Weapon of Choice

by Patricia Gussin

  He hadn’t thought much about tonight’s honoree, a seventy-year-old black woman from a family, who through their newspaper, had promulgated so much injustice and propaganda that The Order had chosen her as a worthy target. Did it bother him that the woman was seventy? Not really. She was just an excuse to wipe out three generations of blacks at one sitting. Yes, there would be whites, too. He accepted that. Whites who associated with blacks were not worth worrying about, just as Banks had said.

  Once dessert had been served, the guests would finish their coffee, wait politely for the speeches to end, and begin to leave. Would they feel ill by then? Charles didn’t think so. He estimated that it would take a good two hours for the staph to flare up in the body, depositing its toxin throughout the organs. This strain had never been in humans, so he couldn’t be too sure of the timing, but before anyone suspected an epidemic, he’d be long gone.

  In jeans and an ordinary shirt, he’d be any fairly young guy leaving the hotel. That reminded him: what car to drive? He’d half expected that The Order would send a car for him. That way his own car wouldn’t be left in the Palace Hotel garage. But it was time to leave and no sign of transportation courtesy of The Order. He’d certainly expected another communication from Banks, but all quiet on that front, too.

  Three o’clock p.m., Charles walked out of his home, turned on the security code, and locked his door. He carried with him a basic overnight bag. In it were the usual toiletries, a change of clothes, and a selection of family photos. After tonight, he’d be starting anew. He just wished he knew where.

  Standing in his pristine garage, Charles looked from his Porsche sports car to his elegant Cadillac sedan. Then he jerked open the door to the Porsche and slid in.

  What did it matter? By the end of this day, The Order already would have whisked him away to parts unknown.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30

  When Special Agent Something introduced himself, Stacy had a moment of terror. Had they come for her? But the handsome young black agent appeared deferential, if poker faced. He made sure nothing in his expression hinted he could be surprised to meet an African American female researcher qualified to handle top-priority and top-security biological samples. His stay on the CDC campus was brief, however. Not even macho FBI men courted unnecessary proximity to a container of deadly staph cultures. For her part, Stacy could not allow lethal bacteria to scare her. She knew the biology cold, took all the prescribed precautions, never cut corners, and never had contracted so much as a sore throat.

  She asked whether he was returning to Tampa tonight.

  “No, I work in Atlanta. Heading home now.” He eyed the package she’d just signed for and then carefully placed on her desk. “Looking forward to a very long, very hot shower. With Lava soap if I can find any.”

  Stacy wished she could prolong the conversation. The guy was genuine flirt material. Stud city. But, of course, she had other urgent priorities. She had carefully explained to Director Cox why she’d transported the Tampa cultures. Now she’d better replicate her work on the purloined—better word than filched—cultures, if she were to keep her neck from the chopping block. The test results would be identical, she reasoned. But what if they weren’t?

  Nice escort for a black tie dinner, she thought as the agent retreated, clearly wanting out of there.

  “Oh, leave a card, please?” she suggested, all business. What would her sisters say if she showed up next Thanksgiving with this hunk?

  “Sure.” Special Agent Hunk extended a worn leather case so she could take one of the cards emblazoned with the dark gold-and-blue insignia.

  She nodded as he closed the door behind him. Obstructing justice? Violating CDC rules? Whatever her crime, he should be her arresting agent.

  Pulling herself together, Stacy proceeded to the P3 lab to unwrap the package. She had all the machines up and running, having been through the drill earlier in the day. No reason for the test per se to take more than ninety minutes. Then she’d have to call and assure Director Cox that the results of this test matched those she’d obtained with the Tampa culture. Then she’d have to rush home to get ready for the Palace event. Nothing much she could do with her hair other than pile it up on top of her head and stick in some rhinestone pins to secure it. Her nails were a mess, but maybe, just maybe, she’d have time to redo them. The dress—maybe she’d pull out that black satin number she’d worn as her sister’s maid of honor. Thank God it was black and just enough off the shoulder. With black stiletto heels, she’d be presentable, just barely.

