowing what could have been mixed in the debris.”
“The lockboxes they use wouldn’t have been broken open.”
“Did you know that landslides can be so strong and violent that they can literally rip a body apart?”
“No, I didn’t know that. But I understand that may have happened to Dr. Shaw.”
“If they can rip buildings to shreds and dismember bodies, why wouldn’t a landslide be able to breach your lockbox?”
“It hasn’t been breached. I understand they’re still getting a signal from it.”
“I can’t believe that I had to hear about this from Logan. When did you think you were going to tell me, Ben?”
He was quiet again. She hated that calm he could manage in the middle of any storm. He had performed surgeries in Iraq and Afghanistan with mortars firing around him. He had treated patients with Marburg in Sierra Leone. He had treated Maggie and her former boss after the two of them had been exposed to Ebola. And always he maintained that disciplined calm that could be as reassuring as it was annoying. Right now, O’Dell found it completely annoying.
“I examined the body of the dead man last night with Dr. Gunther, the medical examiner. His skin looked like it had been exposed to something, Ben. Something extreme.”
“What did the ME think it was?”
“She wasn’t sure. But she thought she’d seen something like it before.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the 1960s, when the U.S. Army sprayed some experimental simulant over Eglin Air Force Base. She told me airmen were spitting up blood and bleeding from their ears. She thought the blisters and rash on the man we dug up looked similar.”
“How could she know this so many years later?”
“It obviously made a hell of an impression on her when she saw it the first time.”
“If they can ship the body up here, I’ll take a look at it myself.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“I’ll talk to Logan about it.”
“Someone set the place on fire tonight. Everything went up in flames.”
He was quiet again, then said, “I didn’t know. Maggie, I didn’t know.”
She stopped herself from sharing her suspicions about Logan. Then realized it was because she no longer trusted Ben. She had been waiting all evening to talk to him about all this, hoping he had answers or at least a better explanation for why he
had kept such vital information from her.
“Look, Maggie, maybe I can talk to this Dr. Gunther. If she can explain what she observed, I might be able to help narrow down what happened to this man.”
At that moment she realized that even Ben was being kept out of the loop.
“Unfortunately she can’t do that, Ben. She’s dead. The same person who started the fire cut Dr. Gunther’s throat.”
More silence.
Then he said, “I’m coming down there first thing in the morning.”
It didn’t matter. O’Dell didn’t bother to tell him she would already be gone by the time he arrived.
64.
Dr. Avelyn had given Creed another dose of pain meds to help him sleep, but they weren’t working. Instead he dozed in and out of consciousness. Twice he noticed Maggie’s cot was empty except for Grace curled up on the pillow. Around midnight he’d crawled out of his bed, fighting the exhaustion but needing to make sure she was okay.
“Which way did Maggie go?” he asked Grace.
She looked over her shoulder toward the back exit. Sure enough, Creed saw her pacing up and down the sidewalk with her cell phone pressed to the side of her face.
He went back to his bed and pulled the covers up, waiting for her to return. He must have dozed off again. When he opened his eyes she was curled next to Grace, but in the dim light of the gymnasium he could see her watching him. He pulled himself up on one elbow to meet her eyes.
“Why is this so important to you?” he asked.
She seemed to be thinking about it.
“A few years ago my boss and I were exposed to Ebola.” She pulled herself up on one elbow, too, and Grace tucked herself even closer.
“Grace goes home with me, no matter what,” Creed said, and he saw Maggie smile at the little dog. “Go on. How did you get exposed?”
“A note led us to a house where we thought there might be a hostage being held. The note was actually delivered to the Behavioral Science Unit—not an easy feat to accomplish. Assistant Director Cunningham took it seriously enough that he insisted on being part of the response team.”
