The White Iris

by Susanne Matthews

  And it’s only Tuesday.

  The inevitable pounding in his head refused to give up its hold to the analgesic he’d taken, and while he had stronger meds for days like these, he avoided them whenever he could. The smart thing this morning would have been to call in sick. At least he’d been sharp enough to pack a bag and take a cab to Schroeder Plaza.

  What the hell was wrong with Mother Nature? Eight out of twelve months a year, he could handle whatever weather she threw at him, but come the so-called winter months, he struggled every damn cold, cloudy day. Hadn’t anyone told Mother Nature that it was still October—time for the World Series, colored leaves, and Halloween? They’d had to cancel a baseball game because of snow. At the start of the season, that wasn’t so bad, but now…

  He hated winter and the miserable weather it brought with it. The best Christmas he’d had as an adult had been the one on Martinique three years ago when he and Julie had been together: sun, sand, and sex—the perfect holiday treat.

  Snow, especially when it fell unremittingly like this, brought back the nightmares. The missing two toes on his right foot reminded him daily of the older brother and father he’d lost—two digits, hidden from everyone but his closest friends, sacrificed to frostbite, in a search doomed to failure. Like the Prophet/Harvester case that kept changing.

  How could the man stay one step ahead of them all the time? Each time they followed a lead, people died and the task force ended up with squat. One step forward, two steps back. Hell of a dance move, lousy police work. His irritability and frustration levels had never been higher, but he couldn’t pack up and run away this time.

  As soon as the hospital had released him after the amputation, Mom had left Carson Creek once more, taking her two remaining boys back to Tacoma, Washington, unable to face one more second in the state that had cost her so much. At the time of his parents’ breakup, he, Nolan, and Nick had refused to leave their father behind, thinking she’d stay because of them. What obnoxious, selfish bastards they’d been. If Trevor had gone with her like he was supposed to do, Dad and Nolan might be alive today.

  After Dad’s death, Mom had sold the family ranch for a song, wanting to rid herself of it, and had wasted away, dying young from a broken heart. When she passed on four years later, despite Nick’s pleas to stay in Tacoma, Trevor had applied to universities in the south. How many sessions with that psychiatrist had it taken before he’d come to grips with his cheimatophobia? Terrified of being lost in the cold once more, he refused to spend any more time in the northern states than he had to. Because of the job he loved, he’d learned to tolerate the cold weather, but the headaches, muscle tension, irritability, and trouble concentrating were never far away when snow was in the air.

  He’d told Lilith that he understood her panic attacks, but he hadn’t explained why. She might be afraid of the dark and the monsters lurking in it, but he was terrified of the cold, snow, and ice. He knew what it took to get out of bed each morning and face his demons. He’d gotten better at it over the years, but if they were looking at six months of winter, he’d have a tough time of it, and with the Prophet on the rampage again … Maybe he should take his own advice and go to see the department shrink.

  The media today was full of stories about the last Snowtober, as the freak October snowstorm of 2011 was called. He vaguely remembered snowy Halloweens growing up, but they’d been the exception rather than the rule. Had there been snow early that year? He shook his head to chase away the morbid memory that persisted in the back of his mind. No matter how much snow they got in the city, it was unlikely he’d get disoriented in a blizzard and freeze to death on Boston Common.

  Freakish weather like this never boded well, and when you had a crazy man threatening to unleash havoc on the country, anything out of the ordinary took on gigantic proportions. Snow like this drove more people inside, where they were closer to one another—where poison gases, nerve agents, and God knew what else were more easily spread and modern plagues could do more damage. Kill, slash, burn—those things had been done more than once in the name of God.

  All he could hope for at this point was that the Great Burning wasn’t ready yet and that these plagues were dry runs because the Prophet still had to decide how to kill everyone standing in the way of his perfect world. So far thirteen people had died in plagues one and two. He wasn’t looking forward to picking up the pieces from plague three, and since he didn’t have any idea who the target might be, he worried, letting the acid in his stomach eat it raw.

