Reckless Creed (13 page)

OMAHA, NEBRASKA

I
t was late by the time O'Dell got to her hotel. Both she and Rief were exhausted but agreed to keep each other up-to-date. The biologist had bagged and taken several of the dead birds but only after donning gloves and a surgical mask. She promised to have results as soon as possible, telling O'Dell that she would oversee them herself if necessary.

O'Dell had been impressed with the woman. Even as the television news van swooped in, Rief remained composed. When the news reporter inquired about O'Dell, Rief simply made it appear as though she were a colleague, then took charge. The locals were already used to Rief being their source. None of them questioned it further. Though O'Dell was captured in some of the video, she remained unnamed. She told Rief that she owed her one. And even more so since they ended up getting their dinner by picking up fast food and eating in the SUV as Rief drove them back to Omaha.

Again, as was O'Dell's routine, she didn't unpack. Instead she turned on the television as she popped open a can of Diet Pepsi. It was too late to call Agent Alonzo. Hannah's voice message from
earlier in the day was a mix of good and bad news. The robins had not been infected, nor did they show any signs of disease. However, the young woman's body may have been. The medical examiner said there was hemorrhaging in the lungs and also in the petechiae. He suspected she had been strangled and left in the river. There was no way of telling for certain because Agent Tabor had confiscated the body.

Who the hell was this Agent Tabor?

O'Dell didn't like this. It sounded like someone was covering his tracks. If the girl was infected, why bother to kill her? And was Tabor part of the cover-up or was he helping contain the contamination?

She made a quick note to call Agent Alonzo first thing. In his message he said he had some interesting information to tell her. She hoped that included who Tabor was and what authority he was working under.

When Hannah had first told her about the robins and the young woman found in the river, O'Dell wondered if it was possible that there was a connection with what was happening in the Midwest. It seemed a bit far-fetched. Except that Tony Briggs was from Pensacola. She was having Agent Alonzo check to see if Tony and Izzy Donner knew each other or had crossed paths. If Alonzo had tracked down Tabor, O'Dell would ask him herself.

She downloaded the e-mail attachments that Benjamin Platt had sent her, and though she was exhausted she pressed herself to take a look. The autopsy of Briggs reported pretty much what she already knew. She pulled up the photos, enlarging and examining them one by one. Nothing out of the ordinary. Front torso, back torso, close-ups of hands, feet, face . . .
wait a minute.

She clicked on the back torso. Across his lower back, right over his buttock, there was bruising—a straight line from his right to his left side.

O'Dell scanned the autopsy report again. There was no mention that the body had hit anything on its way down. And he was found facedown.

She zoomed in on the area. It was a line of bruising about two inches high and stretched clear across the back. Maybe he had done something earlier that day or prior to his trip to Chicago.

Except that the color of the bruise looked recent. The ME noted that the bruise was premortem, but he made no attempt to explain it.

Then she remembered the cast-iron railing on the balcony. It came to about her waist. She checked how tall Briggs was and guessed that the railing would come to about the small of his back. It made sense that it could be the culprit. But leaning backward would be an awkward way to throw yourself over a balcony.

She pulled up Platt's e-mail. He was finished with the room and handing it over to Detective Jacks. But if they accepted that Briggs had committed suicide, there wouldn't be any investigation.

O'Dell thought about the room again and how odd that it was so neat and tidy. Why would a man who was getting ready to jump to his death care about cleaning up beforehand? And if he did care, why leave the bloody sputum on the television screen and the wall?

She looked at the photo again of Briggs's lower back and decided she needed to call Jacks. They needed to get a CSU team to process the room. If her suspicions were correct, Tony Briggs might have been shoved over that balcony.

O
'Dell was still going over the autopsy report when a text message from Benjamin Platt came through.

CALL ME WHEN YOU HAVE A CHANCE.

He answered on the second ring, “Maggie, where the hell are you?”

“That wasn't exactly the greeting I was expecting.”

“Sorry. It's been a long day.”

She told him about the dead snow geese on the lake and then the redwing blackbirds falling out of the sky.

“If Dr. Shaw is responsible, how and where could she have infected them? To my knowledge there's not a DARPA research facility in that area,” he said.

“It wouldn't matter. The biologist I spent the day with says that Nebraska is just a stop before they move on to breeding grounds in Canada, Alaska, and the Arctic tundra. Snow geese winter in a
number of southern states from Texas and Louisiana to Georgia and North Carolina.”

“So it's possible she infected them somehow before they started their spring migration.”

