Unnatural Exposure

by Patricia Cornwell

  She set the tray in the pass box. I was pulling on the suit.

  “Typically, once you’re in here, they don’t let you out.” She shut the drawer.

  “This isn’t typical.” I tied down the hood and turned on my air. “The case this morning is mine.”

  I could tell she was one of those nurses who resented women doctors, because she preferred to be told what to do by men. Or maybe she had wanted to be a doctor and was told that girls grow up to be nurses and marry doctors. I could only guess. But I remembered when I was in medical school at Johns Hopkins, and one day the head nurse grabbed my arm in the hospital. I’d never forget her hate when she snarled that her son hadn’t gotten in because I had taken his slot.

  Fujitsubo was walking back into the room, smiling at me as he handed me a telephone and plugged it into a jack.

  “You got time for one.” He held up his index finger. “Then we got to roll.”

  I called Marino.

  Bio Level 4 containment was in back of a normal lab, but the difference between the two areas was serious. BL-4 meant scientists doing open war with Ebola, Hantavirus and unknown diseases for which there was no cure. Air was single-pass and negative pressure to prevent highly infectious microorganisms from flowing into any other part of the building. It was checked by HEPA filters before it entered our bodies or the atmosphere, and everything was scalded by steam in autoclaves.

  Though autopsies were infrequent, when they were performed it was in an air-locked space nicknamed “the Sub,” behind two massive stainless steel doors with submarine seals. To enter, we had to go in another way, through a maze of change rooms and showers, with only colored lights to indicate which gender was in what. Men were green so I put my light on red and took everything off. I put on fresh sneakers and scrubs.

  Steel doors automatically opened and closed as I passed through another air-lock, into the inner change, or hot side room where the heavy gauge blue vinyl suits with built-in feet and pointed hoods hung from hooks on a wall. Sitting on a bench, I pulled one on, zipping it up and securing flaps with what looked like a diagonal Tupperware seal. I worked my feet into rubber boots, then layers of heavy gloves, with outer ones taped to cuffs. I was already beginning to feel hot, doors shutting behind me as other ones of even thicker steel sucked open to let me into the most claustrophobic autopsy room I had ever seen.

  I grabbed a yellow line and plugged it into the quick-release coupling at my hip, and rushing air reminded me of a deflating wading pool. Fujitsubo and another doctor were labeling tubes and hosing off the body. In her nakedness, her disease was even more appalling. For the most part, we worked in silence for we had not bothered with communication equipment, and the only way to speak was to crimp our air lines long enough to hear what someone else was saying.

  We did this as we cut and weighed, and I recorded the pertinent information on a protocol. She suffered the typical degenerative changes of fatty streaks and fatty plaques of the aorta. Her heart was dilated, her congested lungs consistent with early pneumonia. She had ulcers in her mouth and lesions in her gastrointestinal tract. But it was her brain that told the most tragic story of her death. She had cortical atrophy, widening of the cerebral sulci and loss of the parenchyma, the telltale hints of Alzheimer’s.

  I could only imagine her confusion when she had gotten sick. She may not have remembered where she was or even who she was, and in her dementia may have believed some nightmarish creature was coming through her mirrors. Lymph nodes were swollen, spleen and liver cloudy and swollen with focal necrosis, all consistent with smallpox.

  She looked like a natural death, the cause of which we could not prove yet, and two hours later, we were done. I left the same way I had come in, starting with the hot side room, where I took a five-minute chemical shower in my suit, standing on a rubber mat and scrubbing every inch with a stiff brush as steel nozzles pounded me. Dripping, I reentered the outer room, where I hung the suit to dry, showered again and washed my hair. I put on a sterile orange suit and returned to the Slammer.

  The nurse was in my room when I walked in.

  “Janet is here writing you a note,” she said.

  “Janet?” I was stunned. “Is Lucy with her?”

  “She’ll slide it through the pass box. All I know is there’s a young woman named Janet. She’s alone.”

