by Alex Kava
In the first tank huge plant leaves floated, layers and layers of them. Gorgeous, unusual large leaves with blood-red veins running throughout. The liquid in the tank kept them perfectly preserved. He snapped a few photos and moved on to the next.
He stared for a few minutes at the next tank. Five very different objects, different sizes, shapes, and consistencies. They looked organic but almost translucent, the blue glow shining through in areas and highlighting what looked like a network of veins and blood vessels. Again he squatted to study them from below and that’s when he recognized the object right in front of him. The shock made him jerk backward. His knees gave out and sent him sprawling. He dropped his camera and it skidded just out of reach.
Another motor turned on somewhere in the building, and yet Stotter didn’t take his eyes off the object.
He hadn’t been able to identify it at first. But even from this angle—his butt on the cold tile floor—Stotter could tell that what he was looking at was an eyeball.
He crawled to his knees, still not taking his eyes off the tank and examining the other floating objects. Now he could make an educated guess as to what they were. He needed to focus as he tried to remember everything that was missing whenever a rancher found a mutilated cow. Because Stotter was pretty sure he had just found some of those missing pieces.
He continued staring as he reached out and searched for his camera. It had fallen close by. Still on his knees, he swiped his hand across the floor. That’s when a heavy boot came down on his knuckles and Stotter heard the cracking of his own fingers.
His yelp of pain was cut short by a second boot that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back.
FIFTY-THREE
“Sheriff Skylar didn’t mention that he served with your husband,” Maggie said, noticing a second photo of the same three men, only in this one they wore hunting gear, including camouflage clothing. They stood next to a deer that had been strung up from a tree. Skylar and the other man held rifles. Mike Griffin stood in the middle again, holding one of the biggest hunting knives Maggie had ever seen.
“Oh yes.” Mrs. Griffin came up beside Maggie and her index finger brushed the frame of the first photo. Her finger traveled down the length of the third man, a stranger Maggie didn’t recognize. The gesture of affection seemed odd, but Maggie saw true emotion for the first time in Cynthia Griffin’s face.
She glanced up at Maggie but didn’t appear embarrassed or apologetic.
“Mike, Frank, and my first husband, Evan, served in Desert Storm,” she explained. “This was taken right before they came back. Unfortunately Evan didn’t come home with them.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Evan and Griff were engineers. The National Guard was supposed to be just for playing weekend soldier. That’s what Evan told me when he joined.”
“Mom?”
Cynthia Griffin jumped and that was the last uncontrolled emotion Maggie would witness for the day.
“Oh, Mandy. Agent O’Dell wants to talk with you again.”
“If this is about Courtney and Nikki, I don’t know anything.”
“No, I’m not here to ask you about them.”
The girl couldn’t disguise her relief though she tried to, pushing at her hair that, although washed and combed today, still fell conveniently into her eyes. Her skin looked healthier and her eyes weren’t bloodshot, pupils not dilated.
Maggie waited for Mrs. Griffin to instruct her daughter where to sit and reminded her about the coffee being her favorite as she placed a cup on the matching saucer in front of Amanda.
“You haven’t eaten anything all day.” Mrs. Griffin fussed as she slid one of the beautiful pastries closer to her daughter.
“I don’t want to talk about Johnny, either,” Amanda said, but this time to her mother.
“Tell you what,” Maggie said, coming around the glass coffee table to sit across from Amanda, “I promise none of my questions will be about Johnny or Courtney or Nikki. I won’t even ask about Thursday night.”
Amanda peered out from under the strand of hair and this time she tucked it behind her ear.
“Okay,” she agreed. “What do you want to know?”
“Tell me about Taylor Cole,” Maggie said and watched Amanda’s mouth drop open. “She was a friend of yours, right?”
Maggie didn’t take her eyes off Amanda but she could see Mrs. Griffin half sit, half lean on the arm of a Queen Anne chair behind her.