  As her experiments perked, Stacy started thinking of what questions she wanted to ask Rosa Parks. She knew Rosa was born in Tuskegee, Alabama; her grandparents were former slaves. She’d attended segregated schools but then one day, when the segregated rows of seats on the bus were pushed farther back to accommodate white passengers, in a singular act of courage, she had refused to give up her seat. Media reports of her arrest triggered the historic boycott and legal actions so pivotal to the civil rights movement.

  Stacy wondered if she’d mind being asked questions about what gave her that courage. What had prompted her move from Tuskegee to Detroit? What could she, Stacy Jones, do to carry on Rosa’s legacy?

  “Ding!” Testing complete. Results to be read and interpreted.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30

  Natalie still had not stirred, but her blood tests had improved. Kidney function, electrolytes, and white blood count, all abnormal, but getting better. The ticokellin was working. If Victor Worth had anything to do with the development of the drug, as he had claimed, Laura wanted to hug him. His research would save Natalie’s life. Thank God.

  Director Madeleine Cox requested a meeting in the ICU. Laura hated to leave Natalie yet again, but if she could help Stacy out of a bind, she knew she should. What was Director Cox up to? Laura hadn’t managed to concentrate on what Cox had said in Natalie’s room after Stacy’s call. But Victor Worth finally should be recognized by Cox’s agency for developing a drug effective against methicillin and vancomycin resistant staph. She wondered how his pleasant son Matthew was doing. Well, she hoped. Miraculous that he’d left the hospital before the epidemic would have ended his life. Lucky for him, his staph infection was susceptible to methicillin.

  Ticokellin doses, now in short supply, were under the CDC control and Natalie might need additional doses. Another reason Laura was on her way to the ICU to meet Cox. But the specter of the deadly side effect, aplastic anemia, still lingered.

  As she approached the ICU, Laura slowed, anticipating security control and the isolation protocol. At last count, only two of the original seven patients survived. So far. The fatalities: the two patients she’d operated on five days ago, the good guys, Bart Kelly and Tom Mancini; and the forty-eight-year-old nurse with complications after a hysterectomy; Dr. Worth’s colleague, Norman Kantor, former Keystone Pharma research director, in the ICU for complications following hip surgery; and Natalie’s love, Trey Standish, a healthy adolescent boy, who should have been the most resistant.

  Still alive in the unit: Markus Riedenberg, an eighty-two-year-old man admitted after an observed cardiac arrest in a department store, and Holly Knight, age thirty-three, who’d had a colectomy for ulcerative colitis. In each of these staph-infected patients, symptoms showed up about fifteen hours later than in the five patients who already had died. Each of the surviving two had been treated with ticokellin, and Laura would learn soon whether they’d responded.

  Director Cox met Laura just outside the ICU.

  “I’d like you to listen to what Ms. Knight has to say,” Director Cox got down to business. “Come over here.”

  Cox introduced Laura to two men wearing protective gear; the pair of FBI agents stood as far as they could from the patient’s bedside.

  Laura had not been Holly Knight’s attending physician, but she had rounded on her with the students and house staff on Wednesday.
She remembered Chief Resident Michelle Wallace had pointed out the high risk of colon cancer with the patient’s ulcerative colitis, and that Holly had a strong family history of cancer as well as a history of severe bleeding. So at thirty-three, she’d opted for a procedure that would mean wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of her life. What she had not bargained for was a postoperative course to include massive blood loss, followed by a severe transfusion reaction that landed her in the ICU—where she would catch a raging staph infection.

  “Thank you, Dr. Nelson,” Holly said. “All of the patients and nurses have talked about how when everyone started getting terribly sick, you were the one here for us.” She hesitated, looking away from her visitors toward the empty bed next to hers. “The patient next to me was a nurse and knew you, but she died.”

  Laura wanted to say something, something appropriate, but no words came.

  The male agents seemed to shuffle, impatient, Laura suspected, to leave this hotbed of infection.

