by Alex Kava
“What is it?”
“The cells from Ms. Kellerman. They’re busting open with worms.”
“Worms?” The banging in Platt’s chest invaded his head, as well. “Impossible. There must be a mistake.”
“Take a look for yourself,” McCathy told him, bolting up and sliding his stool aside, offering Platt a look through the microscope’s eyepiece.
Platt swallowed hard and moved in. Adjusted the focus. Tried to ignore his sweaty palms inside the latex gloves. He took a deep breath and clanked his goggles against the microscope’s eyepiece. What he saw looked like spaghetti or thin curlicue snakes with threads unraveling from their sides. They pushed against the cell wall, breaking away from a clump, or what they called a brick, in the center of the cell.
Platt forced himself to breathe slowly. Without moving, still staring, he said, “What about our own lab contamination?”
“Impossible. Our samples are in freezers, separated from this lab by three walls of biocontainment.”
“There are other things this could be.” But Platt couldn’t think of a single one. The cell had been invaded and was exploding with what looked like worms, snakes tangled in a pile. “This agent, this invader doesn’t loop much. And it’s too long. Shouldn’t there be a shepherd’s hook?”
“There’s only one thing I know of that looks like that, whether there’s a loop, curl or hook,” McCathy said. “I saw Marburg years ago. Samples taken from an outbreak along the Congo. Wiped out a whole village in a matter of weeks.”
Platt had seen something similar. The quarantine he had told Agent O’Dell about was one enforced from an outbreak of Lassa fever, another single RNA virus. But Lassa didn’t make cells explode like this.
“How can we confirm it? I don’t just mean running the cells through the electron microscope. I mean inexplicably. We have to be certain, without a doubt,” he told McCathy. They couldn’t waste any more time.
“We can test Ms. Kellerman’s cells against the real thing.”
“What do we have to do?”
“We take more of her blood serum and drop it on cells, on samples from our freezers, samples that we know have the real thing. If any of them glow…” McCathy shrugged. “Then you have your confirmation, beyond a doubt.”
“What do we have in the freezer?”
“Marburg, Ebola Zaire, Lassa and Ebola Reston.”
“How long will that take?”
“I can suit up now.” McCathy glanced at his wristwatch. “Take about thirty to forty minutes to prepare the samples from the freezer. Once I drop Ms. Kellerman’s cells onto the real deal it’s a matter of minutes.”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
“Wait a minute. I work alone in Level 4.”
Platt wasn’t surprised that McCathy would balk even at a time like this. He kept calm and steady. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t allow a hint of anger when he said, “Not this time.”
CHAPTER
32
Saint Francis Hospital
Chicago
Dr. Claire Antonelli arrived early for her morning rounds, though she had left the hospital only six hours ago, just enough time to take a nap, change clothes and kiss her sleeping teenage son, who groaned a protest. But then he smiled—still without opening his eyes—and asked if she had eaten anything.
“Who’s looking after who?” she had asked.
He smiled again, eyes still closed, and turned over, mumbling something about a slice of pizza he had saved for her.
She’d grabbed the pizza and had eaten it cold during her commute back to the hospital, washing it down with her morning Diet Pepsi.
Now she marched down the sterile hallways, the exhaustion of the week lingering, but she felt vaguely refreshed, like a worn rag that had been wrung out and left to dry, ragged around the edges but ready to get back to work. Still, she was glad she had exchanged her fashionable heels for a comfortable pair of flats.
She had already checked in on her newest patient, a three-pound, seven-ounce little guy in the NICU, the Newborn Intensive Care Unit, currently known only as the Haney baby boy but called “bellow” by the staff because that’s all he had done since he had come out into this world. He was asleep finally with all the connecting monitors taped to his tiny body. The monitors continued to register exactly where Claire wanted them to be. He was doing good for coming into the world much too early.