“Yeah, I guess so.” The girl pretended to shake off her surprise.
“You were with her when she jumped off the bridge?”
“I wasn’t the only one.”
“She didn’t jump,” Mrs. Griffin was quick to add. “It was an accident.”
“I know about the salvia,” Maggie said, letting that sink in along with Mrs. Griffin who now sank into a chair.
“I bet Dawson squealed, right?” Amanda said with a disgusted smirk.
“Taylor was your best friend until she graduated last spring.” Maggie was careful not to say what she really believed, that Amanda felt like Taylor was leaving her behind, just like Johnny would do next year when he left to play football for a college possibly as far off as Florida or California.
Amanda shoved her plate away and Maggie knew her window of opportunity had just closed.
“Taylor didn’t slip and fall off the bridge, did she? You were all flying high on salvia and someone dared her to jump.”
“This is quite enough,” Mrs. Griffin said, standing again though a bit wobbly. She scrambled in front of her daughter as if somehow protecting her. “Amanda, you do not have to talk about this. Agent O’Dell, you must leave.”
Maggie didn’t argue. But as she got up she noticed Amanda’s forearm. The red marks had started to fade into a bluish-purple bruise.
“I’m not sure if your daughter knows who attacked them the other night,” Maggie told Mrs. Griffin while she kept her eyes on Amanda. “I do know she’s not telling you everything she does know. After I leave, you might want to ask her why she bit herself and pretended it was someone else.”
Amanda’s startled look confirmed Maggie’s guess.
Back on the road, Maggie realized it was all beginning to make sense. Amanda was the one who orchestrated the drug parties. It was her way of keeping control over the friends she invited into her group. But when they threatened to leave she found a way to get back at them.
Maggie couldn’t be sure that Amanda talked Johnny into committing suicide but the texts that she had read explained the pattern of their relationship. Had Amanda convinced him his future was over? That he would be stuck forever in the Nebraska Sandhills with her? Amanda probably didn’t think the idea would drive Johnny to kill himself. Or did she?
When Dawson asked about Amanda after Maggie told him Johnny was dead, Maggie assumed he was concerned about the girl—maybe because he had a little bit of a crush on her. But now Maggie realized Dawson was scared when he asked, not concerned. He had wanted to know whether or not he still had to worry about Amanda’s wrath. As for Courtney and Nikki? Maggie hadn’t quite figured that out yet.
Nor had she figured out who had attacked the teenagers in the forest on Thursday night. Perhaps it wasn’t related. But she wondered why Sheriff Frank Skylar chose to leave out the fact that Mike Griffin was a longtime friend when he conducted his interview of the man’s stepdaughter. And did he manipulate the case of Taylor Cole to further protect Amanda?
Frank Skylar was also ex-military. If a laser stun gun like Donny or Platt described was used on these kids, it would have been obtained by someone who had military ties. Maybe it was a long shot to think Skylar had something to do with the attacks. But it did make Maggie wonder, what else was Sheriff Skylar not telling her?
FIFTY-FOUR
CHICAGO
O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Platt and Bix didn’t talk the entire trip from the north side of Chicago to O’Hare. They were stunned, exhausted, o
verwhelmed. Now, tucked away in the midst of a crowd of travelers, they finally felt safe.
Bix listened to his messages. Made a few calls. Platt bought a large coffee. He thought about getting something to eat but the smell of raw beef lingered in his nostrils.
Bix closed his phone and released a long breath, as if he had been holding it all day.
“There’s a reason no one could identify this strain of salmonella,” he said, shaking his head and rubbing his temples. “It changes.”
“You said it might be a mutated strain,” Platt said.
“No, I mean it changes once it’s inside the human body. Fifteen of the Norfolk victims that were released as okay two days ago are back in the hospital.”
“Maybe it takes longer to leave the body in some victims.”
“But they’re telling me that six days later the bacteria itself looks different than it did on day four.”
