Exposed (26 page)

The Slammer

The telephone on the wall startled Maggie again. She had been so engrossed in her Internet computer searches that she hadn’t noticed someone come in and take a place by the window.

When she looked up, Platt’s eyes were on her, so intense, so penetrating she didn’t want to meet them. He knew something and it wasn’t good news. She took her time, closing a file, signing off a site and all the while letting the phone ring and letting him stand there.

“Thanks for the computer,” she said when she finally answered. “You’re about to tell me I’m going to get a lot of use out of it, right?”

He just stared at her and she could see his jaw was clenched too tight, so tight that the muscles twitched.

“You’re always trying to preempt me,” he said, his expression remaining unchanged.

“Sorry, it’s a habit. I’m usually the bearer of bad news. I’m not used to it being the other way around.”

“Are you always this cynical?”

“I chase killers for a living.”

“Awww…” He smiled, tilting his head back as if that were explanation enough. “You’re used to throwing people in the slammer, not being in it yourself.”

He pointed to her chair and started to sit in the one on his side, but stood back up and waited for her. She didn’t want to sit. She’d rather take bad news standing up, or better yet, pacing. But he looked so exhausted. His freshly washed hair was still damp. Dark bags puffed out under his eyes. A white smear of something—soap perhaps—left on his chin, bright white against the stubble. And he had changed clothes, a William and Mary T-shirt and navy sweatpants. But the same white Nikes.

“So something tells me you didn’t just get back from a leisurely jog?” she asked as she took her seat.

“No jog this morning.” He followed suit but sat up straight when she thought he looked as though he’d rather slump down and stretch out like he had before.

“I may have found something,” she told him only because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his news yet. “I think this guy might be duplicating certain pieces of unsolved or old crimes.”

“What makes you say that?” He looked curious but nothing more.

“I have a mailing envelope I found at the Kellerman house so I’ve been searching—”

“You removed evidence from a crime scene? A hot zone?” Now he was on the edge of his chair.

“I double-bagged it.” When his brow stayed furrowed, she offered, “It was with me, on my person and inside here now, so I’d say it’s as safely decontaminated as I am for the moment.” She stared him down, didn’t flinch. “Don’t you want to know what I found?”

“You know I could charge you with obstructing a United States Army medical operation.”

“Oh, sure. Go ahead. What are you going to do to me? Throw me in the Slammer?”

They stared each down again, gunslingers, neither willing to be the first to look away. Finally he did. His free hand went up to his face, fingers rubbing deep at tired eyes, and then they wiped down to his jaw, getting at the white smear; all the while he sank back into the hard plastic chair, but he kept the phone pressed to his ear.

“I’ll need to process it,” he finally said.

“It’s yours.”

Maybe he expected her to argue. Maybe he was simply tired.

“So what did you find?”

She explained it him, about the return address, about James Lewis and the Tylenol murders from September 1982, about Mary Kellerman and Mary Louise Kellerman, about the towns’ names being almost the same and how this killer wanted the anniversary to be commemorated with a crash.

“What was in the envelope?” he asked.

“Nothing except an empty plastic bag with a zip lock. I didn’t open it. It
is
evidence.” She smiled at him. She was trying to make amends. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Well, the Kellermans were definitely exposed to something,” Platt said. “But it wasn’t cyanide. I almost wish it were that simple.”

“It’s not a poison or a toxin?”

“No. It’s not a poison.” A slow shake of the head as if he wished it had been. “Not a toxin.”

She waited.

“I know you have a medical background.”

“Premed in college,” she said. “It was a long time ago.” He was making her a colleague so she’d understand his angst. Yet minutes ago he had treated her like an opponent, obstructing justice. Maybe it was simply his exhaustion. She hadn’t slept, either. “Please just tell me,” she said, the impatience slipping. “I don’t need it candy coated but I don’t need all the techbabble.”

This time he took a deep breath. Sat forward again. His eyes never left hers.