  “Where is she? I must see her.”

  “You know that isn’t possible just now.” She was taking my blood pressure again.

  “Even prisons have a place for visitors,” I almost snapped. “Isn’t there some area where I can talk to her through glass? Or can’t she put on a suit and come in here like you do?”

  Of course, all this required permission, yet again, from the colonel, who decided that the easiest solution was for me to wear a HEPA filter mask and go into the visitors’ booth. This was inside the Clinical Research Ward, where studies were conducted on new vaccines. She led me through a BL-3 recreation room, where volunteers were playing Ping-Pong and pool, or reading magazines and watching TV.

  The nurse opened the wooden door to Booth B, where Janet was seated on the other side of glass in an uncontaminated part of the building. We picked up our phones at the same time.

  “I can’t believe this,” was the first thing she said. “Are you all right?”

  The nurse was still standing behind me in my telephone-booth-sized space, and I turned around and asked her to leave. She didn’t budge.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and I’d about had it with her. “This is a private conversation.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes as she left and shut the door.

  “I don’t know how I am,” I said into the phone. “But I don’t feel too bad.”

  “How long does it take?” Fear shone in her eyes.

  “On average, ten days, at the most fourteen.”

  “Well, that’s good, then, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt depressed. “It depends on what we’re dealing with. But if I’m still okay in a few days, I expect they will let me leave.”

  Janet looked very grown-up and pretty in a dark blue suit, her pistol inconspicuous beneath her jacket. I knew she would not have come alone unless something was very wrong.

  “Where’s Lucy?” I asked.

  “Well, actually, both of us are up here in Maryland, outside Baltimore, with Squad Nineteen.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Yes,” Janet said. “We’re working on your files, trying to trace them through AOL and UNIX.”

  “And?”

  She hesitated. “I think the quickest way to catch him is going to be online.”

  I frowned, perplexed by this. “I’m not sure I understand . . .”

  “Is that thing uncomfortable?” She stared at my mask.

  “Yes.”

  I was sorrier for the way it looked. It covered half of my face like a hideous muzzle and kept knocking the phone as I talked.

  “How can you catch him online unless he’s still sending messages to me?”

  She opened a file folder on her Formica ledge. “Do you want to hear them?”

  I nodded as my stomach tightened.

  “Microscopic worms, multiplying ferments and miasma,” she read.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “That’s it. E-mail sent this morning. The next one came this afternoon. They are alive, but no one else will be. And then about an hour after that, Humans who seize from others and exploit are macro parasites. They kill their hosts. All in lower-case with no punctuation except spaces.” She looked through the glass at me.

  “Classical medical philosophy,” I said. “Going back to Hippocrates and other Western practitioners, their theories of what causes disease. The atmosphere. Reproducing poisonous particles generated by the decomposition of organic matter. Microscopic worms, et cetera. And then the historian McNeill wrote about the interaction of micro and macro parasites as a way of understanding the evolution of society.”

  �
��Then deadoc has had medical training,” Janet said. “And it sounds like he’s alluding to whatever this disease is.”

  “He couldn’t know about it,” I said as I began to entertain a terrible new fear. “I don’t see how he possibly could.”

  “There was something in the news,” she said.

  I felt a rush of anger. “Who opened his mouth this time? Don’t tell me Ring knows about this, too.”

  “The paper simply said your office was investigating an unusual death on Tangier Island, a strange disease that resulted in the body being airlifted out by the military.”

  “Damn.”

  “Point is, if deadoc has access to Virginia news, he could have known about it before he sent the e-mail messages.”

  “I hope that’s what happened,” I said.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” I was worn out and my stomach was upset.

  “Dr. Scarpetta.” She leaned closer to the glass. “He wants to talk to you. That’s why he keeps sending you mail.”

  I was feeling chills again.

  “Here’s the idea.” Janet tucked the printouts back inside the file. “I could get you in a private chat room with him. If we can keep you online long enough, we can trace him from telephone trunk to telephone trunk, until we get a town, then a location.”

