The Ares Virus

by A P Bateman

  The sheriff was seated at his desk and looking at what appeared to be an empty diary. He looked up and studied Stone for a moment as if deciding whether to offer him coffee and a warm good morning, or take out his gun and shoot him. He kept his gun where it was and gave a glimmer of a smile.

  “Help you?”

  “Special Agent Stone... United States Secret Service,” he paused. “We spoke on the phone two days ago.”

  Sheriff Harper looked at him for a short while. Stone wondered how many Secret Service agents the man had talked with lately.

  “Sure,” he said, as if it had taken a while to get his week straight. “How can I help you? You want some coffee?”

  “I haven't driven up from Washington for coffee, Sheriff.” He walked up to his desk and sat down at the empty chair. He dropped the file on the desk and loosened the button on his jacket. He had been abrupt and he knew it. He looked at the police chief and smiled. “Just had a damn fine breakfast over the road. Steak and eggs and plenty of coffee.”

  “Let's cut straight to the chase then. You're here because I disagreed with the coroner from Montpelier.”

  “Yes.” He decided that he liked Harper. “Why, exactly?”

  “Smart ass just wouldn't listen to me. The damned truck went off the hill at Sauer’s Lookout. Sort of place where the younger folks go to make out. Not just the young either. Couple having an affair around Deal, sure thing that they go up to Sauer’s Lookout and get the springs moving, if you get what I mean...” He smiled and gave a little knowing wink. “Just didn't figure, that's all. The coroner maintained that he simply skidded off the road. To me, it’s plain and simple he went over the edge of Sauer’s Lookout and smashed on through the barrier and on to the road below.”

  “Like I said. Why?”

  “You got an hour?”

  “Sure.”

  Sheriff Harper drove through the mountain roads with what appeared to be wild and reckless abandon. Stone held on to the armrest and tried to keep his eyes from fixating on the drop. He preferred to drive whenever he could.

  The trees and escarpments were impressive. The morning light reflected off the yellows and reds of the fall leaves, painting a blanket of color away towards the horizon. Stone used the view to take his mind off the road. Each turn took them higher and further into the mountains. They passed through a small tunnel etched into the cliff and out into a sort of plateau of granite rock and young trees. To their left, the thick forest spread upwards as far as he could see. To his right, the bank of the verge narrowed quickly and became the cliff edge. The tarmac of the road almost ran straight off the edge.

  “Fire took this lot down.” The sheriff explained. “Those trees behind us on the right are only about three years old. Deal and a couple of other nearby towns got together and planted them. The road stopped the fire from spreading any further.”

  They continued to wind their way along the road, then turned onto a sharp switchback with an absurdly steep gradient. After approximately a mile the road surfaced worsened until it was merely hardcore and gravel.

  “Here we are.” The cruiser lunged to a halt and Sheriff Harper opened his door. He walked towards the cliff edge and stood precariously close to the edge.

  “Guy drove right off the damn edge, in my opinion. The coroner said there were too many tire tracks to get an identification. Everyone’s come up here at some time and rocked the springs at some time or another. Those who weren’t old enough, and those who were but shouldn’t have. I don’t have a CSI unit, but I suppose he’s right. Tracks are everywhere.”

  Stone looked at the ground and saw the tire tracks. The edge of the precipice was solid rock and he couldn’t tell if it was marked by a vehicle’s tires. He peered over the edge and studied the view ahead of him. There was a long drop to the road below, but with the road snaking its way down the mountain before him, the overall effect was that of a huge precipice into oblivion. The road spiraled out of sight and was swallowed up by the trees over a thousand feet beneath them.

  “Quite a drop,” he commented. His legs felt a little unsteady. He wasn't really keen on heights, but hadn't noticed how much until now. “How far did he go?”

  The sheriff spat on the ground and pointed to the road below. “Right down onto the road, then off the edge and down onto the road below that. Probably a hundred feet in all, maybe one-twenty.”

  Stone looked back at the road and followed it towards the drop. A segmented barrier was to one side with hairpin bend chevrons to act as a warning. From the direction they had come it was completely safe, a large rugged outcrop of rocks would act as a barrier from the cliff edge. But coming the other way would be another matter entirely. Stone had read the coroner’s report which had been emailed to him. Imagined the man rounding the mountain corner, getting his positioning wrong, standing on his brakes, a look of fear on his face as he knew what was about to happen, then...

  “You see it yet?” The sheriff spat on the ground again and looked at him.

  Stone looked at the road below, then smiled. “No skid marks.”

  “Not a damn one. Now look at it a while longer, Mister Stone. You're an educated man, I can see that.” He pointed down the road in the direction they had travelled. “You get it wrong here and you nudge into the barrier. It throws you back into the road, or if you're unlucky, you hit that outcrop of rocks. That would probably kill you anyways. On the other hand, if you come the other way, you break hard and go straight into the barrier. Might not stop you, but you sure hit it nevertheless. The road people use the metal barriers sparingly. They may not use much of it, but they sure put it in the right place. For the guy to go over the edge, he would have had to be going real slow. Real slow, then across the road, turning hard to the left, and over the edge. You agree?”

