"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 Keller-man 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."
CHAPTER
39
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 dropoffs, 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, Walling-ford, 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?