  “I don’t believe for a moment that this person is going to participate,” I said. “He’s too smart for that.”

  “Benton Wesley thinks he might.”

  I was silent.

  “He thinks deadoc is sufficiently fixated on you that he might get into a chat room. It’s more than his wanting to know what you think. He wants you to know what he thinks, or at least this is Wesley’s theory. I’ve got a laptop here, everything you need.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to get into this, Janet.”

  “You’ve got nothing else to do for the next few days.”

  It irritated me when anyone ever accused me of not having enough to do. “I don’t want to communicate with the monster. It’s far too risky. I could say the wrong thing and more people die.”

  Janet’s eyes were intense on mine. “They’re dying, anyway. Maybe others are, too, even as we speak, that we don’t know about yet.”

  I thought of Lila Pruitt alone in her house, wandering, demented with disease. I saw her in her mirror, shrieking.

  “All you need to do is get him talking, a little bit at a time,” Janet went on. “You know, act reluctant, as if he’s caught you unaware, otherwise he’ll get suspicious. Build it up for a few days, while we try to find out where he is. Get on AOL. Go into the chat rooms and find one called M.E., okay? Just hang out in there.”

  “Then what?” I wanted to know.

  “The hope is he’ll come looking for you, thinking this is where you do consultations with other doctors, scientists. He won’t be able to resist. That’s Wesley’s theory and I agree with it.”

  “Does he know I’m here?”

  The question was ambiguous but she knew who I meant.

  “Yes,” she said. “Marino asked me to call him.”

  “What did he say?” I asked into the phone.

  “He wanted to know if you were okay.” She was getting evasive. “He has this old case in Georgia. Something about two people stabbed to death in a liquor store, and organized crime is involved. In a little town near St. Simons Island.”

  “Oh, so he’s on the road.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “With the squad. I’ll actually be staying in Baltimore, on the harbor.”

  “And Lucy?” I asked again, this time in a way she couldn’t evade. “Do you want to tell me what’s really going on, Janet?”

  I breathed my filtered air, looking through glass at someone I knew could never lie to me.

  “Everything okay?” I pressed harder.

  “Dr. Scarpetta, I’m here by myself for two reasons,” she finally said. “First, Lucy and I got into a huge fight about your going online with this guy. So everyone involved thought it would be better if she wasn’t the one to talk to you about it.”

  “I can understand that,” I said. “And I agree.”

  “My second reason is a far more unpleasant one,” she went on. “It’s about Carrie Grethen.”

  I was astonished and enraged at the mere mention of her name. Years ago, when Lucy was developing CAIN, she had worked with Carrie. Then ERF had been broken into, and Carrie had seen to it that my niece was blamed. There were murders, too, sadistic and terrible, that Carrie had been accomplice to with a psychopathic man.

  “She’s still in prison,” I said.

  “I know. But her trial is scheduled for the spring,” Janet said.

  “I’m well aware of that.” I didn’t understand what she was getting at.

  “You’re the key witness. Without you, the Commonwealth doesn’t have much of a case. At least not when you’re talking about a jury trial.”

  “Janet, I am most confused,” I said, and my headache was back with fury.

  She took a deep breath. “I’m sure you must be aware that there was a time when Lucy and Carrie were close.” She hesitated. “Very close.”

  “Of course,” I impatiently said. “Lucy was a teenager and Carrie seduced her. Yes, yes, I know all about it.”

  “So does Percy Ring.”

  I looked at her, shocked.

  “It seems that yesterday, Ring went to see the C.A. who’s prosecuting the case, uh, Rob Schurmer. Ring tells him, one buddy to another, that he’s got a major problem since the star witness’s niece had an affair with the defendant.”

  “My God in heaven.” I could not believe this. “That fucking bastard.”