“Ms. Kellerman has been exposed and her body has been invaded by a virus. It’s been trying to replicate itself inside her. Inside her cells. Bricks of virus, splintering off, exploding the cell walls then moving through the bloodstream onto the next cell.”

Maggie was sure she had stopped breathing at the word
virus
. She didn’t need to hear more, but Platt continued.

“It’s a parasite like one you hope to never see. A parasite searching for a perfect host.” He stopped himself as if trying to find a better way to explain it. As if trying to remember something from long ago. “The biggest problem is that humans aren’t a perfect host. They last maybe seven to twenty-one days. The virus almost always destroys them. Then it bleeds out. It spills out of them and looks for a new host to jump to.”

“You sound like you’ve seen it before.”

“That village I told you about, outside Sierra Leone. I held something similar in my gloved hands.” He said it reverently, quietly, like a whisper or maybe a prayer.

“But you didn’t get sick.” Maggie hated that she sounded so hopeful when his face did not look it.

“That was Lassa fever. Also a Level 4 hot agent. Same family of viruses. But nothing like this.”

She closed her eyes and sank back into the chair. She didn’t wait for him this time. She didn’t need to.

“It’s Ebola, isn’t it?” she asked as she kept her eyes closed and leaned her head back.

The phone’s receiver stayed pressed against her ear so she could still hear him clearly. So she could hear him over the catch in her breathing, the ache in her chest, the slamming of her heart against her rib cage.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s Ebola Zaire.”

Wallingford, Connecticut

Artie enjoyed this part. He liked road trips even if they didn’t take him to exotic places. He liked driving on interstates, being on the open road, lots of time with his thoughts. Some of his best ideas had come to him during his “drop-off” runs. He had even acquired a taste for truck-stop coffee and day-old doughnuts.

Today his mentor was letting him borrow his government-licensed SUV again. Artie had cleaned it, inside and out. He liked things a certain way. Worked hard to make sure everything was done with a plan, a routine and a dose of self-discipline. Probably the reasons he had been chosen.

Like his mentor he considered himself an encyclopedia of criminal behavior. Sort of an aficionado of true crime. He could appreciate the perfection, the thought process, the creative thinking and skills it took to get away with murder. That he cataloged a history of criminal cases and put them into his internal memory bank didn’t seem odd at all. It just made him special. It made him perfect for this mission. And not knowing everything was part of the fun, part of the lesson to see how quickly he could put the puzzle pieces together. How else would he perfect his trade?

No, Artie didn’t expect to have anything handed to him. He had never had much. Early on he learned to get by on patience, charm and an uncanny ability to remember details. And he was a quick study. Though he guessed even his mentor would be pleasantly surprised to find Artie joining in so quickly. He probably didn’t think Artie would be this good.

Artie’s instructions were simply to mail the packages as far away and as discreetly as possible. Artie chose carefully. He knew a lot of thought had gone into choosing the recipients and the senders, why not the drop-offs, as well? So Artie played his own game of tag with the FBI by having some fun, giving meaning to each cancellation on each package.

At first he had kept all his drop-offs closer to home. There were, after all, hundreds of mailboxes to choose from. Before this trip the farthest he had driven had been Murphy, North Carolina, several weeks ago. The package had been addressed to Rick Ragazzi in Pensacola, Florida, with the return address from a Victor Ragazzi in Atlanta. So why choose Murphy, North Carolina?

That one was a no-brainer for Artie. He thought he’d throw the feds an easy one. There weren’t that many “true-crime” connections to someplace like Murphy, North Carolina. Certainly the FBI would peg Murphy, especially since it was one of those cases they’d completely botched for years. They’d have to realize that Murphy was chosen because that’s where Eric Rudolph had lived before going on the run. Rumor was the townsfolk had even protected him, misguided the feds and withheld information. But would the FBI get the joke? Would they appreciate his satirical twist? His goading? His subtle “catch me if you can”?

