Firewalk

by Chris Roberson

  “A boy’s got to have a hobby,” he answered with a shrug. “But no, I save my stalking for work hours.” His smile broadened fractionally. “And somehow I suspect if I had kept track, I’d have found you most often in your office working on a case.”

  “Probably,” Izzie allowed. “Or at my apartment doing a jigsaw puzzle or sitting on the couch eating Thai takeout and binge-watching some stupid sitcom.”

  “With a cat, presumably.”

  “Too much trouble.” Izzie shook her head. “I’ve got a ficus. Not as much fun to pet, but at least it doesn’t scratch up the furniture.”

  Patrick’s smile held for a moment, accompanying a brief chuckle, but then a shadow passed over his features and a serious expression settled in. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

  Izzie tightened her grip on her bag’s strap, her lips drawn straight. “So you really think there’s a connection?”

  “Yes.” He let out a ragged sigh. “Maybe. I’m not sure. It seems crazy but …”

  “We both know that just because something is crazy doesn’t make it impossible.” She paused, and then added, “Just improbable.”

  “Right.” He nodded. “But we also both know that the improbable is kind of what Recondito is known for.”

  A momentary silence stretched between them, as things not necessary to speak aloud passed unuttered.

  “Well … ” Izzie took a deep breath. “Should we be going?”

  “Do you need to check in to your hotel first?”

  Izzie glanced down at the bag slung over her shoulder. “Not if you’ve got space in the backseat for this. The Resident Agency already got me set up with a room across the street, but it’s not like I’ve got an urgent need to unpack.”

  Patrick pulled a key ring out of his pocket and unlocked the car with a click of a button. He yanked open the passenger side door. “Allow me.”

  “So gallant,” Izzie said, sliding into the seat after tossing her bag into the back. Patrick kept the interior of the car as neat and clean as a rental, though she noticed scratches in the fabric of the backseat that might have been made by fingernails. There was a file folder resting on the seat beside her bag, but Izzie couldn’t read the label from her vantage point.

  “Force of habit.” Patrick settled into the driver’s seat. “Of course, I’m usually opening the door for someone in handcuffs after reading them their Miranda rights, but I guess I don’t mind if you sit up front.”

  “Just drive, Patrick. I want to see what you’ve found for myself.”

  The city morgue was located in the basement of the Hall of Justice, a dozen blocks north and east of the Resident Agency at the heart of City Center. Typically a short drive, with rush hour traffic it was taking longer than Izzie had expected.

  “Might be faster to get out and walk.” She looked at the unbroken line of cars that stretched up Prospect Avenue before them, inching along at a snail’s pace.

  “Lots of construction in town these days, roads being torn up and repaved.” Patrick craned his neck in an attempt to look past the obstruction ahead, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently. “Close one lane of traffic and the rest come to a standstill, apparently.”

  “So … Vice, huh?”

  Patrick left off drumming and glanced in her direction. “Yeah, four years now. Narcotics, mainly.” He turned back to face the road ahead.

  “I thought you’d worked pretty hard to get transferred into Homicide. When we first met, you said it was your dream job.”

  Patrick winced. “I thought it was. But after everything, I just … I needed a change, that’s all. I put in a transfer request not long after we closed the Fuller case.”

  “Was that before or after they hung the Medal of Valor on you?”

  He let out a mirthless chuckle. “The captain sat on my transfer request until after the medal ceremony. Said it might send the wrong message to the public.” He glanced back in her direction. “The Director of the FBI gave you a letter of commendation, right?”

  “Yeah.” Izzie shrugged. “I’ve got it in a drawer somewhere. They weren’t thrilled that we didn’t take Fuller alive, though.”

  Patrick shot her a look. “I thought he was going after you with that sword of his.”

  “I know, I know. Believe me, I appreciate the impulse. And it all went in my report.” Izzie found that she was scratching the scar at the back of her hand, and forced herself to stop. “The Bureau understands that it’s sometimes necessary to use lethal force, but it’s not high on the list of ‘desirable outcomes.’ Quote, unquote.”

