Unnatural Exposure

I went down the steps, careful to keep my air line from tangling. He was in front of the camper, squatting by the area of the tongue where the VIN had been obliterated. Having polished the metal mirror-smooth with fine grit sandpaper, he was now applying a solution of copper chloride and hydrochloric acid to dissolve scarred metal

and restore the deeply stamped number underneath that the killer thought he had filed away.

'People don't realize how difficult it is to get rid of one of these things,' his voice filled my ears.

'Unless they're professional car thieves.' I said.

'Well, whoever did this didn't do a very good job.' He was taking photographs. 'I think we got it.'

'Let's hope the camper's registered,' I said.

'Who knows? Maybe we'll get lucky.'

'What about prints?'

The door and aluminum around it were smudged with black dusting powder.

'Some, but God knows whose,' he said getting up and straightening his back. 'In a minute, I'll tear up the inside.'

Meanwhile, Lucy was tearing up the computer, and like me, not coming up with anything that might tell us who deadoc was. But she did find files he had saved of our conversations in the chat rooms, and it was chilling to see them on screen, and wonder how often he had reread them. There were detailed lab notes documenting the propagation of the virus cells, and this was interesting. It appeared work had begun as recently as early in the fall, less than two months before the torso had turned up.

By late afternoon, we had done all we could do with no startling revelations. We took chemical showers as the camper was blasted with formalin gas. I stayed in my army- green house clothes because I did not want my suit after what it had been through.

'Kind of hell on your wardrobe,' Lucy commented as we left the changing room.

'Maybe you should try pearls with that. Dress it up a little.'

'Sometimes you sound like Marino,' I said.

Days crept into the weekend, and next I knew that was gone too with no developments that were anything but maddening. I had missed my mother's birthday. Not once had it crossed my mind.

'What? You got Alzheimer's now?' she unkindly told me over the phone. 'You don't come down here. Now you don't even bother to call. It's not like I'm getting younger.' She began to cry, and I felt like it.

'Christmas,' I said what I did every year. 'I'll work something out. I'll bring Lucy. I

promise. It's not that far away.'

I drove downtown, uninspired and weary to the bone. Lucy had been right. The killer's only use of the phone line at the campground was to dial into AOL, and in the

end, all that came back to was Perley's stolen credit card. Deadoc did not call anymore. I had gotten obsessive about checking and sometimes found myself waiting in that

chat room when I could not even be sure the FBI was watching anymore.

The frozen virus source I found in the camper's nitrogen freezer remained unknown. Attempts at mapping its DNA continued, and scientists at CDC knew how the virus was different, but not what it was, and thus far, vaccinated primates remained susceptible to it. Four other people, including two watermen who turned up in Crisfield, had come down with only mild cases of the disease. No one else seemed to be getting sick as the quarantine of the fishing village continued and its economy foundered. As for Richmond, only Wingo was ill, his willowy body and gentle face ravaged by pustules. He would not let me see him, no matter how often I tried.

I was devastated, and found it hard to worry about other cases because this one would not end. We knew the dead man in the trailer could not be deadoc. Fingerprints had come back to a drifter with a long arrest record of crimes mostly involving theft and

drugs, and two counts of assault and attempted rape. He was out on parole when he had used his pocketknife to pry open the camper door, and no one doubted that his shotgun death was a homicide.

I walked into my office at eight-fifteen. When Rose heard me, she came through her doorway.

'I hope you got some rest,' she said, more worried about me than I'd ever seen.

'I did. Thanks.' I smiled, and her concern made me feel guilty and shamed, as if I were bad somehow. 'Any new developments?'

'Not about Tangier.' I could see the anxiety in her eyes. 'Try to get your mind off it, Dr Scarpetta. We've got five cases this morning. Look at the top of your desk. If you can find it. And I'm at least two weeks behind on correspondence and micros because of your not being here to dictate.'

'Rose, I know, I know,' I said, not unkindly. 'First things first. Try Phyllis again. And if they still say she's out sick, get a number where she can be reached. I've been trying her home number for days and no one answers.'

'If I get her, you want me to put her through?'

'Absolutely,' I said.

That happened fifteen minutes later when I was about to go into staff meeting. Rose got Phyllis Crowder on the line.

'Where on earth are you? And how are you?' I asked.

'This wretched flu,' she said. 'Don't get it.'

'I did and am still getting rid of it,' I said. 'I've tried your house in Richmond.'

'Oh, I'm at my mother's, in Newport News. You know, I work a four-day week and have been spending the other three days out here for years.'

I did not know that. But we had never socialized.

'Phyllis,' I said, 'I hate to bother you when you're not well, but I need your help with something. In 1978 there was a laboratory accident at the lab in Birmingham, England, where you once worked. I've pulled what I can on it, and know only that a medical photographer was working directly over a smallpox lab…'

'Yes, yes,' she interrupted me. 'I know all about it. Supposedly, the photographer was exposed through a ventilator duct, and she died. The virologist committed suicide. The case is cited all the time by people who argue in favor of destroying all frozen source virus.'

'Were you working in that lab when this happened?'

'No, thank goodness. That was some years after I left. I was already in the States by then.'

I was disappointed, and she went into a coughing spell and could hardly talk.

'Sorry.' She coughed. 'This is when you hate living alone.'

'You don't have anyone looking in on you?'

'No.'

'What about food?'

'I manage.'

'Why don't I bring you something,' I said.

'I wouldn't hear of it.'

'I'll help you if you'll help me,' I added. 'Do you have any files on Birmingham? Concerning the work going on when you were there? Anything you could look up?'

'Buried somewhere in this house, I'm sure,' she said.

'Unbury them and I'll bring stew.'

I was out the door in five minutes, running to my car. Heading home, I got several quarts of my homemade stew out of the freezer, then I filled the tank with gas before going east on 64. I told Marino on the car phone what I was doing.

'You've really lost it this time,' he exclaimed. 'Drive over a hundred miles to take someone food? You coulda called Domino's.'

'That's not the point. And believe me, I have one.' I put sunglasses on. 'There may be something here. She may know something that could help.'

'Yo, let me know,' he said. 'You got your pager on, right?' 'Right.'

Traffic was light this time of day, and I kept the cruise control on sixty-nine so I did not get a ticket. In less than an hour, I was bypassing Williamsburg, and about twenty minutes later, following directions Crowder had given me for her address in Newport News. The neighborhood was called Brandon Heights, where the economic class was mixed, and houses got bigger as they got nearer the James River. Hers was a modest two-story frame recently painted eggshell white, the yard and landscaping well maintained.

I parked behind a van and collected the stew, my pocketbook and briefcase slung over a shoulder. When Phyllis Crowder came to the door, she looked like hell, her face pale, and eyes burning with fever. She was dressed in a flannel robe and leather slippers that looked like they might once have belonged to a man.