Exposed (23 page)

The Slammer

Maggie had wanted to tell the woman in the blue space suit to leave her alone. She was too early and Maggie was tired of being poked and prodded. She stayed curled up in bed. She didn’t even look over her shoulder at the woman. She’d simply wait until Colonel Platt returned. But this time the woman brought in a laptop computer and without a word she left.

Maggie booted up the computer and was surprised to find she had access to a wireless network that connected with ease. In a matter of minutes she started trying to track down any information on the manila envelope she had taken from the Kellerman house.

The postage was a metered stamp from a post office in D.C. but the return address was actually Oklahoma. Why go to the trouble of pretending it came from Oklahoma when it was obviously sent from D.C.? If this envelope had delivered the deadly concoction that made Ms. Kellerman ill, Maggie believed there had to be some clue in the return address.

Other criminals had used return addresses to make a statement or confuse law enforcement. If Maggie remembered correctly, at least one of the Unabomber’s intended victims was not the recipient of the rigged package, but rather the person listed on the return address. Theodore Kaczynski had even gone to the trouble of supplying insufficient postage so the package would be “returned to sender.” It was a cunning way for a criminal to remove himself from the victim, make the victim and the crime look random. It became tougher when law enforcement couldn’t make a connection between the victim and the suspected killer. The smartest criminal minds, the dangerous ones, used this knowledge to their advantage.

Maggie suspected this guy was in that category. It was certainly clear to her that he wanted attention or he wouldn’t have dropped a note right into the FBI’s lap. He wanted to thumb his nose at them, show how smart and clever he was. He didn’t just want the FBI investigating his shenanigans, he wanted to drop them smack-dab in the middle of it all. He wanted them to experience this right alongside the victims he had hand chosen. And for whatever twisted reason, Maggie believed he had specially chosen Ms. Kellerman and Mary Louise. There was no doubt in her mind that they were not random victims.

Maggie brought up Google maps and keyed in the return address listed on the package: 4205 Highway 66 West, El Reno, OK 73036. She expected to find a residence belonging to James Lewis who was listed as the sender. What came up on the screen stopped her.

She checked everything she had keyed in. Maybe she had gotten the numbers wrong. There was no mistake. The return address was for the U.S. Federal Correctional Institution for the South Central Region.

“Okay,” she told herself. Federal prisoners had access to plenty of things these days but there was no way one would be able to send out a package that wasn’t thoroughly inspected.

She Googled “James Lewis”+ “federal prison.” Several news articles came up. All of them included the Tylenol murderers in Chicago during the fall of 1982. Maggie sat up on the edge of her chair.

Now, this was interesting.

Maggie was only a girl at the time. Her father was still alive and they lived in Green Bay, close enough to Chicago that she remembered her parents had been concerned. It didn’t matter. She knew the case. Every FBI agent knew the case. It was one of the most notorious unsolved crimes in history.

She scanned one of the articles to refresh her memory of the details. Seven people died after taking cyanide-laced Extra Strength Tylenol capsules. The murderer had shoplifted bottles from area stores, emptied and refilled capsules with cyanide, replaced them in their bottle and box then returned them to each store. Hard to image how easy it had been before tamperproof packaging.

Maggie found James Lewis’s name and continued reading. Lewis was a New York man who was charged and convicted, not of the murders. There was no evidence that he had access to or had tampered with any of the bottles. Instead, Lewis was convicted of attempting to extort one million dollars from Tylenol makers Johnson & Johnson. He served thirteen years of a twenty-year sentence. And he served those thirteen years in the Federal Correctional Institution in El Reno, Oklahoma. However, Lewis was released in 1995 and was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Maggie sat back. Obviously Lewis hadn’t sent this. He wouldn’t set himself up. But the person who did send it wanted to draw attention to the unsolved case. Or was it simply a piece of trivia he found amusing?

Maggie browsed the other articles about the Tylenol case. How could it be relevant? It was interesting, but it all happened twenty-five years ago.

She checked the date and slid to the edge of her chair again.

It was exactly twenty-five years ago.

The first victim died on September 29, 1982. And that’s when Maggie saw it and she knew she was right. He hadn’t chosen at random. Just the opposite.

The first victim of the Tylenol murders was a twelve-year-old girl from Elk Grove Village, Illinois, and her name was Mary Kellerman.

USAMRIID

Platt felt like it was taking an eternity. He thrived on order. He respected processes that followed logic and reason. But suddenly the basic procedure for entering a Biolevel 4 hot zone had become a painstaking, excruciatingly long process. Everything took too long. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. And yet, he didn’t dare skip or hurry any of it. He knew better and all he had to do was to remind himself of the cells he had just looked at through the microscope. That was enough.

His heart still pounded against his rib cage. At least its thundering in his ears had eased up a bit. At times like this his nervous energy pulsed and raced, making him anxious. It was the same excess energy he liked to slam out on the racquetball court or pound out on the running trail. Years of self-discipline taught him how to control it, but here, inside these windowless walls, it was always a bit of a challenge.

