Contagion (47 page)

     “Lou also told me he thought you were taking a lot of risks with these gangs involved,” Laurie said. “Personally, I think you should call off whatever you are doing.”

     “Well, you are siding with the majority if it is any consolation,” Jack said. “And I’m sure my mother would agree if you were to call her in South Bend, Indiana, and ask her opinion.”

     “I don’t understand how you can be flippant in light of everything that has happened,” Laurie said. “Besides, Lou wanted me to make sure you understand that he can’t protect you with twenty-four-hour security. He doesn’t have the manpower. You’re on your own.”

     “At least I’ll be working with someone I’ve spent a lot of time with,” Jack said.

     “You are impossible!” Laurie said. “When you don’t want to talk about something you hide behind your clever repartee. I think you should tell everything to Lou. Tell him about your terrorist idea and turn it over to him. Let him investigate it. He’s good at it. It’s his job.”

     “That might be,” Jack said. “But this is a unique circumstance in a lot of ways. I think it requires knowledge that Lou doesn’t have. Besides, I sense it might do a world of good for my self-confidence to follow this thing through. Whether it’s obvious or not, my ego has taken a beating over the last five years.”

     “You are a mystery man,” Laurie said. “Also stubborn, and I don’t know enough about you to know when you are joking and when you are serious. Just promise to be more careful than you’ve been the last few days.”

     “I’ll make you a deal,” Jack said. “I’ll promise if you agree to take rimantadine.”

     “I did notice there were more influenza deaths downstairs,” Laurie said. “You think it warrants rimantadine?”

     “Absolutely,” Jack said. “The CDC is taking this outbreak very seriously, and you should as well. In fact, they think it might be the same strain that caused the disastrous influenza outbreak in 1918. I’ve started rimantadine myself.”

     “How could it be the same strain?” Laurie asked. “That strain doesn’t exist.”

     “Influenza has a way of hiding out,” Jack said. “It’s one of the things that has the CDC so interested.”

     “Well, if that were the case, it sure shoots holes in your terrorist theory,” Laurie said. “There’s no way for someone to deliberately spread something that doesn’t exist outside of some unknown natural reservoir.”

     Jack stared at Laurie for a minute. She was right, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it.

     “I don’t mean to rain on your parade,” Laurie said.

     “That’s okay,” Jack said, preoccupied. He was busy wondering if the influenza episode could be a natural phenomenon, while the other outbreaks were intentional. The problem with that line of thinking was that it violated a cardinal rule in medical diagnostics: single explanations are sought even for seemingly disparate events.

     “Nevertheless, the influenza threat is obviously real,” Laurie said. “So I’ll take the drug, but to make sure you hold up your side of the bargain, I want you to keep in touch with me. I noticed that Calvin took you off autopsy, so if you leave the office you have to call me at regular intervals.”

     “Maybe you’ve been talking to my mother after all,” Jack said. “Sounds remarkably like the orders she gave me during my first week at college.”

     “Take it or leave it,” Laurie said.

     “I’ll take it,” Jack said.

     After Laurie left, Jack headed to the DNA lab to seek out Ted Lynch.

     Jack was glad to get out of his office. Despite the good intentions involved he was tiring of people giving him advice and he was afraid Chet would soon be arriving. Undoubtedly he’d voice the same concerns just expressed by Laurie.

     As Jack mounted the stairs he thought more about Laurie’s point concerning the influenza’s source. He couldn’t believe he’d not thought of it himself, and it undermined his confidence. It also underlined how much he was depending on a positive result with the probe National Biologicals had sent. If they were all negative he’d have scant hope of proving his theory. All he’d have left would be the improbable cultures he’d hoped Kathy McBane had obtained from the sink trap in central supply.

     The moment Ted Lynch caught sight of Jack approaching, he pretended to hide behind his lab bench.

     “Shucks, you found me,” Ted joked when Jack came around the end of the counter. “I was hoping not to see you until the afternoon.”

     “It’s your unlucky day,” Jack said. “I’m not even on autopsy, so I’ve decided to camp out here in your lab. I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to run my probes ...”

