Rachel Lee: Something Deadly

“If it is,” Dec said, “we’re all already dead.”

“Oh, cripes, thanks,” Hal muttered.

If Carter Shippey had died from an airborne infection, the chances were high that dozens of other people had already been infected. Carter, after all, was active in the Rotary and his church, and volunteered in the high school shop classes.

Declan and Hal walked into the autopsy room and faced one another across the body. Metz was watching from the other side of the glass, and when Declan glanced up briefly, their eyes met.

Hal picked up the camera he brought to every autopsy and began shooting from every angle, even climbing on a ladder to shoot from above. No step of this process would be overlooked.

The first task, after initial photos, was to remove the victim’s clothes intact. The job proved nearly impossible with a body that sagged formlessly. They managed it, though, and after examining each piece of Carter’s clothing, they put all the pieces into red biohazard bags.

“Nothing,” Declan remarked. Nothing other than the usual loss of bodily control at death. No blood. Not a smidgen anywhere. Nor did an examination of the body itself, now little more than a fluid-filled sack, reveal any sign of wound or blood.

“Well,” Declan said, “it’s not Ebola or Marburg. Or any other known hemorrhagic fever.”

“Thank God for small mercies,” Hal muttered.

“I’m not sure that’s a mercy,” Declan said. “Those take time to kill you, and with proper treatment a lot of people can survive. This was fast. His wife said he was okay when she left for her bridge club and dead when she came home.”

“And it’s still working,” Hal said. “He didn’t look like this last night, did he?”

“Hell no.” Declan picked up a scalpel. He wouldn’t need a bone saw. Nor did he want to make a large incision into this body until he knew what might come out.

His hand paused over what had once been a man’s abdomen. He looked toward the glass.

“Chet? This island has to be quarantined immediately.”

Chet didn’t answer for several seconds. His gaze was fixed on the body on the tray as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Uh…can I do that? I don’t have authority.”

“I do,” Declan said. “It’s under my emergency powers. Call the Emergency Management Office and tell them. I want this island shut down. No one in, no one out, until we find out what the hell did this.”

Chet nodded.

“Then get back here,” Declan said. “Because after I open up this body and take some samples, and Hal and I hose each other off, I’m sure as hell going to need help getting out of this monkey suit.”

“Right.”

Looking green, Chet turned and disappeared.

Hal didn’t look too much better. “Do we have to open him?” he asked. “It’s obvious something’s eating his insides. I mean…what if it explodes all over us?”

“We’re covered,” Dec said, refusing to admit that he had any qualms. “Look, Hal, we’ve got to do it. We’ve got to find out what did this before somebody else dies.”

Hal nodded. He drew an audible breath. “Okay. I’m documenting.”

Declan made the first cut with his scalpel.

Carter Shippey hadn’t rotted. He had liquefied inside his own skin. There were no identifiable organs left to remove, and what remained of the bone had become rubbery, almost like cooked cartilage. Declan saved as many samples as he thought would be useful, telling Hal to freeze them all.

Carter Shippey’s brain and spinal cord were the only parts still intact, though they showed violent hemorrhaging. More samples were frozen.

Declan sewed up his incisions as quickly as possible and put the body back in the cooler. He didn’t allow himself to think much about what he’d just seen, beyond the clinical notes he’d dictated to Hal. Interpretation would come later. Right now, he was simply collecting evidence.

Inside, deep inside, some quiver of unease refused to be silent, though. It wouldn’t let him completely ignore what faced him. What might face the entire island.

Dec and Hal scrubbed the entire autopsy room, then poured bleach over each other and took turns under the overhead high pressure shower. When they were done with the shower, they hosed each other and the entire room. The water and the contaminants flowed down a drain into a deep septic tank where hazardous waste was chemically treated and could decompose safely.

Out in the antechamber, Chet helped strip them out of the suits. For the first time, Declan realized that sweat had plastered his clothes and hair to him.

“What did they say?” he asked Chet, when at last he could sag into his chair. His legs felt weak, as if he’d just run ten miles. His hands were shaking, an old and familiar reaction.

“Well,” Chet said, “they weren’t happy about it. But I told them if they’d seen what I saw, they wouldn’t hesitate. So the order’s going out. The flak should begin any minute.”

“Yeah.” Flak. For some reason he thought of Jaws and the mayor who didn’t want to close the beach. “I need to call the Centers for Disease Control. This is way beyond my expertise.”

“You know,” Chet said, “this is going to freak out the whole damn island.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Declan said, “but we can’t be irresponsible. Anybody who’s worried is better off staying at home anyway.”

Hal’s dark eyes reflected doom and gloom. “Remember what they tried to do to that town in Outbreak?”

“Oh, jeez,” Chet said. “Let’s not even go there, okay?”

“Right,” Declan agreed. “We don’t know what we have here. It might not be infectious at all.”

But he could feel they were sitting on a time bomb.

Ken Wilson died today. No one knows why, or if they do, they’re not saying. I asked the medic about it. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about Caribbean bugs. Wouldn’t that be my luck. Get drafted, avoid the Nam, and end up on an infected island.

I should’ve left those bones alone. Bad luck to mess with bones.

At her clinic, Markie Cross repaired a dachshund’s torn ear, quilting the two pieces of cartilage back together. It would never look quite right again, but it was better than leaving the cartilage separated. So much damage from another puppy’s bite.

She twisted her head, easing the tension in her shoulders. Mornings were for surgery. She’d already done one neuter, one spay, a tumor removal and extracted an infected tooth. If all went well, the ear should be the last surgery of her day. Then she could move on to the office visits, which she generally enjoyed, because they allowed her to interact with both patients and owners.

A movement to the right caught her eye, and she glanced over to see Kato standing on his hind legs, looking through the window that separated the surgery suite from the rest of the clinic. He was looking more somber than usual this morning.

Not that she blamed him. Last night hadn’t exactly been pleasant, and it must have been worse for him. She had no doubt his nose had given him a far better picture of what had happened to Carter Shippey than the words had given her.

He had seemed to like Declan Quinn, though, which was a rarity for him. Kato’s usual habit was to stand several yards away and watch new people until he’d made up his mind about them, a process that might take multiple encounters. Last night, though, it was as if Kato had known Declan was there to help someone.

She shrugged away the thoughts of last night and focused on her work. One more stitch, then done. The dachshund was already starting to wake from anesthesia.

Markie’s first routine client of the morning was one of her favorites, Dawn Roth. Dawn had more money than one person could possibly spend in a lifetime, but she remained amazingly unspoiled. Apart from volunteering in every conceivable way, she raised English mastiffs.