He had helped McCathy into his space suit first. Platt would be able to put on his own suit. In the field it was a little trickier. Here it was routine and Platt had plenty of time. McCathy would need to prepare the frozen samples they’d use for the test, something Platt didn’t envy. The samples they were going to use were actual blood serum from human victims with filoviruses, samples in glass vials taken from USAMRIID’s freezer, their own private collection of hot agents. Platt tried to stay positive, tried to remind himself that not all filoviruses were equal. Though all were highly infectious, not all were fatal.

Ebola Reston had shown up in a private laboratory’s monkey house in Reston, Virginia, about twenty years ago. Platt’s mentor at USAMRIID had been one of the task force members who had had the job of containment. The virus spread through the monkeys like wildfire, but it didn’t have the same effect on humans. The sample they had in their freezer collection was from a worker who had gotten sick but who had survived. Ebola Reston hadn’t taken a single human life. Yet under a microscope it looked like snakes or worms with thousands of threads splintering off of it. It could certainly look just as vicious as Ebola Zaire.

Ebola Zaire had earned the nickname “the slate wiper” and for good reason. Its kill rate was ninety percent. The sample they had was from a nurse in northern Zaire just south of the Ebola River. In September 1976 she took care of a Roman Catholic nun who had somehow become infected with the virus. From what Platt knew of the outbreak, entire villages in the Bumba Zone of northern Zaire were wiped out. The virus jumped from one village to another until the government blocked off sections of the country and allowed no one out or in under threat of being shot. That was Ebola Zaire. The only means of containment was to let it die out and, of course, let everyone infected die with it.

In between was Marburg and Lassa fever. Marburg wasn’t much better than Ebola Zaire. Its survivors looked very much like victims of radiation. But the difference was that there were actually survivors. The sample they had of Marburg was from one such survivor, a doctor in Nairobi.

Likewise, Lassa fever was not necessarily fatal. If caught early it could be treated with antiviral drugs, though one out of three victims was left permanently deaf. Still, it was a much better compromise. The sample they had in their freezer for Lassa fever was from a man named Masai. Platt had treated the old man before he himself was quarantined in Sierra Leone.

The test McCathy was preparing would be rather simple. Eventually he would need to do the same test with each of the exposed victims’ blood: Ms. Kellerman, her daughter, Assistant Director Cunningham and Agent O’Dell. McCathy would start with Ms. Kellerman, placing only a droplet of her blood serum onto each of the samples from the freezer.

Unfrozen, the viruses were as hot as when they were collected. If Ms. Kellerman’s blood reacted to any one of the samples, giving off a faint glow, it meant that she tested positive for that virus. The glow meant that the virus recognized what was living inside Ms. Kellerman’s blood. Platt was hoping all of the samples would come up negative and that there might be a chance this wasn’t a virus at all.

Still in his surgical scrubs he sat down on the bench in the gray area, his elbows on his knees, his jaw resting in his hands. He was exhausted. He knew McCathy had to be exhausted, too. Platt’s training and adrenaline would get him through. He had been in war zones, physically exhausted, mentally drained and forced to perform surgical procedures in makeshift operating rooms with blinking generator lights and limited sterile water. Somehow he’d learned to dig deep and find the stamina and the necessary energy to get through the next minute, the next hour, the next day. If he didn’t, it could mean someone’s life. A war zone wasn’t much different than a hot zone.

He stared at the stainless-steel walls lined with spraying nozzles for the decon shower that came afterward. The gray area was neither sterile nor hot. It was neutral territory. Or, as Platt’s predecessor had told him, “One last chance to change your mind before crossing over to the hot side.”

Platt checked his wristwatch then took it off and started getting into his suit. Regulations prohibited wearing anything inside your space suit that touched your skin other than your scrubs. Yet Platt knew several people who wore amulets or charms. Here in the gray area outside the Level 4 air lock it wasn’t unusual to see a variety of rituals or superstitions. Platt had seen scientists make the sign of the cross. He remembered one veterinarian who took out a picture of his wife and children and studied it before gearing up. Others went through a series of breathing exercises or relaxation techniques. McCathy didn’t appear to have any rituals or superstitions, unless his muttering “it’s goddamn unbelievable” had become a sort of mantra for him.

As for Platt, he wished he still had the family or even a photograph. Sometimes he thought it’d be nice to believe in making the sign of the cross, just like he did so many times growing up. Instead, he had no routines, no superstitions. Although he did always make sure he used the bathroom. Six hours in a suit had taught him that lesson very quickly.

He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. He took several deep breaths before attaching his helmet then he pulled the handle on the steel air-lock door to enter the hot zone.

USAMRIID

Platt felt like it was taking an eternity. He thrived on order. He respected processes that followed logic and reason. But suddenly the basic procedure for entering a Biolevel 4 hot zone had become a painstaking, excruciatingly long process. Everything took too long. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. And yet, he didn’t dare skip or hurry any of it. He knew better and all he had to do was to remind himself of the cells he had just looked at through the microscope. That was enough.

