Exposed (Maggie O'Dell)

by Alex Kava

  She was still working when he came in, her gloved hands too busy to wave an acknowledgment. He stood quietly beside her, making sure she noticed his presence despite the hiss of her space suit. He didn’t crowd her or rush her.

  Hernandez must have pinned back or tied up her unruly curls but he could still see them swirling around inside her helmet. A few now stuck to her damp forehead. She glanced up and Platt caught a glimpse of her green eyes through the plastic. Her eyes were intense, a little wild. She’d found something.

  “WHAT IS IT?” he asked, no longer able to wait.

  “THE PLASTIC BAG INSIDE THE MAILING ENVELOPE…” She sounded breathless. “I FOUND SOMETHING. TISSUE, BLOOD CELLS.”

  “ENOUGH TO TEST?”

  “YES.”

  “EBOLA?”

  “YES, DEFINITELY. THE CELLS ARE BLOWN UP WITH WORMS.” She stopped her hands. “THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE, SIR.” She looked up at him and met his eyes. “THEY’RE NOT HUMAN CELLS.”

  “MONKEY?”

  “AS FAR AS I CAN TELL IT’S MACAQUE. I’M TESTING AGAINST OUR OWN MACAQUE SAMPLES. THEY’RE VERY CLOSE.”

  Suddenly Platt got a sick feeling in the bottom of his gut. He’d asked McCathy about a possible contamination. Could they have contaminated Ms. Kellerman’s tissue sample from inside their own labs? McCathy had shrugged off the idea. Too many walls of biocontainment. No way one of their recorded tissue samples got mixed up with Ms. Kellerman’s or any of the other three patients’. They ran a tight ship, no doubt about it.

  But how was someone able to send Ebola to Ms. Kellerman in the first place? Where had the microscopic tissue from a macaque monkey come from, tissue hot with Ebola? Was it possible it had gone missing from their own freezers? In their research experiments they used macaque monkeys. So did other research facilities, but few other facilities had Ebola. Could someone from within USAMRIID have stolen it? Could one of their own have done this?

  “GOOD WORK,” he told Hernandez. “GO AHEAD AND FINISH UP HERE.” He gestured that he was leaving.

  He needed to do an inventory. He’d check their Ebola samples, every last one of them. But would he be able to tell if any was missing? All it took was a small amount. A microscopic amount. Years ago a scientist, an ex-employee of USAMRIID, had been accused of smuggling out anthrax, the anthrax that had caused five deaths. It ended up there was little evidence to support that accusation but just the speculation had raised questions about their procedures and security measures.

  Now Platt realized that Janklow must be thinking the same thing. He had to wonder whether the virus could have come from within their own laboratories. Was he concerned about new accusations? Did the commander want this to all go away quietly, secretly, because he worried about USAMRIID’s reputation? Or was it his own reputation he was worried about? And just what was the commander willing to do to keep it under wraps?

  CHAPTER

  58

  Reston, Virginia

  With her father gone, Emma had spent the entire afternoon reading the letters from Indy to Liney. He wrote to her almost every day of September, filling her in about his life at Quantico, the cases he was working, his friends Razzy and J.B. Some of them rambled, others were brief but sweet. Actually, she thought it was sweet that he couldn’t go a day without talking to her even if it was in a letter.

  At first Emma didn’t understand why they didn’t just call each other, that was, until she found out they didn’t have cell phones back then. Long-distance calls were expensive. What an ancient civilization.

  September 26, 1982

  Dear Liney,

  I’m in Chicago for a few days. It’s killing me that I’m here and you’re in Ohio for your art conference thing. I can’t believe we’ll miss each other, but it’s probably best. I’m here on a case, you know. Classified. So I can’t tell you about it. I’m not even letting my folks know I’m here. Though I’ll let you in on a secret. I plan to drive down to their house Sunday morning while they’re all at church. I want to leave them a little something. Maybe get them off my back.

