Ridley Pearson - The First Victim

She had brought him to Volunteer Park to lecture him on old habits dying hard?

‘‘I’m working on stuff,’’ he confessed. ‘‘Trying to work things out.’’

‘‘Living with my being healthy,’’ she stated. ‘‘It’s hard for you.’’

‘‘I’m working stuff out,’’ he repeated.

She took his hand. Hers was icy. There was never any warmth in any of her extremities, as if she’d just gone for a swim in a cold lake.

‘‘Dr. Woods’ office called,’’ she said.

Boldt swooned. The world seemed to slow to a stop, all sound replaced by a whining in his ears, his vision shrinking. He managed only a guttural, ‘‘What?’’

‘‘The tests. My annual. There’s evidently a newer, more sensitive test they can run. They want me to book an appointment. You’re a part of that decision.’’

‘‘I appreciate that,’’ he said.

She stared out at the water.

‘‘It’s not that I don’t respect your faith. It’s that I don’t understand it.’’

She explained, ‘‘They say they want me in for an early flu shot. They say they’re worried about me getting the flu. But I know Katherine. It’s about the tests.’’

‘‘Which is it? Flu shots or the tests?’’ Something teased his thoughts: the container victims had been exposed to a flu. Could he use that now?

‘‘They mentioned both. The excuse to get me in there is the flu shots.’’

‘‘It’s your decision, Liz: You want to skip the tests,’’ he said, ‘‘I’m with you.’’ But he wasn’t with her; he felt distracted.

She offered, ‘‘You have to be fully behind this. I need-’’

‘‘My faith?’’

She smiled. ‘‘I don’t expect miracles.’’

Boldt caught Dixon in the middle of an autopsy. An eighty-fiveyear-old widow had fallen off a ladder while changing a light bulb and had broken her neck. The law required Dixon to cut her up and take his samples, and though typically an assistant would have handled such a case, the late summer vacation schedule put the burden on the boss. He went about it with all the enthusiasm of a parking lot cashier.

The room smelled foul despite the ventilation system. Boldt hated the taste it left in his mouth.

‘‘Flu shots?’’ Dixon asked.

Boldt said, ‘‘What if the illegals aren’t the only ones sick? These Hilltop women were raped-that’s close contact. What if the skin irritation on Jane Doe was from industrial detergent, as in a car wash ?’’

Clearly impressed, Dixon said, ‘‘Not so far-fetched.’’

‘‘Close physical contact,’’ Boldt repeated. ‘‘You said yourself it was highly contagious. What if it spread? What if a couple guys are real sick? What if the evening news happened to report that a flu shot and an antibiotic had just come available? That both were specific to what authorities were calling the ‘container flu’?’’

‘‘The antibiotic wouldn’t be specific to the flu,’’ Dixon advised.

‘‘So they issue a retraction? The point being that we could use it as bait. We’ve seen guards on the videos. People have been around these women. Close contact. Someone has buried them. Handled them.’’

The doctor’s gloved hands made sucking noises inside the cadaver. He said, ‘‘This is no Ebola, or something-it’s a very bad flu. It’s treatable.’’

‘‘But if the news plays it up, if there’s a treatment available at a clinic, if our people are at that clinic, and if it requires them to fill out a form that includes an exposure date-’’

‘‘That’s completely unnecessary!’’

‘‘But they don’t know that! The average guy doesn’t know that! I wouldn’t know that. Jill Doe was in the ground weeks ahead of Jane Doe. Jane Doe was dead before the container. The point being that if we can trick someone into naming a date ahead of the container’s arrival, then that person will have to explain his exposure.’’

‘‘No one would ever run such a story. It’s medically unsound. They fact check, you know? Your only hope is with the tabloids, believe me.’’

‘‘My hope is that this office will issue a press release,’’ Boldt stated bluntly.

Dixon’s hands stopped, submerged in the corpse. ‘‘Well then, you just lost all hope.’’ He said firmly, ‘‘I understand what you’re going for, Lou. In a warped kind of way, it even makes sense. It’s a pretty good idea. But I cannot put this department in the position you’re asking me to. If we lose integrity and trust, if the public believes we’re willing to manipulate the truth for the good of SPD. . It just doesn’t work. We’re a team of medical professionals. Believe me, we have image problems enough without this kind of thing: ‘second-rate doctors’; ‘surgeons whose only patients are dead.’ Can’t do it, Lou.’’

‘‘But it might work,’’ Boldt suggested, looking for encouragement.

‘‘I’d give it a qualified yes-a highly qualified yes.’’ He repeated, ‘‘But it doesn’t matter. You’ll never get anyone to run the story.’’

Boldt said, ‘‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’’

Between the chauffeur-driven Town Cars and her own 325i, Stevie realized she had not ridden a Seattle city bus until then, surprised by the diversity of its riders and the unexpected neighborliness of its passengers. She had thought the bus system a place for poor people, the homeless and indigent, ‘‘The Unseen Minority’’ as they had been called in a feature piece on N4@5 . Instead, on that Tuesday afternoon she found teenagers, college kids, moms and children, even a businessman or two. They read books, newspapers, knitted, listened to Walkmans, shared a conversation, or stared out the windows, which was what Stevie did, ever alert for landmarks that might signal the location where Melissa’s subject had disembarked. In her right hand, Stevie carried a printout from the digital video for comparison.

The bus stops came and went. People switched seats. The doors hissed shut. The bell line buzzed the driver.

She marked a tourist map as she went, indicating the running time of the trip. With the video time-stamped, it seemed one possible way to identify the bus stop this man had taken.

The bus route dragged on, her broadcast nearing. After ten more minutes, as they approached the Fremont Bridge, she realized the bus trip would have to wait. She had a meeting scheduled with Boldt to determine if they should air the clips of Mama Lu. Frustrated with the idea of giving up she nonetheless disembarked, crossed the street and rode another bus back into town. As it turned out, Boldt was waiting for her.

Brian Coughlie felt obsessed with her. Aware that following the botched attack in her apartment, the police or the other security were more than likely to keep her under protection, Coughlie nonetheless assigned two of his own INS agents to also watch her from a distance, to report not only her every movement but who else was keeping tabs. When his people reported her boarding a city bus Coughlie became perplexed. Try as he did, he couldn’t make sense of her riding public transportation out to Fremont Bridge and then back into the city again. Was it something she had gleaned from one of the videos? A tip from an informer from the hotline? What? Worse: How did he stop her?

He had gone without sleep, compensating for this additional fatigue through a liberal dose of amphetamines and as much espresso as he could force down. He lived broadcast to broadcast, terrified at what she might come up with next, debating his options and not liking any of them. To watch her broadcasts felt to him like professional leprosy: watching the slow rotting of his own career as bits and chunks sloughed off.