Time Clock Hero (9 page)

The horror stood out against the green grass, and Phoenix was struck motionless and faintly ill by the site of the dead.  He stared silently across the campus between the Lutrell building and the student center, carefully cradling his small revolver in the sweaty palm of his right hand.  The smell of death – he’d smelled it before, something he could ever quite describe in any meaningful and coherent way – seemed to hit him square in the center of his forehead as well as in the middle of his gut.  The officers down below in the garden busied themselves setting up stakes and rolling yellow tape, marking off the area for safety reasons.  Most of the deadly activity was confined to a small area.

“Something like you see in the movies,” Dr. Cain said, standing next to Phoenix on the steps of Lutrell.  “Sure, you watch it and think, okay, this will never happen.”

Chief Cobb, his nice suit splattered red from shots fired against assailants barely two feet in front of him, walked over to where Phoenix was standing.  He approached Dr. Cain.  “You must be Dr. Cain.  I’d shake your hand but, as you can see, I need gallon of alcohol and a bath.  What do you have for us?”

“Viral, no doubt,” Dr. Cain said.  “Mixed with, of all things, Psyke.”

“Is there a chance this is Dr. Carson’s work?”

Dr. Cain pressed his lips together and shuffled his feet.  “The science part of me says, yes.  This looks like something only he could make work.  The other part, the carnage, tells me otherwise.  Dr. Carson is not a killer.  In fact, he’s just the opposite. Have you ever considered that---?”

“Considered what?” Phoenix asked.

“That maybe somebody wants us to believe that Dr. Carson is responsible for this?”

“You wouldn’t mind coming in for questioning, would you, Dr. Cain?” Chief Cobb asked.

“Oh, no I wouldn’t – and I’ll gladly comply,” Dr. Cain said.  “And that rat I was testing?  It looks as if a student other than the girl assigned to it had handled it prior to all of this.”

“And that’s how the virus jumped?”  Phoenix asked. “By the rat?”

“I came back from an early lunch and saw someone bandaging a student’s hand,” Dr. Cain said, with his hand on his chin.  “The guy said he got bit by one of the rats and, naturally, I just assumed he’d been bit by one of the fifty or so we keep in the lab.  They do bite sometimes.  So, I went into my office to grade papers and, an hour a later, I heard screaming, so I opened the door.  And that’s when I saw a student being attacked, bitten in the throat, by the student wearing the bandage.  I saw blood going all over the place, so I closed the door and called the police.  The rest of the story you know.”

Phoenix, Dr. Cain, and Chief Cobb looked at the mess in front of them.  Four police officers, six paramedics, and thirty of more students lay dead, all of them by bites or gunshot wounds to the head.  In a minute, there’d be over a hundred police officers and every paramedic in Davidson County, including every reporter ever spawned, on the campus of St. David’s University.  Sirens could already be heard wailing, almost mourning, coming from every point of the compass.

Alaia came jogging up the sidewalk from the left, waving and calling out for Phoenix.  She came quickly through the grass, keeping herself tight up against the building, trying her best to avoid the unpleasant mess.  Then she came up the steps.  “So, this is the virus, then?  The Psyke virus, from your syringe?”

“Not my syringe,” Phoenix said.  “From Albin’s blood sample, or – heck, I don’t know anymore.  June injected me, but I don’t have the virus.  Twilight Zone stuff.”

“And how is it spread?”

“I didn’t get infected by handling it,” Dr. Cain said.  “The rat must have bit a student.”

Alaia nodded.

Phoenix looked back out over the now-restricted area, rubbing his hand over the top of his head.  “Wait, wait, wait, wait.  Can we account for every person?  I remember that kid who ran past us when we first got here.  Where’s he?”

“Oh crap,” Chief Cobb said, closing his eyes and shaking his head.  He pulled out his phone.  “Calling the governor.”

Dr. Cain bit his lower lip, wrinkled his brows, and shook his head.  “I shouldn’t have used the rat.”