“There's more, Ben. A lot more.”

O'Dell told him about her phone conversation with Hannah. About the robins that Agent Tabor believed were infected. She explained what the medical examiner had said about Izzy Donner. That she might have been infected with something. He couldn't confirm his finding because Tabor and his team had confiscated Donner's body.

“Are you thinking this Donner girl may have been one of Shaw's recruits?”

“Possibly. I'm not sure. I'm trying to find if there's a connection between her and Tony Briggs. Donner's body was found in the Conecuh National Forest. That's close to the Pensacola area. The medical examiner believes she may have been strangled.”

“Why kill her? That doesn't make sense,” Platt said. “If Shaw wants to infect as many people as possible—which looks like what Briggs was trying to do—then why kill her before she's able to do that?”

“I don't know. I'm beginning to think Briggs didn't kill himself.”

She explained about the bruise and her suspicion about the railing causing it.

“We thought the young man you followed to O'Hare may have been with Briggs. What if he was there to make sure Briggs didn't leave? What if Shaw has others to watch and make certain the virus carriers don't survive?”

“Or make sure they don't end up in a hospital telling their story.”

“So maybe it's not so far-fetched? There must be others,” she said. “Have Roger and the CDC figured out how to find them?”

“He's convinced DHS there's a large-scale threat. Charlie Wurth is putting together a multiorganizational task force with him in charge.”

O'Dell had worked with Charlie before. He was deputy director at the Department of Homeland Security. She liked and respected him. Several years ago the two of them had been sent to investigate after two suicide bombers blew up themselves and parts of the Mall of America on Black Friday. Since then Charlie had been trying to lure her away from the FBI to come work for him.

“I'm afraid we have a bigger problem on our hands than finding Dr. Clare Shaw,” Platt told her. “We need to find and stop her virus carriers before they infect more people.”

“How can we do that if we don't even know what cities they're being deployed to? Or how many there might be? Ben, she can't be doing this all on her own. She'd need someone helping her, recruiting the carriers and those who might be watching over them. For an operation this size, she needs someone with leverage.”

In the silence that followed she sensed his frustration. And more importantly, he knew what she was implying.

When the two of them were working to find the remains of the North Carolina research facility that had been buried in the mudslide, Platt had kept classified information from her. But it hadn't just been O'Dell who had been kept in the dark. The director of DARPA, Colonel Abraham Hess, a friend and mentor to Platt, had kept even more classified information from Platt.

Colonel Hess had gone a step further. He had sent a crew to
secure the remnants of the facility, but a member of that crew had gone rogue, according to Hess, going way beyond his original instructions. Before it was all over, the man had attempted to kill O'Dell and Ryder Creed.

In O'Dell's search for Dr. Clare Shaw over the past five months, she continually wondered how it was possible for the scientist to simply disappear. Unless she'd had help.

“Do you know an Agent Lawrence Tabor?”

“No, and Maggie, I honestly don't know anything. And if I knew anything that would help I'd certainly tell you. Listen, Wurth believes we need to concentrate on airports. And I agree with him.”

“Airports?”

“Tony Briggs didn't get infected in Chicago.”

She understood. And neither would the other carriers. She grabbed the notepad and started jotting down reminders.

To Platt, she said, “Just like the snow geese and the blackbirds. They would have been infected somewhere else before they arrived in Nebraska.”

“Yes. So where the hell is Shaw?”

“There are a couple of military bases in Pensacola.”

“No,” he interrupted her. “I can't believe she could be working undetected at a military base. It's not possible.”

She stopped from telling him that military bases didn't seem any less likely than government-funded research facilities or state universities.

“Wurth thinks we can narrow it down to several airports,” Platt went on to say.

“It's still an overwhelming task,” she told him.

“He asked Roger Bix and me to figure out a way to help his TSA agents so they could start screening for infected passengers, but most of the symptoms are the same as the common flu. Bix said the CDC might be able to come up with a swab test.”

“A swab test? You mean like inside the mouth?”

“Exactly. Then you dip the Q-tip into a solution. Sort of like a home pregnancy test. It turns a certain color if the sample is positive.”

“They actually have something like that?”

“They've been working on it, but they'd need to devise it for this particular virus strain.”

“And how long will that take?” she asked.

“Ten to fourteen days. But it could be longer to get approval to use it.” It sounded like it pained him to admit it. “They've never tested it before.”

“So it might not even work.”

“It's all we have.”

“Maybe not,” she told him. “I might have a better idea.”

