Isolation Ward

by Joshua Spanogle

  I saw Tim nodding.

  “Okay, so, a possible scenario: Bethany Reginald, or Bethany and Helen Jones, visit Douglas Buchanan at the Jefferson home. Or the women are infected at Open Arms, their home. Purely based on hygiene, it looks more likely that the Jefferson properties would harbor something.”

  Okay, considering the interest in Bethany Reginald as the source of the disease, I was about to skate onto thin theoretical ice. Douglas Buchanan was my man, he was the key; I was convinced of it. Let everyone cut me up behind my back after I was gone.

  “So let’s assume the bug is at Jefferson’s Baltimore Haven. Bethany prods Helen into going over to visit Douglas for a little tryst. There, Helen is infected with the disease, and she’s able to pass it on to Bethany and Douglas. Douglas, for whatever reason, does not get sick. Perhaps he has some natural immunity, perhaps its latency is longer in males. Anyway, he is, by some accounts, a sexual predator. He infects Deborah Fillmore, his reputed girlfriend, as well as Case Number Four. Case Number Four may have been infected in a possible rape at Mr. Jefferson’s birthday party two weeks ago. Case Number Four goes on to infect her boyfriend, giving us Case Number Five.”

  I looked at the new EIS officers. “I would check whether Bethany and/or Helen ever visited Douglas at Baltimore Haven.”

  “It doesn’t make sense that Douglas would show no symptoms,” Beth said. She was a petite woman with a blunt cut and a Harvard MD. She always seemed to wear something like a scowl, or maybe it was just when she spoke to me.

  “Sure it does,” I said confidently, knowing full well that everyone would doubt it. “If we assume that Douglas is a sexual predator—was a sexual predator—then we might assume he had sex with many more people than we now know. I’d check on that. Tim said we’ve had no other cases. It could be that, as with West Nile, only a subset of the population is vulnerable to the disease. But Douglas’s perceived immunity brings me to scenario number two: Douglas Buchanan is actually the first one infected. He’s our index case. He’s living in Dr. Jefferson’s home and has contact with vermin and their feces, urine, other excreta. If that’s true, we might be dealing with some kind of mutation.”

  Verlach mouthed “Good point” and jotted something down.

  Mutation is a characteristic of all living things. Because viruses have such a high rate of replication—and because some viruses, like HIV, have poor genetic editing mechanisms—mutation is frequent. It’s possible, then, that viruses will become more virulent with successive transmissions—i.e., potency is amplified. If mutation was at work here, and Douglas was the first one to be infected, his “immunity” would actually be due to the virus’s relative harmlessness in him.

  Tim spoke. “What we could salvage from Douglas is being flown down to Atlanta today. If—when—we get a bead on what bug we’re dealing with, we’ll see whether it’s in him.”

  “Unless it was hiding out in the missing organs,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, last one, scenario number three: Douglas is still our vector, but he brought the bug from somewhere else.”

  There was silence in the room, which I took to mean everyone thought this theory was bunk. Still, I had to mention it, if only to justify why the hell I was being sent to California to chase it down. “I know it’s unlikely, but we should entertain all possibilities. I’m just throwing these theories out. You guys”—I pointed to Andy and Beth—“have all the files and interviews. I hope the picture will become a lot clearer. If you have any questions, call or page me.” I wrote my pager and mobile number on the whiteboard. I looked at Detectives Myers and O’Leary. “Okay, so what’s the fuzz doing here?”

  There was forced laughter. I continued. “Because Douglas Buchanan was clearly murdered, the police are an active part of this investigation. Detectives O’Leary and Myers will be working closely with whoever ends up following the Douglas Buchanan angle.”

  Beth raised her hand. “I’ll be working on that.”

  “Great,” I said. “Detectives, you want to tell us what you’ve found out?”

