Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (5 page)

Nick frowned, then slowly raised his hand.

“Yes. Nick.”

“Did you say, ‘Assist in
rescue
efforts'? I assume you meant
recovery
efforts.”

“No, you heard me right. If there is extensive flooding across the city, tens of thousands of people are expected to be trapped in their homes or on rooftops. As I said, this is a team effort; the decision has been made by FEMA to focus all available resources on rescuing the living first.”

“Instead of recovering the dead?”

“At first, yes. I think you'll agree, Nick, that it's a lot more important to rescue the living than it is to recover the dead.”

“I'm not sure I do,” Nick said, rising to his feet.

“Fasten your seat belts,” Jerry mumbled. “Here we go.”

“We stopped for gas on the way down here,” Nick said. “A little station just north of Baton Rouge—some of you were with me.” He glanced around the room and a few heads nodded. “There was a line a mile long waiting for gas—it took us an hour to get through. While we were there, two men pulled up to a pump at the same time. They began to argue about who got there first. The argument got heated. I thought there was going to be a fight—until one of them pulled up his shirt and showed the other guy a gun.”

Nick paused to allow the point to sink in.

“That's what stress does to your species, Denny. Those two men were on their way
out
of town—what about the people who stay behind? What sort of stress will they be under? Hunger, fatigue, competition for available resources—and I'd like to remind everyone that New Orleans holds the record for the highest murder rate ever recorded, and that's
without
a hurricane. Human nature isn't going to improve after a major disaster; it's going to get worse—maybe a lot worse.”

“What's your point, Nick?”

“You say we're looking at a lot of casualties here. All I'm saying is that some of them won't have died from natural causes—you can count on that. We owe something to those people too.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“That we divide our resources. Surely at least a few of us could be assigned to the recovery of the dead.”

Denny shook his head. “FEMA estimates that one out of four residents of New Orleans has no access to an automobile. There's no way to estimate how many people have stayed behind—it could be in the hundreds of thousands. And if the city floods, there's no telling how many people will be in need of rescue. Nobody knows if all the government agencies combined can handle it; that's why FEMA wants all available personnel to focus on rescue first.”

“Why was DMORT created?” Nick asked. “To help family members identify and recover the remains of their loved ones.”

“Thanks, Nick, I'm familiar with the training manual.”

“Murder victims have families too,” Nick said, “and they want more than that—they want the murderers brought to justice. That's why the bodies can't wait, Denny. This isn't just about recovery; it's about preserving forensic evidence. You said yourself that this is a unique situation; let's not forget the problems posed by the water. Any pathologist here will tell you that a body decomposes much faster in water than it does on land—but in this case it'll be even worse. The water will be hot, and it will be filled with who-knows-what: bacteria, toxins, sewage, chemicals, pesticides—just to name a few. If the city does flood, we're going to have bodies floating in a toxic brew—”

“Nick—”

“—and it won't just be a problem for visual identification. I'm talking about major decomposition of tissues, even degradation of DNA. Nothing will last long in that soup; by the time we get around to recovering bodies, there'll be nothing left to find.”

“Nick—”

“We're working against the clock here, Denny. This may be an open system, but time is the one thing that's not open. In Somerset County we had all the time in the world to collect the remains from United 93. We had time to mark off the whole field, and walk the grid, but if we take that long here—”

“First the living!” someone shouted from across the room.

“That's incredibly shortsighted,” Nick said. “How many of you have actually viewed a cadaver recovered in water? Let me tell you, it's an evidential nightmare. The tissues soften; the fingers swell until the fingerprints disappear; the hair is lost; the face becomes bloated and unrecognizable—at some point even gender becomes difficult to distinguish. I'm talking about complete loss of forensic evidence: knife wounds, contusions, bullet tracks—all of it disappears. Are we really willing to let that happen?”

The room began to stir; Denny gestured for everyone to quiet down. “Nick, if you want to talk more about this, then see me after the meeting. I'm sure the rest of the team would like to get some sleep. I've scheduled our next briefing for 7:00 a.m. I know, that's awfully early—welcome to DMORT.

“There is one more thing I want to cover tonight. I'd save it for tomorrow, but I think it's that important. If you've been with us before, you know this kind of work can take a lot out of you. The hours are long, nobody gets enough sleep, and then—well, there's the nature of the work itself. That's why DMORT always includes mental health professionals on every deployment, and this time is no exception.”

“Uh-oh,” Jerry said. “I smell trouble.”

“Some experts are predicting that Hurricane Katrina will be the worst natural disaster in our nation's history. If they're right, we'll be working longer hours and we'll be under more stress than ever before—and we need to make sure that we're dealing with that stress in a healthy way. To make sure we do, we're fortunate to have here with us Dr. Elizabeth Woodbridge.”

“I knew it,” Jerry said.

Nick let out a groan.

“Dr. Woodbridge is a distinguished psychiatrist in private practice in the San Francisco area. She is a longtime member of DMORT Region IX, and she's been with us on several prior DMORT deployments. Since Dr. Woodbridge will be serving such an important role here in St. Gabriel, I've asked her if she would close our briefing with a few introductory comments. Dr. Woodbridge?”