  • • •

  Julie yawned. Was it still only Tuesday? After her flight to Las Vegas, she’d spent the night at the airport waiting for a 6:00 a.m. flight to Seattle. As Cassie had promised, the Coast Guard plane was waiting for her, along with breakfast and some of the best coffee she’d ever tasted. They’d landed at ISC Kodiak just after 9:00 this morning, gaining another hour since Alaska had its own time zone.

  Not only had Julie been stunned by the size of the facility, she’d been surprisingly pleased to discover that the temperature, in the low sixties, was warmer than it had been when she’d left Atlanta. Based on the news she’d seen at the Las Vegas airport early this morning, it was downright miserable on the East Coast. Tail or no tail, her decision to leave when she did had been a good one.

  Cassie had insisted she get a few hours’ sleep, and with her nerves as frazzled as they’d been, Julie hadn’t argued. No doubt she’d looked like a train wreck after a night sitting in those hard, plastic airport seats. She’d quickly unpacked and then settled down for what she’d told herself would be a two-hour nap. She’d awakened, surprisingly refreshed, around one, and after a bite to eat, she and Cassie walked across the base to the medical facility. The base resembled a small town, with modern bungalows neatly lined up side by side with three-story barracks, recalling apartment buildings she’d seen in older Atlanta neighborhoods.

  “Here we are.” The medical center was a three-story stone building backing onto green space.

  “Before I do anything else, I want to talk to the fishermen who found the body,” Julie said, following Cassie into the modern foyer.

  “We’ve put them all in the isolation ward on the third floor. Luke Franklin, the base medical officer, has been keeping a close eye on them. Other than a case of cabin fever, they seem fine. This way.” Cassie led the way over to the far elevator, the one activated by her swipe card. “Those guys are none too happy to have landed in this mess thanks to their good deed.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  Using her swipe card again to get them into the restricted area, Cassie walked over to the desk and smiled at the nurse on duty.

  “Hi, Melissa. This is Dr. Julie Smith. She’s here to help me figure out what happened to John Doe.”

  It was the name they’d agreed on since the CDC didn’t know she was here, and she didn’t want to get in trouble for “coloring outside the lines.” Unauthorized work like this when she claimed to be on holidays could get her into serious trouble. And if she didn’t want her boss to know where she was, she sure as hell didn’t want anyone else finding her, either. Once she’d accepted the fact that she wasn’t hallucinating, she felt a great deal calmer. She’d escaped from her watchdogs, so she would figure out what was going on here and then decide how to proceed.

  “Nice to meet you, Dr. Smith. This way.” Melissa came around the desk and led the way down the corridor. “We put them all together in the large ward. It’s a little crowded, but they seem to be used to small spaces. What they don’t like is being stuck indoors. I’ll need you to gown before you go in.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” said Cassie. “I want to check the charts and call down to get you a pass so you can come and go as you please.”

  Nodding, Julie followed the nurse into an anteroom and put on a sterile gown, cap, booties, a mask, and gloves. The nurse did the same, and once they were both properly attired, she pressed the button, allowing the door to slide open.

  Eight me
n, dressed in hospital scrubs, sat either on beds or chairs watching the baseball game on the flat-screen television.

  “Sorry, guys,” Melissa said. “I hate to pull you away from the game, but you have a visitor. This is Dr. Smith, and she’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  “I’ve got a couple of my own,” said a burly man with a full white beard and matching hair tied back with an elastic band. He was tall, well over six feet of solid muscle. “Whitey Howard. I’m the captain of the Salmon Hunter,” he said, offering his hand. “How much longer will we be in here?”

  “It depends on what I find out today. You’d rather be safe than sorry, right?”

  He pursed his lips and nodded.

  “Where did your trip start?” Julie asked, sitting down at a small table, ready to take notes on the tablet she’d borrowed from Cassie. Melissa proceeded to take temperatures and blood pressure readings.