  Oh, and Liney, just a heads-up. It’s not in the news yet, but stay away from Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. Don’t ask me why or how I know, just don’t take any at all, okay? I’m serious. Don’t tell anybody that I warned you but it’s gonna be huge. I shouldn’t even be telling you.

  Love,

  Indy

  Emma flipped through the previous letters. Wow, she thought. This was the first time he’d signed a letter, “Love, Indy.” She wondered what the difference was. He didn’t even make a big deal out of it, just signed it. Maybe he was just missing her badly.

  Emma went on to the next letter but she stopped when she saw the date, December 24, 1982. She flipped through the remaining envelopes. Had she sorted them incorrectly? There were only three left. There had to be some missing. Her mom wasn’t the most organized person in the world. How else could she explain Indy telling her he loved her and then not writing for three months?

  She opened the December 24 envelope and discovered only a Christmas card. No letter. Inside, the card was signed, “Merry Christmas, Indy.” No note. No postscript. Not even a “Love, Indy.”

  CHAPTER

  59

  Artie had never been here on a Sunday. The place was deserted. It was perfect. He loved it. At first he was just going to drop off the car and put away his road trip’s stash. But the place was so deserted he felt comfortable enough to bring his fast food in with him.

  At the last minute he wimped out and decided to eat in the lab next door instead of in the small quarantined lab. Too much bleach smell, he told himself. Of course, his decision had nothing to do with the dead monkey in the corner freezer. His key-card pass worked on all the doors down here, so access wasn’t a problem.

  At the end of the hall the live monkeys were quiet for a change. Artie ate his double cheeseburger, extra ketchup, extra pickles—they cheated you on the pickles if you didn’t insist on extras—and fries. He snarfed it down and once he was finished he moved to the lab next door. From his backpack he pulled out the small notebook he carried everywhere he went. Alongside the notebook he started laying out his most recent stash of paraphernalia.

  His road trips provided a treasure trove. He kept his findings in one of the small storage lockers, so anything from hair to fingernail clippings were readily accessible for the next package. For now Artie placed them on the counter to admire. He had each piece bagged and labeled like the crime-scene evidence it would someday become. He was particularly proud of a tooth he had found in a corner bathroom stall at a rest area off Interstate 95. He had hair samples from four different states. In each of his packages he included something, letting crime-scene techs believe they had a piece of evidence, believing their suspect had gotten sloppy when in fact he was outwitting the best and most seasoned investigators.

  He opened his notebook to the list of package recipients. While driving to Wallingford, Connecticut, something had occurred to him almost out of the blue. He thought he may have made a connection, figured out another piece of his mentor’s puzzle. Now he was anxious to see if he was right.

  He skimmed the list:

  Vera Schroder, Terra Haute, Indiana

  Mary Louise Kellerman, Elk Grove, Virginia

  Rick Ragazzi, Pensacola, Florida

  Conrad Kovak, Cleveland, Ohio

  Caroline Tully, Cleveland, Ohio

  Then he pulled out his true-crime paperbacks and the articles he had downloaded from the Internet. He had already connected Mary Louise Kellerman of Elk Grove, Virginia, to Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Using James Lewis’s return address confirmed the connection to the Tylenol murder case. Slam dunk. That was an easy one.

  The other packages were different. All of the others, at least as far as Artie could check out, had return addresses from people the recipient knew. Rick Ragazzi’s was from a Victor Ragazzi. Easy one. Had to be a family member. Caroline Tully’s was from an R. J. Tully. S
ame with Patsy Kowak. Although Conrad spelled his name Kovak, it had to be a relative.

  That one had been a particular stroke of genius. The intended victim was actually listed as the sender, Conrad Kovak, instead of the recipient. Artie’s instructions called for insufficient postage, enough so that the postal carrier wouldn’t deliver it to Patsy Kowak but would return it to Conrad.

  Artie loved that extra touch. And he’d recognized it, too. The Unabomber had sent at least one package with insufficient postage. The person Theodore Kaczynski had really wanted to blow up was the one he’d listed as the sender. He knew law-enforcement officials would stew over the packages’ recipients, trying to figure out who their enemies were, why they would be targeted. It gave the phrase “return to sender” a whole new meaning.

