Dean Koontz - Phantoms

He stood at one side of the table with Dr. Daryl Roberts, and General Copperfield stood at the other side, facing them across the dead body.

Goldstein pressed a button on a control panel that was set in the wall to his right. A recording would be made of every word spoken during the autopsy; this was common procedure in even ordinary postmortems. A visual record was also being made: two ceiling-mounted videotape cameras were focused on the corpse; they, too, were activated when Dr. Goldstein pressed the button on the wall panel.

Goldstein began by closely examining and describing the corpse: the unusual facial expression, the universal bruising, the curious swelling.

He was especially searching for punctures, abrasions, localized contusions, cuts, lesions, blisters, fractures, and other indications of specific points of injury. He could not find any.

With his gloved hand poised over the instrument tray, Goldstein hesitated, not quite sure where to start. Usually, at the beginning of an autopsy, he already had a pretty good idea of the cause of death, When the deceased had been wasted by a disease, Goldstein usually had seen the hospital report. If death had resulted from an accident, there were visible trauma. If it was death at the hand of another, there were signs of violence.

But in this case, the conditions of the corpse raised more questions than it answered, strange questions unlike any he had ever faced before.

As if sensing Goldstein's thoughts, Copperfield said, "You've got to find some answers for us, Doctor. Our lives very probably depend on it.”

The second motor home had many of the same diagnostic machines and instruments that were in the lead vehicle-a test tube centrifuge, an electron microscope, and so forth-in addition to several pieces of equipment that were not duplicated in the other vehicle. It contained no autopsy table, however, and only one videotape system. There were three computer terminals instead of two.

Dr. Enrico Valdez was sitting at one of the programming boards, in a deep-seated chair designed to accommodate a man in a decontamination suit complete with air tank. He was working with Houk and Niven on chemical analysis of samples of various substances collected from several business places and dwellings along Skyline Road and Vail Lane-such as the flour and dough taken from the table in Liebermann's Bakery. They were seeking traces of nerve gas condensate or other chemical substances. Thus far, they had found nothing out of the ordinary.

Dr. Valdez didn't believe that nerve gas or disease would turn out to be the culprit.

He was beginning to wonder if this whole thing might actually be in Isley's and Arkham's territory. Isley and Arkham, the two men without names on their decontamination suits, were not even members of the Civilian Defense Unit. they were from a different project altogether.

Just this morning, before dawn, when Dr. Valdez had been introduced to them at the team rendezvous point in Sacramento, when he had heard what kind of research they were doing, he had almost laughed.

He had thought their project was a waste of taxpayers' money.

Now he wasn't so sure. Now he wondered…

He wondered… and he worried.

Dr. Sara Yamaguchi was also in the second motor home.

She was preparing bacteria cultures. Using a sanple of blood taken from the body of Gary Wechlas, she was methodically contaminating a series of growth media, jellied compounds filled with nutrients on which bacteria generally thrived: horse blood agar, sheep blood agar, simplex, chocolate agar, and many others.

Sara Yamaguchi was a geneticist who had spent eleven years in recombinant DNA research. If it developed that Snowfield had been stricken by a man-made microorganism, Sara's work would become central to the investigation. She would direct the study of the microbe's morphology, and when that was completed, she would have a major role in attempting to determine the function of the bug.

Like Dr. Valdez, Sara Yamaguchi had begun to wonder if Isley and Arkham might become more essential to the investigation than she had thought.

This morning, their area of expertise had seemed as exotic as voodoo.

But now, in light of what had taken place since the team's arrival in Snowfield, she was forced to admit that Isley's and Arkham's specially seemed increasingly pertinent.

And like Dr. Valdez, she was worried.

Dr. Wilson Bettenby, chief of the civilian scientific arm of the CBW Civilian Defense Unit's West Coast team, sat at a computer terminal, two seats away from Dr. Valdez.

Bettenby was running an automated analysis program on several water samples. The samples were inserted into a processor that distilled the water, stored the distillate, and subjected the filtered-out substances to spectrographic analysis and other tests. Bettenby was not searching for microorganisms; that would require different procedures than these.

This machine only identified and quantified all mineral and chemical elements present in the water; the data was displayed on the cathode ray tube.

All but one of the water samples had been taken from taps in the kitchens and bathrooms of houses and businesses along Vail Lane. They proved to be free of dangerous chemical impurities.

The other water sample was the one that Deputy Autry had collected from the kitchen floor of the apartment on Vail Lane, sometime last night.

According to Sheriff Hammond, puddles of water and saturated carpets had been discovered in several buildings.

By this morning, however, the water had pretty much evaporated, except for a couple of damp carpets from which Bettenby wouldn't have been able to obtain a clean sample.

He put the deputy's sample into the processor.

In a few minutes, the computer flashed up the complete chemical-mineral analysis of the water and of the residue that remained after all of the liquid in the sample had been distilled: PERCENT OF PERCENT PERCENT OF PERCENT SOLUTION OF SOLUTIONOF RESIDUE RESIDUE H 11.188 00–00 HE 00.00 00.00 Li 00.00 00.00 BE 00.00 00.00 B00.00 00.00 c00.00 00.00 N00.00 00.00 0 88.812 00.00 NA 00.00 00.00 MG 00.00 00.00 AL 00.00 00.00 sip 00.0000.00$00.0000.0 °CL 00.0000.00 K00.0000.00 The computer went on at considerably greater length, flashing up the findings for every substance that might ordinarily be detected. The results were the same. In its undistilled state, the water contained absolutely no traces of any elements other than its two components, hydrogen and oxygen. And complete distillation and filtration had left behind no residue whatsoever, not even any trace elements. Autry's sample couldn't have come from the town's water supply, for it was neither chlorinated nor fluoridated. It wasn't bottled water, either.

Bottled water would have had a nominal mineral content. Perhaps there was a filtration system underneath the kitchen sink in that apartment-a Culligan unit-but even if there was, the water that passed through it would still possess more mineral content than this. What Autry had collected was the purest laboratory grade of distilled and multiply filtered water.

So… what was it doing all over that kitchen floor?

Bettenby stared at the computer screen, frowning.

Was the small lake at Brookhart's liquor store also composed of this ultrapure water?

Why would anyone go around town emptying out gallons and gallons of distilled water?

And where would they find it in such quantity to begin with?

Strange.

Jenny, Bryce, and Lisa were at a table in one corner of the dining room at the Hilltop Inn.

Major Isley and Captain Arkham, who wore the decontamination suits that had no names on the helmets, were sitting on two stools, across the table. They had brought the news about Corporal Velazquez. They had also brought a tape recorder, which was now in the center of the table.