Cold Silence (32 page)

Karen had taught me that.

That Orrin Sykes had chosen that night to show up was no coincidence. That he had come when Chris and Aya were there was part of the great game I played. I'd told Reverend Nadine that I believed myself to be in a macabre tug-of-war with God, or some force approximating God—fate, humor, coincidence, you name it—and the notion that for whatever reason, it kept coming back.

Joe Rush, superstitious fool.

I let them stay the night, of course. In the morning they were brought to the state police barracks to be questioned by detectives, and FBI, and days later, allowed to leave and continue Aya's alleged
college tour
, as if nothing, no outbreak, no deaths, no bacteria, none of it had happened. Out beyond my town four hundred million people were trying to do the same thing: get back on commuter trains, shop at Costco for apples and wines, go to the beach, repair houses, go to church.

Chris and Aya stopped in to say good-bye. I kept it quick. I told Aya we could e-mail each other. I shook hands with Chris, felt the small fingers, and her grip, and the coolness of the departing touch. Then their car backed out of my driveway and the last pebbles sprayed out and settled and the world was still. It wasn't just people leaving. It wasn't just love. It wasn't even God leaving. To me, it was different. It was more. And it was right.

There's been no evidence found so far that other cult members are still out there. But maybe that is wrong, and someday one will come for me.

That day, I scraped off the blood on the deck with a sharp spatula, and applied brown deck stain. I probably got all of the blood off, but you never know, probably some bacteria-sized bits remained.

Although leprosy has been mostly eliminated as a health hazard around the world, in 2013, there were 215,456 new cases reported globally, according to the World Health Organization. Pockets of the disease still remain, mostly in third world countries. The key to eliminating the disease and cutting down on transmission remains early detection, and rapid treatment with multidrug
therapy.

The author wishes to thank the following people for their help during the writing of
Cold Silence.

Huge thanks to fellow authors and good friends: Charles Salzberg, Jim Grady, and Phil Gerard, for giving plot advice and for reading versions of the manuscript.

At Montclair State University, thanks to Dean Robert Prezent for providing an intellectual home during writing and to Dr. Jack Gaynor for the hours he spent educating me on issues regarding DNA and experiments with it.

To forensic psychologist Dr. Xavier Amador and to cult expert Rick Ross, my respect and my gratitude.

A very special thanks to my dad, Jerome Reiss, who is a genius at envisioning what certain characters would do in a tricky situation. Go Dad!

Lizzy Hanson, thanks for the advice!

To Stuart Harris, head of Wilderness Medicine at Harvard, thanks for letting Joe Rush affiliate with your fine program, and thanks for walking me through how Joe would handle a problem in Africa.

Novels often come out of past experience, and this story would not have come about without terrific magazine editors like David Hirshey, formerly of
Esquire
, who sent me to Northern Kenya and Sudan on assignment, and Walter Anderson, formerly of
Parade
, who sent me to Somalia.

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