Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero (8 page)

“Tell me the symptoms?”

Eddie sat back, reached out, hit a button.

“Oh, man, listen to this.”

Kelley said, in the recording, “The little prickly feelings in my fingers are getting worse. I’m having trouble walking sometimes, losing feeling in my left leg, below the knee. I tap it. It’s numb.”

“Nerve problems,” whispered Eddie, making a list while Merlin and I hung over his shoulder, riveted to the frail voice. Kelley quavering but staying focused. The kid sick and scared, but diligently making her “observations” file.

“Dad said we all have a flu or a cold and he broke out the five-day Zithromax. But that makes no sense. How come if we all have the same thing, we show different symptoms?”

“Name them,” I urged the voice, the living speaking to the dead, to the past, to the void.

“I think it’s the water. The bottled water tastes funny. Like there’s metal in it or something. Scratchy. It hurts my throat. Mom said she saw the redheaded woman back in Barrow, in the airport, with our supplies. I bet that woman put something in the water. Water! I feel disgusting. I won’t take a shower. My hair is so gross that I got angry at the mirror and broke it, when I saw myself. Ugh!!!!”

Eddie looked up. “Water tasted funny? Or her taste buds changed?”

“Write them both down. Also, irritability.”

“But is that a symptom? Or is she just pissed off?”

“Just write it!”

Eddie said, “Maybe you caught it, Uno, speaking of irritability. What redheaded woman is she talking about?”

“It’s got to be that Greenpeace girl,” Merlin answered, frowning, hands on his hips. Outside the office, through glass, door closed, uniformed police officers were staring in at us. “From Anchorage. Tilda Swann. A Brit. She’s also in PETA, an animal lover. Stop the whaling. Save the bears. Save the seals. The Iñupiats can go to hell.”

“But why target scientists working on lakes?”

“I’m just telling you who Kelley’s probably talking about. Firebrand is more like it. Odds are it’s her.”

Click.
The girl’s recorded voice said:

“I don’t like the way Clay Qaqulik looks at Mom. He stares at her in the way that boys watch Jackie DiNardi in school. I saw him touching himself when she wasn’t looking. I’m getting afraid of Clay. He’s angry all the time, not like he used to be. He got on a four-wheeler yesterday and drove it in circles, faster and faster, crazy, laughing, on the tundra. He keeps cleaning his shotgun. Last night he kept staring into the lake for a long time. I asked him what’s in there, and he didn’t answer, just looked up fast, muttering about
imminnauraq
, little people. I walked away. I was shaking. I couldn’t even open the door latch, because my fingers wouldn’t work right. I’m scared!”

Merlin looked baffled. “Clay doesn’t get angry. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen my cousin angry.”

“Mood changes,” said Eddie, writing:
Headaches, hallucinations possibly, paranoia?

“It started three days ago. We all have fevers. I told Dad we should go back to Barrow, but he’s so crazy because we’re behind schedule, after so many accidents all summer, and we still have three more sites to collect samples from before we can go home.

“And the fighting. Mom and Dad NEVER fight, unless it’s over Dad’s stupid labeling on his ice cream or Mom’s terrible driving. Family peace is like end-of-the-world important with them. It’s like they’re one brain/two people, like Borg people saying the same thing. Like, Can I go over to Ellen’s for dinner, Dad? ‘ASK YOUR MOTHER, HONEY.’ Can we have pizza, Mom? ‘WHATEVER YOUR FATHER SAYS, DEAR!’ And now they’re fighting over the samples, the weather, and especially about Clay and . . . Oh, my God! OH, MY GOD! I think maybe Mom had SEX with him. Nononono!!!!! DISGUSTING!!!!”

•   •   •

THE NARRATIVE ENDED BUT EDDIE SAID KELLEY HAD ALSO RECORDED
other people. Returning to the menu, he found a file titled “BORG PEOPLE” and clicked on it. It was a log of people clearly recorded without their knowledge. I heard my neighbors’ voices—recognizable from our evenings together—but an electric shock went through me. They were the Harmons, all right, but
different
, sounding harsh and cruel over the computer sound system. The mild-mannered restraint that I associated with them was nowhere in the recording. This was not subtle. This was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

CATHY HARMON:
The water, Ted. The fucking water. The water burns, and I will not drink it. I told you to get different water but you never fucking do anything I ask.

