The Arms of Death

by Maggie Foster

  Ginny was fascinated. “What did he see?”

  “He saw the man doing something on the office side of the house, then stick his arm inside, then wait until the flames caught.”

  “Wow!”

  “Yes. Well the next thing that happened was another boy climbed up to see what was going on, or maybe the first one motioned for the other two to join him. I’m unclear on that point. Anyway, the second boy had a cellphone with a camera. He pulled it out and started to video the scene, thinking he could post it online.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then, one of the boys got scared and decided to go get help. So they climbed down, had an argument about telling their parents, got caught by the custodial set of parents who called 9-1-1, and that’s why the fire brigade got here as soon as it did.”

  “It was lucky they were up the tree at the right time, then.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly luck, as it turned out.”

  “What?”

  “The first boy, the one with the binoculars, confessed he’d seen the man before, at least twice. That boy lives in the house behind Uncle’s and his bedroom window overlooks both backyards. He’s been spying on us! Ever since Terry and I arrived. The little monster thinks he’s Dick Tracy. He wants to be a detective and he’s been keeping notes on all our comings and goings.”

  Ginny started to grin. “And what else did he see?”

  “Well, the master bedroom is on the back side of the house.”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  Ginny could not help laughing aloud. “And the police confiscated his notes?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, Mark.”

  “Humph. Well, the thing I wanted to tell you is he thinks he might have seen that man again on Thursday morning, when you were over here.”

  Ginny was suddenly sobered. “You think he saw me, the arsonist, I mean, not the child.”

  “I think it’s possible. You might have attracted his attention. So, when I heard you say you’d had an accident I was afraid there might be a connection.”

  “I hope not.” But it made sense. The timing fit. Ginny took a careful breath. “I really appreciate you calling, Mark. Thanks for sharing that with me.”

  “You’re welcome. When do you think you might be allowed out?”

  “I’ll have to call you after I talk to the doctor on Monday.”

  “All right. We’ll wait to hear from you then. Take care.”

  “I will. Goodbye.”

  Ginny hung up the phone, thought for a minute, then picked it up again and dialed directory assistance.

  “Dallas Fire Marshall’s office, please.”

  Officer Michel was out on a call. Would she please use the following number to reach him? She did and got the answering service.

  “Officer Michel, I would be very grateful if you would call me this evening. I may have some news for you.”

  She glanced at the clock. Dinnertime and she was pretty sure she could smell homemade stew. Sure enough, the smell was getting closer and she was not surprised when her mother entered with a tray. She brought her mother up to speed, then settled down to wait for the fire investigator’s call.

  * * *

  “Ginny, it’s Officer Michel on the line.”

  “Thank you,” Ginny picked up the phone.

  “Good evening, Officer Michel. Thank you for returning my call. You may not have heard that I met with an unfortunate accident on Wednesday, at the ice rink.”

  “I am sorry to hear that. I hope you are recovering.”

  “I am, thank you. The point is, the person who arranged my little accident was a chemist.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line and Ginny could almost hear the wheels in his mind turn. “Are you suggesting the same person is responsible for both the fire at the Craig’s house and your accident, the details of which you have not yet told me?”

  “I am.” Ginny repeated what Steve had told her about the chemical compound. “And he said almost the same thing you did, that the chemicals are readily available at the local home and garden store and that it would take a chemist to know how to make use of them.”

  “That is very interesting. Please repeat the name of the chemicals for me.”

  “Steve called it a ‘polyform steel epoxy.’ He said he had taken it to the University for analysis and I’m sure he’d be willing to give you more specific information.” She read off the rink contact number and heard Officer Michel read it back to her. “Ask for Steve Cheshire.”

  “Thank you, Miss Forbes. I will follow up on this.”

  Ginny said goodbye and hung up the phone. She was just settling back into the pillows, a smile playing on her lips at the thought of Professor Craig’s inamorata, when she suddenly remembered she had forgotten to ask Officer Michel what the video showed. Oh, well, she could ask him later. She made a note on the pad she kept at her bedside for such thoughts, then dismissed the investigation from her mind. There would be plenty of time to think about it tomorrow.

  * * *

  Chapter 43

  Saturday

  On Saturday morning, Ginny felt well enough to come downstairs. The concussion brought with it a long list of inconvenient discharge instructions, among which were: no jarring movements, no alcohol, and no caffeine. She sipped the decaffeinated coffee and wondered if it was her imagination or could she really taste the difference?

  As far as her head was concerned, she’d been extraordinarily lucky. There were no alarming neurological deficits, and the shakiness would resolve in time.

  Her chest was another matter. The cracked ribs could not be treated. She’d been told before she left the hospital she should do painful and difficult deep breathing exercises (but avoid coughing, which increased intracranial pressure) or risk pneumonia. Ginny had been trying hard to behave, but it hurt more than she cared to admit.