  “Well,” Myers finally said, “O’Leary—Detective O’Leary—and the County Sheriff’s Office are going to head the investigation along with help from the state police. I’m going to help out, since a lot of this is cross-jurisdictional.” He fidgeted. It wasn’t the cops’ turf, I guessed, and they weren’t gung ho about addressing this group. “We don’t have much so far. Dr. Jefferson says he doesn’t know anything about Douglas Buchanan, and he didn’t know he had a rapis—a sexual predator on his hands. We’re meeting with him this morning, and we’ll apply a little pressure. So far, it seems that no one knows for sure where Mr. Buchanan came from. It’s like he just became etherealized out of nowhere.”

  Became etherealized, John? I thought.

  Beth asked, “What about the murder itself? Any clues?”

  “Well, in consideration of Mr. Buchanan’s alleged habits, and the nature of the murder—I mean, we thought it might be someone who was extremely angry at Mr. Buchanan and was trying to send a message—it might be that one of his victims or his victims’ relatives took care of the problem. They were so pissed at Mr. Buchanan that they mutilated the guy.”

  There was silence at this, and Myers stammered on. “The coroner said it looked like the organs were taken by someone who knew what he was doing. He said the procedures were kind of sloppy but were probably by someone who had knowledge of anatomy.”

  “A doctor?” Beth asked.

  “Or a vet, or a butcher. But it wasn’t done by some random nut job who was angry the guy raped his daughter.”

  “Unless the nut job was a pathologist,” Beth shot back.

  “All pathologists are nut jobs,” Tim said.

  There was some laughter.

  I asked, “But we don’t know why they took the organs or what they did with them, right?”

  “No.” Myers scrunched around in his chair. “We’ve seen some pretty bad things, but this . . . It’s not the kind of mutilation we’d expect. I mean, most of the mutilations we’ve seen are different, things cut up and off, not cut out, right, O’Leary?”

  O’Leary shrugged.

  Myers cleared his throat. “Anyway, we’re still trying to figure it. We’ll be talking with Dr. Jefferson about all of this.”

  “What about the bleach?” Beth asked.

  “The concrete was to cover the scent, we think. The bleach could be used for that.”

  “Infection,” I said.

  I felt eyes shift to me.

  “If someone was worried Douglas was sick, maybe they wanted to reduce the chance of infection.”

  “So, our nut job pathologist is a humanitarian,” Tim said dismissively. He glanced at his watch. “Okay, Dr. McCormick, you need to be on a plane and we need to get back to the field.”

  Asshole.

  To the sound of closing notebooks, I apprised everyone of my plans—California to follow up on Douglas’s contact, then back to Atlanta—and wrapped up the meeting.

  After my last words, Tim collared me, saying he’d called the California and Santa Clara public health departments to give them the heads-up I was coming. Brooke Michaels would be showing me the ropes, he said.

  Wonderful, I thought.

  Tim clapped me on the shoulder and bolted from the room, presumably to make one of his billion daily phone calls.

  “Nice job, Nathaniel. Very thorough,” Verlach said. He shook my hand warmly. “You’ll be missed. Tim probably told you, but I’m managing the transmission and surveillance. Keep me informed.”

  “You do the same,” I replied. He nodded and left.

  I stopped by Beth’s cubicle and interrupted a discussion between her and the detectives. I made sure she knew she could contact me anytime. Time was getting short, and I grabbed my luggage and headed for the exit. John Myers caught up with me.

  “They’re giving you the boot, huh?”

  “No thanks to you, John.”

  “What c
an I say, Doc? You’re a prick, and you fucked up yesterday. But I’m a prick, too. I like pricks.”

  “Maybe we should date.”

  He seemed to like that one; he slapped me on the shoulder. “Already got a wife and kids.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Listen, I’ll get your back here, but you keep us informed, you find anything out there.”

  “As long as it’s quid pro quo.”

  “You gotta cut the medical jargon.”

  I wasn’t going to explain. “As long as you keep me in the loop,” I said.

