Unnatural Exposure (27 page)

'For what?' I exclaimed as I coughed.

'Attempting to elude. Supposedly, Ring was following him out of the landfill after work and tried to pull him for speeding. Supposedly, Pleasants wouldn't stop. So he's in jail, bond set at five grand, if you can believe that. He ain't going nowhere anytime soon.'

'Harassment.' I blew my nose. 'Ring is picking on him. Picking on Lucy. Picking on me.'

'No kidding. Maybe you should've stayed in Maryland, in bed,' he said as we boarded the escalator. 'No offense, but I ain't gonna catch this, am I?'

Marino was terrified of anything he could not see, whether it was radiation or a virus.

'I don't know what I've got,' I said. 'Maybe the flu.'

'Last time I got that I was out for two weeks.' His pace slowed, so he did not keep up with me. 'Plus, you been around other things.'

'Then don't come close, touch or kiss me,' I said, shortly.

'Hey, don't worry.'

This continued as we walked out into the cold afternoon.

'Look. I'm going to take a taxi home,' I said and I was so mad at him I was next to tears.

'I don't want you doing that.' Marino looked frightened and was jumpy.

I waved in the air, swallowing hard and hiding my face as a Blue Bird cab veered toward me.

'You don't need the flu. Rose doesn't need it. No one needs it,' I said, furiously. 'You know, I'm almost out of cash. This is awful. Look at my suit. You think an autoclave presses anything and leaves a pleasant smell? The hell with my hose. I got no coat, no gloves. Here I am, and it's what?' I yanked open the back door of a cab that was Carolina blue. 'Thirty degrees?'

Marino stared at me as I got in. He handed me a twenty-dollar bill, careful his fingers did not brush mine.

'You need anything at the store?' he called out as I drove off.

My throat and eyes swelled with tears. Digging tissues out of my purse, I blew my nose and quietly wept.

'Don't mean to bug ya, lady,' said my driver, a portly old man. 'But where are we going?'

'Windsor Farms. I'll show you when we get there,' I choked as I said.

'Fights.' He shook his head. 'Dontcha hate'em? I 'member one time me and the wife got to arguing in one these all-you-can-eat fish camps. She takes the car. Me, I take a hike. Five miles home through a bad part of town.'

He was nodding, eyeing me in the rearview mirror as he assumed that Marino and I were having a lovers' quarrel.

'So, you're married to a cop?' he then said. 'I saw him drive in. Not an unmarked car on the road that can fool this guy.' He thumped his chest.

My head was splitting, my face burning. I settled back in the seat and shut my eyes while he droned on about an earlier life in Philadelphia, and his hopes that this winter would not bring much snow. I settled into a feverish sleep. When I awoke, I did not know where I was.

'Ma'am. Ma'am. We're here,' the driver was saying loudly to wake me up. 'Where to next?'

He had just turned onto Canterbury and was sitting at a stop sign.

'Up here, take a right on Dover,' I replied.

I directed him into my neighborhood, the look on his face increasingly baffled as he drove past Georgian and Tudor estates behind walls in the city's wealthiest neighborhood. When he stopped at my front door, he stared at fieldstone, at the wooded land around my home, and he watched me closely as I climbed out.

'Don't worry,' he said as I handed him a twenty and told him to keep the change. 'I seen it all lady, and never say nothing.' He zipped his lips, winking at me.

I was a rich man's wife having a tempestuous affair with a detective.

'A good credo,' I said, coughing.

The burglar alarm welcomed me with its warning beep, and never in my life had I been more relieved to be home. I wasted no time getting out of my scalded clothes, and straight into a hot shower, where I inhaled steam and tried to clear the rattle from my lungs. When I was wrapping up in a thick terry cloth robe, the telephone rang. It was exactly four P. M.

'Dr Scarpetta?' It was Fielding.

'I just got home,' I said.

'You don't sound good.'

'I'm not.'

'Well, my news isn't going to help,' he said. 'They've got possibly two more cases on Tangier.'

'Oh no,' I said.

'A mother and daughter. Fever of a hundred and five, a rash. CDC's deployed a team with bed isolators, the whole nine yards.'

'How's Wingo?' I asked.

He paused, as if puzzled. 'Fine. Why?'

'He helped with the torso,' I reminded him.

'Oh yeah. Well, he's the same as always.'

Relieved, I sat down and shut my eyes.

'What's going on with the samples you took to Atlanta?' Fielding asked.

'They're doing tests, I hope, with what few people they can muster now.'

'So we still don't know what this is.'

'Jack, everything points to smallpox,' I said to him. 'That's the way it looks so far.'

'I've never seen it. Have you?'

'Not before now. Maybe leprosy is worse. It's bad enough to die of a disease, but to be disfigured in the process is cruel.' I coughed again and was very thirsty. 'I'll see you in the morning, and we'll figure out what we're going to do.'

'It doesn't sound to me like you should be going anywhere.'

'You're absolutely right. And I don't have a choice.'

I hung up and tried Bret Martin at CDC, but his phone was answered by voice mail, and he did not call me back. I also left a message for Fujitsubo, but he did not return my call, either, and I figured he was at home, like most of his colleagues. The budget war raged on.

'Damn,' I swore as I put a kettle of water on the stove and dug in a cupboard for tea. 'Damn, damn, damn.'

It was not quite five when I called Wesley. At Quantico, at least, people were still working.

'Thank God someone is answering the phones somewhere,' I blurted out to his secretary.

'They haven't figured out how nonessential I am yet,' she said.

'Is he in?' I asked.

Wesley got on the phone, and sounded so energetic and cheery that it instantly got on my nerves.

'You have no right to feel this good,' I said.

'You have the flu.'