  “We came out of Perryville, our home port. It’s located west of here.”

  “And did you stop at any other port between the time you left there and your arrival here?”

  “Nope. We signaled a few passing ships we recognized, but we didn’t talk to anyone else until we got here.”

  “What about the snow crab fishing boat? How did you know about it?”

  “The alert came over the radio. Since we all fish in the same waters, the Coast Guard asked everyone to be on the lookout for debris. The boat was reported missing a few days after it failed to make port. Aerial surveillance hadn’t found anything, so we assumed she’d sunk. There was a bad storm a couple of weeks ago that could account for it—and before you ask, we were still in port when the storm hit.”

  “Did you know the men on the crab boat?”

  “No. They come out of Seward.”

  “Did anyone touch the corpse?”

  “Hell, no! We’d just pulled up our nets and were getting ready to open them up over the fish box when Frenchie over there”—he pointed to a small man sitting on the edge of one of the beds—“let out a scream that could’ve awakened the dead. I thought he’d been hurt, but when I saw what was left of that man’s body, I ordered the net pushed out behind the ship, and we hoisted anchor. No matter who that guy is, one of the missing crew or some other poor bastard, someone needs to know what happened to him.”

  “Was anyone aboard your vessel sick recently?”

  “You mean other than hungover? No.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry about all of this.”

  “It’s not so bad. The Coast Guard will give us market price for the fish, and since our hold is empty, we can make another run or two before we head back into port for the season. My wife knows where we are, and she’s told the others, so if we’re a few days late, they won’t panic.”

  Julie nodded. The catch would be incinerated because of its proximity to the body, but at least the men would have something to show for doing the right thing. And while the captain would probably never admit it, he couldn’t be too upset that his vessel and all of its equipment had been thoroughly cleaned and sanitized.

  “So can you tell me what you think we’ve caught other than fish?” Whitey asked, pouring himself a glass of water from the carafe on the table. “Don’t get me wrong, we’ve been treated well here, but I’d like to be heading home soon. My wife’s got a bun in the oven, due within the month, and I’d certainly like to be there to see my son born. We’ve got three girls as it is.”

  “I can’t tell you exactly what we’re looking for because I don’t know. We’re watching for signs of respiratory problems,” she said as one man coughed. Melissa shook her head.

  “Jake has asthma. He coughs like that a few times a day. Don’t mean nothing,” the captain said. “He uses an inhaler when it gets bad, but he’s usually fine at sea.”

  “I understand. I’m asthmatic myself. So far, according to the base doctor, none of your men show any indication of flu-like symptoms.”

  Whitey laughed. “You’re doing all this because you think we’ve got the flu? No way. All of us had our flu shots before boarding the boat last week. I insisted on it. Flu lays a man low for days, and it could really do a number on Jake. Can’t afford that when we’re fishing. Everyone has a job to do.”

  Julie nodded. “Unless my examination of the body or your last round of blood tests shows pathogens, you’ll all be free to leave before the weekend.”

  “That’s good news. Thank you, Doctor.”

  Julie shook his hand and followed the nurse out of the isolation ward, then removed her gown and the rest of the paraphernalia she’d worn.

  “Well?” Cassie asked when Julie left the room adjacent to the isolation ward. “Is everything okay?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be any connection between them and the body. No one touched it, so I doubt they were contaminated. Are those their files?”

  “Yes. One’s asthmatic, but it’s controlled. Other than the fact that three of them smoke and they all drink too much, the men are in excellent condition, but Julie, I think John Doe was, too.”

  “According to the captain, that missing snow crab boat sailed from Seward. Is there any way to contact the place and find out if they’ve had any similar deaths?”

  “Yes. I can have Luke Franklin call.”

  “Great. Then let’s not keep our mystery corpse waiting any longer.”

  Taking the elevator to the lower level, Julie tried to stem her nerves. Hopefully, Cassie was wrong about the cause of death. When the elevator doors opened, a man stood waiting to go up.