  What’s more, she wasn’t sure her brain was working at full capacity. Something was niggling at her, trying to break through to conscious thought, but she couldn’t pin it down. Something to do with work? No. One of the good things about shift work was that you didn’t have to take it home with you. Somewhere she was supposed to be? No. In spite of the prohibition against looking at her computer, she had peeked yesterday and found nothing on her calendar that wouldn’t wait. Something about the investigation? Yes! The documents. Hal’s documents.

  Ginny tried to remember when she had spoken to Hal last about those documents. She remembered telling Elaine to look in the car, which she had done, and she remembered telling Jim what they were and what they meant, but she couldn’t remember telling Hal about them.

  So either she had lost part of her short-term memory after all, or he didn’t know. She needed to tell him, or tell him again, whichever it was. She located her phone and settled down to compose a text message.

  * * *

  Jim rose on Saturday morning feeling like a new man. He’d slept straight through, a total of sixteen hours, and, with a hot meal in him and clean clothes on his back, he felt ready to face whatever the day might bring.

  Checking his messages showed him off the hook for almost everything for the next two days, the exception being an e-mail from Chip Galloway containing the final DNA analysis of the lethal virus. Jim set it aside. He would go over it in detail later.

  He settled down in front of his computer and pulled up the Victims list. He had no idea what he was looking for, but couldn’t shake the feeling the answer to the whole mystery lay in the connection between those first two murders and this one.

  He looked over all the information he and Ginny had collected. The only link between the victims seemed to be their hobby.

  Jim stared at his screen for a moment, thinking about humankind. Man was a social animal. People liked to belong, to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Obituaries were heavy with lists of groups the deceased had belonged to, all the way back to childhood in some instances.


  Jim checked the information he’d gotten from the CDC, then plugged the name of the first victim, Peter Ward, into the search engine. An hour later, he had a list of the genealogy societies Mr. Ward had belonged to. Another hour’s search gave him a similar list for the second victim, Matthew Marsh. They had three organizations in common. What about Professor Craig?

  Jim could not find Craig’s obituary online, but he did find a number of articles about the eminent genealogist and some lists of his affiliations. Again, there was some crossover with the other two dead men.

  He looked up the first organization and his eyebrows rose. Not just a bunch of wizened old scholars. This organization was a million plus strong, worldwide, and did charity work.

  The second organization had military roots and was even bigger. Most of the members could claim service and ancestors who had served.

  Jim worked his way down the list. He was almost at the bottom when he hit something a little more interesting.

  The two earlier victims shared one organization Professor Craig did not seem to have joined, The Honorable Society of Armigerous Immigrants (HSAI).

  When Jim plugged the name into the search engine, he did not get a home page for it, as he had for the others. Instead, he got a site that listed grave locations. The entries had pictures of the tombstones, with names, dates, places, biographical information, and links to family members.

  What was interesting, and different, was that one of the names linked to that organization was Williams.

  It wasn’t hard to find a genealogy tree for Hal online with his parents and grandparents listed. His legal name, it turned out, was Henry Aaron Williams. Humph. He looked like a Henry.

  Hal’s father and grandfather both had entries on the gravestone site and both were listed as members of the HSAI. Following the links, he found that Hal’s great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were also members.

  Jim navigated back to the other two dead men. Following their links brought up the same results. Each had a father, a grandfather, and a great-grandfather who had been members of the HSAI.

  Jim sat back and considered this for a moment. What were the chances that Hal, too, was a member of that society? It had all the appearance of something passed down from father to son.

  If so, membership in that organization was a link between the two dead men and Hal Williams. Between two men killed by that very special virus and Hal, who had access to that very special virus.

  * * *

  Hal stared down at the message on his phone. He read it three times, then walked over to his desk and sat down.

  It was carefully worded. She had thought he’d be upset. She was right. He was.

  She’d found those documents, those damned documents. Not only had she found them, she’d read them. She knew what they meant. Well, not all of what they meant, just that he wasn’t descended from Benjamin Williams.

  Hal’s eyes drifted, unseeing, to the Ancestral Fan Chart on his wall. He was remembering what Professor Craig had said to him at the Reception, the night before the Conference started.

  “Mr. Williams! Hal! I have the most astounding news! You must come up to my office and see what I’ve found. It’s a medical log, a record of all the visits a physician made during his life. It’s the most extraordinary primary source I have ever seen.”

  He had pulled the log and the letter out of his briefcase and showed them to Hal. They were encased in plastic. Delicate, ragged even, pages of a long dead era, written by long dead hands.

  “See how he makes his entry? I know it’s a bit difficult to decipher. I will quote, 'It is a shame he had not already begotten sons by his poor Rachel for it is certain he can sire none now, even should he live to remarry.’ And then the later entry about her, 'Aug 12, 1777 - Born today to Mercy Williams, a fine, healthy boy.’ It’s a remarkable story. The two of them working out their problems in that way. A good solution, don’t you think?”

  What had Ginny said, about the article? He read the text again. She had read Professor Craig’s article.

  That article hadn’t been published anywhere that he knew of. He had erased the notes from Craig’s office computer and made sure nothing could be retrieved from his home office.

  So where had she seen it?

