“Hello?” a female voice answered, sounding closer than I’d expected.
“Hi. Is this Sarah Fischer?”
“Yes,” she said. “Do I know you?”
“Well, I’m a friend of Mo Buhler’s, and I think we, he, may have been on his way to see you tonight—”
“Who are you? Is Mo OK?”
“Well—” I started.
“Look, who the hell are you? I’m going to hang up if you don’t give me a straight answer,” she said.
“I’m Dr. Phil D’Amato. I’m a forensic scientist—with the New York City Police Department.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Your name sounds familiar for some reason,” she said.
“Well, I’ve written a few articles—”
“Hold on,” I heard her put the phone down, rustle through some papers.
“You had an article in Discover, about antibiotic-resistant bacteria, right?” she asked about half a minute later.
“Yes, I did,” I said. In other circumstances, my ego would have jumped at finding such an observant reader.
“OK, what date was it published?” she asked.
Jeez. “Uh, late last year,” I said.
“I see there’s a pen and ink sketch of you. What do you look like?”
“Straight dark hair—not enough of it,” I said—who could remember what that lame sketch actually looked like?
“Go on,” she said.
“And a mustache, reasonably thick, and steel-rimmed glasses.” I’d grown the moustache at Jenna’s behest, and had on my specs for the sketch.
A few beats of silence, then a sigh. “OK,” she said. “So now you get to tell me why you’re calling—and what happened to Mo.”
Sarah’s apartment was less than half an hour away. I’d filled her in on the phone. She’d seemed more saddened than surprised, and asked me to come over.
I’d spoken to Corinne, and told her as best I could. Mo had been a cop before he’d become a forensic scientist, and I guess wives of police are supposed to be ready for this sort of thing, but how can a person ever really be ready for it after twenty years of a good marriage? She’d cried, I’d cried, the kids cried in the background. I’d said I was coming over—and I know I should have—but I was hoping she’d say “no, I’m OK, Phil, really, you’ll want to find out why this happened to Mo”… and that’s exactly what she did say. They don’t make people like Corinne Rodriguez Buhler anymore.
There was a parking spot right across the street from Sarah’s building—in New York this would have been a gift from on high. I tucked in my shirt, tightened my belt, and composed myself as best I could before ringing her bell.
She buzzed me in, and was standing inside her apartment, second floor walk-up, door open, to greet me as I sprinted and puffed up the flight of stairs. She had flaxen blonde hair, a distracted look in her eyes, but an easy, open smile that I didn’t expect after the grilling she’d given me on the phone. She looked about thirty.
The apartment had soft, recessed lighting—like a Paris-by-gaslight exhibit I’d once seen—and smelled faintly of lavender. My nose crinkled. “I use it to help me sleep,” Sarah said, and directed me to an old, overstuffed Morris chair. “I was getting ready to go to sleep when you called.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said. “About giving you a hard time, about what happened to Mo,” her voice caught on Mo’s name. “You must be hungry,” she said, “I’ll get you something.” She turned around and walked towards another room, which I assumed was the kitchen.
Her pants were white, and the light showed the contours of her body to good advantage as she walked away.
“Here, try some of these to start,” she returned with a bowl of grapes. Concord grapes. One of my favorites. Put one in your mouth, puncture the purple skin, jiggle the flesh around on your tongue, it’s the taste of fall. But I didn’t move.
“I know,” she said. “You’re leery of touching any strange food after what happened to Mo. I don’t blame you. But these are OK. Here, let me show you,” and she reached and took a dusty grape and put it in her mouth. “Mmm,” she smacked her lips, took out the pits with her finger. “Look—why don’t you pick a grape and give it to me. OK?”
My stomach was growling and I was feeling light-headed already, and I realized I would have to make a decision. Either leave right now, if I didn’t trust this woman, and go somewhere to get something to eat—or eat what she gave me. I was too hungry to sit here and talk to her and resist her food right now.
“All right, up to you,” she said. “I have some Black Forest ham, and can make you a sandwich, if you like, or just coffee or tea.”
“All three.” I decided. “I mean, I’d love the sandwich, and some tea please, and I’ll try the grapes.” I put one in my mouth. I’d learned a long time ago that paranoia can be almost as debilitating as the dangers it supposes.
She was back a few minutes later with the sandwich and the tea. I’d squished at least three more grapes in my mouth, and felt fine.
“There’s a war going on,” she said, and put the food tray on the end table next to me. The sandwich was made with some sort of black bread, and smelled wonderful.
“War?” I asked and bit into the sandwich. “You think what happened to Mo is the work of some terrorist?”
“Not exactly.” Sarah sat down on a chair next to me, a cup of tea in her hand. “This war’s been going on a very long time. It’s a bio-war—much deeper rooted, literally, than anything we currently regard as terrorism.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, and swallowed what I’d been chewing of my sandwich. It felt good going down, and in my stomach.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Sarah said. “Few people do. You think epidemics, sudden widespread allergic reactions, diseases that wipe out crops or livestock just happen. Sometimes they do. Sometimes it’s more than that.” She sipped her cup of tea. Something about the lighting, her hair, her face, maybe the taste of the food, made me feel like I was a kid back in the ’60s. I half expected to smell incense burning.
“Who are you?” I asked. “I mean, what was your connection to Mo?”
“I’m working on my doctorate over at Temple,” she said. “My area’s ethno/botanical pharmacology—Mo was one of my resources. He was a very nice man.” I thought I saw a tear glisten in the comer of her eye.
“Yes he was,” I said. “And he was helping you with your dissertation about what—the germ warfare you were talking about?”
“Not exactly,” Sarah said. “I mean, you know the academic world, no one would ever let me do a thesis on something that outrageous—it’d never get by the proposal committee. So you have to finesse it, do it on something more innocuous, get the good stuff in under the table, you know, smuggle it in. So, yeah, the subtext of my work was what we—I—call the bio-wars, which are actually more than just germ warfare, and yeah, Mo was one of the people who was helping me research that.”
Sounded like Mo, all right. “And the Amish have something to do with this?”
“Yes and no,” Sarah said. “The Amish aren’t a single, unified group—they actually have quite a range of styles and values—”
“I know,” I said. “And some of them—maybe one of the splinter groups—are involved in this bio-war?”
“The main bio-war group isn’t really Amish—though they’re situated near Lancaster, have been for at least 150 years in this country. Some people think they’re Amish, though, since they live close to the land, in a low-tech mode. But they’re not Amish. Real Amish would never do that. But some of the Amish know what’s going on.”
“You know a lot about the Amish,” I said.
She blushed slightly. “I’m former Amish. I pursued my interests as far as a woman could in my church. I pleaded with my bishop to let me go to college—he knew what the stakes were, the importance of what I was studying—but he said no. He said a woman’s place was in the home. I guess he was trying to protect me, but I couldn’t stay.”