TED HARMON:
I saw you coming out of the cabin with him. I go out with Kelley for an hour, and you two are in there!

CATHY HARMON:
(laughs) Oh, you know what they say, if you don’t use it, you lose it.

TED HARMON:
I smell him on you.

CATHY HARMON:
I do, too. I love it.

Eddie looked up at me. “Holy shit, One. Are these the same people we know?”

I looked over at Merlin who was still and serious, staring down at the table.

“Merlin?”

“Nothing.”

“Merlin!”

A sigh. “Clay had a crush on her, Joe. He told me at the family Fourth of July dinner. He laughed over it. He never would have done anything about it. He thought she was cute.”

Eddie said, “Sounds like he did do something.”

I shook my head, feeling the rage and confusion, the lust and pain that was palpable in this room, just as present as the appalling personality changes on Kelley’s recording. “Having the urge isn’t doing it. Everyone has goddamn urges. You need something extra to lose control.”

CATHY:
He can last hours, Ted. Hours. You want to go for a ride with me now? Come on, a ride. You and me. On the tundra. Like when we used to drive around. You know, blow jobs? In college?

TED:
Get away from me. You disgust me.

I said, stunned for the teenager listening to this from her parents, “Write:
sexual aggressiveness
.”

Merlin sighed, thinking out loud. “You know what?”

“What?”

“Crystal meth. Ingested. We had a few kids on it last year. Hyperactive. Meth mouth. Delusions . . . hmm . . . And screwing like rabbits. She said the water tasted funny.”

Eddie shook his head. “You’re thinking all four of them took
meth
?”

“Or were given it. I’m just saying . . . I mean, it’s possible, right?”

I said, “Dr. Sengupta is running blood work this morning at the hospital. If any of them had drugs in their system we’ll know by this afternoon. The other chem-screens might take a little longer.”

Merlin pulled a chair over, and sat down. “Well, they’ve had accidents all summer. Clay thought someone was trying to sabotage that project. So if someone was doing that, but it wasn’t working . . . If someone got desperate to stop them . . . hell . . . Maybe someone showed up at the camp, landed on the lake. Float plane.”

“She didn’t say anything about a plane, Merlin. No tracks, either. No marks on the tundra if someone came down on those big balloon-tire planes. Kelley would have mentioned it, I’d think. And come to think of it, who was
their
pilot? Who took them out there?”

Whoever did that had access to their water.

“I think it was Jens. Yes . . . Jens.”

“Merlin, if there’s something wrong here, something they ingested, we’re not hearing the Clay you know. None of them are normal. Believe me.”

CATHY HARMON:
You could take a few lessons from Clay, Ted. Mouth lessons. Tongue lessons. Fingers. How to beat your three-minute-quickie record, hmm?

I stared at Eddie’s list. I said, slowly, reasoning out loud, “You know: Funny tastes, bright light, numbness, fear of water, sexual aggressiveness. Pretty classic for rabies.”

“Are you kidding? In
four
people? In a cluster? You have to be bitten by an animal to get it.
Four
?”

“I’m not saying it is that. I’m just linking symptoms. But you’re right. One person could be bitten. Not four.”

“It’s not rabies.”

“I know.” I sighed. “Still, I’ll ask Sengupta if he found bite marks.”

“What’s in their stomachs?” Merlin said.

The next two recordings had been made twenty-four hours after the first, same time each day, 3
P.M
., with Kelley apparently sticking to her homemade scientific method, trying to reduce variables, I told Merlin, “Always taking samples at the exact same time.” I envisioned her hiding her little palm recorder as she and her parents moved around the lake, collecting algae and plants; doomed researchers with glass sample bottles, nets, and tweezers, scooping up seeds, all the while their tempers rising, the barely suppressed rage building toward what would, in less than forty-eight hours, explode into shotgun blasts.

Apparently Clay Qaqulik was also testing water that day, as his voice started the next exchange.

CLAY QAQULIK:
There is something out there moving around at night. It’s not an animal.

TED HARMON:
(snicker) Yeah, those little imaginary men?

CLAY QAQULIK:
I don’t make fun of your culture.

CATHY HARMON:
Go eat your fucking ice cream, Ted. Stop it.

