Her left hand maneuvered the camera, pushing it closer to the black piece. Her right hand controlled a trocar, a hollow tube through which specialized surgical instruments could access a patient’s body cavities without cutting him or her open. Her trocar carried a tiny pair of pincers. Like a kid with a hundred-thousand-dollar video game, she moved the pincers closer to the black plastic fleck. Her finger rested on a trigger that, when pressed, would close the pincers.
Margaret tweaked the camera controls. The image, slightly distorted from high magnification, focused in on the mysterious shiny fleck. The pincers looked like metallic monster claws about to pluck a lone swimmer from a sea of black.
She gently squeezed the trigger. The pincers gripped firmly on the strange material, squishing out thick bubbles of rancid goo as they closed.
“Nice job,” Amos said. “First try. Give the lady a cee-gar.”
She smiled and pulled back on the pincers. The material resisted the pull. She looked closely at the monitor, then gently moved the pincers from side to side, wiggling the clamped object. The reason for the resistance became clear-the object appeared to be embedded in a rib. She pulled back gently, slowly increasing the pressure. The object bent slightly, then popped free. They heard a wet squelch as the tiny pincers-smeared with black slime-pulled free from the wound.
Amos held a petri dish under the pincers. Margaret released the trigger, but the little fleck clung to the goop on the bottom pincer. He grabbed a scalpel, then gently used the point to push the object into the petri dish.
She took the dish and held it close to her faceplate. The fleck had a shape to it, and she could see why it had stayed so firmly planted in the bone. It looked just like a black rose thorn.
She felt a rush of satisfaction. They were still a hundred miles from figuring out the key to this horrific puzzle, but thanks to Charlotte Wilson she knew better what to look for and how much time she had to work with. The black fleck was something new, and it brought them one step closer to an answer.
“Hey,” Amos said, “what do you make of this?” He stood next to Brewbaker’s hip, one of the places least damaged from the flames. His finger rested beside a small lesion, sort of like a gnarled zit.
A gnarled zit with a tiny blue fiber sticking out of it.
“So he had some acne,” Margaret said. “Do you think it’s significant?”
“I think everything is significant. Should we excise it and send it out?”
She thought for a moment. “Not yet. It doesn’t look like there’s any decomposition on that spot, and I want to examine it for myself. Let’s focus on the areas that are rotting, as we know we won’t have much longer to work with those, then come back to it, okay?”
“Sounds good,” Amos said. He grabbed the camera from the prep table. He leaned in close to the zit, snapped a picture, then put the camera back on the prep table. “Right, we’ll come back to it.”
“How much longer until we get the results from the tissue analysis of the growth?”
“We’ll have info tomorrow. I’m sure they’re working through the night. DNA analysis, protein sequencing and anything else that might pop up.”
She checked her watch-10:07 P.M. She and Amos would also be up all night and well into the next day. Had to be. They knew from hard-earned experience that they had only a few days before Brewbaker’s body rotted away.
13.
“Good God, Perry,” Bill said. “Two days in a row. I’ve seen flea-ridden dogs scratch like that, but never a human.” Bill, half hung over the cubicle wall, looked down at a madly scratching Perry.
“Of course, I’m assuming you’re human,” Bill added. “Scientists still debate that one.”
Perry ignored the mild gibe, concentrating instead on his left forearm. He’d pushed the sleeve of his ratty Detroit Lions sweatshirt up past his elbow. His right hand looked a blur as he raked the hairy forearm with his fingernails.
“I hear scabies is nasty this time of year,” Bill said.
“Damn thing itches like all get-out.” Perry stopped for a moment to stare at the welt. Its texture resembled a small strawberry-if strawberries were yellow and oozed tiny drops of clear fluid. The yellowish welt felt solid, as if a piece of cartilage had broken free from somewhere in his body and lodged in his arm. His arm, and six other places.
The digging nails left long, angry-red scratches. The scratches surrounded the welt like egg white around an overcooked yolk.
“Gee, that looks healthy,” Bill said, then slipped back into his cube.
“It’s no big deal.” Perry turned his attention to his screen, which displayed a computer network diagram. He absently reached up and brushed a lock of straight, heavy blond hair out of his eyes.
StickyFingazWhitey: Dude, seriously…nasty. Bleedmaize_n_blue: It’s no big deal, mind yer own. StickyFingazWhitey: God forbid you just go buy some-oh, dare I speak the word that should never be spoken-MEDICINE?
Perry tried to ignore Bill’s sarcasm. As if the wonderful rashes weren’t enough of a distraction. Perry had been working on the Pullman problem, the same one he hadn’t solved the day before, for more than an hour. At least he tried to work. The rashes made it difficult to concentrate on customer support.
“Quit being such a macho stud-boy and go buy some Cortaid.” Bill hung over the gray cubicle wall like a puppy trying to decipher a new and unusual sound. “You don’t have to go to Mr. Evil Witchdoctor, for God’s sake, just buy something to help that itch. A disinfectant wouldn’t hurt either, by the looks of things. I’ll never understand why you like to sit in pain rather than partake in the wonders of a modern society.”
“Your doctors couldn’t do anything for my right knee, now could they?”
“I was at the game, Perry, remember? I saw your knee when I visited you at the hospital. Jesus H. Christ couldn’t have brought that knee back from the dead.”
“Maybe I’m just a Cro-Magnon, that’s all.” Perry fought the urge to scratch again. The rash on his right ass cheek demanded attention. “We still hitting the bar tonight?”
“I don’t think so, contagion-boy. I prefer the company of at least semi-healthy people. You know, those with rubella or smallpox? Perhaps a bit of the Black Death? I’d rather associate with them than deal with scabies.”
“It’s just a rash, asshole.” Perry felt anger slowly swell up in his chest. He immediately fought it down. Bill Miller seemingly lived to irritate people, and once he got rolling he didn’t quit. It would be “scabies this” and “scabies that” for the rest of the week-and it was only Tuesday. But they were just words, and good-natured words at that. Perry calmed himself. He’d already let his temper slip once this week-he’d be damned if he’d insult Bill like that again.
Perry moved his mouse and clicked, magnifying a section of the network schematic. “Leave me alone, will ya? Sandy wants this thing fixed right away. The Pullman people are going apeshit.”
Bill slid back into his cube. Perry stared at the screen, trying to solve a problem taking place more than a thousand miles away in the state of Washington. Analyzing computer glitches over the phone wasn’t an easy job, especially with network difficulties where the problem could be a wire in the ceiling, a bad port, or a single defective component on any of 112 workstations. Many times in customer support, he faced problems that would have chewed up Agatha Christie, Columbo and Sherlock Holmes in one big swallow. This was one such problem.
The answer danced at the edges of his mind, but he couldn’t focus. He leaned back into his chair, which set the itch on his spine afire with maddening intensity. It was like a thousand mosquito bites all rolled into one.
Perry’s train of thought dissolved completely as he ground his back into the office chair, letting the rough cloth dig through his sweatshirt. He grimaced as the welts on his leg flared up with itching so sudden and so bad that he might as well have been stung by a wasp. He attacked the leg welts, clawing his nails through blue-jean denim. It was like trying to fight a Hydra-each time he stopped one biting head, two more flared up to take its place.