     “Actually, I stayed late last night and even came in early to prepare the nucleoproteins. I’m ready to run the probes now. If you give me an hour or so, I should have some results.”

     “Did you get all four cultures?” Jack asked.

     “Sure did,” Ted said. “Agnes was on the ball as usual.”

     “I’ll be back,” Jack said.

     With some time to kill, Jack went down to the morgue and changed into his moon suit before entering the autopsy room.

     The morning routine was well under way. Six of the eight tables were in various stages of the autopsy procedure. Jack walked down the row until he recognized one of the cases. It was Gloria Hernandez. For a moment he looked at her pale face and tried to comprehend the reality of death. Having just spoken with her in her apartment the day before, it seemed an inconceivable transition.

     The autopsy was being done by Riva Mehta, Laurie’s officemate. She was a petite woman of Indian extraction who had to stand on a stool to do the procedure. At that moment she was just entering the chest.

     Jack stayed and watched. When the lungs were removed he asked to see the cut surface. It was identical to Kevin Carpenter’s from the day before, complete with pinpoint hemorrhages. There was no doubt it was a primary influenza pneumonia.

     Moving on, Jack found Chet, who was busy with the nurse, George Haselton. Jack was surprised; it was Chet’s usual modus operandi to stop into the office before doing his day’s autopsies. When Chet saw it was Jack, he seemed annoyed.

     “How come you didn’t answer your phone last night?” Chet demanded.

     “It was too long a reach,” Jack said. “I wasn’t there.”

     “Colleen called to tell me what happened,” Chet said. “I think this whole thing has gone far enough.”

     “Chet, instead of talking, how about showing me the lung,” Jack said.

     Chet showed Jack the lung. It was identical to Gloria Hernandez’s and Kevin Carpenter’s. When Chet started to talk again, Jack merely moved on.

     Jack stayed in the autopsy room until he’d seen the gross on all the influenza cases. There were no surprises. Everyone was impressed by the pathogenicity of the virus.

     Changing back into his street clothes, Jack went directly up to the DNA lab. This time Ted acted glad to see him.

     “I’m not sure what you wanted me to find,” Ted said. “But you are batting live hundred. Two of the four were positive.”

     “Just two?” Jack asked. He’d prepared himself for either all positive or all negative. Like everything else associated with these outbreaks, he was surprised.

     “If you want I can go back and fudge the results,” Ted joked. “How many do you want to be positive?”

     “I thought I was the jokester around here,” Jack said.

     “Do these results screw up some theory of yours?” Ted asked.

     “I’m not sure yet,” Jack said. “Which two were positive?”

     “The plague and the tularemia,” Ted said.

     Jack walked back to his office while he pondered this new information. By the time he was sitting down he’d decided that it didn’t make any difference how many of the cultures were positive. That fact that any of them were positive supported his theory. Unless an individual was a laboratory worker it would be hard to come in contact with an artificially propagated culture of a bacteria.

     Pulling his phone over closer to himself, Jack put in a call to National Biologicals. He asked to speak with Igor Krasnyansky, since the man had already been accommodating enough to send the probes. Jack reintroduced himself.

     “I remember you,” Igor said. “Did you have any luck with the probes?”

     “I did,” Jack said. “Thank you again for sending them. But now I have a few more questions.”

     “I’ll try to answer them,” Igor said.

     “Does National Biologicals also sell influenza cultures?” Jack asked.

     “Indeed,” Igor said. “Viruses are a big part of our business, including influenza. We have many strains, particularly type A.”

     “Do you have the strain that caused the epidemic in 19187” Jack asked. He just wanted to be one hundred percent certain.

     “We wish!” Igor said with a laugh. “I’m sure that strain would be popular with researchers. No, we don’t have it, but we have some that are probably similar, like the strain of the ‘76 swine-flu scare. It’s generally believed that the 1918 strain was a permutation of H1N1, but exactly what, no one knows.”

     “My next question concerns plague and tularemia,” Jack said.

     “We carry both,” Igor said.

     “I’m aware of that,” Jack said. “What I would like to know is who has ordered either of those two cultures in the last few months.”

     “I’m afraid we don’t usually give that information out,” Igor said.