  I was a lawyer. I knew what this meant. Lucy would have to take the stand and be questioned about her affair with another woman. The only way to avoid this was for me to be struck as a witness, allowing Carrie to get away with murder.

  “What she did has nothing to do with Carrie’s crimes,” I said, so angry with Ring I felt capable of violence.

  Janet switched the phone to her other ear, trying to be smooth. But I could see her fear.

  “I don’t need to tell you how it is out there,” she said. “Don’t ask, don’t tell. It’s not tolerated, no matter what anybody says. Lucy and I are so careful. People may suspect, but they don’t really know, and it’s not like we walk around in leather and chains.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “I think this would ruin her,” she matter-of-factly stated. “The publicity, and I can’t imagine HRT when she shows up after that. All those big guys. Ring’s just doing this to do her in, and maybe you, too. And maybe me. This won’t exactly help my career, either.”

  She didn’t need to go on. I understood.

  “Does anyone know what Schurmer’s response was when Ring told him?”

  “He freaked, called Marino and said he didn’t know what he was going to do, that when the defense found out, he was cooked. Then Marino called me.”

  “Marino has said nothing to me.”

  “He didn’t want to upset you right now,” she said. “And he didn’t think it was his place.”

  “I see,” I said. “Does Lucy know?”

  “I told her.”

  “And?”

  “She kicked a hole in the bedroom wall,” Janet answered. “Then she said if she had to, she’d take the stand.”

  Janet pressed her palm against the glass, spreading her fingers, waiting for me to do the same. It was as close as we could get to touching, and my eyes teared up.

  “I feel as if I’ve committed a crime,” I said, clearing my throat.

  Ten

  The nurse carried the computer equipment into my room and wordlessly handed it to me before walking right back out. For a moment, I stared at the laptop as if it were something that might hurt me. I was sitting up in bed, where I continued to perspire profusely while I was cold at t
he same time.

  I didn’t know if the way I felt was due to a microbe or if I were having some sort of emotional attack because of what Janet had just told me. Lucy had wanted to be an FBI agent since she was a child, and she was already one of the best ones they’d ever had. This was so unfair. She had done nothing but make the mistake of being drawn in by someone evil when she was only nineteen. I was desperate to get out of this room and find her. I wanted to go home. I was about to ring for the nurse when one walked in. She was new.

  “Do you suppose I could have a fresh set of scrubs?” I asked her.

  “I can get you a gown.”

  “Scrubs, please.”

  “Well, it’s a little out of the ordinary.” She frowned.

  “I know.”

  I plugged the computer into the telephone jack, and pushed a button to turn it on.

  “If they don’t get beyond this budget impasse soon, there won’t be anybody to autoclave scrubs or anything else.” The nurse kept talking in her blue suit, arranging covers over my legs. “On the news this morning, the president said Meals on Wheels is going broke, EPA isn’t cleaning up toxic waste dumps, federal courts may close and forget getting a tour of the White House. You ready for lunch?”

  “Thank you,” I said as she continued her litany of bad news.

  “Not to mention Medicaid, air pollution and tracking the winter flu epidemic or screening water supplies for the Cryptosporidium parasite. You’re just lucky you’re here now. Next week we might not be open.”

  I didn’t even want to think about budget feuds, since I devoted most of my time to them, haggling with department heads and firing at legislators during General Assembly. I worried that when the federal crisis slammed down to the state level, my new building would never be finished, my meager current funding further ruthlessly slashed. There were no lobbyists for the dead. My patients had no party and did not vote.

  “You got two choices,” she was saying.

  “I’m sorry.” I tuned her in again.

  “Chicken or ham.”

  “Chicken.” I wasn’t the least bit hungry. “And hot tea.”

  She unplugged her air line and left me to the quiet. I set the laptop on the tray and logged onto America Online. I went straight to my mailbox. There was plenty, but nothing from deadoc that Squad 19 hadn’t already opened. I followed menus to the chat rooms, pulled up a list of the member rooms and checked to see how many people were in the one called M.E.