His heart still pounded against his rib cage. At least its thundering in his ears had eased up a bit. At times like this his nervous energy pulsed and raced, making him anxious. It was the same excess energy he liked to slam out on the racquetball court or pound out on the running trail. Years of self-discipline taught him how to control it, but here, inside these windowless walls, it was always a bit of a challenge.

He had helped McCathy into his space suit first. Platt would be able to put on his own suit. In the field it was a little trickier. Here it was routine and Platt had plenty of time. McCathy would need to prepare the frozen samples they’d use for the test, something Platt didn’t envy. The samples they were going to use were actual blood serum from human victims with filoviruses, samples in glass vials taken from USAMRIID’s freezer, their own private collection of hot agents. Platt tried to stay positive, tried to remind himself that not all filoviruses were equal. Though all were highly infectious, not all were fatal.

Ebola Reston had shown up in a private laboratory’s monkey house in Reston, Virginia, about twenty years ago. Platt’s mentor at USAMRIID had been one of the task force members who had had the job of containment. The virus spread through the monkeys like wildfire, but it didn’t have the same effect on humans. The sample they had in their freezer collection was from a worker who had gotten sick but who had survived. Ebola Reston hadn’t taken a single human life. Yet under a microscope it looked like snakes or worms with thousands of threads splintering off of it. It could certainly look just as vicious as Ebola Zaire.

Ebola Zaire had earned the nickname “the slate wiper” and for good reason. Its kill rate was ninety percent. The sample they had was from a nurse in northern Zaire just south of the Ebola River. In September 1976 she took care of a Roman Catholic nun who had somehow become infected with the virus. From what Platt knew of the outbreak, entire villages in the Bumba Zone of northern Zaire were wiped out. The virus jumped from one village to another until the government blocked off sections of the country and allowed no one out or in under threat of being shot. That was Ebola Zaire. The only means of containment was to let it die out and, of course, let everyone infected die with it.

In between was Marburg and Lassa fever. Marburg wasn’t much better than Ebola Zaire. Its survivors looked very much like victims of radiation. But the difference was that there were actually survivors. The sample they had of Marburg was from one such survivor, a doctor in Nairobi.

Likewise, Lassa fever was not necessarily fatal. If caught early it could be treated with antiviral drugs, though one out of three victims was left permanently deaf. Still, it was a much better compromise. The sample they had in their freezer for Lassa fever was from a man named Masai. Platt had treated the old man before he himself was quarantined in Sierra Leone.

The test McCathy was preparing would be rather simple. Eventually he would need to do the same test with each of the exposed victims’ blood: Ms. Kellerman, her daughter, Assistant Director Cunningham and Agent O’Dell. McCathy would start with Ms. Kellerman, placing only a droplet of her blood serum onto each of the samples from the freezer.

Unfrozen, the viruses were as hot as when they were collected. If Ms. Kellerman’s blood reacted to any one of the samples, giving off a faint glow, it meant that she tested positive for that virus. The glow meant that the virus recognized what was living inside Ms. Kellerman’s blood. Platt was hoping all of the samples would come up negative and that there might be a chance this wasn’t a virus at all.

Still in his surgical scrubs he sat down on the bench in the gray area, his elbows on his knees, his jaw resting in his hands. He was exhausted. He knew McCathy had to be exhausted, too. Platt’s training and adrenaline would get him through. He had been in war zones, physically exhausted, mentally drained and forced to perform surgical procedures in makeshift operating rooms with blinking generator lights and limited sterile water. Somehow he’d learned to dig deep and find the stamina and the necessary energy to get through the next minute, the next hour, the next day. If he didn’t, it could mean someone’s life. A war zone wasn’t much different than a hot zone.

He stared at the stainless-steel walls lined with spraying nozzles for the decon shower that came afterward. The gray area was neither sterile nor hot. It was neutral territory. Or, as Platt’s predecessor had told him, “One last chance to change your mind before crossing over to the hot side.”

Platt checked his wristwatch then took it off and started getting into his suit. Regulations prohibited wearing anything inside your space suit that touched your skin other than your scrubs. Yet Platt knew several people who wore amulets or charms. Here in the gray area outside the Level 4 air lock it wasn’t unusual to see a variety of rituals or superstitions. Platt had seen scientists make the sign of the cross. He remembered one veterinarian who took out a picture of his wife and children and studied it before gearing up. Others went through a series of breathing exercises or relaxation techniques. McCathy didn’t appear to have any rituals or superstitions, unless his muttering “it’s goddamn unbelievable” had become a sort of mantra for him.

As for Platt, he wished he still had the family or even a photograph. Sometimes he thought it’d be nice to believe in making the sign of the cross, just like he did so many times growing up. Instead, he had no routines, no superstitions. Although he did always make sure he used the bathroom. Six hours in a suit had taught him that lesson very quickly.

He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. He took several deep breaths before attaching his helmet then he pulled the handle on the steel air-lock door to enter the hot zone.