  If a copy still existed, he had to make sure it went away. The original documents, too. Also, he needed to clean house. He couldn’t use the virus again. It was too risky. He should make sure it wasn’t found in his possession.

  Which just left— Hal blinked. What about Ginny? What did he need to do about Ginny?

  * * *

  Ginny looked up in surprise as her mother came into the kitchen, dressed for going out.

  “Where are you headed off to?”

  “You will not have forgotten poor Mrs. Blair. Today’s the funeral.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Mrs. Blair had confounded them all by lingering for almost four days after her massive heart attack, then had another and died on Tuesday. Ginny had heard, but it had been knocked out of her head, literally, by the concussion. “Please make my excuses to her family.”

  “Will you be all right while I’m gone? It’s likely to be a long afternoon.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “There’s plenty of food in the refrigerator and I’ve got my cell phone. If you think of anything, call me.”

  Mrs. Forbes let herself out the back door and Ginny listened to the sound of the bolt being turned, then the garage door opening and closing. She poured herself a large glass of water and took it back to her room. Determined to enjoy her illness as much as possible, Ginny curled up on her bed, turned on the TV, and promptly fell asleep.

  * * *

  Jim felt his heart beat just a little bit faster. Was he seriously considering his old school chum, Hal Williams, as the prime suspect for the murder of Professor Craig?

  Jim had no idea what, if any, forensic evidence the police had been able to get off that lancet. The cause of death was the virus, but how it was introduced into the victim’s system was still theory.

  Jim pulled up the autopsies. The three genealogists all had cause of death listed as “viral illness.”

  The CDC investigation summaries said almost as little. The first two had passed for unexplained exposure to a rare virus. No source of exposure was identified and no one seemed to have linked the “insect bites” to a needle stick. It was Ginny, not the CDC, who had made the connection.

  Jim drummed his fingers on his desk. Showing how it could have been done was not the same thing as proving that was how it was done, but filling in the Suspects chart might give the police probable cause, enough to warrant a search. That meant showing Hal had an opportunity to inject the virus into all three of the dead genealogists.

  Hal was here, in Dallas, at the Genealogy Conference, when Professor Craig was attacked. Where was he when those other two deaths occurred?

  Jim got up from his chair and got himself another cup of coffee. How on earth was he supposed to track Hal’s movements? He brought the coffee back to the computer, then sat down and considered the problem.

  He had the name of the city and the year in which each death occurred. More, he had the date of death. Both obituaries had been specific.

  He suspected each of the men had been inoculated with the virus. He knew how fast the virus moved. So what he was looking for was some reference to Hal being in those locations in the day before the deaths occurred. Right. Good start. Now what?

  Hal lived and worked in Dallas, so it was no surprise to find him at the local Genealogy Conference. There might be genealogy conferences in other parts of the U.S. Was there any way to look that up?

  Jim tried several combinations of search query and finally found there were, indeed, genealogy conferences in both Boston and Washington in the week during which each of the other victims had died. His mouth settled into a grim line. Now. How to prove Hal attended those conferences?

  An hour later Jim had made a rats nest of his hai
r, running his fingers through it and pulling on it, in an attempt to stimulate his brain.

  The police would make short work of this sort of inquiry. They could look up credit card receipts and airline reservations, but Jim had no access to anything of the sort. He needed something else.

  * * *

  Chapter 44

  Saturday

  Hal felt a small lump of ice form in his gut. Ginny. He had hoped she would be too scared to continue the investigation. She should have been, after that accident on the rink. So why was she still meddling?

  He chewed his lower lip, thinking about their relationship. He could get close enough to silence her, but if she died or disappeared, there would be questions asked.

  He rose and started pacing.

  It would have been better if she hadn’t seen Craig’s notes, of course, but it shouldn’t matter. She had the documents and would give them to him. She would tell him where she had seen the article and he would destroy it. He still had some influence over her.

  His eyes narrowed. That was it. He didn’t have to kill her to shut her up. All he had to do was give her what she wanted.

  Hal had conservatively estimated that the arrangement would come to a natural conclusion in the next ten years. If he married her now, by the time that happened she would have a vested interest in protecting him. She might even approve.

  He glanced at the clock. He needed to get his mother’s ring out of the safe deposit box. Also, shower and change, and pick up flowers and candy. How long did it take to get a marriage license?

  Marriage! Hal found himself smiling at the thought of bringing Ginny home, here, to his home, of settling her into his life, his bed. There was definitely an upside to this plan. He grabbed his keys and headed for the bank.

  * * *

  With the ring safely in his pocket, Hal considered what he should do next. He could get both chocolates and fresh flowers at the local market on the way to Ginny’s house. That just left disposing of the virus. As he drove to the store, he turned the problem over in his mind.

  It had lain secluded in his freezer ever since he’d abstracted it from the lab all those years ago. It was an astoundingly stable organism. All he’d had to do was thaw it out, dip the needle into the fluid and administer the injection. Exceptionally virulent, one hundred percent fatal, unknown to the medical community (thanks in part to his contribution to the original investigation), and safe, as long as he didn’t let it get into his bloodstream.