“We need the National Guard out here,” Chief Cobb yelled in his deepest and loudest voice.  The officers, including the S.W.A.T. team members down on the ground, looked up.  He sped down the steps and waved his men over to him.  A minute later, half of the officers hurried away, heading towards the front of the Lutrell building.  The chief made a call on his cell phone, probably to the governor.

Reporters showed up first, some coming from the direction of the student center, others from the front, but all of them came running.  Other police officers arrived, driving up the sidewalks and onto the grassy areas, their tires digging ruts into the soft, wet ground.  Ambulances brought up the rear.

Chief Cobb ended the call just as other law enforcement officials joined him.  He waved for Phoenix, Alaia, and Dr. Cain to hurry down from the steps of the Lutrell building.  “The governor has already activated the National Guard, seemingly, on the advice of the Center for Disease Control.  He knew about this before we did.  They’re quarantining everything this side of Green Hills, Granny White, and Woodmont.  Everybody, including the paramedics, are to stay outside of the perimeter.”  He looked at one of his sergeants.  “Make it happen, now,” he said firmly.

The sergeant turned.  Chief Cobb grabbed him by the arm.  “If anybody crosses that line, for any reason, they’re to be shot – and that’s not my call: that’s straight from the governor.  Tell them this thing was a terrorist attack and that bioweapons were used.  That ought to keep them back.  The CDC is on its way with a team.  Just hold until they arrive.”

The sergeant nodded and hurried away.

“The governor knew about this before we did?” Phoenix asked.

“He had the CDC and the Guard in motion before we got the call,” Chief Cobb said.  “No biggie – we got the call a minute later, that’s all.  The CDC is already watching Tennessee because of the June Buckner incident and after what happened to---”

“Did somebody call the CDC or the governor from this campus?” Alaia asked.  “Kind of odd if you ask me.  Seems like NPD would’ve gotten the call first.”

“I called NPD,” Dr. Cain explained, “just as soon as I saw blood.”  He reached for his phone, hit the home button, and scrolled through his calls.  “Here it is, the call to you guys – twelve-thirty, a one-minute call.”

“Do you know who patient zero is for this event?”  Phoenix asked.  “You said you saw one student attacking another in the hall.  Can you identify that student?”

Dr. Cain bit his lip.  His forehead, wrinkled enough, wrinkled some more.  He put his hands together, almost as if he was praying.  “I never saw the young man’s face.  But he had on a Titan’s cap and a white tee shirt.  Aeropostale, I think.  Yes, Aeropostale – I’m sure of it.”

“I shot a guy wearing a Titan’s cap,” Chief Cobb said.

“Do you remember where you dropped him?” Phoenix asked. 

“Look, we need to stand down and wait for the CDC,” Chief Cobb said, looking askance at Dr. Cain, quickly, and then turning away.

Alaia cut her eyes over to Phoenix, and Phoenix caught her gaze and held it.  Then he nodded towards the body-littered grass.  They both moved quickly, hurrying down the steps together, tuning out the shouts of Chief Cobb telling them to stop, and they crawled under the yellow tape.

Chief Cobb and Dr. Cain came right under the tape behind them, Chief Cobb waving off the sergeant and nearly coming to verbal blows with Alaia and Phoenix.

“Where were you standing, exactly, Cobb?” Phoenix asked.  “I thought I saw you here, near the big guy – the fat one.”

Chief Cobb rolled his eyes and carefully picked his way through the tangled mass of bodies with Phoenix behind him.  He reached down and, with his two bare hands, and with his massive muscles bulging in his arms and back, he flipped the fat guy over.  “Guy with the Titan’s cap.”

A gunshot wound to the head, two or three holes in the chest.  Face pasted red, mouth open like a wild animal’s, eyes completely redded-out like a pair of pirate’s rubies.

Dr. Cain and Alaia tiptoed through the mess and stopped next to Phoenix.  Dr. Cain said, “Same guy.  He’s wearing the same Aeropostale shirt.  No question.  Wish I could see his face more clearly but there’s nothing left of it.”

