‘Thank you, Lucy,’ Margaret said. ‘That makes me feel a whole helluva lot better.’ She stopped immediately and raised both her hands in instant apology. ‘I’m sorry. I forgot. Hell is very real to some of us.’
‘Particularly,’ Lucy said dryly, ‘those of us who have been left trying to keep the ship afloat with nobody at the helm.’
‘Stormy waters, Lucy,’ Margaret said. ‘Forced me to abandon ship. But I’m back now, and I’ll try to sail us into calmer seas.’
‘Well, you’re going to have to do a lot of calming at the Houston Police department. Homicide has been agitating for twenty-four hours now for reports on two autopsies that have not even been carried out yet.’
‘I thought we arranged for Dr. Cullen…’
‘Called back to say he couldn’t make it.’ Lucy smiled sweetly. ‘Of course, that was after you’d, uh…disappeared…yesterday afternoon.’ She paused. ‘Something wrong with your cellphone?’
Margaret ignored the jibe and sighed. ‘You didn’t tell them the autopsies hadn’t been done, did you?’
‘Now you know I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, Doctor.’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve been…stalling them.’
Margaret smiled. ‘Thank you, Lucy. Ask Jack to wheel them out, would you? I’ll do them now.’
She went wearily into her office and her heart sank when she saw her desk groaning under the weight of paperwork that had accumulated, even since yesterday. She sat down with her head in her hands and felt her headache returning. It was all she could do to stop herself bursting into tears. She was tired and sore and sorry for herself. She took a deep breath and sat up. There was nothing for it but to get on with it. On with life. On with death.
The body on the table was that of a young Caucasian male, Margaret guessed in his early twenties. He was short, only about five-seven, but powerfully built and covered with thick body hair. The hair on his head was already thinning. There was evidence of trauma around his face and neck. The knuckles of his right hand were bruised and deformed as though one or more might be broken. She would look at the x-rays in a few minutes. His penis had been severed, almost in its entirety, and was absent. There were multiple stab wounds in his chest and abdomen. Margaret counted thirty-three.
She looked at the photographs from the crime scene on the stainless steel counter behind her. It looked like someone’s bedroom, but not that of the deceased, according to the report. There was a lot of blood on the floor around the body, but not much of it seemed to have come from the stab wounds. Margaret guessed that the penis had been severed first, and that the victim might have bled to death even before the frenzied knife attack.
She returned to the body, and Jack helped her turn it over. Jack Sweeney was one of her autopsy assistants. He was in his mid-thirties and of indeterminate sexual orientation. He had been working for the Medical Examiner’s Office for nearly ten years. ‘Be careful with this one,’ he said. ‘I read the report. Apparently he was a male prostitute.’
Margaret glanced up, surprised. ‘He’s not what I would have thought of as typical,’ she said.
‘Some men like them rough,’ Jack said. Then added, smirking, ‘So I’ve heard.’
Margaret found evidence of trauma and semen in the anal passage and immediately felt herself breaking into a sweat. She ran a sleeve across her forehead and found her breath coming with difficulty. ‘Is it very hot in here?’ she asked.
Jack shrugged. ‘Usual, Dr. Campbell. Pretty cool.’ He peered at her. ‘You okay? You look a bit flushed.’
Margaret put both hands on the table to steady herself. She was light-headed now and starting to feel nauseous. The sweat turned cold on the back of her neck.
She made a dash for the sink and was violently sick into it. Jack was at her side instantly, arms around her shoulders. But she shrugged him off. ‘I’m sorry, Jack, I need a little space.’
‘What’s wrong, Doctor? Something you ate?’ He was concerned for her.
She saw her breakfast in the stainless steel sink and turned on the tap to wash it away. ‘Probably.’ She took off her latex gloves, filled her hands with cold water and sluiced her face, then stood, leaning against the sink, willing the trembling in her legs to stop. She remained like that for several minutes, until she began to feel some control returning. She snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and returned to the table.
‘You sure you’re up to this?’ Jack asked.
She nodded, but even as she turned her attentions back to the bloodless white flesh on the table, the sweat began beading across her forehead, and a further wave of nausea rose from her stomach. ‘Jesus.’ She made another dash for the sink and acid bile burned its way up her throat into her mouth.
Lucy looked up in surprise as Margaret hurried through the outer office, still in her green surgeon’s pyjamas and apron, hair tucked away under her shower cap. She was deathly pale. She stopped in the doorway to her office. ‘No one’s to come in here, Lucy. And I mean no one. Lock the door. Do not leave the office. Stay at your desk.’
Lucy was alarmed now. ‘What’s wrong, Dr. Campbell?’
‘Just do what I tell you, please.’ Margaret slammed the door and crossed to her desk, digging out the phone list from her bag with trembling fingers, and snatching the phone from its cradle. Her breathing was tremulous and erratic, her body wracked by uncontrollable shivering. Fear and dread had balled themselves up together in a huge knot in her stomach. She listened as the phone rang twice at the other end before the operator picked up.
‘USAMRIID Fort Detrick. How may I help you?’
‘Dr. Margaret Campbell for Colonel Robert Zeiss. It’s an emergency.’
‘One moment, please.’
The one moment stretched into eternity. Margaret rounded her desk and dropped into her chair, but perched on the edge of it, only barely in control.
‘Colonel Zeiss.’
‘Colonel, I think I’ve got the flu.’
There was a brief silence at the other end of the line. Margaret could almost hear the colonel thinking. ‘Why do you think that?’ he asked.
‘Because I’ve just had two bouts of vomiting, I’m sweating and shaking from head to toe.’
Another pause, then Zeiss said, ‘Stay where you are, Doctor. I’ll have a team with you as fast as I possibly can. We’ll need isolation facilities. What’s closest to you?’
‘Hermann Hospital, I think. They have an infectious diseases facility and isolation rooms.’ She could almost see the hospital, in Medicine City, from her window.
‘I’ll alert them.’ He paused again. ‘Who have you been in contact with in the last few hours?’
‘My secretary, my autopsy assistant. Li Yan, the Chinese criminal justice liaison…’ Her heart sank at the thought. Please, God, not Li as well. ‘But he’s on a plane to Washington, via Dallas.’
‘Shit!’ Zeiss almost whispered the oath. ‘What airline?’
‘Air Tran.’
‘We’ll try to intercept him. Make certain that your autopsy assistant and secretary have no contact with anyone until we can get them isolated. Is there anyone else?’
Her mind raced. ‘INS Agent Hrycyk,’ she said. ‘Councilman Soong, and about a dozen Houston police officers — but that was several hours ago.’
She heard Zeiss groan. ‘Let’s just hope you’re wrong about this,’ he said, and she wondered if he only hoped that in order to save himself trouble. ‘Sit tight until the team gets there.’
He hung up, and she sat holding the phone, feeling like a criminal. As if somehow it was her fault that she had got the flu and had knowingly gone spreading it around. She replaced the receiver and sat numbly, wondering how she could possibly have contracted the virus. It could only have been during autopsy. Or could Steve somehow have passed it on to her? And, then, what had triggered it?