T Parker - The border Lords

Hood felt his heart downshift. "A bat like the ones in the cave?"

"Yes. That make the asema."

"What did you do with it?"

"Shake bat out of the bag. Step on the bat five time. Use towel. Flush down toilet. Wash floor with bleach and rub with garlic. Say words that have power over evil."

Hood figured Joe Leftwich had put the bat in the wastebasket. Creatures get into these rooms all the time, he thought-geckos and mice and moths and mantids and cockroaches. Joe had probably found it in his room and tried to dispatch it, then wrapped the animal in tissue and thrown it away, thinking it was dead. Or, in the poor light of the tree-house room, superstitious Itixa might have seen something else altogether. A mouse?

"How big was the bat?" he asked.

Itixa held up her hands about a foot apart. "The wings." Then moved them to what Hood guessed was four inches. "Body. There was blood on the tissue in the basket. There was blood on the bedspread on the floor. There was blood on the sheets at the foot of the bed. Small blood. Drops of blood. Mr. Gravas's blood. Asema Joe drink his blood. He share it with the bat."

And in his mind's eye Hood saw what dropped from Joe Leftwich's hands as the priest turned to greet Seliah as he turned away from Sean Ozburn's sleeping body, and this thing fell into the folds of the bedspread.

Something small and heavy wrapped in something loose, like a golf ball wrapped in a washcloth.

A bat, thought Hood.

Superstition meets science.

"Excuse me."

He used the resort satellite phone in the dining room to call the number that Brennan had written on the back of his card. When the doctor answered, Hood could hear the baseball play-offs on Brennan's TV.

"There's a good possibility that Sean Ozburn was bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica on or around July twentieth," said Hood. "That's about five weeks before he started feeling strange and bad. And about nine weeks before Seliah started feeling the same way."

The television went silent. "Deputy, can you repeat that, please?"

Hood repeated and there was a brief silence.

"This changes everything," said Brennan.

"What do you know about rabies?"

"Maybe one out of ten thousand physicians in this country has even seen a case of human rabies. I'm not one of them. But I do know this-by the time symptoms show, it's almost always fatal. And it's transmittable by sexual activity, even kissing."

"Didn't a girl survive it just recently?"

"They used the Milwaukee Protocol," said Brennan. "It very likely saved her life. Very controversial. Potentially very damaging on its own. How did the bite occur? Where was it on his body?"

Hood told the truth, not the whole truth, and something other than the truth. He looked out at Arenal. A shower of red embers puffed into the air and he heard the distant clacking of the thrown boulders knocking their way down the mountain.

"The Milwaukee Protocol," said Hood.

"The Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Rodney Willoughby and colleagues. I followed that case. The protocol had a potentially huge effect on the way other infectious diseases are treated."

Hood felt his anger ignite, something bright and violent but controlled. Father Joe Leftwich with a little bat in his hands. Sean Ozburn. Seliah.

"I'll put Wisconsin and CDC on alert," said Brennan. "They can get the serum antibody test done faster than I can. Other tests will be necessary to confirm the virus. If she's symptomatic with rabies, then she only has a short time to live. I mean days. Maybe a week."

"How is Seliah doing since you admitted her?"

A silence and a sigh. "She checked herself out about two hours after you left. We've called her cell and home and left messages. No return calls. Before I do anything else I'm going to call the Health Department. They'll get the Sheriffs to bring her in if she's not cooperative."

Hood remembered Seliah's surprising strength, her erratic and erotic aggression, her derangement. "If she's not cooperative, look out."

"I've read about their strength," said Brennan. "And the aggression. Rabid dogs get violent, too. Foxes, bats, all of them."

Hood punched off and called Soriana, told him the facts. Told him they needed to round up Seliah Ozburn and get her to Milwaukee yesterday.

"I'll have people to her place in less than an hour."

"Frank, if she's got this thing, she's very dangerous."

"I understand that. We'll subdue her."

"What's the word on Sean?"

Soriana said nothing for a long moment. Hood looked through the dining room and saw Itixa padding her way to the bar.

"About two o'clock today Sean wasted two young men in our San Ysidro house. Came up back side again, walked right by the exterior camera and smiled up at us. Didn't bother to take out the surveillence system this time. He just barged right in and shot them. No shotgun anymore. He used a couple of those Love Thirty-twos you guys came up with. One in each hand. Eighty shots fired in probably about five seconds. Carnage. We got the whole thing. It's his death sentence."

"One of them."

"We could use you here, Charlie."

He was out on the nine twenty to L.A. the next morning. Seven hours later Hood, Bly, Morris and Velasquez were in the Ozburn home in San Clemente. Seliah's car was not in the garage; the laptop was gone; there were a few clothes on hangers left strewn on the unmade bed. Hood and Bly poked around in the closet but couldn't find the red slip-on sneaks or the Angels cap she'd worn to the restaurant a few evenings before. Or the cobalt blue robe for that matter. The mirrors were still covered or turned to the walls.

"What's with the mirrors?" asked Morris.

"We've all been wondering that," said Bly.

"Creepy, man."

Morris and Velasquez tried to coax something useful from an older desktop computer in the spare room, without luck.

Hood had already been told what to expect here, but he wanted to see it for himself. He'd also learned that Seliah had changed the password for her laptop computer. No surprise there. He looked around the living room again, the curtains closed tight over the sun blinds and the house dark but uncharacteristically warm. Hood checked the thermostat and it was turned off. Seliah was gone as gone could be.

His phone buzzed. "Deputy Hood, Dr. Brennan. We couriered the blood sample up to L.A. yesterday evening. Seliah is positive for the rabies antibody. They'll run other tests to confirm, but she almost certainly has the rabies virus in her, too. We have to assume she does."

"Have you talked to the Medical College of Wisconsin?"

"UCI Medical Center can do the protocol right here in Orange County. Rodney Willoughby is willing to personally consult. In fact, he insists on it. But UCI can't do the protocol without the patient."

"We're working on it."

"She might have just a few days to live."

Hood rang off and gave the other agents the news. Not one of them spoke. They stood looking down or at the thin line of sunlight coming through the window.

"I'm going to try again," he said. He dialed Seliah's cell number and got the recording so he left another message about what he had discovered in Costa Rica, and what Brennan was testing for. Then he sent her an e-mail, his third in the last two hours. Dear Seliah, The test came back positive for the antibody. They can do the Milwaukee Protocol up in Orange County. But it has to happen fast. As in right now. Please call me. Please answer this. Please come back from wherever you've gone, and bring Sean, and we'll get you both to the hospital and treatment. You can win this, Seliah. You and Sean don't have to suffer. Love, Charlie A minute later she wrote back from her new e-mail address. "She's back," said Hood. "She's back!" From: Seliah [wildblueyonder@zephyr.net] Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 3:24 p.m. To: Hood, Charlie Subject: this situation Dear Charlie, I can't believe what has happened. I'm not sure I do believe it. But I'm not coming back for treatment without Sean. I'm going to work on him because if what you say is true then his infection is two or three weeks ahead of mine. Apologies for my quirky behavior last Wednesday. I didn't appreciate you committing me to the hospital until now and I retract anything ugly I may have said. If rabies is what I have, I can tell you it brings some wicked evil thoughts into a brain. They are like nothing I've ever had. Stand by. Seliah