'I don't know what I've got.'

'That's what it is, right?' He was worried and his mood went bad.

'I don't know. We can only assume.'

'I don't mean to be an alarmist . . .'

'Then don't,' I cut him off.

'Kay,' his voice was firm. 'You've got to face this. What if it's not?'

I said nothing because I could not bear to think such thoughts.

'Please,' he said. 'Don't blow this off. Don't pretend it's nothing like you do with most things in your life.'

'Now you're making me mad,' I snapped. 'I fly into this goddamn airport and Marino doesn't want me in his car so I take a taxi and the driver thinks we're having an affair and my rich husband doesn't know, and all the while I have a fever and hurt like hell and just want to go home.'

'The taxi driver thinks you're having an affair?'

'Just forget it.'

'How do you know you've got the flu? That it's not something else?'

'I don't have a rash. Is that what you want to hear?'

There was a long silence. Then he said, 'What if you get one?'

'Then I'm probably going to die, Benton.' I coughed again. 'You'll probably never touch me again. And I'd never want you to see me again, if it goes its course. It's easier to worry about stalkers, serial killers, people you can blow away with a gun. But the invisible ones are who I've always feared. They take you on a sunny day in a public place. They slide in with your lemonade. I've been vaccinated for hepatitis B. But that's just one killer in a huge population. What about tuberculosis and HIV, and Hanta and Ebola? What about this? God.' I took a deep breath. 'It started with a torso and I did not know.'

'I heard about the two new cases,' he said, and his voice had gotten quiet and gentle. 'I can be there in two hours. Do you want to see me?'

'Right now I don't want to see anyone.'

'Doesn't matter. I'm on my way.'

'Benton,' I said, 'don't.'

But he had his mind made up, and when he pulled into my driveway in his throaty BMW, it was almost midnight. I met him at the door, and we did not touch.

'Let's sit in front of the fire,' he said.

We did, and he was kind enough to make me another cup of decaffeinated tea. I sat on the couch, he was in a side chair, and flames fed by gas enveloped an artificial log. I had turned the lights low.

'I don't doubt your theory,' he said as he lingered over cognac.

'Maybe tomorrow, we'll know more.' I was perspiring as I shivered, staring into the fire.

'Right now I don't give a shit about any of that.' He looked fiercely at me.

'You have to give a shit about that.' I wiped my brow with a sleeve.

'No.'

I was silent as he stared at me.

'What I care about is you,' he said.

Still, I did not respond.

'Kay.' He gripped my arm.

'Don't touch me, Benton.' I shut my eyes. 'Don't. I don't want you sick, too.'

'See, and that's convenient for you. To be sick. And I can't touch you. And you the noble doctor caring more about my well-being than your own.'

I was quiet, determined not to cry.

'Convenient. You want to be sick right now so nobody can get close. Marino won't even give you a ride home. And I can't put my hands on you. And Lucy won't see you and a Janet has to talk to you behind glass.'

'What is your point?' I looked at him.

'Functional illness.'

'Oh. I guess you studied that in school. Maybe during your master's in psychology or something.'

'Don't make fun of me.'

'I never have.'

I could feel his hurt as I turned my face to the fire, my eyes closed tight.

'Kay. Don't you die on me.'

I did not speak.

'Don't you dare.' His voice shook. 'Don't you dare!'

'You won't get off the hook that easy,' I said, getting out of my chair. 'Let's go to bed.'

He slept in the room where Lucy usually stayed, and I was up most of the night coughing and trying to get comfortable, which simply was not possible. The next morning at half past six he was up, and coffee was brewing when I walked into the kitchen. Light filtered through trees beyond windows, and I could tell by the tight curl of rhododendron leaves that it was bitterly cold.

'I'm cooking,' Wesley announced. 'What will it be?'

'I don't think I can.' I was weak, and when I coughed, it felt as if my lungs were ripping.

'Obviously, you are worse.' Concern flickered in his eyes. 'You should go to a doctor.'

'I am a doctor, and it's too soon to go to one.'

I took aspirin, decongestants and a thousand milligrams of vitamin C. I ate a bagel and was beginning to feel almost human when Rose called and ruined me.

'Dr Scarpetta? The mother from Tangier died early this morning.'

'Oh God no.' I was sitting at the kitchen table and running my fingers through my hair. 'What about the daughter?'

'Condition's serious. Or at least it was several hours ago.'

'And the body?'

Wesley was behind me, rubbing my sore shoulders and neck.

'No one's moved it yet. No one's sure what to do, and the Baltimore Medical Examiner's Office has been trying to reach you. So has CDC.'

'Who at CDC?' I asked.

'A Dr Martin.'

'I need to call him first, Rose. Meanwhile, you get hold of Baltimore and tell them that under no circumstances are they to have that body sent into their morgue until they've heard from me. What is Dr Martin's number?'

She gave it to me and I dialed it immediately. He answered on the first ring and sounded keyed up.

'We did PCR on the samples you brought in. Three primers and two of them match with smallpox, but one of them didn't.'

'Then is it smallpox or not?'

'We ran its genomic sequence, and it doesn't match up with any poxvirus in any reference lab in the world. Dr Scarpetta, I believe you got a virus that's a mutant.'

'Meaning, the smallpox vaccination isn't going to work,' I said as my heart seemed to drop right out of me.

'All we can do is test in the animal lab. We're talking at least a week before we know and can even begin thinking about a new vaccine. For practical purposes, we're calling this smallpox, but we really don't know what the hell it is. I'll also remind you we've been working on an AIDS vaccine since I986 and are no closer now than we were back then.'

'Tangier Island needs to be quarantined immediately. ' We've got to contain this,' I exclaimed, alarmed to the edge of panic.