The patient Claire had gotten here early to see would not be as easy to stabilize and make comfortable. Markus Schroder had allowed Claire to admit him into the hospital two days ago, though “allowed” was even pushing it. The truth was, his wife, Vera, had threatened and coerced him. In less than twenty-four hours he grew too weak and incoherent to argue with either his wife or his doctor. And what was most frustrating for Claire was that after a battery of tests she still had no clue what was wrong with the forty-five-year-old man who, up until a week ago, had been, in his own words, “as healthy as a buck half his age.”
Getting here early she hoped to talk to Markus alone, before his wife arrived. Vera had only good intentions but she also had the annoying habit of answering for her husband even when he was healthy and lucid. Claire needed some answers and she hoped Markus might be able to provide them.
She stopped at the nursing station and pulled the file, checking to see if any of the lab results were in. Before she could flip through everything a petite nurse in green-flowered scrubs came around the corner.
“The rash is worse,” Amanda Corey said.
“What about his fever?”
“Spiked to 106. We have him on an IV but he’s still been vomiting.” The nurse pointed to a plastic container with a red twist cap. “I saved you some.”
Claire examined the container’s contents, a black-red liquid with a few floaters, though Claire knew the man didn’t have anything left in his stomach. This didn’t look good. She was relieved to see Nurse Corey had double-bagged the container and already labeled it for the lab.
“Anything from the lab last night?”
Corey held up a finger and walked to the other side of the counter. “I saw Jasper drop off some stuff about an hour ago.” She grabbed a stack of documents from an in-tray behind the counter. “Let’s see if your guy’s in here.” Halfway through she pulled out three sheets and handed them to Claire.
She didn’t have to look closely. Claire could see the check marks, all of them in the “negative” column. Ordinarily she would be pleased, relieved. No doctor wanted to know that her patient tested positive for jaundice, gallstones, malaria or liver abscess. But in this case it felt like a lead weight had been dropped on her shoulders. She dragged her fingers through her short, dark hair, though she didn’t let Amanda Corey see her total frustration.
“Thanks,” she simply said and then turned and walked down the hall, flipping pages and searching for something, anything she may have missed.
Her patient had a dangerous infection that didn’t respond to any antibiotics. She couldn’t find the source of the infection. Now he was vomiting up pieces of his stomach lining, an educated guess from the looks of the container. Claire was running out of ideas. Hopefully Markus could help her find a clue, because not only was she running out of ideas, she knew she was running out of time.
She found him lying flat on his back, head lopped to the side, watching the door though he didn’t seem to be expecting anyone. He barely acknowledged her entry with a slow blink, eyelids drooping, eyes bloodred. His lips were swollen, his yellowish skin almost swallowed by purple swatches, as though his entire body was starting to turn black-and-blue. It was the red eyes first, then the fever and yellow-tinged skin, that made her think of malaria. Although she couldn’t place Markus Schroder close to anywhere that would have put him in contact with the disease. The Chicago area might feel like the tropics in the summer, but an outbreak of malaria wouldn’t go unnoticed.
Fortunately, Saint Francis was a teaching and research hospital so Claire had access t
o quick lab results, but she couldn’t keep guessing. She was a family practitioner whose private practice brought her to the hospital to deliver babies, suture the occasional minor scrape and diagnose early signs of common ailments. Whatever was playing havoc with Markus Schroder’s immune system was outside her everyday realm.
“Good morning, Markus.” She came to his bedside and laid a hand on his shoulder. Long ago she had learned her patients appreciated even the slightest touch, some small and gentle contact outside the cold jabs and pats that usually ensued in a doctor/patient relationship.
He reached out a purple-splotched hand to her, but before he could respond, his body jerked forward. The vomit that splattered the white bedding and the front of Claire’s white lab coat was speckled black and red with something that reminded her of wet, used coffee grounds. But it was the smell that set off a panic inside Dr. Claire Antonelli. Markus Schroder’s vomit smelled like slaughterhouse waste.