FLORIDA PANHANDLE

C
reed was in bed but far from sleep. He couldn't shake off the image of Sheriff Wylie's body hanging from the tree. Somehow his mind managed to loop it together so that when he closed his eyes he saw not only Wylie's face but also his father's.

He left his window open, hoping the fresh air would clear his senses. The breeze had gotten chilly enough that Grace curled into his side. He could hear the soft snores of Rufus down on the floor alongside the bed. When the phone rang Creed grabbed it off his nightstand. Instead of being startled, he welcomed the distraction despite the late hour.

Then he saw the caller ID.

“Maggie? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. Sorry, I know it's late.”

“It's okay. I couldn't sleep.”

Chronic insomnia was something the two of them shared. They had talked only a handful of times since they last worked together in North Carolina. Creed had avoided contact on purpose. There was chemistry between them that he hoped would
dissolve with time, but just hearing her voice canceled that idea. It also reminded him that there was something deeper between them. They had saved each other's life. Shared things. They trusted each other all the while knowing that trust was a precious commodity to both of them.

“I talked to Hannah yesterday,” she said.

“About Tabor's visit?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“Not yet. I have Agent Alonzo working on it. Hannah left me a message today that the birds weren't even infected.”

“No. He would have euthanized my entire kennel for nothing.”

Creed tried not to think about it. He knew that if Hannah hadn't stopped Tabor, he and his men would have had to kill Creed before getting to his dogs.

“I think Izzy Donner and Agent Tabor might be a part of a larger scheme,” she told him. “Something that involves Dr. Clare Shaw.”

“The director of that DARPA research facility in North Carolina?” Creed asked. He hadn't thought about it before. “Let me guess—the bird flu was one of the viruses she took with her.”

“Yes. It turns out she was working on creating a strain that would transfer easily to humans. And possibly one strong enough to transfer from person to person by casual contact.”

“You think Izzy Donner was infected by Shaw?”

“I'm not sure how any of it works. I've been hunting Shaw since last fall and still have no idea where she is. She literally disappeared that night of the mudslide. There were no calls on her cell phone after that day. No charges on her credit cards. No bank account
withdrawals. We've put out APBs and contacted other research facilities. It's as if Dr. Clare Shaw ceased to exist that night, and yet we still suspect she killed her colleagues and stole three samples of deadly viruses.”

“Maybe she had an assistant? Someone from the outside to help her?”

“That's what I'm thinking. The virus that we're seeing is definitely the strain she was working on. I don't believe there's any way she could be doing this without help.”

“Wait a minute, you've already seen the virus?”

“In Chicago. The CDC is trying to downplay it. I can't imagine that that'll work for too much longer. Now that his parents have been contacted I can tell you that one of the victims was Jason's friend, Tony Briggs.”

“What do you mean? We heard Tony jumped from the nineteenth floor of a hotel. You're saying he had this virus?”

Creed was on his feet now, at the window. The breeze was cold against his chest.

“There's a lot we still don't know for sure. I'm heading down to Pensacola to retrace Tony's footsteps for the last several weeks. But that's not the only reason I'm calling. I remember Hannah telling me about the DHS contracts you have with them to train dogs for TSA.”

“That's right. We also have a contract to provide patrols for a certain number of hours each month. The demand for detection dogs has increased ten times faster than the trainers can keep up. The government's using private contractors more and more.”

“I know you've used your dogs to track diabetes and are
working on cancer. Do you think they might be able to detect this virus?”

He was still thinking about Tony. “If you can get enough samples for us to work with, I'm sure they'd be able to detect it.”

“Would you mind talking to Ben and the deputy director of DHS?”

“Ben's involved with this?”

There was silence, and Creed wanted to kick himself. Did he really just sound like a jealous teenage boy? He tried to backtrack and redirect his focus.

“Tabor made it sound like dogs could get the virus,” he said. “Do you know if that's true?”

“Ben knows more about that than I do. We only talked briefly about this. He doesn't believe there's enough evidence that they would be at risk.”

Creed shook his head. It sounded like a bureaucratic response, probably the exact words Platt had told her.

“Look, Maggie, I know he means something to you, so you trust what he tells you. But there's no reason in the world that I trust him. And you're asking me to trust my dogs' lives based on a theory that they might not get infected.”

“Could you just talk to them? No obligation. If we can stop this virus at the airports before it spreads across the country, we could be saving hundreds, even thousands of lives.”

“I'll talk to them. But no promises.”

“Of course. That's all I ask. And Creed, if you do agree, maybe don't use
Grace.”