“Different, how?”
“Stronger. More resilient. It’s like it’s mutated to better survive and invade its new environment. It’s clinging on to the wall of the intestines.”
“It’s not unusual to need some antibiotics with salmonella infection, especially if it hangs on or spreads.”
“That’s what they thought. So far, not much of a response.”
“Antibiotic resistant?”
“Big-time.”
“We’ll need to come up with a cocktail of antibiotics.”
“What if it’s something they developed?” Bix asked in almost a whisper. “Tell me why that guy, Tegan, was so excited to see someone from USAMRIID. And what projects from the 1970s was he talking about?”
Philip Tegan had ended up giving them a short tour after realizing the two men he had allowed inside his facility might actually not be aware of all the classified work done in the laboratories despite their impressive credentials. He told them about the different hybrid crops they had been able to genetically engineer and he showed them—in excruciating detail—how they were able to do that. He informed them that 77 percent of soybeans are genetically engineered as is 85 percent of corn in the United States. The biotech crops decrease the use of pesticide, require less water, and reduce carbon that normally is released into the atmosphere. All good things for our environment.
When a skeptical Bix asked if it’s healthy, Tegan reassured him that, of course, it was and that these crops were fed only to animals—not used for human consumption.
China, he told them, had created a new corn that contained an enzyme that makes pigs better able to digest the nutrient phosphorus, which would decrease the amount in their excrement. Phosphorus, he went on to explain, was the major polluter of waterways. “Isn’t that amazing?”
But when Bix asked what happened to people when they ate the pork that ate the special corn, Tegan just laughed. “We’ll have to wait and see, huh?”
Platt knew about the technology. He also knew Tegan’s tour didn’t include any of the labs they had seen soldiers guarding or those where they had seen an armored truck leaving. They wouldn’t see those. At least not on this visit.
“So what was USAMRIID doing back in the 1970s?” Bix asked when Platt hesitated too long.
“During the Cold War, when there was a race to create ultimate weapons—before Russia and the United States signed a treaty agreeing to stop—USAMRIID had a program to develop bioweapons.”
“Like mustard gas?”
“Like mustard gas. And anthrax. Other viruses that we might be able to launch on an entire population.”
“Jesus!” Bix sputtered. “And now they’re going to fucking do it with food?”
They sat side by side, staring straight ahead, waiting for their flight back to D.C. to be called.
“When your friend calls,” Platt said, continuing to use their code word for the whistle-blower, no longer because it was necessary but now because it had become habit, “tell him we need to meet him face-to-face.”
“He won’t do that.”
“Tell him he has to or we’re calling a press conference.”
FIFTY-FIVE
NEBRASKA
Maggie changed into shorts, a sweatshirt, and running shoes despite the setting sun and the beginning chill. She wanted to clear her head, drain some of the tension building into a knot between her shoulder blades.
She left a note for Lucy on the kitchen table, then she and Jake headed out on the road. By now the German shepherd understood this was for fun and not a flight from danger.
She had called Donny but got switched almost immediately to his voice mail. She wanted to tell him about Amanda and what she knew about Sheriff Skylar holding back evidence in the Taylor Cole case.
Through Maggie’s limited resources she had learned that Taylor Cole had graduated last spring from the same county high school as the other teenagers and was planning to attend the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Her parents and friends all said she was the happiest they had ever seen her, excited and looking forward to embarking on her new adventure. No one would have predicted that she would choose to end her life by jumping off the Highway 83 Bridge and falling a hundred and fifty feet to her death, plunging into the fast and wild Middle Loup River below.
Of course, it had to be an accident. Though no one had an explanation for that, either. There were no eyewitness accounts. And no further investigation, as far as Maggie could tell. Kids tripping out on drugs was still only a rumor. Unfortunately, rumors usually had a grain of truth to them. And today Amanda confirmed those rumors were true.