  Director Cox moved in a little closer and said, “Holly, you are one of the lucky ones. Your symptoms started much later than all the others, except for Mr. Riedenberg.” Cox gestured to the elderly gentleman across the room, his head hidden under an oxygen tent. “You told the FBI agents that the cleaning lady saw something strange and that she told the patient next to you, the nurse?”

  “I did hear her,” Holly’s eyes widened. “She said to the nurse, ‘You saw that new doctor? I’ve never seen him here.’

  “I heard the nurse say, ‘No, but I’ve been so drugged up, I wouldn’t know my own physician.’

  “‘Well, he gave you some kind of a treatment, and the others, too,’ the cleaning lady said. ‘Not everybody. He didn’t go to every bed.’

  “The nurse said, ‘I’ve had so many doctors probing me and sticking me with needles, I couldn’t tell you, Bunnie. You know with all the students and residents and technicians, there’s always somebody new.’ ”

  “Bunnie,” Laura said. “The woman who was trying to tell me something in the E.R. About a man doing something to the patients. Was the man she saw Victor Worth?”

  “I’ve been trying to remember,” Holly volunteered. “I think I saw him, too. I was groggy; he didn’t stop at my bed.”

  You are one lucky woman, Laura thought.

  Cox turned to the FBI agents. “This could be Victor Worth. He’s the one we need to focus on. That’s what I wanted you to hear.”

  One agent wrote in a notebook, but both eyed the ICU door.

  Cox led Laura and the agents across the room to a quiet space. “According to the patient, a man apparently was seen in this unit, someone whom we think may have a link to this particular lethal bacteria strain. My labs in Atlanta are testing for this connection right now, and if it’s confirmed, maybe we’re looking at homicide. This ‘doctor’ may have got a hold of the toxic staph and purposefully infected the ICU.”

  “What if it was not purposeful, but accidental?” Laura dearly wanted to exclude the possibility of such evil afflicting her hospital.

  “I realize that this is not an official investigation yet, gentlemen, but we need to show the patients and any staff Victor Worth’s photo,” Cox said. “Start with Holly. Find out exactly what she observed. And Mr. Riedenberg, he’s having some lucid moments. Maybe he saw something that could connect Victor Worth to the infected patients.”

  “Worth was here visiting his son,” Laura said. “His son was in isolation for HIV. Worth shouldn’t have been in the main ICU.”

  Laura noticed the agents shift back even farther at the mention of HIV.

  “Except,” she continued, “that he knew a patient in the ICU, Norman Kantor. They’d worked together at the NIH. In the same staph program.”

  “How quickly can we get a photo of Victor Worth, circulate it? See if anyone saw him in the room?” Cox pointed to the agents. “Start with Holly Knight.”

  “And contact Kantor’s family for background on the two men,” Cox said, then added, “Please. And will you find out if Worth visited anyone in the ICU? This is where epidemiology and criminology intersect. If ever there’s a time to cooperate, it’d be now.”

  Laura wasn’t sure if the agents agreed, but she figured that until the CDC director got word from Stacy about the “official” cultures, Cox couldn’t press too hard.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30

  Charles found his chef’s outfit waiting for him in Lonnie Collins’s office. The white jacket large enough to slip over his shirt, and the baggy checkered pants that would fit over his jeans. He’d worn black sneakers that he figured would blend in with all the other kitchen workers’ footwear.

  “You just wait in here until I tell you,” Lonnie instructed him. “You come out too soon and it won’t take long for my team to figure out you don’t know shit.”

  Charles looked at his watch. If dessert was served about nine, he had almost five hours to cool his heels.

  “You got the nasty bacteria?” Lonnie asked. “I don’t want any part of that. I’m going to step back and let you do your thing. I’m not touchin’ that shit. I’m doing what I’m told to get my daughter back. That’s it.”