  Artie smiled. Yes, it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

  The only other exception that Artie hadn’t been able to figure out was Vera Schroder. It was the only package to have no return address. Artie thought the answer might have something to do with the recipient’s address, Terre Haute, Indiana. On his long, quiet road trip something about Terre Haute had nagged at him. He’d seen that city listed somewhere recently, but he couldn’t remember where.

  He started at the beginning of his notebook, flipping through the cases and the information he had highlighted. The first case in his notebook was the Tylenol murders. The case remained unsolved. From September 29 through October 1, seven people died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol, 500-mg capsules laced with cyanide. One family lost three members. The very first person to die was twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman, who had taken one capsule when she woke up the morning of September 29 with a sore throat and runny nose.

  Artie knew the names of all seven victims by heart. He knew the six stores in the Chicago area—with the exception of one unnamed retailer—that the tainted capsules had been traced back to. It was suspected that the killer had shoplifted boxes of Tylenol capsules, taken them home, added the cyanide and then brought them back to the stores and replaced them on the shelves. Most likely the killer had to have done this within the week or days prior to September 29.

  What Artie was more interested in were those cases that followed, the ones that were never confirmed nor refuted as connected to the Chicago tampering. During the months that followed, the FDA had 270 reports of product tampering. Anything from poisoned chocolate milk to insecticide-laced orange juice to Halloween candy with needles stuck inside. However, only thirty-six of those were confirmed.

  He flipped through more pages. The tampering cases that involved more Tylenol, but outside the Chicago area, included a woman in Pittsburgh, an elderly man in Detroit and two family members—yes, here it was—in Terre Haute, Indiana. A local business owner and his wife were found dead in their home by their daughter. Extra Strength Tylenol capsules, laced with cyanide, were found inside the couple’s house.

  Their daughter’s married name was Schroder, Vera Schroder. That was the connection. It was exactly what Artie was looking for. What he wasn’t prepared for was to recognize the couple’s last name.

  Son of a bitch, it was the same last name as his mentor’s.

  CHAPTER

  60

  Razzy’s

  Pensacola, Florida

  Rick Ragazzi washed down a couple more gelcapsules while he read the bottle’s label. He had all the symptoms of the flu, symptoms the medicine claimed to relieve yet he felt absolutely no relief after twenty-four hours of taking the recommended dosage. He wished he could just silence the jackhammer inside his head. Even Joey’s famous syrupy concoction did nothing.

  He popped an extra capsule into his mouth and emptied the glass of orange juice just as he noticed another group of diners come through the restaurant door. Ordinarily he’d be pleased. Sunday evening and they were packed, even had a twenty-minute waiting list earlier in the evening. But his best waiter was still out. Something about stitches and a concussion. Rick wished he could blame a Jet Ski accident for his headache.

  “Sorry, sugar,” Rita said from behind him. “I had to place them at one of your tables. The new kid’s a bit slow. How about you get their orders and I’ll shuttle all the food?”

  “Sounds good.” It had become his easy response when he’d rather say he was out of here.

  “You don’t look so good,” Rita told him. “Maybe you should be home in bed.”

  I wish, Rick thought, but said instead, “I’m fine.”

  He knew an owner shouldn’t show weakness or vulnerability to his employees and always lead by example. He had read that somewhere. Wasn’t it bad enough he let Rita call him sugar? But then she called everyone sugar in that lovely Southern accent that sounded so sincere each and every time and made you feel special.

  Rita had handed out menus when she seated the three newcomers. Rick zigzagged his way through the tables as he tapped his pocket to make sure his notebook and pen were there. He insisted his waitstaff commit orders to memory. And yes, he knew that he should he be leading by example, but with the jackhammer headache he’d already gotten four orders screwed up. Better he slip a notch as an instructor than they eat any more of their profits in his mistakes.

  All three menus were still open, tall accordions hiding their faces.