  “Okay. Deal. If you’re three thousand miles away and not a pain in my ass, I’ll keep you posted.” The elevator stopped on the ground floor and we stepped off together. “The woman’s name is Gladys Thomas, the one Douglas Buchanan called. Here’s the address we have for her.”

  He handed a piece of paper to me. San Jose, all right. The city, not one of the ritzy suburbs.

  I said, “So, what if you hadn’t found me just now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I would have left without this.” I held up the paper with Gladys Thomas’s name and address. “You wanted me to figure it all out on my own? Thanks, John. You’re a fine human being.”

  “Don’t mention it. Take this, too.”

  He thrust something into my hand: it was a photo of Douglas Buchanan, a big, grainy blowup.

  I said, “You have a picture of yourself, too? So I can remember this fantastic trip?”

  I don’t know exactly why I was giving Myers such shit; probably because I couldn’t dish it to Tim.

  “You’ll thank me for that, Doc. Important for identifying the deceased to people who may have seen him but may not know his name. You don’t watch cop shows?”

  “I would if it didn’t mean I had to watch cops.”

  Myers was smiling at me. “Doc, I got a soft spot for you, you know? You’re a lot like me. You piss people off, but it looks like you get the job done.”

  Great, I thought. I’m a lot like Detective John Myers. I was elated.

  I stepped through the glass doors to a waiting taxi, leaving the detective, Baltimore, and this entire sorry chapter in my life behind.

  I grew up in a small town in southern Pennsylvania, not far, in fact, from where Douglas Buchanan had lived before coming to Baltimore. Anyway, that being the case, Baltimore/Washington International was the closest major airport, and I knew it well. By instinct I found my way through the gauntlet of security to the gate. Long ago, when I was still in medical school on the West Coast, I would have taken Southwest Airlines, transferred in Phoenix or Las Vegas, then continued on to San Jose. But it was a different year, a different circumstance. I had travel orders this time, and was able to hop the first direct flight to San Francisco. The flight was packed, so I assumed some poor bastard had been bumped to make room for yours truly. Like the military, CDC might send you into the nastiest hot zones, and like the military, they didn’t want you to wait to get there.

  On the plane, I ordered a double Scotch, downed both bottles, and ordered another. I tried to think about what I was leaving behind, what I was going to. But that mostly depressed me, and I fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 30

  Ah, San Francisco.

  Through the jet’s window, I could see the peninsula slide into view, stretching like a great finger toward Marin County to the north. The Golden Gate Bridge looked electric against the blue, blue ocean. The Transamerica building was there, the office towers along the Embarcadero. The bay was dotted with sailboats. It was just as I’d left it.

  I felt like I was about to throw up.

  Though I’d ruminated entirely too long on it, I was not going to see Alaine Chen. I’d done my best to erect a bulwark against thoughts of her, but in the line for the rental car, I got a pang about having thrown out her telephone number. Not that I would have called her, not that she would have seen me. Not that the number was even close to correct anymore. Still, those scratches in my book were the last tawdry threads to a previous life. Let old acquaintances be forgot, easier said than done.

  The line for the rental was too long, too slow, and I was thinking too much about things that shouldn’t matter to me. To get my mind off the complicated Dr. Chen, I blazed up my Palm and found the number of the only person in California I was sure I wanted to see. Scratch that: the only person I had to see. If I was on the West Coast and she found out I hadn’t visited . . . well, I wouldn’t be surprised if the earth opened up and swallowed me whole.

  And lo and behold, she answered. The old voice crackled into the phone.

  “Nathaniel McCormick,” she said.

  “Dr. Tobel.” I felt a smile stretch my face.

  We chitchatted for a few minutes, bringing each other up-to-date. It had been a while since I’d spoken to her, but we glossed over the intervening years in the time it took the rental line to move forward five feet.

  “And what brings you to San Francisco?” she asked.

  “I need to attend to some business.”

  “Business? You’re not going to tell me you left CDC for a job in industry, are you?”

  “On days like this, I wish I had. But no. It’s CDC business.”