  “Perfect timing. Luke Franklin, meet Julie Smith, an old friend,” Cassie said. “Julie’s a virologist. I invited her to have a look at John Doe. She’d like you to call Seward and see if they’ve had any unusual deaths recently.”

  The young officer with close-cropped red hair, dimples, and a face full of freckles smiled.

  “I can do that right away. Welcome to Kodiak, Dr. Smith.” He offered his hand. He had a firm grip, something she appreciated. “I hope you can pinpoint what killed John Doe. Although I’d heard of cytokine storms, I’ve never seen evidence of one before.”

  “Call me Julie. I have a few ideas about where to look for the missing pathogen that may have started the cascade.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Love to talk longer, Luke,” Cassie said, “but we’ve got a date with John Doe, and we’ve kept him waiting long enough. The sooner we pinpoint cause of death, the better.”

  The doctor nodded. “You’re right. I have rounds and then I’ll make that call. It was nice to meet you, Julie. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear back from Seward.”

  Before going into the morgue, they stopped by the lab, where Julie examined all of the slides Cassie had taken. John Doe had died from a cytokine cascade—specifically, the inflammation in his lungs had been so severe, it had essentially shut down his breathing, causing him to suffocate.

  Three hours later, Julie followed Cassie out of the modern autopsy room located on the lower level of the medical center. The samples she’d taken were on their way to the lab and would be given priority. Her back and neck felt stiff after hours of bending over the badly decomposed corpse. Without a head and missing one hand, the torso hadn’t yielded as much as she’d hoped. Wearing a Hazmat suit might be a bit extreme, especially if there weren’t any pathogens left in the body, but at least she hadn’t had to stomach the nauseating aroma of decomposition.

  The cause of death was still a mystery. As Cassie had noted, the man must’ve been in great shape, and judging from the other fishermen she’d met earlier, that seemed to be the norm. No doubt the work aboard those vessels was demanding, and the men needed stamina to be able to do it for weeks on end.

  One thing was certain. Nothing had taken a bite out of John Doe. His body had been ripped apart by an explosion, one that had no doubt sunk the vessel he’d been on. While the edges of the torso were ragged and fish might well have nibbled on him, there was no sign of teeth marks that could be responsib
le for that much damage. Most of the internal abdominal organs were gone, but the lungs were still there, and luckily, the thymus was intact. A number of new papers suggested that the small gland responsible for producing the T-cells, located just in front of the heart, might hold the answers to immune system malfunctions.

  She’d also done a viral DNA detection test using a lumbar puncture. While the lower part of the spinal column was missing, she’d gotten a good sample farther up. Usually, this test could pinpoint the exact virus invading the spinal fluid. She’d have liked to have gotten some brain tissue samples, but… She’d sent Luke a request to have someone go through the rest of the catch to see if the head was there.

  Julie yawned again. Her eyes were gritty, proof that the beneficial effects of her nap had worn off.

  “I guess I’m not as young as I used to be,” she said. “Ten years ago, pulling an all-nighter and then being able to function was a snap.”

  “Have a baby. You’ll get back in shape in no time.”

  Julie chuckled. Miles had neglected to mention Cassie was six months’ pregnant. “How’s Ariel coping with the prospect of big sisterhood?”

  “She’s thrilled. She’s gotten As in the online courses she’s taken on child care. I swear, she’s a bigger nag than Miles. It’s true this little guy’s an unexpected surprise, but I’m only thirty-six. Plenty of women have babies at my age. Last night, we had quite the discussion on breastfeeding. It seems Ariel feels it’s selfish of me to take each feeding myself, since she considers this ‘our’ baby. If I’m lucky, she’ll feel the same way about changing diapers.” She laughed. “You know, it’s not too late for you, either. You’re a year younger than I am.”

  “Yeah, well, as much as society’s views on single mothers have changed, I’d rather have a daddy in the picture, and I haven’t found a suitable candidate for the role.”