Robin Cook - Vector

Bingham slipped on his glasses and rummaged through the papers in front of him looking for the name.

“Dr. Abelard,” Jack offered.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Bingham said.

“What was the charge?” Jack asked.

“He was angry that you were doing his job,” Bingham said. “What’s the matter? Don’t we give you enough to do around here?”

“I called the man, as Dr. Washington suggested,” Jack said. “I thought he’d want to know about the case of anthrax I diagnosed.”

“So I heard from Calvin,” Bingham said.

“But Dr. Abelard took the news in stride,” Jack said. “He said he’d get to it when he had time, or something like that.”

“But I understand the source is locked up tight in Queens,” Bingham said.

“True,” Jack admitted.

“Yet you took it on yourself to go out and rifle through the victim’s business records,” Bingham snapped. “What’s the matter with you, are you crazy? What if some civil liberty lawyer got ahold of this? You didn’t have a warrant or anything.”

“I asked the man’s wife,” Jack said with a shrug.

“Oh, that would hold up well in court,” Bingham said sarcastically.

“I was worried that some of the victim’s recent shipment had been sold. If it had, then the anthrax could have spread. We could have had a mini-epidemic.”

“Dr. Abelard is right,” Bingham fumed. “What you’re talking about is his job, not yours.”

“We’re supposed to be protecting the public,” Jack said. “I felt there was a risk that Dr. Abelard was not addressing. He wasn’t giving the situation the attention it deserved.”

“When you feel that way about a fellow civil servant, then come to me!” Bingham roared. “Instead of you running around playing epidemiologist detective, I could have called Pat Markham. As Commissioner of Health she can surely get people up off their fat asses if need be. That’s the way the system is supposed to work.”

“Okay,” Jack said with a shrug. In further deference to Cheryl he wasn’t about to get into an argument about bureaucratic inefficiency and frequent civil servant incompetence. It had been Jack’s experience as a city worker that all too often if he didn’t do something himself it didn’t get done.

“Fine, then get the hell out,” Bingham said with a wave of his hand. His mind had already switched to the next problem on his agenda.

Jack got up and walked out of the chiefs office. He paused at Cheryl’s desk. “How’d I do?”

“Honestly, about a C,” Cheryl said with a wry smile. “But since you generally get an F, meaning you aggravate him to a point just shy of apoplexy, I’d say you’re showing progress.” Jack waved and started for the corridor. But he didn’t get far. Calvin caught sight of him through his open office door.

“How’s progress on the David Jefferson case?” Calvin yelled.

Jack leaned in through the door. “Nothing’s back yet. Did you call John DeVries up in toxicology to speed things up from his lab?”

“Right after I said I would,” Calvin said.

“Okay, then I’ll head up there right now,” Jack said.

“Remember, I want that case signed out by Thursday!” Calvin said.

Jack gave the deputy chief a thumbs-up sign even though he doubted it was going to happen, since all the lab work wouldn’t be back. But there was no use arguing about it now. Instead, Jack took an elevator to the fourth floor. There was always the chance of a miracle.

Jack found John DeVries in his tiny, windowless cubicle and asked about the prisoner-in-custody case. In response, John launched into an impassioned lament about toxicology funding. By the time Jack left, he was even more sure he would not be able to finish the case by Thursday.

Using the stairs, Jack climbed up to the sixth floor and entered the DNA lab. Ted Lynch, the director, was in front of one of his many high-tech machines along with one of his technicians. The machine’s instruction manual was open on the counter. It was apparent the unit was malfunctioning.

“Ah, just the man I want to see,” Ted said when he caught sight of Jack. He straightened up and then stretched his back. Ted was a big man and a former Ivy League football star.

Jack’s face brightened. “Does that mean you have some positive results for me?”

“Yup,” Ted said. “One of all those samples you dropped off was positive for anthrax spores.”

“No kidding,” Jack said. He was surprised. Despite making the effort to take all the cultures, he’d not expected any positive results. “Which one of the samples? Can you remember?”

“Absolutely,” Ted said. “It was the one with the tiny blue iridescent star in it.”

“My word!” Jack commented. He could remember finding the star in the middle of the blotter on the desk. It seemed so out of place in the spartan surroundings. Jack had figured it was all that remained of some long-past celebration.

“Can you tell me anything else about it?” Jack asked.

“Yup,” Ted said agreeably. “I had Agnes send up a sample of the culture she’d taken from the patient. We’re running a DNA fingerprint now. We’ll be able to tell if it’s the same strain. I mean, one would assume it was, but it will be nice to have confirmation.”

“Indeed,” Jack said. “Anything else?”

“Like what?” Ted questioned peevishly. He thought Jack would have been more than satisfied with what he’d been told already.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “You’re the one with all this high-tech wizardry. I don’t even know the right questions to ask.”

“I’m no mind reader,” Ted said. “I need to know what you want to know.”

“Well, how about whether the star was heavily contaminated with spores or only lightly contaminated.”

“That’s an interesting question,” Ted said. He stared off and chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment while he pondered. “I’ll have to give that some thought.”

“And I’ll have to give some thought to how it got contaminated,” Jack said.

“Wasn’t this from the victim’s office?” Ted asked.

“It was,” Jack said. “The star was on the desk in the office, but the source for the anthrax spores was his warehouse, not the office. Apparently the spores came in a shipment of goat skins and rugs from Turkey.”

“I see,” Ted said.

“I suppose the spores could have been on his person,” Jack said. “So when he came back to his office and sat down, they dropped off.”

“Seems reasonable to me,” Ted said. “Or what about the possibility of his coughing out some of the spores. I understand it was an inhalational case.”

“That’s an idea, too,” Jack said. “But either way, why the hell were they only on the star? I cultured several spots on the desk, and they were all negative.”

“Maybe he coughed out the star,” Ted said with a laugh.

“Now that’s a helpful suggestion,” Jack said sarcastically.

“Well, I’ll leave the sleuthing to you,” Ted said. “Meanwhile I’ve got to get back to my sick piece of equipment.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jack said absently. He continued to wrestle with the puzzle of the contaminated star as he wandered out of the DNA lab and descended the stairs to the fifth floor. He had the uncomfortable feeling the star was trying to tell him something that he couldn’t understand. It was like a message in a code without a key.

Jack leaned into Laurie’s office, but she wasn’t there. Riva, Laurie’s officemate, glanced up from her desk. In her soft, charming Indian émigré-accented voice, she told Jack that Laurie was still in the autopsy room.

Still in a daze about the star, Jack headed for his own office. It occurred to him that the star might have had a slight electrostatic charge, since its sheen suggested it was made of either metallic or plastic material. That might have explained the reason the spores had stuck to it.