Linwood Barclay - The Twenty-Three

“Clara!” I said.

She stopped, turned. “Barry.”

Even with the lower half of her face covered, she managed to look terrified, and professional, at the same time.

“Give it to me fast,” I said. “What are we dealing with?”

“Similar symptoms across the board. Nausea, headache, vomiting, severe drop in blood pressure. It escalates. Seizure, cardiorespiratory arrest. Hypotension. On top of all that, some patients are scratching their skin off.”

“Food poisoning?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, not food. But something ingested. Something they’ve come in contact with.”

“All at once? From all over the town?”

Clara looked me in the eye. “Not just all over town. All over this hospital. We’ve got current patients on every floor with the same symptoms. Started happening first thing this morning.”

“How can that be? What spreads that fast?”

“I’d look at the water.”

“The town water supply?”

She nodded. “Something got into the drinking water. Fuel spill, maybe. Chemical spill. Something like that.”

I asked, “What can you do for them?”

Her lips were set firmly before she spoke. “Right now, it appears absolutely nothing.”

“How many?”

“They’re stacking up like planes over the airport. Dozens dead. We’re likely going to be in the hundreds soon. I have to go, Barry. Get the word out. Fast as you can.”

“Have you seen Amanda?” I asked. Amanda Croydon, Promise Falls’ current mayor.

“No,” Clara said. “I have to go.”

I let her.

As I turned around, someone familiar bumped into me.

“Carlson,” I said.

“Shit, sorry,” Angus Carlson said. “When did you get here?”

“Just now. What do you know?”

He consulted a small notebook in his right hand. “No one was getting sick last night. Earliest anyone started feeling ill was around six this morning. Symptoms pretty much the same across the board. Dizzy, sick to stomach, shallow but rapid breathing.”

“It could be the water,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice shaky. “Common element seems to be the drinking water from the tap. Even if it was boiled, like for tea. Seems like it’s hitting older people more, but that may just be because older people get up earlier.”

That made sense. I noticed Carlson’s trademark black humor wasn’t in operation this morning. No sick jokes today. The man was clearly shaken. It was fair to say neither of us had ever seen anything like this.

The water. I had to call Maureen.

“You called those close to you?” I asked. “In case they haven’t heard?”

He nodded. “I called my wife, told her.”

“What about your mother?” I’d overheard him, at the station, talking to her on the phone.

“Yes, yes, I called her, too,” he said. “Everyone’s on high alert.”

I looked beyond Carlson, saw yet another person I knew, but this wasn’t a doctor or one of the staff. It was Walden Fisher sitting in one of the ER waiting room chairs, nervously chewing a fingernail.

“Ah, shit,” I said.

“What?” Carlson asked, glancing over his shoulder.

“Walden Fisher.”

“Fisher?” Carlson said with, I thought, some recognition.

“Like he hasn’t been through enough. You remember the Olivia Fisher murder.”

“Of course.”

“That was his daughter. And his wife passed away pretty recently. I’m gonna talk to him. Keep asking around, find out anything else you can.”

I broke away, expecting to approach Fisher on my own, but Carlson chose to follow me.

“Mr. Fisher,” I said.

He looked up, blinked a couple of times, and seemed to be searching my eyes, as though trying to place me. “Detective…”

“Duckworth,” I said, helping him. “And this is Detective Carlson.”

“Mr. Fisher,” Angus Carlson said, nodding respectfully. “How are you managing?”

Fisher’s eyes moved slowly to Angus. “How am I managing? I feel like I’m goddamn well dying, that’s how I’m managing.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He shook his head slowly, more a gesture of bewilderment than a negative. “I don’t know. They found me throwing up in the middle of the street-nearly got run over by an ambulance. They brought me here. I’d had some coffee and then started feeling weird. Why are we all sick? What’s happening?”

“Everyone’s trying to find out,” I said. “Has a doctor seen you?”

“No. I’ve been sitting here forever.” He laid a hand on his chest. “My heart’s been going like crazy. Feel.” He reached out, took my wrist, placed my palm on his chest, and held it there. Despite his condition, his grip was surprisingly strong. I felt flannel under my fingertips, and an erratic thumping. I didn’t exactly have a medical degree, but what I was feeling didn’t feel good.

“Whaddya think?” he asked me.

I didn’t know. If I dragged someone over here to check him out, I’d just be taking a doctor from another patient who might need more immediate attention, and as bad as Walden Fisher was, there looked to be other people in the ER who were in worse shape. I rested a hand on his shoulder momentarily and said, “They’re seeing people as fast as they can.”

Good ol’ Barry Duckworth. Always knows just what to say. Turned out Carlson was better at this than I was.

He went down on one knee so he was at eye level with Fisher and said, “I just wanted to say, I was in uniform back when your daughter, Olivia, was taken so cruelly.”

Walden Fisher’s sick eyes widened slightly.

“So I wasn’t actively involved in the investigation, but I followed it closely, and it’s a terrible thing that no one has yet been brought to justice for that crime.”

“Um… yes,” Walden said.

“I just… I just wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss.” Carlson glanced awkwardly my way, as if hoping I’d rescue him from a conversation he was now thinking he shouldn’t have gotten into. He stood, gave a nod first to Fisher and then me. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything,” he said, then struck off in the pursuit of more information.

This wasn’t the same Angus Carlson I’d encountered earlier in the month. The one who couldn’t stop making corny jokes about dead squirrels. Maybe a move up the ranks, even temporarily, was actually making the man less of a jerk, because that was how he’d impressed me initially.

We’d see.

I got out my phone, saw I had no signal. It had been my experience that you could get a signal in most parts of the hospital, but not in the ER, where you needed one the most. Rather than go back outside, I went into the nursing station and found a landline. One of the nurses looked at me, but gave me a permissive nod when I flashed my badge. As if she had time to worry about me.

I needed to call Rhonda Finderman, the Promise Falls police chief. But sometimes the personal trumps the professional. I dialed home.

“Hello?” Maureen said. She must have been alarmed, seeing the hospital show up on her caller ID.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Listen. Have you had any water from the tap today?”

A pause. “I was just making myself some tea.”

“Don’t. There may be something in the water supply making people sick. Call Trevor and warn him. Then start going up and down the street. Wake people up if you have to.”

“Is it bad?”

“It’s bad.”

“I’m on it,” she said.

“Wait,” I said. “Run some water from the tap, see if it’s giving off a whiff of anything. But don’t put your hand in it.” If there was, as my doctor had speculated, diesel fuel in the water, it would surely give off a smell.