Greg Iles - True Evil

Judah was biting his lip so hard that Eldon feared he would draw blood. "Does it have to be fire ?"

"We have to purify this place. Fire is what God used, so we shall, too."

Judah closed his eyes for a while, but when he opened them, Eldon saw that he had accepted this as his lot. After all, Eldon had defied their father and lived, so he must be anointed by God.

"You must be out by five," Eldon said gravely. "Do you understand?"

"Are you leaving?"

"I'll be back to put the apes down. But I doubt you'll be finished."

"Okay. Where do I go when it's done?"

"I'll explain everything when I come back."

"Okay."

Eldon smiled, then walked back to the primate area. He had some reading to do; explosives were not his line. Still, he was confident in his abilities. What a production it would be. An explosion, then fire-fire hot enough to melt steel-and when the firefighters arrived, they would find something they had never before seen: a dozen panicked primates crazed by the flames. Eldon figured the animals would double the time it would take to get the blaze out, which was exactly what he wanted. So…he would dart the animals, just as he'd promised Judah. But there would be no injection of KCl. And as a last measure, he would unlock the cages, binding the doors with a couple of twists of wire, enough to persuade the primates that the doors were still locked, until a conflagration of biblical proportions ripped through the old bakery. It would be interesting to see which species smashed their cage doors open first once the panic hit, but it was not worth dying to find out.

He looked over at a locked closet to the right of the chimps' cages. In it were four cylinders filled with acetylene. Three other closets in the old bakery held identical cylinders. By the time the fire department responded to the calls of neighbors, the building would be burning at three thousand degrees Celsius. The stench of burning beagles would be permeating the area, and crazed monkeys would be flying at anyone who approached what until recently had been their home. Eldon laughed quietly, so that Judah wouldn't hear him. It would be a spectacle worthy of Hieronymus Bosch on LSD.

Chris held the elevator door for a nurse pushing a woman in a wheelchair, then followed Alex onto the fifth floor of the University Medical Center.

"Have you met Dr. Pearson during your mother's treatment?" he asked.

Alex shook her head. "Mom's doctor is Walter Clarke."

"You're kidding. Clarke was a year ahead of me in med school. I thought he was still at Baylor."

Alex shrugged.

They walked past the patient wards and down to the academic offices. Near the end of the hall was a door with a brass nameplate that read MATTHEW PEARSON, MD, CHIEF OF HEMATOLOGY.

Chris paused and said, "Not a word about the FBI, murder, or anything like that."

"Because?"

"This is a hospital. One whiff of litigation or even liability, and we'll be out the door. This is my world, okay? Just follow my lead."

Alex rolled her eyes. "I can do that."

He knocked at the door, then walked into the office. A red-haired woman with a retro beehive looked up from a stack of papers. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so," Chris said in his most genteel Southern accent. "I'm Dr. Chris Shepard from Natchez. I happen to be up here visiting a friend"-he nodded at Alex-"and I was hoping to talk to Dr. Pearson about a cluster of cancer cases back home."

The secretary smiled, but the smile looked forced. "Do you have an appointment, Dr….?"

"Shepard. I'm afraid not. But I was talking to Dr. Peter Connolly up at Sloan-Kettering, and he spoke very highly of Dr. Pearson. Pete seemed to think I would have a good chance of speaking with him on short notice."

At the mention of Connolly's name, the woman's face brightened instantly. "You know Dr. Connolly?"

"I studied under him when I went to school here."

"Oh, I see." She stood up and, coming around her desk, offered her hand. "I'm Joan. Dr. Pearson is busy right now, but let me just slip in there and see if he can't get away for a minute."

When the woman disappeared into the inner office, Alex whispered, "Aren't you something."

The door opened, and a smartly dressed man in his midforties walked out with his hand extended toward Chris. "Dr. Shepard?"

"Yes, sir," said Chris, taking the hand and squeezing firmly. "Glad to meet you at last."

"You, too. I see your name on a lot of charts that pass through here. You send a lot of referral business our way. We appreciate it."

"Not as much as I used to, I'm afraid, now that we have Dr. Mercier in Natchez."

"Well, that's a good thing for your city." Dr. Pearson grinned. "Hey, you don't have a hidden camera on you, do you?"

So, even Matt Pearson had heard about Chris's documentary on residents' work hours. "No, my days as a director are over. I'm part of the establishment now."

While the glad-handing and listing of mutual acquaintances progressed, Chris sized up the chief of hematology. Despite his coming from Stanford, Pearson seemed to be cut from the same cloth Chris had gotten to know so well during his years at UMC: a smart, clean-cut WASP who'd made a 4.0 at Ole Miss or Millsaps, then left the state for a med school with a more prestigious pedigree and returned home covered with laurels. Chris was a little surprised: in a rigorous specialty such as hematology, he'd expected a foreigner.

"Joan said something about a cancer cluster?" Pearson prompted.

"Right. But I've forgotten my manners." Chris turned toward Alex. "This is Alexandra Morse. Her mother is here in your department right now. Ovarian cancer."

An appropriately somber look came over Pearson's face. "I'm familiar with the case. I'm sorry we have to meet under these circumstances, Ms. Morse."

"Thank you," Alex said in an accent so thick that Chris could have sworn she'd never left Mississippi. "All the doctors and nurses have been wonderful."

"Is your mother part of this cancer cluster?"

"No," Chris said. "Alex is just a friend. As for the cluster, I don't have statistical backing yet, but we've had several similar cases in Natchez this past year, and it's really starting to worry me."

"What type of cancer?" asked Dr. Pearson.

"Different kinds, but all blood cancers. Leukemias, lymphomas, and a myeloma."

Dr. Pearson nodded with genuine interest. "I'm surprised we haven't picked this up ourselves. We've taken over the state tumor registry, you know. Have these patients passed through here?"

"Some. Dr. Mercier has treated several, and some of the others have gone to M. D. Anderson, Dana-Farber, like that."

"Right, of course."

"The thing is," said Chris, "some local doctors have wondered if there might be an environmental factor linking these cancers."

More concerned nodding from Pearson. "That's certainly possible. It's a very complex subject, of course. Controversial, too."

"I've also wondered," Chris went on, "if there might be some other etiological link between the cases."

"Such as?"

"Well, I've been doing a lot of reading in my frustration, and I've come across a few interesting possibilities. Radiation is one. We've got two nuclear plants in near proximity, and two of these patients work at one. The others don't, though. Two of the patients have had chemo for previous cancers, though. I've also been intrigued by the role of oncogenic viruses in cancer."

Dr. Pearson looked skeptical. "That seems pretty far-fetched, given what you've told me."

Chris felt for the man. On one level, Chris was playing a type that Pearson would like to avoid: the loquacious country doctor come to town with a bunch of wild scientific theories. On the other hand, Chris could be a dream come true: a country doctor with a handful of reportable cases that would splash Pearson's name through the top medical journals.