The man exchanged his downcast expression for a glum one. "Could it wait? Mr. Esterquest is in the embalming room."
"I have a strong stomach. We can talk while he works."
The man sucked in his hollow cheeks until the bottom of his face looked like it belonged on a white satin pillow.
"That would hardly be proper," he said.
"Look, just tell him I'm here."
The man went away. He was back less than a minute later, wearing the same hollow expression. His tune was different, however.
"Mr. Esterquest says that he takes no responsibility for any unpleasant thing you may see."
"Fair enough," said Remo, and he followed the man into the back, past bare wake rooms and an atmosphere that was faintly sweet with flowers, but somehow bitter to breathe.
The double door had a brass plate that said EMBALMING ROOM, and the man threw it open. Remo entered and immediately cycled his breathing rhythms down so that the strong odor of formaldehyde wouldn't sear his sensitive lung linings.
Esterquest was bent over a body on a slab. The body was of a man, a sheet modestly covering his midsection. He was as gray as a dead picture tube.
He looked up and said, "I thought you were press."
"Center for Disease Control," said Remo.
Esterquest straightened.
"Don't you mean 'Centers'?"
"Who ever heard of something having more than one center?" Remo countered.
"Let me see that ID card of yours."
Remo handed it over. Esterquest was an ordinary-looking man with soft brown hair and no worry lines on his smooth, thirtyish face. He handed the card back with a reddish thumbprint on it.
"Excuse the blood," he said. "You're genuine. Even if you do have a goofy sense of humor. What can I do for you?"
"I'm looking into this HELP business. I hear you autopsied one of the first victims."
"Brother Sagacious. The UCLA professor. He was the only one they didn't dump into a shallow grave, and only because the family insisted upon a proper Southern Baptist burial. Later, I ordered some of the others exhumed for a proper autopsy. Public health regulations, you know. I'm up for reelection next year. "
"Find anything?"
"Yes and no."
"Let's hear both sides of it," said Remo.
"The dead all seem to be from the so-called Snapper wing of PAPA."
"I talked to both sides. Each side said only the other side caught the HELP virus."
"What do you expect from people who eat bugs? Well, I did six autopsies before it started getting out of hand. I'm the only coroner for six towns and I have enough of a job autopsying the car accident victims, natural causes deaths, and the like."
"Tough job."
"I said I was overworked, not that I didn't like it. Actually, it's very interesting sometimes. Take this man. Do you see any mark on him?"
Remo looked closer. "No."
"There isn't one. Not that I can find. But they found him behind the wheel of his car, parked at a rest stop, dead as yesterday's corned brisket. Barely forty too."
"Heart attack?"
"He'd be a distinct grayish blue."
"Carbon monoxide poisoning?"
"He'd be an exquisite cherry pink. There's no trauma, edema, no contusions, no cranial concussion. It's a mystery."
Remo grunted.
The man looked up and his face lost its hangdog look. He smiled. A twinkle came into his colorless eyes. "I happen to love a good mystery. You know, a woman's kinda like a mystery."
"Most women are," said Remo, thinking of Nalini.
"They're kinda like a puzzle every man aches to solve. You take your time about it, of course. You have to. Even with the shallowest woman, it takes time to solve the riddle of her ways. If you stay together long enough, finally you do. If you don't, they hang in your memory forever."
"Better to figure them out quick, huh?"
"Oh, I don't know. Once you crack the code, once you figure out what makes them tick-why their moods darken or lighten when they do-they're no longer quite as interesting. Some women, I think, it's better to leave unsolved."
"What good is a mystery if you can't solve it, right?"
"Which brings us back to this gray gentleman," Esterquest said suddenly. "There is no reason for him being dead that I can see."
"Well, he had to die of something," said Remo.
"True, which is why I'm going to spend all of today and as much of tomorrow as I dare, poking about this man's viscera. Because I know they hold the secret and I ache to solve it. Once I do," Esterquest shrugged broadly, "he's just another poor stiff and I'll go plodding on, embalming accident cases and stroke victims until the next tantalizing corpse comes along."
"Corpses don't tantalize me."
"Nor me. As corpses. But mysteries do. And in my job, I see a really meaty one but once in a blue moon. It's the same with the HELP victims."
"You have any ideas about that?"
"No, not yet. But I've been saving all my data, blood and tissue samples. I think HELP can be explained. It's just a matter of time."
"Let's get to the yes of this conversation."
Esterquest smiled easily. "You'll never be a detective, my CDC friend. You don't have the patience. As I was saying, the bodies I saw were all from the Snapper wing. This makes sense if the dreaded thunderbug was transmitting the disease, because the Snappers don't cook their bugs. Cooking would likely kill the viral microorganism, rendering them harmless protein. As you know, a virus is just a bit of genetic material surrounded by a protective protein envelope."
"So it is the bug?"
"Except for one tiny but significant detail. I found no trace of viral infection in the linings of their stomachs, the logical invasion site."
"One federal guy I spoke to thought they could be getting it through mouth sores or cuts."
"A good theory, except that if the bug was carrying a bug, some of the victims surely would show soft-tissue damage in the mouth. And I didn't find any cold sores. Cooties, yes. Periodontal disease, also. But their mouths were clean of viral infection."
"That brings us back to the no-bug theory."
"Except there is something killing these people that suggests a virus. If not a virus, perhaps a communicable disease on the order of Lyme disease or a lethal toxin like paralytic shellfish poisoning. Those possibilities are real enough. But I don't know enough about these things to say how they might work or not work inside the body. The HELP agent doesn't appear to be of a type that could kill a full-grown adult inside of forty-eight hours."
"Why not?"
"Because there are no discernible symptoms or effects. The person just becomes very tired one day, and starts wasting until he dies. In order for a virus to kill, there must be physical symptoms, wouldn't you think?"
"I guess," said Remo.
"After all, warts are a symptom of one kind of virus. Chicken pox and mumps have their signature symptoms. Other viral infections settle in major internal organs, such as the heart or the lungs. None of these organs have been affected in any way I can find. HELP victims waste away and they die. But they don't seem to die of the wasting process."
"Kinda like a stealth virus."
"A good way of putting it." Esterquest gestured toward the body on the slab. "You know, I was about to open this man up."
"Be my guest," said Remo.
Esterquest eyed Remo doubtfully. "You have the stomach for seeing me remove this man's stomach?"
"I was in Nam. I've seen everything."
"If you faint, I'm just going to leave you there."
"Don't sweat it," Remo said. "I only faint at election returns."
As Remo watched, Esterquest made a lateral incision from the breastbone down to the pubic bone, without getting anything in the way of blood. He poked around happily.
"Since I see no external signs," he mused, "I'm going to look at this man's major organs. Examine the stomach contents. Perhaps it was something he ate."