  “Good evening. May I get you started with something from our bar? We have our special beach rumbas for half price this evening.”

  “What the hell is a beach rumba?” one of the men asked as he slapped down his menu.

  “Uncle Vic,” Rick said. “What are you doing down here in Pensacola?” He hoped his smile looked genuine and excited instead of mimicking his inner voice that was shouting, “Oh, crap!”

  CHAPTER

  61

  USAMRIID

  Platt sat behind his desk with the chair turned away and toward the window. The rain had started again. A gentle pitter-patter. Drops slid down the glass. Darkness had returned. In his mind he kept calculating the hours and minutes. He still couldn’t shut it off, a ticktock that kept rhythm with the rain.

  He hadn’t been able to prove or disprove any of his theories, his speculations, his suspicions by checking their samples of Ebola. McCathy had been the last one to slide his security card and activate the code. How much had he used to test against Ms. Kellerman’s blood and the other victims’? Was it possible for a small amount to go missing without notice?

  Exhaustion played wicked tricks on the psyche and Platt kept that in the forefront of his thoughts as he sorted through his suspicions. What if the Ebola that was sent to Ms. Kellerman had come from their labs? What if Janklow knew? Even in the beginning when Platt thought the note and the setup might all be a hoax, Janklow seemed convinced it was the real deal. And why assign McCathy? Why so adamant about it including McCathy, a microbiologist who specialized in bioweapons, when Platt already had enough experience to handle the possibility of bioweapons?

  Had Janklow known what they would find in Ms. Kellerman’s house even before they arrived? Had he already been expecting Platt to be his scapegoat and McCathy to corroborate?

  He was tired. He was being paranoid.

  He rubbed at his eyes. Sat back. Tried to clear his mind.

  But he couldn’t shake Janklow’s words, “What if they all disappeared?”

  Platt checked his wristwatch. It was late. But hopefully not too late.

  He fingered a piece of paper, folding and unfolding the already creased three-by-three that had ten numbers scrawled on it, the personal cell-phone number for Roger Bix, the CDC’s chief of Outbreak Response and Surveillance Team.

  Platt knew Bix from conferences, a few formal dinners and a few less formal rounds in the hotel bars. Fortunately the two had only shared war stories and never had to work on a case together. If nothing else, Bix might be able to confirm or deny whether there was any Ebola missing from another lab. Platt knew he could do this without admitting or confessing.

  It took only two rings despite the late hour.

  “T
his is Bix.”

  Platt sat up straight.

  “Roger, it’s Benjamin Platt.”

  Before he could respond, Roger Bix said, “So how much of the vaccine are you able to scrape together?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The vaccine.”

  Platt was stunned. Had Janklow gone ahead and called the CDC? What the hell was going on?

  “Look, Ben,” Bix continued, misreading Platt’s hesitation. “I appreciate the dilemma you all are facing.” His normal, slow Southern drawl held a tinge of panic. “But like I explained to Commander Janklow, we can’t afford to wait too long. I have a full-blown case of Ebola Zaire right here outside of Chicago. They opened up this poor son of a bitch in surgery. Who knows how many people have been exposed. I’m not just talking about hospital personnel. We’ve got visitors, patients, even newborns down in the maternity ward.”

  Platt shoved the cell phone closer to his ear. He couldn’t hear above his heart pounding in his head. He sucked in air. Moved the phone away from his mouth. Let the breath out. There was another case. Another exposure.

  “He was here at the hospital. Schroder, Markus Schroder. Here for three or four days. An accountant, for Christ’s sake. How the hell does an accountant come in contact with Ebola?” But Bix wasn’t waiting for an answer. He wasn’t finished. “This is a fricking nightmare and it’s only gonna get worse. I’ve got Homeland Security up my ass trying to keep it quiet. Everybody’s worried about the fricking media starting a panic. I tell you, Ben, I don’t get that vaccine soon and we won’t have to worry about the media starting a panic.”

  “Let me get to work on this, Roger. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have the vaccine ready to go.”