All Artie had to do was drop the package in a mailbox at the local post office so that it would have a cancellation from Murphy, North Carolina. As much as he had wanted to, he couldn’t risk eating at the one restaurant in town that had infamously and blatantly advertised on their marquee, “Rudolph eats here.” Instead, Artie had settled for a McDonald’s quarter pounder once he got back on Interstate 95. Not a sacrifice at all. Artie loved McDonald’s quarter pounders.

The trip to Murphy had been an eight-hour drive, one way, 460 miles. Wallingford would be twenty-nine miles less. However, Wallingford, as a chosen drop-off, had been tougher for Artie to put together and he knew it wouldn’t be as obvious to his FBI adversaries, although it had been another case they’d botched for months.

He congratulated himself on this particular data retrieval in choosing this drop-off site. It was an ingenious and poignant example of random innocents getting caught in the cross fire. What the FBI or the military would call collateral damage. What Artie liked to call a “bonus kill.” But would the feds even recognize it?

So why Wallingford, Connecticut? In the fall of 2001 there was a ninetysomething-year-old widow—okay, so he couldn’t be expected to retrieve every detail like her exact age—who had been one of the anthrax killer’s victims. Ottilie W. Lundgren lived in Oxford, Connecticut. She rarely left her home, and as far as anyone could determine, she hadn’t been a direct target of the anthrax killer. Somehow her mail had unfortunately come in contact with anthrax-laced mail that had gone through the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford.

The FBI didn’t find anthrax anywhere in her little house. But anthrax did show up in Seymour, Connecticut, about three miles away. Cross-contamination had been the final explanation. Authorities considered it a random and unfortunate incident. Family members called it “senseless.” Artie thought that random and senseless were two things he didn’t mind.

Now as Artie steered the SUV around a second reservoir he glanced at the Google map on the passenger seat. He must have gone the wrong direction. He had taken the Center Street exit off of Interstate 91. Certainly there was no post office out here.

He found a place to pull over. He didn’t have time to sightsee, though the winding roads were inviting and the turning foliage sorta cool. What interested Artie even more was the fact that not far from here was a deserted rock quarry where bodies had been found in fifty-five-gallon drums. Bodies with missing pieces. Yes, it was difficult being a crime buff, being so close to a crime scene and not able to visit. He imagined it was no different than a Civil War buff being close to Gettysburg and wanting to just take a step onto those hollowed grounds.

Another time, perhaps. Artie turned the SUV around and headed in the other direction, this time easily finding where East Center became Center and then making his way to Main Street where he could see the post office. He turned into the driveway for the drop-off mailboxes. The SUV’s tinted windows would obscure any cameras, if there were any. He grabbed the two packages off the floor.

Then he dropped them into the mailbox slot, one addressed to Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland, and the other addressed to Caroline Tully in Cleveland, Ohio.

Wallingford, Connecticut

Artie enjoyed this part. He liked road trips even if they didn’t take him to exotic places. He liked driving on interstates, being on the open road, lots of time with his thoughts. Some of his best ideas had come to him during his “drop-off” runs. He had even acquired a taste for truck-stop coffee and day-old doughnuts.

Today his mentor was letting him borrow his government-licensed SUV again. Artie had cleaned it, inside and out. He liked things a certain way. Worked hard to make sure everything was done with a plan, a routine and a dose of self-discipline. Probably the reasons he had been chosen.

Like his mentor he considered himself an encyclopedia of criminal behavior. Sort of an aficionado of true crime. He could appreciate the perfection, the thought process, the creative thinking and skills it took to get away with murder. That he cataloged a history of criminal cases and put them into his internal memory bank didn’t seem odd at all. It just made him special. It made him perfect for this mission. And not knowing everything was part of the fun, part of the lesson to see how quickly he could put the puzzle pieces together. How else would he perfect his trade?

No, Artie didn’t expect to have anything handed to him. He had never had much. Early on he learned to get by on patience, charm and an uncanny ability to remember details. And he was a quick study. Though he guessed even his mentor would be pleasantly surprised to find Artie joining in so quickly. He probably didn’t think Artie would be this good.

