"I thought you said your team would be in civilian clothes?" McCathy gave Platt's uniform an up-down glance like a disapproving headmaster.
"Civilian clothes and civilian vehicles, except for the panel truck." Platt tried to contain his impatience. He didn't need to explain himself to McCathy. It'd take him five minutes in the locker to change into jeans, a T-shirt and his leather bomber jacket."They're almost ready at the loading dock. Do you have everything you need?"
McCathy nodded but now was taking off his rimless eyeglasses and cleaning them with absolutely no sense of urgency. "It'll be tight if we have to change in the truck. And slow going. Probably only one at a time with a two-man support team.You sure there isn't someplace on-site we could use for a staging area?"
Platt hated this, McCathy questioning him, second-guessing him. McCathy constantly reminded everyone that as a civilian he didn't have to take orders from anyone except his boss, the commander.
"It's residential," Platt explained, even though he'd already told McCathy this on the phone.
"What about a house next door?" McCathy asked, pulling a small bottle of disinfectant from his trouser pocket and squirting some in his hand.
"Orders are to not evacuate. We don't want a panic."
"You've got to be pulling my leg," McCathy said under his breath to emphasize his disgust. "What if it's something?"
"Then we'll be prepared to contain and isolate."
McCathy smiled at him and shook his head. "We both know that won't be enough if this ends up being anthrax or goddamn ricen."
"Evac team is on standby."
"Standby." McCathy repeated with another smile. No, this was a smirk. And Platt recognized it and the tone. McCathy used it in meetings to show his disdain for authority and for rules in general. Platt wondered why McCathy would want to work at a military research lab. He carried himself like a man with some special entitlement, smug in his cashmere cardigan, as though he was the only one brilliant enough to see incompetence, and he seemed to see it running rampant all around him.
McCathy was older than Platt and had been at USAMRIID for much longer, reasons enough in the scientist's mind to dismiss Platt. Also, as a civilian, McCathy didn't have to adhere to a rank-and-file hierarchy. It didn't make a difference to him if Platt was a sergeant or a colonel. He still wasn't going to take orders from him. To top things off, McCathy had managed to draw the attention and favor of Commander Janklow.
None of that mattered to Platt. McCathy didn't intimidate him in the least. Platt had seen things and done things that would shock the fluorescent-skinned McCathy who, outside of his stint as a weapons inspector, was used to living in his sterilized, controlled lablike world. No, men like McCathy didn't intimidate Platt. They simply annoyed him. He was in charge of this mission and he wasn't going to be lured into a pissing contest, especially with someone like McCathy.
"I'll meet you on the dock in ten," he told McCathy and he didn't wait for a response.
CHAPTER
11
Elk Grove, Virginia
Maggie had a premed background only because once upon a time her father had encouraged her to become a medical doctor. However, after a sideswiped childhood that drop-kicked her into the role of caretaker for her alcoholic suicidal mother, Maggie discovered she was more interested in what made the mind tick rather than the heart.
Still, she studied premed out of a sense of obligation to her dead father. Eventually she ended up in psychology and then forensics. Her premed training allowed her to assist at autopsies and sometimes came in handy at crime scenes. This time it helped her recognize that Mary Louise and her mother had not been poisoned. Instead, they'd been exposed.
If the threat in the note proved true, that there was going to be a "crash," then Mary Louise and her mother had not only been exposed to some biological agent but it was now trying to live inside them.
Maggie recognized the term, often used as "crash and bleed out" when military and medical personnel spoke about biological agents. The crash would come when the biological organism ended up destroying its host, and it usually did so from the inside out.
The SWAT team had recognized the term, as well. It had taken little to convince them to leave, even though they all wore gas masks and would have, most likely, been safe. At first Cunningham had ordered Maggie to leave with them. It didn't take long for her to see the realization in his eyes. There was a combination of regret and guilt, maybe a bit of fear when it finally hit him. He couldn't let her leave. He couldn't let either of them just walk out.
They agreed they had to stay out of the bedroom but only after a brief argument. Maggie knew Cunningham was right. They had no idea what they had walked into. Yet Maggie's medical training and her instinct clashed with common sense. What if there was something she could do for Mary Louise's mother? The woman's raspy breathing mixed with a rhythmic hiss and spray. It sounded like she was choking on her own blood and mucus. Maggie knew how to perform a field tracheotomy that would clear the woman's airway.
Cunningham's response was to order Maggie out of the room. When she started to challenge him, he stood between her and the sick woman and pointed toward the bedroom door. She had no choice but to turn around and leave. Cunningham wouldn't allow Maggie to help. Instead, he took Mary Louise to the bathroom to clean her up and clean himself, as well. He stopped Maggie from even following them. She knew he was trying to protect her, a valiant but useless gesture. Maggie knew that it was probably too late. Mary Louise's vomit had sprayed her, too.
For some reason memories of her first crime scene came back to her. Perhaps because Cunningham had tried to protect her then, as well. She had just finished her training as an agent after a year as a forensic fellow at Quantico. It was in the middle of the summer, hot and humid, and the inside of the double-wide trailer must have been ten to fifteen degrees hotter. She had never seen so much blood sprayed everywhere: the walls of the trailer, the furniture, the plates left out on the kitchen counter. But it was the sour smell of rotting flesh and the buzzing of flies that stayed firmly implanted in her memory.
She had thrown up, contaminating the crime scene, a newbie losing it on her first case. But Assistant Director Cunningham, who had been so tough on her throughout her entire training—pushing her, questioning her, nagging her—kept one hand on her shoulder while she retched and choked and spit. He never once reprimanded or chastised her. Instead, in a low, quiet, steady and reassuring voice he said to her, "It happens to all of us at least once."
Now here in this little house in a quiet suburb that day seemed so long ago. Maggie looked around the living room, zoning out the laugh track and sound effects of TV cartoons.
How did he do it?
She let her eyes take in everything again, only this time she tried to imagine a similar delivery system like the doughnut container. There were no pizza boxes, no take-out containers, no pastry boxes. He would have wanted it to be something ordinary, something disposable and most importantly, something unnoticeable.
There was much to learn about a killer from the victims he chose. So why did he choose Mary Louise and her mother? Maggie took in the contents of the room. The furniture was an eclectic combination: a particleboard bookcase, a flowered threadbare sofa and mismatched recliner, a braided rug and a brand-new flat-screen T V. The wooden coffee table with scuffed corners appeared to be the centerpiece of the family, holding the TV remote, a pair of reading glasses, dirty plates and mugs sitting in milk rings, crumpled potato chips, spilled bags of M&Ms, a coloring book and box of sixty-four crayons, some scattered and broken on the rug.