  Stone looked at the road in both directions and nodded. “That's the only way, yes, I agree. The only way he could possibly go over the edge would be to go across the road and over at low speed. That would explain the lack of skid marks.” He looked at Harper and frowned. “So why did you disagree with the coroner?”

  The sheriff spat on the ground again and looked up at him. “Because the guy was travelling in the other direction. He was heading back to Washington from his weekend retreat. To broach the barrier he would have to have been heading in the other direction. And then he wouldn’t be going fast enough to break through the barrier. Nope, up here is the only way he would do that. Speed and gravity. Hell, you can see the impact marks on the asphalt. So why didn’t the coroner take any notice of it? There's no way he'd drive through that barrier and onto the road below. Not a damn way in the world ...”

  FIFTEEN

  The traffic was thick and heavy, and the sound of the street was lying dense in the air. Distant sirens echoed off the buildings, drowned occasionally by the intermittence of vehicle horns. On the sidewalk the pedestrian traffic was just as intense and she was hustled along, caught in the throng of people moving down the avenue. The city was all around her, touching her, enveloping her into mere insignificance. It caught hold of her and thrust her into a distinct anonymity.

  After she had finished her breakfast with Elizabeth Delaney, Isobel had taken a short walk outside the hotel to clear her head as much as to obtain a safety deposit box at the nearest bank. As it turned out, not every bank carried the facility and she had walked for more than thirty minutes, taking her down towards Greenwich Village.

  She saw the sign for the coffee house, high above her as she walked. She figured Delaney would be some while talking things through with David Stein, so decided to grab a cup of coffee before walking the rest of the way back to the hotel. She knew Delaney would not have liked her leaving the hotel, but for some reason she actually felt safer on the street. The anonymity of being in the city was a comforting sensation.

  The coffee house was finished with the ubiquitous wooden floor and deep red or brown distressed leather couches around the edge of the room. The counter had six high barstool
s and a brass foot rail ran along the bottom of the counter. Old monochrome photographs of a bygone, much romanticized era donned the walls with everything from pictures of boxers such as Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano squaring to the camera with boxing gloves ready and cold hard stares, to World Series victories for the Yankees.

  The coffee was freshly ground on the premises of course and offered a more thorough selection than even the purest of connoisseurs could wish for. Isobel opted for a cappuccino with extra cream and chocolate shavings and took a small table directly in front of the counter. The coffee arrived quickly and the waitress dropped the check down beside it. They were obviously accustomed to a rapid turnaround in customers and she already felt hurried for the table. The place was filling up and there were only the stools left at the counter.

  She sipped the coffee, feeling the odd sensation of the cold cream and then the seeping of the hot, strong coffee from beneath. It was almost sensual. The bitter chocolate contrasted the sweetened cream beautifully. It came as a harsh reality as she suddenly remembered why she was there, and that she was not just another person on vacation, or going about her day-to-day business. She put the cup back down on the saucer and glanced around the room. People were merely going about their day as they always did. It felt voyeuristic as she watched, almost an out-of-body experience. Normality was all around her, the clock was ticking and the world was turning for these people. To her right, a couple were talking, flirting intimately with one another over giant lattes. To the other side of her, two women were looking over papers together and discussing their business schedules. All around her people were simply going about their day. She only wished she could do the same. Only she had no idea of what that day might entail and no idea when it would end.

  As a brief distraction she took another sip of her cappuccino, then tried to discreetly dab some whipped cream from the end of her nose with the paper napkin. She felt she managed it subtly enough and glanced up to the television behind the counter. One of the baristas was flicking through the channels with the remote. It looked like a montage to poor quality viewing. He was obviously searching for something in particular because he did not let the channel rest for more than a second. She took another sip from the cup, this time managing to avoid any potentially embarrassing incidents with the three-inch layer of whipped cream. She looked back to the television screen and something caught her eye. It was like subliminal advertising. She had seen something significant but in the same instant it was gone. Another five or six channels had swept by, but it was no use trying to recall what she had seen. Just a face for a split second, like a snapshot through the turning pages of an album. A memory partially reacquainted, then lost again in the chasms of your mind. The tender settled on a roundup of the week's sporting news and returned to taking orders at the counter.

  She was trying to recall what had snatched her attention, but it was useless. The cappuccino had not cooled much, so she stirred it up with the spoon, infusing the mix into a thick, tan colored mess with flecks of melting chocolate. It didn't look half as appealing, but she was able to drink it down in a couple of gulps. She stood up, dropped a five-dollar bill on top of the check and made her way to the door.

  She opted out of walking back and took a Yellow Cab. The driver was called Juan, spoke great Spanish but little English and took her on an interesting journey back to the hotel. She did not know the city, but she knew that she hadn't been driven back in many straight lines, and that it may well have been quicker to walk. However, she enjoyed the opportunity to see more of the city and it also helped to clear her head a little. She paid outside her hotel, but didn't tip feeling that failing to put up an objection to the route was kind of a tip in itself.