Artie’s instructions were simply to mail the packages as far away and as discreetly as possible. Artie chose carefully. He knew a lot of thought had gone into choosing the recipients and the senders, why not the drop-offs, as well? So Artie played his own game of tag with the FBI by having some fun, giving meaning to each cancellation on each package.

At first he had kept all his drop-offs closer to home. There were, after all, hundreds of mailboxes to choose from. Before this trip the farthest he had driven had been Murphy, North Carolina, several weeks ago. The package had been addressed to Rick Ragazzi in Pensacola, Florida, with the return address from a Victor Ragazzi in Atlanta. So why choose Murphy, North Carolina?

That one was a no-brainer for Artie. He thought he’d throw the feds an easy one. There weren’t that many “true-crime” connections to someplace like Murphy, North Carolina. Certainly the FBI would peg Murphy, especially since it was one of those cases they’d completely botched for years. They’d have to realize that Murphy was chosen because that’s where Eric Rudolph had lived before going on the run. Rumor was the townsfolk had even protected him, misguided the feds and withheld information. But would the FBI get the joke? Would they appreciate his satirical twist? His goading? His subtle “catch me if you can”?

All Artie had to do was drop the package in a mailbox at the local post office so that it would have a cancellation from Murphy, North Carolina. As much as he had wanted to, he couldn’t risk eating at the one restaurant in town that had infamously and blatantly advertised on their marquee, “Rudolph eats here.” Instead, Artie had settled for a McDonald’s quarter pounder once he got back on Interstate 95. Not a sacrifice at all. Artie loved McDonald’s quarter pounders.

The trip to Murphy had been an eight-hour drive, one way, 460 miles. Wallingford would be twenty-nine miles less. However, Wallingford, as a chosen drop-off, had been tougher for Artie to put together and he knew it wouldn’t be as obvious to his FBI adversaries, although it had been another case they’d botched for months.

He congratulated himself on this particular data retrieval in choosing this drop-off site. It was an ingenious and poignant example of random innocents getting caught in the cross fire. What the FBI or the military would call collateral damage. What Artie liked to call a “bonus kill.” But would the feds even recognize it?

So why Wallingford, Connecticut? In the fall of 2001 there was a ninetysomething-year-old widow—okay, so he couldn’t be expected to retrieve every detail like her exact age—who had been one of the anthrax killer’s victims. Ottilie W. Lundgren lived in Oxford, Connecticut. She rarely left her home, and as far as anyone could determine, she hadn’t been a direct target of the anthrax killer. Somehow her mail had unfortunately come in contact with anthrax-laced mail that had gone through the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford.

The FBI didn’t find anthrax anywhere in her little house. But anthrax did show up in Seymour, Connecticut, about three miles away. Cross-contamination had been the final explanation. Authorities considered it a random and unfortunate incident. Family members called it “senseless.” Artie thought that random and senseless were two things he didn’t mind.

Now as Artie steered the SUV around a second reservoir he glanced at the Google map on the passenger seat. He must have gone the wrong direction. He had taken the Center Street exit off of Interstate 91. Certainly there was no post office out here.

He found a place to pull over. He didn’t have time to sightsee, though the winding roads were inviting and the turning foliage sorta cool. What interested Artie even more was the fact that not far from here was a deserted rock quarry where bodies had been found in fifty-five-gallon drums. Bodies with missing pieces. Yes, it was difficult being a crime buff, being so close to a crime scene and not able to visit. He imagined it was no different than a Civil War buff being close to Gettysburg and wanting to just take a step onto those hollowed grounds.

Another time, perhaps. Artie turned the SUV around and headed in the other direction, this time easily finding where East Center became Center and then making his way to Main Street where he could see the post office. He turned into the driveway for the drop-off mailboxes. The SUV’s tinted windows would obscure any cameras, if there were any. He grabbed the two packages off the floor.

Then he dropped them into the mailbox slot, one addressed to Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland, and the other addressed to Caroline Tully in Cleveland, Ohio.