TED HARMON:
Ah! Yes! Stop! The perfect request, wouldn’t you say so, Clay? To halt? To cease? To hold off?

KELLEY:
I can’t stand this.

CATHY:
Don’t drink that water, Kelley! Stay away from those fucking bottles, I told you! Use the purification tablets on the lake water if . . . (cough) . . . if you’re (coughing)

On the recording, someone was throwing up. Eddie jotted down, on the lengthening list on the yellow legal pad, “coughing.”

KELLEY:
I want to go back to Barrow. I want to go home.

TED:
Home? What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf? How many times have I told you that we have three more lakes to visit before (gargling noise, grunting)

KELLEY:
Why are you making those noises?

TED:
(grunting)

KELLEY:
Daddy, you’re scaring me.

TED:
Fly . . . argh . . . in my . . . (cough) throat.

CLAY:
Here’s the last bottle. My eyes hurt. This light . . . so bright . . .

The recordings ended. Eddie sat back at the table. Merlin said, “That’s it? No more?” Eddie replied, “Maybe that’s the way they were all the time in private, Uno. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde. Nice all the time to friends in public, at each other’s throats at home.”

“No, if that were the case, Kelley wouldn’t have been surprised at their behavior. That kid is being exposed to this for the first time. Besides, if the parents were always like this, I can’t see them spending all that time with us. They’d never control themselves, not with that much rage in the air.”

“I guess,” Eddie said. “But you never really know what goes on between a couple.”

“What was that about light hurting?” Merlin said.

“Call the hospital. Ranjay must have started screening the blood, hair, and tissue by now.”

•   •   •

COULD A MOLD HAVE CAUSED THE SYMPTOMS? WE HEADED BACK TO THE
research camp to search for
stachybotrys
, a green/black compound that could, if breathed in or ingested, produce aches, pains, fevers, cough, mood sensitivity, and immune suppression.

Poisons? Sengupta ran chemistry panels, seeking evidence of heavy metals or lead exposure or unidentified poisons in the blood.

Eddie explained to Merlin, “We ought to have an idea of toxics in a day, two at most.”

The redhead? Merlin said she was probably over at Borough Hall, carrying a “STOP LONGHORN NORTH” placard at a public hearing today where Dave and Deborah Lillienthal were testifying. He sent two detectives to find her.

By the end of the day I’d found no evidence of mold or gas residue at the cabin, and the yellow crime-scene tape was broken in one place, beaten down, bear tracks at that spot, and lumbering off into the tundra. The ground was wet and we found no human footprints. Merlin made a thorough search. No people had been here since yesterday.

At the hospital, Dr. Sengupta’s initial tests found, “No arsenic in the bloodstreams,” he reported via phone. “No heavy metals so far, no raised lead levels, no illegal drugs. And no flu. Lungs clear. No infection in the blood. No hypo or bite marks anywhere I can see.”

“Didn’t hurt to check.”

“However!” he said, excited. “All four of them had raised white blood cell counts, sixteen thousand in Clay Qaqulik, fourteen to fifteen thousand in the parents and the girl. So there’s an invader in there, but I’ve not found any virus or bacteria so far. I’m going with something chemical. Gas, maybe. They breathe it. It dissipates in air. But wood can absorb it. Cabin scrapings may show it.”

“We have the scrapings. Maybe you’ll see something we missed.”

I reported to the admiral as ordered and when he heard the test results he seemed less anxious. “No germs? Then that’s it for you two,” he said. “No connection! Get back to work, finish your survey. General Homza is breathing down my neck, just waiting for a chance to shut us down. I want to hear that you agree.”

“Back to the mission, sir,” I said.

“We’re giving up?” said Eddie when I clicked off.

“If it weren’t for Kelley’s phone call, it would have been a suicide/shooting,” I answered. “No question. If Kelley hadn’t made the recording, it would have been chalked up to one more piece of bad luck. Tragic accident. Autopsy shows death by shotgun. End of story, man.”

I punched in numbers in Washington, heard the phone ring on the other end, heard Valley Girl pick up in the computer section. She’d been instructed by the admiral’s secretary earlier to “Give Colonel Rush what he needs,” and so now remained under the impression that I could demand any accessible information, and she was to comply.