  Back inside her room, she felt more secure than she had last night. Her confidence was growing, now that Elizabeth Delaney was involved and officiating the matter. It would only be a matter of time before the FBI was involved in force and the bioresearch facility was under proper investigation and the likes of McCray, General Harris and Tom Hardy were either cleared or arrested. This thought filled her with confidence and she realized that she had made the right move in taking the flash drives and involving Elizabeth Delaney.

  With her spirits lifted a little, she switched on the television and flicked her way through the channels.

  She froze.

  It was like looking into the mirror. The reporter's voice was talking, but she couldn't hear the words above her own heartbeat. The blood pulsed through her ears and she felt faint, queasy. Her legs started to buckle.

  The photograph was of the young woman at the train station back in Washington. The photograph had been bordered in red and was in the top left hand side of the picture with the name underneath, taking up about one-sixth of the screen. The moving footage was of a gurney handled down the steps of an unnamed hotel by two city coroner workers, the body was in a black body bag and was strapped down to the gurney with two thick canvass straps. The name under the photograph was Kathy Anderson and the reporter was saying something about her having come to New York from Washington to look for rental property and to start a new life with her fiancé who was to be joining her soon. The words came and went, drifting through the air like a thick mist for her to catch and hold onto mere snippets. The coroner had said there was evidence that it was no accident, and certainly not natural causes. Next on the screen was another gurney and a picture of a young man who was a member of staff at the hotel. His name went past on the bottom of the screen on the tickertape. Police were appealing for witnesses.

  She continued to stare at the screen long after the images had gone and had been replaced with a weather forecast. She wasn't watching, and she wasn't listening. She was simply staring into blankness. She knew what she had briefly seen in the coffee house, and she now knew why it had caught her attention. She realized how much the girl had looked like her, especially in that particular photograph, which had most probably been taken whilst the girl was in college. She also knew that it seemed a bit too much of a coincidence for a girl to look like her and be murdered on her first night in New York. And she also knew that if she had not got off in Newark, it might well have been her on that gurney and not some girl named Kathy Anderson, full of hopes and dreams and the excitement of a new life awaiting her.

  SIXTEEN

  He had watched the television intently. The report had been concise and well documented. There

  was enough information there to be of interest, yet still there was the desire left with the viewer to want more. They would watch the evening news to find out if there had been any further developments and they would talk to their friends and acquaintances to exchange hypothesized opinions on what could have possibly happened to such a pretty young woman setting out on one of life's big adventures. To come to a city in search of a home, having secured a new job and to await your fiancé as he sorted out their final arrangements in what would soon become their previous life.

  It was an innocent, somewhat idealized concept. Full of romance and self-discovery. How many people always say that they'd like to start over again, but fail to do anything about it? This young couple did and then look what happened.

  Seeing the news story filled him with a sense of pride. It must have been similar to that of an artist's exhibition or a writer's book launch. That satisfying sense of relief of your work finally coming to fruition, to the attention of others. However, there was an all-encompassing emptiness to this news report. It was his exhibition. It was his time. The woman had been difficult to kill. She had struggled wildly, desperately. It had taken great effort to make her still, to take the life from her. And yet there was no recognition for his part. It had taken two. For him to kill, and for her to die. She had her recognition and she had her fifteen minutes of fame, but what about him? What about everything he had done?

  He was starting to become angry at the notion. It saddened him that he never had the recognition he deserved and lived such a desperately empty life. He enj
oyed his work, which went without saying, but he could never celebrate his accomplishments. There were no friends in his life and no respite from his work. He worked to live and lived to work.

  He stood up and clutched the pain in his head with both hands. The pain was upon him once more and so was the red cloud, the red mist that came each and every time he started to feel this way.

  So much effort, so much professionalism, so much dedication to his work. And for what? For a hundred thousand dollars a few times a year.

  The pain was starting to subside. It always came quickly and went the same way. It was like a rapid pulse of an electric shock, then gone, as if someone had merely turned off the switch. As if on cue his eyes had started to flicker. The anger was passing, but would be followed by the monotonous beating of the migraine that always ensued. The headaches were getting worse now. Dull and sickening. They seemed to take his life and put it on pause. He felt out of control. And only the weak lost control.

  But it was the dreams that were worse. They took away any hope of a pure thought and held him inside his world of evil and despair. There was no good left in him now, not even within the hidden depths of his subconscious mind.

  SEVENTEEN

  The boy stared out across the lake, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun with a cupped hand. The lake was smooth and calm, and glistened like a bed of jewels on top of a polished mirror. He wished he had worn his sunglasses. He could barely see across to the other shore less than half a mile away. His clothing was bulky, the temperature was dropping daily now as fall beckoned winter. It was surprising how much colder it felt in the shadow of the tree.