Phoenix pushed Chief Cobb to the side.  He tried turning the body over, straining with every bit of his one hundred seventy-five pounds.  Chief Cobb sighed and helped.  With the body flipped back side up, Phoenix went through the victim’s pockets and found a wallet.  He tossed it to Alaia.  “Here you go, Ms. Personal Assistant.”

Alaia shot Phoenix a dirty look and went through the wallet. “Vernon King, twenty-eight, lives in an apartment in Murfreesboro, Tennessee,” she said.  “No student ID.”

“I don’t know the name,” Dr. Cain said.  “Look in the wallet again.  He should have something – maybe a lunch card, maybe a fob for the dorm.”

Alaia looked again.  “Maybe this guy pays in cash.  Looks like he’s got over twenty, new, one hundred dollar bills to spend.”

Phoenix put his hand out and snapped his fingers.  “Throw me the wallet.”

Alaia did as she was asked.  Phoenix caught it and said, “Are you sure this was the guy who got bit by the rat?”

“I’m sure of it,” Dr. Cain replied.

Phoenix knelt down and went through man’s other pockets.  He found an iPhone in the man’s front right pocket, removed it, and handed it Chief Cobb, who handed it to Alaia.

“Like, I’m everyone’s maid here today?” Alaia asked with her eyes glaring.

Phoenix pressed his lips together and glanced over at Alaia.  He leaned over to Chief Cobb and whispered, “And you’re interested in that woman?  What were you thinking?”

“What did you just say?” Alaia said, with her chin high and her eyes protruding.  “You know, if you got anything to say, you can say it so I can hear it!”

“I told
DeAnte’
that we need a printout of every call this guy made or received in the last two days,” Phoenix said with a pinched expression.  “That’s all I said, I promise.  I just told him you had more than enough to do already.  But, if you can handle this, would you?”  He then threw the wallet back to her.

“Okay, I got it – but I ain’t your secretary.”

“This Vernon King guy – he’s too old to be here, or nearly too old,” Phoenix said.  “No student ID in his wallet, he has a wad of cash, and he’s patient zero.  And this guy, who Dr. Cain doesn’t even recognize, just happens to be up in the lab playing with the one rat that nobody needs to be playing with.  What are the odds?”

“Another attack by our mystery man,” Alaia said.  “This Vernon was sent here.”

The CDC arrived, dragging wheeled containers and carrying packs over their shoulders: twenty people at least; and some of them carried weapons.  Behind them came armed National Guardsmen, armed and equipped, who fanned out and began escorting police, reporters, and students away from the scene under the governor’s orders.

Chief Cobb took an incoming call.  He nodded and said, “I understand.”  He turned to Phoenix and said, “Looks like this is no longer within our jurisdiction.  We’ve been ordered out here.  The CDC now owns this campus and everything around it.  And they’re evacuating everyone.”

Phoenix looked at Alaia, raised his eyebrows, and said, “I guess that’s our cue.  Unless you’ve got something else you have to do, what do you say we head over to the office? Do you still have that Krystal’s coupon in your car?”

Phoenix drove into the parking lot of the Green Lawn Cemetery office just off Thompson Lane, in the suburbs of Berry Hill.  He got out of his car at the far end of the parking lot, took a quick look around the monument-covered, gently rolling hills, and popped the lid off his Dr. Pepper.  This was one place he hated more than anything.  He’d avoided cemeteries ever since he’d been conned into sleeping in one back during a scouting trip, and he hated this one even more. 

In this cemetery, on a pine-covered hill overlooking I-440, was a plot he’d purchased for himself and his wife.  Though she’d been gone in mind for less than half a year, Phoenix struggled to remember her – the way she carried herself, the way she spoke, the way she laughed.  Her ability to teach high school kids – she had been voted National Teacher of the Year before her coma – was nothing short of pure gift; and her skills in reaching even the most closed-minded, obstinate child, extraordinary. And she always had time for her husband, more than he ever seemed to have for her.  And that had never occurred to him until the day of her surgery, when the surgeon had come into the waiting room to tell him that his Tracy had slipped into a coma. 