The woman who stood up looked strangely out of place. She was unusually pretty—not that the other women present weren't attractive, but the physical demands of DMORT required a what-you-see-is-what-you-get approach: Pull your hair back in a ponytail, scrub your face, and forget the makeup. But this woman looked as if she had just stepped out of a corporate office—which she probably had, just a few hours ago on the West Coast. Her hair was blonde and shoulder-length, cut in a trendy style, with a long straight wisp that crossed her forehead from left to right, causing her to forever brush it back. Her skin was fair and smooth and her eyes were unexpectedly dark and almond-shaped. Her face was beautiful but her eyes were piercing, like thorns on the stem of a rose. It was a quality that Nick found especially annoying—among others.

“I still say she's the hottest babe in DMORT,” Jerry said.

“Good evening and welcome,” Dr. Woodbridge began. “Or should I say, ‘Welcome back.' I see a lot of familiar faces out there.” As she said this, her eyes scanned the audience; when she came to Nick, she hesitated for a split second.

Jerry leaned over to Nick. “I saw that.”

“Shut up,” Nick said.

“As Denny told you, this deployment could pose unique challenges for all of us—including challenges of a psychological nature. Traumatic stress, sleep deprivation, insomnia, nightmares—these are things we're all susceptible to. My job, to put it simply, is to help you avoid these things—or to help you through them if necessary. If you'll allow me to be a bit pedantic for a moment, I'd like to read to you from the DMORT Field Operations Guide.”

Jerry leaned in again. “What does ‘pedantic' mean?”

“It means you went to a community college. Shut up.”

“‘Description of Duties of the DMORT Mental Health Officer,'” she read. “‘(1) Monitors incident stress levels of all personnel and implements stress reduction measures as necessary. (2) Identifies appropriate assessments, interventions, prevention techniques, and counseling for early identification of personnel at risk of mental health and related problems.' That pretty much says it all: My job is to help each of you assess your individual stress level and keep it at a manageable level.”

“I came here for the stress,” Nick said. “Why can't she mind her own business?”

“Now, how will this happen? First of all, there are things you can do to help. I'm reading again from the Field Operations Guide: ‘Be responsible for your well-being and keep in touch with your family. It is important that you monitor and maintain yourself in areas such as: stress levels, medical fitness, physical fitness, proper hydration, proper foods, and regular bowel movements.'”

“Freudians,” Nick said. “She's been here for five minutes, and she's already talking about bowel movements.”

“Those are things that you can do,” she said. “What I can do is listen. As in all past DMORT deployments, each team member will be required to undergo an exit interview when his or her rotation is completed. But here in St. Gabriel, due to the extreme pressures we may all be forced to work under, I'll also be conducting informal interviews along the way just to keep an eye out for unhealthy coping mechanisms. So if I ask you, ‘How are you doing?' please don't brush me off—because I really do care and I really want to know. Thank you.”

She concluded to scattered applause. At this point the meeting broke up and people began to slowly rise and mingle. Nick just sat there, slumped down in his chair.

“Terrific,” he grumbled. “A perfectly good disaster ruined.”

5

“Talk to you later,” Nick said to Jerry. “I need to grab Denny before he gets away.”

“Go easy on him,” Jerry said. “He's got a big job this time.”

Denny spotted Nick charging toward him, and he held up one hand as if to repel the advance. “Now, take it easy, Nick. I know you're upset about this, but the decision has already been made.”

“What fool made that decision?”

“You know how the system works: DMORT is part of the National Disaster Medical System; NDMS is part of FEMA; FEMA is part of Homeland Security; and DHS is part of the president's cabinet. So who made the decision? I don't know—somebody a lot higher up than me. Don't shoot the messenger, okay?”

“If I did, they'd never recover your body.”

“C'mon, Nick. Living people are sort of the priority, you know?”

“No, they're just one of the priorities. Look, I know we need to rescue the living—I'm okay with that—but we owe something to the dead too.”

“Nick, let me fill you in on something: In case you haven't noticed, this whole setup is a logistical nightmare. Everybody knows it's going to be bad tomorrow, and everybody's ready to help—the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Department of Transportation—and those are just a few of the government agencies. We've got a hundred parties in the private sector waiting to pitch in too. And every agency's got some grand contingency plan they worked out years ago, but nobody counted on anything quite like this. The problem is, nobody knows exactly who's in charge.”

“It should be FEMA,” Nick said.

“It should be, yeah. And FEMA used to be a cabinet-level position, remember? That was before 9/11. They had the president's ear back then; they had clear lines of authority. But after 9/11 they lost their cabinet seat, remember? They got shelved under Homeland Security, and now it isn't clear who's making the decisions. It's tough to know where the orders are coming from, and it's even harder to know who to complain to when the orders don't make sense.”

“Then you don't think it makes sense either.”

Denny paused. “I think I'm not the boss,” he said, “and neither are you. But since you asked me, I agree with them—I think all available resources should be focused on rescuing the living first. Think about it: If we wait to recover the bodies, then what you said is true: We might lose a lot of forensic evidence—we might even lose the ability to identify some of them. But if we wait to rescue the living, we'll just have more bodies to deal with later. C'mon, Nick, I know you like bugs more than people, but after all—we're here to serve the living.”

“I'm here to serve the living,” Nick said, “but there are different ways to do it. One of them is by taking care of the dead.”

“And we will—as soon as the rescue operations are finished.”

“I just don't see why we can't do both. Surely they could spare a few of us.”

Denny paused again, choosing his words carefully. “I don't think the decision was purely logistical. When all this is over, I think the people in charge want to be able to say that they used every possible resource to rescue everyone they could. I think there was an emotional element involved.”

“That's a political element, if you ask me.”