"How many strips did you say there were originally?"
"Twenty." Harry touched Cooper's arm. "Coop, you know I'm not a scaredy cat."
"/resent that," Pewter complained.
"You're tough as nails."
"I'm afraid."
Cooper carefully held the bottom of a strip, examining the sharpshooter. "Someone has snuck onto your land. Maybe two someones: one to bury the body, the other to bring in insects."
"I feel like they know my schedule. Fair's, too."
Cooper considered this. "It's possible, but your house and barn are two miles away as the crow flies. And you can't see the peach orchard. You can't even see it from the old Jones house."
"I know." She interlocked her fingers. "I feel like I'm being set up."
"Fair," Cooper replied. "It's more like Fair is being set up."
28
Twilight lingered in the spring. An hour of fading light enlivened by brilliant sunsets brought many Virginia residents outside to watch. Cloud wisps looked as though painted with a flat brush swirling upward, turned white then gold. After ten minutes the horizon line over the farther mountains deepened, but over the Blue Ridge themselves a brilliant turquoise line appeared as outlining on what were once the highest mountains in the world.
Fair noticed the sky, streaks of pulsating scarlet mingled with gold and copper, as he walked back from the barn with Harry. "My God, that's beautiful."
Harry looked up. "Sure is."
"When that sun goes down the chill comes on fast, doesn't it? Always amazes me."
"Yeah, but then we get into summer and the nights are languid. I love that feeling of warm nights with a light breeze to keep the bugs off."
"Girl, you've got bugs on the brain." He wrapped his arms around her waist as they watched the sky.
"I do, Fair. I'm baffled. And I can't help but think, two men are dead, both of whom had a great deal of knowledge about pests, about black rot, about grapes."
"I still don't see those deaths being connected."
"If Professor Forland were studying insect-borne diseases, he could have told Toby."
"He probably did. But all the vintners or their managers are scientists of a sort. Hy, Arch, Bill, and Patricia know how to look through a microscope to identify diseased tissue or what chemicals to use to kill their fungus on that."
"Yeah, you're right."
"Isn't that something about Toby's sister refusing to claim his body? What's wrong with people?" Fair shifted the subject. "Doesn't matter if they weren't on good terms. He's still her brother."
"Maybe she killed him," Harry flippantly replied.
"At this point, honey, I'm ready to believe anything."
"Inheriting a large farm under intense cultivation isn't a slim motive." Harry watched a great blue heron fly overhead, croaking as she headed for her nest.
"What an awful voice. You think she'd shut her bill,"Pewter remarked.
"Ever notice how ugly people are often more vain than good-looking ones? Maybe it's the same with birds. She thinks she has a lovely voice,"Tucker observed.
"I'd feel better if I didn't think the two murders were related." Harry wasn't giving up on this idea.
"Suppose this was about bioterrorism: wouldn't it be easier to send out anthrax?" She flipped up her coat collar. "You've been to seminars about this. Professor Forland certainly scared people at the panel. Maybe he was working for our government."
Fair thought awhile, then took her hand as the twilight faded, heading back to the warmth of the house. "Anthrax can be contracted through a cut. The bacterium enters the skin. If I handle a contaminated hide—not even the animal itself—I could contract anthrax if I have a break in my skin. You can breathe it in and you can get it from contaminated meat."
"What are the signs?"
"Do I have to listen to this?"Pewter wrinkled her nose.
"If a human ingests the bacterium, the intestinal track becomes acutely inflamed. Vomiting and fever, followed by vomiting blood and severe diarrhea, occur. And this kind of infection usually results in death in a very high number of cases, from twenty-five to sixty percent."
"That's a big spread."
"Yeah, it is." He opened the porch door just as Flatface flew out of the barn for a night of hunting, "But you have to consider the health of the individual who contracts it and the level of health service available. Someone who ingests anthrax in the Sudan will have a much worse time of it than someone who becomes infected in Canada. Obviously, chances of infection inCanada are next to nothing."
"What about a cut?"
"Raised itchy bump like an insect bite. One or two days later a painless ulcer occurs on the site, a bit of necrotic skin in the center. The lymph glands swell. About twenty percent of infected people die. However, the last case of cutaneous anthrax occurred in our country in 1992. You see it in the developing countries. The real problem is airborne anthrax." He turned on the flame under the teapot. "Breathe that stuff in and the bacterium races through your lungs and then is passed into your circulatory system. Fatal septicemia comes on very fast. The incubation time is anywhere from one to six days."
"Wouldn't that make more sense as a bioterrorism weapon than stuff distilled from fungii?" She put a pot of water on the stove. Tonight was a good night for spaghetti.
"Seems so to me, especially since the anthrax spores resist environmental degradation. But the trick to creating anthrax that can kill huge sections of the population is the size of the spores. A chemist has to transform the wet bacteria culture into dry clumps of spores. But when the spores are dried they glop together into larger lumps, and then they have a static electric charge, so they cling to surfaces just like laundrywith static cling. If the spores do that, they won't float through the air."
"Could a smart loner figure it out?"
"The method of reducing the spores to the optimum size for penetrating the human lung once free of static electricity has been closely guarded by what used to be the Soviet Union and by our government."
"But the secret really is out, isn't it?"
"Yes." He handed her a packet of spaghetti. "One way to find out who knows the secret is to capture anthrax that has been used in an attack. Then you'd be able to tell how closely the stuff genetically resembles the weapons strain our government made before 1969."
"Why 1969?"
"We agreed to destroy our stored biological weapons then. At one time, honey, our country had nine hundred kilos of dry anthrax made per year at a plant in Arkansas. I have not one shred of doubt that some was saved after we supposedly destroyed it all."
"And it's possible some was stolen, isn't it?"
"Yes, and over time those spores divided. Remember, they are living things, sothey divide. And think about all the anthrax the Soviet Union made. That's not all gone, either."
"Gives me the creeps."
"Ought to give every single American the creeps." He paused. "How about I make clam sauce after I make you a cup of tea?"
"Okay. Want a vegetable?"
"You're heading somewhere with this. Fess up." He poured water in the teacups. "Uh, I don't want a vegetable, but I'll take a salad."
"I don't think the murders have one thing to do with bioterrorism, and one of the reasons is that anthrax is easier, is available. I just wanted to hear the particulars. So I'd feel more convinced of my direction."
"Gut instinct?" he questioned her simply.
"It may be that Professor Forland's specialized knowledge plays into his murder— Toby's, too, perhaps—but that's not what's underneath all this. I just wish I could find the reason."
"Not knowing is always worse than knowing. To change the subject, what's the dress code for Mim's party tomorrow?"
"She doesn't want us to call it a party. She says it's a gathering of friends to relax and celebrate the redbuds."