Now it was late afternoon, and Phoenix watched for Alaia. He looked impatiently towards the road, then back across the pine-covered hill, and then towards the road again.  He saw her pull off the road and into the driveway, and he watched her follow the single lane road up to the cemetery office and park beside his car.

Phoenix, feigning annoyance, opened the door for her and she got out.  “You know, that little incident back at the college would never have happened had I not---”

“But you did,” Alaia said.  “You just better be glad Cobb likes you.  He’s pretending like the syringe never existed.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“I know so, he told me. And I find that really, really odd.”

Alaia started to walk to the office, but Phoenix stopped her.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Phoenix said.

Alaia nodded.  “Albin shot, at headquarters, with your gun.  The note in your pocket about your wife.  And there are only three of us who knew you’d taken the syringe and---”

“So who told Vernon King – and who paid him?”

“Whoever it was who wanted that virus going viral,” Alaia said smartly.  She grabbed Phoenix’s arm and said, “Let’s get moving.”

“You know, the Men’s Clinic has a new You Tube video that’s gone
virile
,” Phoenix said.

Alaia ignored him.

Phoenix and Alaia headed towards the office, a plain white building, one story, with double glass doors and a black shingle roof.  Tulips, red and yellow, bloomed in two large planters on either side of the doors.  Phoenix opened one of the doors, looked at Alaia, and said, “After you.”

An old woman, blue-haired and tired, sat hunched over her desk looking into the even bluer screen of her desktop computer.  Her right hand was lying flat against her cheek and, with her other, she picked out keys on the keyboard, hitting each one slowly and deliberately.

Phoenix said, “Hello,” and she didn’t respond, and he found the bell on the counter and hit it three times.  The woman must have heard it, or maybe she’d seen Alaia waving her hand in the air; but she turned and saw the two visitors and she slowly rose from her seat.

Phoenix went straight to the point.  He looked at the woman, straight into her eyes, licked his lips, and said, “We’re looking for Phillip Mercer.”

“Phillip Mercer?” the woman replied.  “We have no one here by that name.  We have a Bill Turner, and he manages when he can.  Would you like to see him?”

Phoenix turned and smiled at Alaia.  Then he looked at the woman.  “Sure, he’ll have to do.”

The woman turned and walked towards the door to her right, carefully holding onto her chair, then a cabinet, and then the door frame.   She disappeared, step by step, into a hallway.

Phoenix pointed up at a picture of man, a younger man with a face that looked like a used car.  “That must be Bill,” he said.  And he had hardly finished saying “Bill” when Bill came through the door with the old woman behind him. 

“What can I help you with?” Bill said.

“We’re looking for interment records for Phillip Mercer,” Phoenix said.  “Died about---”

“The name is all I need, Mr.---”

“Mr. Clean, thank you.”

Bill Turner sat down at the desk, made a few key strokes, and wrote down a few numbers.  He stood up and handed the paper to Alaia.  “Hell of a nice looking secretary,” he said, ogling Alaia.

“No, she’s my mom – and yes, she does clean up after me,” Phoenix said.  “She can be yours.”

Alaia shot Phoenix an evil look, a look almost as evil as the one she gave him when they first met.

“Let me print out the interment details for you, Mr. Clean,” the manager said.  He paused and, when the printer failed to print, he bent over the desk in a plumberly fashion and tried to resend the information.  The copier clicked and whirred into action, like a garbage disposal on the blink.

“Here’s all we have,” the manager said.  “Looks like Phillip Mercer was disinterred a week ago and put back the same day.  Doesn’t say why, but I would guess you could inquire with the state coroner’s office.  I’m sure they’ll be able to tell you something.”  He handed the paper to Alaia, who rolled her eyes and handed it to Phoenix.