  Patrick honked the horn when a merging car came too near to his own bumper, narrowly avoiding a collision.

  “Speaking of Narcotics … ?” Izzie went on as the horn’s bleat faded. “‘Ink’? Is that what it’s called?”

  He nodded. “It’s a new street drug. Started turning up early this year. At first we thought it was just another designer amphetamine like Molly or Eve, but it’s something else entirely.” He paused, and then added. “The lab has designated it as a ‘synthetic opiate,’ but that just means that they don’t really understand what it is yet.”

  “And the dead man?”

  “Tyler Campbell. Low-level dealer. We had surveillance footage of him making a deal, but by the time we took him into custody he wasn’t in possession. We brought him in for questioning, but he wouldn’t give up his supplier. We held him overnight to let him stew a bit, but never had a chance to take him in front of a judge.”

  “Why not?”

  “He died in his cell that night.”

  “Cause of death?”

  He turned and briefly made eye contact. “That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

  The car had finally made it through the intersection at Prospect and 12th, and the Hall of Justice loomed into view just ahead. A towering block of gray stone that covered an entire city block, it was stark and utilitarian in contrast with the Spanish Colonial style of the older city offices that surrounded it.

  Patrick pulled the car into a reserved spot on the east side of the building, among a small fleet of patrol cars and other service vehicles.

  “Come on,” he said, switching off the engine and popping open the door. He reached into the backseat and grabbed the file folder. “We don’t want to keep the goddess of the underworld waiting.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Izzie zipped her jacket up tighter as they stepped off the elevator into the biting cold air of the cavernous, low-ceilinged space. Autopsy tables were neatly arranged, the metal doors of the refrigerators that lined the back wall were polished mirror bright, and the sinks and workstations were spotless and clean. Bright lights overhead reflected off the white tiles underfoot. Had she seen it in a photo, Izzie could easily believe that it was the picture of sterility. But her nostrils stung with the strong ammonia smell of antiseptic cleaning products that couldn’t quite mask the underlying stench of corruption and decay.

  And a photo would not have conveyed the teeth-rattling sound of goth rock blaring from the open door of the medical examiner’s office.

  “A little on the nose, isn’t it?” Izzie wrinkled her nose in distaste.

  “I think she does it for effect,” Patrick answered. “I’m half-convinced she listens to disco music when she’s alone down here, and only switches on Bauhaus or Sisters of Mercy when she hears the elevator chime.” He stepped further into the morgue, and raised his voice, calling out, “Hello? Anybody home?”

  The music suddenly stopped, and a diminutive woman in a white lab coat leaning heavily on a cane appeared in the open doorway. Her jet black hair was cut in an asymmetrical undercut bob, and the thick-soled black boots she wore boasted an impressive number of buckles and straps.

  “You’re late, Tevake.” Her cane tonked against the tiles as she walked across the floor.

  “Aren’t most people when they come here?” Patrick gestured towards the sheet-covered body on the nearest autopsy table. “Late one way or
another, I mean.”

  “You make that joke every time.” She leaned both hands on her cane, smirking. “Keep trying, though. It’s bound to get funny eventually.”

  “Dr. Nguyen?” He looked from the woman to Izzie. “Allow me to introduce Special Agent Isabel Lefevre.” He gestured to the woman. “Izzie, this is Dr. Joyce Nguyen, Recondito’s Chief Medical Examiner.”

  “Only medical examiner at the moment, though I keep putting in requests for the city manager to find room in the budget to hire me an assistant.” She stepped forward and held her hand out to Izzie. “Please, Agent Lefevre, call me Joyce.”

  “‘Izzie’ will do fine.” They shook hands. “And it’s nice to meet you.”

  “Actually, we met briefly when you were here last,” Joyce said. “I don’t blame you for not remembering, though. I was interning with the old M.E., and I was still a mousy little thing in floral prints and sensible shoes with my hair in a ponytail.”

