Taji's Syndrome (16 page)

“That is interesting,” said Harper after a moment. “How much information do you have?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” said Sam. “Which is why I’m going to call them and ask a few questions of my own, before I jump to too many conclusions, in case they’re facing something different than we are. Would you like to be in on this?”

“Damn right,” said Harper at once. “When are you going to make this call?”

“Say an hour? Can you be here by three?” Sam looked at the clock on the wall and weighed up the various alternatives available to him. “I think I’ll call now and set up a phone appointment. That way, if this Doctor Maximillian Klausen isn’t going to be free, you and I won’t waste part of the afternoon.” He picked up his pencil and started to doodle.

“Fine. I’ll be waiting for your call-back. How’s that?” Harper paused. “I have to be here at four; I can arrange to be a little late, but . . .”

“We can do a conference call from your office and mine to Doctor Klausen in Portland, if that would be easier.” Sam frowned and drew several emphatic lines on his doodle. Much as he appreciated Harper’s aid, he preferred it when the criminologist was with him. Sam did not doubt Harper’s dedication to their project, but he did question his expertise where medicine was concerned.

“How many cases have we had to date?” Harper asked.

“Over sixty. Thirty-nine fatalities.” He crumpled his doodle and dropped the paper in the waste basket. “I’ve been asking around, to see if other hospitals have unreported cases.”

“And do they?” Harper asked.

“There are a few I think might have patients with the syndrome. There’s reason to be suspicious about the illnesses in any case. I’ll wait until I see the blood work to be sure, but the profile is right—most of them are young, and those that aren’t are showing the same symptoms we’ve seen so far.” He cleared his throat. “Most of them are still in your area, but I think it is spreading. How’re your analyses coming?”

“Nothing specific yet. I haven’t been able to isolate any specific poison spectrographically; I’ve also asked for any indication of radioactive particles and gas levels, both on the skin and the internal tissues. It ought to show something. I’ve called the medical examiner’s office and asked that they do a full poison workup on the bodies they get to autopsy.” Harper stared at the wall, his eyes on the calendar though he did not focus on the figures there. “I’m hoping to get a full chemical analysis on the samples I have in the next twenty-four hours.”

“Um. Keep me posted.” Sam hesitated. “How about Susan? How is she doing?”

“Same as before. She wants nothing to do with this, and she has refused to discuss it with me. She’s planning to go to California, to visit Grant and her brother. I haven’t the heart to argue with her.” He did not quite sigh, but his breath came a little harder and slower than before. “I hope in time that she’ll decide that this investigation is a good memorial to Kevin.”

“I hope so,” said Sam, privately not holding much hope. Over the years he had seen families pulled apart by lesser things than this; he wanted to believe that the Rosses would survive their disagreement about Harper’s investigation but he dared not rely on it too much. “When does she leave?”

“Next week; Tuesday.” Harper cleared his throat, changing the subject. “I’ve got some extra lab time if I want it on Friday. If you have anything you want checked here, let me know and I’ll schedule it.”

“Thanks,” said Sam. “Let me call Portland; I’ll get back to you.” He decided it would be important to have as much information before he and Harper talked to Doctor Klausen as it was possible to get. That way, if they were following the wrong trail, it would not take much of their time or attention. Sam wanted to be convinced that the disease they were seeing in Seattle was isolated, that no other areas had been touched by it.

“Fine,” said Harper. “Talk to you later.” With that he hung up.

Sam referred to the letterhead number and the extension indicated beneath Klausen’s all-but-illegible signature. He placed the call and waited first for the switchboard and then for the extension to be answered.

“Doctor Klausen’s office,” said a woman’s voice made heavy with sinus congestion.

“Hello, this is Doctor Samuel Jarvis in Seattle at Harborview. I have a general letter from Doctor Klausen about a disease that he found in the town of Sweet Home in Oregon. He was requesting information about similar conditions . . .”

“Oh, yes, Doctor Jarvis. I have your name here on the list. I can reach Doctor Klausen for you, if you like. Do you have patients with similar symptoms?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Sam.

