Patricia Cornwell - Unnatural Exposure

'You're a genius!' Lucy was so excited she was hurting my ears. 'How the hell have you managed to keep him on that long?'

'What do you mean?' I asked, amazed. 'Eleven minutes so far. You win the prize.'

'I was only on with him maybe two minutes.' I tried to cool my forehead with the back of my hand. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

But she didn't care. 'We nailed the son of a bitch!' She was ecstatic. 'A campground in

Maryland, agents from Salisbury already en route. Janet and I gotta plane to catch.' Before I got up the next morning, the World Health Organization put out another international alert about Vita aromatic facial spray. WHO reassured people that this virus would be eliminated, that we were working on the vaccine around the clock and would have it soon. But the panic began anyway.

The virus, dubbed by the press Mutantpox, was on the cover of Newsweek and Time, and the Senate was forming a subcommittee as the White House contemplated emergency measures. Vita was distributed in New York, but the manufacturer was actually French. The obvious concern was that deadoc was making good on his threat. Although there were yet no reports of the disease in France, economic and diplomatic

relations were strained as a large plant was forced to shut down, and accusations about where the tampering was done were volleyed back and forth between countries. Watermen were trying to flee Tangier in their fishing vessels, and the Coast Guard

had called in more backups from stations as far south as Florida. I did not know all the details, but based on what I had heard, there was a standoff between law enforcement and Tangiermen in the Tangier Sound, boats anchored and going nowhere as winter winds howled.

Meanwhile, CDC had deployed an isolation team of doctors and nurses to Wingo's house, and word was out. Headlines screamed and people were evacuating a city that would be difficult, if not impossible, to quarantine. I was as distressed and sick as I'd ever been in my life, drinking hot tea in a bathrobe early Friday morning.

My fever had peaked at a hundred and two, and Robitussin DM didn't do a thing except make me vomit. Muscles in my neck and back hurt as if I had been playing football against people with clubs. But I could not go to bed. There was far too much to do. I called a bondsman and received the bad news that the only way to get Keith Pleasants out of jail was for me to drive downtown and pay in person. So I went out to my car, only to have to turn around ten minutes later because I' d left my checkbook on the table.

'God, help me please,' I muttered as I sped up.

Rubber squealed as I drove too fast through my neighborhood, and then moments later, back out, flying around corners in Windsor Farms. I wondered what had happened in Maryland during the night as I worried about Lucy, for whom every

event was an adventure. She wanted to use guns and go on foot pursuit, fly helicopters and planes. I feared such a spirit would be crushed in its prime, because I knew too much about life and how it ended. I wondered if deadoc had been caught, but believed if he had, I would have been told.

I had never needed a bondsman in my life, and this one, Vince Peeler, worked out of a shoe repair shop on Broad Street, along a strip of abandoned stores with nothing in their windows but graffiti and dust. He was a short, slight man with waxed black hair and a leather apron. Seated at an industrial-sized Singer sewing machine, he was stitching a new sole on a shoe. As I shut the door he gave me the piercing look of one accustomed to recognizing trouble.

'You Dr Scarpetta?' he asked as he sewed.

'Yes.'

I got out my checkbook and a pen, not feeling the least bit friendly as I wondered how many violent people this man had helped back out on the streets.

'That will be five hundred and thirty dollars,' he said. 'If you want to use a credit card, add three percent.'

He got up and came to his scarred counter piled with shoes and tins of Kiwi paste. I

could feel his eyes crawling over me.

'Funny, I thought you'd be a lot older,' he considered. 'You know, you read about people in the news and sometimes get flat-out wrong impressions.'

'He'll be freed today.' It was an order as I tore out the check and handed it to him.

'Oh, sure.' His eyes darted and he looked at his watch.

'When?'

'When?' he echoed rhetorically.

'Yes,' I said. 'When will he be freed?' He snapped his fingers. 'Like that.'

'Good,' I said as I blew my nose. 'I'm going to be watching for him to be freed like that.' I snapped my fingers, too. 'And if he isn't? Guess what? I'm also a lawyer and in a really, really shitty mood. And I'll come after you. Okay?'

He smiled at me and swallowed.

'What kind of lawyer?' he asked.

'The kind you don't want to know,' I said as I went out the door.

I got to the office maybe fifteen minutes later, and my pager vibrated and the phone rang as I sat behind my desk. Before I could do anything, Rose suddenly appeared and looked unusually stressed.

'Everybody's looking for you,' she said.

'They always are.' I frowned at the number on my pager's display. 'Now who the hell is that?'

'Marino's on his way here,' she went on. 'They're sending a helicopter. To the helipad at MCV. USAMRIID's in the air right now, heading here. They've let the Baltimore Medical Examiner's office know a special team's going to have to handle this, that the body will have to be autopsied in Frederick.'

I gave her my eyes as my blood seemed to freeze. 'Body?'

'Apparently there's some campground where the FBI traced a call.'

'I know about that.' I had no patience. 'In Maryland.'

'They think they've found the killer's camper. I'm not clear on all the details. But it has what might be a lab of some type. And there's a body inside.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. 'Whose body?'

'They think, his. A possible suicide. Shot.' She peered at me over the top of her glasses, and shook her head. 'You should be home in bed with a cup of my chicken soup.'

Marino picked me up in front of my office as wind gusted through downtown and whipped state flags on tops of buildings. I knew instantly that he was angry when he pulled out before I' d barely shut the door. Then he had nothing to say.

'Thanks,' I said, unwrapping a cough drop.

'You're still sick.' He turned onto Franklin Street.

'I certainly am. Thank you for asking.'

'I don't know why I'm doing this,' he said, and he was not in uniform. 'Last thing I

want to do is get near some goddamn lab where someone's been making viruses.'

'You'll have special protection,' I replied.

'I should probably have it now, being around you.'

'I have the flu and am no longer infectious. Trust me. I know these things. And don't be mad at me, because I have no intention of putting up with it.'

'You'd better hope the flu's what you got.'

'If I had something worse, I would be getting worse and my fever would be higher. I

would have a rash.'

'Yeah, but if you're already sick, don't that mean you're more likely to catch something else? Like, I don't know why you want to be making this trip. 'Cause I sure the fuck don't. And I don't appreciate being dragged into it.'

'Then drop me off and be on your way,' I said. 'Don't even think about whining to me right now. Not when the entire world's going to hell.'

'How's Wingo?' he asked in a more conciliatory tone.

'I'm frankly scared to death for him,' I replied.

We drove through MCV, turning into a helipad behind a fence where patients and organs arrived when they were medflighted to the hospital. USAMRIID had not arrived yet, but in moments we could hear the powerful Blackhawk, and people in

cars and walking along sidewalks stopped and stared. Several drivers pulled off the road to watch the magnificent machine darken the sky as it hammered in, blasting grass and debris as it landed.