“Shouldn’t this document tell us who opened the casket and why?”  Phoenix asked.

The manager leaned over and looked at the paper.  “Seems like it should, right?  But you know how it goes!  Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr. Clean?” he asked, with his eyes glued on Alaia.

Phoenix folded up the paper and slipped it into his front pocket.  “No, but thanks.  We’ll be back, though.”

Phoenix and Alaia left the building and walked towards their cars.

“Maybe we ought to put Phillip Mercer down as a missing corpse,” Alaia said.

“No, we dig him up, tomorrow, with or without a court order.”

“You can’t just walk into a cemetery in broad daylight and---”

“Not in broad daylight,” Phoenix said.  “Tomorrow night – and I’ll bring a crew.”

“Are you asking me to break the law?”

“No, I’m hiring you.”  Phoenix reached into his pocket and pulled out ten, crisp, new one hundred dollar bills.  He held it up in front of Alaia.  “Put this into your son’s college savings, or don’t. I don’t care.  Or spend it on some clothes.  I’m tired of seeing you in that masculine-looking NPD stuff.  Maybe you should get a halter top, or something – then I won’t have to go to the Men’s Clinic.”

Alaia’s mouth fell open when Phoenix slipped the cash into her waistband.  “You didn’t take that, did you?”

“Cobb took the other half, so don’t look so surprised.  If he wasn’t on the take, he’d have thrown my butt in jail after I – I mean, you – shot Albin back at the lab.”

Alaia pulled the bills out from her waistband, heard them crinkling, fresh and new, and she counted them.

“I was just kidding about taking the money from that kid back at the campus,” Phoenix said.  “Or maybe I’m not.”

Alaia folded up the money and put it into her hip pocket, then she looked around.

“We’ve had enough for one day,” Phoenix said. “Go home, get cleaned up, and get ready for the Schermerhorn tonight.  Oh, and bring your son – what’s his name again?”

“Darkeem.”

Phoenix scratched his head and smiled.  “How did I forget that?”

Alaia smiled back. “Are you picking me up?”

Phoenix’s smile faded at her words, like a light going out on the front porch of a country cottage, and he laughed a little laugh and looked down at his penny loafers.

“It’ll save me some gas money, that’s all,” Alaia said.  “And I hate getting back home late.”

“Six it is, then,” Phoenix said.  “And think formal.”

“Then I’ll be formal.”

Phoenix jumped into his car and drove away, following Alaia as she headed towards the interstate.  He turned on the radio, always WLAV, and caught the hourly news update.  A news alert, something about contaminated water, advised people in and around Nashville to avoid water from the public utilities.

The beautifully clear day had turned to dark and drizzle by the time Phoenix, Alaia, and Darkeem reached the Schermerhorn.  Phoenix pulled up close to the entrance, right up to the sidewalk leading to a set of steps, and he reached under his seat, brushing Alaia’s thigh accidentally, and pulled out a small, black umbrella. 

Alaia took the umbrella, opened the door, and stepped out.  She raised the front seat and Darkeem, a rather tall boy for his age, with close cut hair and a quick smile, climbed out.  His eyes widened with anticipation when he hit the sidewalk, trying to take in the site of the building; and he giggled when he looked up at the symphony hall’s four tall columns and richly decorated roof line.  Alaia popped the umbrella; but Darkeem was off, running across the walk and up the steps, dodging others carefully making their way up to the symphony hall beneath their umbrellas, and he reached the shelter of the building within seconds. 

Phoenix drove away.

Alaia, with Darkeem by her side, waited for Phoenix just inside the front lobby.  She turned abruptly back towards the door, realizing she held only two tickets; and a sudden panic set in, making her feel like someone about to miss a flight because they’d arrived late and at the wrong gate. 

She waited impatiently for Phoenix until she glanced at her watch and saw that only two minutes remained before the program started.  She walked towards the hall, showed her two tickets to the attendant, and she and Darkeem were escorted to a table. 

Phoenix never returned.