“Oh, dear,” said the woman with a deep sniff. “I’ll put you on hold; do you mind?” Before Sam could answer, she had done it.

For the next few minutes Sam was treated to a rock version of the
Acceleration Waltz
with four electric guitars, rhythm and synthesizer.

“Doctor Jarvis, is it?” a deep, gravelly voice said. “This is Doctor Klausen. I understand you have seen symptoms like the ones I’ve found in Sweet Home.”

“Yes,” Sam said. “What we have here fits the profile, including the age distribution. Almost seventy percent of the patients are teenagers.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Max said with feeling. “I’ve now seen more than ninety patients with the symptoms, about sixty-five percent of them teenagers.” There was a brief pause. “I’ll send along the statistics and diagnostic printouts through your modem, if you like.”

“We can trade,” Sam said, feeling almost overwhelmed with pessimism. “Have any of your patients survived?”

“Not once the fever has gone up,” Max admitted unhappily.

“Have you heard of any other incidents of the disease?”

“I had a call this morning from a doctor in Idaho, named Landholm. He’s been treating several high school athletes with the symptoms you’re seeing. Most of his practice is with athletes, and therefore he didn’t have much information about other cases, although he mentioned that there were other patients at the hospital where he practices with what might be the same thing.”

“Great,” said Sam, lowering his voice. “I want to get back to you after I’ve had a chance to go over your printouts. Do you have anything from Landholm you can send?”

“Not yet, but I will by tomorrow. As soon as I’ve got the material, I’ll see that it’s forwarded to you.” Max paused. “When did you see your first case of it?”

“November,” Sam said at once. “The son of close friends, in fact.” This last was an awkward admission.

“I’m sorry.” Max swallowed. “An old friend, a colleague of mine; the man who alerted me to the disease in the first place—he and his wife have both died from the disease.”

Sam tried to think of an appropriate response and could not. “That must be hard on you,” he said at last.

“On all of us, I’m afraid. My wife hasn’t forgiven me yet for their deaths.” He wanted to make light of this but could not; Cassie’s ire was too real, too alive and present for him to dismiss it. “How soon can you get your material to me?”

“Most of it by nine this evening,” said Sam, adding, “I’m working with the father of the patient I mentioned. He’s a professor here, of criminology, and he’s treating his son’s death as an unsolved crime. He’s running some tests and I doubt I’ll have the results before tomorrow. Do you want to have them as well?” He had started another page of doodles, this one more scattered than what he had done before.

“That might be useful,” said Max. “Sure, send them along. His data can’t be any more confusing than the material we already have.” He cleared his throat, trying to rid himself of the tightness that was there. “Do you have any indication of what’s causing the trouble?”

“Not so far. We’re assuming some kind of toxic waste—it fits the symptoms and the pattern.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “We’ve been checking out toxic waste dumps. We haven’t turned up anything so far.”

Sam glared at his doodle before wadding the paper into a ball and tossing it across the room. “Neither have we. I thought it might have a connection to some of the reforestation chemicals, but no luck so far.”

“Reforestation?” Max said. “No, we haven’t got anything on that, but it might be a lead we can use. There were all sorts of fertilizers used as part of the reforestation, five, ten years ago. Maybe there was a toxic combination resulting from that.”

“Nothing specifically wrong with any one element, but cumulatively dangerous?” Sam said, taking up the idea. “I hadn’t thought of that; I hate to admit it. I’ll put Harper onto it. Still you’d think something would turn up spectrographically if that was the case.”

“Not necessarily,” Max said. “What about comparative levels? Have you tested for that?” He had already decided that would be his next area of testing. “You might have to do slices of all major organs to get a comprehensive picture. Also bone marrow.”

“You’d think the computers would pick up on it,” said Sam, his scowl growing deeper.

“Not if they weren’t programmed to look for it,” Max reminded him.

“Right,” said Sam, scribbling a note to himself before he began another doodle beneath it. “I’ll see what I can come up with, and I’ll put Ross on it as well.”

“Good,” said Max. “Will you be free tomorrow evening? I think we ought to wait until then to compare notes.”