Maggie understood a sheriff wanting to protect the reputation of a dead victim, maybe trying to protect the victim’s loved ones. What was it that Lucy had said, that it could be devastating for parents to find out things about their dead child? Skylar may have thought, why put Taylor Cole’s parents through that? They were already grieving the loss of their daughter. But in doing so, Skylar had let all the other teenagers involved off the hook.
Maggie saw Jake pin back his ears. He started herding her to the edge of the dirt road before she heard the faint rumble of an engine over the hill behind them. This time she listened to the dog and moved left to the crumbling edge. If the driver didn’t see her until he came zooming down the hill, she would still be far enough to the left side that she would be safe. She had even worn a white T-shirt to be more visible in the fading daylight. But none of this calmed Jake.
She heard the engine getting closer, slowing down as it reached the top of the hill. She glanced back. The headlights prevented her from seeing beyond the windshield. It was a pickup truck or SUV, something riding high. Perhaps the same young man who had almost run her over the other day. It had slowed to a crawl. Overly cautious. Without looking back again, she waved her hand for the vehicle to go on by. She didn’t break her pace and ignored Jake nudging her. But then she heard the dog growl.
She felt a sharp pain in the middle of her back before she realized that she had been hit. She fell to her knees. A jolt of electricity surged all the way through her. She tried to reach around to grab what had stabbed into her back, only her hands wouldn’t move.
Couldn’t move.
Why couldn’t she move her arms, her hands, her fingers?
They didn’t even brace her for the fall and her cheek slammed into the crusty sand. Her muscles started to spasm. Her body jerked beyond her control. Sand and gravel bit into her skin. Then her muscles locked up. Her head began to spin. But that was the only motion. She still couldn’t move. She was paralyzed.
She heard Jake whimper and opened her mouth to tell him to run. Get out. Go home. But what came out was a babble of gibberish in a weak, tinny voice that she didn’t recognize.
The boots appeared before her eyes. She hadn’t heard their approach. Could no longer hear anything except her own heartbeat, the thumps inside a wind tunnel. She tasted sand and realized her mouth was open. She couldn’t close it. Couldn’t even look up. The world was spinning, tilted sideways. All she could see were the boots standing in
front of her, mud-caked boots that smelled like river sludge.
FIFTY-SIX
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Julia Racine threw the newspaper down on the bed beside Rachel. It didn’t make the thump she had hoped but it was enough to draw Rachel’s attention from her iPad and the annoying chatter of CNN pundits. She was already in bed in her nightshirt, covers pulled up to her waist, but her work still surrounded her, notepads, pens, news journals spilling onto Julia’s side of the bed.
“You never read my column,” Rachel said, glancing at the page of the newspaper that Julia had carefully folded back.
Julia was tired. She’d missed her day off only to have it followed by a long shift that included two drug dealers offing each other, doing the District a favor but leaving a bloody mess in the parking lot of a boarded-up and otherwise abandoned gas station. Of course, no one in the neighborhood had seen a thing. Then on break she happened to take a look at someone’s discarded Washington Post. And despite what Rachel thought, Julia did read her column as well as every investigative piece she had written since they met. Maybe she didn’t always tell her that she read her stuff.
“You said you wouldn’t use anything I told you.”
“I didn’t.”
“Dumpster diving for evidence?”
“Okay, that was too colorful to skip but come on, I didn’t say what was found.”
“A late-night meeting with the USDA?”
“Now wait a minute.” And this time Rachel put her iPad aside and sat up ready to defend herself. “I do have sources other than you, Julia.”
“What sources do you know at the USDA who would have known about that late-night meeting?”
“Mommy.” CariAnne appeared at the bedroom door, sleepy-eyed, pale, and dragging her favorite stuffed animal, a koala bear with one button eye missing.
“Just a minute, sweetie,” Rachel told her, putting her hand out, palm up in total not-while-mommy’s-talking mode. Until she saw the little girl’s face. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