  “Oh, sure, I remember. You were here when we brought in the Reaper victim who the fishing boat had trawled out of the bay.”

  “That was me, all right.” She paused, smiling a little wistfully. “You don’t get remains like that every day.”

  Izzie remembered those particular remains all too well. The only thing more unsettling that the smell had been the squelching sound that the body parts had made as the M.E. pulled them apart in the course of the examination. That they had once belonged to a human body was a fact that only an expert could recognize readily.

  “Speaking of remains … ?” Patrick indicated the sheet-covered cadaver on the autopsy bench. “Is that our guy?”

  Joyce nodded. “I pulled him out of the fridge this morning when I got your message.”

  The medical examiner started towards the table, and glanced in Izzie’s direction. “I suppose that Tevake has filled you in on the basics?”

  Izzie nodded. “Low-level drug dealer, found dead in a holding cell.”

  “That’s the bumper sticker version.” She picked up a clipboard that was resting at the foot of the table, and flipped open the chart clipped to it. “Adult white male, well developed, somewhat undernourished and appearing the stated age of twenty-nine years. Head normocephalic. Irises discolored by decompositional changes, but the pupils were equal in diameter. No contact lenses present, no conjunctival petechiae. Nose normal, with purging hemolyzed fluid in the nares and mouth. Teeth present, with evidence of good oral hygiene that had recently been neglected. Left ear pierced but the hole has healed over. Yadda yadda.”

  She flipped the chart closed, tucked the clipboard under her arm, and began pulling on a pair of blue nitrile surgical gloves.

  “I did a thorough external, internal, and microscopic investigation, and only found two things of real interest.”

  Joyce lifted one corner of the covering sheet and took hold of the dead man’s left hand, holding it up. She pointed at the fingertips, where the nails had been cut to the quick during the autopsy. “I found trace amounts of an unknown substance beneath the fingernails on both hands. I’ve sent it to the lab to be analyzed, but I’m still waiting to hear the results.”

  “Could it be this drug?” Izzie asked. “Ink?”

  Joyce glanced at Patrick, who nodded. “That’s our working hypothesis,” she answered, looking back to Izzie. “Unfortunately, we are largely working in the dark.”

  “We’ve had a lot of trouble laying our hands on samples of the drug,” Patrick added.

  Izzie looked at the dead man on the table. “Was he a user as well as a dealer?”

  “Maybe.” Patrick scowled. “Maybe not. I wish we knew.”

  “As I understand it,” Joyce explained, “determining whether a subject has ingested Ink is based entirely on behavioral and anecdotal factors. In advanced cases there is often a mottled discoloration of the user’s skin, but the drug itself doesn’t appear to remain in the system after use, and so far we haven’t found an effective physical test for it.”

  “What kind of behavioral factors?” Izzie asked.

  “Mood swings,” Joyce replied. “Personality changes. Memory loss.”

  “Whether someone witnessed them taking it,” Patrick offered, his scowl deepening.

  “As I said.” The medical examiner pursed her lips. “Anecdotal factors.”

  She let the dead man’s hand fall back to the autopsy table and covered the arm with the sheet once more.

  “You said you found two things of interest?” Izzie asked. “I’m guessing that you didn’t mean both hands.”

  Joyce walked around to the other end of the table, and folded back the sheet covering the dead man’s head. “It was the brain.”

  Izzie could clearly see where the scalp had been cut and folded back, and then stitched back up again after the examination was complete.

  “Honestly, I don’t know how he was able to function at all, given the state of degeneration, but at the moment it seems the most likely cause of death.”

  She pulled the clipboard out from under her arm and flipped open to a series of photos, and held one out for Izzie to examine.

  “What am I seeing?” Izzie finally asked.