“Yes,” said Sam. “I’ll want to go over your material with my criminologist friend as well as set up comparisons with what we have on file here. Then we might be able to get somewhere.”

“What about Atlanta?” said Max with less certainty than before. “Have you been in contact with them?”

“Not yet. I don’t want to cry wolf. They’re not very forgiving of that.” Sam had written
Atlanta
in the middle of his doodle and surrounded it with several versions of a question mark.

“Amen,” said Max. “But I’m getting worried about this stuff. It’s here in Oregon, it looks as if it’s in Idaho and Washington as well. Where else has it cropped up?”

“Atlanta’s a warehouse,” Sam said bluntly. “If we can’t get anyone there interested in this disease, whatever it is, it’s worse than useless to talk to them. You know how they are, how much bureaucracy they have.”

“The Environmental Division is less hampered,” Max said, though his words were more of a question than a statement. “We might have a chance there.”

“I hope so,” said Sam, as dubiously as Max. “It might be necessary, but I’m not looking forward to it.”

“No, nor I,” said Max. The two men were silent for several seconds, and then Max went on. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Sam looked at his daybook. “I probably won’t be back in the office until almost seven. Is that acceptable to you?”

“Let’s make it seven-thirty then, just in case you get held up.”

“All right. And I’ll make sure Harper Ross is here as well, in case he turns up something we haven’t spotted. That is one thing he’s shown me—that his perspective is different, and in a case like this, it’s damned useful.”

“A professor of criminology,” said Klausen, not believing what he was being told.

“You’ll see what I mean when’ you talk with him,” said Sam, and prepared to hang up. “We’ll talk later.”

“Good.”

Harper’s response was more enthusiastic. “That’s terrific. Now we’re starting to get somewhere. What’s this about Atlanta? What can we do to hurry that up? It sounds to me as if we should have been talking to them before now.”

“You’re wrong there, Harper,” said Sam. “Atlanta is constantly getting material from all over the country, especially in the Environmental Disease branch, and unless you have something major to show them, it just goes into the files and stays there. The fact that we might have proof that this outbreak is not limited to one area gives us a reason to have more attention than we might have otherwise, which is why we’ve got to be damned sure of what we tell them.” He had no more paper left on his notepad for doodles and so began to make random lines on the cardboard backing.

“You mean to tell me that they’re so inefficient?” Harper demanded indignantly.

“I mean that they are overworked, understaffed, and that the whole area of Environmental Disease is so clumsily defined and understood right now that half the time they’re in no position to give data a real evaluation.” He saw that he had broken the point off his pencil and reached for another one.

“This is outrageous,” said Harper, his tone more subdued but as intense as before. “What if there are dozens of cases of this stuff all over the country, but there hasn’t been enough checking? You mean in Atlanta they would not do a cross-check, just in case there were other reports?”

“If they had time and someone was willing to do it, they might,” Sam answered carefully. “But no, it isn’t part of the routine.”

“It bloody well ought to be,” Harper said. “What’s this about Idaho?”

“I wasn’t sure you noticed,” said Sam. “There might be some cases in Idaho. Klausen’s going to find out more before we talk. We need a conference. Three locations will demand attention.” He let out his breath slowly.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, I was thinking about the spread of the disease. We still haven’t isolated what causes it, and how long it takes to develop. What if it takes a couple of years, and there are people who lived here two years back and have moved, who might still get the disease? Since we don’t know how long an exposure is needed, what about travelers or students who have been here for a time but have moved on? How much of a risk are they? How do we locate them? How do we warn them?”

“I’ve considered that,” Harper said softly. “I worry about what it tells
me.”

Sam tore the cardboard sheet in half and dropped it on the floor. “Yeah.”

“Keep in touch,” said Harper quietly.

“I will. We’ll talk this evening, probably.” He scratched his head reflectively. “Don’t talk to anyone about this unless it’s absolutely necessary, and don’t reveal any more than you must, will you, Harper? If we had a panic now, I don’t know what we’d do.”

“I know,” said Harper. “But what about the poor bastards who might have the stuff, been exposed and not know it? What about them?”