     “I can understand that,” Jack said. For a moment Jack feared he would have to get Lou Soldano involved just to get the information he wanted. But then he thought he could possibly talk Igor into giving it to him. After all, Igor had been careful to say that such information wasn’t “usually” given out.

     “Perhaps you’d like to talk to our president,” Igor suggested.

     “Let me tell you why I want to know,” Jack said. “As a medical examiner I’ve seen a couple of deaths recently with these pathogens. We’d just like to know which labs we should warn. Our interest is preventing any more accidents.

     “And the deaths were due to our cultures?” Igor asked.

     “That was why I wanted the probes,” Jack said. “We suspected as much but needed proof.”

     “Hmm,” Igor said. “I don’t know if that should make me feel more or less inclined to give out information.”

     “It’s just an issue of safety,” Jack said.

     “Well, that sounds reasonable,” Igor said. “It’s not as if it’s a secret. We share our customer lists with several equipment manufacturers. Let me see what I can find here at my workstation.”

     “To make it easier for you, narrow the field to labs in the New York metropolitan area,” Jack said.

     “Fair enough,” Igor said. Jack could hear the man typing on his keyboard. “We’ll try tularemia first. Here we go.” There was a pause.

     “Okay,” Igor said. “We have sent tularemia to the National Health hospital and to the Manhattan General Hospital. That’s it; at least for the last Couple of months.”

     Jack sat more upright, especially knowing that National Health was the major competitor of AmeriCare. “Can you tell me when these cultures went out?”

     “I think so,” Igor said. Jack could hear more typing. “Okay, here we are. The National Health shipment went out on the twenty-second of this month, and the Manhattan General shipment went out on the fifteenth.”

     Jack’s enthusiasm waned slightly. By the twenty-second he’d already made the diagnosis of tularemia in Susanne Hard. That eliminated National Health for the time being. “Does it show who the receiver was on the Manhattan General shipment?” Jack asked. “Or was it just the lab itself?”

     “Hold on,” Igor said as he switched screens again. “It says that the consignee was a Dr. Martin Cheveau.”

     Jack’s pulse quickened. He was uncovering information that very few people would know could be discoverable. He doubted that even Martin Cheveau was aware that National Biologicals phage-typed their cultures.

     “What about plague?” Jack asked.

     “Just a moment,” Igor said while he made the proper entries.

     There was another pause. Jack could hear Igor’s breathing.

     “Okay, here it is,” Igor said. “Plague’s not a common item ordered on the East Coast outside of academic or reference labs. But there was one shipment that went out on the eighth. It went to Frazer Labs.”

     “I’ve never heard of them,” Jack said. “Do you have an address?”

     “Five-fifty Broome Street,” Igor said.

     “How about a consignee?” Jack asked as he wrote down the address.

     “Just the lab itself,” Igor said.

     “Do you do much business with them?” Jack asked.

     “I don’t know,” Igor said. He made another entry. “They send us orders now and then. It must be a small diagnostic lab. But there’s one thing strange.”

     “What’s that?” Jack asked.

     “They always pay with a cashier’s check,” Igor said. “I’ve never seen that before. It’s okay, of course, but customers usually have established credit.”

     “Is there a telephone number?” Jack asked.

     “Just the address,” Igor said, which he repeated.

     Jack thanked Igor for his help and hung up the phone. Taking out the phone directory, he looked up Frazer Labs. There was no listing. He tried information but had the same luck.

     Jack sat back. Once again he’d gotten information he didn’t expect. He now had two sources of the offending bacteria. Since he already knew something about the lab at the Manhattan General, he thought he’d better visit Frazer Labs. If there was some way he could establish an association with the two labs or with Martin Cheveau personally, he’d turn everything over to Lou Soldano.

     The first problem was the concern about being followed. The previous evening he’d thought he’d been so clever but had been humbled by Shawn Magoginal. Yet to give himself credit, he had to remember that Shawn was an expert. The Black Kings certainly weren’t. But to make up for their lack of expertise, the Black Kings were ruthless. Jack knew he’d have to lose a potential tail rapidly since they had clearly demonstrated a total lack of compunction about attacking him in public.