"Scared?"
"Not scared, a little nervous," Patsy admitted.
"Honey, if it were all that hard, how come there's so many people in the world?"
"Spoken like a man," Dr. Patricia Chavez noted. "It's easy for you to say. You don't have to do it."
"I'll be there to help." her husband promised.
"You better be!"
CHAPTER 23
Henriksen arrived at JFK International with his body feeling as though it had been shredded, spindled, and mutilated before being tossed into a wastepaper basket, but that was to be expected. He'd flown literally halfway around the globe in about a day, and his internal body clock was confused and angry and punishing. For the next week or so, he'd find himself awake and asleep at random times, but that was all right. The right pills and a few drinks would help him rest when rest was needed. An employee was waiting for him at the end of the jetway, took his carry-on without a word, and led off to the baggage-claim area, where, blessedly, his twosuiter was the fifth bag on the carousel, which allowed them to scoot out of the terminal and onto the highway to New York City.
"How was the trip?"
"We got the contract," Henriksen told his man, who was not part of the Project.
"Good," the man said, not knowing how good it was, and how bad it would be for himself. Henriksen buckled his seat belt and leaned back to catch a few winks on the way in, ending further conversation.
"So, what do we got?" the FBI agent asked.
"Nothing so far," d'Allessandro replied. "I have one other possible missing girl, same area for her apartment, similar looks, age, and so forth, disappeared around the same time as your Miss Bannister. Name is Anne Pretloe, legal secretary, just vanished off the face of the earth."
"Jane Does?" the other federal officer asked.
"Nothing that matches. Guys, we have to face the possibility that we have a serial killer loose in the area-"
"But why did this e-mail message come out?"
"How does it match with other e-mails Miss Bannister sent to her dad?" the NYPD detective asked.
"Not very well," the senior FBI agent admitted. "The one he initially brought into the Gary office looks as though-well, it smells to me like drugs, y'know?"
"Agreed," d'Allessandro said. "You have others?"
"Here." The agent handed over six printouts faxed to the New York office. The detective scanned them. They were all perfectly grammatical, and organized, with no misspelling on any of them.
"What if she didn't send it? What if somebody else did?"
"The serial killer?" the junior FBI agent asked. Then he thought about it, and his face mirrored what he thought. "He'd have to be a real sick one, Mario."
"Yeah, well, serial killers aren't Eagle Scouts, are they?"
"Tormenting the families? Have we ever had one like that?" the senior man wondered.
"Not that I know of, Tom, but, like the man said…"
"Shit," observed the senior agent, Tom Sullivan.
"Call Behavioral Sciences in on this one?" the junior agent, Frank Chatham, asked.
Sullivan nodded. "Yeah, let's do that. I'll call Pat O'Connor about it. Next step here, I think we get some flyers printed up with the photo of Mary Bannister and start passing them out on the West Side. Mario, can you get us some cooperation from your people?"
"No problem," d'Allessandro replied. "If this is what it looks like, I want the fuck before he starts going for some sort of record. Not in my town, guys," the detective concluded.
"Going to try the Interleukin again?" Barbara Archer asked.
"Yeah." Killgore nodded. "-3a is supposed to enhance the immune system, but they're not sure how. I'm not either, but if it has any effect, we need to know about it."
"What about lung complications?" One of the problems with Interleukin was that it attacked lung tissue, also for unknown reasons, and could be dangerous to smokers and others with respiratory problems.
Another nod. "Yeah, I know, just like -2, but F4 isn't a smoker, and I want to make sure that -3a doesn't do anything to compromise Shiva. We can't take that chance. Barb."
"Agreed," Dr. Archer observed. Like Killgore, she didn't think that this new version of Interleukin was the least bit helpful, but that had to be confirmed. "What about Interferon?"
"The French have been trying that on hemorrhagic fever for the last five years, but no results at all. We can hang that, too, but it's going to be a dry hole, Barb."
"Let's try it on F4 anyway," she suggested.
"Fair enough." Killgore made a notation on the chart and left the room. A minute later he appeared on the TV monitor.
"Hi, Mary, how are we feeling this morning? Any better?"
"No." She shook her head. "Stomach still hurts pretty bad."
"Oh, really? Let's see what we can do about that." This case was proceeding rapidly. Killgore wondered if she had a genetic abnormality in her upper GI maybe some vulnerability to peptic ulcer disease?… If so, then the Shiva was going to rip her apart in a hurry. He increased the morphine dosage rate on the machine next to her bed. "-Okay, now we're going to give you a couple of new medications. These ought to fix you up in two or three days, Okay?"
"Are these the ones I signed up for?" F4 asked weakly.
"Yes, that's right," Killgore replied, hanging the Interleukon and Interleukin-3a on the medication tree. "These ought to make you feel a lot better," he promised with a smile. It was so odd, talking to his lab rats. Well, as he'd told himself many times, a rat was a pig was a dog was a… girl, in this case. There wasn't really all that much of difference, was there? No, he told himself this afternoon. Her body relaxed with the increased morphine dose, and her eyes became unfocused. Well, that was one difference. wasn't it? They didn't give rats sedatives or narcotics to ease their pain. It wasn't that they didn't want to, just that there was no practical way to ease their discomfort. It had never pleased him to see those cute pink eyes change from bright to dull, reflecting the pain. Well, in this case, at least, the dullness mirrored a respite from the pain.
The information was very interesting, Henriksen thought, and this Russian was pretty good at developing it. He would have made a good agent for the Foreign Counterintelligence Division… but then, that's just what he had been, in a way, only working for the other side, of course. And with the information, he recalled his idea, from the Qantas flight.