  “You won’t have to touch a thing,” Charles said. “My delivery system is secure.” And it was, too. Charles had secured a syringe that could efficiently deliver small aliquots of the staph-infested media. Just a simple tap. Tap, tap, tap, profiterole after profiterole. Lonnie had explained that there’d be fifteen plates per tray, pastries already on the individual plates. Shouldn’t take more than fifteen to twenty seconds to complete a tray. Twenty-five trays of fifteen. Done. Mission accomplished.

  “I gotta go out and set up,” Collins said. “On my way out, I’m locking the door. You don’t answer for anybody. Not the phone. Nothin’.” Lonnie reached over and pulled a book off the shelf. Here, you can read this. Take your mind off what’s on the menu tonight.” Lonnie tossed him a hardcover book with a cover illustration of a gorilla. “Skeleton Crew,” he said. “Bunch of short stories. Stephen King. Scare the shit out of you.”

  Charles restricted his reading to nonfiction: biographies, mostly of American heroes. Short stories by Stephen King? He looked around the office for other books. There were none.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30

  Now that Natalie was regaining consciousness, Laura could put it off no longer. She needed to tell Natalie about Trey. Seven years ago, she’d had to tell her children that their father was dead. Each one had taken it so differently. Natalie had been only ten years old then; now she had to tell that same child that someone she so held so dear had died. Natalie was now seventeen, and Trey had meant so much more to her than Laura ever could have imagined. And Laura felt profound guilt and a powerful sadness. Had she acted differently, could she have saved Trey Standish? Now she had to be the bearer of tragic news.

  To prepare herself, Laura had called home. Her kids all had come back to the Tampa house, wanting to feel close to Natalie even though they knew they couldn’t go to the hospital to see her. The grandparents were with the kids and Laura’s housekeeper, Marcy Whitman, had come home, too. Her sister and brother remained at her parents’ place on Anna Maria Island. The phone lines were kept burning back and forth.

  Several times during the day, she’d talked to the kids—giving them updates on their sister, hearing the fear in their voices. Stories about the deadly staph epidemic at Tampa City dominated the local news, and with the arrival of the director of the CDC, now had gone national. Director Cox’s appearance on the scene effectively marshaled resources, but also intensified the media hype. The reality was bad enough, the headlines way off the reality charts: Toxic Staph Annihilates Major U.S. City; Florida Quarantined; Scourge Infecting Thousands With No Cure In Sight; Tourists Leaving The West Coast Of Florida In Droves.

  Laura reviewed the events of the last six days. Because of her AIDS patient, she’d consulted Stacy, and mentioned her to
Dr. Kellerman, who’d called Stacy at her mother’s; with Natalie in grave condition, Stacy responded. By this fortunate chance, Stacy was present and had the authority to call in the CDC rapid-response team. She had such a reassuring effect on Laura—if Stacy could only have stayed in Tampa. And how ridiculous for her to have to fly back to Atlanta just because an insubordinate employee claimed to be ill. Stacy had predicted that he’d be fired, and Laura, too, hoped he would be.

  Now as she dialed her home phone number, she knew she needed advice from Natalie’s twin sister, Nicole. The girls were dramatically different in personality—but they shared everything. Laura remembered the birth control pills falling out of Nicole’s purse. They must have been Natalie’s. And she’d blamed Nicole.

  Laura’s mother answered the phone. “How is Natalie?” she asked, before Laura could get out a word.

  “Better, Mom, she’s responding to that investigational drug. Thank God.”

  “I’ve been praying so hard. We all just said the Rosary. All the kids and your dad.”

  “Thanks, Mom, for being there for me and the kids. Dad, too.”

  “All we’ve done is huddle together, trying to keep up each other’s spirits. And, you—we’ve been worried about you, too. All that TV coverage about how fast the infection is spreading and how dangerous it is. You’ve been there the whole time. Honey, are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Yes, surprisingly. Once she realized that she faced an infectious disease out of control, she’d taken precautions, but being in such close contact with Natalie and being so exhausted, Laura knew she must have a solid immune system to thank for her health. Look at her colleague Ed Plant and her young resident, Michelle, not so lucky, but both had taken a dramatic turn for the better with the ticokellin. And Natalie was responding, too.