  “Nothing serious?”

  “It is serious, actually. You heard about the outbreak in Baltimore?”

  “Yes, I did read something. . . .”

  “Well, it has to do with that. I’ll fill you in when I see you.”

  We set up a lunch appointment for the following day.

  Dr. Tobel said, “I hope it’s no trouble, but can you come to the lab? I have a very tight schedule tomorrow, unfortunately. We’ll go to lunch from there. You don’t mind, I hope.”

  “You’re still at The Farm?” I asked.

  “I am. Same building, same lab.”

  Well, in that case, yes, of course I minded. “No, of course not,” I said.

  CHAPTER 31

  I got a car with a GPS navigation system. It was Silicon Valley, after all, so when in Rome . . . More important, I told myself, I was responding to an emergency and didn’t need to waste time getting lost. First thing, I programmed in the address for the Santa Clara County Public Health Department.

  It was still early afternoon, early enough to avoid the nightmare of Bay Area traffic, so I was able to take the 101 south to San Jose. The highway was one of the Ugly Ones, a big, nasty gash through the landscape that clotted with traffic every morning, every evening. Like so much else, I didn’t miss the roads here.

  Thirty minutes into the trip, I passed green signs marking the exits for my former university. In the four years I lived in the area, I’d made this drive countless times, shuttling back to school from dinner or dancing in San Francisco. Having spent so much time trying to forget this place, I was surprised how familiar I still was with the roads, the hills, the little cities that hung off the freeway like baubles off a necklace. But I sure as hell didn’t recognize the big-box superstores, the massive office buildings, the unending swath of development that bracketed the 101.

  I turned on the radio and found an old favorite station. It was now called, I think, La Música, and played some hip-hop Latin stuff. Not my cup of tea. I settled for the local NPR station and felt old.

  San Jose. The female voice on the navigation system guided me gently off the sunbaked 101 to the 880 to the city’s sunbaked streets. For all the money and fame that San Jose attracted in the 1990s, it was still, at its core, a cow town. A commercial vacancy rate near twenty-five percent left the downtown looking ghostly and sad, with For Lease grafted on to the buildings and amoeboid clumps of young men gathered on the sidewalks in the middle of the day. The party was definitely over.

  I parked in the garage across from a midsized gray building that housed the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, Disease Prevention and Control Program. I walked into the building, which had about as much security as a video game arcade. I found a receptionist of sorts, and asked him to page Brooke Micha
els. Then I sat on a hard plastic chair next to a stand filled with public health brochures. I read one on genital warts.

  Just as the brochure was really getting good, I heard a voice above me. “Dr. McCormick. You don’t look any worse for the wear. You could use a tan, though.”

  “Brooke.” I looked up to see Dr. Brooke Michaels in all her blond, bronzed glory. “And you should watch yours. We’re supposed to set an example, you know. Wouldn’t be good if you knocked off at thirty with melanoma.”

  We shook hands. “Twenty-nine,” she whispered, and turned toward the hallway behind the guard’s desk. I followed her through double doors to a warren of offices, fighting to keep my eyes off her well-toned rump. I’d forgotten how good-looking she was. Or maybe I’d just tried to forget. Anyway, she was well muscled, with fantastic lips, azure eyes, and to-die-for posture. She had the whole California surfer girl package going for her, though she was originally from about two thousand miles east.

  The offices looked a little strange—long white hallways with tiny offices pasted onto either side. I asked Brooke, “What was this space before you guys invaded?”

  “The sexually transmitted disease clinic. The exam rooms are our offices.”

  I made a note to watch where I sat.

  Brooke turned back toward me, flipping the golden hair. “Tim Lancaster told me briefly why you were coming. I told him I’d be happy to check it out, that they didn’t need to send you, but he declined.”

  She was asking for some sort of answer, but I didn’t indulge her. Brooke being Brooke, she asked anyway. “Why did they send you all the way out here? State didn’t bite on this?”