  “More importantly, what are you not seeing?” Joyce flipped to another page of the report and pulled out what Izzie at first thought was an X-ray, but then realized she was looking at soft tissue and not bone. “I had an MRI done on the organ once I realized how widespread the degradation was, and decided that continuing the physical examination would be counterproductive.”

  It was a human brain in profile, but dotted throughout with tiny black shadows.

  “Is that … ?” Izzie looked up and met Joyce’s eyes, and then shot a glance at Patrick, but his expression was closed and unreadable.

  Joyce nodded. “The man’s brain was riddled with vacuoles. Little pockets of nothing, like bubbles in Swiss cheese. My first thought was that it might be variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease …”

  “Mad cow,” Izzie said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

  “The same agent is responsible for both vCJD in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cows, yes. But there was no indication of the prions associated with vCJD and BSE in the subject’s cerebral tissue. And the degree of degradation was beyond that typically found in even the most advanced cases of prion disease. In fact, I hadn’t seen anything like this since …”

  “Five years ago.” Izzie couldn’t look away from the face of the dead man on the table.

  Patrick opened the file folder that he’d brought from the car, and pulled out a sheaf of MRI printouts.

  “The one common factor in Nicholas Fuller’s victims.” He fanned the printouts on an empty instrument table. “A fact that was never released to the public.”

  Patrick took the MRI printout from Izzie’s hands and laid it on the instrument table with the others. The same dark shadows could be seen on all of them, though none with so many and so large as the latest one.

  “I thought that was chalked up to a coincidence. Unrelated to their causes of death.” Izzie turned back to Joyce. “That was in the official report that the medical examiner provided.”

  “ Well …” Joyce rubbed her lower lip with her index finger, considering her answer. “The old M.E. was a … shall we say, ‘pragmatic’ individual. Yes, the degradation in the brains of the murder victims was not a result of the manner of their deaths, which was ruled in every case to be either homicide by cutting instrument or blunt force trauma, followed by post-mortem dismemberment. And so, technically, it was unrelated to the causes of death.”

  “Technically?” Izzie raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, the odd thing was that we were completely unable to develop any kind of workable explanation for why each of them showed exactly the same type of brain degradation. As in the present case, no prions were found in the cerebral tissue of the murder victims. But assuming for the moment that the pathology was similar to prion-related diseases, it was extremely unlikely that there was a comm
on cause, considering that vCJD and related disease can incubate for up to fifty years. And given the diverse ages, ethnic and geographic backgrounds of the victims …” Joyce trailed off.

  “It was the pragmatic choice simply to dismiss it as a coincidence.” Izzie scowled, angrily scratching the scar on the back of her hand.

  “It’s not Joyce’s fault,” Patrick said. “She was just an intern at the time. Besides, the killer was dead. There wasn’t any pressure from my superiors for a more detailed explanation, or from the FBI as I recall. They were all happy to jump on the simplest solution that presented itself.”

  “To his credit, the M.E. was concerned about the potential health risks presented by the victims’ remains, so they were properly disposed of, even though we found no evidence that the condition was transmissible. Either post-mortem or in living tissue. And with the absence of any common cause that we could point to—”

  “Undersight.” Izzie’s head was down, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  “Excuse me?” Joyce was momentarily confused.

  “The other fact about the Fuller case that was never released to the public,” Patrick explained. “The old M.E. was informed, but perhaps he never told you?”

  Joyce shook her head.

  “It was a research project headed up by scientists from Ross University. It ran for several years, and all of the victims were involved in one capacity or another, sometimes months or even years apart.” Patrick sucked air in through his teeth. “And Nicholas Fuller was one of the head researchers and chief architects of the project, before he left the university.”

  Joyce’s eyes widened. “And this was all at the university here in town? If the agent was on campus, the potential exposure could have been …”

  Patrick shook his head. “No, not on the campus. The Undersight experiment was located a mile underground in an old mine shaft out in the hills a few miles outside of town.”

  The medical examiner breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. “Still, if they were exposed to something down there that caused this condition, then others could still be at risk.”