CHAPTER
33
The Slammer
Maggie had wanted to tell the woman in the blue space suit to leave her alone. She was too early and Maggie was tired of being poked and prodded. She stayed curled up in bed. She didn’t even look over her shoulder at the woman. She’d simply wait until Colonel Platt returned. But this time the woman brought in a laptop computer and without a word she left.
Maggie booted up the computer and was surprised to find she had access to a wireless network that connected with ease. In a matter of minutes she started trying to track down any information on the manila envelope she had taken from the Kellerman house.
The postage was a metered stamp from a post office in D.C. but the return address was actually Oklahoma. Why go to the trouble of pretending it came from Oklahoma when it was obviously sent from D.C.? If this envelope had delivered the deadly concoction that made Ms. Kellerman ill, Maggie believed there had to be some clue in the return address.
Other criminals had used return addresses to make a statement or confuse law enforcement. If Maggie remembered correctly, at least one of the Unabomber’s intended victims was not the recipient of the rigged package, but rather the person listed on the return address. Theodore Kaczynski had even gone to the trouble of supplying insufficient postage so the package would be “returned to sender.” It was a cunning way for a criminal to remove himself from the victim, make the victim and the crime look random. It became tougher when law enforcement couldn’t make a connection between the victim and the suspected killer. The smartest criminal minds, the dangerous ones, used this knowledge to their advantage.
Maggie suspected this guy was in that category. It was certainly clear to her that he wanted attention or he wouldn’t have dropped a note right into the FBI’s lap. He wanted to thumb his nose at them, show how smart and clever he was. He didn’t just want the FBI investigating his shenanigans, he wanted to drop them smack-dab in the middle of it all. He wanted them to experience this right alongside the victims he had hand chosen. And for whatever twisted reason, Maggie believed he had specially chosen Ms. Kellerman and Mary Louise. There was no doubt in her mind that they were not random victims.
Maggie brought up Google maps and keyed in the return address listed on the package: 4205 Highway 66 West, El Reno, OK 73036. She expected to find a residence belonging to James Lewis who was listed as the sender. What came up on the screen stopped her.
She checked everything she had keyed in. Maybe she had gotten the numbers wrong. There was no mistake. The return address was for the U.S. Federal Correctional Institution for the South Central Region.
“Okay,” she told herself. Federal prisoners had access to plenty of things these days but there was no way one would be able to send out a package that wasn’t thoroughly inspected.
She Googled “James Lewis” + “federal prison.” Several news articles came up. All of them included the Tylenol murderers in Chicago during the fall of 1982. Maggie sat up on the edge of her chair.
Now, this was interesting.
Maggie was only a girl at the time. Her father was still alive and they lived in Green Bay, close enough to Chicago that she remembered her parents had been concerned. It didn’t matter. She knew the case. Every FBI agent knew the case. It was one of the most notorious unsolved crimes in history.
She scanned one of the articles to refresh her memory of the details. Seven people died after taking cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. The murderer had shoplifted bottles from area stores, emptied and refilled capsules with cyanide, replaced them in their bottle and box then returned them to each store. Hard to image how easy it had been before tamperproof packaging.
Maggie found James Lewis’s name and continued reading. Lewis was a New York man who was charged and convicted, not of the murders. There was no evidence that he had access to or had tampered with any of the bottles. Instead, Lewis was convicted of attempting to extort one million dollars from Tylenol makers Johnson & Johnson. He served thirteen years of a twenty-year sentence. And he served those thirteen years in the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma. However, Lewis was released in 1995 and was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Maggie sat back. Obviously Lewis hadn’t sent this. He wouldn’t set himself up. But the person who did send it wanted to draw attention to the unsolved case. Or was it simply a piece of trivia he found amusing?
Maggie browsed the other articles about the Tylenol case. How could it be relevant? It was interesting, but it all happened twenty-five years ago.
She checked the date and slid to the edge of her chair again.
It was exactly twenty-five years ago.
The first victim died on September 29, 1982. And that’s when Maggie saw it and she knew she was right. He hadn’t chosen at random. Just the opposite.
The first victim of the Tylenol murders was a twelve-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, Illinois, and her name was Mary Kellerman.
CHAPTER
34
USAMRIID
Platt felt like it was taking an eternity. He thrived on order. He respected processes that followed logic and reason. But suddenly the basic procedure for entering a Biolevel 4 hot zone had become a painstaking, excruciatingly long process. Everything took too long. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. And yet, he didn’t dare skip or hurry any of it. He knew better and all he had to do was to remind himself of the cells he had just looked at through the microscope. That was enough.
His heart still pounded against his rib cage. At least its thundering in his ears had eased up a bit. At times like this his nervous energy pulsed and raced, making him anxious. It was the same excess energy he liked to slam out on the racquetball court or pound out on the running trail. Years of self-discipline taught him how to control it, but here, inside these windowless walls, it was always a bit of a challenge.
He had helped McCathy into his space suit first. Platt would be able to put on his own suit. In the field it was a little trickier. Here it was routine and Platt had plenty of time. McCathy would need to prepare the frozen samples they’d use for the test, something Platt didn’t envy. The samples they were going to use were actual blood serum from human victims with filoviruses, samples in glass vials taken from USAMRIID’s freezer, their own private collection of hot agents. Platt tried to stay positive, tried to remind himself that not all filoviruses were equal. Though all were highly infectious, not all were fatal.
Ebola Reston had shown up in a private laboratory’s monkey house in Reston, Virginia, about twenty years ago. Platt’s mentor at USAMRIID had been one of the task force members who had had the job of containment. The virus spread through the monkeys like wildfire, but it didn’t have the same effect on humans. The sample they had in their freezer collection was from a worker who had gotten sick but who had survived. Ebola Reston hadn’t taken a single human life. Yet under a microscope it looked like snakes or worms with thousands of threads splintering off of it. It could certainly look just as vicious as Ebola Zaire.
&nb
sp; Ebola Zaire had earned the nickname “the slate wiper” and for good reason. Its kill rate was ninety percent. The sample they had was from a nurse in northern Zaire just south of the Ebola River. In September 1976 she took care of a Roman Catholic nun who had somehow become infected with the virus. From what Platt knew of the outbreak, entire villages in the Bumba Zone of northern Zaire were wiped out. The virus jumped from one village to another until the government blocked off sections of the country and allowed no one out or in under threat of being shot. That was Ebola Zaire. The only means of containment was to let it die out and, of course, let everyone infected die with it.
In between was Marburg and Lassa fever. Marburg wasn’t much better than Ebola Zaire. Its survivors looked very much like victims of radiation. But the difference was that there were actually survivors. The sample they had of Marburg was from one such survivor, a doctor in Nairobi.
Likewise, Lassa fever was not necessarily fatal. If caught early it could be treated with antiviral drugs, though one out of three victims was left permanently deaf. Still, it was a much better compromise. The sample they had in their freezer for Lassa fever was from a man named Masai. Platt had treated the old man before he himself was quarantined in Sierra Leone.
The test McCathy was preparing would be rather simple. Eventually he would need to do the same test with each of the exposed victims’ blood: Ms. Kellerman, her daughter, Assistant Director Cunningham and Agent O’Dell. McCathy would start with Ms. Kellerman, placing only a droplet of her blood serum onto each of the samples from the freezer.
Unfrozen, the viruses were as hot as when they were collected. If Ms. Kellerman’s blood reacted to any one of the samples, giving off a faint glow, it meant that she tested positive for that virus. The glow meant that the virus recognized what was living inside Ms. Kellerman’s blood. Platt was hoping all of the samples would come up negative and that there might be a chance this wasn’t a virus at all.
